Esther had somehow wandered into Ursa while it was a storm. Cold, obviously. The gembound was hardly worried about the 'infected' that one somewhere announced. It reminded them of the time they helped fight that large rocky-golem before, everyone freaking out, screeches - only Esther did not understand why. Of course they did now, after Vargas explained some things. Esther was here to help, despite their minds scream to set this place ablaze - the storm wouldn't allow it. They would need to find something able to catch flame.

The gembound was not around for the darkness that suddenly came for the others, but if they had, they might have understood it as the void. The thing that made their own magic. The whispers that were perpetually at their ears. Their wings stayed pulled against their own body - the storm was fast, a blur of sight and feeling. Esther did not want to get lost within it. Why this group was here to fight during a storm made them wonder, but it would allow some kind of cover for both sides.

Which could end up as a problem.

A blaze had the corrupted looking up, up at the birds that were being singed from the light of a feline who stood atop two legs. Strong, that one was. Esther could feel their body near catch-flame themselves, something that happened sometimes, but the whirling winds prevented it from truly taking hold in their russets. Could they stop the wind with pressure? Or would that hurt too many of them? With a frown, Esther wondered if they should have tried this before making their way to the group - still, it was too late for that now.

Still. What if it helped? Giving a quick once-over, Esther decided that maybe it could be interesting in the least. Helpful in the most. Maybe it could work??? Hopefully??? The storm was annoying and they were tired of dealing with it.

To the mountains - they were instructed. Hopefully, the gembound would get to go there, and not be crushed under the pressure of the magic if something did happen.

Wyvern flinched and let out a small cry as lightning split the air, thunder booming in her ears and the scent of burnt flesh stinging her lungs. Was it the storm? Ursa's ceiling must be high enough to generate its own lightning. But she'd also watched Gembound spark bolts of electricity into being with magic during the golem's raid, and this was a sort of gathering similar to the one that had formed during that battle. The stench of scorched feathers only cemented Wyvern's suspicions.

Despite the instincts warning her to stop, Wyvern trudged toward the group. It was, she reflected, one of the less wise decisions she'd ever made. But Bone and Svartis had disappeared in the last battle, and it seemed as if history might be about to repeat itself. Would this give her clues as to what had happened? Could she find them--and if not, could she at least stop others from losing family in the way her beloved niece had?

Wyvern hoped so.

TO THE MOUNTAINS, came the cry, and Wyvern could see its source now: the shape of a deer through the swirling snow, great beasts dripping oil and smaller animals around him. No... enemies? were to be seen, and Wyvern was relieved. She'd never wanted to fight anyone.

"WAIT," she called to the deer. Along with being the group's apparent commander, he also seemed less likely to trample or eat her than the towering furry monster or the serpent-like creature next to it. "WHAT IS THIS? WHERE IS THE MANY-ARMED ONE?"

Some here were familiar faces. A second round against the golem, but in a more organized fashion? "DO YOU LOOK FOR THE ONES WHO WENT MISSING?" Had any of them lost family, and was this a search party of some sort? It had taken them long enough to get one organized, but Wyvern couldn't fault them for wanting to be prepared. They must not want to lose more.

In any case, there was safety in numbers, and perhaps more eyes would help her in her own search. Wyvern would help them seek, if that was indeed their goal.

The air around her flickered, as if reality itself was being warped and transformed. A second Wyvern coalesced and flapped its wings, trying to make its way to the group before she gave up and let the winds toss it and carry it wherever they would. Her grasp on the magic was too weak to make it fight and fly despite the storm, but it had worked enough that she might be able to get a second perspective on this whole mess.

Wyvern is rolling to try to observe from the Drift spell

@Tahi-shei for asking questions

The Merchant, astonishingly, looked back at her. She wondered if he knew her. If he recognized her. If he... cared? If what Vargas had told her was true, probably not that last one. Still, she could not help but stare. What purpose was he created for...? She did not know.

Furthermore, what sort of a name was the Masked Merchant? Her head inclined slightly. She knew his real name, or at least the one the Master had called him by, though she wasn't sure if it held any power. Maybe if she lived, she'd ask him.

Sora had not forgiven him. But neither, exactly, did she hate him. Sora was distracted, then, by shouting -- the hyena, first, Giggle. The Boneseer, she knew her -- shouting that they had company. White birds blended into the snow like she did, and Tahi-shei barked orders as attacks were unleashed. Sora shuffled forward. She was melee, so she was in the front.

