“Little Feist.” The voice of the hyn was very smooth, rather genderless, and hard to describe or remember, while at the same time being quite unforgettable. No one who heard it would fail to recognize it, but trying to describe it was virtually impossible. “And three Hagchildren? Are these Hazé’s little sisters?”
All three girls swallowed, eyes wide. “I think he’s the Shadow and the Knife!” Veis stage-whispered. Verd and Amber both nodded above her, their eyes dancing.
The hyn noted this very unusual reaction, and pragmatically stepped away from the dead man. “Drag him around the back so he can decompose out of sight.”
Without the slightest hesitation, the two older girls zipped around the corner, darted up to the dead man, seized an arm each, and hauled him very quickly around the back as the bemused Void Brother watched.
Master Feist walked up oddly, a strange kind of pattern that would make any hostile moves exaggeratingly clear, his hands always in sight. Veis pranced behind him, big pale eyes wide with curiosity. The Shadowknife strolled after the dead man, white mist leaking out from the wound in the back of the corpse’s neck.
“You usually don’t act so openly, Elder,” Feist noticed respectfully. He looked over the dead man, and saw nothing out of place. “What marked this fellow? Dealing with Aberrants?” he asked softly, eyes narrowing.
“He’s a pan-dimensional scout from a world under the auspices of The One God,” the Shadowknife told him calmly, not bothering to hide the information. “They’ve been sending people here for the past century, looking to gain information about the forces here, and we’ve been offing them as they come.”
“A spy from another world?” Feist wondered aloud, shaking his head as the girls dumped the corpse behind a storehouse without batting an eye. The Shadowknife went up and began to pat him down, taking off the dead man’s cloak and dumping his findings thereon. “Ah, I thought you dealt with time travelers, and things outside Creation, sir...”
“That is my specialty, and what I am more sensitive to than my Brothers. These folk are also outsiders to the Land, their flesh born of other worlds, the magic they bear wrought of different Lands’ energies, the touch of other gods upon them. We would not bear them much ire if they were but travelers, explorers, or merchants, flitting from realm to realm as others do city to city, save that we questioned the first of them in depth, and employed several Powered to infiltrate and survey their homeworlds.
“They are the vanguards of The One God, seeking to add more worlds to its worship. As such, they are dealt with when we find them immediately.”
His long knife was in his hand in a blur, striking and sheathed in little more than an eyeblink, and the staring, startled head of the man rolled free of his neck, dark energies sizzling and quenching the trace of vivus on the wound, so that the head wouldn’t burn.
“Is your big sister going to be returning soon?” he asked the girls calmly.
“She is scheduled to return at dusk, sir,” Verd spoke up promptly. “She said she had some tasks to address.”
“I will employ her services to question this fellow, then. Wrap the head up in his shirt.” Verd and Amber quickly and professionally cut open his tunic at the seams, tore it off him, and bundled up the head, not blinking an eye at the sight of vivic flame burning on the neck stump, turning flesh to mist slowly being swallowed by the Land.
“Does he have compatriots?” Feist ventured to ask, and the girls all brightened visibly at the thought of possible fun.
“Only the unwitting. The One God needs cross an entire Pantheonic boundary to reach here. Normally I would remand the head to an Inquisitor of Harse, but with Starsister Hazé available, I will make use of her services.” He bundled up the cloak and the man’s belongings with deft movements, and tossed them to Verd. “See that all are Burned for their magic.”
“Yes, Brother,” she acknowledged promptly. It didn’t matter what the items were, they were dangerous and foreign, and for various reasons, from being Scrying Focuses to possibly Possessed, they had to be disposed of. Turning them into Investing material for their own magic items was for the best.
“Is your business in Calespi done? We are just passing through on the way to the Capital...”
The Shadowknife paused. “The center of the Empire is a dangerous place to stay long,” he said calmly. “I trust you don’t have long-term business there?”
Master Feist pursed his lips thoughtfully. Such warnings were not to be taken lightly. “We are meeting Veis’ brother there, who happens to be a Heavenbound of some ability.”
“Ah, the Gilderalz boy? Mmmm.” His shadowed eyes glanced at Veis, who straightened up proudly. “Well, two decent things out of that family in the last century, I suppose...” Veis looked a little confused about whether to be offended or delighted at that. “As for your question... no, I didn’t come here for this man. I simply happened on his trail and tracked him down en route to my main reason for being here.”
“Oh!” Amber let slip, not bothering to hide her excitement. “We’ve done work for Brothers before!” she blurted out.
“I am aware.” His calm hadn’t changed, but certainly damped her excitement down. She flushed despite herself. “And since I am waiting for your sister, I may as well put the time to good use.”
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“Yay!” all three girls cheered, totally okay with doing wetwork for the Brotherhood. The Shadowknife looked on in bemusement.
“What are they going to be dealing with, Elder?” Master Feist asked carefully.
“N’Guthu infiltrators and their hosts,” the Shadowknife said placidly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “They’ve set up a nest in this city, and need to be expunged.”
All four of them had blank looks on their faces.
“Ah, right. They aren’t one of the mighty, overbearing races, like the brain collectors, cerebrovores, or Elder Races. They’re a fringe race of the Void Pact, working through the occasional Warlock or mad Summoner dumb enough to stumble onto their existence. Think of them as large worms that co-exist inside the bodies of their Hosts, with great hatred for Divine entities and the insecurities of thinking themselves opponents of the gods.”
