7:11
Kim
The carbon nanotube beach-tumbleweed of her mind is still. It does not shift. It does not twist. It lays flaccid, the once dense, bright, condensed tangle a stainless steel scrubber used rough, pulled out, loose, holes gaping in the once tight weave. Exhausted.
She doesn’t even twitch when the pulse comes, just stares eyes and mouth agape, focusing on the still, pure darkness. There are no fireflies the color of a happy childhood to be chased into infinite spirals. No sparks in the dark. Only the hunger exists there now, swelling an acid green thing, the edges of it flaring chartreuse and gold, expanding and contracting with the pulse, like a scum of oil on a pool of water shimmies with the movement of the breeze.
It is all consuming. This yawning emptiness and her fascination for it. There is no room for anything else except the yearning, the gnawing hunger.
“We’ve gone too far.”
“We’ve gone just far enough, I think. Watch.”
Another pulse. The pulsating mass of emptiness expands, draws back, expands again, an unnatural heartbeat matching the pulse feeding it.
There is the sound of footsteps, a muffled shuffle that disappears into the beat of the pulse not her own. There is a scraping at her scalp. She can taste the metal of the comb, synesthesia converting touch to taste to something consumable. The hunger contracts, expands, reaches out to devour.
With an inner strength she’d thought surrendered to the gnawing need, Kim lifts her head and slams it to the side to bury the tines of the comb in her temple. Pain sizzles over her tongue, impulse turned to electric surge like sticking her tongue in an outlet, overloading her senses. Darkness swells, consumes the neon hunger, and she lifts away from her shell, drifts away.
*
“Do you hear that?” Patti stood up abruptly and scanned the tunnel.
Siobhan, watching Gwen, Ben, and Dempsey for signs of them stirring, frowned but didn’t look up. “I don’t hear anything. Dan?”
“Nope,” Dan called back from where he stood guard along the tunnel.
Ben groaned and lifted his hand to his forehead, snatching Siobhan’s attention. She duckwalked over to him and peered into his face. “Are you good?”
Ben shoved his hand against the floor and pushed himself up to a sit. “Good enough.”
Next to him Gwen lifted a hand to bat the air with a languid hand. She smacked her lips and opened her eyes. “That might have been a bad call. Did a train hit me?”
Patti leaned down to offer Gwen her hand and pull her up to her feet. “No. A book and maybe some furniture. Definitely the ceiling.”
“Super.” As soon as she was on her feet Gwen looked around, her eyes settling on Dempsey who still lay on the floor. “Anyone need healing.”
“No.” Dempsey didn’t open his eyes and he didn’t move to rise but he did reach around with his hand. “Where’s my shield?”
“Here,” Patti nudged the shield with her foot, pushing it close enough Dempsey was able to brush his fingertips over it. “Dan and I grabbed it when we got you.”
“You make the worst decisions.”
“I do?”
“You,” Dempsey still didn’t open his eyes. Instead he just waved his hand to vaguely indicate the group. “As a group make the worst decisions.”
Gwen frowned at him, the look lost as he still had his eyes closed. “And yet you are still here.”
“Guess I make bad decisions too.”
“And that’s why you’re still here.” Gwen rolled her eyes and then nudged Dempsey with her foot. “Time to get up. We got more bad decisions to make.”
“Ugh.” Dempsey slowly rolled up to a sit and then pushed himself to wobble on his feet. As soon as he gained his feet and steadied his posture he turned to look down the tunnel. “What’s this?”
Gwen shrugged. “A tunnel? I don’t know. I just woke up too.” She sidled up to Patti. “Why do people always ask questions like that?”
“Eh?”
“So, what is,” Gwen leaned heavy on the word, “this?”
Patti looked at her and grinned. “A tunnel?”
“Comedians,” Siobhan muttered to Prairie. “I am surrounded by comedians.”
Prairie popped a dimple. “To steal a response from Dan, yep.”
Patti slid up on Abe. “How you doing? Overwhelmed yet?”
Abe wagged their head back and forth, hard enough to send the halo of their hair skittering. “Not even. I have never seen so many impossible things in one place.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
Eyes wide, Abe smiled, putting their whole heart into it and drawing a smile from Patti with the sheer exuberance of it. “It’s the best thing. There’s something coming out of the wall.”
