Iktchi-Chi’s eyes flared wide in panic. She couldn’t breathe! Both hands went to her throat where the collar had tightened like a garrote, squeezing the life from her. She tumbled out of the bed, clawing desperately for she knew not what. There was no way to take it off. That was the point.
She felt a heavy presence beating at her. A presence she’d thought herself forever free of. The Dark Lord! He was here! How?
And then it was gone. The collar slowly loosened, until she could once more gasp in a life-giving trickle of air. The presence of the Dark Lord was gone, the afterimage of a nightmare, beating at the back of her throbbing head.
She rolled onto her back, chest heaving, eyes unfocused. That had been no dream! For a few moments, there had been a connection. Not to the Dark Lord directly, she now understood, but to its realm, certainly. There was no mistaking that. A portal had opened and then closed. A portal to the realm of her former master. Why?
Almost instantly, she chided herself. Why? Why else? He’s sent something through. Searching. And not for her, she’d wager. In fact, it was her fervent hope that the Dark Lord considered her no more than a missing tool, easily replaceable, and of no great consequence. Whatever he’d sent through was looking for Jack Grenell.
The room was black as pitch. Still night then. She yawned as she reached a shaking hand for her clothing hanging from a peg on the wall beside her bed. Buckling her belt around her middle, settling her pouch and knife, she staggered out into the main room.
Opening the front door, she looked to the sky. Still well clear of dawn, she decided, muttering a low curse. She didn’t need much sleep, but she needed some, and she’d been out hunting until after midnight. But she couldn’t afford to wait on this.
She’d been gone from the Dark Lord’s realm for a good while now, and so didn’t know what was happening there. But one thing she did know. The mission to dispose of one Jackson Thomas Grenell, incipient Hero, before he could set foot on Tarr, had gone disastrously wrong. The Dark Lord would want to know what had become of him. She had no idea if the Dark Lord had any way of searching the void, to discover their absence from it, but she couldn’t discount the possibility.
She was soaring high as she thought these things. Straight up in tight spirals. She wanted altitude. She had an idea of the direction, but no more than that.
Once she’d achieved several hundreds of feet, she sent out a locator ping. She’d know the taste of the Dark Lord’s creations.
There! She dipped a wing, rolled and took off at best speed, trailing the jagged backed sword from one hand, just in case.
Jaegers. She was almost disappointed. And only five? Half the size of a minimum mob. And so the answer to why the portals were acting strangely was answered, and the culprit confirmed. It was of little solace to know that they were apparently working no better for the Dark Lord.
She climbed a few hundred feet. She didn’t want get too close. There’d be at least one flit with them, possibly more. And the last thing she wanted was for one of them to catch a glimpse of her to carry back home.
They didn’t move initially, standing as still as statues in the night. Chi was beginning to wonder if they’d broken when something finally happened.
The champion raised its head, thankfully not in her direction. It stared into space for a moment, and then trundled into a slow walk, the other four following wordlessly. Ah. That would be the flit returning from a scout and giving them a potential destination.
She followed, staying high and clear. She could probably take them down if she surprised them, but of what use? Tarr would just dispatch more, and those more on their guard. And there was no possible way she’d take them down without being seen by the watcher. Even assuming there would only be one. And no sure way to kill the flits. They were notoriously difficult to spot in the air.
They reached the highway and settled down into ambush, going dormant. They could remain in that position for months without rousing, waiting for their unsuspecting quarry to appear.
Unlikely they’d be a danger to any locals passing by, and so she decided to leave them be. An impish grin spread across her face as she turned away. Sending five jaegers after Jack Grenell? What were they thinking over there? She knew he had the 10mm on him. She’d seen it on his belt as he’d knocked her clear of the bus.
Oh, wait, the grin widened. Did I forget to mention in my report that he always kept that pistol on his person? No, five jaegers would barely catch his notice so long as he had that pistol on his hip.
The clatter of a hard driven cart disturbed the night, rumbling into the yard outside the farmhouse door. Iktchi-Chi’s eyes cracked open and her pointed ears pricked.
The front door banged on its hinges, accompanied by an anxious child’s voice. “CHI! CHI!”
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Iktchi-Chi gasped, her eyes flaring open. How did she—?
CHIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE! The call became a wailing scream, and Chi saw Samus standing in the doorway to her bedroom, back pressed against the doorframe, trembling wildly, her staff held out at Chi as though she thought it might prove of some use. She continued screaming, seemingly paralyzed in place, and she’d wet herself.
“Sam!” Chi rolled to the side of the bed, holding her arms before her, palms out. “It’s me, Sam! It’s Chi! It’s alright, Sam, it’s just me!”
“—IIIIIIiiieee ...” the scream trailed off, although neither the girl’s trembling nor stance changed. “You’re—”
“I’m me, Sam,” Chi pressed, voice gentle. “I’m just me. Chi.”
“B-b-but—!”
“It’s alright, Sam, Chi repeated. “It’s just me.” she reinforced the concept by reapplying her human guise, struggling a bit with the strain the little girl was putting on her nerves.
“H-h-how...? W-why? Chi...?”
"It’s just me, Sam. Chi.”
“W-what h-happened, Chi?” Sam sobbed. “How are you...?”
