𝙳𝚊𝚜 𝙷𝚎𝚛𝚣: 𝙱𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝙴𝚒𝚗𝚜

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟒 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰

Standing at the edge of the village, Ermanno sniffs the air, Eber folding his arms and watching the Lieutenant as he gleefully explains. "Can you smell them?" he asks the Commander who stares back at him blankly. "I can." He turns to the woods. "If I stretch my senses I can even hear them a little." he grins, "They are coming quickly."

Looking to the woods, Eber holds his focus and gradually the look reaches through the forest. They are unhoned skills, but he too can smell them, sense them, hear them. He can hear their sounds of rushing through brush, their grunts and growls at each other like a pack of animals communicating as primitive nature. He can hear their cries, their screams when another scream of one who is alive rings through his senses. His eyes shift abruptly from their dead examination of the forest, to a glare of the village which had been behind him.

"That sounded like the woman," Ermanno tilts his head back, far less concern trickling over the homesteads below as Eber lowers his expression darkly and disappears in a pulse of air. Watching the Commander's haste to respond and show of unhappiness, Ermanno crosses his arms over his broad chest. "Heh, I have a feeling that someone is getting stabbed." He vanishes in the same pulse of air after Eber.

Koza rushes up to the tavern steps following the trail of the holler. Thayer comes up beside him with the Captain crashing through the door only to halt immediately.

A shady figure of snarling lips and bared teeth crushes down on a table, smashing its claws into the wood while another shadow beast growls and slams to the wall as though not seeing the boundary.

Hitting the floor from the chaos, Kasimir lifts himself to an elbow as Biagio rushes to him. Grabbing at the old man's arm, the devotee helps him up. "She is the host of those demons, if she is blind, then as are they." At that, Lorelei's head whips to the men with her shadows' heads jerking to do the same, their eyes open wide whilst hers stay shut tightly in pain.

"But she is not deaf." Biagio yanks Kasimir out of the way, Koza doing the same for Thayer as the shade monsters crush the floorboards where the men stood.

Steadying himself, Biagio flaps his coat to the side, clutching a dagger and drawing it from its hidden place. Taking his brief moment of aim, he flings the weapon for the Woman's head. Covering the distance of the room in a blink, the dagger meets a sudden halt in Eber's grip, the Commander having crossed the distance of the village in the same blink. Holding the sharp point at his chest, Eber looks from the weapon, up to Biagio. In another wave of air, Eber moves to the front of Biagio, the man having only the time to vaguely see the soldier before Eber shoves his hand against the man's chest with force to send him out the door, into the street with a grunt and thud.

The sound of movement alerting Lorelei once more, her focus shifts to where Eber stands in the room, her shadow beast training on the same spot. Growling and snarling, the creatures rush the spot, fangs bared and claws drawn, honed to cut and slice. "Lorelei," Eber calls softly. Her own snarl drops from her face, the beasts lurching to a sudden stop nearly at the soldier. As her expression softens, now knowing who her target was in that moment, the shadows' fangs fade and claws draw in. The ridges of the figures in feral jaggedness smooth, the Soldier not their prey.