Can't Keep A Good Merc Down

    Winter is here and while the new year celebration was probably a lively one, the Forgotten have not been stopped. Instead reports are still about with their activity.

The Forgotten seem to be up to something, spotted here, spotted there. They sometimes attack Caravans, but not as often. They come out at night still, but the Merchant Blades been making sure people generally stay off the roads and out of the woods without an escort.

Yet, somehow, people still get claimed by the undead. They still manage to turn the landers into monsters and while it may have slowed down, any good soldier knows-- it just means they are planning. Planning and waiting. Both which are never good.

    This brings us to today, where Kaydon has picked up some local rumors about Undead scouts. Mostly skeleton warriors with a few floating weapons not far behind. They been see on the outskirts of the farm lands, in the wilderness.

It would be his choice if he goes it alone or sees if a few Merchant Blades would be willing to come with him. Either way, time to see just what the undead are scouting around here for...

Kaydon wasn't feeling much like celebrating. Things had been coming at them fast. Talk of new worlds to explore, a lifted quarantine, and the failure of the 10th floor. Keys of Twilight, whatever the hell those are. He had more things to focus on right now.

Farmers in Ninetails had been reporting an increase of undead scouts. Kaydon figured if he could track them back from one of their scouting missions, perhaps he could figure out where their main camp is located at. This was always so much easier when they had drones and sattelites.

At the moment he's lurking on the farmstead, near the edge of their land, looking for the telltale signs of one of the skeletal patrols. He just has to not screw it up when he tries to follow them back.

    Kaydon has chosen to search around it seems and as such-- his searching doesn't lead him but in circles, he may not realize it at first, but when he hears a few children giggling, before they run off-- well-- he may get the general idea that he has indeed been looping around.

Thankfully he may pick up the sound of movement in the distance and see a hint of a shadow, but where that shadow went off too and what it was is really hard to say. He would need to venture further away from the farm to see what it might be.

Hopefully-- It isn't a trap.

Kaydon finds himself staring off into space, lost in his own thoughts for a few moments, and then hears thes ound of the giggling. Once he realizes he's probably been following nothing but his own two feet, he shakes his head to clear it.

Once he's back in the right headspace, he decides this lurking around thing isn't working, and he heads for the edge of the farm, hopping the fence and heading into the woods proper.

    The woods are not that dense and with the lack of foliage, all that surrounds Kaydon are dead trees, light snow, and the cold wind.

There are some marks in the snow, but its hard to tell if it's caused by hunters, undead, or something else. He may pick up the sound of clattering; Something moving. Yet, it is hard to pinpoint the location of the sound thanks to the wind carrying it or-- maybe distorting its actual distance.

The were fang sniffs at the air a couple of times as he stops, and then one of his ears twitches. He's not the best tracker in the world, but were fang senses can help. He turns and heads in the direction of the sound. With the wind blowing he has to estimate which way to go, and how far away it might be, but he thinks he has a decent idea of where to go.

    Kaydon's ears do not let him down, he manages to follow the sound, where he sees a sword floating in the air, its chain is what is clattering in the wind, followed behind it is a shield, and then he can spot just slightly beyond those two an armored figure, with snow laying over the dark steel metal.

The figure doesn't move as much as the weapon and shield, but giving their levitating nature, it would explain why they are so hard to track. They seem for the moment unaware of Kaydon's presence...

That's something at least. Kaydon would have liked to have more time to prepare, maybe put up a couple of blinds in trees or something, but this will have to do for now.

Bearing in mind how much sound snow can make, he does his best to stay low and move up close, trying to keep a tree between himself and the floating weapons there. Because even if he makes a sound, a lack of visual confirmation may at least keep him hidden. He just hopes his years of playing stealth games can help out.

    Maybe it's because of the wind or just sheer luck, but while the armored figure looks in the general direction of where Kaydon was, they don't seem to act.

Instead the armored figure slowly looks away and while the sword and shield move around also altered, they can't seem to find the Were Fang.

As he moves in closer he see them starting to move once more, the shield coming in behind the armored figure using its own bulk to hide the figures tracks. It will be Kaydon's choice if he wants to follow them...

Follow them Kaydon does, although as he follows along behind the undead, he misses a stick in the snow, and steps on it, which cracks with the loudest sound that it possibly could given the situation. Kaydon mutters a bit to himself as he mentally begins to prep for either a chase or a fight.

    The snap of the stick causes the three binders to come to a stop. The armored figure slowly looks over his shoulder directly at Kaydon. There was a flash of red behind the helm visor.

