Something in the air has shifted. The feeling in the room, the pressure of the ever so subtle draft which always creeps through the cracks of the old house, the lingering smell of fire that never quite seems to leave the walls which had, for a while now, been covered by the fresh smell of frogs. It all changes.

The owl-god Obscura sits up high on the rafters, staring down at the room beneath herself. But she isn’t just there. She’s everywhere, as are the eyes. Yellow, haunting pairs of eyes stare out of every shadow, every nook, cranny and crevice as if a thousand small, birdlike silhouettes and then a thousand more were all standing in every lightless gap of the house, watching a field full of scampering mice running beneath themselves with shifting, darting eyes. But those are only eyes in the darkness. There is only one real, visible form, one gestalt, one Obscura that sits as the embodiment of a giant owl atop a wooden rafter, which looks like it’s bending, sagging down from the weight of her massive body sitting atop it. Her long talons, each alone the size of Rhine, wrap around the beam as she leans downward and tilts her head at a sharp angle.

The air all around the space is distorted by passive magic. The presence of it is exhausting. The sheer, raw energy released by a god, perhaps even one as minor and obscure as Obscura, is literally tangible. It’s draining.

Fighting it, Hineni presses himself up onto his legs. The bindings on his wrists snap as the pressure of the spell, combined with the weakening of the fabric, along with the own pulling his large arms, is enough to break them apart.

“Three?” croons the owl-god. “Obscura has been gone for THREE days. She knew the bad frogs would come. BAD FROGS!” she hoots, spreading her wings out wide. A gust of air shoots out immediately. Tables flip over, vases fly and break, Hineni lifts his arm to cover his face, only seeing out of the corner of his eyes as Rhine flies away, unable to keep his footing.

The frog-like healer is certainly terrified. Far more terrified of Obscura than she is of the elf holding a knife to her bleeding throat, as evidenced by her body starting to drop away from Sockel’s grip towards the floor, even if that means the knife moves along her clammy skin somewhat.

The magic dissipates as Obscura scans the room, scans him, tilting her head at an unnatural angle as she sees his soaked clothes and bloody head. She hisses and clicks with her beak. The pressure in the room seems to lessen even further, as she dials down her magic.

The blue-haired woman with a bleeding arm lets out an angry scream, rising to her feet. Swiping her good arm out, a torrent of wild water rushes around her fingers as she prepares a spell.

Hineni grabs her arm from behind, one hand around her wrist, one hand beneath her shoulder.

(Hineni) has interupted (???)'s channeling !

She looks back towards him with a coldness in her eyes. “Miss,” says the man, looking straight at her. “I’m going to be looking after your son.” She narrows his eyes, lashing around to strike him with her injured hand. It makes contact, but Hineni doesn’t move, feeling the sting on his cheek without flinching away from it. A menu pops up behind himself. He looks into her river-green eyes. “- Get out of my house.”

(???) has slapped (Hineni) for {1} DMG ! [HP: 30/39]

The man turns, throwing her to the side as hard as he can. She flies over the table and out through his favorite window, shattering it into a hundred pieces as she departs.

(Hineni) threw (???) through a window for {9} DMG ! Applied critical status: [Bleeding 5] [HP: 29/64]

Glass shards fly everywhere. A moment later, the door bursts open as four more robed figures, who had been waiting outside, run in to make their entrance. Sockel spins around, kicking the healer away from herself, throwing the woman into the crowd and knocking them back for a moment.

Someone screams behind him. Hineni turns to look as Beni makes his second approach, running towards him with the knife raised once again. The man stumbles and falls as Rhine latches onto his leg and sinks his teeth into his calf. “GET OFF ME!” yells Beni, kicking the boy once with his other leg, sending him tumbling towards the booth to their side.

(Rhine) has bit (Beni) for {3} DMG ! [HP: 31/44] (Beni) kicked (Rhine) for {5} DMG with his [Marsh-Leather boot] Applied Combined Status: [Incapacitated {Dazed + Winded}] [HP: 7/16] Rhine has been incapacitated for the duration of the fight

Obscura swoops down, crushing the elf against the floor with her massive foot, pinning him against the boards, her talons leaving a deep scar in the wood. “The Beni…” she hisses, pressing her massive beak closer to his forehead.

