As Lyreis and Mathilda launch attacks at the vampire, Moltaris squirms away from her with every desperate bit of her energy! Breaking her hold, the cleric steps back into the Healing Spirit presented by Hurosk and calls on the Mother for a bit of healing as well. Then she takes a deep breath and shouts, "STOP! Just stop, everyone! Lady Morlainne, you've made your point. My goddess would prefer me alive rather than dead, and I'm sure my friends feel the same about their own lives. Can we start over?"

OOC: the following were all rolled in Discord

• 18 Acrobatics to break the grapple
• 4 HP of healing from Healing Spirit
• 1+5 HP of healing from Healing Word

The vampire just ignores the arrows that hit her but looks at Hurosk and raise an eyebrow when he claims the house. 

Thanks to Lyreis attack and the surprise from Hurosk’s words she lighten a little bit her grip on Moltaris and she is able to squeeze from her mortal embrace. As soon as she moves out of her arms, the vampire is no longer there. 

Kyne, who’s mind is clear now that he has seen the monster that she really is, see her at the limit where the fog, near the forest. He can barely see her, only a form among the fog, her eyes burning in the dark like a pair of two green lanterns.

”Now you want to talk? Now that you see that your pitiful lives are in my hands, that your weak powers are no match to mine... now you want to talk... “ 

she laughs and her laugh is kind no more. It’s cruel and cold and the echoes resound among the trees that surrounds the house. 

“No little one... now it’s too late. “

Kyne thinks that his mind is still confused by her magics, for he could swear that her eyes are multiplying. Now there a two pairs, then three pairs, four, five... Then he notices that the other pair of eyes are not at the same level, and that most of them are yellow.. He hears a low growl that send a shiver down his spine. 

“You will pay for your insolence. “

”Kill them “ she orders

From the shadows of the wood five big shadows seems to deattach from the fog and take the shape of big, black wolves, that charges forwards to them! 

As the fight begins, everything seems to move in slow motion for Kyne. He feels sluggish and his limbs are heavy, as though the air around him is thick as molasses. Part of him, a very large part, wants nothing more than to protect Morlainne from this sudden attack, but at the back of his mind something else whispers urgently that this is not right.

As the wolves leap from the darkness, he snaps out of his reverie and his senses abruptly realign to the harsh reality of the situation. Magic instinctively wells up within him in response to driving out the foreign enchantment, surging until his eyes once more glow like hot coals. Tongues of flame begin to lick off of him until he is surrounded by a swirling inferno and with one spinning motion he gathers it in both hands and hurls an enormous ball of flame towards the encroaching pack.

Kyne casts fireball for 38 damage, rolled in discord.

The spell cast, he hurries towards the house to join his friends.

"Sorry," he adds sheepishly, once he is close enough. "Her magic got the better of me."

The fireball explodes and send the wolves flying in all directions, landing on their feet they seem hurted, but the pain of the fire made them angrier. 

Kyne hasn't seen one of them, that seems to have avoid the main force of the blast and jumps on him, making him fall hard to the ground with the heavy animal on top of him. He felt the air leaving his lungs with the impact but before he can recover the jaws of the wolf close on his shoulder, making him bleed. He can't see nothing except the great wolf that is biting him, but he feels another crushing and piercing pain on his right leg where another wolf bites him. 

Mathilda sees how another wolf jumps onto Lyreis, and the other warrior falls to the ground with the great beast above him, biting his arm. 

Another one runs into Moltaris, still recovering from the vampire attack she uses her shield to block the charge of the wolf, she is pushed againt the wall and the wolf bites her in the leg, making her blood run. 

The rogue is about to run to help them but the she hears a low growl and turns only to see one of the great wolves at her side, growling and showing its great white fangs. Before she can react the wolf jumps over her, making her fall to the ground and she feels the fangs stabbing her flesh and the blood abandoning her.

     Hurosk steps back towards the window as the wolves spill into the cabin, attacking Kyne ruthlessly. He quickly fires off two shots at one if the beasts. The first finds its mark, in the base of its skull, instantly dropping it to the floor. The second shot sails wide as he tries to change his target.

Lyreis sees the wolf late, the pounce knocks him down and the jaws close in but he just manages to deflect them with the haft of his scimitars as he falls backwards.

