The scream, as it turned out, had come from a pair of what looked like servant girls, ones that had (by all appearances) survived the nautiloid's crash, and seemingly had emerged from the wreckage relatively unharmed in an attempt to flee to safety, only to be found and killed by a group of intellect devourers. Even now the dog-sized creatures were clustered around their battered and bloody corpses, their clothes and flesh torn from the stubby talons that the monsters had used to butcher them. Now, Ciri and Shadowheart were crouched behind some rather sizeable rocks and wishing there was another route that they could take.
"Damnit! Four of those fucking things. Are you fit to fight, 'heart?" Ciri bit out, glaring at them as they warbled back and forth at one another in what she assumed was some sort of language, even if it was bizzare to her that a group of walking brains might be audibly communicating with one another.
"I can support you with spell-work, but I don't think it would go well if I were to try and fight them with my mace at the moment. Can't you just incinerate them with that fire spell of yours? We're on the ground now and that Gith isn't charging into your line of fire like she was on the nautiloid. You don't need to worry about sinking the ship or killing an ally." Shadowheart responded, and Ciri opened her mouth to refute the idea before pausing to think about it. Yes, her Signs were far more powerful and she lacked much in the way of fine control over them, but the ravenette had a fine point. She didn't need fine control right now. She just needed to kill her enemies, and her efforts on the nautiloid had made it clear she was more than capable of that.
Stepping around the rock, she took a deep breath and began sketching the Sign, even as the intellect devourers took note of her presence and turned to charge at her, warbling shrieks that echoed and resonated psychically as they came. An instant later, their battle-shrieks became shrieking of another kind as fire washed over them. Their defenses, such as they were, crumbled quickly, their physical forms following rapidly thereafter, leaving only a quartet of charred lumps behind.
"You know, I could quite happily get used to watching you do that." Shadowheart commented, sounding not only impressed but rather pleased as she approached, though her nose wrinkled slightly at the stench of seared brain-matter and bone. Not the worst thing either of them had smelled, even if only just upon the nautiloid, but an unpleasant smell all the same. "Front line fighting has never been a particular talent of mine, nor am I particularly interested in changing that fact."
"You specialize in healing, then? Back home, we'd have killed for someone who can heal injuries like you can out in the field. We only had natural healing or, at best, potions that could cause blood to clot faster and the like. Problem was, you drank too much of it too often, and it would clot the blood in your veins along with your injuries." Ciri asked, entirely genuine and feeling more than a little jealous of this world. "Any healing spellcasters, who are rare enough, tend to stay closely guarded in civilization or in fortified camps."
"No, not really. Illusions are where my training really lies. Any Cleric worth their training can do some healing, of course, but I had nothing more than the most basic of training in it until a handful of weeks ago. It's why I was so worn down back on the nautiloid. A Life Cleric could have healed every injury all three of us took several dozen times and still had strength to spare." Shadowheart denied with a self-deprecating laugh, and Ciri boggled at her. That kind of power…she could scarcely imagine it. Oh, she might know powerful spell-weavers. Her adoptive mother was one of the most powerful and famous sorceresses in modern history after all, and she herself was hardly a slouch when it came to pure power, but laying waste to cities and armies was easy. Destruction was easy. Healing, such as what Shadowheart had done, was hard. Oh, many a spellcaster was capable, and the feats it could achieve were incredible, but it was also incredibly draining on the mage and far more difficult to learn. To do it so extensively as what she was claiming…well, she could think of more than a few things about her home that would have changed if a half-dozen of these 'Life Clerics' at her disposal.
"Well, you're pretty damn amazing regardless of whether you consider yourself a talented healer or not, 'heart." She finally responded aloud, shaking her head and missing entirely the faint blush that dusted the half-elf's cheeks at the praise, or how pleased she looked to receive it. "Onward and upward, then?"
"Yes, I think that is best. That temple was built into the cliff-face, which hopefully means there is more of it at the top of the cliff. Even if the temple itself has been abandoned, there will likely be something that can tell us where we are. Some old records, maps, heraldry, mementos left by worshippers. Even knowing what god the temple is dedicated to could provide us with somemanner of information on our location." Shadowheart agreed, shading her eyes with her hand as she regarded the world around them. "Problem is, unless we want to give that sheer, crumbling rock-face a try at killing us, we'll have to go into the nautiloid's wreckage and hope we can find a way up the cliff from the inside. Unless you can use that teleportation magic of yours to get us both up there?"
