Break the Lines

Eidiri leapt out from behind the cover, hurriedly dashing out into the treeline once he saw that the other soldiers were preoccupied slaughtering the caravan.

Edgar and Ken followed behind him, all of them hunched over, trying to remain unnoticed.

They quietly slipped into the underbrush, turning around and only leaving their eyes to be visible, waiting to see the next location the mage would appear at so that they would be able to ambush them.

As they hid in the bushes, Mr. Branson kept chanting what sounded like a ritual.

From what they could see, the obscured figure of Mr. Branson was leaned over, drawing some weird things out of the fallen's blood.

Then his figure when ramrod straight, his spine snapping upwards.

Black ooze starting pooling out of orifices, his limbs snapping in a grotesque fashion.

Seeing this scene, a great excitement swept over the cultist forces, their boisterous voices cheering loudly.

"The Great One!"

"Abraxas has returned!"

"Well damn. They're summoning an evil god guys," Edgar remarked cynically.

"Never mind that, the mage just cast a fireball or something. Just follow me guys. Try not to make any noise," Eidiri said.

Hiding within the trees, they slowly crawled towards the last known location of the mage.

Hopefully they would be able to assassinate them quickly and get the hell out of there.

There was no chance that they would be able to actually contend with a full-blown Evil God.

Whenever they noticed that someone was looking towards their direction, their lowered themselves down, lying down in the grasses.

They would crawl forwards a little, and then immediately dive down.

They would crawl forwards again, and then dive.

This repeated several times over until they reached the location that Eidiri saw the mage at.

However, when they reached the little rocky outcrop, the mage had already disappeared.

"Seriously?" Edgar asked, "Can they please just die already..." he whines.

"Welp, time to try to find them again," said Eidiri.

They went back to lying in wait again, trying to spot the mage again.

After about 3 minutes of waiting, a cloaked shadow-y figure appeared to their right, their hands outstreched, drawing in arcane energy.

Ominous runes and magical script flew around, whirling around and condensing to form raging black flames that scorched the wreckage of the caravan.

The flickering of the flames cast light upon them as they dived back into the trees, their figure heading towards their direction.

"Hey guys. We don't have to search for 'em. They're walking towards us. Cover yourselves," Eidiri said.

Ken dived into a bush and Edgar covered himself in dirt. Eidiri merely took cover behind the rocky outcrop.

The sounds of twigs snapping greeted them, and soft footfalls approached.

They each silently drew their weapons, preparing to ambush the mage and take them down before they had a chance to strike back.

When the mage had walked past the rocks Eidiri was hiding past, he leapt out and strikes towards the back.

To his shock, Eidiri's dagger merely bounced away before the strike had even landed.

A spider-web of cracks splintered around the mage, signifying that they had a magic shield up.

In response to the attack, the mage quickly summoned several knives, hurling them towards Eidiri.

Eidiri once more took cover behind the rock, weathering the storm of blades being launched at him, while this happen he messaged the other two to attack the mage while he took the aggro.

In frustration the mage circled around the rock, "This is the grounds of the Cult of the Ancient Gods, you have no right to be here."

"As such, your pitiful existence shall fuel the new era. Rejoice and repent. Let your sins be cleansed."

The temperature starting rising, and suddenly fire started to crash down on either sides of the rock, just when the heat was becoming unbearable, the onslaught abruptly stopped.

Deciding to look at what happened, Eidiri peeked out from behind the rock.

"Is he dead?" he asked.

The slumped over body of the mage lay of the floor, both Edgar and Ken viciously stabbing at him.

Their sneak-attack had succeeded, and while it had taken a bit of time for the attack to happen, it had worked.

They looted the dead-body, obtaining some basic magical materials/herbs, nothing they really use at the moment.

They also obtained some sort of parchment, presumably a magic scroll.

They decided to not meddle with that, especially considering that the former owner of the scroll was literally a mage of a damn cult.

The fire that the mage had started had rapidly begun to spread though, drawing the attention of the attackers.

Seeing this, Eidiri quickly decided to use the fire as a barrier to block the soldiers from getting to them.

At this point, Mr. Bransons body was completely covered in this viscous black substance, and suddenly, a hand burst out of the long-dead Mr. Branson's chest.

Tearing it open, a hideous little creature stumbled out of it, grabbing wildly at the air.

It's raspy cry rand through the air, and through irregular breaths it said, "Blood. Blood!" it yelled.

One the cult members then did something crazy, walking forward, they took a knife out of their pocket.

They split the blood from their hand and dripped it directly into the creatures gaping maw.

On the other side of the field with the trio of players, they were dodging in and out of combat, taking a couple hits here and there after the soldiers had ran around the fire.

They dipped in and out of combat, lashing out but then immediately withdrawing, they completely going on the defensive, only striking when they saw openings.

Not to mention that Eidiri got them into a tightly packed formation so that it would be had to separate them for one another.

Steel Song pierced through the leather armor of one of the soldiers, sliding into his ribs.

Withdrawing it, Eidiri rushed to block at another swing, leaping back after parrying the strike.

His limbs ached after the constant fighting, hopefully, the food Ken made would be able to do something about that.

Regardless the soldier's numbers kept thinning out, their movements uncoordinated while the three of them focused their attacks on one target at a time, slowly weeding them out.

Despite them having a numbers advantage, the soldiers were slowly being put on the back foot here.