>>5204002>>5204042>>5204198>>5204310>>5204321You reflect on your one-time friend, the fox-woman, and her race’s traditional and stereotypical habit of luring in human men to consume their hearts. Well, you may have never fully mastered illusion in the same way that she did, but with Irinnile’s abilities at your disposal, you see no reason why you cannot play at the same gambit.
“Infiltrators, you should stay back,” you suggest to Roth and Alhazred, in deference to how your last experiment went, and especially in deference to the swelling and the unconscious tilt of Roth’s head.
Alhazred nods, but Roth scoffs.
“And trust our entire operation to your abilities to outfight and apprehend three larger males at once?”
You smile indulgently as you shift your shape to that of a mussy-haired ingenue, and tell him: “I won’t be alone.”
When you leave the others ad seek out these hunters, you are careful to scan the area around them for any stragglers behind them or scouts ahead before you approach. Finding none, you spring your rap, staggering forward in a pantomime of a damsel in distress, gasping and whimpering.
“Woah!” one of the men tells the hound at his feet, which yelps and snarls. He pulls it back, looking you up and down. “What… Who are you?”
You hide a smirk behind a mask of fake terror turning to false relief, and you tell him and his companions of how you and your dear, beloved sister were traveling through the woods collecting berries when you were set upon by a terrible beast—a bear, of course, nothing supernatural—which treed your sibling and sent you fleeing to find help.
“And now I have!” you gush, grabbing hold of the arm of one of the men, the one who stared the most, and sandwiching his elbow between your breasts. “Please, please can you help?”
The three men look uncertain, at first. Perhaps a bear was a bad choice—they are hardly outfitted to battle an ursine menace of any size. You sweeten the pot:
“Please,” you say, “my sister and I will be ever so grateful. I’ll do ANYTHING!”
You cast your eyes downward, pretending not to notice the hunger and excitement in their eyes, the looks they exchange as if mentally debating who will get you, or your fictitious ‘sister’. By the time they have agreed, you are already planning how to dispose of them and their dogs.