The Restoration of Erihal [GAME START]

Duril quickly shrank back behind more undergrowth than was strictly necessary to remain hidden. "Gods, what even was that to begin with? Anyone know? Maybe there's some of its original self in its behaviour that we can exploit... I don't know if fighting it head-on is the right move."

After a second of steeling his nerves, he crept forward just enough to see the beast again, and raised his lens to get a good look at it.

Leah is hiding behind Duril! She may be well, big (as the Bigmanes are notable for), but she is a bit of a coward.

She ponders for a moment. "Well, a beast is dangerous but they are...beasts." She makes an exaggerated gesture of thinking. "Not exactly one for lateral thinking, hm yes. Perhaps...we could lure it into a trap with some morsel."

She looks at Klyalson and his shrubalnds of a mustache.

"Perhaps of the...noodly sort?"

Mournfully, Klyalson hands over the pack of leftover noodles, gone cold, mildly spiced. Better the creature to eat his noodles instead of him! He blissfully thinks about a universe where he stayed behind in the village.

"Ah was t'inking a hoarse maybe. Buh de spice of noodles mahy catch it's snout, yeh." Jow said, thinking about that.

"Damn pooahr thang is awful sick though. It senses cou' be all messy and cou' haf the froth or sometin in it's brain. It been tacking the trees. Why te' devil would it do a thang like tat?" He mused, trying to think of what diseases he knew could be affecting an animal like this. Giant lizards were damn near exactly NOT his expertise though, nor the plagues in this region.

"I think an indirect fight is best, for sure. Maybe I could find some herbs that could act as a sleep aid with the noodles in our supplies... Or a lot of gunpowder to blow it to smithereens! No matter what we do though, we can't touch it. Whatever it's diseased with, there's no telling what it'll do to us."

"Ah tink it muhst be in pahn. Tars why its atahckin te trees." Jow said a little softer, rubbing at his chin.

"Raight. Ah say we go with te noodles. Easay to eat. Miss Jamie, you help owh ressidant chef hear wit the food. Sleepee is gohd, key it cam. Leah, Duril, you fihgur owt where to place it and hoawh te get its snout to it. When tat beast is nomming, ah'll be gabbing Prim and runnin' toot sweet, an' we'll wait to kill tis thing once owh lost soul is safe. Yeah?"

Jani nods at the suggestions.

"I agree that setting a trap is best. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of extra gunpowder with us here, unless someone wants to go back to the village to get a keg. And that would make recovering the trapped hunter much less likely."

They look to Adair, then to the Mau doctor, saying,

"Is it safe to touch that thing?"

The old cat grunts. "Doesn't look contagious, if it's disease."

As Duril looks through the lens, his senses are quickly overwhelmed by a powerful magic aura. As he binks and his eyes refocus, he can make out the source of the aura - something inside the beast! In its chest, near where he would think the lizard's heart would be, Duril sees a glowing mass, with tendrils of light branching out from it like veins throughout the monster's body.

Duril crept backwards closer to the group, keeping his voice low. "I see a source of the magic inside that thing," he said. "Lodged in its chest. Maybe in its heart. We will need to kill it, to be sure, but if we can keep its heart intact, it would be a valuable thing to study! But only if we can trap it safely and kill it a different way."

He grimaced, wringing his hands. "If it proves supernaturally tough, though... at that point, destroying its heart might be the only way to kill it. I would love to study whatever magic caused this to happen, but this beast has already killed people. Don't take any unnecessary risks on my account."

"Hm, maybe we should make a pit trap with spikes placed in a circle, on the bottom. So it would be less likely for the creature's heart to be pierced. Do you think we could dig fast enough, though?"

"Hm."

Xanthi stares at the beast, deciding for once that this isn't the time for dramatically pacing around. Even if she does have a cool coat that swishes while she dramatically paces around.

"More than just valuable, I would think. If we can't understand how this happened, could happen again. We need an effective trap. Have to wonder, though... Hm. Looks like a carnivore. How... meaty are these noodles? Would they even work as a lure?"

"Ah, my friend! With the perfect spices, the senses and the desire for meat can be fooled" says Klyalson, throwing the quality of his noodles into question.

"In that case, I suggest you hurry at creating a lure," said Duril to Klyalson. "We should use it to lure the beast away and rescue the hunter, and then we'd have more time to set up a proper trap."

Klyalson pulls out a bunch of freshly cooked noodles from his pockets (it was his ration for this surely exhausting expedition), and ties it with a red string. "Here you are!" he smiles.

Jow's mouth twisted up, looking at the beast, then the noodles, then all these trees. "Enoufh oh tis plannen." He said, grabbing the noodles out of Klyalson's hands with a grateful wink, then swiftly ran out amidst the trees, keeping crouched low to the ground as steps cress-crossed over each other, almost rapidly skipping.

"oh the night been dark and very cold, the woman took pity on a poor old soul, she took pity on a poor old soul as she asked him to come in, with a tool lool lool lool ramptin hine, a tool lool lool lool ramptin high, tool lool lool lool ramptin hi and the light of a beggarman. In the middle of the night, did the ol' wind blow, she missed the beggarman and the door did close, she clapped and clapped and clapped again and said he has been further gone. With a tool lool lool-" He burst out in song as he stopped by one of the scarred trees, judging that the branches would support him if he needed to and shooting a thumbs back at the others to get ready.

"What the-" exclaimed Duril, staring at Jow's song and dance routine. "Is he trying to get himself killed?! He'd better know what he's doing!"