Her ears twitched at Wyvern's shouting. She recognized that one from the Raid; she'd been calling for her family, hadn't she been? Sora felt a pang of sympathy for her. However, she did not speak. It was not her place. She was not to decide who received information and who didn't -- all she was to decide was whether or not to follow orders.

She was not bred to be a soldier, but she was one now.

Thankfully, the group was hardly subtle. All Zhusha had to do was follow the noise. And what a noise there was! Giggle's and Tahi-shei's shouting caught his attention first, and he moved in that direction. Soon the outlines of the hulking Valkhounds could be glimpsed through raging blizzard, and Zhusha stopped short.

On one hand, two of them were very large and very monstrous, and whoever chose to associate with that kind of creature couldn't be any good. There were a whole lot of them, too, and Zhusha was but one adolescent bird.

Also, a crack of lightning forked through the air and struck two somethings, probably killing them if the burnt smell was anything to go by. Birds down. Look out. Zhusha narrowed his eyes suspiciously. So they were killing birds now, were they? He was a bird.

On the other hand, "I'M NO COWARD!!!" he shrieked into the wind, and that was that. The decision made, he charged—as well as a bird could charge through deep snow and against the roaring gusts of wind—toward the group. He would demand answers!

"You-you!" he roared over the wind and the cacophony of other voices, gesturing wildly at the gathering. "What is the meaning of this?! Gathering with beasts like these," he gave Draconua and Nidhogg a disgusted look, "and striking birds? What if that'd been me?" Though, if they were anything like the crane fly who'd assaulted him so rudely (and after he'd given it a gift, too!), he doubted they would care.

It was for the best that all those surrounding here were mere specks in her field of vision; even Nidhogg, nipping and pressing against her calves and flank while they seized and kicked out, was wholly ignored. (Any other time, and the reactive bomb would've blown up in the serpent's face.) Draconua, as much as she wept black, was conserving her magical potential.

She cared not for any of the Gembound walking at her side, for Vargas or his ilk. (One couldn't even be sure if she had the capacity to, so driven mad by Chaos and lust as she was.) No, she cared only for finding every scrap of Order, of its densely-webbed mire and wretched cleanliness. Any of those falling at her side would not see her as their savior.

Religious motifs abound, she was not so much an angel.

Let the trumpets of heaven ring; the Sleepless Chaos was here in her apocalyptic fury.

She had arranged herself to the front of the group, an unstoppable force meeting a quite moveable object; she was elbow-deep in the snow, plowing through it and the blizzard. (Any fool enough to follow close after her found the ground sullied in her wake, inky-iridescent black leeching into the white; a corruptive influence starting to make itself home and infesting their later dreams.)

But, Draconua flinched and shocked into a halt—"BIRDS... INFECTED."—and there was the pulled trigger.

Sanguine face-plate twisted for the sky, pitch-black eyes searching. A vague silhouette, pale shapes flitting about, vile.

As one's (familiar!) lightning stole for it, the valkhound broke into a shrieking roar. Maw spread wide, her hide convulsed once. Sinewy flanks seized as a vantablack whip cracked, danced into the sky. Zhusha's complaints fell on deaf ears, for her might whirled back on her. There was a cacophonous roar as the lancing bolt arced back through her form, wholly unprepared to receive it.

Draconua shuddered and screeched in place, joints flash-frying and spilling Oil from her eye sockets.

Assuring.

Saved from the strong winds by Vargas, Marshmallow allowed herself to be placed onto Tahi's back. The small bat climbed from there onto one of Tahi's antlers, using her small claws to hang on. "I! Help!" exclaimed the bat, who considered Tahi to be not-an-enemy. She remembered delivering a message to him before from Arwen, so he must be nice. It was too bad the bee wasn't here, Marshmallow missed her.

"Eyes! Ye!" She remembered what Vargas had said, and that was what Arwen called her sometimes too. Her eyes. She could be Tahi's eyes! Marshmallow had a lot of practice with that, she could do well.

@Tahi-shei (mentioned)

Nemo

The lammergeier had a second to fiddle with his bauble - a second to feel proud at his stable magic, the fact that this all seems to be going well - before Giggle calls out the birds overhead.