At first Patti figured Abe was talking about, she didn’t know, something Abe’s Magick was seeing, like the statement was in support of their reference to the “best thing”. But then Ivan let out a startled yelp and there was the distinct sound of Dan releasing a crossbow bolt. Patti twisted her head to look at the wall Abe was staring at, her eyes widening as the surface of the wall rippled and a foot protruded out of it.
The foot was the color of the packed dirt making up the wall. No, Patti corrected that. It was the packed earth making up the wall. As she watched the foot was followed by a squat leg, then another leg and a torso pulled free of the wall. Next came a hand swinging something like a stone club, followed by an arm, a shoulder and what could politely be referred to as a head, if heads were lumps of clay with something vaguely passing as features pressed into them. Even before the head had fully emerged from the wall the club was swinging for Ben’s head. He rolled back, then kipped up to his feet, pulling daggers from somewhere and managing to cross them to parry the strike of the club.
The thing’s other hand emerged from the wall last, dragging substance from the wall as it came so that when the hand fully emerged it was grasping a ball of mud. It flicked its arm forward, flinging the mud and hitting Ivan on the lower jaw. Mud splattered as it hit, spraying outwards in a burst that splattered Ivan’s mouth and eyes.
Now fully separated from the wall Patti could see the creature stood around three and a half, four feet tall with thighs like trunks and feet that melted into the floor of the tunnel. Or were part of the floor… It was really hard to be sure which. All Patti could say with certainty was the things feet flowed into the floor and when it moved forward, as it did to swing on Ben again, it glided rather than stepped, its feet or whatever never losing contact with the earthen tunnel floor.
Further along the tunnel more creatures were pulling themselves from the walls.
“Stay away from the walls!” Ben yelled.
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Patti muttered and skittered closer to the center of the tunnel and as far from the walls as she could. A loud crack came from down the tunnel towards where Dan stood.
“Dan? What’s that?” Siobhan yelled, drawing Patti’s attention to where Siobhan was pointing up the tunnel. At first all she saw was a slight glow creeping along the dark walls, but the glow quickly resolved into something her mind couldn’t quite figure out.
From the darkness of the tunnel’s mouth slunk creatures. First one, on point, then two more behind it fanning to either side. If there were more further down the tunnel it was hard to tell. They had four legs and moved low, like dogs or maybe coyotes, and they moved fast. The creatures were black, the edges of them blending into the darkness of the tunnel. The core of them flared white, traces of gold drifting along the edges of the white before bleeding to orange, red, and yellow branching into the black and forming the illusion of something like and not like fur that moved on its own breeze. There was something primal about them that drew the eye and engaged the mind, something that triggered an atavistic shiver at a never known but somehow remembered threat, beautiful and cruel stalking the dark shadows of ancient caves just beyond the protection of the fire’s light.
Hunching their backs and stretching their limbs, the creatures shook themselves and the substance of them rippled, the dance of light mesmerizing, beautiful and cruel. Red, orange, and yellow undulated, forming patterns in the dark substance where the creatures bled into the shadows of the tunnel, emphasizing the silhouettes of the creatures and furthering the sense of fur. The glow at their centers pulsed an eye-searing burn, casting Dan’s shadow back over Siobhan and Prairie standing closest to him in the tunnel.
A discordant jumble of sound wrenched Patti’s attention from the creatures. Well, not wrenched. That was too strong a word. It spoke of exuberance. Of urgency. And that wasn’t it. Rather the sound flowed into her, the most obnoxious of ear worms drilling in to flow and twist until it came to rest coiled in the very back and bottom of her brain, the weight of it slight yet distracting. She strained her ears, trying to catch the sound. When that didn’t work she released the controls she kept on her Magick so that it flowed outward in search of the sound.
“Dempsey! Patti! Shields!” Siobhan’s shout broke Patti’s concentration, drawing her back to the moment and the urgency of their situation. Pulling her Magick back so she could focus fully on the threat, she curled her hand around the strap of her punch shield, and took a tentative step forward. She knew she needed to move forward, block those things if she could. She had one of the only shields. But her lizard brain, the part where primal instinct lived, was having none of it. Her feet froze, her thoughts locking up. It was all she could do not to go running back into the room behind them, even though she knew that would probably spring the trap within.
