Dysney = Ignis
Mystydjinn = Aelflead & Occultus
WC: 2621
Mystydjinn = Aelflead & Occultus
WC: 2621
Ignis kneeled next to Aelflead, worrying her bottom lip. The spurii had snapped and lashed out at her, but not in the way the enlil had expected. If the aggressive woman had wanted to rip her a new one, the avian would have understood but this… this breakdown was something Ignis didn't know how to respond to. She had bound the tanned woman and dragged her away from the procession marching to battle. It wouldn't do to get arrested now, though the idea of just facing the consequences of her actions was tempting. Aelflead was in no condition to deal with that.
The woman lay curled up, sobbing and shaking.
Tentatively, Ignis set a hand on the spurii's shoulder and patted her a few times. She was still nervous the normally tough women might try to deck her.
Instead she flinched. It seemed as though the violence of her episode had drained her too much for beyond that.
Not that Aelflead’s appearance was usually immaculate, but her desperate struggling against Amicus’ binds had covered her with torn pieces of bark, grass, and dirt. Tear stains had drawn lines in the dirt on her face from the trek up the plateau and the sweat from her thrashing had plastered fuschia cartilage and red hair to her face in stringy, wet, red curls.
If the conexus soldiers walked in on them now, none would be able to identify her to her wanted poster. She didn’t look like the fearless warrior depicted there, she looked like a small, scared, child covered in dirt.
Ignis drew her hand back, frowning. What could she do for the spurii now? The enlil wracked her brain for a solution.
Meanwhile, Amicus crept closer. Gently the mons infans picked leaves and dirt off of the crying woman. Even if she wasn’t his favorite person, Ignis’ empathy moved him.
The enlil, for her part decided to do what her mother would have done for her. She sat next to Aelflead and began to preen the usually tough woman’s messy hair. Her claws gently glided through the wild tresses, taking time to work out knots, the tips of her talons just barely scraping Aelflead’s scalp. Softly, just loud enough for Aelflead and Amicus to hear, Ignis cooed, not unlike a dove. It was a song her mother used to lull her to sleep once upon a time.
“Ew, smells like something over here needs a shower.” Said a nasally voice coming from behind the enlil.
The birdsong halted. Ignis stiffened, having been caught unawares.
The voice sounded again and with it came the sight of a small figure poking the top of Aelflead’s head with a stick and sitting in front of her.
“Looks like the kid’s missed a couple baths, huh?”
While hunched over Aelflead, the strange figure’s features were indistinguishable. Now that it was facing Ignis she could see that it wore a long cloak similar in style to Aelflead’s, though it was much larger and blacker than the redhead’s. The cloak looked as though someone had sucked all of the light out of a room and then sewn the coat out of the darkness left within. Most disturbingly the newcomer didn’t have a face.
At least, it didn’t seem so. It’s features were covered by a pure white mask made of some strange material like that glittered like raw terra regia but was as smooth and reflective as polished porcelain. It was also largely featureless. Besides two eye holes cut out of the mask and the glimmer from the material, there was nothing else displayed on its surface, not even a mouth.
“Leave her alone, you can tell she’s had enough, can’t you?” Ignis snapped, glaring at the strange, cloaked figure.
Amicus bristled; a vine came to life and wrapped around the stick in the masked figure’s hands. The vine tightened until the wood cracked and splintered, before letting the broken pieces fall.
“Who are you?” the enlil demanded while Amicus reanimated the nest of vines and branches Aelflead lay on to scoop the spurii up and put some distance between her and the intruder.
The creature stood and dusted grass off its knees. “No one important, just a party concerned with the little a constituent’s well being.”
“Don’t make me ask twice.” Ignis’ face darkened, lips twisting into a snarl that didn’t fit her fine features. Her sharp teeth were bared, feathers raising. She was already on her feet, stance aggressive. Ignis never had been any good at fighting for herself, though she managed to rise to the occasion whenever someone under her care was at risk.
“Feisty aren’t we?” Two words suddenly replaced the blank canvas and empty eye holes that had been there. They read, “The Hidden” in common tongue and in obnoxiously bolded flowy script.
“Friends call me Oscar.” The stranger waved its hand and whipped the hat off of its head with a flourish and bowed.
“What do you want? Why are you interested in Aelflead?” Ignis’ tone stayed low and hard.
Her shoulders were taught and her fingers itched for her pistol. If not for the noise gunfire would produce, she'd have already threatened to shoot the stranger.
