The Day of Thunder

[Kaiu Tai]

Hadn't been hard to miss the commotion off in the fields. Folks would need fixing. It wasn't her strong suit. People were so much squishier than stone. Still, Tai heads to where most folks have been sleeping and set up a fire, water, bugging folks for supplies...the usual fussing around when you're mostly waiting to do a thing.

[Makime]

Having heard of a fight, the Lioness arrived to check on the aftermath. Makime hadn't been surprised that such an attack was successful...the town had basically no defenses.

She moved around to see just how bad the casualties were. Spotting an aged Crab, the Lioness made her way over. If there was a fight, there was a good chance a Crab had been part of it.

[Kaiu Tai]

Tai stirs a pot of willow bark tea. Didn't need a lick of training to know that one unless you'd kept your head in a hole. Training could make it more palatable...woe to whoever drank from this pot.

As far as Makime can see, this Crab at least is uninjured. Most of the injuries here so far seem to be folks who were scratched or bit by the fleeing wildlife and found this closer than the village healer's hut; which is to say, not many folks so far.

Tai looks up from the pot and offers a nod. "You're the Lion as spoke with Lady Anjing earlier, yeah? Get caught in the mess out in the fields?"

[Makime]

"No. I had been distracted in the village when the violence erupted. The townsfolk do not seem much disposed to defending their town." Makime squatted down opposite the Crab, "Walls are expensive in time and resources. But having a system of alerting the town to danger...considerably less investment in either."

She eyes the pot, "...strong stuff. There are going to be some unhappy folks in a moment I'd wager."

"Lady Anjing and I were familiar with each other sense the descent of the Children of Heaven." She looks up at Tai, "Makime, servant of Akodo, who is Lord of the Lion."

[Otaku]

A large, pale-ish shape looms up indistinctly on the edge of the light from Tai's fire... and resolves in a moment into a short woman leading an unusually tall and large gray horse. The woman is still wearing a rough cotton arming jacket, streaked with sweat and creased where armor straps pressed into it; the horse is unsaddled and looks to be lame in one front leg. In another moment or two it's obvious why.

"Hello," the woman says in a quiet but very lovely voice. "I heard there's boiled water and clean cloth here?"

[Makime]

"Lady Otaku." Makime turned to regard her and stood up, "I'm not a trained healer but an extra pair of hands rarely hurts in my understanding." She looked to the Crab.

"And if you do not mind, I would ask you about what happened...given your condition it seems safe to say you saw some of the worst of it."

[Otaku]

"I'm fine." Otaku half-shrugs this off, lifting and dropping one shoulder. "It's Tsubame. His legs need cleaning and wrapping." She tugs gently on the lead rope, clicking her tongue, and the horse limps forward, the firelight illuminating an ugly animal bite above the knee on one front leg and a minor scrape on the other.

Otaku bows her head politely to Makime and Tai, recognizing both from that afternoon's... whatever that meeting was.

"There was a Bat who took the worst, but someone carried her to the village healer. A huge..." her brows draw together and she reconsiders the starting point of her tale. "We fought the beasts that likely drove all those other animals into the village. A pack of mad wolves led by a monster the same shape, almost, but three times their size."

[Makime]

"...something born of the nightmare realm?" Makime rubbed her chin in thought, "I have heard tales of such things but never seen such."

The Lioness eyed the horse warily, one of the rare times in her life she was intimidated by something. Magnificent beast itself.

"Sounds as if none died from your part of the battle, unless this Bat was in a truly terrible position when she was taken to the healer. Did you dispatch them or drive them off? Did there seem to be more?"

[Otaku]

Otaku loops up Tsubame's lead rope so he won't step on it, trusting that he won't wander off. The horse does indeed stand obediently at the edge of the campsite, shifting his weight to favor his worst-injured leg but obviously well-trained to stay where he's put.

Otaku crouches down to pick through the medical supplies. "Five wolves and the big monster. All dead. I thought the wolves might break when the monster went down, but they did not." She holds a roll of bandage lint up to the light, frowning uncertainly at it. "Unnatural." She sets the bandage down and keeps looking, though it's not entirely clear whether she actually knows what she's hunting for amongst the supplies.

"I saw no more, but the light was going by the time all was finished."

[Kaiu Tai]

"Well, whatever himself said about the fight bein' in some number of days, we need to be better guarded against whatever this kind of thing is. Creatures bleedin' in from the dream realm now, along with putting the elements to sleep?" Tai frowns as she approaches the horse...carefully, to look at the wound. More for signs of corruption than because she knows a fetlock from a forelimb.

"I'm thinkin' that needs stitches, which I'm no good at. How skittish is he, if I try wakin' up the water spirits enough to do some of the work?"

[Makime]

"Driven by more then fear and their pack instinct?" Makime crossed her arms, "This is beyond my expertise. But they died all the same it seems, and that is more to my understanding."

She watched the Unicorn look through the supplies, "Anything I can do to help? I am not trained in healing man or horse but I could hold..." The Lioness eyed the horse again, sizing up her chances of holding it down if Otaku needed to do something painful to its injury. It was not a calculation she felt favored herself. "the supplies while you work."

[Otaku]

"Oh, he'll stand if I hold him." Otaku gives Tai an obviously grateful look.

"Thank you. I--" she opens her hands, abandoning for now the quest for first aid supplies. "My husband, Ide, is good with a needle. I would turn to him or my brother for this, usually," she admits softly but without embarrassment. "I thought I had best just clean his legs and check them in the morning, but if you can..."

She steps over to Tsubame again and takes hold of his lead, stroking his nose. As the horse lowers his head toward his mistress, the flat piece of jade sewn to the brow band of his halter catches the firelight. "It was something like pack behavior, but too much. When the monster died they cried out and seemed to want revenge." She shakes her head. "Eerie."

