by J. B. Garner
Oh boy, that hit a nerve. Before I could try to remind Bunny to keep her cool, ignore the jab, and keep trying to get through to Patches, she was already growling and chuffing, yelling back as her eyes matched the red glare in the Corgi’s. “I won’t lie. I do still care for her, but I would never do anything to break up your pack! More than that, how dare you insult Mother’s virtue to ever think she would stop loving you! She will worship you when you’re long gone, you idiot!”
I winced, my eyes locked on the growing, growling, and writhing form of the Corgi in front of us. Something was definitely wrong, and it wasn’t merely the nature of the conversation. “Maybe calling the enormous, angry dog in front of us an idiot wasn’t the best course of action, Bunny.”
Bunny shot a glare back at me. “Somebody has got to snap some sense back into this moron before he throws his life and his family away, Mary!”
I answered her stare with one of my own. “And maybe adding moron to that isn’t smart, either. We’re trying to calm him down, not make him kill us!”
I wasn’t wrong, but admittedly that wasn’t the best time to bring it up. Fortunately, one of us still had his eyes on the number one threat in the room, if you discounted our bickering. What happened in those few moments when my focus had faltered only confirmed my feelings of wrongness. The strange contortions under Patches’s fur turned into sudden growing and shifting, as new, unnatural growths erupted out of his body.
Well, they were not entirely unnatural. After all, squids exist in nature. Sure, fifteen-foot long squid tentacles shouldn’t be sprouting from an eight-foot-tall Corgi’s shoulders, but I suppose it could have been worse. I wasn’t sure how, once I realized what was going on, but …
I only realized the danger when Aelfread, his startling Elven reflexes as finely honed as ever, was already hitting me from behind, throwing me forward to the ground as one of those tentacles whipped through the air through the space I had once occupied, and Bunny currently did. The Huntress let out a cry that mixed pain and surprise in equal measures as the tentacle slap threw her half-way across the clearing.
Pushing to my elbows, I grunted with a little pain of my own as my injuries were rattled. Aelfread had already rolled off me and into a crouch, a hand on my shoulder, whispering harshly, “The Star can’t be doing this. Something’s made contact through the ritual, whispering secrets of Garou morphomancy into his brain.”
“Morphowhat?” I asked as I got to my feet, the Corgi stalking towards our downed friend, tentacles flailing as his entire form continued to twitch under the fur.
“It’s the proper name for Garou magic,” my prince explained, helping me up as he looked on, unable to keep the growing distress from his golden eyes. “He’s not just using elements of his breed species. He’s starting to call on other natural animal shapes, mixing and matching them. I’m sure Mother or Bunny would have mentioned if he could do that already.”
Despite the royal bonking Bunny had taken, she hopped back to her feet gamely enough. “This isn’t right, Patches! Look what you’re doing to yourself.” The red was gone from her eyes, and she was trying to honestly plead with him. “Let this go, get home to Mother and your pups before something irreversible happens.”
If Aelfread was right, he was already too far gone, not with whatever spirit from whatever dimension was creeping into his brain. Patches was already scared, angry, and ready to lash out. With that extra presence in his mind and all that power, well, how could one pleading voice stop him?
“Can we stop the ritual?” I said as I pulled my book and hammer out of my bag. “Maybe if we close the door on this thing, we can talk him down.”
A distinctly snake-like hiss filled the air as something sprang from Patches’ docked tail, growing as it lashed out at us. Now, I wasn’t letting my eyes off the ever-transforming Corgi, so I caught sight of the giant fanged snake that sprang out at us. No, I wasn’t going to try to figure out how that worked, not as I moved right and Aelfie rolled left, the biting snake catching only air.
“No!” The bark and mental yell intermingled in my ears and my mind, as Patches expanded another foot in all directions. “I, we can’t stop now! The bridge has been opened again and those who have turned from the old ways of our people will know the folly of their infidelity.” The beast, no longer truly the poor victim that Patches was now, took a step threateningly towards Bunny. “Bow and worship us now, show abeyance to that you have cast aside, Reba Kincaid, or be the first to be sacrificed before we tear the Souris apart.”
