9:3
So, they went to The House. As if, after Dempsey’s cards’ “tricks” they could do anything else. Well, they *could* have. Maybe smart people *would* have. People with some sense of self-preservation that outweighed their commitment or determination or pride. People who valued their physical well-being over their emotional one. Normal people. Nothing wrong with them. Really. But no one in Kim’s group could claim that title. For whatever reason each of them was abnormal. She liked to think in the best way.
Regardless of the why or the what or the whatever, none of them hesitated to gather their weapons, their resources, their abnormally large bag, and their resolve and head out for The House.
It was a testament to Jeff’s calm and to the blasé nature of the owners and customers of the various shops around Leo’s that no one raised so much as an eyebrow when the group poured out of Leo’s brandishing cudgels and shields, mice in belt houses, plungers, daggers in tasteful thigh sheaths, bulging duffle bags, suspiciously hanging jackets that clunked and clinked when they swung out, and determined expressions.
“Have fun storming the castle!” Jeff hollered after them, proving himself as big a geek as any member of the party and getting several jaunty salutes and two one-fingered ones. Ben and Kim slashed looks at each other and hoisted them higher, Kim going so far as to twirl it around dancing to a tune only she heard while Ben’s grin did its best to light the whole damned street.
“I feel like we should be singing “Kill the Beast”,” Patti murmured to Gwen who shot back, “I liked the Beast.” At Patti’s confused look, Gwen added, “You know, Gryphon. He was basically The Beast.”
“Oh, yeah,” Patti nodded. “I hope he’s doing okay.”
“I checked in with Aillea yesterday. She says Gryphon is doing well. They have a date tonight.”
Patti grinned at this. “Good for them. Nice to hear something good came out of all this.” She waved vaguely. Sass leaned out of the window of its house, swinging from her belt, and made a similar gesture, getting a laugh from both Patti and Gwen.
Patti gently tapped the mouse’s nose with her fingertip. “I really do think Sass understands us.”
“Yes. Definitely.” Gwen nodded, drawing a sharp glance from Patti to which Gwen wiggled Spirit-fingers. “I can feel it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice.” At Gwen’s slightly skeptical look, Patti added, “No. Really. I assume but it’s good to know that my most constant companion understands me.”
At this Sass gave a trembling peep and rubbed its head against Patti’s finger, gaining another smile from Gwen and also from Prairie who was walking beside her.
“What do you figure we’ll be facing this time?” Patti asked, tone idle, stance less so.
It was Dan who answered from behind her, pitching his voice to carry to all of them. “If it follows the other encounters we’ve had, probably the story of Red Riding Hood.”
“So,” Kim ventured, “not too bad. Just a walk in the woods.”
“And a wolf,” Prairie added in a soft voice.
“And a wolf,” Kim acknowledged. “That’s, what, one wolf and ten of us?” She scoffed, “Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
Ben’s, “Famous last words,” clashed with Patti’s, “Great. Now we’re *cursed*. Probably going to get animated trees. Or pitfalls.”
“Quicksand,” Gwen offered.
“Poisonous pricker bushes,” was Siobhan’s contribution, following on the heels of Prairie suggesting, “Giant spiders.”
“Elephants!”
Everyone, almost in accord, stopped or slowed to stare at Ivan who shrugged at the looks of censure, meeting the looks with a big ass grin and a shrug. “Elephants could happen.”
“Not in a forest,” Kim shot back. “Plus. No. No, elephants.”
“How about lions? Tigers? Bears?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Do not wish bears on us. Seriously, man, do you hate us? Bears are the sharks of the land.”
Dan gave an uncharacteristic snort and Abe giggled from where they walked next to him. When they made a quiet comment to Dan, too low to hear distinctly, he mumbled back a response.
They moved passed the stone fence ostensibly separating the swampland from Great Oaks, the small, gated community it butted up against that contained not a single oak, great or otherwise although it did have a nice bunch of willows; Willows that formed an additional, natural barrier between the swamp and its questionable flora and fauna and the lush green backyards of the modern colonials that made up the curated neighborhood.
As he often did, Ben eyed the homes with an assessing eye.
“So, you casing the place or considering moving on up?” Kim mumbled.
Ben slanted her a glance full of grin. “No comment.”
Kim snorted as Ben strode forward to walk beside Ivan where he and Siobhan had the lead of the group.
