Chapter LXI
in which Haas is reborn
The Blood Letting Part II
Glad wastes no time in prepping for the battle, eager to land what help Godrik can provide against Vorshen. He rallies 250 men to the pit and begins bringing a little less than half that force to the cave entrance that leads to the Dionastran temple. The rabid Skarlak feasting on a basilisk is bound and questioned, though he isn't able to reveal much of help. Shortly after he suicides, Sokaldu begins his assault on the cavern. He sends in waves of insects, leeches, and bat like creatures, as well as three basilisk. He also has 20 Skarlak surround the Foxes army, which Maus is able to detect. Maus relays the intel to the others and takes off to breach the Skarlak circle. He has no problem methodically picking away at the Skarlak with his mind magic, illusion magic, and stealth skills. Soba takes a party of Chracioites into the forest to break the Skarlak and has no problem swarming their small force with his numerically superior squad. Haas directs the other men as they fight waves of incoming beasts while Glad tries and fails to narrow down Sokaldu's location. She and Frax take down the first of the basilisks. Glad returns and raises the dead basilisk to fight one of the remaining two. Frax traps the third and kills that as well. With the beasts seemingly handled, Sokaldu appears in a explosion of blood and attacks Glad. He takes the damage and jointly attacks Sokaldu with Haas. When Sokaldu's body explodes back into blood, Red traps it within a stone container. The combined forces of the reunited party mop up the remaining Skarlak and basilisk, bringing a quick reprieve.
Glad and Haas continue to have no luck tracing Sokaldu, so Glad decides to feed the blood from one of the captured prisoners to FaceBook. Through guile, they'e able to convince FaceBook that they're trying to take down its master's rival to curry favor with Vorshen. FaceBook decides to help by supervising the making a potion that ties Glad's location to Sokaldu. After drinking the mixture, each becomes aware of where the other is.
The Vanished Foe
The Silver Foxes, undead basilisks, and Chracioite Army advance on the village where Sokaldu is hiding. The guards there are already on the look out. During Glad's attempts to have them step aside, Haas, who speaks their language, notices that the guards have warned their boss. Glad sets his basilisks on the two guards he was talking to. Their bodies sink into the swamp, which turns red with their blood. The rest of the henchmen hold and watch as their Sokaldu calmly walks towards the group through a volley of arrows and magical attacks. Saba, who snuck off during the confusion, investigates the hut Sokaldu came from and finds two blackscale corpses in a coffin. Their blood is being drained and funneled into the swamp. Sokaldu approaches Glad and asks if Vorshen sent him. Glad continues his attacks and replies that he hasn't. Sokaldu states that Glad may live, then, and disappears into FaceBook. Glad sets the book afire in a moment of panic. Haas finishes its destruction with her revocation net.
With Sokaldu absent, the Foxes are able to easily restrain the rest of his henchmen, investigate the village, and revoke the blood magic at work. Before they leave, a redscale woman appears and in her anguish attempts to take 40 of the compromised Chracio soldiers down in a blood magic murder-suicide. Glad is able to spare all but three of those from death with some quick revocation. He has Sokaldu's surviving henchmen thrown into the pit. Three of them survive the attunement to Chracio. The Foxes are able to gather more information about what Sokaldu was up to from one of these and learn more from Sokaldu's mistress through a combination of magic induced confusion and Saba disguising himself as Sokaldu.
Back in the Dionastran Temple, the group relays what happened to Godrik. He uses the magical orb they came upon earlier to get a lock on where Sokaldu when. They discovered that Sokaldu tried but failed to subsume Vorshen's power. It's not the end he had in mind, but Godrik accepts the results and offers his help to the Foxes.
The Vanquished Foes
Back at the pit where she's being held, Haas is able to convince Sokaldu's mistress to help lead their party to her captive lover. The group teleport back to their airship in Brenthia and follow the mistress' heading into Serosan. They pick up Ricotta's expedition along the way. Their destination is a series of cavern tunnels. After some basic recon to establish the number of people within the hideaway and the presence of their two targets, Tirza and Ricotta collapse the structure on their enemies. Only Sokaldu and Vorshen survive the ambush. Unfortunately, the dead acolytes provide plenty of blood to power up Vorshen's blood magic.
Vorshen valiantly attempts to escape the wreckage but is prevented from becoming fully incorporeal by an onslaught of continuous attacks. While Glad keeps Vorshen pinned with up a kinetic shrapnel tornado from sand, rocks, and projectiles contributed by Tirza, Phrax continues to dehydrate the blood droplets making up Vorshen's body for the rest of the fight. All the while, the medics do what they can to help the Brenthian's recover from blood magic triggered cardiac arrest. Haas suffers the effects of a blood magic attack, but recovers, shapeshifts, and begins continually crushing Vorshen so that his body can't fully form. When the vortex exhausts itself, Glad works to prevent Vorshen from absorbing the damage taken by necromantically forcing the wounds to stick. This ability is turned against some of the Brenthian allies when Vorshen subsumes control of Glad's body, but Tirza is able to force Glad's counter-potion down his throat. Glad continues to help Phrax interfere with Vorshen's recovery. Tirza and Red do their best to slow the source of blood leaking up from the collapsed hideaway.
This assault proves to be too much for Vorshen to handle and he falls in battle. The party excavates the ruin. When they find Vorshen's body, Haas bites the head off her prey. The corpses of all the blood magic mages are burned in a funeral pyre and the magic of the place is revoked. Glad revokes the resurrection spell that Sokaldu's mistress was casting himself. She frenzies and eventually suicides. With the primary backing of the Spooker eliminated, Ricotta and Tirza are relieved enough about the matter to commit their troops to the war with the understanding the Foxes are expected to intervene on their behalf if the Spooker becomes active again.