The Chiaroscuro Chimera Caper
WARNING: This piece is bad. Really bad. I would have disowned it, but I put a lot of myself into it and effort like that needs to be preserved, if only to tell me where I went wrong.
The Adventures of Mari, Girl Detective: The Chiaroscuro Chimera Caper
Evening is the time when the City of Glass truly bustles, the vendors of the Out-of-Towners' Quarter huddling around firepits to stay warm in the frigid desert evening. They sneeze, snivel and shiver even through their many layers of clothing, interrupted occasionally by the need to entertain a customer.
Mari and Shrike, of course, are above all of this. Shrike's gotten the best rooms for them in the prestigious Desert Rose inn, thanks to a combination of her charms, her Charms, and a healthy application of silver. She's also arranged for their dinner to be served in bed, hand-fed by a pair of twin brothers and sisters, wearing the grey sash of the Dereth. The customs surrounding that social class had been a sticking point for Mari, who'd voiced her appreciation of a particularly attractive boy, and had gotten herself challenged as a result. Only the hasty intervention of Shrike had prevented a tragedy from occurring; the Eclipse had no intention of leaving a trail of corpses behind them as proud male after proud male broke themselves on Mari's fists trying vainly to duel her.
Fortunately, the travails of the day are behind them, and Mari's learned to address the Dereth by the appropriate pronoun after a few candy-aided lessons. In fact, the brother (named Lark) seems to have taken a shine to the easily-excitable Exalt, treating her like a kid sister of sorts. His sister, a girl called Robin, is rather more enamored of Shrike, blushing shyly whenever the Solar favors her with a smile for pouring her tea just so. Of course, there was some good-natured "confirmation" of gender by Mari, but everyone in the room is quite used to Mari's grabby hands by now.
Robin is dancing to the tune of a strange desert ballad sung by her brother, with the backing music supplied by Shrike's Phantom-Conjuring Performance, when suddenly, a piercing shriek fills the air.
A startled Robin yelps in sympathy, taking the chance to leap into Shrike's arms as she does so. Lark sits bolt upright, causing Mari to spill the candied dates she was trying to flip into her mouth off the back of her palm.
"Hey!" she fumes, and then Lark's arms fold around her in a way that's as protective as it is clinging."Larkie?" she asks, as she feels his bound chest against her back. "You okie?"
"Oh... oh," he whispers as he slowly releases Mari. "Y-yeah, I'm all right. Just... well, we've all been a bit nervous recently, is all," he continues.
"What was that scream, anyway?" Shrike asks.
"Dunno, but let's find out, Nee-san!" Mari enthuses. Robin doesn't look terribly excited by this course of action.
"Er, Lady Shrike, Ms. Mari, m-maybe-"
"Woohoo, let's go!" Mari says as she drags everyone else out the room with her.
There's something in the alley.
It's hard to tell, but there's got to be something there. Otherwise there wouldn't be a group of soldiers standing in a group around it, would there?
The crowd's already forming, drawn partly by the scream, but mostly by curiosity. They're kept in check by the footmen bearing glass-bladed swords and tower shields, but mere weapons can't quell the unease rising up from the gathered people. Mari notes that even the armsmen are barely resisting the urge to look over their shoulders, while Shrike's keen ears pick up mutterings about "The Slayer" and "third time this week."
"Nee-san," Mari begins. "What's everyone scared of?"
"Some sort of Slayer, I think. And this is not the first time. Robin? Lark?" she asks with a quirk of her eyebrow.
The siblings are clutching hands and jump a little at Shrike's questioning look. "W-well... a-a couple of weeks ago, we started finding bodies in the streets. Th-they looked like they'd been mauled by some sort of wild animal... except that they found all sorts of weird tracks which led nowhere. At least, that's what I heard from the sergeants who came to us..."
"They're probably trying to keep this a secret," Lark says, "But it's common knowledge now. Even staying inside doesn't seem to help either; the beast breaks into houses too..."
"Hmm," Shrike muses. "I'd like to get a closer look at this creature's handiwork."
With a single whispered word that slashes through the rising confusion, Shrike parts the crowd before her and her entourage, bringing her face to face with the armsmen blocking off access. Just as they open their mouths to speak, however, the Quicksilver Falcon favors them with a wink and the ghost of pouted lips, and the men make way for their newfound spiritual liege.
What they find is something out of the tales of a soothsayer; a hapless burgher, torn open by inhuman strength, blood and entrails spilling out of the gruesome cavity of his abdomen. Shrike raises an eyebrow at the carnage, but is unmoved. Mari simply giggles and oohs in fascination. Robin almost shrieks, but Lark lays a steadying hand on her waist, and she buries her face in her brother's shoulder, sobbing quietly into the silk he's wearing. There's tracks in the blood, obviously animal, which lead off into the crowd. Shrike doubts anyone could follow them now, what with all those people trampling the trail into oblivion.
Then, the clatter of hooves gets the attention of the Shrike faction. Their leader turns to see a mounted nobleman (or a noblewoman; he'd count, given the plethora of jewelry and brightly-colored fabric he's wearing) riding up to the cordon of footmen, trailed by half a dozen other mounted warriors.
