Frost , 122
Blinking through Slipspace was a strenuous matter for a novitiate, and the fact that she wasn’t going very far with each Blink was somehow all the worse. A single jaunt through Slipspace? That required one to pass through the ghostly barrier between the worlds only once. Dozens of smaller jumps, though much safer in practice, left Imogen on the verge of heaving over and over again.
The technique’s theory, though, proved quite sound. The strange pull the metal spirit had implanted into her soul expressed itself perfectly well through the strange sixth sense of the Rune of Traversion, and so each of the stomach-sickening leaps could be made with much more confidence than a novice had any right to expect. No matter if she opened her eyes to jungle or the ruin-dotted unlight of Slipspace, she could feel the shining thread leading inexorably forward.
Imogen couldn’t have said how long she spent slipping in and out of being, aether washing over and through her until the only thing that felt solid was that silver line. If you’d told her it was only minutes, that could have been true- but it felt equally like days.
And when that spell ended…
The shadow jaguar hunted its prey through the gloaming-paths of the deep forest, and it knew only absolute focus and bliss.
Through biology, under the auspice of Raella, it had been forged by vast time and unfathomable suffering from the rude pig iron of a thousand generations of lesser cats. It had been designed for the hunt, for the chase, to pursue. Its muscles thrilled to the task, adrenalin and dopamine mixing in a heady elixir inside, the raw energy of nature released and bent and kept in time only by the relentless drumming of the cat’s great heart.
The cat’s nostrils flared as it ran, seeking for the fleshy scents it craved, but only the smells of oxidization trailed the fleeing tapir. The predator was fast, much faster than any pig, but there was a cruel streak in its instincts and it loved to toy with its quarry. Better yet, the pig was tough, its metal hide no real defense from the jaguar’s teeth and claws, serving only to cushion the tapir from playful blows which would have granted the final mercy to a purely fleshy creature some time past.
Its other nature thrilled to the chase too. When first the sun had risen black in the sky, the jaguar had not known what to do- but when the orb at last reached a zenith and the shadow fell over Southern Ecith, it had felt a great stirring in the heart of its being. It, or the shadows which were part of it, were ascendant in the cosmos after so long, the orb which had haunted its kind since the (literal) dawn of time finally smothered.
And it had found that this new ascendancy brought greater benefit than simple excitement. The shadow urged it to consume the metal-nature of the pig, to drown it in darkness as an offering to its new lord (though the cat did not understand it in these terms, being a fairly simple creature). For days now, it and its brothers had rampaged in the jungle, glorying in the triumph of Aedrin’s misbegotten child over its brothers. Just as none of their bodies could contest the grace and strength of the cat’s majestic form, so too were their various powers humbled by the umbral sea welling within it.
This was no simple thing, the cat could feel. Its instincts told it that this was a chance for a seismic shift below the leaves. The order of nature had been set for so many aeons, but that time was ending. Now, nothing within the forest could prevent the ascendance of-
Between the jaguar and its prey, a sudden hole tore itself open in midair. The veil of reality split, revealing a great blank endless naught beyond, and a large scaled monkey stumbled out of it.
Split between its instincts to pounce and to turn tail and run, the jaguar skidded to a halt, staring at the strange new arrival. Was this some new predator, that it needed to fear? Or some form of prey, like the smaller-
"Oh fuck." Imogen swore. She stumbled to one side, hoping to intersect with a tree. She failed. A moment later, she was on the ground, puking her guts out.
This filled the cat with alarm. More strange noises, strange sights. It didn’t recognize how she’d appeared out of nowhere, either; that was not an elemental act, and so its shadow-nature could not respond. Still, the creature was now down, nearly prone, her organs vulnerable. It had an opportunity, now, to strike.
The jaguar took one step towards the retching Ork, then another. It picked up speed, swimming through the shadows soundlessly, eyes trained directly on Imogen, that primal mono-focus returning to consume it. Seamlessly, in one instant between running steps, it leapt, sailing through the air with fangs extended, preparing for the kill.
