The beast managed to move just as it was fired upon, lunging onto the wagon filled with corpses. It roared, the primal sound filling the building, as it tore at its undead enemy, seeking to pull the dead man down to the floor.

Quantrill swung away as the werewolf came for him, using the momentum he had gained from his motion swinging by the arm attached to the roof to narrowly avoid the claw that had swiped at him, threatening to pull him down from his perch.

A dark whisper of motion sailed over the hurrying huckster.

"Cora!" Korpi called, pausing a moment atop the open door to bob urgency, then launched herself in, following Morganwolf's strangely deformed self and shadow.

A cry startled from her beak to find the man-avakhi on her level and swinging out of the reach of fangs whilst Morgan leapt.

"Ka!"

Swooping away from the action, Korpi snatched the lantern from its nook and continued in an arc. A couple of hard wingbeats brought her up around the dead man's back. Let Fire deal with the demon.

Korpi let go of the lantern handle with one foot at the instant of landing, turning and hauling it up against the once-man's collar as she found balance. The pale flame still danced its ancient dance within its little globe of glass. Now, how to get Fire onto the demon?

Sky Dog jerked away from the sudden heavy swing of steel over his shoulder, twisting to avoid the worst of the splatter from Daniel's strike. He blinked.

"This one was upstairs, I think," he told the swordsman, shunting the corpse aside with his foot and proceeding upwards with light-footed caution. The shaman's nostrils flared at the scent of the smoke beginning to well from the main room and he glanced back, then took in the streaming bullet graze to Daniel's temple and hastened up in search of blankets and bandaging-cloth.

Quantrill laughed as the bird brought him just what he needed. The sound of his voice seemed to resonate arrogance, hatred, and glee in equal parts. It was a twisted sound, and it cut through the night like a knife. As if on his command, the flame in the lantern seemed to get excited, slithering in between the small space between glass and metal on the lantern. Once it was out, he blew on it and a gust of flame shot towards the werewolf.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:48, Thu 06 Aug 2015.

Daniel opened his mouth as if to protest Sky Dog's plan to proceed to a place that was likely to be engulfed in flame soon, but shut it and followed the shaman to the second floor. Surely they had time to find things before the fire was licking at their boots.

Whateley rushed over to the other building, following Coraline and the trail of the beast, whose transformation he had witnessed with awe and curiosity. Looking at the scene, the werewolf atop a wagon full of corpses, and Quantrill hanging from the ceiling like a spider, he raised his wand and pointed it at the undead butcher and shouted something at it in a strange language.

[Language unknown: "P laolce adla sa itaist!"]

"AHHH!" It wasn't pain, but pure irritation and annoyance as the bird came for his eye. He didn't have time to think about or react to the thing that was trying to force him to sleep, swatting uselessly at the bird.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:28, Wed 12 Aug 2015.

Undeterred by his failure, Whateley cast again with his wand and shouted his incantation, more exasperation in his voice as he failed yet again.

Unable to tell wood from open space in the dim upstairs corridor, Sky Dog nearly brained himself on the first room's doorframe.

"fir poles..." The shaman rubbed his head under the bear teeth and grinned ruefully. "Are any here?" he addressed the upstairs in general, seeing as the thud would likely have signalled his presence to any hostile parties.

The creature recoiled briefly as the flames shot toward it, wary of the tricks the dead man possessed. It snarled at him, lashing out at a second time, seeking once more to pull him to the floor.

Korpi flapped for balance whilst Quantrill flailed, the lantern in her claw knocking against the demon's face as she sought a better grip on his hair. She ducked and snapped at the long-dead hand as it came close then darted her beak down viciously at the man-avakhi's uninjured eye, seeking to pull and rupture and spill his sight, hackles raised.

The outlaw writhed and cried out at the attack on his eye, shutting his eye and twisting around so that the bird only scratched uselessly at his face. "GODDAMN BIRD!"

Snapping the loaded cylinder into place, Randolph scrutinizes the street and spots Coraline heading toward a building a couple of doors down. He hurries after her.

"Whateley!  Soul blast?" she called to the fellow hexslinger.  She wasn't certain what hex he'd been attempting, but she was almost certain he'd tried to blast Quantrill earlier.  She wasn't sure this creature even had a soul to injure.

"On three," he agreed, nodding at her selection and indicating that they should time their attacks to strike as one. "One, two, THREE!" He flicked back his wand and stabbed it in the air towards Quantrill.