“Excuse me,” Abe’s voice was quiet, almost lost under the pounding of Patti’s heart. They stepped around Patti, pulling their cassock off and dropping it on the earthen floor and swinging their arm in a motion like they were parrying with a rapier. The black ink on their right arm slid from shoulder to elbow to wrist, sinuous liquid beauty following the sweep of their movement. They strode to the front of the group, the ink flicking like a living train behind them. As they passed Gwen she bent her leg up so her foot glided above the ink and Prairie and Siobhan slid to the side to let Abe pass.
“Dan, please move to the left.”
Dan moved in the direction Abe requested, allowing Abe to snap the ink forward. They directed the wave with a curve of their hand, sweeping it to form a dark shield between the creatures and the members of the group. Abe winced, gave out a small gasp, then firmed their jaw and continued the sweep of their arm, ending with their hand held before their left shoulder, their fingers spread and stiff.
High yips emerged from the other side of the darkness, trailing off into an eerie hee-hee-hee reminiscent of a hyena’s laugh. Sparks danced on the air above the line of ink, deadly fireflies biting the dark. For a moment Patti thought Abe had effectively cut off the threat of the things but then a weird wind began to blow. It blew from every direction, tearing at their hair and their clothes and threatening to knock them down.
And if that wasn’t bad enough a huge belt of it came swooping in over Abe’s ink, grabbing the sparks and flinging them at the group. Everywhere they hit it was like the time Patti accidentally held a sparkler too close to her face. The sparks from that sparkler had left tiny little scars along Patti’s jaw and hairline where they had bitten into her skin. They’d faded with time but the memory of the sharp, biting pain from the sparks never did.
The wind resolved into ribbons, the edges of them clearly visible. And then from ribbons to long fingers, the edges tapered like talons dabbling at the sparks like a child might dabble at a stream. The sparks wove around the fingers, nearly liquid in their movement and furthering the sense of fingers in a flow of water.
Patti followed their dance, spellbound, not so much unable to look away as not wanting to. As she focused on them, slipping into a weird state of calm, from somewhere and everywhere and maybe nowhere – it was impossible to pinpoint – the discordant sound from before played through her senses, drawing her attention away from the dance of the sparks on the wind.
Everything stood still, caught in a crystalline infinity between one breath and the next, the chaotic sounds of the fight blanketed beneath the incessant warble-hum-loop of the discordance. Before she could really focus on the sound, the ribbons snapped, flicking sparks towards the group, snapping the crystalline silence and pulling her attention back to the fight. Dempsey stepped in, tall and firm, and held his shield over Abe’s head, shielding them and himself from the hot rain.
Eyes still trying to make sense of it all, body moving on autopilot, Patti raised her own shield, catching the sparks falling towards her and Siobhan. Her arm quivered, the shield wobbled, and she drew a deep gasp as a face resolved from the air, a sharp nose, defined cheekbones and a pointed chin forming like a face pressed against silk chiffon. Like chiffon the air flowed back from the defined features, streaming into something like a long tangle of hair. One. Two. Three faces formed this way and as many fingers or ribbons as would come from three people snatched at the sparks and sent them dancing on the air, some shooting straight for the ceiling, others towards the walls of the tunnel, and yet others diverting to sprinkle Patti and her friends.
“Prairie?” Patti whispered. “Are those spirits?”
Prairie took a swipe at a mud creature pulling itself out of the wall next to her. Her daggers made contact, scoring a line in the substance of the thing, but as soon as the damage was done mud flowed in to fill the space and erase her hit. Hearing Patti’s question she jerked her head around to look at what Patti was referring to. Gwen stepped in at her side, flourishing her plunger and giving Prairie the moment she needed to truly focus on what Patti was asking. Something about spirits?
Gwen was having a little better luck fending off the creatures crawling out of the walls. Where the edged weapons the other wielded dealt damage that was almost immediately healed by the creatures, they retreated from the flourishes of her plunger.
Prairie looked in the direction Patti indicated with the thrust of her cudgel, her eyes widening as she took in the sight of the creatures floating and dancing on the air, their razor-cut features hearkening to a time of mysterious mushroom circles and the creatures said to dance within them on foreign moors. Though they did not look like any spirits she had ever seen Prairie could understand where Patti’s question came from. They were the very image of what someone might expect a spirit to look like, ethereal, drifting, terrible and bright. Instinctively she reached out with her Magick. It passed right through the drifting things. There was nothing about them that had the feel of Spiritus.
