Cassandra Pendragon
The entire, meticulously cared for garden had turned into a devastated battlefield in the span of a few seconds. Not to mention the steaming, unmoving body at its centre, which smelled like the world's most disgusting barbecue, or the erstwhile pristine glass dome, which had been reduced to dust and shrapnel, the animated plants alone had wreaked havoc on an almost legendary scale. There wasn't a square metre of grass left untouched and every few steps pipes and cables jutted from the ravaged earth like broken, skeletal fingers. The elevators surely didn't work anymore and the staircase… oh well, blocked would have been a euphemism par excellence.
As for our visitor and its means of transportation: the gate was closing and the giant was at the very least out for the count, but the ghostly wisps, which had crawled their way from the broken pieces of his spear, were still very much active and moving like a swarm of greenish, translucent fireflies. Shit. I had hoped they would be siphoned away or some such, but on second thought the magic was probably bound to the giant. Which meant he was still alive. Probably a tad overcooked, but tender on the inside nonetheless. Ah well, as long as they didn't bother us…
My kindergarten level analysis was cut short when a silky mane of crimson and white moved into my field of vision and a soft, tantalising sensation spread from my lips to every corner of my body. Even the distant sounds of the city and the laboured breaths of my companions died away as my world shrank to the size of an embrace. "Did you miss me," Ahri whispered and her warm breath sent a pleasant shiver through my tails.
"Always. But I'm not overly comfortable looking like a forest goblin when you're touching me." She shrugged, but instead of letting go she used her tails to pull me closer.
"You should be. It's pretty cute to be honest. Reminds me of all the times you snuck out and came back looking like a brush. I don't know how many hours I spent combing out your hair."
"You also complained the entire time." "True," she chuckled throatily. "Shall we try again?" Her tails travelled up my thighs and a teasing spark ignited in her multicoloured eyes. "I won't complain this time around. Promise." My cheeks began to burn and I tilted my head to the side, thinking about a way to ditch everyone else. The scene of destruction and the smell of a medium rare giant cooled me down quickly enough, though. At least the gate had closed by now.
"Any ideas on those swirling things," I asked no one in particular as I plucked the largest roots and clods of earth from my hair, my tails still wrapped around my angel.
"The remnants of souls," Aurelia commented while she moved closer and studied them curiously. On a side note, Viyara stuck to her about as closely as I stuck to Ahri. Apparently the dragoness had meant her goodbye. "They aren't dangerous and should vanish soon enough, I think. As soon as there's nothing left to tether them to reality." I nodded along.
"Kill the chubby monster it is. What… now?" I whirled around, my nose twitching as thick, dark smoke rose from the living walls Erya had erected around the witches. The kitsune were already preparing another spell, the smell of ozone intensified and an eerie rustling sound, like the wind dancing amongst tombstones, filled the air, but with a gesture I asked them to stand down. I knew what was happening. Grounding grown women usually didn't go over quite as smoothly as one would hope. With a sound like grinding rocks the plants were torn apart, splinters and leaves flying everywhere. My eyes went wide as I saw the girls and even though they did look slightly disheveled and maybe a bit angry, their expressions weren't what surprised me.
Anna had mentioned before that she had bonded with a beast. There was a slight difference between bonding and taming. The latter simply turned a magical creature into a pet, provided you had the strength and patience to cajole a wild animal. The former was slightly more intimate.
As with mages, powerful beats could develop a core, an organ that allowed them to control and store much more mana, or in rare cases even the more esoteric energies, than they would otherwise have been able to. Not to mention that it could buffer the backlash caused by more advanced magics. The core contained the beast's essence, which made it a rare and sought after ingredient for rituals, spells, you name it.
As you can imagine there were two ways to get it. One was by force, the other… if a beast was wounded beyond salvation, it would, sometimes, disgorge its core. A sufficiently powerful mage could choose to bind it, effectively turning the beast's core into their very own. As a result the two would enter an almost symbiotic relationship. The mage gained access to the beast's abilities, sometimes even its form, while the creature survived, powered and kept alive by another's body.