In a move honed over decades he rolls accepting the loss of position to avoid the wound favouring one shoulder he comes up ready to counter. In one motion he returns both to his feet and into the fray, three attacks in as many seconds end the beast, the first a heavy slash down the flank which is followed but a feint, drawing the wolf's head up for the final attack and the thrust catching the onrushing creature squarely in the throat.

Holding the wolf at bay with his scimitars extended Lyreis watches it die quickly, the blade withdrawn and flicked to the side casting off the blood running down the blade at almost the exact same moment that Hurosk slays another with a masterful shot. 

Mathilda yelps in pain, holding her arm. She quickly rolls to get out from under the wolf and runs for the house in a blind panic. As the dashes for the entrance, she barely registers the fighting going on around her. As soon as she makes it inside, she stops dead. The scene is grizzly: the wolf next to Lyreis is dead, drenched in blood. The one by Kyne has an arrow sticking right out of its skull and its limbs are twisted off at an odd angle. A third one has his fangs in Kyne's leg and makes eye contact with Mathilda. Without thinking about it, the rogue grabs the cast iron pan from the stove. She is about to try and whack the wolf in the head to get it off Kyne, but then a stroke of genius - or madness - hits her and instead, she thrusts the pan towards the wolf and shouts: "Mmmmmmmm BACON?!" She holds her breath, waiting for the canine's reaction.

A piece of bacon falls into the wolf's snout. The beast seems to look at it, same as the others as the piece of bacon slowly moves down to the floor. 

The wolf lookas at Mathilda and growls...

Kyne snarls back at the wolf as its teeth dig into his leg, the flames around him licking up at the beast and singing its fur. He raises his other foot and boots the vicious creature in the snout, forcing it to let go so that he can spring to his feet. Putting his weight on his good leg, he leans forward and swirls fire between his palms once more, drawing several strands from it and sending them flying towards his foe.

One, two, six times he throws jets of flame at the monstrous wolf, grunting with the exertion as he does so. Some hit, others fly by it, but the beast stands. Carefully, the elf sidles around the snarling creature, edging closer to his allies.

"Come to Mother, you whelp..." Moltaris growls as the wolf licks her blood off its muzzle. Hackles raised, the beast stalks forward, then springs! Molly catches its charge on her shield and buries her rapier into its guts. With a whispered prayer, a purplish-black burst of divine energy pulses through the blade and into the creature's form. For a moment its eyes glow with the energy of the burst, too great for its lifeforce to withstand. Then it slides off the blade, dead.

Molly steps back into the embrace of the ranger's healing spirit, then complements its power with another blessing from the Mother. Then she hurries towards the house, still drained and preternaturally weary from the vampire's assault.

The wolf that was attacking Kyne finds himself surrounded by enemies, all the wood around him burning. His pack almost killed by fire and steel. He howls and, using the smoke from the fires as cover, jumps over the window. The other remaining wolf answer the howl of the first with another and darts off the night and fog.

Mathilda sees that the wolf had taken the bacon before jumping off. And she also notices that the temperature in the room is rising at an alarming rate. Smoke fills Moltaris lungs and Hurosk realizes that all of the fires that Kyne threw trying to kill the wolf had ser the whole house on fire. 

They dart towards the door trying to save their lifestyle from the sudden inferno. 

As soon as the first flames begin to lick up the wooden walls of the cabin, Mathilda springs into action, shouting: "Get out, get out NOW!" She runs out the door, covering her arm with her sleeve against the smoke. She passes Moltaris on the porch, who was about to go inside, but spins around and retreats with Mathilda. Having backed up a little from the house towards the lake, Mathilda watches to make sure everyone makes it out safe. As they wait, she asks Moltaris: "What on earth was that woman? Did she command those wolves? What is going on here?" Her eyes are wide with fear, but as she looks at Moltaris, she notices how badly wounded the cleric is. Drawing in a sharp breath, she mutters: "I'm sorry, is there anything I can do to help you?"

Jumping out of the window or through the broken door, the party stumbles outside while the flames engulf the lodge and all its contents. 

The last of them to get out is Kyne, confused by the thick smoke that comes out of the carpet, wich seems to be the focus of the whole fire. 

They sit on the grond outside the cabin, with the lake at their backs. The night and the fog faintly illuminated by the fire that came out of the windows and the door. At least they don't have to worry about the cold. 

