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(Vol 5) Chapter 33: Ain't Nothing But Hound Dogs
🕑 Added 2024-05-31 15:12:19 +0000 UTCIt occurred suddenly to Sammy that healing spells did not need levels to be useful, even more so than buffs, since their effect was instant. And she had something that allowed her rangelessness if she had some sort of link, though at pretty bad penalties to effect levels if the link wasn’t strong. Dart more than qualified, though.
Ignoring the mirror, Sammy put her perceptions back in her goddess body on the throne in Heavenpeak. Utilizing [Sympathetic Targeting], Sammy cast Seal Major Wound on Dart’s broken arm — though still at penalties, it worked, and the bone mended in a burst of light.
Yes! I’m not useless here.
Dart managed to regain control as his stunned status was cleared and righted himself before crashing into the trees. He swooped down and back up in a great wheel, shaking his head to clear it and growling deep in his throat as he eyed his target. He was pissed.
Sammy sent to him quickly, “Hey! Calm down. Use your brain, alright? Play it smart. Utilize flight. Don’t bother with breath attacks, either. I don’t think it’ll be effective.”
Dart seemed to snap out of his rage with his goddess’s voice in his head. “Ugh! Fine. Suggestions?”
“Stall. Absorb its attention. Taunt it.”
“Hmm. That I can do…”
Sammy was surprised to see a flash of prismatic light — illusory, actually. It surprised and distracted the Hound on Ash as well. It came from the mirror Dart had apparently dropped when he was attacked, and it was floating in the air.
On Heavenpeak, Sammy flashed her eyes to the side to see Azure in front of a mirror portal, briefly pausing to smirk and wink at her, but otherwise very absorbed in what she was doing.
Ah! She’s more advanced than my Resemblants for mirror use, and can use illusions to boot! Handy.
The Hound was totally misdirected from seeing the mirror, and it lashed out at that instead of attacking Ash. Azure just barely dodged with it, getting clipped by a solid phantom jaw to flip end over end. The mirror was thankfully undamaged, though.
Ash, for her part, created space and cast another spell. A smoky figure appeared in front of her, like a gladiator with a spear and shield and covered in armor. She now had her own phantom protector, though it seemed inclined to hold back in defense rather than charging forth.
Dart swooped down to the rising Hound below him but stopped short of attacking. Instead, he spun around in midair and presented his butt, shaking it and his tail down low.
Almost immediately the Hound barked and growled, then leapt for the tail, but naturally Dart was ready for it. He lifted the tail right above the phantom’s snapping reach, then dropped it down again, wriggling it temptingly. He had his neck craned around, a sadistic dragon grin on his face as he eyed the target of his irresistible taunts.
Whining furiously, the Hound jumped up again — to no avail.
Whatever works, I guess.
As for Porthos and his canine foe… the Hound had almost slithered out of his grip, but a last hand grabbed a leg and pulled it back, after which Porthos jumped on the beast’s back. It was agile even then, flopping sideways as its teeth snapped behind it and gashed the cheek of the giant in a bloody, if fairly trivial wound. Porthos growled as they rolled, trying to lock and pin the beast from behind even as it bucked to get free.
Okay, fine — perfect! They’re being stalled.
Sammy once again took the opportunity to cast her perceptions back to the maze realm. She made rocks within the giant chamber fall away to present a bubbling pool of some unfortunate hot liquid. The hand presented Beltrand over it face-first. “Call off your Hounds, Beltrand!”
“Never!” The witchhunter cried defiantly. “There’s nothing you can do to me to make me stop hunting you. I’ll do far worse to you when I get my hands around your foul neck!”
On Heavenpeak, Sammy bared her teeth and growled in frustration in her throat. “Insufferable idiot! Damn it to hell, I don’t want to do any of this! I just don’t have time! We have to get out of here.”
In the forest of the Everwood, things continued without signs of any completion. Porthos’s Hound managed to avoid the pin, half turning around to get another bite and a gash on the giant’s arm. Dart’s Hound got tired of the game and about-faced to begin toward his two brothers — but Dart swooped in and smacked it with his tail, sending it tumbling into the trees.
Ash’s Hound attacked the mirror, snapping at and missing it several times, as Azure swept the object just free of its jaws, but then a huge paw closed down on it. It was smashed into the ground, shattered and ruined instantly.
“Fuck!” Azure exclaimed, sagging to lean on her knees. “Sorry, Samantha…”
“It’s fine,” Sammy assured her evenly. “You protected her. You bought her time. That’s the most important thing here.”
Protect her — that’s what I need to do. Whatever it takes. And this war of fucking attrition isn’t it, because they could be coming for us right now. They can teleport! I can’t keep fucking around. I can’t do this in their territory while my Avatar isn’t even there.
Ash cast another spell, sending a black dart at the Hound and catching it squarely in the torso. It passed through the beast entirely, which made it jerk, and the wound channel smoked upward as a sign of damage. But the thing was not at all stopped. It planted one foot and then another, squaring itself to charge the waiting form of Ash’s spearman.
How much physical damage like that will it take? Two minutes of fighting? Five? I don’t have it to give! And we are hardly guaranteed a win.
Steeling herself, jaw clenched, Sammy cast herself back into the maze realm. Beltrand was trying his best to hold his head and face away from the noxious fumes of the pool, but it was clear from his discomfort that he was breathing it in.