“No. They aren’t spirits.”
“Then what are they?”
After watching three of his crossbow bolts be swallowed by the surface of the earthen creatures, Dan lowered his weapons and reached for the book in his breast pocket. He cast threw his memory, considering what in the book might have the best impact. Patti’s question caught his attention. Abandoning, for the moment, his next attack, he turned to look at what Patti was referring to.
Something pushed at his memory. An image from a book he’d read once. He frowned, pushing to pin down the memory. As he did one of the translucent ribbon-like fingers left off playing with the sparks, snapped around Prairie and Gwen and pushed them towards the center of the tunnel. They stumbled under the force of it. Gwen cried out as her plunger whipped to the side, wrenching her arm into an awkward twist. Prairie was flung back. Dan reached out to catch he as her feet twisted and she started to fall backwards. He looped his arm around her waist and pulled her into his side.
Prairie looked up at him, her expression stricken, her lower lip quivering. “Thank you. I wasn’t paying attention. I was-” she waved her dagger vaguely, “Thank you. It just came out of nowhere.”
“It’s the wind. You never see it coming.” The words popped out, maybe from the subconscious place he’d been searching for the memory from the book.
“It’s the wind.” He repeated it slower as he shifted his gaze to the faces floating in the air.
Prairie narrowed her eyes and scrunched her nose in question.
“Can you stand?”
When Prairie nodded, Dan set her away from him and turned to look at the sparks dancing on the wind. Then he turned and looked to where Ivan and Ben were making a valiant effort to fight several creatures pushing from the wall next to them. Ivan summoned his folding shield and blocked the worst of the globs of mud the creatures flung. Ben put away his daggers and lobbed balls of shadow at the things.
The shadows splashed against the surface of the creatures. They didn’t absorb them as they did Dan’s bolts, but they also didn’t seem overly phased by the impact of shadow. What was the brush of shadow over the earth? Just part of the endless cycle.
Flicking shadow balls from both hands, Ben yelled at Ivan.“What the fuck are these things?”
“I don’t know! This sword is useless.” Ivan thrust his sword into its scabbard and lunged in front of Ben, ducking low and moving his shield to catch the balls of mud the things threw. “I block. You throw.”
“Got it!” Ben ducked, dodged, and weaved, flinging shadow at the creatures. “They seem to get smaller when they throw the mud at us.”
“Yeah, but they keep grabbing more out of the walls. This isn’t working!”
“Got a better idea?”
Ivan shifted his shield to catch a big clod of dirt zooming for Ben’s head. “No!”
“Got any toys that will help?”
“No!”
“Damn!” Ben continued to flick shadows, Ivan continued to block balls of mud, and the earthen creatures continued to diminish themselves then replenish by plunging their arms wrist deep into the walls of the tunnel.
Dan shifted his gaze to the wall closer to he, Gwen, and Prairie. Three creatures stood there, squat dark things with melting features brandishing stone clubs. Unlike the ones on the side with Ivan and Ben these ones did not encroach. Instead they stood. Braced. Ready. But not engaging. Sentinels on a wall.
He shifted to look at Ivan and Ben and the creatures that were clearly attacking them. Then he looked back at the still creatures in front of Prairie and Gwen. What was the difference?
Rolling that question in his head, Dan turned and looked back towards the room they’d left. The glass door was still there. Closed. And it was easy to see because nothing – not weird earthen creatures or strange black dogs with fire at their hearts or ghostly apparitions with faces from Victorian art – blocked the way between the group and the door.
Dan did a second visual sweep, parsing details. It was hard to pick something to focus on within the chaos but he persevered.
If you’d never been in a fight with eight allies and multiple aggressors, it was hard to explain the chaos. The closest image Dan could come up with was being on a playground roundabout. You and all your friends gather around the circumference of the thing. You each grab a rail and then you start running. When it gets going fast enough you fling yourself up and in, something between elation and terror buoying your jump, praying you’ll make contact with the surface instead of get flung roughly to the trampled earth around the roundabout. And if you did get your ass on the metal you’d loop your arms or your legs or maybe both in the rail and hold on tight so you didn’t go shooting off into the universe.