"I've never tried Blinking with another person before, and I'm not inclined to try with you of all people, given that fact. I've no interest in being responsible for your death just because things went wrong, after all." Ciri denied immediately, and Shadowheart smiled again, laying a hand on her arm.
"I think you worry too much, Ciri. This magic has obviously never harmed you, and I see little reason to believe it would allow me to come to harm if I were with you. Magic is shaped by intent, after all, and I have little reason to believe you might wish me harm or be apathetic to my health." She coaxed gently, and this time it was Ciri's turn to blush lightly as the cleric gave her a sly grin. "Unless I have terribly misread your regard in the short time we have known one another?"
"No, of course you haven't!" Ciri shook her head sharply, even as she turned to eye the cliff-face. It was well within her range, of course, even if carrying Shadowheart might somehow reduce it to a fraction of the typical distance she could Blink. "Well, I admit that I'm not particularly interested in going back into that damn ship, crashed or not. If those poor girls and those intellect devourers could survive the crash as well as they did, demons and mindflayers might have as well, and neither of us is in the shape for that sort of fighting."
She paused for a moment, looking back at Shadowheart.
"Are you sure about this? We can go back, break into the temple from the lower door and work our way up on the inside." She offered, but Shadowheart made a gesture of negation with one hand, the look on her face making it clear that it wasn't an option.
"That door was clearly securely locked. We would have to blast our way in, and I don't know that doing so would be particularly wise. It's just as likely to bring everything down on our heads as it is to get us inside." She explained her reasoning, and Ciri dipped her head in acceptance, trusting the other woman's opinion. She wasn't exactly an expert on breaking into ancient temples, and she knew little about how things were built in this different and far more magical world.
"Pray to whatever deity you worship that we get through this alive, then." Ciri sighed, offering her companion one slender hand, only for Shadowheart to step past it and wrap her in an embrace. She stiffened, shocked, her out-stretched arm rigidly extended.
"I think it would be safer if we were to be closer together, like this. Just in case your spell works in a certain radius around yourself." The cleric practically purred the words into her ear, Ciri's blush blooming brighter, and the silver-haired vampire wrapped her arms around her companion while desperately trying to avoid taking notice of how lovely her magic-rich blood smelled~.
Bending her not-inconsiderable will towards ignoring that very distracting thought, and almost pathetically grateful that Shadowheart was wearing chainmail of sufficient volume to prevent her feminine form from being easily felt. Gods, was Ciri really this affection starved, this desperate to be held by someone other than her mother and father?
She pushed that thought away as well, holding Shadowheart tight and focusing not just upon her desired destination, but her desire to ensure that she and Shadowheart reached it unharmed. Her desire that they would land on solid ground, away from anything that might harm them. She focused on her desires and drew on the wellspring of power pooled at the core of her Self, and the world twisted around her. Shadowheart had enough time to yelp at the sharp, buzzing tingling sensation, two sets of arms tightening around one another in unconscious unison, before it was over. They were atop the cliffs, and a quick mental evaluation of herself and physical evaluation of Shadowheart proved they were both unharmed on the immediately observable level.
She also discovered that Shadowheart's ass was rather impressive, even (or perhaps especially) through leather pants. The cleric gave a soft yip at her touch, releasing their embrace and pulling away from her to give her a look of combined amusement and chastisement (and something else, something deeper within her eyes) as her hands flew out to the sides at the vocalization.
"I'm not that kind of girl, Ciri. If you want to get your hands on my ass, you'll need to do things properly and romance me first." She chided the Witcher teasingly, ignoring Ciri's admittedly weak attempts to excuse herself as she turned and started walking towards a large white stone ruin in the distance. "Come on, that's what is left of the temple up there…"
"Wait, 'Heart." Ciri cut her off, darting after her and grabbing her arm, and Shadowheart turned amused eyes and raised eyebrows towards her expectantly.