"All right, nothing to see here, move along," he calls out to the crowd as he approaches the scene of the murder.
"That's Damas Kas," Robin whispers. "One of the nobles in charge of security in the city. These are his men standing guard. We should probably go back... the Slayer probably won't climb as high as our room-"
The clop-clopping of Kas' horse suddenly ceases, and the four of them are suddenly aware that they have the lordling's full attention.
"And who the devil are these-"
His words die in his mouth the moment he sees Shrike, even as an appreciative leer grows on his face. The Eclipse can practically feel the man violating her with his eyes, but she betrays no sign of revulsion - it was, in a twisted way, a form of appreciation, and it would be rude to treat her admirers with scorn. More importantly, Damas Kas obviously felt something for her; this would be a crack in his soul that she could exploit.
"What ever would you ladies be up to? You girls shouldn't be walking around on the street without a good man to take care of you-"
That tears it. But Shrike's wrath manifests not as a scowl, but a smile.
"Dear Lord Kas," she purrs, winking at him with a look that would have crushed the will of the most devout ascetic. "You're absolutely right. We're just a trio of helpless young women in need of a big, strong man to protect us. Where ever shall we find one?"
She gives him a knowing look and smiles.
"Surely you'd volunteer to protect us, wouldn't you?"
It's a good two minutes before Kas regains the function of his mouth. His entourage, and indeed, Lark and Robin are entranced by Shrike's Essence-charged words. Only Mari seems unaffected; though that's probably because she's already dedicated to her Nee-san.
"I... I... o-of course! N-nothing would please me more!" he stammers, suddenly aware of how worthless and insignificance he is before her. Kas tries to dismount, fails miserably, and falls in a messy heap before Shrike. There is no malice in her smile. Why would she have to mock an insect collapsing before her?
"And... well, our feet are so tired from all the walking we've done... couldn't you lend us your horses so we could retire to... hm, your lodgings? After all, I'm sure you only want the best for us, don't you...?"
After a few minutes of this, a feebly subservient Kas is leading Shrike's horse by the rein, walking them back to his opulent estate, which also doubles as a local constabulatory. Several of his formerly-mounted underlings guide Mari, Robin and Lark behind him, as the the other commoners watch on in bemusement.
While this happens, however, nobody notices a shape in the shadows, its emerald eyes examining the torn body, and then the departing Solars with eyes of emerald. Then the night wind blows, and the shadows are empty once more.
Empty, except for the tracks in the dusted sands...
Damas Kas' servants watch with a mixture of bemusement and horrified fascination as the once arrogant lordling reduces himself to pitiful abasement before Shrike, who seems singularly uninterested in his antics. Instead, her attention's focused on his two lieutenants, who appear to be the ones who actually do all the work around here. Normally, there would have been the usual period of hemming and hawing and sorting out the chain of command, but Shrike has a way of instantly winning peoples' loyalty over, to the point where it seems perfectly natural to do as she says.
"Fifteen known victims in three weeks," Shrike remarks. "Troubling. Anything in common about them or the crime scenes?"
"There didn't seem to be any links between the victims, but animal tracks were found near the scene of the other murders," reports the first, a young man by the name of Khaled. "Only... they were unusual. The tracks we found were rather unusual for a desert city, like bears and wolves and other creatures. Then there's the size and depth of them - we've found cat-sized pawprints sunk two inches into paved stone, or massive footprints in narrow corridors. Anything that size wouldn't be able to fit in those places, but nobody's ever seen them, even after the reward was doubled."
"Reward, you say," Shrike smiles behind her fan. "Interesting. Tell me more."
"Uh, yes," his colleage Jamal pipes up. "Three hundred dinars. We received the usual flurry of reports at first, but then they dried up after Lord Kas started flogging people for giving reports which didn't help him catch the Slayer."
"Which was all of them," Khaled notes grimly.
Shrike turns a scornful eye to Damas, who quakes in his boots under her withering gaze. Then she returns her attention to the lieutenants.
"Hm. So we have no way of finding this creature?" Shrike asks.
"I wouldn't say that, no," Khaled replies. "There are mercenaries who are currently... unemployed. Some of them are manhunters, and possess talents in the fields of tracking and apprehension. The problem..."
"The problem?"
"They are mercenaries," Jamal says. "They will expect a substantial fee for their services... fees which we cannot afford."
His eyes flicker over to Damas Kas. Shrike gets the message.
"Very well," she nods. "How soon can you round them up?"
"It should not be difficult, ma'am. They're largely concentrated in the Eagle's Nest guesthouse in the Foreign Quarter. However, there's still the matter-"
"Take this," she says, tossing over a small sack to them. It... jingles? No, it rattles, and Khaled's eyes grow wide as he opens it to discover that it's full of brilliant cut Gem blood rubies.
"Keep a couple for yourselves. Use the rest to get the best men you can find. My companion and I will be surveying the scene of the crime for more clues. How soon can you get them ready?"
