Halloween Horror (Pt. 9): A Horrifying Beginning to the End
--- Audrey ---
“Right, okay this is officially above our paygrade.” She admitted, as a wave of something dark rippled over them, something that she could feel (crawling over my mind!)
She took a deep breath before letting it out in a much shakier one as she forced herself to push through whatever that was. A feat she could only pull off after being around Val and the Scarecrow for so long.
“We need to get everyone here now.” She told the others as she pulled out her phone. “Fuck the Creeps, this is the thing that’s going to kill everyone.”
“Crowds are a bad idea with fear eaters.” Val reminded her before the other girl’s head twitched. “Espantapájaros, says to only call in the big guns. Sanctuary’s grunts would just be lambs to the slaughter for this thing. Best to limit it to a handful of people.”
“Fantastic.” She nodded, feeling another ripple of something trying to get into her head. (Not that a handful of people will be enough to deal with this thing!)
She screwed her eyes shut and forced that intrusive thought away. “Fuck, this thing is getting into my head…”
“The seal shouldn’t be giving like this…” Artemis frowned, somehow keeping it more together than her. (Probably her phobia philia bullshit.) “There should be all kinds of… signs or something, that it was going to give like this.”
“Yeah, well it’s looking like the guys responsible for keeping an eye on that are kind of dead at the moment.” She pointed out to the elf as she opened her Hunter’s app and- “Fuck! My signal ‘s too weak to open the Hunter’s app.”
Val pulled out her phone. “I’ll try mine, see if you’ve got enough signal to call anyone.”
“R-right.” She nodded, closing the app and moving to her contacts.
“I meant, there should’ve been signs before tonight.” Artemis continued with some frustration. “Signs Miss Edme would’ve seen and warned everyone about.”
“Didn’t you say she disappeared a few weeks back?” Val asked, before scowling. “My signal’s shot too.”
“And mine is just giving off static.” She added, hanging her phone up.
“She told me that someone managed to kill something similar to the Horror, but that she needed to get details from the local magic users to see if something similar could apply here.” Artemis answered, pulling out her own phone and putting it next to her ear. “Static here too, the Bleed must be messing with the cell signals.”
“Fuck.” She cursed, running a hand through her hair as she remembered that, yes, (of course, the tears in reality mess with EM signals. How could I forget something so basic?) “Any idea how far that would stretch?”
“Depends on the Bleed and what crawls out of it.” Artemis shrugged, looking at the Bleed that was now large enough to reveal a bloodshot eye the size of a car tire looked all about. “The stronger the creature the further it stretches, so with the Horror it could be miles. Whatsmore until the Bleed closes the signal won’t clear up at all, though it’ll probably right itself within minutes once it does close.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.” She laughed bitterly as the creeping inside of her mind grew worse every time the horror looked their way. “Meaning we’re on our own until someone realizes this thing is here.”
“Which will take a while since this thing is giving off Madness, and the only people I know sensitive to that stuff are the Gamer’s Guild and maybe us if we count the Scarecrow.” Artemis continued to give her good news.
“And the Gamer’s Guild is spread out and weaseled into every other Halloween Party in the city in case the Creeps are attracted.” She remembered.
“And I wouldn’t count on the Scarecrow either.” Val admitted with her own wonderful news. “He flat out told me joining in this fight is just going to weaken the seal more. Something about them both being [Fear] Demons means that they can sort of feed off of each other but… because I’m contracted to him and the Horror is half-starved it’ll help the Horror more than us.”
“Great…” She nodded, her face screwed up in frustration as she fended off the thing trying to latch onto her mind. “Anyone else got any ideas because looking at that thing we’ve only got a few minutes before that thing rips that Bleed wide open.”
Artemis looked at the Horror’s bleed and bit her lip for a moment. “I can try to take a look at the Horror’s seal. Miss Edme just taught me the basics but maybe I can figure out a way to strengthen the seal, or at least figure out why it’s not working.”
“I’ve got a bunch of Spell Scripts I haven’t used since el espantapájaros ‘s been a greedy fucker.” Val threw out, showing off a couple of her scripts. “We might be able to lay enough out that they at least slow the Horror down when the seal finally cracks. I mean we’ve no idea how strong this thing is just that it feeds on miedo.”
“Right, then I’ll help you spread those out.” She nodded, before turning back to Artemis. “You look at the seal and try to figure… anything out.”
--- Artemis ---
That turned out to be significantly harder than she thought it would be, for several reasons.
First was the fact that in order to check the seal she had to get close enough for her Spell Sight to discern the magic’s actual coding, something she’d be reluctant to do if it was just the Horror she had to be worried about. The fact that Whitaker was just standing there staring at the Horror, just waiting for the beast to escape rather than trying to do anything to stop it, did little to help her nerves.
