Out and about

When the order is given Valtore doesn't hesitate in the slightest. He moves to engage his foe with his Dragonscale shield and ancient longsword. "Ye spit on me boots ye bastard..TWICE! I'll teach ye respect ye TWIT!" He uses hiscombat prowess to move past te guards to attack the commander...

Grinning and huming his monotony and loud melody the bladesinger merely strikes defensively at the arrows comming not even reducing his speed towards the first soldier, those lucky shoots are reduced to nothing as a protection from arrows shields the elf. The soldier would find the bladesinger almost smiling to him while dodging fastly and counterattacking at any breachs in his defense, by the elf fast and powerful movements its clear he has interest in apply swift justice to the man (aka kill him). He stops just for a moment his disturbing melody to talk.

- The castellan lives, but dont need be whole, swift justice serve his soldiers, let's see how worth they are.

As his opponents approach, Castle leaps back, behind his men, narrowly missing an arrow intended for his knee. While Castle had not known the arrow was coming, he mentally chocks it up to the fear of Bane in the heart of the archer. One of the Zhentarim soldiers looks at him and Castle nods towards the rebels, "Well?" he says impatiently, more of a statement than a question. In response, the soldiers move forward between Castle and the 'rebellious scum.'

The Zhentarim soldiers are slightly spread out, but it is apparent that to get to the Castellan, the rebels will have to go through them. All of their swords are drawn and they are prepared for the coming fight. The Zhentarim remain in a defensive position while the Castellan backs up approximately ten feet behind the soldiers. His sword now drawn, he waits.

Taeron simply circles the battlefield, making sure the Zhents won't have an easy time retreating to safety.
He waits for Valtore and Nadin to clash with the soldiers before he engages himself - not to end up fighting alone.

With a single nod towards Nadin, Valtore falls into his battle rythem. His blue dragon tower shield before him and his sword pointedslightly to the left. As the guards prepare he moves forward intent on his first foe. In his mind he plays through the action of deflection and a quick sword slice through the center of the opponent. He gathers his focus as only a weapon master can and when the time is right he strikes...

After giving out a silent curse in hinnish, Alfie vanishes back in the woods, starts circling around the battlefield, watching his comrades charging in, clashing of swords and shields. Himself seizes to strike (intend to cripple, critically injure) any Zhentarim, who attempts to cast a spell openly...until then he stays in the shadows follows the action by jumping from bush to bush .

"This's ol' trick then."
Tohrm sung a quick, rash melody, directly at Castle, the kind of song that would throw someone into a daze whilst his lackeys were being cut up. Attempting to 'cloud his mind'.

If Castle seemed to be unaffected by it, from sheer luck or being immune to spells of that type, Tohrm would instead stride towards the battle, dirging a haunting melody, throwing doubt and discontent into the ranks of the swordhands. A song to curse them, if one could call it that.

Afterwards having made up his mind that the Zhents clearly were not going quietly, he would spring into combat with two longswords, recognisable as an acidic Faerie blade and a chilling Mithral elven backsword, spinning like a razor edged snowflake, slicing through armor as if it were cloth.

As the Zhents seems to hesitate after his roar (lion's roar), maybe some are stunned even, Karovir channels his inner divine energy again and releases it in form of an extremely bright radiant light (word of faith) which emanates over the battlefield for a short moment. Any creature summoned by the enemy would be dismissed immediately and each enemy who is not protected against it would find himself blinded by the extreme bright light for a short while. The ones who fight on Karovir's side will find themselves completely unharmed however.

The air elemental charges together with Valtore and Nadin.

Nadin hums increase as his sword movements increases too in an agressive assault of dodge, parry and blow, his mastery of the song of fury combined with the haste spell, his speed focused in a deadly combat, but anyone looking at him could not differ his movements of those of a skilled and furious dancer. The elf no more speaks, his focus in the battle, but still from the corner of an eye he keeps looking to the castellan, ready to cast if he notices an attempt to flee from his fate.

The Zhentarim guard Valtore approaches holds his sword in a defensive position and begins swirling his off-hand around. Valtore's strike finds a point between armor plates and a wound opens, spraying blood upon Valtore, covering his face (Helmet?) and chest. Just as the blade leaves the soon-to-be corpse, one of Alfie's arrows finds its way through the soldier's off-hand wrist. It is clear that this arrow was not from the direction of the dark-skinned man's group, but only those who knew Alfie was there would know it was his.

Castle remains aware of the enemy, looking from one to the other, hoping to find an opening to attack while one was busy. His eyes meet Tohrm's and before he can continue his scanning of the battleground, he begins to wonder about things he surely would not be thinking of in battle. "Did I make my bed this morning?" he thinks to himself, unfortunately unaware of the battle around him for the time being.