"With a signing fee like this... An hour, at most."
"Then go. We are not going to let this creature stay free any longer than we can help it."
"At once," Khaled and Jamal nod in unison. As they leave, Mari tugs on Shrike's sleeve.
"Nee-san, why so serious? You sounds like you really want to catch this guy..."
Shrike favors Mari with a smile, ruffling the girl's hair in just the right way to extract excited cooing noises from her. "Well, Mari, ever since we've been travelling around the South, we've just been drifting from one bordello to another. We've seen the sights, we've slept with the girls and boys, it's all gotten rather... boring, don't you think?"
Mari doesn't think of it that way, but then again, she's always been easily entertained by simple pleasures, such as playing pattycake with the whores after the usual bedroom gymnastics.
"Weeeeell... kinda. Yeah."
"This sounds like a challenge. It sounds interesting. And one way or another, we're going to bring him down. It's going to be a big adventure. Will you help me out?"
"Course I will!" Mari beams. "Adventure! Excitement! Fun! When do we start?"
"We've already begun, dear," Shrike says with a hug.
Meanwhile, outside, Khaled asks Jamal without turning his head, "So, it seems neither of us is particularly resistant to the idea of following this woman we've just met and who's wrapped Damas Kas around her little finger and seamlessly taken command of our corner of the city militia."
"Well," Jamal replies. "She's confident, she's got presence, she seems to know what she's doing, and to be frank, even that little girl beside her would probably have been better than Kas, that slug."
"You think it's wise to talk about our commander that way?"
"Who says he's our commander?" Jamal grins.
"Point," Khaled grins back. "Right, we'll need to start assembling the troops; let's not keep the new boss waiting..."
Shortly after that, Mari and Shrike are back in the square where the latest victim met his grisly end, flanked by a platoon of sentries. The men seem remarkably more comfortable and animated in her presence than in Damas Kas'; some of them even go so far as to smile and ruffle Mari's hair as she skips around them. Shrike, on the other hand, surveys the crime scene with an aloof eye.
This masks the fact that she knows next to nothing about where to even begin looking for clues about the Slayer. For now, it's just best to look important, and in charge, and keep Mari from -
- where's Mari?
"Soldiers," she snaps, and the armsmen spring to attention. "My ward. Where is she?"
Nervous looks and desperate glances all around. Shrike gives them half a minute, but no answer is forthcoming.
"So," she begins, wrath creeping into her voice. "You couldn't even keep your eyes on a-"
"Neeeeeee-saaaaaan~" a familiar sing-song voice calls out. Shrike turns. "Mari? Mari, where are you?"
"Over here~" she answers, waving from the roof of a fifty-foot building. She's holding up - wait, was she really holding up-
Shrike glances at the corpse. One arm is missing. Or rather, one arm was missing, because Mari is waving it like a flag to Shrike and the armsmen.
"You lot, to her, quickly!" Shrike orders the guardsmen standing nearest her. She turns to the building, but does not bother going in through the door. Instead, the Essence of the Solar spider floods her feet, permitting them to adhere smoothly to the walls of the building. She runs up beside the gouge-marks Mari's made with her climbing, and it's not long before she vaults the parapet and lands beside the girl. Mari's still holding the arm, a smile on her face. "Look what I found!" her expression says.
Shrike takes a look at the severed limb, then back down at the corpse in the plaza below them. The last stragglers of the armsmen haven't even made it to the building yet. She ignores them, and considers the distance between the body and the arm.
"Mari, did you find this here?"
Nod, nod.
"You're sure you didn't move it."
Nod, nod.
"How did you know it was here?"
She gives a smile and a helpless shrug, pointing to the wall on a nearby building.Shrike realises that there's large score marks along the side. They're well above ground level and spaced very widely; this suggests the Slayer was hopping from wall to wall before it made its way up to the roof. Shrike glances down, and sees the indentations of large, clawed feet scarring the stone beneath her. If she had found this...
How had she found it, in the first place? All this time she thought the girl had simply been playing around... Perhaps she's more tricky than she looks.
"Mari, you did a very good job. Nee-san is very proud of you," she smiles. Mari's face lights up, and she drops the arm to hug Shrike.
"Yaaaay~ Nee-san praised me! Nee-san is awesome!"
"No dear, you are," Shrike coos as she pats Mari's back in a comforting rhythm. "Nobody else could follow the trail, but you found it in a heartbeat. Tell me, do you know where it goes after this?"
Mari furrows her brow in thought. "Hmmmmm... I think I do... But I'm not sure... lemme take a look!"
Before Shrike can stop her, Mari's already bounding off, somersaulting off one roof to another with long, graceful leaps that bring up clouds of dust from the force of her impacts on the roofs which are her landing point.
"Mari!" Shrike shouts. But the girl's already out of earshot, or rather, she probably won't stop for anything at this point. The guards burst through the nearby door leading to the roof, panting from the effort of running up half a dozen floors in comparatively heavy chain armor. They look at Shrike, who's standing over a small mess of blood and a severed arm, looking into the distance. She turns her gaze on the guards. Her expression is grim.