The description in fits and starts Anna had shared, "by the way, I've bonded with a beast, wanna meet her", had already drifted to the very back of my mind, but when the smoke and rain of chopped up plants cleared, I couldn't help but gulp. Instead of the beautiful, sophisticated woman with her designer dress and less than practical high heels, a no less beautiful horse with an ebony coat and a mane of roiling darkness reared on its hind hooves. It… she neighed proudly, dark flames licking at her nostrils, and a scent like crushed cedar permeated the air. With a surprisingly loud thud she dropped back on all fours, her glowing, red eyes focused on the angel at my side.
"I'll be damned," I breathed and inadvertently raised my hand as if to touch her. "That's no simple Nightmare. Where did you…" I was interrupted when Viyara cleared her throat. In her dragon form the sound was pretty hard to ignore, similar as it was to a mountain crumbling.
"Can you fawn over your pet later?" Pet? What had I done to tick her off? Or was she angry with the witches? Luckily she couldn't speak as a dragoness and even if she had been able to, no one but us would have understood her. The language barrier was quite pronounced, when you had been raised on different planets. "They're still in one piece, aren't they? What do we do with that thing?" She used her tail to make the giant's leg jerk. "Throw him down? That should do the trick."
It would. And probably squash a few cars to boot. On the other hand, considering the spectacle we had made of ourselves the streets were most likely empty. Luckily I hadn't heard any sirens, yet, but that was bound to change.
"Tie him up," I asked doubtfully. "Unless you want to carry him all the way back up before the cavalry arrives I wouldn't throw him down."
"Can't we just kill him," Erya piped up. The fey had let go of her spell, but her eyes were still glowing with a hint of power. When I turned to her she smirked and gracefully made her way over, stepping resolutely in between the giant's legs for good measure. She stumbled and grimaced, but the glance she threw at the oversized body pillow was now filled with a grudging respect.
A moment later the smell of wild flowers tickled my nose as she wrapped her arms around Ahri and me. I returned the smile when I felt her hands wondering, but for once I didn't mind overly much. She had every right to be mad at me, yet she wasn't. Being groped, within reason of course, seemed like a fair trade.
"If you have any ideas how," my fiancée replied from her other side, "go ahead. We could try hauling him through Greta. Once on Gaya…"
"Not going to happen," the dryad shut her up. Luckily her tree had survived, otherwise we might have been stranded, but it also meant she could appear whenever she chose to. And right now she had chosen to appear as a distorted face on the tree itself. "That thing is still connected to wherever it came from. If I tried to pull him through, I'd probably destroy my seedling. Think of pulling a ship while it's still anchored. Gotta keep the lad here."
"Aren't you at all curious where he came from," Anna asked, her voice maybe a smidgen deeper, a tad more raspy, and trotted closer. Apparently she was still able to speak in her new form, even though I couldn't quite imagine how that worked. It hadn't sounded like a spell, either. Maybe the beast was capable of actual speech? Not unheard of, but still exceedingly rare.
I felt the two girls at my side turn to focus on me and I could practically see the worried glances Viyara and Aurelia threw my way. I couldn't even fault them. Of course I was curious. More than that. I still had a gut feeling that we had to know if and how the gate and everything that came through was connected to Gaya, but that didn't mean that I'd go right ahead and do something stupid, did it? You know… on second thought, don't answer that. Speaking of answers…
With a frown I mumbled: "how did you even know what we were talking about? Unless I've missed more years than I thought, there's no language on Earth that's similar to our Common Tongue." My words elicited a surprising amount of giggles from the witches in the background. Cecilia even commented:
"Busted. Better fess up now." I cocked an eyebrow at the elegant mare, who pawed the ground almost nervously.
"Research," she mumbled.
"If by research you mean obsessing like a teenager," Cecilia clarified helpfully to the chagrin of her friend as she approached with a smile. For my benefit she added: "we didn't expect you to speak English. You've never been very clear on how you'd change. Only that you would. So Anna spent the better part of five years developing a translation spell. She wanted to make sure we'd be able to communicate immediately."
"Interesting. But it'd take a lot more than a foreign language to shut Cassandra up," Aurelia interjected. In English. When everyone stared at her she chuckled. "What? I've learned more languages than you probably know words. Of course I can figure out a new one quickly. Shouldn't we focus on the obsessing like a teenager part, anyways? Sounds much more interesting to me than the intricacies of grammar and phonetics." All in all I wasn't overly thrilled with the direction the conversation had taken, so I cleared my throat and said:
"Be that as it may, what are we going to do with him?" Nobody felt the need to ask whom I meant. "I'm pretty sure I can kill him without alarming any other immortals. Especially if he holds still. I'm just not so sure if I actually want to."