Dropping back a step, Kim fell in next to Prairie who was delicately patting her ribcage while she whispered something too low to hear. The corner of Kim’s mouth tweaked. “Kirby good?”
Prairie looked up with a vague expression then gave Kim a soft smile. “He is. He had an interesting idea about the Moon card Dempsey pulled earlier.”
“Oh?”
“It has both a dog and a wolf on it. He says that the dog and wolf reference the tamed and wild aspects of our minds and wonders if that is relevant or if the images just meant that there will be a wolf and if maybe he is the dog.”
Kim frowned. “You two have that kind of,” she paused, considered, suggested, “conversations?”
Prairie’s nod was very enthusiastic. “It might have something to do with my having communicated with spirits since I was young so I’m used to having concrete conversations with abstract beings. Or maybe it’s a death avatar thing.”
“Death avatar?”
“Not in the sense of the manifestation of a diety.” Prairie wrinkled her nose. “Maybe for Kirby, but I don’t think I’m that kind of special.”
Gwen moved to bump Prairie with her hip from the side opposite Kim. “You are some kind of special.”
“So are you,” Prairie said on a half whisper, then smoothed the hair that had escaped her pony to form a nimbus around her face back behind her ear. “But. Yes. Kirby and I have some pretty interesting conversations. He’s a good companion. I’m glad he came to live with me.”
She stopped, smiled, and then patted-pet her side.
Kim carefully picked her way along what jokingly passed for a path through the swamp. Every few weeks some industrious sort came and dumped gravel, pebbles, or any other building-type materials made sense to them on the somewhat wobbly ribbon cutting through the damp. And one or two days after that the swamp began its industrious quest to reclaim itself. Judging by the spongy give of the stones under her feet Kim was going with they were a solid halfway through the claiming and reclaiming war between man and swamp. It was enough that her boots weren’t being sucked wholesale into the muck. She could work with that.
Oops, spoke too soon, she thought as the ball of her foot disappeared under an inch or three of sploosh that reeked of ‘eau d’ swamp’, that impossible to parse blend of rotting vegetation, mushrooms, peat, brackish water, and poop she didn’t really want to think enough about to catalog. Her boot came out with a slorp that drew a wince. From that point on she made a point of focusing more on where she stepped. In that way the path to The House was both longer and shorter than it usually was – longer because you focus on every step and don’t realize how many damned steps you took, shorter because focusing entirely on her steps shut off her brain which always made a trip shorter.
Patti, walking behind her, and clearly a bit frustrated by the slow pace if you wanted to go by her tone, asked, “Why don’t you just, you know, ask the earth to stop sucking your boots in?”
“Because Earth and I?” Kim shrugged. “Kind of like that brother you have that you want to punch most of the time for being a dick but when it comes to a fight they’re all in.”
Prairie giggled from in front of her and nimbly skipped along the path.
“So,” Patti ventured, “the reason why you are the only one being sucked into the muck…?”
“Earth. Total dic…” Kim chocked off as the earth gave way under her back heel and she toppled backwards, only saved from a total cheese out by Patti’s quick check with her shield against Kim’s back.
Kim glowered at the mud sucking over her boot and murmured, “And you prove my point.”
The ground burped. No really – burped – and her heel was projected forward, a move she countered with a quick knee bend and weight shift onto her other leg.
“You might want to work on that relationship,” Patti said on a laugh.
“Yep.”
A small geyser of water rose from the right, formed what could only be described as a tentacle, and gently lapped over her boot, washing the mud away. She turned and smiled in that direction. “Thanks!”
The tentacle waved, clearly in response, then receded back into the reeds.
“Okay,” Patti muttered, “That wasn’t weird at all.”
Sass peeped, clearly in agreement.
“So,” Patti ventured after they’d walked a bit further. “You didn’t call on the water to do that?”
“Nope.”
“Weird.”
“Yep.”
Again Sass peeped.
Between Kim’s carefully watching every step she took and Earth being, probably, merciful, they made the rest of the way to The House without any more hazards or the accompanying delays.
Kim and Patti, the last in the group, stopped outside the fence along which everyone else was arrayed in something like rough order. Siobhan stood at the gate, leaning over slightly to brush her fingers over the profusion of growth beyond. Ben stood beside her, hands deep in his pant pockets, as he craned his neck to look up at the roof of The House.
“Does it look bigger?” he murmured to Ivan, standing next to him.
“Could be?” He gave the structure a rough assessment. “I’m not an architect but it definitely looks bigger.”