“I’m just me, Sam,” Chi repeated. I’m Chi. Your friend, Chi. I’m sorry. I should have told you,” she crooned. “I’m so sorry..
”Why are you here in the middle of the night, sweetie?” she asked when some of the terror had left Samus’ eyes.
“I... you....” Samus was clearly confused, and no less frightened than she’d been upon first catching sight of the horned crimson figure lying in the bed, but she was slowly making the connection, and her love of her hero was winning out. “I....”
She shook herself and lowered her staff, although she didn’t otherwise move. “M-mister Norley an-and his sons...” she gasped out. “Th-they didn’t come home before dark l-like normal. A-and then a signal went up!”
“A signal?” Chi was suddenly alert. “How long has it been? Where was it coming from?”
Samus was losing the edge from her terror now that Chi had resumed a form she knew. She tried to push the other away as she struggled to answer. “Papa hitched Lucky up as soon as the guard saw the light, and we got here as f-fast as we could,” she told her friend. “I don’t know where, but it’s that way,” and she pointed north.
Chi was up and striding for the door, blood turning cold at the way Samus flinched away as she passed through the doorway. “Get yourself cleaned up, sweetie,” she ordered. “And head straight home. Keep to the center of the roadway, just in case.”
She snatched up the jagged backed drugand sword and was nearly to the front door before she paused, looking down at herself. Turning back, she grabbed her leather coat and rolled it tightly before tying it off around her waist by the sleeves.
The moment she cleared the door, she reverted to her true form, features morphing even as she leapt into the air, startling Lucky the cart horse more than a little bit.
She’d made quite a few of the signals for the villagers over the past six months, so she’d be able to find them in the event they needed aid. And, knowing how far outside of the walls she lived, and how long it might be before she’d be able to receive the call, she’d been sure to make them so they’d burn for awhile. Thus it was that she’d been able to see the signal from the moment she’d cleared her doorway.
A thick column of blue-white light, beaming arrow straight into the sky. Doing the math in her head, she decided she’d easily make it to those in trouble before it died out. All that was left was to see how quickly she could fly.
Which, unfortunately, left her ample time to worry over the undoing of her great secret. Because there was no way Samus was going to be able to keep what she’d seen to herself.
* * *
Able Norley clung desperately to the bole of the oak and glared down at the milling sounder of scarlet swine. They were currently eating their dead, although their preoccupation did little to provide a path to escape. The slowest of them would run him down in fewer than a hundred steps, and they’d be all over Jeeb in less than half of that.
So he clung to the tree bole and concentrated on keeping his shoulders taught so that his youngest son could rest his weight on them. Crey and Jub were safely on higher branches, and could hold themselves, but Jeeb had been injured in the first rush of the swine. He was crying softly with the pain, trying not to be heard.
The swine were staying well clear of the signal, one of many that the Lady Chi had provided to the village. It lay in the duff, spitting and sparkling, sending out cascades of bright colors in addition to the blue-white pillar that reached into the sky. He wished he’d known about the former affect. He’d have tossed the thing closer in to the base of the tree.
“Papa?” that was Crey, his middle boy. “She’s comin’, ain’t she?” There was a distinct quaver in his voice.
“Sure, son,” Able assured him. “She’ll be here in a bit. Just don’t let go.”
They’d killed more than half a dozen of the swine before running out of arrows. Ordinarily, that would be a feat to brag about. Trouble was, they’d have to live long enough to do that, and it was looking increasingly unlikely they would. Despite his assurances to his son, Able was worried.
The signal had been lit for awhile now, and there was no trace of the rank fifty. Not difficult to understand. What, did he think she just sat around all day and all night just waiting for one of the blamed things to go off? Who’s to say she was even in the county. And even did she see it, who’s to say she’d be able to travel the whole long way in time? They were quite a distance north of the warded road out here, and he’d never seen her move about but on her own feet.
A deeper shadow passed between Able and the moon, and he looked up in time to see something with bat wings hurtle past overhead, moving almost too fast to see. His heart sank. More monsters. Just what he needed. He breathed in a deep, gasping breath and loosened his short sword in its sheath. Hog, demon, or demon lord, he’d go down fighting, regardless of how pointless the effort.
“Boys,” he grated. “Get ready. Things may have just got worse.”
Something on the ground caught the eye of the remaining twelve swine, and they turned as one to face east.
Chi heaved a great sigh of relief as she caught a glimpse of the errant hunters up high in an oak. All of them, she thought. That was good. It meant that she’d been in time.
What wasn’t good was the threat. Scarlet Swine, identify told her they were called locally. She knew them as Crimson Voracious. Levels ten to twenty in her experience. She’d never seen more than five or ten of them in one place before. There were more than that still alive down there, and she could see the partially devoured carcasses of half again as many.
Maybe just a bit higher than base level humans, the thought crossed her mind. Anywhere else, she’d call them low end level ones at minimum.
She overflew the signal and landed well clear, at the base of another copse of scattered trees. Once on the ground, she transformed into Chi the adventurer and donned her coat. Whatever would eventually come of tonight’s events, she didn’t think any of those villagers up in that tree would welcome a devil girl coming to their rescue. And so, rather than a simple matter of picking the swine off from the sky, she would go in on... ugh... foot.