"What took you so long? Back down the stairs; we're following Mari!"
It takes a while for this to set in, but Shrike silences the dissenting complaints with a vicious glare. Still, muttered grumbling rises from the guardsmen as thry grudgingly turn to make their way down...
Meanwhile, Mari's leaping from roof to roof, following the strange, inhuman tracks. Normally, she'd have as much luck following a trail over hard stone as she would have following a swimmer through the ocean, but evidently her quarry is heavy, as evidenced by the cracks and slightly depressed crater in which she finds the first set of prints on each rooftop. More importantly, the tracks change; the only reason she's even able to tell they're by the same being is because the Slayer is strong enough to emboss hoof and claw marks into the stone of the buildings. Sometimes she finds entirely different prints in the craters on a new roof; clearly it must have changed its tracks in mid-air.
All in all, it's a blessing that the killings took place in the Foreigner's Quarter. The imperishable Chiaroscuro glass would never have held a trail, and with some of the buildings reaching well over two hundred storeys in height, it would have had far too many places to hide.
It's been several minutes since she started the chase, but now it seems she's run out of trail. It ends in a large plaza, fairly deserted. There are no tell-tale craters or claw marks on the walls, and it frustrates Mari no end as she romps around the buildings surrounding the plaza.
"Dammit, where is it," she mutters, leaping from roof to roof. There's only clotheslines, staircases heading downstairs, shocked lovers trying to cover themselves up, a mousie... hey, it's a mousie! It's soooo cute! She has to have it right away it's so adorable~
"Mousie~" she calls out. "Come back, mousie, I love you!"
Mari pounces like a stalking cat; the rodent skims out of the way with an unnatural grace, leaving Mari to crash through the stone parapet and off the top of a four storey building. The mouse regards the girl-shaped hole in the low wall, when suddenly Mari leaps back up the full thirty vertical yards, face dusted in pulverized plaster and a wild look in her eyes.
"That wasn't very nice, mousie, now stand still and let me glomp you!"
The mouse's tail goes up in alarm. and it scampers aside just as Mari's grasping hands dig inch-deep gouges into the stone where it once lay. It squeaks and scampers up the far wall, throwing itself off the side...
...and Mari turns, just in time to see a bird fly away. Something inside her tells her that the bird is the prey she so desperately craves; she launches herself off the roof with a jump that collapses the ceiling not two feet from the cradle of a sleeping baby as she throws herself at the fleeing avian.
"GOTCHA BITCH!" she yells as her hands fasten around it's feathered body. That she is now almost thirty meters above the ground is of no consequence to her. She turns in mid-air, holding it triumphantly over her as her body hits the flagstones of the plaza like a meteor.
As the dust clears, the bird in her hand is no longer a bird; it shifts into a serpent, hissing as the moon plays in intricate silver patterns down its length. It goes for Mari's neck, slick scales slipping through bronze fingers as its venom-dripping fangs champ down on the girl's delicate neck...
...only to shatter like glass on her iron skin. Foolish creature; its intended prey had spent the daylight hours free-falling off the top of the mile-high towers of Chiaroscuro for her amusement and had headbutted colossal battering rams back off their housings; what threat were a mere pair of fangs?
The serpent hisses in agony, thrashing about so violently that it squirms out of Mari's grasp. As the Solar gets to her feet she sees the serpent shift, change, and grow into an eight-foot tall bipedal form, silver tattoos tracing its lithe, muscular body, down its furred, digitigrade goat legs, along its muscular, claw-tipped arms, and up to the tips of its long-horned goat's head.
Mari notes with some degree of prurient interest that the tattoos trace their way down a phallus as thick around as her slender forearm, but then her attention is captured by the rough voice growling from its bleeding mouth.
"M-monster," it says, heedless to the irony of its words. Its hands go out to its sides, and a pair of strangely bladed staves coalesce out of the air in sparkles of moonlight. "Who - what are you?" it snarls.
"I'm Mari!" she grins, seemingly unmoved by the sight of this creature, half again her own height, glowering at her with barely-restrained rancor. "Are you the person who's been eating people?" she asks innocently.
"You... you've stolen the face of a little girl and you dare accuse me of your crimes? Unforgivable! I will never forgive this! May you find absolution in death, chimera!"
The goatman slams the staves together, the blunt ends fusing seamlessly with a moonsilver weld, and then it leaps on powerfully muscled legs, bringing the combined weapon down on her. Mari's still smiling, right up to the point when she flickers to the side, and the staff crashes harmlessly into the ground not two inches away from her. It growls, and then kicks both hooved feet at her, pulling itself forward on it s embedded staff to add speed to the blow. Mari avoids them effortlessly, bending over backwards... and then each foot explodes into a nest of razor-bladed tentacles aimed at her head.
That, Mari is not expecting. She raises her hands to protect herself, but not fast enough to prevent the tentacles from scoring hit across her forearms, her face and her neck. Her invulnerable skin of bronze doesn't quite live up to its name; the tentacles score deep gashes over her arms and shallower ones on her face and neck. They're not fatal, or even terribly disabling, but they're enough to make Mari bleed... and make her mad.