“I’m not an architect either,” Kim offered, wandering up behind them, “though I work with quite a few and can say with that second-hand knowledge that it is definitely bigger.”
“By at least three feet,” Dan added from the other side of the gate next to Siobhan. “In height. I believe,” he pulled a notebook out of the inside of his vest, thumbed forward a few pages, then ran a blunt-tipped finger down one page. “Yes. It appears to have grown at least three feet tall and,” he lifted his gaze to the building, focused on the page, looked back at the building, “probably six feet across. Interesting.”
“Interesting?” Patti asked, ever the one to speak what the others in the group might be thinking. They all had their jobs. That was, apparently, one of hers. Probably as she was one of the newer members of the group and got to express confusion at the novelties of their situation.
Dan slanted a look at Abe on his other side and murmured something low. Abe squinted up at The House, cocked their head, left then right then murmured something back at Dan.
Patti shifted and cleared her throat. “Want to share with the class?”
It was Abe that answered. “It’s bigger. But it’s more like it grew bigger rather than was added on?”
Siobhan turned at that and looked at Abe. “Grew?”
Abe nodded, sending their mop flopping. “Like a mushroom. See,” they pointed towards the bottom of the building. “That part at the bottom is lighter. You can see the stones are a slightly different shade that blends in about halfway up the window edge?”
“So, its getting taller from the bottom and the windows and doors are, what, moving so they remain in the same basic spot?” Ivan asked.
Abe looked back at the building, studied it a mikro, then nodded. “I think so.”
“So glad we’re going into that,” Patti mumbled to which Kim nodded. “At this point it hasn’t eaten us so it’s probably not going to?”
“That’s encouraging. Really makes me want to walk right on in.”
“We could dance?” Gwen offered with a grin. “So, we’re standing around here because?”
Siobhan shrugged. “Just because.” With that she lifted the latch from the inside of the gate and pushed it in. The plants, growing up close to the path through the garden, drew back at her gentle nudge. The path up to the front door had grown over, herbs and plants that Kim honestly had no name for beyond “pretty” and “smelly slash pretty smelling” seeking to reclaim the area much like the swamp had moved to swallow the path through it.
Siobhan swished her fingers in front of her and the plants swayed out of the way. Kim felt earth moving, rippling like rings in a pond after a rock is dropped in. Connected as she was to the earth she giggled as receding roots tickled it with their movement. Gwen shot her a look from the side of her eye, pinching in her mouth on a comical expression of concern, making Kim snort and rub her arms. “Tickles.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“It’s like, you know those cartoons where plants come out of the ground and their roots bend up, kind of like toes or legs or something so they can dance around?”
“No.” Gwen drew out the word, a wealth of “I’m humoring you” in the tone.
Kim waved a hand. “Well, picture a cartoon like that. It’s what the roots are doing, only under the earth.”
“And you feel it?” Prairie asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you often feel what the elements are feeling?”
Kim stopped to consider that a mikro, then tentatively said, “Uh. No.”
“Interesting.” Prairie nodded like it was actually quite interesting.
Kim rubbed her arms, chasing away the feeling of phantom fingers or roots. Then she snap-slash-cracked her neck to the left, righted her head, and looked at The House. “We should go in.”
“Okay.” Prairie’s nod was light as was her tone. Kim imagined her patients probably found the manner super soothing. She could imagine it. Herself the implications kind of pricked at her, like phantom roots under the skin. Whoa. Way to remind yourself, dumb ass. She shook off the feeling and the thought and pushed through the gate, following Ben, Ivan, Siobhan, Dan, Abe, and Dempsey who’d already started up the raggedly cleared path to the front door of The House.
When she drew to a stop next to Ivan while Ben worked on the door, checking for traps or locks or potentially dancing gnomes with buckets on their heads – she put nothing past The House, Ivan murmured to Kim, “It’s bigger to fit the elephants.”
“I will punch you,” she murmured back. “It will probably break my hand but, by all the gods above and below, I will punch you.”
Ivan’s grin transformed his face from classically handsome to fucking heart-stopping and eye-catching. Seriously, the man had no right to be… that. From the corner of her eye Kim caught Prairie looking at him and she bit back a smile. Ivan caught the grin but probably thought it was in response to his because he waggled his thick, but not so thick they resembled a wooly-bear caterpillar, brows at her. She shook her head and grinned back.
“My dude, dial it down a notch.”
Ivan lowered said full brows. “Dial down what?”
