Chapter 33

Retaking the Vineyard

Trusting Fabian's instincts the rest of the group leapt after her, acting fast enough to avoid the grasping arms of the needle blights diving to stop them. Falling atop a wagon piled with barrels, Fabian and Erros slipped from the smooth casks while Pieron and Dyson landed squarely on their feet, and sprinted into the rain and after the blight leader already making significant headway. They were headed for the vineyard, and already the blights shambling aimlessly about the yard lurched to guard their leader's escape. Large antlers wove between the closing gap in a wall of bark and needle, but Pieron threw forth a spray of acid and together with Dyson they lowered their heads as one and crashed forward full speed. The blights, fallen off kilter by the acrid burning and despite raking and cutting into their flesh, scattered enough for the scraped up pair to charge through, Fabian and Erros catching up just in time to squeeze past before they crowded together once again. The leader stuck to the winding road but was already out of sight behind a bend in the rows of grapevines. Still the group ran after, gaining ground like only those accustomed to extreme feats of endurance could, despite being laden with armor and gear. The leader lobbied spells over their shoulder, paniked and haphazardly, and thick brambles of thrones snaked out of the dirt to cover the road. Fabian yelled to get behind her, and shield raised she soldiered through at an immense speed, her sturdy iron greaves trampling a path for the rest to follow. As she lowered the shield they saw with but moments to spare, a battalion of needle blights had amassed from about the grounds in a formation ahead of them that loosely resembled a shooting line. The leader had turned again out of sight, and the blights readied to loose a volley of foot-long needles that would surely blanket them all. Erros as he ran, hurled into the air the illusion of a great black stallion with a firey mane, snorting and galloping through the void, as he recalled the fear the forest folk had shown at the sight of another of Strahd's servants. The blights held none of that fear, but pulled at the last moment to loose against the nightmare. The needles flew high and passed through the illusion as the group kept their pace and rounded the corner before the missiles could fall harmlessly into the fields and road well behind them.

Ahead was the last straight stretch of path before the vineyard ended at the main road, and one by one it seemed globs of black ichor were trailing off the leader's fell staff, and rising from the ground as gnomish twig blights. They chattered ravenously as they  ran for the group, closing the distance quickly and diving for their legs to trip them up and slow them down. Dyson, who'd already pushed himself as far as he thought he could just to keep up with his much longer-limbed companions, pulled one last well of strength from within, and ran to the front of their group as he ignited his maul in conjured flame. He swung back and forth like a horizontal pendulum just as the twig blights arrived. Each swing lifted one clean off the ground to burst aside in scattered, charred, sticks. Straining he let out a crazed power grunt and for once the rest ran harder to keep up with him, Erros already imagining how glorious this part of their tale would be to recount. What blights he did not destroy simply dispersed into the vine rows in an effort of self-preservation, and then it was just the prey and the pursuers. Their breath was labored, but ahead their quarry drew close, nearly within their grasp as they neared the end of the vineyard and the great forest beyond. Pieron and Erros almost upon them, the leader suddenly planted their heel and skip to a stop, thrusting their hand down in an arcane sign and filling the air immediately with a thick white smoke. Erros lunged but caught nothing in the opaque cloud, the leader was trying in a last ditch effort to shake them. The group slowed and spread out upon the path, Fabian ran out to the main road, and Erros ducked low to look for tracks in the mud, but together they saw nothing, heard nothing but the sound of the rain and the shambling's of blights fast on approach from the winery. The fog cloud was thick and covered a large area, and despite it clearing quickly, the leader could have dipped into a dozen different rows, could have used an array of unknown spells to evade detection. The leader escaped, and quickly the group needed to decide what next to do. They choose to stick to the plan and return to the winery, and with the blights from the fields gathered onto the path, giving it a wide berth they were able to make it back unaccosted, and pulled themselves up through the loading hole over the wagon from which they'd tumbled out.

