Ch: 203 It’s A Mistake
Maddie Hopkins snarled with fury as she advanced on the two kids in the darkened workshop, her wicked club swung carelessly to and fro, biting fresh wounds into her wrist as she closed in.
Amy glared at the menacing women and snapped a single word:
“Sh’ed!” Her voice rumbled and echoed through the room, shaking the foundations of the house as a horde of ghosts swarmed to her defense, interposing themselves between the woman and her prey.
Maddie struck Amadeus across his powdered wig with her stolen club, sending the musical prodigy staggering away with his ectoplasm fizzing and popping.
“Madeus! No!” Amy shrieked with rage, as one of her beloved mentors vanished in a cloud of sparks. She waved her tiny hand, banshing her friends to safety as Rio started tapping his drum behind her. “I don’t like you.” She snarled in a very unchildish tone. “K-ek!”
Her last word struck like a physical blow, as clinging aggressive darkness enshrouded the woman’s head.
“Oh, a tiny shadow mage… how delicious.” A soft oily voice whispered from the darkness all around. “I was going to possess this mortal, but she is already dying and beyond my reach, somehow.”
Amy and Rio faced the dark swirling mass, his drum still rattling away, as Wilford sprinted down the stairs, sliding in beside Rio with his flute.
Amy smiled at her brothers and shrugged. “I don’t like her… but you really make me mad.” She glanced at the woman, still weakly thrashing on the floor, entombed in living darkness. “If she dies, it’s none of mine.”
“Oh, you resist me… how delicious.” The voice whispered again. “Your halfliving abomination is gone away, submit, perhaps I will not consume the rest of these if you do…”
Amy snapped a single word, harsh and sibilant on her lips, stinging with distaste and anger.
“Vihiṃsā!”
The sound hit like a tidal wave of expelling force, shoving the entire eastern foundation wall out into the lakeside garden with explosive force and violence. Massive foundation stones and beams hurled through the air and slowly evaporated into smoke and mist, drifting on the wind.
The noxious cloud of bubbling gray darkness sizzled in the sun’s light, foaming at the edges unwholesomely. One long, ropy tendril of the stuff snaked into the pierced bucket, lying on the smoldering lawn.
“You cannot resist my Will, mortal child, not even in the cursed light of this filthy star!” She wailed and screamed, while Amy and her brothers stepped out through the wreckage, playing a martial tune.
#
Seahorse ran aground with a rattling crunch, as all three occupants leapt for the shore, armed, armored and unwilling to listen to reason. The sound of approaching hooves was nearly drowned out by the loud, furious music pumping from the exploded side of the inn.
Amy’s voice roared over the lake, with her brothers singing backup, tangled in her violent terrifying gifts.
Tranquil as a forest,
But on fire within!
Once you find your center.
You are sure to win!
You're a spineless pale pathetic lot
And you haven't got a clue!
Somehow I'll make a man out of you!
The kids and a small band of ghosts were singing heroic and sassy Disney songs into a ruptured metal pail, rather, into the foaming cloud of gray stuff trying to squirm its way inside.
It thrashed and flailed with each hard bitten stanza of martial lyrics and music, wriggling itself back into the bucket a few despicable inches at a time.
As if it sensed Gary’s approach the nasty vapor started boiling even more fiercely. He charged forward and scooped up the metal can, giving it a violent shake.
He reached out at the fissure in the side and made a clenched fist, pinching off a large swirling cloud of quivering smog. It drifted off into the sunshine becoming thin and wispy, before finally sizzling away with a quiet scream of mortal agony.
“Are you kids ok?” He scooped all three up in his free arm, the other hand still busy containing something vile. Shai swooped in closing the deal, with Becky hot on her trail. They formed a tight cluster on the lawn by the broken wall, as the girls made sure nobody was hurt for themselves.
Once he was satisfied, his furious gaze swept the gathered people on the lawn.
“It ate someone, who did it get?” He demanded, with two fingers jammed in the rupture in his bucket of demon and kids still clenched close..