Kim flared her hands at him. “That.”
“You mean,” Ivan struck a pose with his hands on his hips and his elbows akimbo. “The smolder.”
“No!” Kim giggled. Prairie giggled. Heck, Patti giggled. Gwen straight up made hip thrusting motions at him. “Seriously. Not the smolder!”
Ivan turned his head so he was looking over the cap of his shoulder and pursed his lips. “The smolder, it cannot be contained!”
Sass squeed, loud and sharp, and clapped its little hands. Which was just it. Kim snorted so hard she hurt her nose and Prairie rolled her lips so her cheeks got all apple-y and round then squeezed her eyes shut hard as she broke into a peel of giggles.
“Oh, God!” Patti slapped at the air, like she was fighting off ‘the smolder’, “Put it away!”
Ben turned from the door. He pursed his lips. Looked at Ivan. Looked at Kim, Gwen, Prairie, and Patti with a look of pure censure, then turned to look at Dempsey, Dan, and Abe who were separated from the hilarity by a solid six feet of calm air. Abe shrugged, hands spread at their sides, then grinned. “Can’t stop the smolder!”
Ben rolled his eyes but then grinned big enough to be seen from space. “I have the door open and it’s safe to enter. Can’t say for sure what’s on the other side.”
“Allow me,” Ivan declared, shouldering past Ben without removing his hands from his hips or unbending his elbows. He had to turn slightly to not ding his elbows, kind of sashaying over the stoop. “This calls for smolder!”
“It does not, in fact, call for smolder,” Ben replied in a very flat tone. The grin he retained belied the disapproving he injected into the words. He looked over at Siobhan, his expression suggesting at least she would be a voice of reason. To which she shrugged, like she was just a captive of the truth, unable to deny, “Everything calls for smolder. Do not mock the smolder or it may abandon us when we need it most.”
Grinning wider if possible, Ben shook his head then walked into The House. Everyone else fell in a somewhat uniform order and walked, stomped, strode, glided or whatever suited their particular style across the threshold. Kim, bringing up the rear, reached back to close the door rather than letting it close itself as it was wont to do with a bang or a shush that made the spirit of whoever was closest to it surge to be free of their skin.
It seemed The House was not to be denied it’s fun for as soon as the door closed on a click it reopened on its own, pulled back about a foot, then closed again with a definitive snap. Kim huffed a sigh and shook her head real slow to which the door opened again, a hair this time, then closed again, bringing a chuckle unbidden from Kim’s chest.
Cheeky. Cheeky, cheeky House. Yeah. You either laughed or you Scooby Doo ran the fuck out of the place leaving a cloud of dust under your levitating feet. Embracing her inner Velma, Kim shoved imaginary glasses up her nose with the tip of her right pointer and stepped away from the door which stood out, solid and inorganic, from the lush backdrop of evergreens that made up what should have been the wall.
The House didn’t even make a pretense of manifesting the wall as it had before. No slow melt of architecture giving way to the world of The House. Just forest, trunks of white birch standing white and stark in contrast to the varying dark greens of cedar, pine, and spruce with the rectangle of door sitting in it, foreign as a chunk of fat in a can of baked beans.
Multiple spears of light – strained through cloud and cover – defined the space between the trees, shards of broken glass mellow gold in their center tapering to a diffuse white fuzz at the edges dissipating as they met the spongy cover of fallen needles brown and rust with some small splashes of green where branches snapped off in the wake of forest creatures.
A rustle in the undergrowth caught Kim’s attention. She turned her head quickly, searching out the source, then when nothing jumped out at her – like a bear or an elephant – she turned back to find the door was just gone, leaving only the tableau curtain of forest, vast and deep, trunks going narrower and narrower the deeper she looked, the affected V of an art student’s study of perspective.
She smoothed out the corresponding V of her brows and turned to look at where the rest were already walking along the path leading through the trees in front of and to the sides. The path was narrow, allowing for only two of them, at most, to walk next to each other. Dempsey and Ivan, being wider, nearly filled the path side to side, Dempsey’s shield adding to his bulk. Because of this the two couldn’t take up their preferred positions at the vanguard. Ivan looked to Dempsey, then down the path which was shadowed by overhanging branches.
“Looks like it might be darker up ahead,” he said to Dempsey who made a show of craning his neck and peering ahead.
“It does.”
“You want to take front or back?”
Dempsey contemplated the path a mikro longer. “Me in the front, you in the back?”
