Soulriders 5.0: Legend of the Unending Games

One quick thing to knock out for you.

As Afina goes back, she's soon enough intercepted by Finnegan. "Can we talk privately," he asks, coming right up to her.

Afina flutters to a stop and nods. "Come with me, then," she leads Finnegan through a portal to one of Aurora's meeting rooms that isn't currently in use, turning to face the elf with an expectant air afterwards.

Finnegan takes a seat, Val resting across his lap, poking over both sides and then some. He sits back and exhales, "By the Triune's mercy, has Moore been informed and instructed on how to deal with diabolical ambushes and scrying before? I was waiting for him to withdraw us when we detected the sensor, but it never happened. It's a genuine miracle any of us are back in Aurora and here to talk about it. What happened?"

"I've never told him that in so many words - or anyone else for that matter," Afina admits. "It's a foundational principle of battle that you pick your battles and don't let the enemy pick theirs. Aurora works because we stay mobile and only ever attack - every time the devils have come after us we've given way, taken advantage of our mobility to avoid their strengths. I haven't told anyone because I thought it implicit, but certainly I will be telling people after today."

"The funny thing about things like that is that they're obvious until they aren't," Finnegan sits back and looks up, "It has Hell's fingerprints on it, aye. They know we won't give up on captives, so they tried to use it against us. We're damn lucky you're so fast or we'd all be dead or worse now."

"We're all very experienced and skilled people, every officer in Aurora is a legend in their own right," Afina shrugs. "I don't lecture Surraruthru on when to use an ice spell and when to use a fire spell. I don't tell Jaela when she should fight conservatively and when she should use her risky counterattack stance. Everyone that's gotten to this degree of power shouldn't need to be babysat, but I suppose the other side of that coin is arrogance sets in. Moore probably thought he could handle anything Hell threw at him, because nothing's stopped him so far."

"Arrogance kills," Finnegan says firmly. "You're the biggest fish in the pond, until you aren't. Heroes like us have a bad knack of only realizing that as we're bleeding out."

"I don't think Moore's going to forget this any time soon," Afina says on that note. "I hadn't even met the other member of your expedition, but I understand she was a friend of his from before? That must be hitting him hard."

"Yeah," Finnegan sighs, "Nice enough woman from what I saw of her. Follows Raziel, has some powerful holy magic. She didn't leave a body, s hopefully she's reforming over on Celestia."

"The last time something like this happened it was Kascha who suffered that," Afina nods sadly. "Ithea was ambushed on an outing to the plane of Earth and Kascha was killed by a fallen solar."

A deep, foul grunt at that. "Funny story, I once saw the other end of this. I'd been dealing with some business and stopped at a roadside tavern to rest. Just as I'm going in, an elf in blue comes out and an elf in purple's following. The follower points at the one in blue and suddenly a squad of celestials teleport in. They knocked him out and took him away before I could do thing one about it."

A rather indelicate noise follows. "At the time, I thought it was great. Never knew what he did to deserve it, but it was impressive. Being on the other end of it is intolerable."

"Mmm," Afina hums at that. "I've never really taken part in the scry and teleport method of ambushing someone, although given all of my targets are devils I can just use planar binding spells to bring them into killing grounds of my own choosing anyway. Anyway, was that all you wanted to ask me about?"

"That was it.  I don't want a repeat of this, to lose good people over some sort of oversight," Finnegan says. "You're a general, fix it. It's your job."

"I'll take my responsibility for it, Finnegan - I was there, I bled to get you all out of that trap," Afina retorts stiffly, "But don't abandon your own responsibility. As an officer of equal rank to Moore you could have spoken up to get everyone out of there as the situation was developing."

"You're right," Finnegan nods back, not stiff at all. "I assumed Moore knew better or had one hell of a plan, since it was his expedition. My mistake there, no two ways about it."

"And Jetina and Westwind have paid the price for it," she concludes. "If that's all I'd better get back to work," she floats up and flies off to the portal out.

It's at that moment that Elena appears, "Jaela needs you, Balyss has a lead on Mala, but we have to act now." She waves her hand and points to the door, "Hurry."

Considering how badly she exhausted herself dealing with those nessians, that's not really great to hear. Still, she should hear it out. "I'm on my way, point me to her," she nods, picking up the pace.

I shall merge you into Cor's thread once he replies on the 'morrow.