“Don’t kill him!” calls Hineni, turning back around towards the door. The cultists, the frogs, are getting back up onto their feet. The healer scrambles away, running out of the door, but the other four newcomers make their approach. The wind begins to blow, pressing in through the room from some indistinct source, rushing, washing, pushing through his damp clothes as the torrent begins to fill the space with a pressure, with a presence.

“Fuck the ritual!” screams Beni over towards the four men. “Kill him! Kill them!”

The fabric of Hineni’s clothes billows, flapping wildly around himself as the surge of Obscura's wind seems to fill the entire room, as the pressure of an air-current fills the room. The house groans as it fills up with too much wind, like a vessel getting ready to explode from the pressure contained inside it. The crushing presence of Obscura’s magic has returned, along with something new.

Sockel, perhaps seeing something that he himself is still unaware of, makes a hasty retreat from the front door as she rushes past him, diving down over Rhine just as Hineni lifts his hand. He didn’t even know that he was moving it.

The man stares at the novelty, not really sure what it is that he’s doing, as four silhouettes rush him in the back of his blurred vision. But he can only focus on the silhouette of his fingers, the outline of the glow that has begun to wrap itself around his burnt, scarred, raw hand. Ash. Ash.

This has gone too far. This has gone in a direction that he hadn’t expected. He in all of his naive foolishness had been too good-willed, too optimistic about the path that he’s chosen to walk, too soft. A home, a family, a purpose, these are all great things to have, but by having them, there is a cost. They must not just be had, they must be protected as well. Jealousy, hatred, envy, anger, or even just people who have goals opposite of his own, these are all factors that he hadn’t, in all of his social naivety, even begun to consider as real threats to the person who he’s becoming, to the three people who he’s claiming as his own.

He doesn’t know if he has malice towards these four new creatures, these frogs, these people who likely follow their god like he does his, but this has gone too far. They’re in his house now and sometimes, a man has to put a stop to things. It’s the sad, horrible truth of this world. He’s chosen to walk this path, so he has to walk it now. There was no going back then and there’s no going back now if he wants to keep this thing, to protect this thing, this new thing, this cherished thing, this thing that he loves.

Hineni looks at the figures standing only feet before himself now, the fabric of his scarf billowing wildly in Obscura's protective wind as he snaps his fingers, not feeling bad in the least about the thing that he thinks next.

‘Frogs croak’.

(Hineni) uses [Ash: Antichrysalis]

Crude? Yes. Tasteless? Perhaps. Hineni had sworn never to kill another person again since that day in his childhood and now, for the second time in his life, he’s cast the same spell in the same room as back then and this time, more than two people die.

- Besides, it’s a good joke.

Glowing, burning ash explodes out of his hands in all direction, flooding and filling the entire room with nothing but smoldering gray and the glow of thousands of yearning embers, which swirl and spin like dancing stars amongst the blackened sky of night, as the pressure of Obscura’s wind magic guides them, pushes them, moves them towards the four screaming, writhing gestalts who quickly lose their coordination amongst the wild-fire.

Their silhouettes dance in the smoke and the ash, writhing and screaming in a display of a sight that is familiar to him. Shadowy, blackened limbs, losing their flesh, reach out of the cloud of ash. The literal hands of the dead, trying to claw him back down with them to the underworld, but Hineni swipes them away like he did back then with the reaching, disintegrating hands of his mother and father. They crumble apart and fall into nothing but ash and screams, as back then, now once more.

“I’m sorry,” says Hineni as the spell dissipates. He says it now for the first time and he means it not just for these four, but for all six. He’s sorry that it had to be this way.

But he’s going to do it again if he has to.

The encounter is over.

(Hineni) has KILLED

(???)(???)(???)(???)

with his [Ash: Antichrysalis]

Hineni lets out a long exhalation, staring at the window through the ash, not sure what this complex feeling is that he feels now.

Relief? Torment? Confusion? It’s a little of everything, all mixed together into a nice, tight, disgusting bundle in his chest. There might even be a little pride there too. Is that bad? Perhaps. But he feels it. He’s done what he’s needed to do and nothing in this world will be able to convince him that it was wrong.

The ash dissipates, the cloud begins to fall.

A gust of wind presses past him, Obscura’s wind magic moves and carries all of the ash, all of the smoke, all of the growing fire and embers out of the building, out of the open door, out of the broken window, carrying it off high, high into the sky where it might rain down again to nurture the land after its cooling.

It’s over. Hineni looks around himself, looking at the others. Obscura sits there, still crushing Beni down. Sockel is lying beneath a table, having dragged Rhine down there with herself to hide from the ash. Hineni exhales, walking over to the door and watches as two other groups of frogs, standing out in the street, make a hasty retreat.