"Ciri, if you're going to try to apologize again for grabbing my ass, I was teasing you…" she started, only for her to stop at the intent look in Ciri's eyes as they focused on something to their west. Glancing over, she couldn't see what was drawing Ciri's attention so deeply, and she felt a stirring of genuine irritation within. She hadn't minded Ciri's touch in the least, she'd rather enjoyed it to be honest. That did not mean, however, that she was remotely amused by some awkward attempt to pretend something else was going on in some fumbling teen-aged attempt to divert attention, nor willing to entertain it. "Ciri, you…!"
"Shadowheart, there's something wrong." The other girl cut her off promptly, eyes narrowing, and Shadowheart frowned as she audibly sniffed. "There's magic in that direction, powerful magic, but it's going wrong. And someone is in the middle of it."
"What the hell are you…" Shadowheart started to ask skeptically, only to be forced to stumble along as Ciri grabbed one of her hands tightly and darted in the direction she had been looking. This was a bit far for trying to defuse an awkward moment, so maybe there really was something going on? She could give Ciri a few minutes of this before stopping the other girl and really letting her have it for nonsense if it proved necessary.
It didn't prove necessary.
"How the hell did you know about this, Ciri? There was no way you could see this from the distance we were standing at, not with all the trees and terrain in the way! And why were you sniffing?" she asked, feeling rather bewildered, as she beheld the violently reacting Rune of Travel carved into the stone wall. Then her eyes widened as she considered something, and she shot Ciri a genuinely frightened look, taking in her features. Silver hair, red eyes, unnaturally graceful, unnaturally strong, charismatic… One hand snapped up, radiating golden light as she prepared to defend herself. "Gods, are you a vampire?"
"Fuck." Ciri groaned, running a hand through her hair in agitation, glancing back at her and seeming to wilt slightly in the face of her fear and the hand that shone with divine power, looking genuinely saddened. Enough so that Shadowheart lowered her hand slightly in unconscious regret for putting that expression on her face. "Yes, I am, but I'm not the kind of vampire you hear horror stories about, alright? I'm not going to ambush you in your bedroll and drain you dry, I have better self-control than that. Better morals, too, not to mention the fact that I'm a Witcher."
"What, exactly, is a Witcher?" Shadowheart asked suspiciously, somewhat reassured by her words. While Ciri could be lying, she knew that the girl didn't really need to. If she intended Shadowheart harm, she could have attacked her any number of times, and Shadowheart honestly didn't believe she could have done anything to stop it.
"Monster hunters. The best of them." The newly-revealed vampires told her, straightening slightly in unconscious pride. "When mankind is helpless in the face of the beasts and nightmares of myth and legend, they call upon the members of my order. We are sworn to defend the mortal races at all costs, from the time we are Chosen until the moment we die in battle. Above and beyond my own beliefs, my own vows, I would never disgrace my father by breaking that vow."
There was…a lot to unpack there, there really was, and Shadowheart was going to spend plenty of time doing just that (and asking far more questions), but Ciri's words radiated absolute truth. As a cleric of Shar, a master of The Domain of Trickery, Shadowheart knew how to recognize a liar when she saw one, not matter how talented they were. That was enough for her to relax entirely, though she made a mental promise to herself to double check her instincts with a bit of magical assistance. A Zone of Truth, once they were someplace quiet, applied without warning Ciri ahead of time.
"Anyway, it was easy enough for me to sense this thing going mad. I could hear it, too. And whomever was here last killed a group of goblins a little further to the west. Three or four of them, from the smell of things." Ciri continued, taking another, more subtle sniff, and Shadowheart couldn't help but find the way her nose immediately wrinkled (at the stench of the goblins, she didn't doubt) to be really rather cute.
"Hello! Is someone out there?" a male voice, strained but strong, echoed out of the violently reacting rune, and both women stepped back slightly in surprise as an arm, clad in a purple robe, suddenly jutted out of the middle of the magical vortex and waved about blindly. "A hand, if you please? I'd really rather not die from a bad portal of all things!"