The blood of the first slain soldier becomes swirled and caught in the air elemental's swooshes of air. For a moment, one of the Zhentarim guards looks at the elemental's new intimidating appearance. It is a moment too long. The soldier finds two blades in that moment. One of Tohrm's blades finds flesh between the helmet and armor, stopped just short of a clean decapitation. The other a blade held by Nadin, crossing over perfectly through the other side of the soldier's neck, finishing the decapitation without their blades touching. From the force of both blades, the head flies high into the air, landing in the swirling air of the air elemental, bobbing around inside of it with the air and blood.

One of the two remaining soldiers takes the opportunity and begins and overhead slash towards Tohrm. Midway through the swing however, a blinding light pushes him back slightly and he manages only to nick Tohrm (((I'll leave the location of the nick up to you))). Regaining his composure, he shakes his head a bit.

The last soldier, apparently warded enough to ignore the effects of the blinding light, runs towards Karovir with his Greatsword pointed straight at him, intent to run through him.

His path to the Commander now clear, Valtore ignores the blood spatter and charges forward. He holds his shield secure before him intending to bash him with it and send him towards Taeron's waiting form just off to his side. (A bull rush and shield bash)

"Eh? Lucky bastard!" Tohrm exclaimed as the swordhand cut his shoulder, before he paused and looked about the rest of the fight to see how things were going.

Instead of rushing Castle immediately afterwards, he returned to his supposed self given role of 'surveyor', singing a very varied array of songs to keep the others in the fight and the Zhents off balance. He kept quite a close eye out for the previous 'dark skinned individual' who had decided to withhold from engaging.

After finishing the casting Karovir notices the soldier running towards him. With his divine gift come divine reflexes but the old man's combat style is far away from defensive which probably results in him deflecting the sword so it won't go through him but the soldier would hit him anyway. Being warded and due to his damage absorbing skin the wound is probably not too great but due to it being a greatsword it certainly would cut him well. Blood starts to stain the side of his grey silvery armor.
Karovir grimaces shortly but ignores the hit and swings his bright shining sword at the Zhent recklessly with another, this time not magical, roar.

Immediatelly after finish his circular movement that sent the zhent head bobbing into the air elemental, the elf avoid waste time looking at the bloody wind scene, instead he fastly scans the area to see if any of the remaining soldiers is in route to him, if one is he will attempt spring him off aside from the path. The elf focus in the castellan, and while still keeping his defensive instance, with his free hand he picks a scroll and read its runes for a bigby's forceful hand spell.
((scroll will be trashed. Spell description: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ))

Karovir's deflection successful, the Zhentarim guard intentionally releases his weapon so that he may keep momentum, which flies into the air. Able to keep the Pushing his shoulder forward, the Zhentarim meets Karovir's gut, knocking him down, but by no means unconscious.

Almost as if intentionally collecting anything flying through the air, the elemental catches the large blade in its gusts of wind, swirling it around. The blade, however, only remains for a few moments before it is thrown back to it's original owner, spinning in the air not unlike a dagger, only much larger. To the observer, it would not be known if this was intentional by the elemental or not.

The blade flies across the battlefield and, due to its weight, begins to fall, hitting the guard that knocked Karovir in the calf, hilt first, obviously breaking the guard's leg. the guard falls to his other knee, wincing and crying out in pain.

Nearby, Valtore connects with his shield, pushing the Castellan towards Taeron. Unfortunately, only a moment after he connects, a force pushes against both Valtore and Castle. (((Val, please respond as if you were successfully hit by the Bigby's. If you are immune to knockdown, being dazed or both feel free to calculate those in))) Castle's trajectory is adjusted in midair, heading towards Taeron still, but not directly at him. The daze effect does not take effect, however, as Castle seems to be quite afraid, both visibly and vocally as he flies through the air (((Think Capoeira in mid-air))).

As Vall scans the battlefield, the only unoccupied soldier is the one who nicked Tohrm. The guard is squinting hard, one hand covering one of his eyes and the other held outward, as if to feel around.

As VAL has no prtoection from his allies he is tossed to the ground and starts drooling uncontrollably. "Da da. Da" he continues on and on...

Taeron finally commits to the battle. He watches the flying Zhent leader and readies his axe and shield. He twirls the axe in hand just a bit, to land the first hit with it's blunt side.

As soon as the Zhent goes to his knees Karovir would move his sword in a mighty swing at him aiming for his head. Since he only received one hit the wound would start to close quickly until only the red stains on his armor are left.

Tohrm eyed the blinded Zhent and sheathed his sword, cracking his knuckles before wandering over to the Zhent.

"Time fer a nap, lad."

