Part 2: The Blinkening

[Grimm]

The Blinkening

Some distance away, the two figures appeared out of thin air about 10 feet above a wooded hill. Their immediate motion began as they started falling with nothing to brace them. They both hit the ground hard as they both started tumbling down the hillside separately. Kalen struck a tree first, knocking him unconscious only to be brought back by one of his talismans instantly. Grimm was the second to be acquainted with the local foliage but this time scattering contents of his pouches down the hillside. Through a few more encounters with stationary trunks both finally found a resting point at the bottom of the hill, items scattered around them.

Grimm was the first to stir, struggling to get to his feet, he said, “You know you can’t beat me.”

Kalen, head throbbing from the impact, “I don’t need to beat you, just need to figure out how to turn it off.”

Grimm pulled his headband down over his now missing eyepatch, but not fully hiding the purple glow from behind it.
“It would have been easier if you stuck with the group,” chuckled Grimm with a smirk as he got to his feet, a bit stiff in the movement as the fall was less than kind.

“No… You’re too cunning for that.” Kalen climbed to his feet. “You would have hurt someone.”

Turning his back to Kalen, Grimm scans the ground looking for something. “So instead, I have to hurt you.” A smile comes across his face, he bends down and pulls his curved sword from the leaves and ground cover.

“I can hold my own,” Kalen raises his hand towards his face and says under his breath “Disguise” claws start growing from his fingertips, and white and black fur starts down his arm.

Still facing away, Grimm is now beaming with enthusiasm, “And here I thought today was going to be boring.” He turns pointing the sword at Kalen who now is fully covered in fur, cat like features now replacing the once familiar appearance. “Here kitty, kitty,” Grimm beckoned

“Woof motherfluffer.” Kalen quickly closes the distance between the two of them. Claws flashing as they reached for Grimms shoulder, but meeting the flat steel of his curved sword. Strike after strike to be deflected, Kalen pressed. His advantage was even more so obvious as he noted Grimm’s torn side, likely from the fall. Claws and steel flashed as they circled the clearing but Grimm kept striking with the flats and backs of his blades. Kalen was sure he was up to something and needed to end this now. With a feral roar he lunged as Grimm seemed to misstep and stumble. This was that moment.

For Grimm.

As the movement was made Grimm dropped his left blade, his right catching the inside of Kalens extended elbow, again with the curve pushing out with the flat, his empty palm reaching for Kalens core. Purple flashed (Blast) as he felt the energy connect. Down to his knee Kalen dropped, as Grimm raised his sword. “You know none of this was personal. We all have our strings and some are harder to cut than others.” Kalen noticed Grimm’s ragged pouch of supplies inside of his coat. As he fell into Grimm’s hip he grasped up as Grimm’s arm came down.

Grimms smirk vanished almost as fast as he did. (Blink) Up he went, a straight 60 feet into the trees.

Clutching and grasping at anything to slow his fall, a branch was kind enough to catch him. Unsure if the branch was cracking or if it was the angle his arm was caught, Grimm hung fifteen feet from the ground as Kalen took a moment to search the pouch for anything useful. Two healing potions, a large silver Consortium coin, and the Biggest Grimm favor he had ever seen came from the pouch.

“I suspect this is the culprit.” Kalen, still favoring the wound now fresh from Grimm’s strike. He downs a potion and takes the favor and final potion, leaving the coin with Grimm hanging in place. “Suggestion: Sleep.”

Grimm falling unconscious lands limp on the ground. He turns him over and administers the healing potion. Grimm, still unconscious, rests on the ground motionless. Kalen pulls out his smaller Grimm Favor given to him by Rook long ago. Holding both favors together in one hand, he starts casting a spell over the both of them. “Magitech Savant”. The smaller Grimm Favor glows with energy matching that of the larger favor. He walks over to Grimm’s now stirring body. As he reaches to place the new favor on the body, Grimm suddenly rolls over with his flintlock drawn and leveled point blank at Kalens outstretched hand. His smile strained in pain as he sat up. Blood dripping down the side of his head, he slowly gets to his feet. A soft spoken cantrip seemed to flow from him as Kalen’s heart raced. He opened his mouth to speak.

Grimm’s free, and broken, hand rose to his lips “ Shhh…” Purple flared from behind his bandana and Kalens voice was stopped. (Silence)

Kalen started to sweat. Grimm looked on and his aura seemed to grow in menacing pressure (Intimidation) “Suggestion: Drop.”

The soft thud of the gem hitting the ground was the only thing that broke the silence as the two locked the stare.