But once she’d worked up the nerve to actually get close enough to inspect the seal, she realized that whatever was going on with Whitaker he really was going to just stand there and wait on the Horror to escape. Which while unnerving, did nothing to actually impede her attempts to inspect the seal.
In fact in all likelihood she wouldn’t have accidentally stepped inside of the second invisible barrier preventing people from looking at the seal if not for her desire to be as far as possible from the unhinged teen while searching for the seal.
No, what had actually impeded her was the fear that if she prodded something she wasn’t supposed to the Bleed would rip open while she was directly under it, because apparently the seal’s matrix had been enchanted into the statue of one of the city’s founders.
A founder that had apparently died on Halloween the year before the town was originally founded. (Really hoping we aren’t going to have to sacrifice someone’s soul for this.)
There was a reason Miss Edme didn’t want her messing with the dark arts and that was that as powerful as they were, they were dangerous.
Still, even if her mentor hadn’t wanted her studying Demonology, Necromancy, or any part of the more Occult side of Magic, that didn’t mean her second mother figure hadn’t taught her about the seal itself. Given how it was her mentor’s main long term project to observe, monitor, and maintain the pre-association seal it was almost inevitable even through sheer osmosis over the years.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
From what she could piece together the seal was linked to a series of imaginary arrays designed to create and maintain a pocket dimension using the ambient magic generated by people living within the city. This ‘void prison’ would then be bubbled by the seal’s secondary function, preventing the Horror from eating fear and growing in power to escape via a Bleed.
(A function that’s clearly been damaged.) She noted at the sight of a set of marks on the statue that had a spell signature clearly resembling the Creeps that appeared every year. (But that can’t be the whole thing if the seal ‘s been weakening for years…)
She frowned, looking the statue over once more and really wishing that half of the original spell engine’s detail work wasn’t inside of the statue. Given how most of what she was able to decipher was the more modern improvement made to the seal after the Arcane Association had been founded than the actual pre-association foundation of seal.
The only original parts of the extremely complicated spell engine that she could make out were the stealth ward built into the base and a complicated sequencing around the entire seal that she roughly deciphered as ‘divide by three while mirrored in three so the one doesn’t form in between’.
“Okay, so the mirrored in three is clearly a reference to the fact that there are three seals in place, but what does it mean ‘divide by three so the one doesn’t form in between’ it can’t be the workload because the one is a worse thing.” She broke down. “Does it mean the Demon? If the seals break the Demon forms in between them? Plausible but the Horror is fully forming here so the three and one can’t mean that… Maybe the Demon’s power? But that doesn’t fit right…”
She ran a hand through her hair before going over what she could see once more, “No wait, wait, there’s a metaphysicality in this writing and all Demons are a metaphysical representation of their concept meaning their power is their form. So yes the Demon has to be the one and the divided three, but that still doesn’t explain why it's forming here when each of the seals should have a third of the Demon’s power sealed. Especially since with the redundancies both clearly new and old, you should be able to demolish this statue and the other two would still hold if with more strain and thus more Creeps drawn to them.”
No matter how she looked at it, the Horror should not be able to form unless all three statues were damaged at once. And given how the other cities had (what, a third) as many Creeps to deal with than theirs were three times as secure this year, meaning they had to still be standing.
“Shit, what am I missing?” She groaned, stepping back from the statue and letting her Spell Sight drop. “I don’t know nearly enough about Demons or this Seal to figure this out…”
A bit of movement to her side drew her attention to Val.
Val who frequently referred to the Scarecrow as her pet.
Her pet Demon.
“And what better to ask about a Demon…” She murmured.
--- Val ---
(“Oh, those absolute fucking idiots!”) The Scarecrow cursed after listening to Artemis’s explanation, before going on to insult said idiot’s entire bloodline, existence, religion, culture, and everything else in a fit of rage she couldn’t recall seeing from the fear Demon.
“Well, that’s not a good sign.” She blinked.
“What isn’t?” Audrey frowned, having wandered over upon noticing her and Artemis talking.
“Uh, give me a sec… Big guy, mind explaining the problema?” She asked, trying to get the Demon back on track.
(“They split a Demon’s power in three!”) The Scarecrow told her.
“Yeah, and that weakened the Demon.” She nodded, speaking aloud so she wouldn’t have to repeat too much of the physically absent Scarecrow’s words.
(“Before leaving the parts alone for OVER A CENTURY rather than simply kIlLiNG tHe pIEceS!”) The Demon hissed.
“Don’t think they had the power to kill them.” She pointed out. “You guys are notoriously hard to kill.”