As if in answer, Maddie staggered out of the shattered workshop wall and stumbled for the baths. Her skin was a dark, mottled gray, with black, puckered, weeping wounds at her right wrist. She lurched to the edge and toppled in with a grateful sigh. Within a few seconds no trace of the woman remained, her entire body dissolving away in a cloud of steam.
“Ok, Paina Skully didn’t do that…” He said worriedly, as concerned people kept flooding in. “I felt all her powers, she’s all mental control and spiritual manipulation. That was one of mine…”
“She got bit by your icky club.” Amy complained. “She tried to hit me with it so I used the words, just like you said… she hurt Mozart, hurt him bad.” She sobbed, her big girl act finally crumbling.
“My icky club?” He asked, in slowly growing dread. “Not the snake thing…?”
“Uh huh.” Rio answered. “The snake thing. It’s evil.”
He wriggled out of his family’s grasp and ignored the multitude of shouted questions and demands, vanishing into the wrecked workshop in search of a venomous serpent.
This Mortal Coil, enchanted weapon, club/cudgel/bludgeon
Spiritual and etheric enchantments. Contract weapon.
Effect: Serpent Bite, physical and spiritual affliction. Living beings struck by this weapon suffer the effects of the bite of a greater black swiftadder. Multiple strikes will increase those effects rapidly. Effects: Primary impact location pain, swelling and necrosis, rapid onset weakness, bleeding, health, mana and stamina drain, debilitated, pain averse, traumatized, frightened. Effects remain until cleansed with purifying divine magic.
Effect: Occult, Contract this weapon to unlock this effect.
Effect: Occult, Contract this weapon to unlock this effect.
Effect: Death’s Kiss, Affliction. Undead targets struck with this weapon suffer extreme mana and energy drain until entirely dissipated. This effect cannot be extended, expanded or stacked. This effect cannot be halted, slowed or cured.
“Warning* Cursed object *Warning*
Use by any but the contracted wielder may be fatal. Incompatible wielders may not survive.
“Ware my bite, it is death. Ware my strike, death is a mercy.”
“Ok, that’s just wrong. This thing was locked up, in a sealed case! How did the damn demon get loose anyway?”
Amy was still too broken up and Wilf just shrugged. “She was talking to it… the ghost in the can.” Rio mumbled. “We were snooping.”
“How’d she get in my locked cabinet?” He asked, still furious and without anyone to productively hit. The two boys just shrugged again. “She was diggin in there when we came down.” Amy sniffled, ready to be a big girl again now.
“Well you kids are safe and that’s all I care about.” He grumbled quietly, dangerously. “Stay with Shai, I’m gonna take care of the queen of the dumb now.” With the bucket o-demon in one hand and the wretched, black, moist seeming club in the other, it was hard to tell which was less pleasant.
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He stuck the awful thing back in its leather case and tried to shove the club into his Pockets!. He only succeeded in hitting himself with the thing and bruising his hip mildly. “Oww! Stupid cursed club!”
He grumbled and complained with both hands full for a minute and finally grunted. “Hey Khan… hold on to this thing, don’t open it, shit’s cursed.” He handed the leather case to his guildmaster, who accepted as though he were being handed a venomous serpent… which was pretty sensible.
“Nobody touches or opens that… it’s had a taste, now it wants more.” He had a warning in his voice, one probably best not ignored. “Anybody that’s curious and wants to watch something unpleasant, follow me to the back garden. Kids, no peeking. This is nasty grownup business.”
“What about your destroyed house?” Pangbourne asked mildly.
“A woman died today, I’ll worry about my woodwork when the one responsible is finished.” He snarled. “It’s pretty unreasonable for me to want to unload on you right now, but it feels right, so let’s not tempt me. Ok, sir Pangbourne?” He looked to the crowd that had followed him and his bucket of outsider and waggled his free hand.
“Poor Maddie must have been really susceptible for this idiot to lure her in… or had a taste for the same things she likes. That’s the only way she could have heard the demon’s call through my spells and enchantments. Either way, she paid her price already.”