The smoke mingles with the fog, making all the surroundings more intimidating outside the light that the fire provides. Hurosk knows that the woman is not near, but somewhere inside the lake, in the same direction he felt the undead presences before.

Sinking to the ground Lyreis sighs, unwounded but a little bruised and frustrated by their recent encounter the battlemaster turns and looks out towards the lake, the fire behind him altering the shadows in unpredictable ways, the corpses of the wolves seeming to writhe on the ground. "I don't suppose there is any bacon left?" he calls out over his shoulder to Mathilda.  

Kyne staggers out onto the grass, collapsing onto all fours and breathing deeply as Hurosk's healing spirit lingers, soothing their aches and pains.

"What in the nine hells was that?" He exclaims, rubbing his leg as the healing energy slowly closes the deep wounds from the bites. "Was she scrying on us? She wasn't supposed to know we're here. Gods, we were play things to her. If she's left us in one piece, she has a reason and it can't be a good one."

     Hurosk dives out of the window as the cabin suddenly is engulfed in flames. He quickly picks himself up and dashes to the door to make sure everyone else made it out alive. Seeing the smouldering elf pulling himself out of the building, he offers him a hand up and the spirit -  looking much like a Shambling Mound - grasps Kyne. "You didn't have to burn the cabin down, you know?" he says lightly. The spirit then rolls over to the others to offer relief for their wounds.

     With all wounds tended to the best he can offer, the ranger roams the area trying to get a sense if the marks he left on the vampire can still be felt in the area. With a dissatisfied grunt, he returns to the others. "She has gone back to the lake," he says matter-of-factly. "Maybe she could sense that her servants were no longer alive?" 

Quote from HanaObrien >>

As soon as the first flames begin to lick up the wooden walls of the cabin, Mathilda springs into action, shouting: "Get out, get out NOW!" She runs out the door, covering her arm with her sleeve against the smoke. She passes Moltaris on the porch, who was about to go inside, but spins around and retreats with Mathilda. Having backed up a little from the house towards the lake, Mathilda watches to make sure everyone makes it out safe. As they wait, she asks Moltaris: "What on earth was that woman? Did she command those wolves? What is going on here?" Her eyes are wide with fear, but as she looks at Moltaris, she notices how badly wounded the cleric is. Drawing in a sharp breath, she mutters: "I'm sorry, is there anything I can do to help you?"

Molly takes a deep breath and groans. No matter how much healing she does, the vicious bite wound on her neck refuses to close. "That, Thilda," she begins to respond, glancing at and making eye contact with Hurosk, "was a vampire. Kyne's right - there must be some reason why she left us here - maybe my blood didn't agree with her... I hope it burns her up from the inside." The cleric wavers a bit on her feet, then steels herself. "First things first - we need to move NOW. Not that it will necessarily help, since she has my blood. If she can't scry herself, she'll find herself another lackey that can. But I'd feel a lot better if we put some miles between us and this disaster."

As Hurosk's healing spirit works its magic, Kyne slowly pushes himself, to his feet, mostly recovered.

"You're right. Let's head back to town for now. I have more than a few words for that hook-nosed creeper."

"Is there no chance we could take her during daylight?" Lyreis asks quietly as he continues to stare at the water "She proved she can come to us, if she does so again in the night she will not be testing us, she will be murdering us.  We held her for moments, Moltaris nearly died and Kyne was rendered powerless, and if I hadn't managed to hold her off when she assaulted my mind she would have been able to kill you all one by one in you sleep I imagine, while I stared at her like a fool."

He turns back to the group, eyeing each one of them "There is something else we haven't discussed, this trickster who set us on this path, they clearly have a history, she has been enjoying the upper hand recently but he must have some power, or else she would simply have removed him.  If we return to the town to seek him out then we must do so ready to fight him, and we have no idea of his strengths. Both of them must be defeated in time, but which to tackle first...."

Kyne nods to Lyreis.

"I have never hunted such a creature myself, but I have known those who did. A vampire is powerless in the daylight, and I doubt her coffin is just lying out in the open on some island. It will be hidden and protected. Nevertheless, you're right. She remains a threat to us. It would be wise to get some distance from this place... either that or we go straight after her. At dawn, immediately."