He looked over at the beast's lair, waiting for it to move, slowly raising his lens to watch it in action. "When it moves, someone go grab the hunter!"

Xanthi stared.

"...He's going to die. I'll grab the hunter."

When the beast inevitably chased after (and possibly ate) Jow, Xanthi sprinted in, grabbed the hunter, and got the hell out of there. She was surprisingly athletic for a goddamn nerd.

The group continued to discuss their plan of action, that is, until Jow started singing. Then, everything seemed to happen at once.

The loud singing roused the beast quite suddenly, its head shooting up from where it lay and its eyes struggling to open. From a distance, they could see it blink and turn its head, trying to locate the source of the noise. A deep sniff detects the noodles, and its head turns to face Jow. Venomous jaw hanging open, it rushes to charge towards him. Thankfully, Jow is quick on his feet, and he manages to sidestep the lumbering beast. It skids past him, crashing into a nearby tree and leaving another splintered wound in the wood. It shakes itself and starts turning around, trying to locate Jow once more. It seems that the lizard is relying more on smell and sound than its eyes.

In the meantime, Xanthi is up and away the instant the lizard moves. Thanks to her quick thinking, she manages to grab Prim and haul the poor woman off into the woods. Her medical training is, to be frank, not stellar, but she manages to avoid disturbing the wounds too much. That would be bad. The smell of noodles might be attracting the lizard for now, but blood would surely draw its attention.

Jow blinked once, before time seemed to slow as it crossed the distance at him, the speed of it's approach horrifically underestimated as he leaped aside. He immediately starts running, howling and hooting at another tree, looking back to try and keep his silhouette directly lined up with the tree he was running at, then dumping the noodles at the base of it and leaping up into that tree, still yelling excitedly.

"Ahk, com' non yah beeg beastai, come geh yeh noodills." He taunted.

Duril popped out of the bush where he'd been observing the beast, gesturing for Xanthi to bring the injured woman back to the group. He was a competent doctor, and was definitely able to help patch up the injured hunter at least to the point where it'd be safe to carry them away from here.

Oh, good. No excessive bleeding. That made this a lot easier, and made Xanthi not regret her decision to save a dying woman from a monster.

Xanthi rushed her way back to the rest of the group, taking a reasonably roundabout path so as not to accidentally lead the lizard right to them, and brought Prim directly to the village doctor. And whoever else may have been competent at medicine. Duril? Did he know anything? Maybe. Xanthi hadn't asked.

"Got her. Think she needs medical attention. Immediate."

"I'm on it," said Duril, immediately crouching down and getting to work inspecting and treating the woman's wounds. So long as doing so wouldn't seriously risk the hunter's health, he'd inspect the wounds with his lens first. "I'm checking to make sure the beast hasn't contaminated them with its magic," he explained to the village doctor as he did so. "Once we get her stable and get out of here, I can do a more thorough analysis."

'Probably not contagious' was all Kamile needed to hear! Jow was a big dumb idiot for doing a foolish thing like this, but by the gods she wasn't going to let him be the only brave one here!

She fetches her trusty weapons from her backpack. She places her worn-out sword on her hip, tests the weight of her spear in her hand, and nods. Right! She's smaller than Jow, has presumably bathed more recently than him, and she's not calling attention to herself, so by all chances, the beast wouldn't even see her coming. Time for a charge!

While the critter has its attention on Jow, she'll try to plant it in the back of its monstrous knee. She doubted she could outdo the folks it had already knocked about, but if she can slow it down just a bit, the cowpoke's stupid, dumb plan of tiring it out might actually work!

Before she goes, though, she grabs Klyalson by the shoulders and speaks solemnly. "Noodle-man, promise me one thing: if I die, make sure any goods I leave behind are sold at a fair market rate, that they go to people who need them and not hoarders, and that the proceeds go towards finding a cure for Crazy Lizard Syndrome." Without waiting for a response, she ventures forth! For the people! For goods and services! For not letting that rascal Jow look too good!

Klyalson is very touched by being given this opportunity, although it was probably not a good idea to ask for what he thinks a fair market rate is.

Duril, Xanthi, and the village doctor attend to Prim's wounds. It doesn't look good. The hunter's breathing is shallow and ragged, and her clothes are caked with oozing blood. The old Mau doctor shakes his head looking at it.

"She's lost a lot of blood. Too much mayhaps. But she's a strong one. Holding on for now."

Duril's lens shows no sign of magical contamination. There are small traces from the creature's scales and saliva, but it is fading quickly.

Jow makes it up the tree outrunning the lizard (somehow) and hitting his target with the noodles (quite impressively). The lizard crashes into the wood, shaking its head and regaining its bearings. It hisses and claws up the tree, shaking it and making more deep scratches in the wood. Jow holds on for dear life, now trapped like a cat up a tree.

Kamile manages to sneak up on the lizard, the noise of her footsteps in the water covered up by the splashing of the beast itself. Her spear lands true, skewering the thing's knee through a weak point in its scales. It roars in pain and begins to turn. As she tries to pull out her spear for another strike, she feels an unexpected resistance. The brief moment of confusion allows the creature's tail to strike her, knocking the breath out of her. She falls flat in a puddle, winded but otherwise unhurt.

"I don't see any contamination, at least," said Duril, working on cleaning and binding Prim's wounds as best he could given the situation. He just hoped the fight didn't bring the beast back over here while they worked. "Once we've got her bandaged up, we need to get her out of here. Xanthi, do you think you can lift her without disturbing the wounds?"