Rain Harlow
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(Vol 5) Chapter 32: The Rendezvous Shuffle
🕑 Added 2024-05-29 15:04:34 +0000 UTCSamantha released her 'captive' from the Mirror Maze, and Ash materialized out of it like a liquid crystalline blob turning into a solid humanoid form, before finally transforming fully into flesh. Ash gave a little yelp as she fell to the ground, but soon she laughed as her hands dug into the grass and dirt. She lifted it up, muttering, “Real, it’s real…”
“Ash,” Sammy began, frowning down at her from the mirror face, “it’s only a temporary-”
Her head shot up, eyes insistent, her cool exterior suddenly shredded away. “I don’t want to go back in. Please, take me to the destination bodily from here.” She shook her head slightly. “You don’t understand how terrifying it is, after all I’ve learned. With who I am. You just can’t. Please. I-...”
She wiped her hand over her face, grimacing. “I’m not stable anymore. I don’t have a center. I can’t handle this shit!”
Sammy found her gut twisted terribly by those eyes begging her for something. The last thing she wanted to do was deny them or cause her any sort of pain. Barely knowing her in the material plane didn’t matter a single bit — her daughter’s pain was her pain. “Ash, we… we can’t-... I… argh, fuck it! Alright. We won’t. You don’t have to go back.”
Ash stared up at her in apparent disbelief.
Dart was also disbelieving. “Um, excuuuuse me, here? This is not part of the plan, and I’m pretty sure it was a smart plan.”
Sammy shrugged. “I don’t care, Dart. Get ready to transport her just as she is. We’ll use invisibility and go as fast as we can undercover.”
“Ehhh, I dunno… gonna be kinda slow…”
Sammy just glared at him until he sighed and nodded, then began transforming into a griffon. It was a reasonable selection, as something they did not typically use, and at one time a well-utilized mount in the north. They preferred the far north as wild animals, though.
Ash stumbled to her feet and flashed her gaze between the polymorphing griffon and Samantha’s mirror. “Really? Just like that?”
Soberly, Sammy nodded. “Of course. I have no desire to hurt you, Ash. I’m sorry for what I had to do so far. I won’t force it on you. We’ll make it work. Expediency be damned.”
For a long spell, Ash held her eyes. Finally, she looked away and squeezed her eyes shut — squeezed a shaking fist at her side as two tears spilled from shut eyelids. Gradually her hand stilled and unclenched. She calmed, straightened, opened her eyes slowly, and said softly, “Forgive me. I am in error and we must do what is logical to avoid detection. Please trap-... please place me in the new mirror, Your Majesty.”
“Ash,” Sammy answered just as softly, floating the mirror closer, “you don’t have to do this. I said we’d make it work. I mean it.”
Newly frozen eyes met hers again levelly. “I want to do it. It is the proper course of action and I even told you it was good that I was so well hidden. I can’t falter in weakness so close to my escape. I must press through whatever it takes, so please, Goddess… let me facilitate your plan. Let me do my part. It is terribly small for being the greatest beneficiary, after all.”
Sammy found herself unable to help erupting in a pleased grin. She formed a full illusion of herself, just so she could place her hand on Ash’s shoulder. “I am proud of you, Daughter.”
Oops. That’s not what I formed my mouth to speak.
Ash’s eyes went wide in surprise and confusion, though her cheeks reddened slightly.
An unfortunate framing of the scene then was tremendous screaming in the back of her head, from her very vague subconscious monitoring of Beltrand. Annoyed, she flashed her perceptions over to him fully.
He was in a circular chamber, the very center of which housed some sort of giant toothy worm creature he’d been dicing up, in between cutting through smaller versions that had been jumping at him. Beltrand looked quite worse for wear, cut up and bloodied by his many battles, his hat entirely gone and a bandage over his head and eye. He still had his blade, along with some makeshift shield he’d tore out of a plated creature.
Beltrand was perhaps most annoyed that the worm had just stopped fighting and was staring down at him. Meanwhile, the smol boi worms were just flopping around aimlessly.
Ugh. I guess my brain stopped subconsciously producing content when I was dealing with Ash. The jig is up.
“Show yourself, damn you!” Beltrand screamed, practically frothing at the mouth. “I know what you are — I know what you’ve done, witch! Do you think you can hide from a hunter of your kind?!”
That sent pinpricks through her, though she didn’t respond immediately. Why does he think I’m a witch, exactly? Superstition?
The man coughed a bitter, hysterical laugh, slinging his sword upward. Oddly, she noticed his eyes had a red glow to them. “It doesn’t matter, you bitch! You vile, disgusting bitch, my Hounds will come for me! They’ll tear out your throat and free me!”
Sammy, extra alarmed suddenly, had the worm turn into an arm and hand that shot forward and grabbed Beltrand. He was quick and already reacting, but with such impunity over the realm, Sammy didn’t let him pull some ridiculous dodge maneuver — she made his feet stick to the floor, blocking any chance at escape.
There was a surprised look on his face as he was wrapped up and pinned by a hand as big as his torso and legs. He immediately began screaming obscenities and empty promises, so Sammy had him take a little squeeze to shut him up. He cried out in pain — a strangled sound as his breath was taken from him.
Sammy made the hand lift him as she formed a still-unrecognizable voice to resound, “What ‘hounds’? Tell me, Beltrand. Now.”
When she loosened her grip, he sucked in breath, coughing and grimacing. But he was laughing too, underneath it all. When he cast his glowing eyes up and around looking for a source to the voice, they were full of hatred. “I don’t have to, witch. You’ll see for yourself!” His eyes flashed brighter red.