"I don't suppose you can stabilize this thing, somehow?" Ciri asked Shadowheart, who immediately shook her head. This sort of magic was the realm of Wizards, not Clerics, and certainly not a Trickery Domain cleric. Quite frankly, she wouldn't know where to start, and the likelihood that it would go horribly (and for the man within, fatally) wrong if she tried anyway were…rather high. Sighing, Ciri nodded in acceptance and stepped forward. "Brute strength it is then. I seem to be making a habit out of rescuing people by tearing them out of things."
With that, she gripped the hand before her tight, settled her base of gravity and dug her feet in, before pulling hard. The arm, or more accurately the portal's pull against the man whose arm it was, resisted briefly before faltering in the face of her supernatural strength. Moments later, a handsome brunette mage, dressed in fine clothing under a rich purple robe, a well-trimmed build, and a definitive air of magical power was standing before them, breathing heavily as he stood hunched over Ciri's hand. After a long moment he straightened and gave Ciri a warm, roguish smile with the whitest teeth that Shadowheart had ever seen.
She immediately hated him.
"Ah, my most radiant lady, you have my utmost of thanks for pulling me out of that unpleasant situation I had found myself in." he said, his voice rich and his cadence speaking of great wealth and education, and Shadowheart bristled and scowled as he shifted the mutual grip he and Ciri had on one another to give her a courtly bow and a kiss to her knuckles. "Much longer, and I might have found myself entering the Realms of the Dead in more than one piece. Gale of Waterdeep, eternally grateful and infinitely pleased to meet you."
"Ciri. This is Shadowheart." Ciri said, pulling her hand free of his grip to gesture to the unhappy woman beside her, who received a cursory, if polite, nod in greeting. Then all three grimaced and hunched over, hands flying to their heads, as their minds oscillated in and out of contact with one another. "Another survivor of the nautiloid, then? I don't supposes you have some magical way of getting these worms out of our heads?"
"No, on the contrary, I was hoping that your cleric friend here might." Gale responded, shaking his head with a breathless scoff, glancing over at Shadowheart, whose jaw worked slightly in response to the look in his eyes as they roamed the small but obvious Sharran iconography on her armor. "But I imagine it lies outside of her talents. Sharrans aren't known for their healing abilities, after all. Or their basic decency. Much like their psychotic bitch of a goddess."
"How dare you!" Shadowheart hissed in response, glaring at the wizard and half-drawing her mace, who sneered at her, even as flames started to flicker around his hands. "Lady Shar…"
"Is a cruel, malicious lunatic who tried to destroy the entire world not much more than a century ago. Entire nations, continents, were destroyed as a result of her actions! Entire Planes of existence collapsed or were snuffed out! Millions dead! Magic itself broken!" Gale cut her off harshly, and Shadowheart's eyes narrowed as her fingers clenched white around the haft of her weapon, only for Ciri to interrupted the brewing fight by shoving her way between them, pushing them hard enough that they sprawled across the dir.
"That's enough out of both of you! I don't know near enough about this situation to have an opinion, and I don't care to try and find out under the current circumstances. We have mind flayer tadpoles in our goddamn heads, waiting for gods-only-know-when to turn us into those things, are stuck in the middle of nowhere without any food or water or shelter to survive, and the two of you want to have a fight over religion!" she shouted, glaring between them with bright and angry eyes as she lay down the law a bit. "Gale, can you keep it together long enough for us to find whatever passes for civilization in this area and go your separate way, or do 'heart and I need to go our separate ways from you now?"
"You'd rather stick with a Sharran cleric? Are you mad?" the man seemed genuinely baffled, glancing at a now darkly smirking Shadowheart as the cleric got to her feet, and Ciri gave a huff of aggravation in response.
"All I know is that I survived the nautiloid, including fighting demons with flaming swords, because of Shadowheart's healing and help. What you say about her faith and her goddess might be true, but I don't know you." Ciri told him simply, before holding up a hand as he opened his mouth. "And even if that was out of selfish pragmatism,"
"Which it most certainly was not, given you saved me from one of those fucking pods at great risk to yourself, when you easily could have abandoned me like that damn gith wanted you to." Shadowheart interjected with another dark look for Gale, who looked surprised to hear it, and concerned as well. Especially when the cleric mentioned gith, which Ciri quietly took a mental note of.
