Chapter 7
In reply to Titus Blackwell (msg # 13):
The party picks up the pace, following the wide trail up an shallow incline and to the top, the sounds of combat becoming ever louder.
After a short push, you clear the top of the hill and can make out what is going on.
Two abandoned horses, decked in similar livery to that you just saw bolting, neigh and whine from the sides of a small but fierce melee between three men.
The scene about them tells the story of a fight winding down: half a dozen dead or dying, a few arrows protruding from the odd tree, and a lance nearly perpendicular in the dirt.
Two of those left standing wear heavy cloth tunics matching the horses. One stands with lance in one hand and dagger in the other. His companion wields a curved sword.
From a distance, the third man appeared to be an unmoving, tanned flagpole. He stands placidly and seeming unleashed among the carnage. Were it not for the dense bluegreen aura about him, he would seem to be a lost cause.
At nearly 6 feet tall, he is barely able to see eye to eye with the men seemingly intent on his destruction. The ground shakes. Suddenly the seemingly frozen form takes life. Muscles explode with tension across his body, the ground visibly shaking in acquiescence to his will. A tan visage covered in a seemingly permanent pockmarked layer of ash covers the unknown man from head to toe, eyes of olive intensity and hair of the darkest black whirring with intensity.
The first of the attackers makes his last mistake, charging at the man, the second coming from his flank.
The rocks at his feet swirl, and a massive obsidian maul spins into existence. His swing is seemingly errant, missing the first target entirely but using its momentous weight to swing him from the oncoming charge. He lets the follow through pull him into a slide, swiping the second enemy off his feet and pulling the upswing toward the first enemy.
He flies off like a rocket, a cavernous indent where his groin had once been. The dervish, suddenly standing effortlessly above the prone second man, pauses for only a moment before simply releasing the maul from above his head, a literal crushing blow to the remaining foe. He dragged the maul across the dirt with ease, a trail of blood giving way to the rocky soil below.
The tension left his body, and the unmoving flagpole returns, the only sign of battle evident as sweat on his tightly cropped hair. Seemingly without provocation or awareness, he turns to the party.