“I’m just gonna do this, no fancy rituals to ease the way or gentle passages into the next thing. Watch, ask questions if you wish, don’t try this at home kids. Only a pure fool lunatic would truck with a demon.” With that, he ripped the split can wide open, as his enchantments released and the can began rusting to pieces.
He gripped the ornate skull by one horn and shook the rust flakes and grit out of its eyesockets.
The crowd stepped back, as the gray miasma exploded from it again. A much smaller and decidedly tattered cloud. “This is a demon, its very essence.” He said calmly as the thing writhed in his grip. “Notice how exposure to the sun erodes it at the edges… moonlight and even starlight do the same. Not all demons react this way, but the ‘Dweller In Abyssal Darkness’ package is pretty popular among certain types.” He rattled it a little to make his point, shreds and wisps of the substance drifted off and evaporated in the air.
“In her element, with her tools and minions she would be a deadly foe to most mortals… one that they have no chance of actually defeating, not finally anyway. Immortals are super annoying that way, always promising to return even stronger and destroy our children.” He shook her again, just cause he was feeling unpleasant.
“So it has no physical body? Can we destroy its skull vessel?” Hamish wondered aloud.
“Like I mentioned before, that is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. She would just hang around until the conditions arose for her to slip back in, to wreak havoc. To make matters worse, mental control types are harder to deal with than the meathead, ‘Shred Your Bones And Devour All Flesh’ crowd. Undead manipulators are even worse than either. This asshole is a hybrid mental and undead manipulator. If she had been subtle and clever, she might have taken the entire duchy, instead of just one small city.”
“So how will you deal with a non corporeal threat that is immortal?” Pangbourne asked, actually sounding interested.
“First, as long as her skull is in my hand, she is absolutely in my power. Because I know her name and nature, she can’t touch my mind without my consent. The part of me that would have let her in is dead… more dead…more deaderer. He’s the deadest, out of the picture.” The boy grinned madly and shook his demon again.
“Second, I have tools and abilities that let me interact with the non corporeal, for good or ill. That’s why she fears my touch, she tastes something new in it.” The cloud was smaller now and thinner, hardly more than a thick vapor.
“Third and finally, really finally, I’m cursed to die. Nothing in the universe can stop it. Every mortal I touch with my gifts will also die that is also irrevocable… and any immortal unlucky enough to wind up in my power, will also contract my very infectious mortality. I’m poison to her.”
“Ducky, and Thirp… What about them?” Becky whispered in horror.
“I can offer them mortality, if they want it. But I could never do to them what I’m going to do to her. What I already did to her, honestly. The seed of mortality has been growing in her, since she first tried to seize control of me.” He yawned deeply and took his weird baton out of his Pockets!.
“Even if she were to slip back into the void, her native plane… with my touch on her, she would dissolve and wind up meeting the Devourer. I’m just gonna make that intro happen right now.” He giggled madly at the twitching squirming shadow in his hand.
“Look up and tell the mortals what you see… ‘Mighty Vixoreath’, who’s name will be an empty shell in a few moments. I will allow you to speak.”
“Red hunger, eternally watching, eternally waiting. It sees me, it sees every part of me and is hungry…” A soft oily voice whispered from all around coaxing and pleading some found it sexy and sensual, others found echoes of a beloved aunt or fond acquaintance, but mostly it was tinged with primal and absolute terror and a sense that the speaker had never felt those emotions or anything close, ever before.
The madman’s voice cut her off before she could begin wailing in mortal terror. “Pro tip: The Devourer Of Souls doesn’t really devour anything, its task is to cleanse souls and prepare them for rebirth in a compatible world that needs them.” His crooked grin got even wider. “They are a close friend, your friend too… everyone comes from, through and returns to the Devourer, except immortals. Among true immortals, only gods whose portfolios touch death, can encounter or perceive the Devourer.”
He powered up his whirling, singing baton and smiled as it began its sweet, chaotic song. “You learned about pain the other day, let’s revisit that lesson, as a goodbye gift from me to you.”