He's glad he doesn't have the reflexes to launch after them that quickly, either, because the blinding and ear-breaking crash of lightning and the general chaos muffled behind the ringing it brought throws everything in his mind into tumbling fear as he flattens into the snow to avoid the storm that breaks out in the Gembound before him, and, ignoring the complaints, the calls, he launches himself skyward with the smell of ozone and burnt feathers clawing at his lungs, and he adds his own voice to a break in the din.

"I've made a route for those of us with wings, stronger fliers can come with me- use your wings to feel the path I've made!"

Nemo snaps down his wings to shoot himself forward, to scout, folding and rocketing between the antlers of the leaders of the party as a way to alert them of his passing and he aims to stay a few lengths ahead- and about a dozen meters high. In the center of his self-made highway, but lower than the birds from before would seem to want to remain.

Any Lessers who would ride his winds would ride them straight to him.

The chaos and Chaos is left behind him as he blends into the white, his darker back barely visible in the storm, and the bird is... oddly calm. Something had settled into place in his chest.

Less fear and more respect for the rolling storm around him. A storm that he could at least handle. Funny, that he's spent his whole life afraid of wind and it's call, but that he'd prefer it to the dynamics of the group behind him.

Sorry Giggle.

@Tahi-shei
@Pride

Open to have anyone follow him skyward, and forward- on to the mountains!

The call regarding the birds went up, near-lost to the roar of the bitter storm. He squinted up against its bite, dancing in place, a dog prancing for a ball he couldn't reach. The thrill of the hunt, the frustration of their sheer distance, thrummed through him--took him over--so that he very nearly did not notice Draconua about to attack.

At the last split second, he leapt clear, to make room for her fury: and a good thing, too, as her magic lashed out and tore into herself.

A shrill shriek of alarm escaped him, and he bounded off into the snow a few paces, turning back and staring in confused horror as the Sleepless Chaos writhed in the snow. Nidhogg was not generally a vocal beast, but as he stood legs splayed in the ice--shaking with surprise--he found his words. His jaw clicked shut twice, and he spoke.

"Did you mean to do that..?" he asked, at last, and gone was the trust in a motherly figure, replaced by the hand of venomous chaos with faint mockery, instead.

Giggle's spell only scared the ghostbird up, higher and farther away--before Pride's magic gripped one, and hit it with the other, and sent them both careening wildly. Madhukar's lightning arced up in a blinding flash. It chained between them, the dual lashes hissing and zapping, the flash-fry of flesh and feather sending up twin streams of smoke as both plummetted downward.

Their bodies hit the snow, sizzling there. The stench of burned flesh was swept away by the relentless, bitter wind.

Wyvern's double would spot what others might, if perceptive, also see: a few Lessers here and there, paralleling the group as if to monitor their progress. The double would, in particular, see a third Ghostbird much farther up ahead that the others had not yet spotted.

The group would feel, very distinctly, exposed on the snowy plains that led to the mountains. Those with the instincts to note it would realize they were out in the open, on the plains, with no cover--nowhere to hide. Those who were observant enough would, perhaps, manage to spot the Lessers here and there, likewise failing to hide in the storm: the closest a small flock of Mountain Sparrows hunkered down a couple dozen yards away, the little birds occasionally flitting ahead, as if to keep an eye on the Gembounds' progress.

Characters are free to roll any form of Perception check to notice the Lessers observing the group's progress. If successfully identified with any form of fungal sense, it will be known that they are all infected. Wyvern may spot these Lessers in advance with the Drift double.

@Tahi-shei (Sora) @Madhukar @Twisted @Marshmallow @Nemo @Reign @Pride (Giggle, Nidhogg) @Draconua @Wyvern (Zhusha)

Esther had been to Ursa before, the storm wasn't this bad. Did the storms here get this bad all the time? Esther must not have been there during one of them if they did, which they were ultimately glad for. Still, their spell wasn't able to capture and the storm remained. They could hear some of the gembound speaking as they all traveled to the mountain, and Esther still wanted to get the damn storm to go away.

They did notice the group was out in the open - Esther had explored Ursa before to know it well enough to tell. It made them think back to those caves, with that funny smell. Maybe they could go check that out again sometime, bear not dying here. Still, dark eyes peered around to their best ability, not noticing the lessers that some may call out if they noticed. With a grunt, the gembound kept moving, and prepared their spell to try again.