So fixated upon murder was the cat that it did not notice the seven-foot long round shield descending from the air above it. Imogen’s pact weapon struck the shadow-infused cat like fifteen pounds of steel, which would not have sufficed to harm it except that it was also enveloped in a veil of silvery nova-fire, which overwhelmed the cat’s shadows and tore them apart before it had any chance to retaliate.
Concussed, the jaguar fell limply to the earth.
When Imogen at last overcame the nausea, her stomach thoroughly empty, she found herself face-down on the damp soil, the smell of her own vomit pervading. She forced herself to her knees, vision slowly resolving from a blurry nonsense, and discovered the body of the cat she had come here to slay, not five feet away from her.
"...ah." Imogen commented to herself, throat still sore from the sudden trauma. "Well, alright. The deed is done."
Her shield was resting quietly nearby. She’d only meant to use it as a vessel for the Window to enact her transit scheme, but her Pact Weapons had enough of her own soul in them to leap to her defense without any conscious direction. The course of events she’d just missed became quite plain.
"Oh, uh, thanks." It was a stupid gesture, even by the standard of a woman who frequently spoke to objects like they were people. The shield, after all, was just a fragment of her to begin with.
Anyway, it certainly seemed that-
The Sunsinger blinked, feeling the same pull, just coming from a different direction. What was going on? She’d just killed the monster, as she’d been directed.
Imogen beckoned to her shield and it floated out of the earth, sailing gracefully to her side. Having already mastered the Window trick once, it was much easier to link the metal spirit’s pull and her shield’s surface again, displaying-
”Well, bugger." Imogen swore again, ”There were two of them. Alright."
It was bitterly unwise to call upon the Rune of Traversion again so soon after she’d just been hit with such nausea, but thankfully she could feel from the Window that the site wasn’t far. She invoked Animus and filled herself, instead, with the speed and swiftness of another kind of cat and bolted through the trees, moving through them much more quickly than any Ork ought to have been able.
A minute later, Imogen came across the second jaguar, chasing the family of little metal pigs much as the first had been. This time she had no need for luck. By the time the jaguar had noticed that it, too, was being stalked, she was much too close for it to escape.
Her great seven-foot-long spear of bronze and gold and silver fire erupted from her outstretched palm, cast through the air at the cat. Although the jaguar managed to dodge to the side, it found the weapon following, re-orienting itself in midair in order to prepare to spit the jaguar whole.
The shadow-cat, desperate, invoked its strange elemental magics to plunge itself into the patina of shadows spotting the ground- but it only got about halfway through before the spear pierced its flesh and magic both, Imogen’s silver fire ripping both apart. The corpse fell over, missing its entire hind from the sudden severing of its magic.
Imogen jogged deftly to a slow walk, then stopped in front of the corpse. Almost a pity, really. The metal spirit’s plea had made it seem like this would be a very serious challenge, but just as with the shadow-beasts of the eclipse, it was a challenge stacked in her favor. Her sun-reaved blades were nearly custom-made to…
…what was that? Was that the pull again?
Breathing heavily, Imogen waved for her shield, which she still had not dismissed. The Window opened easily.
Wait.
Imogen closed the Window, then waved again.
Struck with a sudden realization, the witch closed and reopened the Window again, then again, and again. Each time, a separate scene.
"Son of a bitch." Imogen breathed. This wasn’t a matter of one, or two, or even a dozen of these cats.
It was an entire species gone mad.
"How," the Ork asked nobody, disbelieving, "Am I meant to stab them all?."
Blinking through Slipspace was a strenuous matter for a novitiate, and the fact that she wasn’t going very far with each Blink was somehow all the worse. A single jaunt through Slipspace? That required one to pass through the ghostly barrier between the worlds only once. Dozens of smaller jumps, though much safer in practice, left Imogen on the verge of heaving over and over again.