Ivan shrugged then nodded before turning back to the group. “We should be wary of things approaching out of the woods, not just up the path. Dempsey will go first with his shield. I’ll cover the back with mine.” He looked to Patti. “You got one of the sides?”
Patti brandished her punch shield and stepped up so she was roughly in the center of the group spread up and down the path. “Yep.”
“I have the other side,” Prairie offered, palming her daggers. Ivan frowned, started to say something, then appeared to think better of it when Prairie gave him a steady look that somehow conveyed that it would not be in his best interest to tell her anything else.
“I’m behind Dempsey,” Gwen said, moving into that position, then turning to look back at Siobhan. “One healer in the front, the other in the back.”
Siobhan nodded and stepped back to take up a position in front of Kim who was second to last on the path next to Ivan. Ben moved up next to Gwen and shook out his hands. That left Dan and Abe who stepped in behind Gwen and Ben and in front of Patti and Prairie, each turning their attention to the woods on the side of the path they were on. Dan gripped the crossbow on his left leg. To his right Abe donned an excited smile, their head on pivot as they scanned the woods to the right.
“Are we good?” Dempsey called back down the line.
After getting a mixed bouquet of nods and quietly worded assent, Dempsey nodded and called out, “Then let’s go.”
Dan said something that halted Dempsey’s step. The large man turned looking at Dan and asked a question which Kim strained to hear.
“Hey,” she called out, pitching her voice to carry, “Can you repeat for those in the back?”
Dan turned. “I said don’t leave the path.”
“Did you see something?” Patti asked, straining to look into the woods like she’d see what Dan missed.
Dan shook his head. “No. Staying on the path is a theme in Red Riding Hood.”
Siobhan nodded. “Makes sense. Okay. We stay on the path. Ben?”
Ben turned his head so he could look over his shoulder at Siobhan. “Yeah?”
“That means you. Specifically. You. Stay on the path.”
Ben rolled his eyes, then grinned. “Fine.”
“Promise.”
“Promise?”
Siobhan kept her gaze steady on him. “Promise.”
Ben raised his brows and shook his head real slow, conveying disappointment. “Fine.”
“That goes for everyone.” Siobhan looked along the line, making a point to catch and hold everyone’s gaze. “Stay on the path.”
Gwen saluted. “Yes, Teacher!”
Among a chorus of laughs the others echoed the sentiment. Prairie nodded, as did Patti. Abe bobbed their head, setting their hair fluttering around their head. Dempsey just lifted his brows because of course he’d stay on the path, then turned back to look down the path. “Moving.”
When Gwen responded, “Following!” he gave a clear shake of his head, then squared his shoulders and his shield and moved forward.
At first they walked tense and ready, gazes flicking over and into the depths of the woods to either side of the path. After several meros something began niggling at Kim. She flicked a quick look over her shoulder at Ivan who returned the look with a questioning one. She frowned, shook her head, then turned her eyes back to the path but her mind drifted, working over whatever it was.
Another several meros with nothing breaking the silence besides the shush of feet on pine needles, the sound of breathing, and a few quickly captured snatches of conversation drifting back to her, she stopped, tilted her head back, and swept her gaze over the branches arching over the path, searching for sky through the screen of leaves and evergreen needles. Ivan smacked into her back, dropping a hand on her shoulder to keep them both upright.
“What’s up?” he muttered in her ear.
She held up a hand, ticking her gaze over the leaves and needles. “Does it seem too quiet?”
He made a point of turning his head right then left, expression inwards, then gave a very small shrug with shoulders and brows. “No. Sounds pretty much like I expect a forest to sound.”
“Huh.” She scratched her ear then focused on the forest with a frown. After a mikro she turned to him. “Sure?”
“Yeah, I mean it’s not loud but if it was I’d be worried because that would mean something was coming out of it.” He nudged her back with his hand, drawing her attention to where the others continued moving down the path. “We shouldn’t get separated.”
“True that.” Even as she tacitly agreed with Ivan’s assessment questions continued to niggle in the back of Kim’s brain. In response she gave a subtle flick on her fingers, stirring a small breeze. It wove around her, ruffling the small hairs along her hair line, then the vague suggestion of a face resolved from it and thrust towards hers.
??? blew through her mind.
Concentrating on her sense of stifling silence, she indicated the woods to the right with a finger. Air unwound from around her and flowed off into the trees.
What? She wasn’t leaving the path. Technically.