The world whipped around you, a blur of color and movement and warped sound. The screams and laughter of the others were torn from their mouths to spin on the air, battering your ears in the best way. You’d forget to breath, overwhelmed by the sensation of wind ripping at you and vertigo snatching at you as the metal careened wildly and your smart nine-year old mind would question if this was the time the big fat spring under the roundabout would fail and the metal circle that for that moment was your world would come tumbling down, tossing you into the dirt. It was exhilarating and terrifying and amazing and when you got off wobbling and weak, your legs spaghetti not flesh and bone, you’d want to jump right back on.
The movement and the speed and the blending of raised voices and the combination of exhilaration and fear clashed around him, the frenetic swirl of the fight that was the roundabout that was the fight in an endless loop of pandemonium. In the center of it all Dan found a small peace. The fight still whirled and whipped around, the roundabout never stopping, but just like it was on that playground equipment the center offered a slight respite where he was jostled and his vision swirled and shouts shifted odd, yet he was able to gain a semblance of focus.
Ivan and Ben continued their fruitless fight against the three creatures that had pulled from the wall to the right, falling back small step by small step towards the center of the tunnel where Dan and Prairie clustered with Gwen facing off against the creatures keeping silent vigil to their left and Patti and Prairie split the difference between Dan and Prairie and Abe and Dempsey at the front.
Patti was holding her right hand to her ear, plugging it with a finger, and frowning as she swiveled her head to search the air, the sweep of Abe’s ink, the floor and walls. Dan considered her actions for a moment, but as there didn’t seem to be an imminent threat he moved on.
Abe holding the pall of darkness behind which creatures both dark and light shifted, occasionally cutting the stillness with their high pitched laugh, stumbled back a step. Dempsey moved with them, keeping his shield high to block the fall of sparks tossed about by the fingers of air. Because, that was what it was. Fingers of air.
The earthen guardians to the left took a step forward as Abe and Dempsey took a step back. Gwen fought the wind to lift her plunger and hold it in front of her, threatening a bludgeoning if the creatures stepped into her range.
“Where’s Water?”
Prairie, daggers crossed in front of her in a guard position, turned her head so she could shout to be heard over the sound of Ivan and Ben and mud flying and sparks crackling on the sky and the whip of the wind. “What?”
“Air.” Dan shifted his eyes upwards to the faces floating in the air. Then he gave a chin jerk to the earthen creatures forming a wall to their right. “Earth. Guessing, that,” he turned his attention to Abe and the creatures they were holding off, “is Fire.”
Prairie frowned, shifting her attention to where Dan indicated. “Fire?”
“Sparks. And the brightness.”
“Patti?” Siobhan called, her voice partially muffled by the cacophony of the fight, “Can you move us back to Dan?”
Patti frowned. She lowered her finger from her ear, shifted her gaze around the area, then shook herself and focused. “Okay.”
Patti and Siobhan shuffled back until they were even with Dan. As soon as they were close enough Siobhan asked, “What were you saying? I didn’t quite hear.”
Prairie answered for him, shouting as the wind snatched her words from the air and carried them away. “Dan thinks that the wispy things Patti thought were spirits are some form of Air Magick. The creatures that came out of the walls are Earth. And the dog-things are Fire.”
Siobhan shifted her gaze to the ceiling then to the left and right before settling on where Abe held back the creatures behind their veil of ink.
“Why aren’t the ones on the left attacking?”
“Don’t know.” Dan answered.
“Where’s water?”
“My question.”
“Why aren’t the creatures actively attacking anyone except Ivan and Ben?”
“Don’t know.”
Dempsey shifted his shield and eyed the darkness Abe held. He looked down at Abe, noting the strain on their features. “You doing okay there?”
“I don’t think I can hold this indefinitely. The ink-” they stopped, frowned, stiffened the fingers held near their left shoulder. “If it isn’t on me I risk losing it. We have an agreement,” they stopped, bit their lip, cast their gaze inward, “I guess you could call it an agreement? It’s-”
“Magick.” Dempsey nodded. “Got it.”
“So, either the ink bonds with me or it will return to where it came from. It can’t be in the in-between state too long.”
“So you call it back or you lose it?”
Abe bit their lip then nodded. “Yes.”
“Then call it back.”
“But the creatures-”
“We’ve got it. Call it back.” Dempsey pitched his voice to carry. “Abe has to let go.”
