In the Aethyr, metals smelted into a disipation that gave off a most pleasant odor. One that smelled of deep spice. Copper, iron, nickel and gold diffused, for a wayfarer born of the mundi world, into pure aromatic perception, much like the kitchen of a long established royal house.
Leresai scratched at the itch this caused her nose with the back side of her wrist when she caught sight of the morbidly pale body at her feet. She bent down to her knees and then she felt for a pulse on Lord Carro's temple. The slightest of ripples coursed beneath his flesh. She lifted his head to the side to better study the wound on his neck. Crusted blood coagulated along the nick she had left there. He wasn't going to bleed out much more.
A shimmer in the air a few yards away jolted her to spring back up with her blade at ready. The disturbance grew into a sparks besotted static discharge from wence an irregular, jagged bolt of lightning flayed about. Something was testing the envelope of protection the pentagram provided.
The Aethyr wasn't safe for mortals to transverse. Beasts of the Abyss, the elder gods, strange aliens from the dynastic courts of Oblivion, all beings possessing the power to travel between the settled planes that marred existence, leaked into the Aethyr. It was an unsettled tween between those places; it was to be transversed, not inhabited.
Leresai peered beyond the shimmer, only to spy a ferment formed of rocky, much rutted ground, uncannily like the fjelds of the Northern Isles. Scholars of her acquaintance even described it as such a craggéd terrain. It was one not made of soil or rock, at least as such substance's base elements formed in the mundane world.
When ionized metals in the air cooled down, they reformed densely and unevenly along a singular plane. Over the edge of one side of her protective pentagram the formation dipped low and a river of mercury snaked along.
No place for a man or mer of flesh and blood or even for a being of great power. She heard of elder dragons, demon lords, greater djinn that attempted exile in the Aethyr but none could exist comfortably for long as it was always in a state of transition.
Grand palaces would be attempted only to be shattered as the magnetic poles of the singular plane rippled and inverted such colossal energy that gaseous metals swept like a cascade of rain into solid being and solid metals puffed instantly into gaseous matter.
It should be over soon, Leresai told herself as she grew more alarmed. The fjeld lands of Aethyr were forming faint red lines along the length of a metallic sheen beneath, as if some disease corrupted it's subdermal foundation.
The pentagram formed at the high end of a plateau along a river bend. At the bottom of the ramped hill that formed the plateau something scurried at the edge of the mercury river. Many more creatures joined with the first one. They appear to be large, pink hounds with impossibly large heads.
A mort horn wailed in a long arching tone. The hounds charged up the plateau pathway. Leresai swooped her dagger's twin up into her free hand. With a jerk of both hands she butted the crossguard heads together to ensconce the fire nebulae opals. The blades shrieked as the ebon metal turned to a fiery red.
Seven hounds lead the pack. The hounds threw themselves at the pentagram shimmer only to be rebuffed. The hounds were knocked back and slammed into the pack behind them. The pack leaders were chewed up and utterly destroyed by their sisters.
The hounds had no eyes. The remainder of the pack, some two dozen, approached slowly. They snarled and bit, sniffing at the shimmer. One braver than the others, thrust its head at it. Grabbing a piece of it in a bite, it's face blistered as if hit by lightning.
The beast squirmed and whimpered as it held on. Clawing at the ground as it tried to pull at the energy field.
Its mouth sizzled with foam. Its skin began to molt like a snake's. Sheaths of skin shimmered down its leg. Steam rose from out of its pores and smoke flowed out of every orifice. The beast's skeleton burned to embers and shattered to the ground.
The shimmer snapped back in place.
The mort horn sounded out again. Its tone like a high wind through cavernous sized bones. It's high bellow rose followed by a cacophonic descent spoke to the hounds differently than before. Leresai peaked down the plateau once more, searching for whomever it was who sounded the horn.
Along the winding course of the mercury river, a sorrel nightmare in ivory armor preened. It's rider, a creature in a matching set of armor bearing red metal engravings that burned continuously into the foundation plate of ivory, stared up at Leresai.
He wore a helm whose antlers were as tangled and profuse as the limbs of a maidenhair fir. The antlers were of no creature Leresai could identify, but she knew who this was. Roquín. Once a Minion King in the empire of Izdun, ruling over the Midvries a millennium ago, he was ensorcelled for six hundred years of penance which drove him mad. Set loose by the Wild Sister, he became Roquín the Hunter.
The hounds backed away slowly and spread out. Positioning themselves in a semicircle around the pentagram.
Leresai called out to him.
"Roquín the Hunter, can you hear me?"
"I indeed hear you, my fellow Hunter, Leresai the Enigmatic One."
Leresai raised her proud torso, folded her elbows under her bosom, and tilted her head to the side. Her lips perked into a hauter puss.
"Why do you hunt me if you and I are so copacetic?"