"You're going to fucking pay for that," she growls. With the speed surpassing mere lightning she grabs the mess of retreating tentacles, pulls with all her strength... and throws an Essence-enhanced haymaker right into the beast's chest. At the last moment, its skin turns to an invulnerable moonsilver carapace... but even that doesn't save it from the brutal impact of her fist, which disperses the cloud of dust surrounding them with the shockwave generated by its sheer force. The goatman flies more than thirty yards away, bouncing off the corner of a nearby house and into and alley, where it caves the wall in on the other side of the now-collapsing building. It peels off the wall, collapsing in a boneless heap, though its grip never loosens on its strange bladed staff.
Blood drips from Mari's fists as she advances on the creature, a mix of eagerness and anger on her face. This thing is one of the few creatures that's managed to actually touch her besides Nee-san. She looks forward to utterly pulverizing it to dust.
The goat-man coughs up blood, but despite its dazed appearance, its mind is still sharp. It rises to its feet, trying to figure out how on earth it's going to deal with Mari. That feint with the tentacles got her, but he doubts she'll fall for it again. And by the gods, though she looked little older than a girl-child, she hit harder than the elders!
A petite shadow looms through the moonlit dust, and it has enough time to gape in shock before a tremendous shockwave disperses the dust and knocks the goatman to his knees. He shakes his head to clear it, just in time to see Mari's hands come down from where they've come together in a titanic thunderclap, to wrap around his throat.
"Oh yeah, that hurt, horny mousie. But that's okay. I hurt you too."
With that, she turns and spikes him off the ground so hard he bounces up a good twenty feet into the air. This time, the goatman actually loses consciousness for a second, only recovering as he plummets headfirst into the edge of a well. Thinking fast, he inverts himself so he can at least go feet-first into it instead...
...but then his staff sticks at the mouth, the force of the sudden deceleration almost making him lose his grip. Almost. He blinks again, looking around... and then he sees.
As Mari pulls him up by the wrist, one fist cocked to punch him all the way up to the moon, he releases one hand from his staff and holds it out to her.
"W-wait! Please! This fight is unnecessary!"
"Blasphemy! All fights are necessary!" she declares, tensing her muscles.
"No! Please! You said you were following the chimera, weren't you?"
"Corrupted ancient?" she asks, tilting her head sideways.
"The... the corrupted elder. The one who's been eating all these people. At... at first, I thought you were it, but... but the chimera does not fight like you, without talons or horns or tentacles."
"That's right! Mari uses the Justice Fist!" she grins, waggling her free hand for emphasis.
"Y-yes.. a-anyway. When I fell down the well, I...I found these... look..."
He points down, inside the well. Mari leans over the side... and recognizes the characteristic score marks of the Slayer.
"Hey, I know these!" she says, almost letting go of the goatman in her excitement. "So that's where he went! I've been looking for them!"
"You... you have... hmm... well, if you seek to hunt him down, maybe... maybe I could help."
Mari looks at the goatman. The anger's gone out of her eyes, replaced by her trademark curiosity.
"You could?" she asks. "Oh well, I suppose it can't hurt," she says as she dumps him unceremoniously to the ground. The goatman collapses onto his back, wheezing like an elderly man, though his labored breathing grows stronger by the second as his wounds heal before Mari's eyes.
"Oh gods," he pants. "You... you fight like the honored elders," he continues. "Never before have I seen anyone quite... er. Uh, l-little girl, why are you pinning my legs? What are you... w-wait! I thought we didn't have to fight any more!"
Mari looks up from where she's planted her feet on the sides of his knees, pinning them open and exposing... well, exposing his sensitive bits.
"Yeah, that's true. But you see these?"
Mari indicates the wounds on her forearms, neck and head, which, unlike his, do not regenerate.
"I-I'm sorry! I overreacted! Forgive me, please?"
"Forgive you?" she repeats. The concept is strange.
"That means, you, uh, don't hold it against me, as long as I'm sorry!"
"Oh. Well... are you truly sorry?"
"Yes!"
"Oh... okay, well, then I guess I forgive you for scratching me up," she says.
"Thank go-"
"Of course, you still have to suffer horribly for it first."
"Huh- wait! No! Noooooo~!"
The goatman's wail echoes into the night.
When Shrike and her long-suffering entourage finally reach the plaza, she finds chaos. The night breeze carries dust and debris in a vision-obscuring haze, the voices of panicked and distressed people rising through it like a symphony of the damned.
"What in Malfeas happened here?" Shrike asks. Nobody answers. Nobody can answer. The Eclipse grits her teeth as she desperately surveys the scene. All she sees is the smoke, the dust, and people wandering aimlessly. A gust of wind clears the drifting haze enough for Shrike to see that a nearby building's collapsed on the corner where a sizable chunk of masonry's been removed from it. Her mind races through various nightmare scenarios of what might have happened... and most of them end in the limp, broken body of Mari half-buried in the-
"Nee-san~"
A familiar voice lilts down from the roof of a nearby building. Mari waves to Shrike, silhouetted in the full moon rising behind her. Then, she jumps off the building's roof, landing in a spiderweb of cracks of stone flooring pulverized under her deceptive weight.