“The fountain,” Aelfread cried as he scrambled away from the still-snapping snake tail. Patches or whatever was in charge now must have realized the danger the Elf’s knowledge meant to its existence. Though you would think that hissing viper would have a limit to its reach, every time Aelfie outpaced it, the scaled horror grew more body from the Corgi’s spine. “That’s the conduit, through the moonstone of the bowl!”
I began to scramble for the center of the grove, clenching my hammer tight. All I had to do was get there, bring up the power of the runeword on the head of my weapon, and smash the crap out of the bowl. I risked a glance at Bunny as I moved, praying for her safety.
True to her principles, the Huntress didn’t cower, and she didn’t break down into prayer. Instead, she stood up straight and put up two fluffy, cottony paws clenched into fists. “I’m sorry, moon goddess or whatever you are now, but it’s my duty as a Huntress of the Drachenreich to put you under arrest for possessing an innocent, assaulting a Huntress, and threatening the murder of a member of the Figment community. You can either vacate yourself to your home dimension and leave this man in peace or I can drag you kicking and screaming out of that body.”
She thumbed her wiggly pink nose. “Which is it going to be?”
Even the snake tail seemed to be pissed off at Bunny’s defiance, and it looked to be the perfect distraction. As the immense, rapidly shifting Corgi tensed in preparation to rip Bunny apart limb by limb, it seemed to completely ignore me as I made it to the base of the fountain. Raising my hammer up, I let the fire of magic run through my arm as the runeword atop the weapon’s head flared to life, wrapping it in a fiery glow.
“Watch out, Mary!” Aelfread shouted, but it was a hair too late.
It turns out that your average extradimensional entity-slash-minor goddess can multitask pretty damn well. I barely turned in time to see one of the squid tentacles rushing towards my face, the other trying to play whack-a-mole with Aelfread as the main Corgi body pounced on Bunny.
I went flying one way, landing hard on my back, while my hammer went another, my book a third, and my bag a fourth, my bundle of chisels and carving tools spilling out of it when it hit the ground. Aelfread was only barely keeping ahead of being the meat of a tentacle-and-ground sandwich, while Bunny’s best efforts were for naught as she was thrown to the ground, pinned by two tons of still-strangely huggable mutant Corgi.
It was all over except for the dying and that could only be a moment away unless someone thought of a brilliant idea and fast.
21
Fortunately, brilliant ideas were being handed out by the dozen that night. It helped that we were each pretty good people to have around in a desperate situation. In fact, Aelfread and Bunny had based their occupations (former and current respectively) on their ability to think quickly on their feet. As for me, well, I was simply too stubborn to stay down, no matter how much my shoulder or my chest hurt.
Even if I hadn’t been in a car crash earlier that day, getting thwacked by a giant squid tentacle to land on mossy rocks face first would have been enough for most people to get the picture and stay down. Not yours truly, though. I forced myself to my feet, seething with frustration and pain, but surprisingly unmolested. Separated from my tools and my hammer, I must not have presented a threat to the rapidly-mutating Patches, the super-sized cuddly Corgi gaining new animal characteristics faster than I could track.
Whatever alien mind was in the driver’s se
at of the Garou’s body still thought Aelfie was a problem, a second tentacle joining the first to try to get a hold of him. Bunny tried one last time to pry her arms loose, each one trapped under a massive paw, as Patches’s growling snout loomed closer to her face, beetle horns and mandibles sprouting out of his head. What had been a dog’s growl now mixed with a thousand animal sounds, insect buzzing, rodent squeals, feline hissing, and so many more. It was a sound I never wanted to hear again, utterly unnatural in the sheer, well, naturalness of it.
Ever defiant, the Huntress chuffed back at the looming mandi-jaws. “Patches, if you’re in there, get this crazy spirit under control before I have to do something I really don’t want to do!”
She talked a good game, but I didn’t buy it. Neither did the possessed Patches as he leaned down.