The technique’s theory, though, proved quite sound. The strange pull the metal spirit had implanted into her soul expressed itself perfectly well through the strange sixth sense of the Rune of Traversion, and so each of the stomach-sickening leaps could be made with much more confidence than a novice had any right to expect. No matter if she opened her eyes to jungle or the ruin-dotted unlight of Slipspace, she could feel the shining thread leading inexorably forward.
Imogen couldn’t have said how long she spent slipping in and out of being, aether washing over and through her until the only thing that felt solid was that silver line. If you’d told her it was only minutes, that could have been true- but it felt equally like days.
And when that spell ended…
~~~
The shadow jaguar hunted its prey through the gloaming-paths of the deep forest, and it knew only absolute focus and bliss.
Through biology, under the auspice of Raella, it had been forged by vast time and unfathomable suffering from the rude pig iron of a thousand generations of lesser cats. It had been designed for the hunt, for the chase, to pursue. Its muscles thrilled to the task, adrenalin and dopamine mixing in a heady elixir inside, the raw energy of nature released and bent and kept in time only by the relentless drumming of the cat’s great heart.
The cat’s nostrils flared as it ran, seeking for the fleshy scents it craved, but only the smells of oxidization trailed the fleeing tapir. The predator was fast, much faster than any pig, but there was a cruel streak in its instincts and it loved to toy with its quarry. Better yet, the pig was tough, its metal hide no real defense from the jaguar’s teeth and claws, serving only to cushion the tapir from playful blows which would have granted the final mercy to a purely fleshy creature some time past.
Its other nature thrilled to the chase too. When first the sun had risen black in the sky, the jaguar had not known what to do- but when the orb at last reached a zenith and the shadow fell over Southern Ecith, it had felt a great stirring in the heart of its being. It, or the shadows which were part of it, were ascendant in the cosmos after so long, the orb which had haunted its kind since the (literal) dawn of time finally smothered.
And it had found that this new ascendancy brought greater benefit than simple excitement. The shadow urged it to consume the metal-nature of the pig, to drown it in darkness as an offering to its new lord (though the cat did not understand it in these terms, being a fairly simple creature). For days now, it and its brothers had rampaged in the jungle, glorying in the triumph of Aedrin’s misbegotten child over its brothers. Just as none of their bodies could contest the grace and strength of the cat’s majestic form, so too were their various powers humbled by the umbral sea welling within it.
This was no simple thing, the cat could feel. Its instincts told it that this was a chance for a seismic shift below the leaves. The order of nature had been set for so many aeons, but that time was ending. Now, nothing within the forest could prevent the ascendance of-
Between the jaguar and its prey, a sudden hole tore itself open in midair. The veil of reality split, revealing a great blank endless naught beyond, and a large scaled monkey stumbled out of it.
Split between its instincts to pounce and to turn tail and run, the jaguar skidded to a halt, staring at the strange new arrival. Was this some new predator, that it needed to fear? Or some form of prey, like the smaller-
"Oh fuck." Imogen swore. She stumbled to one side, hoping to intersect with a tree. She failed. A moment later, she was on the ground, puking her guts out.
This filled the cat with alarm. More strange noises, strange sights. It didn’t recognize how she’d appeared out of nowhere, either; that was not an elemental act, and so its shadow-nature could not respond. Still, the creature was now down, nearly prone, her organs vulnerable. It had an opportunity, now, to strike.
The jaguar took one step towards the retching Ork, then another. It picked up speed, swimming through the shadows soundlessly, eyes trained directly on Imogen, that primal mono-focus returning to consume it. Seamlessly, in one instant between running steps, it leapt, sailing through the air with fangs extended, preparing for the kill.
So fixated upon murder was the cat that it did not notice the seven-foot long round shield descending from the air above it. Imogen’s pact weapon struck the shadow-infused cat like fifteen pounds of steel, which would not have sufficed to harm it except that it was also enveloped in a veil of silvery nova-fire, which overwhelmed the cat’s shadows and tore them apart before it had any chance to retaliate.