She holds her arms out to Shrike, only to receive a slap on the face that stuns Mari more than any hit from an Immaculate's grand goremaul. Before she can react, however, Shrike bends down and scoops Mari into a firm, fond embrace.
"Mari, Mari, you naughty, silly, bad, precious girl," Shrike whispers, in a voice that's not choked from dust. "Don't you ever, ever run off again like that without telling me. I was so scared... I didn't know what could have happened to you..."
"...but... Nee-san, I was following the-"
"It doesn't matter!" she hisses. "It doesn't matter if I find that Slayer or whatever it is if I lose you in the process. It's not worth it. Not worth you..."
"Awww..." Mari sniffs. It seems Shrike's mood is infecting her as well. THe two of them hold each other for a while before Shrike can get her composure back again.
"Now, tell me - what happened here?"
"I believe I can explain," a new voice comes from behind Mari. Looking behind the girl, Shrike sees a young man in loose, steppe clothing, the nubs of two horns poking out from behind his headband.
"My name is Tenacious Gareth-"
"Gari!" Mari interjects.
"-or Gari, yes if it pleases you," he says with an almost imperceptible groan which suggests that he's endured a lifetime of suffering in his fifteen minutes with the girl. "I am a..."
He looks at the footmen surrounding them. Most of them look tired and out of it, but he'd rather not take chances.
"Lady, I... I must speak with the two of you in private. Could you dismiss your armsmen?"
"Well, they're not my armsmen," Shrike says. "But very well. You guys, go help the people and calm them down," she says. The sergeant-in-charge salutes, and leads them off. In all likelihood, they'll probably find a place to sit down and have a drink, but that's all right. Shrike doesn't need them to do any real work right now. Once they're alone, Shrike turns back to Gareth.
"Proceed," she says.
"Ah, yes. Well, like I was saying earlier, my name is Tenacious Gareth. I am... a Chosen of Luna, much as you are the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun. Before you assume anything, allow me to state that I am not the fiend you are looking for."
"Oh? And how would you know that we are looking for a... fiend? A demon?"
"Miss Mari told me you sought a creature called the Slayer, that killed men in the streets and vanished without a trace."
"Ah. I see. And I assume you know what this demon is?"
"It is not a demon, Lady. It is infinitely worse."
He sighs and casts his eyes down, as though the act of looking at them were physically taxing.
"To my shame... I must confess that this creature is a chimera."
He spits the term like it were something foul. Shrike is nonplussed.
"And this is worse than a demon?"
"A demon is a fragment of a fragment of a broken god. Most of them, even those of the Second Circle, can be fought and beaten by the Exalted. They are bound to one set of attributes, and powerful as those attributes may be, one can change and adapt to defeat them. A chimera... a chimera is not so limited. They are those Lunar Exalted who were driven mad by the endless dynamism of the Wyld, unable to maintain their forms or even their minds. They are the ultimate predators - all of them, at once; and worse, many of these chimera are elders from the First Age, who lost their sanity and shapes in their flight from the victorious Dragon-Blooded."
"They are corrupted Lunar Exalted?" Shrike says. "Then how is it that you are not a chimera like they are?"
"Our elders devised tattoos to maintain our shapes against external shaping forces."
Gareth indicates a patch of whorling moonsilver designs spreading across his skin.
"These tattoos tell a story, a story of the self, engraved into our bodies and minds and heart. They define our identity, and in the process, prevent us from being altered by external influences. But... not all of us were tattooed; especially not the first of the ancients from the First Age. It is one such corrupted ancient that I have pursued to the City of Glass. Once, his name was Hengei Stalks-The-Truth. Now he is Hengei Kinslayer, for when his sister was tasked to apprehend him for tattooing, he struck her down with a poisoned claw and left her behind to die."
Gareth grits his teeth at the memory of this.
"She was my mentor. I swore to her on her deathbed that I would hunt him down. For almost a year I have tracked the chimera across the Southern sands... and now, we are here. It seems you wish it destroyed almost as much as I do, and while I am leery of the forces you command, I am not averse to working with them. Will you aid me in my quest? Or rather, will you accept my aid in your endeavour?"
Shrike looks coolly at Gareth. His words ring true, and if their opponent was truly a fallen legend of the First Age, they'd need all the help they could get to deal with him. If nothing else, they should at least avoid working at cross-purposes; her men might well confuse him for the Slayer, if they were not forewarned.
"Very well," she nods. "Then we shall return to our headquarters to plan our next course of action..."
"Or we could pursue it right now," he says. "During my, ah, encounter with Mari, I found its tracks leading down the inside of the well over there,"
Gareth indicates the half-ruined well.
"If we went down it right now, we could probably track it back to its lair-"
"And then what, you'd fight it alone?" Shrike counters. "Do you think the three of us will be enough to deal with the beast? Assuming, of course, that we managed to keep up with you down there and didn't get lost."
