Excerpt of something I'm working on, main update has around 3k words atm:
"What...is that thing?" Logan asked warily, not daring to even blink.
His nose practically felt like it was stopped up, this close to her. She smelled of lilacs and pressed flowers and spice and the faintest bit of sweat from exertion, yes, but that was solely the mundane scents. For better or worse, he was one of those who perceived far more than just the mundane. In that regard, Matriarch Gehenna smelled like molten gold, the sorts being poured from crucibles into molds to be forged into jewelry or something else. She smelled like hot metal shavings, or perhaps the sparks that came as a hammer slammed down upon a bar of iron straight from the forge's heart. She smelled like every different kind of metal that he had ever been nearby, from iron to bronze to tin to silver to steel to gromril and more, but most of all, she smelled like gold. Something that he normally wouldn't even have said had a particular smell, because he knew that actual truly fully pure gold had no scent at all. And yet, the smell persisted, of something of that same level of purity, or perhaps even more so, something that embodied the very concept of gold, perhaps.
A confusing bouquet that was shared, to a minor extent, to the monstrous metal hound that had loudly padded around at her side.
"Hmmhmm," the Matriarch laughed without opening her mouth for a moment, red eyes flashing with delight. "Why, young Hohenzollern, this is my latest and greatest creation, or perhaps I should say, the father of such. My familiar, Gehennon!" She said happily, placing a hand atop the shimmering golden hound which surprisingly actually leaned into the touch.
Of course, to do so, the tall Matriarch in fact actually had to reach up to rub it's head. It wasn't the size of any dog that Logan had ever seen. In fact, it was equal in size to some of the Winter Wolves of Ulric, in fact larger than others. But instead of being possessed of a holy aura of cold and power granted by a God, the so-called Gehennon seemed to be wholly crafted of nothing more and nothing less than the Wind of Chamon itself. Solidified, somehow, through some sort of arcane means that Logan did not understand. For it was not a living creature. It couldn't be, not properly. Especially because it was made entirely of metal! Gold it might be, but as soft and pliable as gold it was not. Or at least, not entirely. Its outer layer almost seemed to flex and bend and nearly squish like skin and flesh might, but it was furless, and when it had opened its mouth to 'yawn' it revealed a bewildering and strange mixture of mechanicals and gears and otherwise. It was a clockwork creation of magic. It's eyes burned the same blazing red as its master, and if Logan was any judge it seemed to have gained something of its masters increasingly infamous pride and self-assuredness. Of course, it also possessed incredibly sharp looking claws and fangs, yet without them in pure metallic bulk aside it could likely simply crush a man to death by running into them.
"I...see," Logan said slowly, noting how all around them, he could see the Gold Wizards starting to assemble in great number, as they had exactly one time in the past so far during the siege. "The gates are still holding, though, are they not?"
Gehenna's gaze narrowed slightly before she harrumphed, tossing her hair back and lifting her chin so far that it was almost perpendicular to the ground.
"Bah! For now, they are, but the Everpeak is vast, and its enemies many! We shall be descending into the Deeps to test my latest creation, against the endless hordes of goblins and squigs that are even now drawing vital defenders away from the real fight up here," she proclaimed with a sharp laugh before clapping a hand on his shoulder that actually almost buckled his knee from the unexpected strength and actual sheer physical weight behind it. "Tell me, young Hohenzollern," she leaned in close, so close that her eye was nearly touching his. "Do you wish to see it? It may interest you to see! And, perhaps, your father," she added as if it were an afterthought as she drew backwards.
"My father?" Logan blinked rapidly.
"Why of course! I would like his endorsement," she said shamelessly, "I wish to make some dealings with the dwarfs that, even now, despite all of this," she spread her arms wide to encompass the vast concourse and the defenders occupying it. "Are denying me. Think about it, would you?" She winked at him before whirling away, half-dancing as she flounced off, leaving behind solid impressions of her feet into the stone she walked upon as she went.
Gehennon whuffed at him, a strange grinding sound through its metallic throat, before loping after its master.