Concussed, the jaguar fell limply to the earth.
~~~
When Imogen at last overcame the nausea, her stomach thoroughly empty, she found herself face-down on the damp soil, the smell of her own vomit pervading. She forced herself to her knees, vision slowly resolving from a blurry nonsense, and discovered the body of the cat she had come here to slay, not five feet away from her.
"...ah." Imogen commented to herself, throat still sore from the sudden trauma. "Well, alright. The deed is done."
Her shield was resting quietly nearby. She’d only meant to use it as a vessel for the Window to enact her transit scheme, but her Pact Weapons had enough of her own soul in them to leap to her defense without any conscious direction. The course of events she’d just missed became quite plain.
"Oh, uh, thanks." It was a stupid gesture, even by the standard of a woman who frequently spoke to objects like they were people. The shield, after all, was just a fragment of her to begin with.
Anyway, it certainly seemed that-
The Sunsinger blinked, feeling the same pull, just coming from a different direction. What was going on? She’d just killed the monster, as she’d been directed.
Imogen beckoned to her shield and it floated out of the earth, sailing gracefully to her side. Having already mastered the Window trick once, it was much easier to link the metal spirit’s pull and her shield’s surface again, displaying-
Off Topic
A family of tapirs huddled within a hollow log, trying not to make the sounds of panic which they felt welling up within themselves. The window reflected sudden movement as an inky-black paw slams to the ground on the other side of the log. The little creatures know they are being provoked, but there’s nothing they can do- instinctively, they squeal and begin to run.
”Well, bugger." Imogen swore again, ”There were two of them. Alright."
It was bitterly unwise to call upon the Rune of Traversion again so soon after she’d just been hit with such nausea, but thankfully she could feel from the Window that the site wasn’t far. She invoked Animus and filled herself, instead, with the speed and swiftness of another kind of cat and bolted through the trees, moving through them much more quickly than any Ork ought to have been able.
A minute later, Imogen came across the second jaguar, chasing the family of little metal pigs much as the first had been. This time she had no need for luck. By the time the jaguar had noticed that it, too, was being stalked, she was much too close for it to escape.
Her great seven-foot-long spear of bronze and gold and silver fire erupted from her outstretched palm, cast through the air at the cat. Although the jaguar managed to dodge to the side, it found the weapon following, re-orienting itself in midair in order to prepare to spit the jaguar whole.
The shadow-cat, desperate, invoked its strange elemental magics to plunge itself into the patina of shadows spotting the ground- but it only got about halfway through before the spear pierced its flesh and magic both, Imogen’s silver fire ripping both apart. The corpse fell over, missing its entire hind from the sudden severing of its magic.
Imogen jogged deftly to a slow walk, then stopped in front of the corpse. Almost a pity, really. The metal spirit’s plea had made it seem like this would be a very serious challenge, but just as with the shadow-beasts of the eclipse, it was a challenge stacked in her favor. Her sun-reaved blades were nearly custom-made to…
…what was that? Was that the pull again?
Breathing heavily, Imogen waved for her shield, which she still had not dismissed. The Window opened easily.
Off Topic
A tapir ran, and darkness flooded behind it. Two, no, three… four! Four of the shadow-cats pursued it, faces each a perfect mask of feline death-lust, framed by the living darkness which surrounded them in a nimbus. The tapir leapt-
Wait.
Imogen closed the Window, then waved again.
Off Topic
Another tapir sought solace in a stream, hiding amidst the reeds. It had seen how the cats had already destroyed the water-deer which usually called this meandering creek home, lacerating their bodies without bothering to actually consume them-
Struck with a sudden realization, the witch closed and reopened the Window again, then again, and again. Each time, a separate scene.
"Son of a bitch." Imogen breathed. This wasn’t a matter of one, or two, or even a dozen of these cats.
It was an entire species gone mad.
"How," the Ork asked nobody, disbelieving, "Am I meant to stab them all?."
