Abominations and Ancestors (2/3)
As Fjolla wandered through the snowy forest, feeling the weight of dark magic press against like water, she had to give the abomination this:
The Heart was subtle.
To find the Stomach, beyond asking sobbing, terrified Garazi and interrogating infuriated Fullbeards she could have simply followed the stench of rotting meat and corpses, found a meat tentacle (that, of course, unfolded like a flower to reveal a single eye), started chopping and just not stopped until the thing was dead. Straightforward, if either tedious or difficult, depending on how much a threat such a creature would be to the one who'd slay it.
The Heart, though? That was proving a harder hunt. Perhaps the surest sign she was in the right area was the constant thrum in her ears as magic was pumped to power this creature from eons long since passed, rather in emulation of, well, a heart. Why was it they could never stumble on something friendly in these scenarios--
Fjolla took a second to put her ax through Joll, sending his body to the ground, splayed out. It bled for a moment.
Then it started to break down into shadow and mist and lies.
The other surest sign, that. Constant hallucinations that she was being assailed or attacked by the people nearest to her. It was partially why she was going it alone: Better not to run the risk that she actually end up putting her ax through somebody other than this freakish thing. Just asking for trouble, that.
Besides, she could kill it without any help.
"You keep this up and I swear I'm gonna use some part of you to make a gronti that cleans outhouses," she said . More to fish for a reaction, and to put up a brave front, than for anything else.
Two things were simultaneously true as she walked through the woods, hunting. She could keep it up for as long as necessary, to make sure this bad memory faded; and constantly hallucinating her loved ones attacking her was unpleasant, and seeing their dead bodies was worse.
Not enjoying the nightmares, old woman?
She barked a particularly cruel laugh at the thing as it wurbled out its first comprehensible words in the past hour, though even its communication had to be freakish, of course, talking in her brain (which is some nonsense when, as far as she knows, she's hunting the Heart and not the Brain, yet anyway). "You have no idea what my nightmares look like."
I've peered through them enough to know that's not true, Maggot. I know your heart, and so I'll break it.
"My heart's gromril, beast. You don't have the hammer hard enough."
And it was true.
Much as was true her nose had caught something.
Her uncle can sniff out metal, it's how he found his Gromril mine. Useful.
But her? She can sniff out a good gem. And she has to say there's one right, about--
She reached down and put her armored fingers through the snow and as expected, wrapped them around hard crystal. It's an odd thing alright: Most blood she's aware of comes out bright red then dries to a flaky, unappealing brown. The smell of blood certainly fills the air as she grabs the gem alright, but rather than that red or dried brown it's simultaneously a sludgy brown, chunky purple, pus green, eye-jelly white and not in some kind of slurry way, but rather like oil on water. Vessels connect it to something, covered under the snow. "Blood's never a particularly aesthetic substance, beast, but somehow yours is uglier than most."
STOP!
"No. No, I don't think I will." She grabbed one of the vessels and yanked , pulling it up through the snow and following it. The magical heartbeat started to grow faster and more erratic as she squeezed and journeyed, following it and following it, and most importantly stopping the flow of magic.
And stopping the flow of magic meant the spell the thing was weaving would break.
One second there was nothing, the next it was a crystal larger than three dwards standing atop each other and shaped like a tear drop, split into four chambers, filled with the same vile substance, beating and beating and beating as it swallowed magic. She hefted her ax, but even as she did and as the thing screamed, the false copies of her children and husband and parents and uncle and apprentices and friends--everyone, really, or at least everyone whose opinions she cared about--appeared from nowhere, eschewing the subtle summoning the thing had started with at first for forcing them out. For all they were weak, shoddy copies at best there were more of them than there were her, and for all they were shadows as the new scar on her forehead could attest they were real enough to cut, to slice, to hurt.
I SAID STOP, PREY! CEASE YOUR STRUGGLES, MAGGOT! I WILL TORMENT YOU FOR TEN-THOUSAND YEARS!
In response she hefted her ax and advanced on the one that resembled Snorri first. The thing's copies were acceptable fighters, all told, but she was more than acceptable, as she moved on her heel into range and put her ax through the paper copy of Barak Azamar, but even as she did she was still pressing forward and putting her hammer into Joll's knee, sending the facsimile into his ribs, shifting her armor to catch the blows she couldn't dodge or dispatch in time, she had all of two hands after all.
She was advancing, of course. Slowed, but not stopped, she advanced her way towards the thing's heart, inexorable, fire and contempt filling her alike, because for all she was not yet Snorri City Breaker this thing was no Fimir, no Gori, no Daemon.
Just a monster.
And the Dawi have gotten very good at killing monsters.
THE BRAIN WILL KILL YOU!
"Not if I put my ax through it first."
She kept cutting, kept killing, kept chopping, trying very hard not to internalize certain images, until all at once she stood before the crystalline heart. With no fanfare for a beast that merits none she slammed her hammer into it once, twice, thrice, and it shattered as Conduction forced heat and power through it, making it fall apart like glass.
And all at once, the thing was two-thirds dead.
Now to find the Brain.
