Hearing Cirice in a bit of panic, Astrid looks back at her as if nothing is wrong, blood spattered across her face. "Huh? What, it's just a bit goopy," she says as if she only had a bit of dirt on her. The half-dwarf pulls her hammers dripping in blood up and charges into the fray with the last of the harpies, letting out another raucous battle cry. Both harpies veer away from her then swoop down, talons poised for danger. Astrid's war hammer glows and lightning wreaths her body. She takes the hits from the harpies, one across her arms and one on her cuirass, but this is fine because upon touching her, both harpies receive a powerful jolt of electricity, and their legs fall numb. With two last swings, Astrid sends her hammers sailing at each of the harpies, knocking each of them out of the sky with more heavy strikes and zaps. The harpies aren't necessarily dead, but they are heavily injured when the girl collects her weapons. 

"Yeah, that's what ya get fer messin' with locals, ya dang sky rats! Abominations copyin' Avasha's image, ya are!" She turns to her friends and rushes to help them if they need it, but things are looking good here. 

---

Lightning Armor [post 1/3]

"Goopy? The wolf is goopy. That's blood and viscera Astrid..." Cirice tries to shake off her horror and smacks her own cheeks. "This is what it means to adventure, huh?" She isn't sure what she is doing but this is what she's supposed to do and how she's supposed to move forward in Mother Moon's will... Mother Moon knows what's best, she can't doubt her goddess. 

"I-Is it over?" It seems that the harpies are pretty much defeated and the villagers are saved. She swallows hard. At the very least she can go heal the wounded villagers. "I-I'm going to go heal the people if they need it. I think you guys are okay." She pats the wolf's hide gently before scooting away to go care for the injured.

A few of the villagers have minor cuts and gashes and she uses healing them as a way to get her positivity back. By the time everyone is healed she's back into her normal spirits. She has lots of questions for Blue and Astrid and she comes back over, hopefully once the carnage is cleaned up, and looks at them.

"That was incredible. Terrifying. Gory. But Incredible. You're both so strong!"

Blue Wolfberry sat down, their tail wagging behind them and their tongue hanging from their open, smiling mouth. The battle was over, but they were concerned about the people nearby seeing them transform back into an armored knight. Instead, they decided to just act casual. Just a casual giant blue wolf with lightning arcing off of it that just ate several Harpies alive. Cool as a cucumber. A blue cucumber. A really big, blue, fuzzy, slightly sticky, electric cucumber. With teeth. And claws. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

The lightning arcing off of Blue Raspberry faded as they let go of their focus on emitting it. The ooze wolf sniffed at some of the injured Harpies on the ground, wondering if they could eat some more. They picked one up in their mouth which began to squawk and flail wildly, but before actually eating it, they looked to Astrid with pleading eyes to seek permission to do so. The other Harpies screeched in fear and tried to scoot away from them, not wanting to be next.

The villagers were wary of the giant blue wolf, but thankful for the healing of their wounds from Cirice. They quickly left, heading down a path down the cliff that lead toward several fishing boats on the sandy beach. The group must have missed that on their way here somehow.

Things finally settle down, and Astrid takes a deep, calming breath, letting the lighting stop sparking around her person and setting down in the grass to catch her breath while Cirice runs away to go heal people. Out of some odd habit, Astrid offers the goopy viscera on her hammer to Blue Raspberry, holding the seemingly weightless bloody hammer out to the ooze to clean up like a bizarre lollipop. It doesn't take long to notice Blue Raspberry giving her puppy dog eyes wanting to eat the last of the harpies.

"Wha? No, remember, ya gotta put 'em out before ya eat 'em or it's unethical," she says, walking over and doing a final bonk on each of the harpies before she lets Blue Raspberry clean her hammer again. "Alright, have at it, I s'pose." Then she sets her hammer down and lies back in the soft grass, a nice ocean breeze wafting over her. All the while the strange, blue, lightning wolf scarfs down a vaguely humanoid bird person beside her. She's used to this kind of thing apparently, and the harpies are monsters who were attacking villagers... Though maybe there was a reason for it besides them just being evil monsters? What if they had just as much sentience and sapience as Blue Raspberry?

She stops thinking on the moral dilemma, and once Cirice comes back, she gets up. "Well, how was that fer a first adventure? A bit messy, but that's how they go sometimes. We can head back ta Starlight and get ourselves cleaned up before we part ways. Or ya can head back ta the mainland with us if ya like!" She remembers Charles is at the bottom of the cliff. "Oh yeah, we've got ta go get Charles."