Kalen releases his form and the fur fades away revealing the familiar form that Grimm is used to. “Good fight, I expected less. This was a pleasant surprise from you.” As Grimm moved the Flintlock down the motion caused a flare of pain. In that moment, Kalen scooped the dirt from around him and threw it into Grimm’s face.
“Bilge rat!” He exclaimed as Kalen wrestled the Flintlock from his grasp. Diving for the bushes, trying hard to put some distance between himself and Grimm. Grimm took a moment and cleaned his face. Way too calm for Kalen’s liking. He took a moment to look over the weapon he had won in his exchange and his heart sank. This “Flintlock” that Grimm was so proud of and kept openly on his hip, had no trigger, no powder, not even a shot in the chamber. It was nothing more than a decorated pipe fashioned exquisitely to a handle. “Oh, of course.” Kalen sighed.

Grimm had moved to the center of the clearing, having already retrieved his other blade, he stood over the fallen favor.

Looking down, he spat. “I had hoped better from you than to resort to something like this.” He stabbed the dirt next to the stone. “I have been ordered to kill you all. Though I was not given explicit instruction as to how.” He took a few steps away from the blade, “So come out and fight for your life, Kalen. Fight for the very lives of those you call friends back on that ridge. Because if you don’t, I will bleed them dry. One by one until all who called Sanctuary foe, are dead. Or until you stop me.” He paused as he noted a movement to his left.

…Moments Before…

A scuff of dirt and crunch of leaves is enough to snap Kalen from his thoughts and have him raise his weapon- a very nice-looking stick pretending to be a blaster- at the direction of the disturbance.

That disturbance is a short, angry shadow crouched low to the ground and staring up at him over the barrel. Sam sits frozen as she takes in his mildly frantic state and only releases the breath she’s holding when she recognizes the weapon. This would have been a stupid way to die. Two fingers push the aim to the side just in case.

“Easy there, tiger. That a blaster, or are you just happy to see me?” She grimaces and huffs a sigh as soon as she hears the words leave her mouth. “Damn, I really do hang around him a lot.”

Pushing herself to a stand, she throws a thumb behind her in the direction of camp before crossing her arms, “I’m glad you’re alive by the way. I was worried after you blipped away back there. Speaking of, what was that? Because it wasn’t Grimm. Not entirely, at least. Too thoughtless.”

Her expression darkens into a scowl. It’s hard to say what would be worse, Grimm being innocent and everyone deciding otherwise without checking for certain or Grimm being guilty and having to figure out what his justifications were. Both were equally frustrating for a number of reasons.

“If it was Grimm, he was being a new level of stupid yet to be seen… taking all of Meadowmere on by himself…” Sam grumbles to herself, cutting off as Kalen addresses her original question.

“There appears to be some sort of corrupted Grimm Favor.” He points to the loose gem left next to the sword stick a quarter into the dirt. One of Grimm’s dual blades.

She spares herself a grimace at the abandoned blade in favor of studying the gem a little closer. Her brow furrows harder as the familiarity of it tugs a memory all the way back from Ancuram. A flittery naive voice wallowing about a nearly empty coin pouch. Empty except for the large gem that wasn’t meant for “that type of spending” apparently.

Sam’s upper lip twitches in a poorly contained snarl as a flame of rage flickers inside her chest.
Later. She couldn’t waste time on revenge when she could use it to help now.
But she’d be getting to that later.

“Well, where is he now?”

As if to answer her question, a commotion makes itself known a stone’s throw away behind Kalen. The sound of the blast matched by the purple flash as the tree line opposite them lit up. Sam barely shares a glance with Kalen before taking off into the foliage, shield raised and braced to charge through.

Twigs crack beneath her boots as she breaks through the treeline. There’s two seconds where she sees Grimm, sword raised, and a vicious grin illuminated by a faint purple glow emanating from beneath his eye covering. He’s got half that time to register her presence before her shield hits his side.

[Suggestion] “Freeze!” She yells, just as the rest of her collides and sends him flying back. [Push]

Sam skids to a halt, breathing hard as she watches the dust settle ten feet away. A rustle of cloth snaps her attention to the side to see three familiar folk standing wide-eyed in the brush over half a bag of spilled coin. She glances down to the currency, to the possessed force frozen on the ground, and then the spooked group of half rogues. None of these things give her the calm she needs.

“Can somebody tell me what in the Nine Hells is going on!?”

It’s then that she processes the shorter presence in the back, and her face lights up with utter relief.
“Rook! You’re alive!”
The relief is short-lived as the ongoing stress of her disappearance hits Sam full force once more.
“Where have you been!?”

With a sigh of helplessness and a shrug Rook replied “Rendezvous?”

The group’s collective attention shifts to the groans of the seafarer as he starts to regain his land legs, looking more than displeased as he does so. Sam then notices his empty hand and sees the corresponding sword stuck into the dirt not too far away. She makes a grab for its hilt before yanking it from the ground. The blade slashes through the air as she adjusts to its weight before crossing in front of her defensively. She has an expression of reluctance but a stance willing to act. “Somebody has a plan to snap him out of this, right? Because all I had was brute force, and I don’t think it worked.”

[Author]

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