They walked another mero or more. As the time stretched so did their vigilance. Siobhan picked up her pace slightly so she was right behind Patti and Prairie and the three of them were having a low-voiced conversation.
In front of them Dan and Abe were doing the same, with Abe making frequent sweeping gestures, pointing out something in the woods and then the overhanging branches and even the pine needles cushioning their steps. Once or twice when they hit a word with a hard c or g their voice would resolve into something more than a murmur but mostly they kept their voice modulated in contrast to the energy of their gestures. From time to time Dan would nod. There were a few times he drew out a notebook and scribbled something in it before tucking it back in one of the pockets that dotted his vest and pants.
Dempsey kept steady, his shield up, his head making quick tracking motions as he looked left and right into the woods along the path. Ben walked, soft-footed, behind Dempsey still which was either a bona fide miracle or a testament to his commitment to the group because that man’s feet could wander, his attention also drifting left and right. Next to him Gwen spoke in a soft voice, reaching out to tap his arm a few times when his focus went from her to the woods. Behind Kim Ivan’s steady footfalls formed a lulling rhythm she found herself relaxing into even as her ears strained to make out sounds in the woods and her brain strained against the sense of being wrapped in a pillow.
Dan’s warning to remain on the path took on a strange mysticism as they continued walking – the feeling that there were two worlds within The House, the one defined by the path and Kim and her friends who trod it and the one beyond the path enshrouded in eerie silence compounding it. Kim found herself mapping the line where the two ‘worlds’ abutted until she’d almost swear she could see a shimmer in the air.
She was so focused on this she was almost bowled over when Air came barreling in from the right. One moment there was profound silence in that direction, the next her hair was whipping in the wind as Air swirled in a frenzy around her head, agitated !!!!! blasting her mind and causing her to reel. She blinked, shook her head, tried to make sense of the cacophony of sound slash feeling that refused to fully resolve into anything more than panicked torrent.
For a mikro, possibly more though time lost meaning, her vision went white, consumed by the maelstrom, then black as Air projected an image into her mind. If Ivan hadn’t lunged forward and shoved a hand against her shoulder blade she would likely have stumbled off the path which, even in her state of mind-blast, she understood was a bad, bad thing.
“Wha-” his words faded in and out, snatched up by the storm in her mind and tossed about like a cow in a tornado, “-ou!”
She blinked. Closed her eyes. Swallowed hard against the rush of bile in her throat. Drew a hard breath through pursed lips so her chest expanded. Held it for the count of five. Let it out. Opened her eyes in time to see Patti lunging towards the edge of the path after a small projectile launched from somewhere in the region of her belt.
Kim’s hearing came back on Patti’s sharp, “Sass!”
“No!” she yelled, knowing even as she screamed it, she was too late. Something dark surged from the ground just beyond the path, a shape similar to the tentacle of water risen to clear Kim’s boot earlier, only dark, so dark it swallowed the light as it flew forward and wrapped around Patti’s outstretched hand.
Maybe if she’d been a mikro quicker; maybe if she’d been a little more focused; what happened next might have been averted. Maybe if any of them had been whatever, but it happened so damned quick. One moment “‘la la la; walking in the woods”, “reasonably aware because they weren’t stupid” the next… Chaos. Calamity. Cataclysm.
The words burst within Kim’s consciousness, punctuating the mikro burst vignettes playing out along the trail. As Kim pushed away from the support of Ivan’s hands, jets of darkness speared in. Midair, mid-leap, Sass flared to light, a small star white and luminous. A hazy nimbus, dancing with energy, formed around its small form. Patti’s hand, outstretched to snatch the mouse from the air, was made translucent by the light, the bones of it standing out stark against the peachy-pink of her flesh. This effect was emphasized by the vast, impossible, light devouring darkness reaching to swallow Sass.
A snake’s gaping maw, the darkness snapped closed around the mouse. Its light was consumed but for one mikro the afterburn remained, a ghost mouse hovering a half inch from the tips of Patti’s outstretched fingertips. Then the darkness twisted with unnatural grace and wrapped Patti’s fingers. Flowing too fast for eyes to track it surged, undulating as it swallowed her hand, her forearm, and her elbow.
Patti fell back, wide-eyes wildly skating over those closest to her. She opened her mouth to, well who knew, and the darkness darted up her arm, over her shoulder, and reared back to close over her lower jaw, covering her mouth. And then she was yanked sideways with a speed that whipped her head at unnatural angles. Her eyes went wider and for a mikro Kim had genuine fear that the darkness had snapped Patti’s neck. But then Patti drew a panicked breath through her nose, loud as a tsunami in the unnatural silence.