Cirice grimaces, watching Blue slurp up the last of the harpies remains. She shudders. They're monsters, right? They were hurting people. The villagers had told her all about the attacks as she healed them. But even so this feels... Wrong. Maybe its because she's just not used to this sort of thing. But she supposes she should steel herself against feeling disgusted or afraid. This is her path, accepting that will make things easier. She gets to Astrid and watches the cleaning of the hammer like a lollipop and just.. smiles.

"It was terrifying! I thought I was going to die at several points!" She says cheerfully. "I would very much enjoy getting cleaned up. Can we find Zarius again too? I don't know what I'm doing next but I'd like to get his advice. Thank you for bringing me with you! I hope I didn't slow you down!"

With their meal completed and the villagers gone, Blue Raspberry was free to change their shape back into their humanoid form without being seen. Well, by the villagers. Cirice was still there to witness it, but that didn't seem to matter so much at this point. She had already witness far worse. They shifted their form, their armor emerging and reequipping onto their frame, and faced Cirice.

"So! I guess you saw some... uhhhhh... me do some stuff. Welp, I guess I have to admit something. Yup. I'm... ummmmmm... I'm just a knight and these are normal things for a knight to do!" they lied extremely unconvincingly, an uncertain, nervous smile on their face hidden beneath their helmet. "Yeah, let's go back and get Charles!" they looked to Astrid to change the subject that they now felt they probably just shouldn't have brought up in the first place, but it was too late for that. "Do you guys want a ride down? I can turn into a wolf again, or a bird, or uhhhhh.... uh, turning into a bird is also normal for a knight to be able to do..."

"Uhhh I mean, I'm afraid I'll fall off." Cirice replied, making Blue Raspberry stop preparing to transform. They put a finger to their chin for a moment and thought about it before responding, placing their hands on their hips and nodding. "Right, sorry! Should I carry you in my mouth instead?"

Riding down on Blue doesn't seem so terribly bad, but the offer to ride in their mouth is a big no from Astrid. "Aht, no, we don't store people in yer mouth," she says quickly. Astrid gets to her feet and shakes her hand towards Blue Raspberry. "We don't know what happens ta livin' creatures that go in there. Usually, they don't come out, so we're not gonna test that theory. I'm sure there's a path we can find if Cirice ain't alright with it. I don't mind either way, but we've gotta get back ta Starlight so we can get outta here. If yer really so inclined ta run down the cliff again, we could just walk while ya do that."

Astrid looks past them and spots the path. "Well, there's the path I s'pose we missed the first time." She looks back at her friends. "If ya wanna do it, I'll hold ya on. If not, we could just ride on the path. Either way, let's get movin'. I'm hungry!" With that, she hefts up her two hammers and is ready to go for a ride or walk down the path (or ride down the path) depending on what her friends decide. She's just ready for another meal.

Cirice folds her hands together and presses them against her lips, the picture of concern.

She looks between her two friends. "You are, in no way just a normal human or just a knight. You... Don't have to tell me what you are, but I'm NOT getting in your mouth. Can we just... go via the path. I'm tired too. We can talk about this all later. If you're comfortable with that. If you aren't... Well I'll be curious forever and ask Mother Moon later."

She sighs tiredly, rubbing her face. "I'm hungry too."

"I promise, I wouldn't swallow her! I can hold her with just the teeth, like in the snoot. I held one of those Harpies before! I mean, before I ate it..." they tried to persuade Astrid of their capability of not swallowing everything that they hold int heir mouth, but realized it wasn't working. They pouted a bit, but didn't argue. They also were a bit sad when Cirice told them she didn't believe them. They'd thought their lie was really convincing too! They had no idea what Knights were supposed to be able to do though They really didn't know what a knight was at all. All they knew was that people often called them a knight when they were wearing their armor, so they just rolled with it.

They immediately cheered up when the others mentioned that they were hungry and wanted to go get some food.

"Me too, I'm starving! Let's go get some street food!" the insatiable ooze called out, raising a fist into the air with a big, toothy smile on their face beneath their helmet. The irony of them declaring that they were starving almost immediately after devouring and entire flock of Harpies was completely lost on the ooze. "Hop on!"

They quickly transformed their shape into that of a giant wolf again and lied down for Astrid and Cirice to climb onto their back. They were far too excited about eating some delicious street food to walk all the way back to the city in their humanoid form. Running as a dire wolf would be much faster!

With the two on their back, they ran down the path they'd missed earlier, back to the beach to pick up Charles on their way back to the city. The villagers were a bit startled as they ran by, but a few of them waved to them as they grew more distant, thankful for the adventurer's help. They'd remember the help they'd received from the trio gratefully.

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Shapeshifter's Plate