Dempsey’s statement stopped Siobhan’s questioning mid-word. She shifted her attention forward, noting the slump of Abe’s shoulders. Abe appeared, if possible, twenty-percent smaller than they had before, like they were shrinking in on themselves. Any protest Siobhan might have made regarding the loss of their shield instantly vanished beneath her concern for the newest addition to their group.
“Okay.”
As if Siobhan’s words were the trigger they needed to action, Abe drew a deep breath, pulled their shoulders up and threw their head back so their mop of hair danced around their shoulders. They pulled their right arm back, their fingers gliding on the air an echo of the lyricism shown by what Siobhan now saw to be manifestations of Air. The dark sheet slid in the wake of Abe’s hand, receding like a dark tide to flow up their fingers, their knuckles, their wrists and elbows, painting the skin a solid black before lapping at their shoulder to form a pattern like heavy, crocheted lace.
As the ink receded the creatures behind it were revealed. They shook themselves and veins of red, orange, and yellow rippled through the darkness of their forms, creating an effect like shaken fur that swelled outwards, expanding the bulk of their silhouettes. Nimbuses of heat and sparks radiated from them, adding to the sense of primordial size. Their heads dropped down, throwing the hump of their shoulders into sharp relief as they stalked forward. One step. Two. Pad. Pad. Pad. Each step deliberate, heavy with intent. Dempsey, shield braced, fell back an equal amount. Siobhan didn’t blame him. To do anything less in the face of what could only be an apex predator of an order as yet undiscovered would have been unthinkable.
The capricious air creatures tossed sparks into Dempsey’s face. Ducking his head and tucking his jaw into his shoulder to avoid the worst of the bursts, he firmed his stance, leaning forward into a lunge and squaring his back foot. Abe sheltered behind him, averting their face to avoid the sparks and pressing their forehead to his back.
“Ivan?” Dan called. When the wind snatched the words, ripping them from their intended target and tossing them back towards the glass door, Dan raised his voice to a shout. “Ivan!”
“What?” Ivan yelled back. “Kinda busy here.”
“Stop fighting.”
“Stop-” Ivan turned his head to look at Dan, getting a clod of earth to the cheek that whipped his head around further for his troubles. He shifted his shielded hand up to block any additional attacks, the process also cutting off the wind so his next words, pitched to be heard over that wind, were really loud. “Why?”
“Theory.”
Ivan flinched as two clods of earth pinged off his shield. “Theory?”
“Ben too.”
The look he gave Dan was equal parts outrage and confusion. “Ben too?”
Now Carl would have said something sarcastic like, “Is there an echo in here?” But Dan was not his brother. Dan was the solid one. So, instead he just kept his gaze steady on Ivan, meeting confusion and outrage with quiet determination.
“Yep.”
“Kidding, right? We’re getting our asses handed to us.”
“We aren’t.”
“What?”
Dan directed Ivan’s attention to where the fire dogs – he was sticking with that until something better presented itself – padded very slowly towards Abe and Dempsey who continued to take microscopic steps backwards to keep a safe distance between themselves and the dogs. Patti and Siobhan slowly stepped back behind them, moving closer to Dan and Prairie. Then he shifted to look at Gwen, holding three earthen creatures at bay with a plunger, though considering the damage an equal amount of creatures were doing to both Ben and Ivan it shouldn’t have been possible for Gwen and her plunger to be any real defense.
Where the creatures on Ivan and Ben were doggedly flinging clods of earth, one of which plonked against Ivan’s shield as if in emphasis, the ones in front of Gwen just stood, short arms easy at their sides, the tips of stone clubs resting on the ground, advancing only when the fire dogs did and then with the slow, steady encroachment of a glacier’s pace that was easy for Gwen to step back from.
Above and around them the air played – because the more Dan watched the creatures the more it became clear to him that was what they were doing – but never from behind. No. No air or wind ripped at them from behind. No tendril played with their hair, tore at their clothes, batted sparks against their skin from behind. Combined with the slow advance of the fire dogs and the earthen creatures, it added up to one thing.
“We’re being herded.”
Siobhan, now next to Dan, turned her head swiftly. Forward. To the left. The right. Up. Back. “I think Dan’s right. Stop fighting.”
“Stop-” Ivan lunged forward to catch a glob of mud heading for Ben’s head with his shield. “Fighting?”
“For a moment. If Dan’s right those things will stop hitting you. If he’s wrong feel free to go back to it.”
