Really, Scarlet knew better than to expect peace, but she also didn't expect to be met by a fucking giant turtle monster the moment she stepped out of her temporary home at the Duckling. The hell was a Adamantitan doing here anyway? And what of the Paling? The screaming of a woman on the other side of the building brought Scarlet back to reality, the screaming which ended abruptly followed by wailing of several others. Fuck.
Ushering the patrons out of the inn, Scarlet reached for her Deathbringer on her back, gripping it in her hand tightly. She wasted no time rushing at the beast, the clammy feeling of Dark oozing from her sword from the get go.
It was quite possibly telling that Genevieve’s first thought upon seeing the Adamantitan bearing down on her tavern was of cost. How much would she need to scale back in order to recoup the capital that would be required to restore the inn? And then there was the brief thought of remodeling, which she had been considering.
Still, she was less surprised than she should ought to have been, but Aspel’s warning had come minutes before, and Genevieve had been on the look out since. Scarlet had already rushed forward to engage it, and the countess slipped past the door, outside into the mist filled streets. Briefly, she looked towards the center of town where the mages resided and thought of the Palings.
But it, too, was fleeting. Standing in the shadow of the building, she set about casting Poison. Whether it would do any good, only time would tell - still, she could at least try. The mental click of a successful cast sounded in her mind and the beast stumbled as it hit, as though the spell were a minor annoyance.
Cian had been trying to do as the prophetess told him.
He'd barricaded himself inside since the day before, canceling some appointments, rescheduling others, sending vague warnings of possible trouble to key employees at the Docks, in Red Light.
But in the end, business couldn't stop, and one particularly lucrative deal would have slipped through his fingers. He'd weighed the risk and the reward, had decided the latter outweighed the former, and gone.
He'd stayed in well populated areas, thinking of potential aid in the event of more zombies. Sadly, the precaution only meant that when the Mist rose and the giant fucking turtle all but dropped on his head, he had to fight the panicked crowd and ended up swept along by them until he found himself all but on top of the countess, who looked mildly peeved (bonus points for composure, he thought, not that that would do them any good). And when she spotted him -- bugger all, fuck fuck fuck -- his fate was sealed. He had to stay and help.
His cards, he thought, would slide right off the slick shell. Well, good thing he felt his luck thrumming through his veins like blood. Today wasn't his day to die.
He withdrew a pair of dice from the pouch at his waist -- the newest batch, improved, Nate had written -- compressed the pips, threw.
Right about then, all hell broke loose. The explosion triggered -- virulent purple and blinding white light -- was so powerful that it knocked him off his feet even at a distance. Even the tortoise, for a brief moment, seemed to float above the ground, launched into the air by the intensity of the explosion.