As the armored figure starts to turn, the sword is the first one to move rapidly toward the Were Fang, it moves to strike by flying past in a flying slash motion to the side, as it zips past, then arcs around to come back around once more!

Damn, not what he had planned at all. Kaydon tries to move out of the way when the armored figure comes at him, but he's not fast enough to react and takes a solid blow, though he moves out of the way of the second strike, and returns with one of his own, having gotten to draw his damascus sword after getting out of the way of the second blow, "Maybe I can get some intel off them.." One might drop a letter or something, he hopes.

    Kaydon's blade slams into the sword and does more than the sword binder can physically handle. The Were Fang's blade slashes it into two, making quick work of the lower level enemy.

The shield then races in, as the armored binder seems to suddenly to keep on moving, allowing the shield to deal with Kaydon instead of itself.

Speaking of the shield, it comes spinning directly for the Were Fang, but slides by him and ends up getting itself lodged into the tree. Oops!

Now the question is if Kaydon was going to leave that shield binder to think about its life choices and go after that retreating armored binder-- or would he deal with the shield now?

Kaydon steps deftfuly to the side, deflecting the shield with his sword and sending it crashing into a tree behind him. He looks quickly between the two remaining monsters, and while figuring that armor is most likely to have intel, he can't leave the shield alone.

So he does the only logical thing, grabbing the shield from the tree it lodged into. Even if he takes a bit of damage, this should look cool. He hauls off with a perfect throw, sending the shield spiralling towards the armor.

If only someone was around to see how cool that probably looked.

    If only someone did...

    In this case the Binder Shield is hurled against its control by Kaydon. It spirals and slams hard into the armored binder, clanging it in the back of the helm with a nice dent!

The impact causes the shield to lose all its HP and it vanishes into pixel dust, while the armored binder staggers forward a few steps. Yet the armored binder doesn't stop moving, it seems like it is trying to lose Kaydon, instead of turning around to fight the Were Fang.

Thankfully without its fellow binder companions, the armored binder won't be hard to follow with its very obvious snow tracks.

"Hey!" Kaydon yells out at the armor binder, as he starts to give chase, "I'm not done with you yet!" And so he follows after the armor binder, now having a much easier time tracking it in the snow. It also helps that Kaydon isn't trying to be stealthy any longer, at least for him trying to catch up to the armor binder.

At this point he'd rather it not make it back to camp and get reinforcements. Otherwise he finds himself in a bind of having to either run or fight them all. And he'll probably choose fight.

    The binder continues to run, though as it comes to a stop it suddenly looks like it's a little lost. It looks two different ways, before choosing a path to run down. Kaydon is closing on the binder quickly and when the binder realizes it picked the wrong path, it slides to a halt.

The armored monster quickly draws out its blade from its side and turns to face Kaydon, taking a step back as it does. Holding the sword in both hands, it moves to a more defensive stance. One could almost swear it breathed out a curse or maybe it was just the wind.

Now usually when you're attacking armor, it requires knowing how to bypass the steel and get to the juicy bits inside. Though with this particular one, Kaydon doubts the amount of juicy bits in thre. Still, the same principal applies.

He stops a few feet away from the armor once he realizes he has it cornered and then considers. He could try to exchange words with it, see what it wants, perhaps. But he doubts he'll be able to interrogate it. Instead the plan has to remain.

He rushes forward, and moves to swing his blade in a downward arc from his right side. However this is just a ploy, as he brings his left hand up, fist balled and slams it into the gut of the armor, deploying the hidden blade to slip through the crack and strike at the binder inside.

    The binder attempts to parry Kaydon's move, but is sadly to slow. The Were Fang's attacks do their mark and without even able to counter, the binder falls down to one knee, resting some of its weight on its sword.

It seems to look at Kaydon, as if trying to find some strength to retaliate back, but instead the knight eventually falls over and vanishes into pixel wisps of light.

Sadly there is no letter that drops or any hint of where the camp may be. But what Kaydon does find is a hooded robe figure looking directly at him from the forest.

Before he can even make a move though, the figure is suddenly gone. No trace, no tracks. The enemy was aware he was there and it may be wise for him to move on before he has an entire camp on his posistion.

Some part of Kaydon feels bad after he kills the binder, but that thought is momentary and fleeting, especially once he spots the hooded figure. He doesn't even get a chance to call out, but now that they've up and vanished, he has more questions than he started with.

Questions that will have to wait, until he is safely out of harm's way. He knows well enough how to exfil. Next time he'll have to bring a better tracker.