I almost froze, torn between a dozen ideas and the potential death and/or maiming of two people I cared for, three if you counted myself. The keys to saving anyone were scattered, and I only had two stumpy Dwarf legs to get me to them. Should I go for the hammer to smash the basin? Should I get my book and invoke the platinum runes, hoping that it might shut down the ritual along with depowering the Azure Star, assuming I didn’t kill myself in the process? Or maybe I should go for my tools? There was stone everywhere, and with my runic chisels, I could carve a new word, a better word, that might stop this madness safely.
My moment of indecision was resolved for me. Ducking a tentacle that caved in the trunk of a pine tree ringing the grove, Aelfread scrambled forward, frantic desperation plain in his voice as he shouted, “Mary, I will get the hammer! Don’t fret about the spring!”
From the moment I had been knocked over, he had been making his way towards the still-charged weapon, something I only now realized, and his last dodge had put it practically at his feet. That made my life easier and the answer more obvious. As much as I might want to get a safer option to stop the Star, my book was a sure bet that would ensure everyone else’s safety, Patches included. After all, with all the magic he was burning through changing his shape, there was a very real chance he would die the moment the link to this extradimensional whatever it was broke. He’d either collapse from expending too much of his body’s energy or explode in a violent display as what magic remained outmatched his suddenly diminished mastery of morphomancy.
Either way was a deal breaker in my eyes.
With that in mind, hoping he didn’t bite Bunny apart before I made it, I broke in a sprint towards the book.
Unfortunately, my fears were about to be put to the test. As I pumped my little legs as fast as I could, the moon spirit in the Corgi drove him in for the kill, scales mixing with orange-and-white fur as Patches’s neck rippled and expanded, his jaws and mandibles flying forward like a striking cobra. My heart froze in mid-step, even as Aelfread scooped up my glowing hammer, as a terrible crunch and snap filled my ears.
It restarted a moment later when I realized I hadn’t heard a scream or the tearing of meat. No, that was the shattering of stone, not the breaking of bones. The beast let out another cacophonous howl as I risked a look backward.
Where I still half-expected to see a messily mauled body, there was only Patches pawing madly at shredded clothes as his multi-species head howled and spat up gravel and moss. I was at a loss for a moment, but my questions were answered a split-second later when I saw a little fluffy bit of white scurry out from under the Corgi’s tree trunk legs.
It was the cutest white rabbit you could imagine if you ignored the burning red Garou eyes.
“Go, Bunny!” I found myself shouting, relief washing over me. Of course, I was an idiot by being distracted again, not to mention calling attention to myself as I now stood a few steps from my rune book.
The death Corgi whirled at my shout, drool and bits of leather dangling from his multi-pronged jaws as four new eyes opened in a line along his original eyes, still blazing red. He looked at me, I looked at him. I eyed the book at my feet, his six eyes eyed it as well. With nothing to lose, I lunged for the book as demon Patches pounced towards me, suction-cup-laden tentacles shooting ahead of him.
There was no contest. I didn’t have Aelfread’s inhuman speed or Bunny’s animal prowess. Even with my significant head start, I barely laid a fingertip on the leather binding when one tentacle wrapped around my waist and the other slammed atop the book. That’s when I received an immediate and painful lesson in marine biology.
You see, the suction cups of a squid aren’t always ‘merely’ suction cups. Some have teeth that ring the cups, some have claws embedded in their tentacles. Whatever else this lunar spirit knew, it knew its sea life and picked what I found out later to be a Humboldt squid as its inspiration for these tentacles. As the tentacle wrapped around me, hundreds of small, sharp teeth bit down, piercing the sturdy fabric of my skirt and cutting into my skin.
I screamed bloody murder, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
There were a few silver linings to this, though. First, I was momentarily distracting Patches from mauling anyone else. If my torture bought Aelfread the few moments he needed to get to the fountain and break it, it might be worth it.
Second, by some miracle of Dwarven density (a lady doesn’t reveal her weight, but I’ll let you know that it’s quite a bit more than you might expect, no matter how brawny I look) and poor positioning, the tentacle didn’t hoist me in the air. Adrenalin flooded my veins as I fell forward, thick fingers trying to find a hold in the broken stone and underbrush. I might not have been as strong as a fully fursploded Bunny, but I hadn’t been a carnival strongwoman for no reason.