Sammy quickly cast her perceptions out from the maze realm back to the mirror, spinning it around looking for danger. Ash was still waiting expectantly, with Dart transformed to his human guise yet again, holding the mirror with a frown.
She got a bad, bad vibe suddenly.
“On guard, everyone!” Sammy called loudly in a panic. “Trouble is-”
Baleful red energy flashed and coalesced, like a singular shade of fire made into phantoms — three giant canine shapes appeared, eyes like torrents into another world, howling like tortured banshees. Their phantom jaws were big enough to close over a tree trunk with ease.
“Witchkiller Hounds!” Ash called in horror. She snapped both of her hands at the same time, after which a dark aural armor made of blurring smoke enshrouded her.
There was little time to act preemptively beyond such quick actions, as the Hounds pounced immediately. One charged the mirror to snap at it, but Sammy dodged it, out and upward out of danger.
The other two Hounds charged at Ash and Dart, and these did not fare so well at dodging. In both cases, jaws flashed and closed over their torsos sideways, to very human screams of very similar high-pitched octaves. Ash was saved from harm by her spell, but Dart’s human body made the sound of cracking ribs.
Nonetheless, he persevered, holding his hands over the jaws with great strain as his leveled strength kept his spine from being snapped. In another moment, there was a poof of prismatic smoke and he shapechanged into his dragon form, which met jaw with jaw.
The charge of the Hound strained and came to a stop as talons dug and slid through the earth; wings fanned out. Green, glowing eyes narrowed with intensity and animus.
Ash called out, “Don’t use spell energy or mental effects — physical-based only!” She suited her own words to this, placing her hands to either side of the Hound’s maw and then casting a spell that flared a great telekinetic blast in a cone right in its face. This knocked it back in a roll with one little whine, while freeing her to fling herself up from the trampled weeds of the forest floor.
Sammy first tried for [The Unseen Animus] on the beast facing Ash, which was one thing fully usable through a mirror. It resisted immediately in a way that made it clear to her that it was immune.
Witchkillers — of course they’re immune to such curses. Probably a lot of other shit, too.
Otherwise, Sammy simply moved her mirror upward into the sky at maximum speed. As she hoped, this confounded the Hound, which did a half-hearted leap once but simply did not have the oomph to reach her. It whined in annoyance.
And then a flash of swift movement and a poof of smoke materialized into a meaty giant that slammed into the Hound full-force, making a small crater as the ground was embedded with the tremendous force.
Porthos — having come in hot from his owl-form patrol.
The giant laughed in glee as he wrestled with the great phantom canine. “This is the fight I’ve been waiting for! Bad dog!” He tried for a mighty lifted-up hand to hammer-fist down, but the head of the Hound jerked out of the way at the last moment and the hand buried into the ground in a great spray of loose earth and roots. “Oof. That’s not good.”
Sammy took the spare moment to flash back to the maze realm. She smashed Beltrand down into the floor once, just enough to hurt, then lifted him back up and made a large, demonic head rise up out of the floor with great cracking and splintering, revealing itself as the owner of the arm.
It brought Beltrand up to its face, bared its teeth, and growled. “Call off your fucking Hounds, now!”
Woozy with all the pain and injury dealt to him, Beltrand coughed a few bitter laughs and sneered with blood visible on his teeth. “Or what? You’ll torture me in this mindscape? Please.”
The demon-head glared. “Or I’ll kill you, you idiot!”
He scoffed derisively. “Don’t make me laugh. If you could, you would have already.”
Damn this motherfucker!
She shifted back to the real world. Porthos managed to keep his grapple going, but it was a draw as they rolled around in the dirt and struggled, neither dishing any serious damage. For his part, Porthos was having a blast with it.
Ash was moving evasively as her Hound bared its teeth and snapped at her in a quick flurry of attacks. She almost managed to avoid it thanks to the benefit of her blurred movements, but got clipped in the arm, shredding her smoky protections. She did the smart thing, however, and recast it immediately, giving her two more wound negations, though it was much slower being a manual cast.
Ugh, we’re going nowhere fast so far.
Dart had gotten a good grapple on a Hound with his front talons and began taking off into the air. But only some ten meters high, the Hound managed a terrible bite chomping down on Dart’s arm. It snapped and he cried out, flinging the Hound to crash into the earth. Meanwhile, Dart was stunned and careened into an unhealthy spin.
Damn it! I have to be able to help, here. Come on, think!
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« (Vol 5) Chapter 31 | Table of Contents | (Vol 5) Chapter 33: Ain't Nothing But Hound Dogs »
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Comments
Rain Harlow
She does have some capabilities there. An agent like this is too well-trained to have anything specific easily revealed or exploitable. Agents too far outside core territories can't summon them as they are territorial benefits. They actually have other specialties.
Rain Harlow
Fair point. That's just something she struggles with because of the helplessness and impunity, and she's juggling priorities to warn the others. Once the Hounds are out, she felt it was a safer bet to force him to call them off, not knowing the rules they were under. There is also a teensy other thing you might notice is at play from latter chapter discussion. Not that she shouldn't have despite it all, though.
Clinton Walsh
Doesn’t she have some innate sense for detecting fears? Perhaps using her Goddess voice to convey the degree of shit he’s standing in? Hmmm… These hounds are new. Wonder how commonly they are used by Shiners or if they would be too obvious…?
Tejing
Honestly, I'd have just killed him as soon as he called the supposed bluff. There's just no upside to keeping him around at that point, especially as doing so reinforces his mistaken sense of control over the situation. There's a decent chance the hounds would disappear or lose interest with him dead, too...