"And here we go again," Erya sighed resignedly. "Pray tell, what else is there?" I shrugged.
"No clue. Maybe we could stuff him in a tutu and teach him a few tricks?"
"Sometimes I just can't tell if you're being serious," Ahri groaned. "You aren't. Are you?"
"Of course not. He'd look ridiculous. A leotard might work, though." Before they could question my sanity I quickly added: "it was supposed to be a joke. Too soon?" Considering the devastation all around the concern seemed reasonable. Especially when I listened closely. The wind still rustled through broken boughs and the bellowing breaths of a dragon were almost impossible to ignore, but over the familiar noise I thought the sounds from the streets far below had changed. At first it had been silent, the explosions and the pressure of unleashed magic enough to keep any onlookers away, but by now I heard the distinct chatter of curious humans and the still faint, but quickly approaching sound of sirens.
I titled my head to the side and closed my eyes. "Can you hear it? It won't take long for the officials to knock on the door." Without conscious thought I took the few steps that still separated me from the magnificent mare and gently stroked her mane. "Can you turn them away? You've always had a way with words." Anna snorted in response.
"That's called befuddlement and something you could easily learn. It's not that hard. But sure. I'll take the girls with me. Between the seven of us I'm sure we can work something out. With a little luck we might even get around a proper investigation. As long as there are no oversized corpses on the sidewalk. So please, don't start throwing giants around while we're gone. With or without tutus." I felt her powers stir and retracted my hand as her outline shimmered and flowed. A second later she had returned to her human form, albeit naked. At least I wasn't the only one who had to deal with disintegrating wardrobes. She did wear her birthday suit well, though, and didn't even blush as she quickly conjured new garments from thin air. I still turned away, but I was the only one. Figures.
"I'll try. Can you check in on your grandfather and the monk on your way down? I don't think there's a reason to worry, but with the power we used up here, the spells on the other mages might have been damaged. Better safe than sorry, right?"
"Never thought I'd hear you say that," she replied when her head resurfaced from a new dress and I faced her again. "What happened to you?"
"Well… for starters I was killed. And every single time in the last few months I even remotely relied on luck I had to pay for it. Dearly. Call me crazy, but I'd rather not have the lot of them wake up while you're trying to charm an overeager inspector and we're trying to figure out what to do with a snoring giant."
"You're actually considering keeping him alive," Erya piped up. The fey had watched Anna's transformation curiously and the amount of bare skin the witch had shown at the end had also been to her liking, if her barely hidden smirk and appreciative glances were anything to go by. Oh well, some leopards never changed their spots.
"You make it sound like I have a plan," I retorted. "I'm just making things up on the fly. Look, that thing came from a portal that has spewed out a unicorn and a phoenix from our world. Yet I can tell you for a fact that he is a part of Earth's mythology. I don't even know if he's been real, once upon a time, or if he's entirely made up. Some legends are based on fact, but I've never before heard of, never mind seen, a giant." The fey's black gaze darted to a point behind me and she swallowed dryly. "What," I asked.
"See for yourself. I guess you'll soon have answers to your questions." With a sinking feeling in my stomach I turned around. The greenish wisps were circling the slumbering behemoth in silence, but instead of invigorating the fallen warrior it seemed like they were feeding on him. While they swelled with each passing moment he seemed to wither and shrink like ice under the sun. He had already lost a good chunk of his bulk.
"Should we… should we do something," Corvin, one of my soldiers asked nervously.
"No," Aurelia immediately answered. "I think I know what's happening." She sidled closer, but still kept a respectful distance from the ghostly spectacle. "That… that's no giant. It was something else. Maybe someone else. And now what's been gifted is taken away." Flowery descriptions aside, even if I had disagreed with her, I wouldn't have had the time to intervene. My heart beat once, twice and before I had even managed to wrap my mind around the utterly disturbing scene it was already over. The wisps glowed with a newfound strength and like a flock of birds they rose higher into the air before they vanished without a trace. In their wake a naked, handsome man was left behind, snoring contently on the ravaged ground.