Living Mist
Fjolla's greaves beat out a false, staccato beat as she walked, her ax in one hand, bright-furious Lhunegal in the other, casting away the magic, turning the slop and mud and filth into something walkable for a time. The magic was perturbed here, in this place, perturbed and unnatural and wrong, wronger than usual even. Dwarfs never trusted the stuff to begin with, of course. But even the Brana and the Elves, who seemed to enjoy drinking the stuff down like good ales and beers, apparently did not trust whatever was happening here, in this forest, poisoned as it was by Beastmen and Daemons and worse. Of course with the Fimir accounting for so much attention and time, there were few who could be dispatched to handle this, whatever
this was.
Leaving it perfectly suited for Fjolla.
She rolled her shoulder, felt no tension, no slowness, where the Fimir blade had parted her gut like so much bread, opened her from shoulder to waist, an ugly, bleeding thing. She was ready again, her armor hard, her ax sharp, her mind turned to the task at hand. When she had entered the forest, of course, it had been normal. This deep in, it was much less so, but that did not distract her. The chirping sounds of animals twisted by so much magic, melding together with a meaty thwack to their tone. The deer with one horn too many. The rats thick and fat and watching, waiting. Squirrels, twin-tongued, who shrieked to see her. The trees themselves either stunted and warped or lanky and obscene, in all cases their fruits aromatic, slimy, dripping
substances to the ground. And yet all of this corruption did not distract her.
Nor did it keep her from seeing, as she walked, a flower. It was a soft, comforting gray, like mist, fog, darkness yes but darkness a rational mind might seek to hide in, rather than a laughing, hungry maw. There was magic worked into it, light but present, promising mystery and confusion.
Looking she saw more of the flowers, in this forest not so distant from home. She catalogued it, but did not let it distract her, even as she approached the epicenter of the magic.
And brushing her way through the trees she revealed something she did not understand.
Four trees, stunted little things, each with burned, wicked sigils wrought not simply into the bark but into the very essence of the things. One for
Hate, one for
Lust, one for
Despair, and one for
Desire. They surrounded a tall, unblemished, unburned and unwarped tree, at least as wide as four of her, and ten times taller. And rising from the tree's trunk, almost a throne, and seated on it something biped.
No.
Not seated.
Not a throne.
A prison.
Chains of meat anchored with bones were wrapped around the thing's waist, its wrists, its knees and ankles and neck, and its mouth was open, its tongue missing, and its eyes empty pits filled with scarabs. A sword was jammed through it.
It was dead.
Hopefully, long, long before that had come to pass.
And yet it still bled. It bled, and a moan seemed to fall from its dying throat, a singular thing of exertion stretched out into infinity.
It was trapped, bound, held, tortured,
feared.
Fjolla paused. She had not thought that.
And yet even with the confusion that brought it was not hard for her to bring her ax around and force the Gor's sword into the dirt, followed not a second later by ending its life.
"My time is valuable, Shaman. Stop wasting it."
Fog poured in, filling the clearing, leaking from the boughs of the trees and gaps to cover the quinqux that was her-
its, she snarled--sacrifical altar, where whatever the dead creature was trapped, and then appearing in a flash of silver the shaman, ready for battle in a way none other were, all clad in armor.
The panoply was brutal, ugly stuff, wrapped around the thing's body, thick and ungainly but articulated plate. For all evil runes burned on it, it was solid, substantial, metal pounded by will, not magic hastily shaped by idiot daemon things screaming into the void. Not merely a gift of the gods, but something resembling a true craftsman's work, if not an artist's. She would have considered it acceptable--if tasteless--from a people more civilized, if the Brana had brought it about or the elves or whatever the things Master Snorri kept discovering enslaved by the Fimir were. It was a big world, and privately she thought perhaps someone more focused on seeing the deed done than making it pretty...might...not always be wrong.
But it was Dum, and so to her it was hideous.
It did not help that the Shaman itself was a vile, odious, disgusting mismatch of creatures, none of which were meant to share the same body. Segmented, insectoid legs below the knee ending in clawed feet, perhaps those of a butterfly, colored the yellow of pus. Above that it was the leg of a great stag, shaggy and tangled and overgrown, the fur peaking out through the armor, sweaty and foul. That melded, and not seamlessly, into the scaled belly of a fish, which at the back sprouted the wings of butterfly, except unlike a butterfly which might fake eyes to frighten off predators this thing's wings were covered, inch by hideous inch, with seeing, staring, horrifying eyes. Its upper arms were leonine, its forearms dwarfish, and its head that of a four eyed, four horned frog.
It began spewing blasphemous words, and floating, and magic began to swirl and swirl and swirl and with a noise that ended all noise a for a moment there was a burst of mist. Fjolla tossed her ax and raised Lhungal, unleashing its bright light.
The next thing she could remember, the forest was ablaze. The animals screamed, and not only in pain but some in relief as the misery was ended, the smell of burning pus was thick in the air, and the beastman was dead, and the creature was still trapped.
Chaos hated all that was good.
Chaos hated plenty that was evil.
She pulled the sword out and she swore she heard a whispered thanks on the air even as she turned to see one of the Fogflowers and suddenly filled with a desire that not everything should burn, plucked it and prepared to flee, to run, from the forest as magic atop magic atop magic poured out into it.
It would be a trophy, aye.
And something to study.
--
Re: Whatever the creature is
