Deidre took the lead in following Sir Toleus after her confident assertion of intent to disregard the unpleasant man's statement of leadership. Wank, Jehan, and Arwen followed soon after, leaving only three remaining standing before the gates of the keep. "Well," Torgun spoke up as he went to follow them as well, "look at it this way. All those soldiers'll help up north, but it sounds like not many went west. D'you really want to trust the fate a kidnapped girl to the likes of Sir Toleus and Wank? I'm gonna go make sure they don't do anything painfully stupid, and I'm sure I could use the help."
The trip westward was largely uneventful. Uneventful, but long. The winding road down to the bridge across the river was close to empty, and unlike their trip to the keep there was nothing of interest spotted along the way. After they passed through the small section of Varden on the western side of the river, it took Arwen and Masawa only a couple minutes to find a promising trail through the long grass. It was in truth less a trail than a path of destruction that looked like a very localized storm had passed through to tear everything up, but it reeked of magic and was very fresh so they followed its course: a straight line heading directly toward the odd tower in the distance.
After following the trail for about half an hour, something strange quickly became evident to all the magic users in the group. There was a sense of everything being at once stretched out before them and squished into a shorter distance than it should have occupied; all of them but Wank had moments of confusion where the tower seemed to shift from appearing to be only a mile or so away one second to being far in the distance the next. Wank managed to see through whatever trickery was going on to recognize that the tower was indeed very distant, and it did not waver in his vision. It also stayed still in the eyes of those lacking magic, but for them it seemed close and didn't appear to grow nearer until they had been walking for well over an hour after the point the magic users noticed the strange distortion.
They were nearing two hours of travel from the keep when whatever illusion held the land around the tower finally broke, and the tower about a mile distant started to creep ever closer. The tower's appearance changed quite a bit as they passed that threshold. While it had looked plain and clean and new, built of light grey stone to all of them, its true form was much less impressive (except to Jehan, for whom the smudge only seemed to grow a little darker). The tower was dark with age and creeping vines growing over its walls, rising over a hundred feet into the air with only the tattered remnants of the wooden beams of a roof remaining where the illusion had showed fine blue tiles. None of the party could tell just how old it might be at a glance, but Torgun murmured an uncertain guess of at least five centuries.
The land itself also appeared to change: where it had looked much the same as the plain grassland rising slowly uphill as they traveled toward the west side of the valley Varden occupied, the mile or so directly around the tower was eerily flat and the grass was kept very, and its unnaturally vibrant green was offset by little pops of red and yellow and purple thanks to flowers that grew at random and just barely rose above the level of the grass. The furrow in the ground they'd been following continued on through this grass, but it looked like it had happened days ago and had been smoothed out by heavy rains. It was all clearly magical in nature, including the seven-petaled flowers that none of the party could name, but the pristine landscaping was somewhat harder to explain. Arwen spotted the answer to that: small magical constructs, discs about the size of an Orc male's outspread hand, that were clear like glass and hovered over the grass apparently trimming anything that grew too high, plus a handful of them sweeping back and forth over the line of torn up earth to put it back into place.
The beauty of the scene could not hold their attention for long, however, as a cry of pain rang out soon after they stepped onto the pristine grass. Sir Toleus mounted his horse immediately and charged toward the sound, and Torgun cursed under his breath and beckoned everyone to follow as he got to running. It took them all (minus near-sighted Jehan) no time at all to make out a battle underway near the base of the tower. Where before it had seemed to take them ages to cross minimal distance, the apparent mile to the tower was reduced to almost nothing, with each step sending the tower lurching closer at a nauseating rate. In under a minute Sir Toleus was charging into the fight with his sword drawn, giving out a battle cry that carried through the air without any distortion or disruption from the fact that to the others he appeared to be leaping forward dozens of feet with each step of his horse: "Die, foul demons!"
And demons they were. There were six small creatures with sickly green skin, about the size of Goblin children but with gnarled limbs and pairs of horns atop their heads and large fangs that made them far more monstrous than any Goblin. Two roughly Human-sized creatures were also present, beings with furry legs that ended in cloven hooves, torsos with more sparse hair that showed red-tinted skin beneath, and goatlike heads with beady red eyes and curling horns. The final demon of the lot was a hulking thing, at least eight feet tall, and it looked like a vastly muscular grey orc with a mouth full of jagged teeth and two stumpy horns protruding from its head; it was the only one carrying a proper weapon, a sword made of some dark metal that it wielded in one hand but which would be a rather oversized greatsword for a Human, and one spot near the center of the blade was smeared red with fresh blood.
The trio of adventurers from Alfhem were trying without much success to fight the pack of demons themselves. They had been nowhere in sight during the long trek to the tower, but the fight appeared to have started not long ago. Thal, the male Elf, had been fighting the largest of the demons and had also been the one whose scream alerted the group to the danger; he was laying on the ground beside a shattered sword with a large wound in his side, though with his hands on it and all the blood it was hard to tell how badly he was hurt. Tres and Whalebones were engaged with the goatlike demons, the former wielding two swords and the latter a large club. The demons seemed to be holding their own without much struggle, blocking each attack with hand motions that created little barriers of shimmering blue light. The pack of smaller demons were mostly jabbering in some unintelligible language, but they sometimes tossed little balls of fire that seemed to do little more than irritate the fighters.
Sir Toleus charged straight for the largest demon, but his horse was met with a brutal swing of the massive sword right into its chest, sending the knight flying forward over its head. His metal boots flared with brilliant green light for a moment, and his headlong rush to the ground was averted as the magic of his boots spun him around in the air to land on his feet, skidding a few feet as he landed but otherwise none the worse for wear. He charged the large demon again with a wordless roar, shield held ready and sword swinging. His arrival pushed the other demons to fight more actively, and it quickly became apparent they'd been toying with their prey as Tres and Whalebones were put on the defensive by blasts of magic from the goat-headed demons and more intense blasts of fire from the smaller creatures.
"Demons. I fucking hate demons." Torgun got his grumbling out of the way as he picked his pace up into a sprint, charging into the fray with his battleaxe swinging and a battlecry pouring forth in a bellowing roar that seemed far too large for the dwarf as he headed for the goat-headed creature fighting the female Elf. "Eat mithril, you festering cunts!"
With all the yelling and fighting going on, none of the demons seemed to have quite registered the other threats appearing, leaving at least a few seconds to maneuver and strategize as they wished, though those already engaged in combat did not appear to have long left before they would be overwhelmed.