“You asked that question already, but I’ll humor you.” The stranger stood up straight and straightened his suit. “ I want a lot of things y’know? My own domain, world peace, somebody to enjoy sunsets with, a hippo-.”
Ignis continued to glare at the unsettling stranger. Something wasn't right with the masked figure.
“Why are you here now? What is it you need from Aelflead?”
Amicus hissed, leaves ruffled.
The stranger huffed and snapped its fingers. “You shouldn’t cut people off when they’re talking.” A thick strip of tape appeared across the enlil’s mouth and stranger’s mask traded the words “The Hidden” for a theatrical frown.
“Mmph!” Ignis’ protests were muffled by the tape.
“No! You’re rude, take it off yourself.” The Hidden walked past the enlil and waved its hand dismissively.
Amicus made a low, gravelly sound, as if grinding sticks and stones.
The enlil fell silent and settled for glaring at Occultus while attempting to remove the tape while it stopped in front of Aelflead’s unconscious form and began digging through its cloak.
The enlil stiffened. The feeling that something was not right intensified.
“I swear this new generation.” ‘Oscar’ pulled out what looked like a wad of crumpled and used tissues then tossed them over its shoulder . They made a wet thump when they hit the ground
“Got no respect for their elders... We didn’t even have to do it this way.” More tissues along with plates, and bars of soap flew out of ‘Oscar’s cloak and disappeared from view into the forest.
Occasionally it flung its hands into the air as it spoke, flinging its hands into the air dramatically. “We coulda had a nice talk over tea and cookies,” it said, and tossed a boxed tea set over its shoulder.
“I mean, wouldn’t that have been better than lickin’ glue?”
As the tea set crashed to the ground and shattered porcelain slid across the grass, cookies wearing masks spawned into existence in the air between them and bobbed up and down to a silent beat.
Ignis tried to pull the tape off but her hand passed through it. The tape dissolved, causing her nose to wrinkle like a child who had found vegetables in their ice cream. “Bleh…” the avian used her sleeve to wipe her mouth before responding.
“Not from, you, no.” Her suspicious glare had yet to fully fade. “You never did say why you're here, Trickster. It's not wise to just take food or drink from strangers, especially not those with unknown agendas.”
It rankled Ignis that she couldn't get Oscar to leave them alone, though the creature's claims to be Occultus seemed more likely in which case her inability to affect it made perfect sense.
“Yes I di-Ah! Here it is.” The Hidden straightened its posture as it produced a magicians’ wand from its cloak. Then it took a step towards Aelflead and began drawing a series of black glyphs in the air above her with it that pulsed with an otherworldly light.
Then Occultus’ head swiveled around on its shoulders to face Ignis. The simple, empty eye holes had returned to its mask. “And you never stopped asking me the same question.” Its mask didn’t change form again but its annoyance was clear in its tone.
“You kept giving unsatisfactory answers,” Ignis shot back, just as frustrated.
Occultus stared at the rust feathered woman for a moment as if it was waiting for something, then made an exaggerated sigh and looked back towards Aelflead, then her. “You don’t actually know why she’s collapsed do you?” Incredulity and intrigue was evident in the cloaked god’s voice.
Ignis just sighed heavily and shook her head to indicate that she indeed did not know what was going on. “Not a clue.”
“Great.” The god groaned and produced a scroll covered in glittering black script, read it over, then began tearing it to pieces. “How do you just barely break a contract?”
“I’ll explain then.” Occultus straightened his posture and the rest of its body spun to face the enlil and waved its wand lazily as it spoke. “Your friend here has an issue that your scientists won’t take seriously for at least a century.” It tapped its head with the tip of its wand.
“Anytime she touches one of these,” a pair of shimmering black shackles appeared around the enlil’s hands and feet.
“She has a little, episode.” Occultus made quotation marks with its fingers.
Contract? Ignis frowned.
“What has she gotten herself into?” The enlil shifted uncomfortably at the shackles that suddenly appeared and tried to slip out of them. For a brief moment, Ignis didn’t want to know what magic the grumpy woman had been messing with and go home. Perhaps she would have left Aelflead to her supposed friend had she not been curious to a fault.
“Not much honestly.” The Hidden snapped its fingers and the shackles, along with the wand in its hand turned into puffs of smoke and drifted away. “We met under the stars and shared a wondrous night together some months ago.”
