Session 38 : The Werewolf leader and Destiny's wand

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“I must defeat Kiril to reclaim the pack”, proclaimed Emil.

“Ok, so we just go kill him.” Destiny added.

“No, I must defeat him in single combat in front of the pack. Only then will the pack respect and follow me.”

“Ok, but didn’t you lose against him before?”

“Yes.” Emil said sheepishly.

“So, how can you win this time? You barely managed to fight off those wights in the dungeon. I think you’ll lose again.” Destiny said matter-of-factly.

“I will not lose. I cannot lose.” Emil said, looking across to Zuleika.

“My dear, I think first you need to heal up. You are in no shape to fight. Come,” said Zuleika as she runs her hand gently along Emil’s waist, “let’s go upstairs and… heal.”

***

The pack gathers around the stone circle as two silver swords are thrown into the ring. Kiril picks one up and throws the other to Emil on other side of the ring. The crowd cheers louder as the two challengers each swing their swords to test for balance. Kiril is visibly larger than Emil. Destiny looks around and see Silenzo, Serenity and Ireena backing out of the crowd. Smart, just in case things turns south. She follows their example while slowly reaches into her cloak for the wand that has many times made her smile.

“It’s time”, she thinks, “that it makes someone else smile.”

She gently touches her wand to find the spot. “Not too soon”, she reminds herself.

The crowd’s excitement erupts into fever pitch as Kiril deals the first strike. Emil blocks hastily and lunges forward with a counter strike. But Kiril is too fast and swings around to Emil’s now-exposed side. Spotting a perfect opportunity Kiril gives a snarl and plunges his silver sword deep into the ribs of Emil who yelps in pain.

Silenzo casts a worrying look at Destiny as she rubs her wand furiously. Suddenly Kiril’s snarl turns into a very uncanny, unnatural and wholly inappropriate, energetic smile. Kiril falters, visibly confused as he raises one hand to his feel face. Emil seizes the chance and swings twice at Kiril’s torso. The pain snaps Kiril out of his confusion, still forced to smile by Destiny’s magic, he focuses again on Emil.

The two werewolves trade blows to the now near-deafening howl of the circling pack.

Destiny compounds each blow Emil makes with a psychic spell timed to look as it the pain came from Emil's ferocious attack. And with each cut Emil takes Destiny secretly casts healing magic to lighten the blow. Kiril, perhaps realising something was awry, looks round to his underlings to cry foul. But with a magically steady smile and the loud yelps of the crowd, his underlings just cheer him on as if he was enjoying the fight, cheering him louder as Emil swings for his head. Kiril jumps backwards but not before the blade slices his left cheek clean open. He falls backwards into the crowd as they yell “Yield! Yield! Yield!”.

With part of his cheek muscle gone, the magical smile causes his jaw to rip to the right, twisting his face into a gruesome grimace with blood pouring through his teeth. Destiny looks over to Emil who appears to be in a pretty bad shape too. Instead of moving in to finish off Kiril, he just stands there clutching the side where he was first struck, swaying slightly.

Then, catching almost everyone by surprised, Kiril leaps up and charges towards Emil. Destiny didn’t know much about sword fights, but even she could tell that this was a one way charge. Kiril didn’t care about defending. It was all or nothing. All it would take is a simple parry from Emil and Kiril will fumble into the ground with Emil’s sword firmly lodged in his chest… except Emil is not moving. Why is he not moving?

So far Destiny has only cast weak spells that could easily be disguised in the fighting, but seeing Kiril’s deadly charge, she threw caution to the wind a more powerful spell.

With that, Kiril's attack falters and Emil reacts with a flash of his blade, slicing Kiril's head from his body. The pack erupts in celebration of their leader and begin to celebrate. Destiny looks around, very pleased with herself, but notices that no one seemed to notice that as Kiril attacked, he eyes closed and he seemed to fall into a sleep. No one, except Destiny, even noticed the brief snore that came from Kiril's head before it was severed from his body. No matter, Destiny would definitely let everyone know about this once The Heroes of Barovia had triumphed over Strahd.

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