Planeside

[Fenric]

[Eternal Mountains]

Indeed: Cleo's sudden transformation does cause quite a stir, and draws the blonde, long-haired elves out of the woodwork as it were. Good solid stereotypical elves, these: nothing surprising other than being rather a long way down the "primitive" scale as far as their clothing and equipment. They show the signs that they will eventually inspire awe and wonder with their skill someday... but that day is a long while off.

Cleo has an admiring crowd in no time flat, and "respectful distance" doesn't seem to be part of their vocabulary.

Speaking of vocabulary... this language is clearly not the stop-ridden atrocity that the wood elves of Erda used. It's probably closest to welsh: round and rolling and fond of multisyllabic words that flow on and on.

Oh well.... guess we can't have everything all matchy-matchy. Hey, guys!

This does get her some attention of her own, and in short order Ce, Pi, and Keiko have their own curious group.

[Recaiden]

[Eternal Mountains]

Cleo looks over the elves, wondering why the translation spell doesn't cover them the way it covered Pi, and a little annoyed. Even when explaining how primitive and backwards they are, elves have to be described in terms of how great they'll be. Darn elves. But she lets them come close and admire her - why wouldn't they? Sparkling starry scales, shimmering gem, spiraling horns, deep eyes, and many claws.

"What would be the point of so many worlds if they were all the same?"

Then she realizes that she can hear what the elves are saying; it was just the excited noise of the crowd that blurred the individual words together.

"Greetings! I am the wizard Alucleosepha, and have come here with the ninetails Orochi no Keiko, Sun Ce, and Cao Pi with information from the future, so that we can set right what would go wrong and save the people of these mountains."

[Fenric]

[Eternal Mountains]

Keiko chuckles

Yeah, yeah.

Cleo's announcement makes an even bigger stir in the crowd, and a few people go running off. Pi is getting wary looks, but Ce is fussed over: apparently the elves are reasonably fond of the foxes. Still, a Hu and a Huli together (and nobody being eaten) is quite an unusual thing.
There is naturally much concern over what they might need to be saved from, of course, and no little curiousity over a black furred fox with nine tails. They don't react to "Orochi" so it appears his fame has failed to spread this far.

Keiko does her best to describe the dark elves and the danger they present, but the wood elves are surprisingly unfamiliar with their unpleasant cousins - or at least, completely ignorant of any of the concepts that Keiko is using to describe them.... though Cao Pi still seems quite convinced that the people his relatives battle with are the same and does his best to assist in the descriptions.

But Keiko is soon frustrated

How can somebody not even understand ... I mean... I dislike wars and fighting and killing just as much as anybody, but to not even have words for those things at all?! Hunting is the closest they get, and the notion of applying it to another elf just breaks their little brains. How is it you haven't take over the place already, Pi?!

The Hu snorts

What makes you think we want to have responsibility for the Shu?

Sun nods

They are more clever than us in many ways, but they can be quite... irritating... sometimes. For our part, they consider themselves our friends and are always very kind to us, but they never help us against... the Wei clans...

Pi shrugs

You can say it out loud: it is no secret. You Wu have tried many times to recruit them, but it has been no use at all, else something might have changed by now.

[Recaiden]

[Eternally Elfy Encounter]

"Well, then we aren't going to communicate it by explaining. We need to ask them questions!"

"What's the worst thing that could happen to one of you? What's the worst thing one of you could do? The worst thing someone else could do? Are you ever eaten by the tigers? Do you keep animals? Birds, frogs, deer, maybe? What are you afraid of? Do you ever feel angry?"

She's pretty sure that with understanding the elves' lives, they can find the right analogy or at least avenue to explain. So she asks lots of questions and does a little bit of explaining in the vein of above, and ignores the snarky fox and tiger spirits.

"I guess they don't need ideas like that when they're all together the way they are, and not divided into different groups...that they know of."

[Fenric]

[Eternally Elfy Encounter]

It takes a bit of time, and truly tries Keiko's limited patience, but eventually the elves start to get the idea. And it is not long after that that the elf king finally makes his appearance - apparently he finally decided the gravity of the situation was sufficient for him to make an appearance.

We thank you, oh great ones, for your timely warning about the danger growing out in the plains like a thunderstorm.

Keiko summons up her best courtly manner

Great and wise king of the elves: it is time for you to ally yourselves more formally and properly with your neighbors: the Hu and the Huli, together with any other such powers that might be present to ...

The trouble with trying to rouse less sophisticated people against a more sophisticated foe, is that there is always a chance that the enemy is already well aware of the people in question and has already been actively taking measures to prevent such a rousing. Keiko and Sun's ears swivel in unison, but to little avail as a black and orange fletched arrow of some dark wood sprouts from Keiko's right thigh.

YEARGH!!!!

Sun looks worriedly in the direction the arrow came from

But here's nobody there!

Pi is similarly baffled

One of our arrows that is, but there are none of my people within many hundreds of paces

[Recaiden]

[Eternally Elfy Encounter]

Cleo turns to watch the elf king approach, intending to be rather cutting towards him but calming a great deal when he surprisingly doesn't say anything foolish. So she spends a moment being unsure what happened and then shocked when the arrow appears.

"But something was there." She shouts at the elves "Go! Find it!"