(“And do you know why?”) The Scarecrow asked with a sweetness that did not fit the fear Demon at all.
“Because you guys are powered by whatever Concept you have and can exist as long as that Concept is present?” She answered a little unsurely.
(“Correct. As long as our Concept is present we can rEgENerATE!!!”) The Scarecrow screamed loud enough to make her flinch.
“Yeah, I know that.” She nodded, before adding that, “Demons regenerate from their concepts.” for the girls.
(“Mm-hmm…”)
She gave the girls a curious look to see if either of them got it, but they both looked just as confused as she did.
(“Think about starfish.”) The Scarecrow suggested, again with false sweetness.
“Starfish?” She repeated with a frown.
Both Artemis and Audrey blinked, though Artemis seemed to be thinking about it harder.
(“And worms.”) The (asshole) Demon tried again, rather than (just giving me the answer.) (It’s part of our rapport.)
“And worms…” She sighed.
“Starfish and worms…” Artemis’s face scrunched up in thought before her eyes went wide as she looked at the Horror that was slowly leveraging the Bleed open enough for one of its forearms. “Oh shit.”
(“Ah, that one got it.”) The Scarecrow laughed. (“Glad to see your tastes include brains… Admittedly different from my taste in brains but the point stands.”)
“Uh, Arty, care to share with the class?” Audrey prodded.
“Starfish and worms can reproduce via fission.” Artemis explained with a pained and panicking expression.
“Reproduce via… fission…” Audrey repeated her eyes slowly widening as she turned towards the Horror. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, that uh, that makes things more complicated.” She admitted.
(“Yes, it does.”) The Scarecrow admitted bitterly. (“Thanks to you chuckle fuck humans being dumbasses instead of having a single one of these guys running around you’ve now got three trying to break out of their prisons!”)
“This explains why the seals are getting weaker, they were meant to split the Demon’s power to make it easier to contain. but if each piece has regrown to match the original then no wonder they’re starting to fray. They’re all being pushed to the point where the other two have fallen.” Artemis realized.
(“Correct, what’s more thanks to you idiotic humans this thing won’t just fight me for half of the region’s fear but will try to eat tHReE fOuRthS oF It!”) The Demon screeched, more offended by the threat to its food supply than the threat to them. (“Oh, that’s the beautiful part, since the three Horrors are all one Demon in three bodies, getting the majority of the fear, he’ll grow in power three times faster than me, until eventually he can EAT ME!!!”)
“Oh, that’s a problem.” She frowned.
“What now?” Audrey practically whimpered, something she didn’t think she’d ever heard from the older girl.
(“It’s the Horror, it’s already starting to feed on her.”) The Scarecrow growled. (“Fuck it, at this point I need to kill that thing before it comes for me… I’m on my way but I’ll need a minute if I want to keep it from nipping the moment I’m within range.”)
“Right, okay. So el espantapájaros has decided we need him if we’re going to fight this thing but that he needs a minute to keep it from taking any of his power the moment he shows up.” She summarized, leaving out the part about the Horror being an actual threat to her Demon. (After all, we're going to kill it before it gets to that point.)
(“Damn straight.”)
“Alright, alright, we can work with this.” Audrey told them, though she got a distinct impression it was more for the druid’s sake than theirs. “Here’s what we need to do-”
A ripple of Madness tore through the air, as the world around them screamed in agony and screech like nails on a chalkboard echoed all around them.
“Shit…” Audrey cursed, as they all turned towards the Bleed where in an explosion of red the Horror managed to force the Bleed open just wide enough to force its upper body through.
The Halloween Horror possessed a grotesque figure, like a desiccated corpse thin and bony with gray paper thin skin. From each shoulder sprouted two long arms, with two bends along its length, before ending in six fingered hands with four segments upon each.
Its face was some twisted twitching chimerical cross between an insect and a human skull. The right side looked the most insect-like with a massive compound eye made from a dozen smaller human eyes, and the left almost human with a single massive bloodshot eye darting all about before locking upon the three of them.
A long serpentine tongue darted out from the lips on its left before wrapping around a single mandible on its right and whipping back into its mouth as the Demon smiled with a dozen oversized teeth crammed into far too small of a space.
“Sho… HuNgReee…” The Horror told them as it reached out with a hand large enough to snatch all three of them at once.
A hand that was stopped as a glowing axe bit into it with an explosion of light that had the Horror screaming as it pulled its hand back.
The three of them blinked before turning to the side where Jon was walking forward with a dark look and eyes that seemed to glow red as his axe returned to his hand.
“I’m going to be killing you now.” The teen informed the Demon with a calmness that no human should have in the face of such a monstrosity. “It is completely personal.”