"I happen to adore you. Of all the heroes of your time you would be one of the few who would not wilt if subjected to the tumult of my own. However, you are a conduit. A means to enter mundi and not be ravaged by the insatiable curse. So it is not that I object to you, but I have need of you."
"I doubt if I have ever been called a hero before this very day." She pointed at the unconscious form of Lord Carro. "He certainly would not call me a hero."
"Due to yours being an age ruled by fools possessing the meagerest of hearts."
Roquín crossed his legs over the saddle and jumped down. The sorrel nightmare backed up trotting in an elegant cross legged stance. For a woman who did not appreciate horses, this was one to whom she could fall In love.
The air dappled around its form in a futile measure to capture it's beauty; a beauty unsettling in its delicacy as nightmares tended to reft from their very surroundings. The movement of its neck, four legs and tail we're like watching a troupe of well-choreographed Suüd danseuse.
Long-limbed, limber, and wispy. Leresai could not see how such a thing survived in the Aethyr. The hounds appeared pure hellion in their course and calloused skins, but not this sorrel nightmare with her fine, shimmering mane.
As soon as Leresai began to form a plan to take the beast from Roquín, the geas scar began to sting. She glanced down at the unconscious Lord Carro. Any possible execution of such a plan would forfeit his life. The scar bled through the banded towel wrapped around her chest. She abandoned the plan immediately. All she could do was stall Roquín until the crossover occurred. With furrowed brow she addressed the Hunter.
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"Is it true, Izdun is free?"
"That it is," Roquín confirmed. "Being that you are one whose mentality is shaped in the ways of the Sœurarchy, would you believe me if I told you Izdun's intentions are noble?"
Leresai considered his words, thought it was not in her interest to contradict him. She shifted her stance. Chin deeply indented beneath her lip.
"I have heard his many tales. He seemed nothing if not the most errant of knights whose ventures were taken to grevious extremes. Humor me if you will, Roquín. What does Izdun intend?"
The question bade a bow of the hunter's head. His words came out as near rhapsody, as if speaking of a much hoped for promise.
"He intends death to me, and the other Realm Kings. To give us a merciful end. What the sisters did to us in our penance made us the most loathsome of souls. Insane and undead. Most of our fellowship is much worse than I. I at least still live in the tether of mundi.
"The others though are far less cogent, far less forgiving of mortal men. Forever flesh hungry, immortal blood lusting wights. It is no way a knight should obtain immortality. It mocks righteousness.
"Immortality through song, yes. Immortality through story and spoken legend, yes and yes. Through the invitation of true gods requiring your presence in their meadhalls, hallelujah, yes! But this?
"This existence created by the cruel sisters where I am forced to endure this unlife of perverse need? Are you aware of the final curse Lady Insatiable placed upon me? I am to only be sustained in my vitaechimique capacity by the menses of a doe? No other food will feed the conduit of my need. Hence, why I am now the Hunter.
"When the Wild Sister mercifully opened my gate, Lady Insatiable appeared at the entrance way. Rozzenblunde insisted upon and argued for my release as I had served the sentence and seven decades more.
"Lady Insatiable countered that I needed to be tethered to a bond that would prevent me from fermenting rebellion. Being the creature of dark eros that she is she deigned to such an indelible penance."
Roquín straightened and became calm. The very timber of his voice changed. "Listen, North Princess and you will hear it too."
His head twisted and his chin pointed down the length of a tall cavernous craig.
"Calm your ears, now. What do you hear? Point your ears in that direction. Do you hear a chant? It is coming from that direction in the periphy of our perception. With intention you can make it manifest. But it is not really of this Aethyr.
"Can you be made to understand? It is from the world you wish to re-enter. Twelve men in deep catacombs dedicated in secret for many generations to Izdun's return. The chant is an invitation for the both of us. Can you hear it? What do they say?"
She listened as the Hunter insisted. The roar of the Aethyr world turned to nought to her ears. There it was, the chant. In old Suüd.
"Bring to us the silver haired witch. Bring to us the unholy Hunter. Their souls are to be one this evening. One to cancel out the other."
The chant repeated, the second time the voices sang in a blaring unison that made Leresai feel overwhelmed.
"Bring to us the silver haired witch. . .," To which her gut clinched. Worse than the feeling she was about to shit herself, she sensed her vagina was rotting from the inside out. "Bring to us the Unholy Hunter. Their souls are to be one this evening. One to cancel out the other.
"As is prophesized, so shall it be."
When they got to the end of their unholy chant, she was down on her knees. She smelled the scent of her womanhood in necrotic decay as venereal vexation fed upon her womb
"That is enough," she whispered.
"Indeed," Roquín agreed.