Cora gave a nod and gambled with her soul once again against the foul creatures of the otherworld. While she wrangled one into submission, she hissed at how weak the creature seemed to be.  Nevertheless, she let her attack fly at the same time as Abaddon's, streaking toward Quantrill with ghostly white light.

Turning his head towards the rotten little bird that had been trying to claw his eyes out, he growled, "I'm gonna eat you later!" and blew a tremendous gout of flame towards it this time, a cloud of fire seeming to engulf the raven.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:45, Mon 24 Aug 2015.

Having found several empty rooms on the upper floor, Daniel briefly thanked God that everyone was safe and then moved to quickly secure as many fire-fighting implements as he could find and secure. He snatched a bedsheet and quickly cut pieces for Sky Dog and Daniel to use as a deterrent to the smoke finding a way into their lungs. He then snatched some blankets and tossed some of them at Sky Dog before wrapping a couple around his neck and hoisting as much sand as he could find and/or carry.

Bandanna already pulled up over his nose, Sky Dog grabbed those blankets that flew towards him and wound the sheet-strip around his arm before running-vaulting-standing downstairs ready for Daniel to chain buckets to. "People here! We have brought the sand from above!" he called to those in the main room.

Anyone responding would get a sand bucket and/or a heaped blanket to throw over the flames.

---

Meanwhile Korpi rose up from Quantrill's head like a blown cinder as he turned and breathed fire at her. The lantern fell, abandoned, as heat washed up from below.

"KA!"

---

"AA!" The cry torn from Sky Dog's throat was hoarse and startled as he flinched back, hitting the side of the stairs.

---

Away...

Singed in the sear of flame, the sparks trailing from her feathers, Korpi banked a sharp turn out of the winch setting into the night. Cool air greeted her; hitting the roof the bird slid down into the gutter. Consciousness faded with the heat.

---

The big, ugly knife scrabbled against the wood of the stairs as Sky Dog pushed away and loped into the bar room, frantic.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:22, Tue 25 Aug 2015.

Sky Dog came down yelling into an empty room, the patrons of the establishment having left the burning building as soon as they could. Despite the open door and windows, there was a significant amount of smoke in the room, and it continued to crawl up the wall it had started on.

For a shattered moment, Sky Dog just stared from the empty room to the fire on the brink of getting out of control to the idly-swinging door. Whatever had happened to Korpi left an ache and a tremor in his fingers. Yet...

"They have run away! The wall it is not bad yet, and the floors are well," he reported back to Daniel, voice pitched rather than raised though it strained at the end with the urge to cough.

Throwing the woollen blankets down and setting his knife on the bar, Sky Dog donned his goggles and rolled a handful of bar nuts between his palms before crouching to the corpse of the patron shot down by Quantrill. "Not here? Ah, good..." Salt sained the dead eyes and mouth and the line from throat to heart, a half-choked murmur of prayer laid down in warding the dead flesh.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:45, Wed 26 Aug 2015.

It was accustomed to hunting alone. To stalking its prey without aid. Yet, dimly, the beast understood that those that were attacking the dead man were those that the shell, its weaker half, considered friends. They were those that the creature was constrained from harming.

A moment after the dead man attacked the raven with a burst of flame, the beast lunged toward him with a furious roar, its claws seeking to rend his flesh, to tear him from his place of safety.

The last attack of the Werewolf was too much for Quantrill to hear. Struggle as he might, Caleb ripped the villain's head from his body, slashed open his guts, and the headless corpse remained hanging from the ceiling - a macabre spectacle as any - only a few moments more before it collapsed to the ground in a messy heap, smothering the small fire that was building up from the dropped lantern.

"Good Lord," Coraline whispered as she watched Caleb's beastly side rip into the undead Quantrill.  She took an involuntary step backward, one hand pressed to her stomach, eyes wide as she surveyed the scene.  Her eyes flitted to Abaddon uncertainly.  Had he ever seen anything so ghastly?  She half expected the beast to turn on them next.

God.  The bird. 

Remembering Korpi, she took a step back from the building and turned her gaze upward, searching for where she'd seen the blaze of black feathers and cinder land.  Swearing under her breath, she hiked up her skirt and ran to the side of the building, climbing the rain barrel and standing on her tiptoes to get a look into the gutters.

"Whateley!  Come give me a leg up.  This bird isn't moving."