“Fuck!” Ivan’s voice echoed odd against his shield. “Ben. Stop.”
Ben whipped his head around to look at Ivan. “Stop?”
“Stop.”
Ben cast a narrowed-eyed look at Ivan, then back at the three earth creatures he was doing an abysmal job keeping off them, then back at Ivan. Sighing he clenched his fist, drawing the ball of shadow back into his palm.
His look of outrage flowed into one of confusion when the earthen creatures immediately stopped their mud flinging. The creatures kept advancing until they formed a line matching the one of their confederates to the left. They took up similar positions, arms down, clubs kissing the dirt of the tunnel floor.
Ben’s gaze ticked over the earthen creatures to the right of him, then to Ivan. He pivoted, taking in Dempsey and Abe doing small back steps before the slowly advancing fire creatures. When the fire dogs reached the line of earthen creatures those creatures glided forward, always keeping a flanking position with the fire dogs. The wind women drifted above them, sending out fingers of air to shove at the Dan and the others, nudging them back towards the glass door.
Seeing the earthen creatures were no longer attacking, Ivan shifted to position himself next to Dempsey, adding his shield to the bulwark against the heat of the fire dogs.
He curled his chin in to his collarbone and called over to Siobhan. “So, if we fight they fight and we can’t seem to do shit to them.”
“Seems like.”
“But if we don’t fight they push us back.”
Dan took two large steps back. “Yep.”
“And if we open the door of the room we trigger the trap.”
“Seems like.” Siobhan repeated.
“So, what do we do?”
Siobhan took several steps back and one in as the earthen guardians sloped towards her from the left. “Not sure.”
The earthen things were coming in at an angle, forcing Siobhan and Gwen to the left and Ben and Patti to the right to move in until they were almost stepping on Dan and Prairie’s toes. Prairie curled tight to Dan’s side, making herself as small as possible to give the others as much room as she could. And still they pressed.
“Can we open the door, get across the room and get to the other door then back onto the landing?” An errant finger of wind slid across her face, snatching the words away, and causing Dan to frown down at her.
“What?”
Summoning her trauma nurse voice, the one that could cut through the chaos of an accident site, Prairie repeated. “Can we all get through the room and trigger the trap from the other side? Maybe it will catch these things?”
Dan cast a quick glance back over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching door. “Not sure.”
Siobhan cupped a hand around her ear. “What was that?”
“Can we open the door, get through, spring the trap and catch these things in the air room?”
“Can you catch air with air?”
Prairie considered this. “Maybe not, but two out of three?”
Siobhan turned so she was walking backwards with her eyes on the door. “Any better ideas?”
Her question was snatched away by the wind women. Siobhan scowled. Guess this wasn’t time for a consensus.
“Let’s try it!” She leaned forward to yell in Gwen’s ear. “We need time to open the door.”
“Won’t that set off the trap?”
“Hopefully!” Siobhan looked at where Dempsey, Abe, and Ivan were forming the barrier at the front of the group. “Our voices don’t carry-”
“What?” Gwen yelled as Siobhan’s voice disappeared into the wind.
“Our voice don’t carry!” Siobhan yelled in Gwen’s ear.
Gwen winced pressed her ear to her shoulder. “Yeah!”
“You need to tell the others!” Siobhan pitched her voice lower so she didn’t rattle Gwen’s ear drum and just then another gust of wind snatched her words away.
Siobhan stopped and scowled upwards. The face of one of the wind woman pressed close and for a moment Siobhan was taken by the beauty of the creature. It had delicate features. Sharp cheekbones. A chin that came to a distinct point and a narrow bridged nose that could have been cut by a diamond. Small, half-formed eyes danced with mischief.
Siobhan scowled and narrowed her eyes on the creature. This seemed to amuse it all the more. It reached out a ribbon finger and flipped Siobhan’s flower crown from her head, snatching it so it flipped midair, changed direction and skittered along the floor to rest at the base of the door. Flashing another scowl at the air, Siobhan turned her head to press her lips to Gwen’s ear. “You need to tell the others. We need time to trigger the door. Prairie and I will do it.”
“Then what?” Gwen holler whispered back.
“Then you and Dan will go across the room and trigger the other door to keep it open.”
“This is a sketchy plan!”
“Best one I’ve got. Go!”
Enter The Woods 