He would swing hard with his enchanted monk gloves on, aiming for the Zhents head, regardless of the fact he had a helmet on or not. He would follow up with a quick knee to the gut if the Zhent had not recovered from the word of faith Karovir had used earlier. If the Zhent still put up a fight, he'd continue to brawl with him, which some might find strange in the middle of the violent battlefield, but it was clear he was trying to knock the Zhent out rather than run him through.

Taeron's blunt swing meets Castle's shoulder with a clang and a crunch. A bit of blood spatters out and a few broken bone shards pop through the skin, visible as his dented shoulder guard flies off. Landing, the Castellan falls on his back and immediately winces in pain. His left hand meets his right shoulder and he pulls it away immediately with a scream as he apparently feels the broken bones shifting. His look becomes one less of pain and more of anger as he puts he left hand back upon the blade that flew with him through the air.

Karovir's blade moves quickly toward the guard. Movement to avoid it is made, but not quickly enough. Although avoiding a decapitation, the Zhentarim turns and the blade sinks in between his neck and shoulder. The guard falls to the ground but it is unclear whether he is dead yet or simply passed out from the pain. If the blood is any indication, he'll be dead soon enough, either way.

The blinded guard takes the blow to his helmet and the helmet flies off. the guard is now blind and slightly dazed as Tohrm continues, landing a blow to the guard's midsection with his knee. The hit on the head seems to have aided the guard in shaking off the blindness and he backs up, focusing slowly on Tohrm. Spitting on the ground near Tohrm, the less-than-blind guard begins to throw his fists as well.

After some back and forth, it is clear that Tohrm is a far better pugilist than the guard and the Zhentarim falls on his butt. The heavier armor definitely tires one out.

Just as it seems the Zhentarim are beat, the dark skinned man approaches, "Seems you guys aren't half bad in a fight of roughly the same number. Too bad there are so damn many of them." His voice shows no sign of concern, as if there is and never was any danger.

"Burrerrr" drool continues to flow from the dwarf pinned to the ground under a large semitransparent hand..

Karovir would end the guard quickly with a thrust of his sword letting him not suffer for long and then looks around to get a picture of the situation right now. If he sees the drooling Valtore he would quickly try to cast a spell to remove his paralysis.
After hearing the old man say something Karovir would reply: "And you are standing there watching like a vulture who will pitch into the remains after the battle or are you going to do anything?"

Unless the castellan is unconscious, Taeron would just see to it that he remains pinned to the ground untill someone can take him off his hands.

Nadin examines his pouch looking for something to counter Valtore condition, but as he notices Karovir already going to assist he gives up and instead checks for any other adversaries. Not already sheating his blade he spots the castellan already defeated and talk,

- The enemy is defeated, lets remove anything interesting and pile the corpses and tie the prisoners fastly so we can burn those dead, no need to let bodies to necroworkers. Now about our misterious archers, are you going to show yourselves and explain exactly what you had in mind when shooted arrows?

Karovir ends the guard's potential suffering and peruses the battlefield, finding Valtore, dazed on the ground. After a short moment, it becomes apparent that Valtore is no longer under either effect of the Bigby's.

As the Castellan reached for this blade, Taeron puts a foot on his chest. Castle thinks about attempting to grip the blade well enough to swing it at the chance of taking one of these bastards out. He decides otherwise. Taking his hand slowly away from the blade, he rests back fully to the ground, never letting the grimace of hatred leave his face.

Scanning the battlefield, Vall would see one guard sitting on his arse, Castle pinned to the ground by Valtore's foot and the rest dead.

The dark-skinned man responded to their questions, "Call this personal confirmation. Recon told me all of you were more than capable, but let's say I wanted to see if for myself. I mean, if you had been unable to successfully take these few on, you wouldn't be much use to me. None of you were in any true danger, I assure you. My Intelligence officer, Recon, and my other associates would have ended the lives of any of these men that were likely to kill or otherwise hurt any of you. But I can see that was an unnecessary precaution." He chuckled for a moment at their worry. "As for the arrows, it was a simple distraction intended to see how you operated under stress of outside influence. You can be either offended or understand why it was necessary."

"I told you I'd give you the time and place of our meeting, as well. I have come to do so," he said as he pulled several parchments from a pouch hanging over his shoulder. "The details are here. The parchment has been made thin and easy to burn. Once you have put the details to memory, burn them." The dark-skinned man folded his arms and looked to Tohrm and asked, "You seem to share the sentiment here. Recon hasn't mentioned you, but that could mean any number of things. You might be extraordinarily inconspicuous. Either way, you are welcome to come to this meeting as well."

The dark-skinned man looked down at the guard sitting on his rear and then to the Castellan, "Seems you have some fates to decide."