"But it'll attack again. I know it. It won't be satisfied with just one kill a night - do you really want to let it loose on the people?
"Do you think I want to? Look, I know why you want to go after it, but if we started following it right now, we wouldn't be able to do much to it with just the three of us. My people are assembling a bunch of experts, though. THey should be able to help."
"Well, if you say so," Gareth nods, glad that he doesn't have to defend his plan. "Lead on then, Lady Shrike," he says.
"So these are the men?" Shrike asks Jamal. The men in question are the several dozen "specialists" that he and Khaled have hired with Shrike's funding. Like most mercenaries, they don't look particularly presentable, but Shrike doesn't want parade troops who'll fold at the first sign of danger, she wants people who can bring down an ancient Lunar god-monster. At a discount.
She knows it's probably an insult to them, but she asks the two lieutenants, "You're sure they can help?" Jamal nods, a faint look of resignation on his face. Perhaps he was anticipating this question all along.
"Most of these guys you see here, we've had to take in at one point or another. Some are fighters, so we know roughly what they can do."
Shrike's expression is grim. The Chimera is probably not a creature which can be killed with brute force. You'd have to drive it out of the city, or failing that, lure it out. That thought is sobering. She does not relish sacrificing men as bait to that creature, even if they did know what they were getting into.
"How many of them are sensible?" she interjects. Jamal and Khaled look confused, so she elaborates. "How many of them are disciplined and smart enough to follow a plan and have useful skills? We'll need people who can track and move fast.
"Oh. That's... trickier..."
He indicates a much smaller group, less than ten in all. Shrike groans quietly to herself. She'll just have to make do.
"Okay. These guys? I want to talk to them. Everybody else gets the basic rate and they go out with the sentries. Hmm... do we have fireworks?"
"Fireworks?" Jamal asks. "Uh. Well, not really, but we could buy them -"
"Get as many as you can, get bright colors. Rockets, mainly, anything which is visible at night," she says"
"Understood, Lady Shrike," Jamal nods.
"Right, then carry on. Khaled will supervise the ones we don't need. I'll talk to the rest..."
The moon shines high overhead. Mari is bored, Gareth is nervous, and Shrike? Annoyed, most likely.
THe plan was that they'd station people all over the Foreigner's Quarter, each of them with a firework rocket. Anyone who saw an unnatural-looking animal would set off his rocket, and one of the handpicked assistants would investigate it if it were in his area. If it really was the chimera, he'd send up a red flare, and the Celestials would move out toward the location.
Shrike has seen three rockets go up so far. Each of them has been followed by a green "all clear" flare. That was the problem - you couldn't describe a chimera since it changed shape all the time, so the people on the streets probably just fired off a rocket whenever they saw something. Even the deputies only knew a little more than the rank and file.
A rocket goes up. They probably saw a two-headed goat, or a cat with no tail, or-
And a red flare.
Shrike jumps up, waking Mari and getting Gareth's attention.
"Red light," she says, pointing to the crimson beacon in the distance.
"Let's go~" Mari exclaims, picking the two of them up before they can protest and breaks into a mad dash over the roofs. As they near the source of the flare, they notice the torches of the city guard. They're moving erratically, like the men carrying them are running around in a panic, and some of them are very, very still...
They touch down in front of a harried man, one of the assistants Shrike hand-picked earlier. She remembers his name - Duro Stonespeaker, an Earth-Aspected outcaste. He was calm enough when she spoke to him in Damas Kas' villa. That calm has deserted him now.
"I saw the rocket, but when I arrived at the scene, this is all I found," he says as he shows them a scene of blood and carnage. Blood is sprayed over the walls of the houses and the stink of blood and offal and death hangs heavy in the air. Mari holds her nose at the smell, while Gareth watches impassively.
"Where is it?" Shrike asks.
"I didn't see it. This is all I found," Duro says. "I - wait. I sense something. Hostility. Someone... something... closing in."
The outcaste's voice trails off as he closes his eyes, focusing on the link between the Essence of Earth within him and the land itself. His all-encompassing earth sense can't tell him where the hostility comes from... but he knows that it's approaching them.
"It's here? Where?" Mari asks excitedly before Shrike shushes her.
"Don't distract him. He might lose it!"
"It's all right," Duro says between gritted teeth. "I'm sensing it through the earth; or rather, its hostile intent. And it's very hostile. I haven't felt anything like this... ever."
"I doubt you would have," Gareth nods. "It's ancient, and it's got a lot of hate in it."
Silence reigns for a few moments, broken only by the crackling of torches. Then Duro speaks up.
"I have movement. It... it's..."
The earth pulses imperceptibly under the Dragon-Blood's feet as he sends a rippling wave of Essence out through the earth's surface. It tells him that there's three people standing beside him, one abnormally heavy for its size, that there's several families of people in the nearby houses, including one or two pets, various multilegged small animals huddled in corners...
...and something that weighs as much as an elephant, its killing intent like a consuming flame.