He slams it shut.

“Are you okay?” he asks Obscura. She nods to him. It’s a little odd, but Hineni presses himself against her giant, fluffy body, surprised as to how much fluff there actually is until he reaches her long, bony leg that is just about as large as his whole body. She nuzzles him with her head as he walks back out, dusting himself off. He smells like owl now.

“Sockel?” asks Hineni, bending down and helping the elf out from beneath the table. “Thank you,” says the man, nodding to her. She nods to him and then runs over to Beni.

“What the fuck, Beni?!” she yells at him, gripping the front of his robe and pulling his body upwards. Obscura doesn’t let him go though.

“I was trying to get us out of this mess!” exclaims Beni.

Hineni meanwhile pulls Rhine out and lays him out onto the bench. He’s not sure what to do with him now. He’s in rough shape. “Sockel?” asks Hineni. “Rhine needs help.” The elf, clearly in an angry place right now, looks back towards him with clenched teeth. “Please,” says Hineni.

She pushes Beni back down to the floor and gets up to look at Rhine, who seems to begin to stir. “He just got k.o.’d during the fight,” says Sockel, looking at him. “He’s at half health. I don’t think he got any internal damage. I didn’t see a status appear.”

Hineni nods, relieved. He doesn’t have much fighting experience, honestly. He was always a big kid, so the other kids had always left him alone and as an adult, he never really went into the dungeon or did any kind of adventuring stuff.

Rhine opens his eyes, blinking as his world is apparently still spinning. A tepid sense of relief comes to Hineni.

“Rhine,” says Hineni, pressing a finger against the boy’s forehead and pushing it back down to the bench so that he doesn’t get up. Rhine groans, still half out of it. “We’re going to have a talk about appropriate workplace behavior later,” says Hineni, shaking his head and walking over to Beni.

“Was that a joke?” asks Sockel, looking his way.

Hineni bends down, grabbing the elf, Beni, and taking over Sockel’s question from before. “What the fuck, Beni?!”

“Hey!” says Sockel sharply.

“Oh.” Hineni shakes his head, getting up. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” replies Sockel, taking his place. The elf clears her throat and then grabs Beni’s collar. “What the fuck, Beni?!” she asks, shaking the man a third time now.

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!” yells Beni, looking around at them. “SOCKEL!” he snaps. “You can’t be around this thing! It’s dangerous! It’s evil!” he shouts at her. “Get out of here!”

“Beni!” she says, shaking him. “It’s just the fucking owl-guy and an owl-god! What’s your problem?!” she asks. “I was worried about you! Dick!”

“It’s not!” yells Beni. “Remember the stories? From when we were kids?!”

She bends over, narrowing her eyes. The elf's ears twitch as she sniffs her friend. “…You smell like frogs, Beni,” she says, ignoring his question, as if this scent were some life changing revelation for her.

He squirms, fighting for his life. Froth builds at the sides of his mouth as his eyes tear open wide. “You can’t stay near it!” barks the man, becoming hysterical. “Sockel! You can’t stay near it! Get out of here! R-!”

(Obscura) casts [Dream-Whisper] on (Beni)

Applied Status: [Sleep]

[HP: 31/44]

Beni falls slack. “The Beni will sleep now,” hoots Obscura, lifting her leg and stepping off of the man who lays there, limp. “Big sleep.”

Sockel sighs, looking around the room. Hineni shrugs, not sure what to tell her either. Since when could Obscura use magic like that? Maybe because of the daggers he made? “Now what?” he asks, looking over at his window. It’s going to cost another few hundred Obols to repair and…

Hineni lets out an exasperated groan. The forge. It’s ruined. Rhine’s spell flooded the entire room. He doesn’t know how he’s even going to start salvaging it. Everyone is okay though and Hineni, not sure what else to do, lets his shoulders fall slack as he sits down at the booth next to the broken window on which there is nobody on the other side and lets out a long, exhausted exhalation.

He’s lost count of how many it’s been so far, but he has the feeling that, before the day is over, he will have let out a few more.

A group of city-guards kick in the front door and run inside, looking around in confusion at the mess.

Hineni sighs again, earlier than expected as he shakes his head and looks down towards his side. Beneath the broken window, in the vase that he had tucked a tuft of ash into a few days ago, grows a small, green sprout.