She wants to run off that way herself. But Keiko! Hurt! Much more important. She jumps over to approximately in-between where Keiko is now and the arrow came from, looking down at her to see how the injury was.

[Fenric]

[More elves than you can shake a longbow at]

Keiko is doing her very best to be brave, given that a broad-headed arrow has just sunk clear to the bone in her thigh. She shouts at the other two, though there are tears in her eyes and she's clearly not tolerating the pain nearly as well as she's pretending to. She's also very conspicuously not looking at the arrow.

Ce! Pi! Use your noses, you idiots! There's at least one dark elf...

The two charge off, just in time for the archer's second shot to fly through the space where Ce's heart had been just a moment before and instead sink harmlessly into a tree. Perhaps surprisingly, this offends the other elves to no end, and they start running around like a stirred-up anthill.

[Recaiden]

[More elves than you'd want to shake a bow at]

Cleo shivers at the sight, and it isn't even her own leg, but then puts a claw near the arrow and murmurs a brief spell to stem bleeding and take away much of the pain. But doing much with that leg still can't be recommended.

Silly elves (though she thinks much less kindly of them herself). Is it shooting a tree or shooting at the Huli that bothers them so?
She turns and runs off after Ce and Pi; There's only so much she can do from over here, not knowing where the archers are.

[Fenric]

[Sooo... many Elves]

Keiko has a solid opinion

All this time, I just had to say they'd hurt the trees!

The archer doesn't get a third shot before the angry Cao Pi plows into him, disrupting his cloaking spell and sending him sprawling. Ce is quick behind

Don't kill him! We need to find out what he knows!

But the situation is already a little more complicated as the scurrying residents have inadvertently run into two other assailants, and are ill-equipped to handle them.

[Recaiden]

[Tooo many Elves]

"Good work, Pi!"
That's one less dangerous elf out of three or more, but probably not too many more.

And the elves are doing important work by finding out the intruders in their little tree town much better than she could. Cleo looks at one of the assailants with all of her eyes and points with a front left claw, sending toward him a thin green ray that tries to turn him to stone. And that without a sound.

[Fenric]

[One Down... X to go!]

They may be more sophisticated than the "good" guys, but that doesn't make them any real challenge: Cleo's target quietly becomes a statue. The other ends up falling from an unfortunate height after stabbing several of the wood elves with his knife. The groans indicate that it may be possible to save him yet, if someone moves quickly to do so.

Meanwhile, Ce has successfully convinced Pi to not kill their captive, so there's no real pressing need to save the fallen one.

Keiko has passed out from pain and shock, and is lying in a heap with the arrow still sticking out of her leg. It looks like she tried to pull it out, and the wound is bleeding again.

[Recaiden]

[Three Down... X to go!]

So the fallen one is still alive.

Cleo jumps over towards where he landed and makes sure he doesn't come to any more harm by doing the same thing to him. Stone is very resilient, and unlikely to injure itself or escape. It wouldn't do to kill them, just for a little attempted assassination.

She looks back over her shoulder and - oh no! She should have known something was wrong as soon as Keiko stopped being snarky at the elves! Cleo bounds back over, winces when she sees what happened, and repeats her small magic to slow bleeding and then bring it to a stop. Not sure in her ability to remove arrows, it's the next best thing. Surely there are elves here who know more about surgery and such. Right?

[Fenric]

[Wood Elf Village]

Cleo has no trouble at all with petrifying the second elf, and equally little stabilizing Keiko.

While waiting for the elf shaman to get there, Pi and Ce drag the responsible elf over. Pi still looks like he'd far rather just eat the elf and be done with him, but Ce has managed to talk the aggressive tiger out of that... for now.

You made a poor choice of targets, elf. And the only reason I'm willing to refrain from eating your body is to watch our mistress eat your soul!

Sun Ce leaves Cao Pi to keep the elf "entertained" and hurries over

How is she?

[Recaiden]

[Wood Elf Village]

Cleo shakes her head, breath slowing down.
"She's hurt, but it's only a flesh wound. A cut, healing, and a glass of juice; she'll be fine. I think she just tried to run on a shot leg, and of course that didn't work."

"Did you see any more of them out there? None that got away?" She sounds like she'd rather eat the elves.

[Fenric]

[Wood Elf Village]

Ce shakes his head

No. I haven't smelled any more, either... they're pretty distinctive, so I'm pretty sure there aren't any more. At least, not right now.

He looks sympathetically at Keiko

She is very brave - that has to hurt a lot... I can't imagine being so mean as to smear hot chili oil on an arrow: they hurt enough all by themselves.

Hot... chili... oil... ouch.
Regardless, the elven shaman arrives and winces at the arrow.

Such dreadful goings-on... But I have a poultice that I usually use for large splinters that should fix this quickly enough.

he fusses with a bound-up leaf, eventually extracting a rather stinky ointment that makes Sun Ce sneeze.

[Recaiden]

[Wood Elf Village]

"Hot...chili...oil? Not a poison? Hurt enough is right."

Cleo pounces off towards the prisoner, and if he happens to have some dragon claws dig into him, well, that's too bad.

"What are you trying here?"

The shaman is left to his work fixing the dreadful goings-on. Wishing, Please let that work, is all Cleo can contribute.