The winch room now sat empty, but they kept high their guard, knowing their foes were almost certainly still lurking about the winery, and in a tight formation they opened the nearest door to clear the rooms one by one. They were exhausted, both of body and spirit, and having only enough strength for a few spellcasting's between them they worried their next engagement could be fatal. But their goal felt close, and retreating then could have given the forest folk enough time to regroup and rebuild their defenses. An empty hallway led to a disheveled kitchen, rotting scraps of a half-eaten meal still plated on the table, and ear to the ground Erros's keen new hearing picked up the shifting of blights directly behind one of the two doors. He put a finger to his mouth, then pointed at the sound, and silently the four positioned themselves about the room. Fabian lifted her shield, ignoring the ache of her tired arm, and thrust open the door. Another narrow corridor stretched to the right with a winding stair to the left, and square in the middle stood a lone forest folk in profile, blights positioned down the hallway in a configuration for an assault that did not come from the kitchen. His eyes grew wide and paniking he turned. With Fabian and Dyson just feet away, weapons thrusting, he clapped his hands in a thunderous crack that shook the walls and bounced about the kitchen with extreme force. The two held their ground but felt their insides churn as debris flew about the room and Erros flew backwards into the wall, narrowly catching himself from crashing through the window. Pieron, safe around the corner cast a spell of her own, burning the assailant's face, and Fabian and Dyson delivered their strikes true. Making to run he crumpled lifeless to the floor, and two remorseless human forms wrought of writhing vines glided over his corpse to attack. The second door whiped open from a bedroom by a second forest folk caught the group unaware, and with the wave of his hands the entire room filled with deadly grown razerwire, threatening pain for any movement. Erros, thinking himself tactical, climbed out the window at his back and gripped the roof above him to shimmy along to a flanking position. He made it about three feet, before the rain-slick rooving tiles shed his grip and he fell, landing hard on the ground below. Dyson pushed into the hallway to avoid the worst of the thorny trap and struck the closest blight with his still flaming maul as deadly as he could muster, and dropped the burning creature to a pile of viney ash in the single hit. Stoically, he stepped over the corpse and raised his weapon again. Erros rose from the grass quickly and backed a good distance from the building. In line with his target window he started to run, and in the last moment before colliding with the wall he ripped a patch from his cloak and in his hands sprung a thick wooden rod over a dozen feet in length. He jammed it into the dirt and propelled his momentum upward, for a moment sailing through the air like a circus performer, to grab hold of the window ledge just as the rod slipped and clattered to the ground. Visualizing how incredible his feat of acrobatics must have looked to rows of audience members he wished for a moment he had, he opened the window and pulled himself up to get the jump on their foe, just as Pieron threw a dagger into the forest folk's chest. The caster's concentration fell, and the thorny trap crumbled to dust as Erros cursed his timing and the forest folk ran from the room.

Fabian ran after him and barreled past to block his escape, as Erros came up from behind and drove home the point of his rapier. Dyson felled a second blight in another powerful blow, and then a third in just two until only one remained for Pieron to incinerate with a final tired casting. Surrounded and mortally wounded, the forest folk desperately filled the hallway with smoke and ducked down, dodging Fabian's attack moments before Erros dealt the final cut. As the fog dissipated Fabian saw the folk slumped on the floor and Erros withdrawing his blade from the man's heart, a perfectly lethal strike delivered to an invisible target. It surprised Erros too, for he felt he'd simply known what his prey would do, sensed the fear and smelt the man's blood, delivering death entirely on instinct without decision. The house fell silent again, and with her adrenaline fading Fabian felt a deep pang of sorrow for so much blood spilt over a bunch of grapes. The rest of her group continued their sweep of the house as she dragged the body of the man they'd killed hides into the light of the nearest window, a final gesture of good will to the man's soul. As she did so, several glass vials spilled out from a pouch concealed beneath his deer hide vestments, and while the vials looked empty it was a surprising thing to see on a man like this. Together they traveled from room to room on the first and second floors, and found no more combatants in the house, passing bedrooms and workshops for printing labels, cooping casks, and blowing bottles. They shored up any outside doors, as well as the door to the basement which they agreed to search in the morning, and felt confident they could rest in the bedroom on the second floor, watching in shifts for any more attacks from the blights in the yard. As rain subsided, and the storm clouds darkened in a transition to night with no visible sunset, they treated their wounds and settled in for a restful night.