Waiting for a resolution (Timur28)

Jewel looks at the egg suspiciously.

"My eagles can't just have gone. We need to find them and rescue them to my bad place." She says definitely.

"Rescue eagles. Put them in your bad place. Check" quips our hero, deadpan.

"I'll try Pattern but the damaged thing will give me a headache. Any theories on what's wrong with it?"

He attempts to use the Pattern to seek for giant eagles like the ones here that kidnapped Ashol.

"Good, I'm glad you've got this. This is important." Jewel says equally seriously. Especially given her impression that the Universe needing saving wasn't that urgent.

"Not really, that's Aunty Fi's domain." Jewel adds.

Timur tries to use the Pattern and instantly regrets it, getting a massive headache almost instantaneously. He gets a vague sense of what he seeks to the south before it fades.

<chuckle> Gotta love  her! <platonic love>

"Ow! They are South of here. Perhaps they have migrated. We could do with the reindeer."

"We can walk. I don't mind." Jewel strides off south, though she is not aware of an exact direction she should be going.

"Let me scout ahead."

He launches into the air and heads in the correct direction, gaining height to check that Jewel and Markovi are following, and to gain a better view ahead.

Or they've been summoned by the Eye of the Tornado...

The rugged hills ahead of them give way to broken rocks that are hard to pick between. In the far distance by a river Timur can see a small settlement and next to it there is a large plume of purple something going into the sky. Its not quite clear to Timur from this distance what that something is, but it could be some kind of light.

Jewel is following eagerly below with Markovi keeping a lookout for any threats.

He heads off ahead to get a better view of the settlement from a height. He occasionally looks back to check on Jewel's progress.

Flying closer, Timur can clearly see that the settlement is surrounded by a wall and towers with something large inside them. The pillar of purple seems to be coming directly from the middle of the settlement, seemingly from the ground.

Jewel is not slacking in her speed to get towards the eagles.

He sharpens his eyesight and flies closer, trying to identify the 'something large'.

Timur's eyesight was already as sharp as he could make it. As he flies closer, he realises that the 'things' in the towers are huge ballistas manned by 'huge' looking people. The nearest tower starts to turn towards him.

Oh crap! They must have good vision, or some other way to detect me.

He banks rapidly right into a dive away from the settlement and furls his wings to plummet like stone, looking to see if the 'giants' looks like they could be Children of the Giants, and watching to see the trajectory of the expected ballista bolt.

Timur dives away to land on the ground. From this distance it is impossible to see if they are children of the Champions, but Timur thinks that they mght be a little smaller. No ballista bolt fires at him yet.

He checks that he is out of line of sight of the towers, and tries to recall what the terrain was around the walled settlement, and whether he could creep up to it unseen, or swim.

Timur has been fortunate in that he has landed in the one spot that is in a hidden dip and cannot be seen by the Tower. It is however a fair way away from the little town. The only cover that Timur to remember seeing would be the river, and he would need to hold his breath for a long way to swim there underwater.

A spot of luck, but now I am trapped.

Timur Trumps Jewel.

Yes? Have you got my eagles yet? She demands to know.

Not yet. There is a walled settlement ahead, occupied by giants with giant ballistae. I don't know if they have the eagles or not. Let me check.

He grits his teeth and asks the Pattern where the giant eagles are (probably losing the Trump connection unless Jewel maintains it), to check whether it is still pointing towards the settlement.

If they have go kill them all then and get my eagles.

The Pattern compounds his early headache with an even bigger one. It points south to the little town.

They do seem to have the eagles. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they do. Maybe they live there during the winter, or whatever season this is. I will investigate, whilst avoiding getting into a war with a bunch of people who are bigger than me, and so are their crossbows!

You'll need to pull me through, since they saw me land here.

He offers her a hand.

Very well, but you'll get my eagles straight after? Jewel says pulling him through the Trump.

"You can take the help to go kill them all and get the eagles back"

"I'm not here to be ordered around by you Princess Jewel." Markovi tells her.

"Thank you. Markovi's duty is to ensure your safety. I'll go investigate."

He flies to the river, upstream of the settlement if he can, keeping low and out of sight of the towers.

Timur flies up the river. There are a couple of the large humanoids sitting beside the bank with fishing rods some way to the west. He can fly further if he wants and land beyond them near to a little low rocky watercourse.

He looks for a lone fisher, who he can land near, out of sight, shapeshift to his natural form, armoured and wearing Mandor's black suit, and then approach.

Alas there is not a lone fisherman. There are only the pair of them sat on the bank, not paying much attention elsewhere other than the river. Timur lands a way away and now he can see that these things are huge ogres.