The fire spell hit the beacon, and the scenery lit up (how does one describe black lighting up while staying black? It wasn’t exactly something you could really experience, and comprehend unless you have beaten your brain into a proverbial paste of melted matter via the medium of multi-realm drifting, and yeah, those who have been there will quite understand, otherwise, sorry about that dear reader.)

The creature fell back with a terrifying sounding hissing screech, which heavily implied at least a dozen voice boxes, that had been rolled off a waterfall in a barrel, Mibbet covered her ears, and the instant the creature fell back, started sprinting back towards the exit on legs that were somehow still running at the sheer speed of terror, despite several hours of sprinty, swimmy, springy abuse. Really if you ever need a good exercise routine that really pushes your limits, terror is a great motivator, though before you start it would be advisable to switch to brown trousers, to prevent some awkward moments down the line.

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Se-h’m Pye fell back the instant the light was lit, with a chuckle.

“Oh noes, you lit the beacon, now whatever shall I do?”

He was aware he was hamming it up, and that many of his coworkers would usually eat said mortal at this point in time, but there were rules, and he was sticking with them. Besides anything else, he did not need Eldritch Relations breathing down his neck for the sake of a dubious snack. Even so, he tried his best to take his role seriously, well aware that to the mortals this was a serious business.

Serious enough that some mortals in silly looking, tacky robes had been trying an invocation for weeks. In the end, he’d put their signatures into invoker ID, and carefully screened them every attempt. At least this one had kept to the rules.

Now, what was next? Oh yes, wait till they are close to the exit, then flicker the portal, and scream in rage at being thwarted. He was good at that and even went to voice coaching to get the Tharlips resonating across multiple realms. If he did this right maybe they’d even hear it back on the mortal planes, now wouldn’t that be something?

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Mibbet kept running, diving through the rubble, swearing to herself that if and when they got through this she was sleeping for a week, if she ever slept again that is, this little misadventure cast plenty of doubt on that possibility.

Rosalind kept an eye out around them as they ran, for the others, signaling them to start running. (Like they would do anything else. If something was enough to make a Von Harmsworth peg it, it was a fairly good indicator it should be fled in a hurry. Hell if a Von Harmsworth sticks around to fight something odds are fairly good you should still be running from it. But that wasn’t really an option when they were your employer, in that case, it was best to do what they do. Unless they say “Hang on I’ve got a great idea.” In which case you are likely doomed either way.)

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

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Addy was somewhat unused to all this running, being a giant bipedal boulder was generally not a state that lent itself to speed. But she was definitely finding her second wind here, beside her Sir Leeroy was making a spirited effort too. Though it was hard to say which of the pair had the greater mass. Behind them, a screeching wail of rage, despair, and a whole mess of emotions that are beyond the ken of mortal minds rang out as they somehow all managed to cram their way through the portal at once. Doing their very best to not acknowledge that they could still hear the screech at the other end, as they tumbled out onto the loam.

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Se-h’m Pye wasn’t sure what to do now, they were all clear, but he still had a few eons to kill before his date. Meaning he was stuck hanging out here until the portal opened from his end. Flarac the gatekeeper wasn’t the fastest guy out there at the best of times, least of all when you were dating his cousin. So all he could do was mooch about here until they got round to it.

At least they wouldn’t make him late for it, last time they’d pulled that little stunt she’d kicked his Blarach, after making him GROW Blarachs. She was not the kind of girl you crossed.

Now, what was there to do around here? There weren’t any more mortals on this plane, at least not unaltered ones with sentience. There was one thing that felt strange though, moving in the rubble. He reached down, rummaging around until he retrieved a creature, that was making a spirited attempt to disembowel him, despite a lack of teeth, a mouth, claws, or any natural weapons really. How strange, he had to say being attacked by footwear, sentient or otherwise, was a new experience. Particularly given how few things on the eldritch realms had feet in the strictest sense.

Still, he had to admire the creatures Moxy, there were creatures, and horrors from the void who fled, or turned into gibbering wrecks, or worse (ugh) a cultist infestation as soon as they saw him. Yet this little thing was willing to try to fight him. It was like a Chihuahua yapping at an elder dragon. (We all know that if they were given the opportunity they absolutely would, it’s a side effect of having a brain the size of a peanut in a chassis only marginally bigger, with an ancestral memory of being a bloody wolf, and the ego to match. It’s like they forget they aren’t exactly apex anywhere where other predators exist and are instead are bite-sized to pretty much everything.)

Well sod it, he was keeping the stinky little bugger. FlarGtaghn was a sucker for pets anyway, so he carefully summoned a dimensional containment box.

“Well, I will feed you, and pet you, and raise you, and name you GeORgE. He muttered to the creature, he’d have to consult a secret keeper about ways to safely deodorise them though.