“No affinity with the Heralds?” Feist sighed in relief.
“Nowhere near enough influence. They’re Aberrants, but not servants of the Old Ones or Elder Gods, being much too egotistical for that. I’ve already completed a circuit of the town, and sensed five of them. Shall we?”
All the girls nodded eagerly. Karma waited for no one!
---------
“You’ve done good work. They are quite smooth,” the Shadowknife praised Master Feist.
Veis had darted out like a mouse, her Kukri held against her arm as she sliced through the tendons at the back of the knees of the fat man moving down the street. As he shouted and fell down, Verd’s Spear took him right in the liver, driving through the mail on his chest. Amber seemed to fold out of nowhere, and her rapier licked out, opening his throat smoothly.
“They’ve some killer instincts behind them, cold and ruthless. That Ritual they went through showed them some things about reality that no one should have to face... and they clawed their way out of the darkness. Those are some nasty girls there, and when they grow up, they are going to be some very dangerous women, Elder,” Feist replied with a very straight face.
The N’Guthu came up out of the wound in the man’s neck... and the one in his stomach, lamprey mouths opening and writhing, lunging at the girls... who immediately went all in, hacking with knives, ripping with claws whose colors suddenly looked a great deal more dangerous, and in the case of Verd, bit into one of the heads of the thing and ripped it apart.
“Hagchildren may end up being a useful resource for the Brotherhood, if we can find suitable foster parents for them. Hazé was a good find. Our luck with the Sylunars has been intermittent, as Hagchildren tend to be difficult to deal with, so we haven’t pursued it.”
“They defied the Hag Curse, they can defy anything. Really, I think the best thing is that they are sisters, and that holds them together. Hazé manages them well, but they manage one another better. She pushes them to be better than her. If she beats them in a fight, she rolls her eyes so perfectly, they get soooo mad that they can’t best her physically. Always pushing them to find another way, use the tools they have to be better than the Hags they were going to be. It’s really quite impressive to see,” Feist noted.
The girls were now in the middle of chopping the multiple heads of the unwound N’Guthu into writhing bits with great enthusiasm. The slimy things were whipping and writhing, trying to escape, and the girls were having none of it. Shadow-style grappling ki made their grips very hard to break, and their ki-buffed nails were at least as strong and sharp as steel blades. They had no ick or eww factor whatsoever as they tore the eel-snake-tentacle things apart with vim and vigor.
“They’re using Soul Magic?” the Shadowknife asked, watching intently. “That’s a very uncommon path.”
“Hazé tripped them to it, not me. She opened my Chakra points, too,” Master Feist admitted. “And... yes and no. They can’t use any of the active Soul Magic.” Shadows swirled onto Feist’s hands as the Shadowknife watched, and his fingers began to drip cold, dark mists. “They can’t do anything like this, none of the ‘magic’. However, they can use the power to gain some transcendent insights into fundamental combat skills. As a result, they are far more dangerous than they appear, and there’s nothing actively magical about them whatsoever.”
“That’s true. I can feel the Essence on them, but that’s just an energy. It’s not interacting with the Breath at all.” The hyn looked intrigued.
“If they could use magic, they’d be Hags now,” Feist reminded him calmly.
The Shadowknife nodded as the girls gathered the pieces of the dead Aberrant together, and stacked them onto the burning corpse of its host. They were covered with some alien gore and dirt and blood, but didn’t seem to mind at all, with Veis remaining the cleanest somehow, and Verd and Amber helping one another clean up quickly and precisely and completely uncaring how strange it looked after their unrestrained fighting.
“So... this sisterhood makes it easier to manage them? That is good to know. When we find others in the future, we can direct them to their sisters.”
“Turning the Hags into a provider of skilled servants for the Brotherhood?” observed Feist ironically.
“At least the crones will be good for something,” the Shadowknife sniffed. The girls rifled through the man’s attire expertly, liberating some interesting items, and quickly brought them over for the Shadowknife to inspect.
He lifted up a copper medallion from the pile, waved the rest away. “Fairfoot Portage and Travel. A Merchant Association. Perfect cover for spreading this kind of creature. I recall a trail near the warehouse district. Let us wander on down that way and see what sort of things might be there, shall we?”
Not looking anything but excited to help, the three girls nodded, and followed the two hyn who were moving with deceptive speed down the darkening streets, toward a part of town where all sorts of things were hidden in the darkness.
----------
Semi-transparent Helices swirled around the hyn’s arm, and the banker swallowed despite himself.
“Take this, read it, and forward it on to Colamn,” the Shadowknife instructed patiently, and the man bowed and accepted the letter. The hyn left as quietly as he entered, none of the attendants outside ever catching a glimpse of him.
Hazé was waiting outside for him. “I could have dropped it off myself faster than it will travel,” she told him with a sniff.
“It needs to be read by others on the way there.” The Shadowknife shrugged. “The Watchers of Harse need to know what to look for.”
“And they alone?” The corner of her mouth dropped in disapproval.
“You will inform your faith and goddess, and I will inform the Druidic Circles in passing. If you choose to disseminate the information more widely, I do not care. Past practice suggests that the average person learning something creates short-term paranoia and long-term apathy, so it’s usually best left to the elites who might do something about it.”
Hazé sighed and had to agree. The disappearance of five, no, six men had barely caused a ripple in this town, where many folk passed through, and many regulars left and never returned for one reason or another. More men who’d succumbed to alien invaders weren’t really going to be missed...