He jammed the noisy weapon into the cloud and gave the thing more energy, shredding the stubborn stain in the air away in a few seconds. He picked up the ornate skull and tossed it to Rolf. “Here, have a trophy. It’s just in really bad taste now, it would make her miserable to know she was just gathering dust on a shelf, as a knick knack.”
“So it’s really gone? That’s it?” Becky asked, sounding slightly furious.
“Yes, no one will ever be able to call her back to a mortal plane, because she will be living and breathing, eating and pooping as a mortal until the universe ends and begins again.” He said firmly.
“So what the hell happened with the slug and the hollow one?” She stomped up to her towering older and younger brother and kicked him in the ankle, hard.
“Oww! The hollow one wasn’t a demon, Victor was a tragedy writ large across centuries of suffering, it takes time and work to unwind that kind of trouble.” He rubbed his ankle and pouted a little. “The slug was an embarrassing accident… I wish you’d stop bringing it up, eldritch diarrhea is awful.”
#
Esperanza’s bounty heaved in the stormy swells, battling forward with all her crew’s gifts in play. She surged forward, following Falco’s chittering call into the gloom. A short luff of saint Elmo’s fire revealed a massive sperm whale, charging up from the depths off her starboard bow. Falco unloaded his sonic attack, as the behemoth moved past.
She followed his movements with care, picking her time and cast her wickedly barbed harpoon with all her new iron rank strength. The jagged and hooked point ripped into the rubbery flesh tearing a horrible oozing wound. The wooden shaft fell away, only the terrible steel barb remained, trailing a line of braided spidersilk. “Haul Yusef, hard to port!” She plucked another harpoon from the barrel and readied, calling on her gift from the spirit Light. With a swat of his mighty fluke, the whale brought her prey into view again.
A long gray bodied squid, with a chewing, tooth ringed, sucker lamprey mouth and long, blood sucking tentacles. It was attached uncomfortably close to the whale’s vent and chewing ragged wounds in his victim; seeking rich cetacean blood to feed on.
She jabbed her harpoon into its slippery mantle, right below the head, jamming it in with a twist that popped the haft free in her hand. “All stop Yusef. Lets peel this leech!”
Falco let out another sonic attack, stunning the hideous squidleech for a few vital seconds. Long enough for the whale to change course and run for the depths at his full speed. Steel and spidersilk fought rubbery cephalopod flesh… and flesh lost badly. Esperanza’s bounty rolled and heeled as the mighty whale dragged his tormentor backwards under the sharp bronze keel, while the cables tugged at its mantle.
A slow, steady vibration thrummed through taut cables as the monster squid’s mantle ripped away, inverting into a hollow cone and leaving the nasty insides of the squid monster, uncomfortably outside. Things ended rapidly and decisively at that point.
“Mind that ink sack Falco! Yusef, Marc, bring some of the boy’s violet goo up from stores! Bide a moment Kreeillsh, this unworthy has an ointment for your wounds. Thank you for your timely aid brother!”
Dante was aft, hauling in the titanic slab of monster calamari, before it drew anything unpleasant…er, unpleasanter, that was it. “Gods I’m tired!” He muttered sourly.
Over the devouring rift, the only true depths in the shallow sea, few would linger long, certainly not after a struggle like that, and so much detritus falling down to disturb whatever might lurk below. The mighty whale flashed a fluke and flank marked with bright violet smears, as he dove for his hunting grounds.
Dante and Yusef poured all their energy into recovering their drifting Esperanza. Esperanza’s Bounty cut through the water, slicing arrow straight for the brightly painted riverbarge, cut loose when the monster squid attacked the two vessels. Yusef swung over the rail with a mad cackle of glee. “I saw that in one of Gary’s ‘movies’! Suck on that Errol Flynn!”
In a minute and a half, she was back in tow, bobbing merrily along, behind her much bigger sister. The young boatman had a fine view of his crewmates and captain struggling mightily to haul more than a ton of rubbery squid flesh aboard. Finally, Esperanza brought the loading crane into play, with help from Falco, they looped a cable around and hauled the massive meaty mass aboard.
