An Undine Sits on the Beach Alone At Night

Once they were done with the Silver SWords, Jazz told Nevarri she was going for a walk and she did. In fact, she's gone far afield, having walked for several hours, and finally reached the beach. Her ankles swollen and scraped, her clothes rumpled and battered from the underbrush she crawled through at one point, she deposits herself in the sand and begins to take pen to parchment. There's coastline to draw, after all,. She rests her pen against her chin as she muses, looking otherwise perplexed.

Being that the sensible thing to do when one is going off on one's own is to check in now and again, so Nevarri didn't think too much after the first couple of calls getting something of an okay response. That was the first couple of hours. A few hours longer though, and the concern was starting to grow.

"<Jazz, you've been gone for a pretty long walk. Are you okay?>"

She didn't want to come off as overbearing, so was keeping the concern dialed back.

There's a delay in the response, though not a terribly long one. A few minutes, perhaps as Jazz futzes with a messaging system she's not used to using and has given little thought to.

"I'm a bit lost but otherwise fine. Just on the coast. Looking at the stars. Thinking about how vividly rendered they are."

Nevarri had just one /tiny/ problem with the Undine being out on the beach with it having gotten dark. "<Wait, you're on the beach? At this time of night?!>" Nevarri having gone a little wide eyed, as she begins to make a quick march for the edge of town, and points out, "<There are Sahagins out there, and who knows how the night affects monster spawn times!>"

Nevarri sighs a bit as she looks up at the sky to get a glance at the stars, having by this point learned to pick out the local North Star. "<Which coast are you on? Can you see the North Star?>"

"Oh, more of those mer-people I saw from the boat? West coast... I think? Went through some foresty ladns and what not."

Jazz is, perhaps, not contemplating the danger she could be in.

Okay, she's TOTALLY not contemplating that she could be in any real danger atg all. It doesn't feel real to her, after all.

"I've been wondering about the north star. Do we even *have* one?"

"Yes, there's a North Star. The game has stars on the skybox, and I've double-checked." Nevarri finds herself sprinting and making her way to the west, while pulling out one of her earlier maps and taking a quick glance at it. It wasn't super-detailed and she was basing this all on memory of the area from prior, but she had a good idea of where to go.

"Yes, those mer-people you saw form the boat. They can be pretty vicious, and they're kinda like Goblins in a way. You don't want to be swarmed by them, especially at low level by yourself. I'm heading your way.

"Yeah, sure," says Jazz. She seems disconnected from the actual threat she may face, or perhaps merely distracted and unthinking of it. Or maybe she just doesn't take it seriously? It's truly hard to know with her, and really, she just sits there on the beach, toes bared in the sand, and draws.

Why not?

Nevarri blinks at the dismissal and takes a breath, before looking around. She didn't want to take an hour walking, now that she had a good idea of how to directly get to the coast... She could, however...

Fifteen minutes pass on the coastline. It does appear to be pretty serene, doesn't it..? The water seems pretty peaceful... Though there does appear to be some bubbling.

The bubbling draws some attention, eventually, from Jazz.

Could it be the mermen she was talking about? The Sea-Witch rises to her feet, squints out in that direction. Now, what on earth could that be?!

It's a tense moment of bubbling, but soon it stops when a pair of big fish eyes and the top of what looks like a fish-head and fin pops out of the water. It looks very much like a fish more than a mer-person, and it releases a bit of a gurgly burble sounds from beneath the surface.

From this viewpoint, it actually looks kind of cute in an ugly fish person way.

There's a heavy sigh.

"Oh," says Jazz. "Well, guess you were right," she pings at Nevarri about the sahagin.

Then she closes her eyes a moment and focuses only on the water. It's just a moob, after all.

"<Right? About the Sahagin?! How many--No, never mind, just get from them before you aggro them. I'm almost at the coast.>" Comes the transmission back.

At this point, however, there's a bubbly hiss from the fish man before it submerges once more.

Danger averted, right?

SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH!

A clutch of the things just launch themselves out of the water and land themselves in a semi-circular fashion to corner the Undine newbie!

"grrbmgmrmgmrll grrbmg mlblbrmlblmgbaba! lbmggr rbmgmrbaba!mrgllbaba!"

There is no translation.

"...maybe six of them? I might be able to handle it ahahaha who am I kidding."

Jazz is readying herself for the inevitable attack. The waves are her's to command. The wave of waves. Ha. Haha.

THat's funny.

The creatures, now above water and thus revealing the toothy fish face they have going on, wave about their tridents and gurgle and growl some more, an intimidation tactic for the moment, as they a couple of them attempt to close the circle and properly surround Jazz.

They wait for the adventurer start to panic, because all it would take is one of them to step out of her line sight.

That's when one of them sucks up a breath and fires off a gush of hard hitting water to try and blast the Jazz and try to knock her senseless.

That, at least, is something she was waiting for. The attack.

She swiftly brings up the defensive shield around herself, a bubble appearing around her that deflects and absorbs the impact of the water, but it can only hold for so long. It's about this time that lightning crackles at her fingertips and she holds out her hand, snaspping her fingers as it arcs from her to zap one. % r
Her offensvie spells aren't all that impressive, but a lightning blast is a lightning blast. She's buying time for herself to get a move on.