--

Horse has 17 Wounds and no corruption.

[Kaiu Tai]

Tai notices the jade. "Huh...good idea for the jade there. Obvious if it's affected. Doesn't look like it, so clean and wait might've worked too." And then she saves her voice for the kami for a time.

She draws her small stone knife and presses it beside another small cut on the back of her wrist. Scraping the knife across gathers the blood on the swirled blade, which is then dipped into a cup of water. Tai chants quietly, a sound with some rhythmic sibilants like the waves repeating themselves at a shore. It's a soothing sound as she approaches the worst injury to pour the cup's contents down the leg, smoothing the water down with her hand, flesh mending as it passes. After a moment, nothing remains but damp on his hide to show where the wound had been. The process is repeated with the other wound.

With the knife resheathed, Tai works on cleaning the cup, looking up to Otaku. "You say you're not hurt, Bat's off with other healers, anyone else?"


***********
D2 LE: PTiP for Tsubame, VP | 6k4 ⇒ 29 (TN: 10)
19 wounds. Tsubame, best of horses is good to go

[Makime]

"They lashed out for the fallen you say? That does not bode well for any further fights, though perhaps it is related to their existing nature. Before whatever corruption changed them." Makime watched the Kaiu work with some interest. She had seen her own healers perform such rituals with similar results, still there was some subtle differences. "Was it one of the smaller wolves that wounded your horse? Or the large one."

She resisted the temptation to reach out and touch the spots, "Always fascinating to watch a healer work their art."

[Otaku]

Otaku smiles in clear relief as the enchanted water mends Tsubame's wounds. The horse nickers and pulls his head away from Otaku's hands to nose curiously at the wet spots on his forelegs--intelligent enough to be surprised that he's all better so suddenly, but not quite enough to understand why or how it happened. Not that Otaku herself could likely explain the answer to that question especially well either. "You use the old way of magic, Kaiu-san," she observes. "Tsubame doesn't need my help now, but I could wrap that cut for you?" She'd sometimes done this simple first aid for Jin, and oftener for her littlest brother once he started learning the craft.

"There was one other who took some bites from the normal... the small wolves. One of yours," with a nod to Tai, "Hiruma Naraku. His weren't too bad. We kept the wolves from any of the farmers. Those small ones bled like healthy creatures, but the big one..." she shakes her head, brows drawing together. "Black blood, thick like honey. This one was still ready to ride it down." She pats Tsubame's muscular neck. "I didn't let him, with those bites you saw already open. Only the smaller beasts touched him."

[Kaiu Tai]

Tai chuckles at Maxime's word. "Only barely a healer, mostly a builder. Walls, pots. But you learn a few tricks of necessity in a long enough life, neh?"

She nods at Otaku's offer. "Appreciate it. It's small enough I wouldn't usually. Awkward to wrap one-handed. So thanks." She looks up, way up, at Tsubame. "Well I'd certainly be worried if he wanted to trample me, so I'm sure the wolves stood no chance. Hope they burned the one with black blood. That's going to be a mess." She glances off, but can't really be sure if there's smoke amid all the fog. Surely Naraku would've said something, since he was there.

"We need better warnings though. Can't imagine they'll stop tryin' to get at us after this."

[Makime]

"Walls may be necessary if the enemy continues to send monsters." Makime replied to the old Crab's comment. "Black blood..." She fell silent for a moment in deep thought. Then glanced back up at the two, "Has anyone checked the others wounded for corruption?"

She let out a long sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. "Hmm...the fog makes it difficult but it couldn't hurt to get up some watch towers. If you can raise a wall a simple mound to serve as the base of a small wooden tower should be easy no? Just a platform with some stilts to get it up higher. And a way to make noise to warn everyone."

[Otaku]

"Hiruma-san also said to burn the beasts' bodies. He had jade on him." Otaku nods and gives Tsubame another pat on the shoulder before stepping away to wash her hands with some of the boiled water stored at the camp--so as not to get horse sweat and hairs all over the simple bandage she's about to apply to Tai's wrist.

"I saw the Bat had some jade beads. I don't know about Otomo Akutou, the fourth of us. But he wasn't hurt. If the green stone doesn't burn the skin, that means the person is clean, right?" She dries her hands on a cloth and turns to her first aid task. Tai's shallow cut is a lot simpler to dress than Tsubame's wounds, fortunately.

"All in this camp should have jade if we can manage it," she adds after few moments more of thought "The villagers... that would be more difficult, with no supplies. But the samurai must stand between them and any more monsters."

--
D2 LE--First Aid on Tai, Medicine/Int+VP | 4k3 ⇒ 23 (TN: 15)

D2 LE--First Aid on Tai, wounds healed | 1k1 ⇒ 6

Definitely a more efficient trade than me rolling Medicine on Tsubame.

[Kaiu Tai]

Tai nods appreciatively. "You've a solid touch there. Guess that's needed when you fight while ridin'"

"Jade burnin' them means they're definitely touched by some corruption of the soul. But there's folks who've been fine...and then not..that makes one think it might slumber in them somehow. But there's not much we can do about that, so not much point in worryin' about it till we can." She reaches into her pouch, pulling out her own piece, carved in a simple lozenge. "But I do agree that we ought to see that as many folks as can, have some."

[Makime]

"I brought an extra piece myself." Makime pulled a necklace with two pieces of jade on it out from her kimono. "I can spare one if needed."

She tucked it back into her clothing, "An insidious danger. As if the enemy did not have enough such tricks already. Wolves, dreams, and who knows what else may emerge before...well whatever is supposed to happen happens."