“Do we know where the inn is right now?” Marc asked, with slippery squid mucous covering his entire body. “I could use a good bath.”
“They are in the high inland mountains… terribly far from the sea.” She answered sadly. “Last report was that sweet Shai’s house is still in Wheatford… set course for home.”
It took three hours of hard sailing to get back in safe, shallow waters, where only shoals, reefs, pirates and normal monsters were a threat. Running the deeps was always a gamble, even with Falco and his many friends helping.
“Yes darling, give him our thanks once more… you were both very brave. This one will trade that ambergris and meet him in three weeks. I know a perfumer in Port Sunderland who will take most. The rest I will unload in Wheatford, the market for alchemical supplies is strong there now.” She waited patiently for a few moments while her familiar chattered and chirped.
“Yes, This one remembers the story… how would he know? He is a creature of the deeps…” She frowned and sighed. “He should feel foolish for believing anything a beluga whale says… This one has never met a less reliable race.” She snorted at her familiar. “Call this unworthy a bigot if you will, those bubbleheads spend all their time befuddled by hallucinogenic krill.”
She waved at her laughing familiar as he tailflipped backwards away.
“Ship of the dead indeed… with a bottled crew, screaming from a sunken wreck. Utter foolishness.”
#
When the group followed the madman back to the house, everything was repaired, back as it should be. The hefty foundation stones, with their quirky decorations and twining vines were back in place.
The two observing knights shook their heads and went inside, confronting a barrel of beer and a group of frazzled and exhausted Adventurers manfully. “Sit down Hamish, Rolf… I’ll pour.” Pangbourne muttered, with a mug in his fist.
“You’re good at that…” Rolf remarked a few minutes later. “Pouring and barcraft…” He let that dangle for a while.
“My people are herders and orchardists, we make wine and cider as our main cash export. My house acts as factorum for all the vintners and brewers. I was working in the tasting room before I was old enough to learn the sword and lance.” He said quietly.
“I always found a certain satisfaction in the work…” His eyes followed the giantess as she danced through the common room. “Sometimes I wonder… What if I had not been bound to War and Order…” He grinned at the stocky young knight. “No offense, Rolf.”
“That is what these children are asking for, Frank.” Lady Emma said softly, with the most adorable foam mustache on her upper lip. “The chance to make contracts and live as they will… why are you smiling so? This is serious… you’ve seen what they face without hesitation. Do you think they will shirk their duty unless enslaved to it?”
“I’m smiling, because this beer is excellent.” He said firmly, once his own foamy ‘stache was in place. “Our hostess looks careworn, shall we, Emma?”
Pangbourne draped a napkin over one forearm and offered a gallant hand up to lady Emma, who giggled and followed him behind the bar, to acquire aprons.
Trent and Jake watched in amazement, as sir Pangbourne poured wine and beer, carried trays and was generally helpful. He seemed as in his element, as he was astride his mount, tipping a lance into something awful.
“This is good beer…” Trent gazed into his mug for a moment, wondering. “Nahhh…”
Emma whisked her hostess away to join her children and man, with promises that the hospitality of her house would be upheld. When she returned to the common room, Frank was firmly in control. Dannyl and Becky were in the kitchen working on something spicy smelling, while Luna, Khan and Tallum rode out with a pony cart to fetch back that giant silverfish. “I’m going to have that almandine!” Ivy grumbled from the cart bench.
Up in the master bedroom it was a cozy affair. All three needed a cuddle, a cry and a nap. Shai and Amy sat up chatting, while the boys went for their naptime hat trick.
“I already cried all over your skirts… sorry.” The little blue and brown songbird chirped sadly.
“Tis well that Gary kin clean an mend then, is it not?” Shai asked smugly, holding her daughter close. “He will need mending himself, after this day. Tis nae fault of thine, but his heart will be hurt that ye faced peril wi him away, as does mine an Becky’s” She buried her face in Amy’s long dark hair, so thick and black. “We may coddle thee a mite, fer a time. Dinnae mind us overmuch.”
“That’s Ok Shai… it was kinda scary.” She sighed in her new mother’s embrace.
#