When the Bubble goes up, the rest of the Sahagin proceed to try to swarm and stab their tridents at the shield in order to pop it quicker. They had easy prey after all, all it would take is one good stab!

The Zap gets that one Sahagin good, causing it to collapse, and the rest to back off, lest their prey try once again wiht the zappy zappy.

That is just the kind of moment that Jazz would need to make a break for it.

Which is exactly her vague, nebulous plan. Make a break for it after that.

"Ugh, she had to go and say Sahagin and now I have to..."

"...FLAAAASH-STEEEEP," and then she's running, wind propelling her forward in a gust as she calls on it and giving the slight girl a boost. She hates how this looks, but it does make her fast as her hair ctraisl behind her under her hat qand all around her, swirling and lifting like she's under the water despite being *above* it. Dumb water magic. Dumber air magic. DUMBEST SAHAGIN.

And now she's running back up the beach towards the trees.

"UGH UGH, NEVARRI, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BRING UP FISH PEOPLE."

Jazz is able to get a good lead while on land, certainly, but that's only because they have fins for feet, and that doesn't really stop them from giving chase, as two of them throw their tridents ahead of the Undine and land it in the ground ahead of her, while another two fire off water blasts once more in their attempt to knock Jazz off her feet.

This could be a turn for the worst!

The water hits her in the back and she goes tumbling end over end into a sand dune.

Welp, that's not good. She can't exactly defend herself from a hit to her back, even looking over her shoulder as she was. It just came too fast.

She scrambles back to her feet, crackling lightning to zap them as they race to approach her. This is so not good. Dying would SUCK.

There appears to be five leftover, since the one that was previously zapped appears to have stayed down, but the remaining keep rushing! One of them takes another ZAP to the face and goes down, but now there's an opening as two others dash around with tridents ready to strike!

"ANCHOR HOWL!!"

There's that sensation that comes from having all of that aggro pulled away from you, as the Sahagin freeze up briefly, before they all turn towards the source and charge at it. The source being a human encased in armor, some decent stuff, shield and sword, yelling, "COME AT ME BRO!!" And charging back.

"FIREBALL!"

A fireball flies past the tank, coming from a certain redhaired Salamander in glasses.

Rushing up to Jazz's side is an elf girl, a druid, her staff glowing as she casts, "Healing Winds!"

"...gah," is what Jazz says. She's not too worse for wear, but honestly, she's not too banged up... luckily. Still, she *was* injured andn ow she's not and that makes a cold chill go through her.

"Uggggh," she groans. As the Sahagin are being sworded and fireballed, she does her best to get her own lick in, dousing one of them in water that knocks him to the ground, leaving him easy prey for a blast or a sword to deal with them.

Once helps arrives, it's only a matter a minutes before the fight is over. The tank is clearly pretty experienced at holding his own, and once Jazz is healed up, the healer is keep her attention back on him, and Nevarri just keeps lobbing attack spells one after the other, weaving in a Flame Pillar to keep the Damage Over time going.

But the clutch of Sahagin are soon finished, each of them dispersing into a puff of gold and XP.

This leaves Nevarri time to finally make her way over to Jazz, arms at her side as she glares sternly at the Undine, "Do you have any idea how much trouble you were in, Jazz?! What if we couldn't find you in time! You could have died!"

Jazuhanzu just stares at Nevarri, uncomprehending.

"... yeah, I mean, if I'd died I'd have... died? We come back, you know," she points out, not after all aware of the real consequences of death like anyone else.

"But I appreciate the save, really, I do. You ran all this way out here? For me?" She blinks her eyes, looking between the three. It's kind of bizarre to her. Not that she doesn't understand the principle. She'd do the same. It's just... for her.

"That doesn't mean it's okay!" Nevarri responds with a certain amount of aggravation, though it's clearly from worry!

And if that wasn't sufficient enough, the Salamander girl reaches suddenly and grabs Jazz's shoulders, before pulling the undine in for a BIG hug against her chesty.. Um... Chest. "Of course I did. You're my friend."

She just holds the girl tightly for a while, as the Tank walks up with hands behind the back of his head, "Well, we ran, but your friend cast Airstep on cooldown to speed things up."

"HRK," says Jazz.

She is hugged. She is being hugged. THERE IS SOME FLAILING THAT FOLLLOWS AND SPUTTERING.

She couldn't be any more anime if she tried.

Nevarri blinks a little before loosening her squeeze with a woops, "Sorry...!" She giggles, before releasing and folding her arms across her chest, "But you really shouldn't be ready to just throw your life away, just because death has been cheapened here."

"I wasn't intending to 'throw it away'," counters Jazz, hotly, cheeks flushing. She's flustered and embaressed. She windmills her arms a little. "I even almost got away, but let's get out of here because, come on, you can yell at me back in town and I'm sopping wet."

"I can yell at you plenty on the way back." Nevarri hmphs, "We can start with you explaining why you wandered off for so long."

"... I was exploring," counters Jazuhanzu.

It's going to be a long trip back.