The roar of the Aethyr world once more rushed into her awareness, thankfully crowding out the ardants' chant. The scent of her sex no longer smelled diseased but instead as strongly musk and as womanly as ever, as it was meant to be, for that she was most relieved.
Leresai stood up, her hands pressed long against her knees. She arched her head up as she leaned and she looked to Roquín.
"Their hatred for me, I've never felt something so visceral."
Roquíns hands pointed to the Craig.
"Care to behest those desolate men their prophecy? To quell their doubts that their lives have been spent on nought but words of no satiation? It would be a shame if it was all frivolous waste. A worthless idée fixe. Given their carnaticum, their slaughterhouse bill, as it were, is paid in full, and then some, to not attend their invitation would be most rude."
Leresai winced to this last remark. Whom or what did these evil bastards damned to the blue blazes of Shoal sacrifice in order to curse her with such power?
"It was no mere chance this evening's events have come about as they have," Leresai stated. "I asked myself, how could it be that we came to meet here, as my intention to execute the plan this evening was decided by myself and myself alone.
"There is no Fate, merely conspiracy against the natural order. They somehow subverted my plans, likely through necromancy, as there is no Destiny except for that which we make for ourselves. As for prophecy, it mocks our choices, and the responsibilities our choices place upon us, and I cannot abide by that."
With both of his gauntlets outstretched towards her, Roquín pleaded.
"I do not ask you to tempt the abominations of Fate, Destiny, and Fortune. In return for your help in circumventing the insatiable curse, I do have it within my grasp to render those men impotent against you"
Roquín touched his gauntlet to his breastplate and bowed his head. He placed his other gauntlet over his first and opened them up together revealing within his palms a tri-foil of tangled orchids. One flower, faint blush pink, one bright scarlet, and the last shell purple, arranged to suggest vaginal grace. The sacré.
"You ask yourself, dear Leresai, how can it be such a fragile thing can survive the Aethyr and retain it's full materiality? I have some power vested in me to subvert this twisted void land. I can do the same for you as I did for this sacré.
"We will ride Sellanna over to a grotto I've prepared for you. We will join our souls in the way men and women have done so since the dawn of time. I'll finally taste something much more divine than the menses flow of a doe in heat."
The scar began to bleed; while her curiosity was aroused by the sexual challenge of intimate deed with a creature of legend it also occurred to her she could use the moment to subdue the Hunter. Again such an expenditure of time in executing the plan would have cost Lord Carro his life.
She pulled down the banded towel and displayed her wounded breast.
"This is the geas inscribed upon my heart. If I indulge in such a well proffered tryst, it would kill me. Even you I doubt could prevent that. It is with great reluctance that I decline."
She needed to leave the Aethyr soon. Her eyes warmed in the silver as she concentrated on a sub group of lines and runes on the pentagram that formed a triagoniste ward. It would be easier to make it sing at a higher oscillation than what a full pentagram was capable.
The form in her mind began to echo a chorus from the ring of lines that surrounded the runes. It took shape over the etched marks and lifted from the ground. They appeared as smooth dark red saphires with a sparking cascade of flames captured within. The chanson sigil surrounded her, waving in a seesaw pattern, switching back and forth around her as it sung.
"I am sorry that I cannot accommodate you and what you proffer, Roquín, I have to be elsewhere."
Roquín shook his head slowly, he sighed sorrowfully. The triagoniste ward she had formed collapsed with a staccato thunk.
"It is I who should apologize. The last thing a huntress would want to hear is for a hunter to tell her the correct track to follow as if she had not the good sense to read the signs for herself. However, I have some inkling of what lies ahead, and I have been planning for it for sometime. So, I'm afraid I cannot permit you to leave until this intract is fully attested."
When Roquín sounded the mort, the hounds sprung forward, chomping down on a piece of the shimmer and pulling with their teeth. An ugly sulfurous smoke hissed from their nostrils.
It overwhelmed the pleasant spice of ionized metals. The hounds growled, and pushed, and thrusts back. Leresai's daggers screamed red, her eyes fully engaged in the silver, as well. She arced the twin daggers in adjacent swings. She made contact.
Black bowel spilt out of the four hounds in front. They whelped as they died, only to be replaced by four more hounds. A hound at the far end burst in flames and shattered. A fifth hound grabbed at the shimmer where the previous one dug in.
Leresai readied her attack once more but stopped in midthrust and pulled back when she noticed the marks she had made slashing the hounds rivened through the shimmer, leaving slits gaping open. The gases of the Aethyr started to pierce through. Soon it would kill her if left unmended.
Leresai held her breath to steady her pulse and she lit the shimmer up with her silver in overlay. As she hoped, the gaps began to mend.
The reprieve lasted merely seconds as the hounds gnawed and pulled in unison. The shimmer stretched away from its tether to the pentagram until it burst. The hounds were annihilated in an instance. Engulfed, the pentagram imploded.