"Which Shadowheart insists in wasn't, it's still more than you and I have had." She continued, as if the other girl hadn't even spoken, though despite her words she none-the-less offered him a hand. He stared at it for a moment before taking it and allowing her to pull him to his feet. "Simply put, we've forged something of a bond in battle, and that transcends most things. Now, will you come with us, or go your own way?"
"…well, I think it's likely to end in disaster, but I will follow you all the same. I doubt those goblins I killed are the only ones in the area, and then there is anything else that might have survived the nautiloid crash to be concerned with." He said with a heavy sigh, shaking his head in resigned acceptance, before glancing between the two of them. "I don't suppose either of you have any idea where we are?"
"None whatsoever. There's an old temple, back that way a bit, built into the cliffside. We were going to check it out for information, or at least have somewhere we can take shelter if needed, but we got sidetracked saving you." Shadowheart answered, stepping up beside Ciri, her expression challenging, and Gale raised an eyebrow before nodding.
"In that case, let's see to that temple now. I doubt anyone is living there currently, or this area would be crawling with the inhabitants, but if more goblins show up a solid and defendable shelter would be a life-saver." He suggested, and Ciri frowned in concern as a thought occurred to her.
"Is it possible that the goblins are sheltering in the temple? Back home, creatures like that sheltered in ruins often, for much the same reasons that people would. Half the time, they're the ones that made the ruins, ruins in the first place." She voiced it aloud, but to her surprise the pair gave a swift (and doubtlessly rare) show of agreement as they shook their heads in unison.
"We'd have known right away if there were goblins nesting in there, Ciri, not least of which because of the smell. The door was still on the hinges, no totems, no guards, no beast pens, no bloody marks on the walls, none of the usual goblin signs." Shadowheart voiced, a tinge of disgust in her tone as she talked about the goblins, which made sense. "No, wherever the goblins are camping, it's not in that temple."
"They were well-equipped, not the usual trash that scurries about avoiding military patrols or roving bands of adventurers. If I had to guess, we're either somewhere well off the beaten path, or we're looking at a large and powerful warband on a rampage." Gale added contemplatively, actually folding his arms and gesturing slightly with one hand as he talked, like every intellectual lecturer Ciri had ever met. "Either way, we will need to tread carefully. Stealth ought to be our watch-word, at least until we have a better idea of the situation. Though stealth will, admittedly, be a bit complicated, given the means and method of our arrival…."
"He's right. The nautiloid would have been obvious for miles around if anyone were to have so much as half an eye on the sky, and the crash even more so. Not to mention the fact that the sun is past it's apex, and all manner of creatures become more present and unpleasant when the sun sets." Shadowheart agreed, reluctantly it must be said, with an unhappy purse of her lips as she glanced up at the sky with a practiced eye. "Another three or four hours, maybe, before it's dusk. And in the midst of a cliff forest such as this, it will be darker quite a bit faster, what with all the trees."
"So we take search the temple quickly. If we don't find anything pointing us to a nearby settlement quickly, we find the best place inside to camp out for the night and get some rest." Ciri decreed, glancing towards the dead goblins, her nostrils flaring slightly before her nose wrinkled. She could drink from them, she knew, but she wasn't all that thirsty just yet, and they didn't smell the most appetizing. "I don't suppose you checked their bodies for anything useful?
"No, I was more interested in reaching the rune. Regrettably, I still had spell-work woven over my body from the fighting, and it interacted badly with the rune's own magic." He answered, and Ciri gave a hum of acknowledgement before making her way towards the corpses. A quick search revealed virtually nothing of use or interest, besides a few handfuls of gold, and the grumbling vampiress returned to the pair with a scowl, marching straight past them towards the temple. After a moment of glaring at one another, the wizard and the cleric followed, with Shadowheart darting ahead to claim the position closest to Ciri, leaving Gale to bring up the rear. Typically the last thing one wanted to do with the wizard in one's party, given the possibility of an ambush picking off the rear-most person, but then Ciri didn't know that, and Shadowheart didn't particularly care. He hadn't exactly made any friends in the last few minutes, not that he regretted it for a moment. Though, he had the oddest feeling that he recognized Ciri from somewhere….