Ben lunged in from the side, hand outstretched. A ball of shadow hovered in his cupped palm, pulsed out, then flowed back into his hand, a tide of darkness. The edge of the dark tentacle rapidly dragging Patti off the path undulated, pulled by Ben’s Magick.
Kim drew a breath through pursed lips. Okay, Ben had this. Darkness. He had…
He didn’t have this. The dark split, shooting out a spike thick as Ben’s wrist and jamming it into his palm. His eyes went wide, the whites stark against his dark skin, and he snapped his other hand around, clamping it around the tentacle of dark.
It reared back, oddly muscular in its movements, lifting him off his feet. Then another lance of darkness flew from off the path. As it hit the edge of the path it writhed. It was really too damned fast to follow. One mikro it was a tentacle or a tendril or a spear. The next it had legs, emerging from its length like some kind of time-stop image of the evolution of water-based creature to land-dweller, stretching into elongated claws that closed around Ben’s hips.
He let out a harsh scream as the claws closed and then a gasp as they closed fully and his body just dissipated, fading to nothing. His legs, below what was clearly now a paw, kicked even as they dissolved, a seethe of Darkness and Ben flowing from hip to knee to flailing feet. Kim’s tore her gaze from the horrifying mesmer of the motion, tracking her attention up in time to see his torso, shoulders, then face swirl away.
It freaking happened between one damned blink and the next. He was there and then he was gone. As was Patti and Sass.
Blink. Gwen surged in from the right.
Blink. Dempsey swung out his arm and blocked Gwen’s movement with a shield flaring to light, catching the creature of darkness lunging for her. Moving too fast to stop, it bashed into the surface, clearly recoiling from the glowing surface.
Blink. Dempsey took up a stance, feet straddling the path like a sailor prepared to weather a storm, and swung his shield forward to block that side of the path.
Blink. Dark things jetted from the right side of the path, legs and paws and claws resolving to snatch at Dan and Abe. Abe snapped out their right arm, sending out their ink in a wave to meet and clash with the onrush of darkness. Yellow eyes flared from the forest, distinct against the black, and then the creature swelled in size. Once. Twice. Three-times what it had been before it loomed, rolled over from the top, and reeled in the ink.
Abe’s eyes went wide. So wide. They fell back, landing on their butt, their breath leaving on a huff, and immediately started digging their heels into the ground, fighting against the pull of the darkness.
Blink. Dan yanked his mini-crossbow from his thigh but didn’t loose a bolt. Likely he realized it would just be engulfed by the dark things flying out of the forest. He scrabbled at the vest pocket over his heart, snapped up the flap, and yanked a book out. Whether he intended to pull Magick from within it or simply hold it against the dark, like a priest commanding evil from within a living vessel, was unclear. Perhaps it was the first but the darkness didn’t give him the time to do so, separating two clumps of darkness from its mass to lunge at Dan.
Blink. Abe screamed as the ink rose from their skin, drawn into the maw of the thing looming above them. They rolled to their side then flopped to their belly as the darkness yanked hard on their right arm, drawing it out in such a way that suggested dislocation. From beneath their cassock more and more ink flowed until finally the flow stopped and it was then that Abe was pulled hard off the path on their stomach. The flow of ink made it impossible to tell where the ink stopped and their skin and bone started so it wasn’t until the arm of their cassock hit the line between path and forest that Kim saw they were dissolving as Ben and Patti had, into tattered swirls of dark and ink and Abe that were sucked into the forest.
Blink. What could only be described as a giant freaking mouth opened up and chomped down on Dan’s arm, engulfing book and hand. He reared back his other hand and punched the darkness. It rippled, absorbing the first hit, then when he pulled back to land a second it flowed forward impossibly fast and engulfed his second arm. He fell back, fighting the pull.
It became clear when he accepted there was no fighting it because he turned his head and yelled, “Follow the story! Stay on the path!” The last word lingered on the air as the darkness reared back, swelled, and then fell over him, an encompassing wave that crashed to swirl the fallen needles on the path. The needles swirled in its wake until they hit the edge of the path, then fell in a pile marking the invisible barrier. Of Dan and Abe there was no evidence of their having been there at all. Only the pine needles remained.
Enter The Woods 