“Do you really want to taste it, too?” The voice asked maliciously. “Call off your Hounds or know a pain no one should, Beltrand. Last chance.”
“I know all there is to know,” Beltrand said — calmly for once. “Ironically. We dip witches in a special acid, feet first. A little more each time, intermittently coming up for healing. If you can call it that. The disfigurement is… profound. You know what they say? ‘What do you want, what do you want?!’ They beg and beg, especially when we get to the groin. But it's simple. We want to dip them in acid!”
Barking a laugh, he finally screamed at her again, “For a wretched bitch like you, we’ll fold you in half and dunk you ass-first!”
On Heavenpeak, Sammy shot out of her throne to stand with a dark cry of rage and frustration. Simultaneously, she dunked the man into the liquid.
Nearly boiling, foul liquid engulfed him as he struggled to hold his breath, as he held in a scream of agony from his every pore effectively lit on fire. He managed to keep his eyes firmly shut — if he hadn’t, he’d have gone blind.
‘The Daughter of Fate in jeopardy, we will dress ourselves in the garments of suffering — we know the stitchings all too well. We do what we must, what is necessary, and accept another stain on our soul. The blood always seeps through. Always.’
Sammy didn’t leave him for long. She pulled Beltrand out and he finally let out the scream brewing, his skin burned and smoking, his eyes refusing to open.
A voice perhaps beginning to bleed more Sammy-like shot through the maze chamber. “Call off your fucking Hounds right now, or I’ll hold you until you are dissolved, you piece of shit! Clearly, you deserve worse.”
Shaking, voice raspy, Beltrand managed, “Do your worst, demon-loving whore.” Every word dripped with derision and hatred that trumped all else. “I’ll get out eventually… and if I don’t… at least I spat in your ugly fucking face on the way out.” He suited the words somewhat by literally spitting into the liquid he still faced.
The fight in the forest continued to go nowhere. Well-matched force with force doomed to a long, drawn-out struggle. Sammy suspected the Hounds were effectively designed for such pin-down maneuvers. They needed to flee by air, and soon. But…
I have to do it. I probably should’ve done it hours ago and maybe none of this would’ve happened. Maybe it helps with the Hounds, maybe not. Probably. But holding on to him a moment longer makes me a criminal to my cause.
“So be it,” Sammy said, and then she ripped Beltrand’s soul out through her impunity of control within the Maze realm, sending him straight to reincarnation. There was only the briefest flicker of surprise and understanding in his eyes that he had been killed. Then he was gone, his body disintegrating into nothing.
Sammy felt the ‘marring’ of the mirror disappear, and in a very subtle and faint way, the ‘body’s final location’ passed from the mirror to the location. That was brief, as she could not even sense it one moment later.
A cold-blooded killer yet again. Like crushing a bug — a sapient one. Will this get easier? That’s what terrifies me.
The Hounds noticed. The loss struck them as if physically gobsmacked, their phantom forms flickering and dulling. They whined, broke off their attacks or took their final licks, and otherwise tried to retreat, though they gravitated toward that final ‘spot.’
Breathing a sigh of relief because she had not been at all sure that would happen, Sammy called off any further aggression. “Go!” she called from the mirror. “If they don’t pursue, we flee.”
“Wait! Cover me.” Ash, moving slowly in the general vicinity of the Hounds, cast a minor spell that scooped up the other, broken mirror. Fortunately, the two spots had many meters of distance between them. The phantom canines just kept their distance, watching and whining.
“Good thinking,” Sammy muttered with a bit of a sigh. On Heavenpeak, Sammy had been standing for a while, so she dropped back into her throne.
Ash dumped the remains she’d procured into a sack and then retreated to mount up on Dart. Porthos was already shapeshifted to dragon-form as well. They left quickly and the Hounds — as expected — did not follow. They circled and sniffed around the area, whining anxiously. That was all Sammy saw before they disappeared to the ambient tree cover.
The mirror hitched a ride on Dart as well. Sammy asked Ash, “What the hell were those things? Talk about annoying.”
“Powerful summoning enchantment,” Ash said. “A Towerbound witchhunter’s heart is replaced with a similarly functioning enchanted organ fueled by three loyal canine sacrifices. You may hear some call them doghearts or dogs derogatorily, but that is not literally true. In any case, it’s an intricate, spiritual tie.”
“Holy fuck! That sounds like some twisted ass shit. Fuck those guys! Also… Towerbound?”
Ash made a perturbed face, perhaps at her ‘language use,’ but Sammy was in no mood to care. Ash replied, “Lands held for aeons have a power all their own. Territorial officials can tap into it whatever their focus. Towerbound is just an old word for particular authorized agents. The owner of those Witchkillers was one such regional agent. It is ‘was,’ right?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. He’s… dead. Super dead. Why?”
“I’m curious how you managed to find him and kill him.”
“What do you mean? It’s the same one that’s been there the- oh shit. I didn’t really explain, did I? The ‘no time’ bullshit, as usual! This guy came in and noticed the floating mirror I put you in, so I had to trap him in the same mirror. I guess he turned out to be more of a big deal than I realized. His name was Beltrand.”
Ash seemed to go even paler, and her hand went to her throat as if she were being choked. In a bit of a strangled voice, she whispered, “You trapped and had Beltrand the Dipper in the same mirror as me? Ohhh, Bollocks and Buttfiends…”
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