The masked deity lazily drew more unknown, glittering glyphs into the air and they twisted themselves into a cartoonish display of a prison being torn asunder by a sobbing Aelflead. Then a swirl of disturbing images flew through the enlil’s mind. A ruined study, a massive salmon-haired velen, and a set of teeth large enough to swallow her whole flew by in a hurry. Before she had a moment to rest, red smoke and the stench of sweat and musk filled her lungs, and a mass of undulating, slickened bodies filled her field of vision.
The mental invasion drew a deep frown from the enlil. A lesser person might have thrown up from some of the sensation of foreign images being pushed into their minds with magic. Ignis was used to sharing her mind with Amicus and so she bore the violation a bit better than most. She did, however wrinkle her nose at the smell.
The bodies moved in and out of focus like an erratic heartbeat, constantly growing closer until she could make out faces twisted in effort and fervor. But one stood out from the bunch. It was wreathed in dingy, tangled, red hair sopping with sweat, mud, and-“Go fuck yourself!”
A flash of metal the color of the sun embedded itself in the ground beside the enlil, abruptly replacing the mask-clad diety’s form with a larger than reasonable sword. And as reality snapped back into place for the enlil, Aelflead, looking as though she’d just finished a swim greeted her with an haggard expression.
Acid burned Ignis' throat as the contents of her stomach threatened to come back up. “What the hell! Aelflead, what did you do?”
Aelflead began walking forward slowly, her boots like heavy weights on her feet while Ignis gathered herself.
"Nothing.” She said after a long silence.
Ignis massaged her temples and tried not to breathe too deeply. “Why would you break a contract?”
The spurii sighed and her pace increased slightly. “I didn’t.” The woman’s tone was clipped and her voice ragged and hoarse.
Amicus heaved and rustled uncomfortably as well.
“This feels vis-awful.”
Aelflead stopped her walk when she reached her sword and narrowed her eyes at the enlil.
“Why do you think I wanted it gone?”
“Wanted what gone? This doesn't make any sense!”
Aelflead wrapped her hands around her blade’s long handle and tugged. The sword didn’t move.
“All I had to fuckin’ do.” She tugged again, and yielded nothing.
“Was keep it to myself.” She sighed and took a deep breath, then tugged on the thick sword again.
Still nothing.
“Keep what to yourself?” Ignis asked, frustrated.
Aelflead stopped her fruitless tugging for a moment. “That.”
“You’re just as specific as your friend, Oscar.” Ignis frowned and sighed, frustrated.
The redhead turned to face Ignis and narrowed her eyes. “What do you think I’m talking about drumstick? What did Oscar,” she emphasised The Hidden’s false name like a question. “Show you?”
“Nothing I care to remember,” the enlil said evasively. “It didn’t make any sense anyhow,” the avian continued, wrinkling her nose, “in any case you’d better not touch any more of those weird chains. Oscar said they give you episodes. He, it, whatever that thing was ripped up some sort of paper and said you broke a contract.”
Weird chains?“Sort of-.” The redhead stopped mid-sentence and frowned again. Why am I telling her this? Aelflead stared at Ignis for a long while and let her hands fall away from her sword’s handle. Her body was still drained from before and it was already sick of trying to yank the hunk of kings mineral free anyway.
The enlil watched the spurii warily just in case. She wasn’t quite ready to believe Aelflead wouldn’t try to deck her again. “I'm not even sure I want to know what any of those images were about,” Ignis grumbled. Coming from her, that meant she was disturbed by what she'd seen. The avian woman was curious to a fault.
Even still, the redhead had learned something from her ordeal, and so she held out her hand as a peace offering from her seat on the grassy ground. “Would...”
Aelflead shied away from meeting the woman’s gaze as she spoke, but the green and scarlet almonds had softened too much by fatigue to form her mask. Instead they seemed, defeated.
She sighed. “Would you mind listening anyway?”
Ignis stared at Aelflead for a moment, silenced by the other woman's odd behavior. She pinched herself for good measure. Amicus pinched her to make sure they weren't dreaming, twitching at the sensation.
Her eyes swept over the hill they'd relocated to, back towards camp. There wasn't much to see but dirt and struggling, yellowed grass that pushed through the cracks.
The company they traveled with wasn't likely to move soon, too many people were seated or laying down. A few traveled around the outside edges as patrols against surprise attacks.
Then, the pale enlil looked down at Aelflead again, suddenly feeling as tired as she looked (purpling marks under her eyes, an unhealthy hollowness to her cheeks, and minor trembles hinting at how on edge she had been for who knows how long).
Ignis’ legs collapsed under her, folding like a house of cards tumbling at the slightest push.
“Sure. I've got nothing but time.” The words were truer than the red feathered woman would have liked them to be.
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