Third, this horrible predicament vastly simplified my options. Knowing that Bunny was still free, I screamed (coherently this time), “Bunny! Chisel!”
That was the best I could manage as the crushing thing around my waist made it increasingly hard to breathe, but I didn’t need to say more. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bounding, far faster than any normal rabbit, to my spilled bundle of tools. Snatching the thin end of my rune-carved chisel in her teeth, Bunny began to drag it towards me.
Risking a glance back, I tried to ignore the blood that was starting to seep from around the tentacle grappling me to see Patches practically astride the fountain, yet still woefully ignorant of Aelfread. The Elf slid on his knees across the wet moss and slick stone like a rock guitarist, the hammer gripped with both hands and ready to strike. I guess under him was one of the few places Patches hadn’t grown eyes yet.
The beast pulled me in another few feet, now only a scarce few yards from his snapping jaws, but the stones below gave me their blessing, letting my fingers jam into a broken crack, my hand seeming to mold to it as if the stone had been shaped to fit. I let out another howl as the tentacle pulled hard on my shoulder, but somehow my arm was still in the socket, and my grip held.
Through narrowed eyes, I saw Bunny almost to me, so I strained to throw out my free hand towards her. The shifting mass of monster behind me started to move, finally seeing what the little rabbit was doing, but the tremendous crack of rune-empowered hammer on stone caught Patches full attention.
That blow sent a ripple through the room far beyond the thunder of its actual impact. It was if the whole reality of the place was challenged by the breaking of the moonstone behind me. The light above us wavered as the strike seemed to drive the luminous moon into retreat. Though the tentacle around me didn’t shrink back into nothingness, it did weaken, giving me the little bit of leeway I needed to pull myself towards Bunny, just as she stopped and swung her little fluffy body around, tossing the chisel toward me at the end of her swing.
I tried not to think about the danger Aelfread was in as the chisel somehow slapped handle first into my outstretched hand. I decided not to think about how close to the thing’s jaws I was either. No, I instead focused on formulating a runeword to stop the Star and protect all four of us from whatever magical backlash might be coming, all while keeping my tenuous grip on the stone below me, the canvas fo
r this masterpiece I was about to create.
No pressure, right?
Thankfully, I didn’t need to do this alone. As my mind raced, as the wisdom of a thousand generations of Dwarves filled my ears with whispers, Bunny let out a chuff of fury as she exploded from her little bunny shape straight into her full hybrid wererabbit glory. She was also completely naked, but that wasn’t important, not then. Leaping over the length of my outstretched body, she landed on the offending tentacle, wrapping her arms and legs around it, crushing it as she plunged her large and scarily sharp incisors into it.
Blood spurted from the bite and Patches shrieked. Before I realized it, I was free. That freedom was accompanied by another tremendous crash, my hammer letting out a righteous ringing. The moon receded more, and the trees around us began to wither. Another strike would probably do it, but that didn’t stop the Azure Star.
No, that was up to me. Ignoring the fact that I was bleeding on the stones, I found the runes in my mind, realizing my near-fatal flaw of before. As with the ‘taser’ runes, I had let my desire, my intent, be driven too far by emotion, by fear for myself and my friends. Noble intentions, sure, but rune magic was an art as much as a science. It wasn’t merely the runes, it was the scriber’s intent and emotion that fueled them. While there were times my untamed instincts had paid off, now wasn’t one of those times, not if we were all going to live.
The amount of magic I would have used to completely nullify the Star, an artifact just short of a Dwarven Runestone, protect everyone, and sunder the connection to another plane of reality would have killed me stone dead. So, I had to be clear-minded and keep my intention focused purely on the effect I intended. Suppress instead of destroy the Star’s magic, keep us safe only from the dimensional whiplash, and leave the moonstone basin to Aelfie’s capable hands.
That I could do, especially as I was magically fresh, only having invoked one simple runeword since my rest. Make that two, as I willed a bit of magic into the runes inscribed on the chisel. The tip glowing with silvery light as I raised it up and began to cut into the stone. The word let the chisel do its work with simple thrusts and swipes, sparing the need for laborious chipping we didn’t have time for.