"There!" he shouts, pointing toward a deserted alleyway. The three Celestial Exalts turn... and there's nothing. Mari looks disappointed.
"What's there?" she asks, heading over to the alley. She peers around, the annoyance growing on her face. Then she spots it.
"Kitty~" she exclaims, holding up a strange black cat. Gareth's eyes widen and Duro's close again. The massive weight is gone? No, still there, just... Mari? No... the weight was added to hers when she picked up the cat...
"Mari, put it down, it's the-"
And then Gareth's warning is cut off as the flesh of the innocuous-looking cat ripples and it turns into a gigantic fanged maw of silver teeth clamping shut over her arm. Shrike winces and looks away, Gareth draws his bladed staves, Duros reaches for his goremaul... and Mari simply smiles at the massive assemblage of moonsilver teeth trying fruitlessly to puncture her iron skin.
"So you're the beastie, then," she giggles. "Nice to meet you," she smiles, and then she lifts the easily-six-foot across mouth assembly and slams it into a nearby wall. Once, twice, three times, until she's caved the chimera's outline into the wall and its moonsilver teeth break from the sheer force of the repeated impacts. It slides limply from her arms, losing cohesion as it does so. Mari pokes the comatose heap with her foot and shrugs when it gets no response.
"This was the chimera? Man, what a puss-"
And then a dragon's mouth on a giraffe's head made of flowing silver snatches Mari up and throws her through the dent that she made in the wall using the chimera. The head retracts into the lunargent protoplasm. whose movements are getting more and more coordinated as it rises to its feet. Having disposed of Mari, it turns on Gareth and Shrike...
"You'll meet your end this night, monster!" Gareth shouts as he springs through the air to assault it. The bladed staves he holds are deceptively small, but he brings them down with the force of a guillotine upon the blobby mass. The corrupt moonsilver splashes, unable to resist either the sacred weapons or the strength which drives them, and the chimera parts a hole around the vengeful Lunar. An exultant Gareth proceeds to press the attack... and narrowly avoids running into a wall of sharpened spikes which have suddenly been grown into his path. Fusing his staves together with a flare of Essence, he uses it as a pole and vaults back and away from the chimera before it can capture him.
"Spiked tentacles," he grimaces to Shrike. "I don't like those. We'll have to keep it at range," he says, holding his staff before him like a halberd. The chimera roars, then fashions itself into a winged tyrant lizard before plunging down on the two of them with an inhuman roar. Shrike and Gareth give ground, trapping the beast between them... but then they feel the city walls on their back, and as the chimera head on Shrike's side transforms into a horned bear with more spiked tentacles, she realizes that the reverse is true - the chimera has trapped them instead, now that they're split up and unable to help each other.
The bear-body charges her, and she sidesteps effortlessly, ... and into the path of the half-dozen moonsilver tentacles intent on skewering her. Only her flawless skill at evasion permits her to extricate herself from the nest of razor-sharp appendages without harm, but several nicked strands of hair and torn clothing bear mute testament to her opponent's speed and power. Meanwhile, on the other side, Gareth hooks open the top of chimera's upper jaw with his staff, but is forced aside when the chimera's tongue transforms into a champing maw that seeks his flesh. Thinking quickly, he recovers his staff, causing the chimera's mouth to slam shut on its own tentacle tongue, and with a mighty shout, he slams his staff into the creature's closed jaws, driving it back... and toward Shrike, who is unprepared for the thing to come lunging at her. Fortunately, the chimera was not expecting it either, and Shrike takes the opportunity to dart into the nest of tentacles and deal it a palm stroke, the Pillar-Shattering Blow, which shoves it back the way it came. However, the sum total of damage to it seems to be minimal, and both sides of the chimera-creature prepare to charge again...
...until a certain diminutive SOlar comes crashing down on it from above, piercing it in its body-core with a broken pillar.
"How about that?!" she exults, stomping once more on the pillar to nail it in place. The two body-halves attacking Shrike and Gareth retreat, allowing them to escape. Mari hops back to the ground, rejoining the others as they watch the chimera struggle.
"Mari! Are you all right?" Shrike asks.
"No worries, Nee-san," she smiles. "Hard head," she says, tapping her skull with a metallic ting.
"I think you just made it mad," Gareth says, as the chimera wrenches the pillar out of its body with a giant hand shaped from its fluid mass and crushes it between the trunk-like fingers. The hand retreats into the rest of its mass, but there's a certain sluggishness to its movements which is evident to the three of them.
"Made it mad, but hurt it," Shrike smiles, patting Mari on the head.
Now the chimera grows to the size of a house and takes the form of a giant spider/scorpion, a mass of snapping lobster claws sprouting from its back. It advances on the three of them, silver eyes mad with pain and the Wyld. It passes through an intersection...
"What in the name of Heaven is that?"
"I don't know! Shoot it! SHOOT IT!"
...and a storm of firewand blasts and arrows coated in Ardent Embrace Resin strike it in the flank, setting the chimera's entire right side ablaze with the incendiary alchemical concoctions. It turns to strike at its tormentors... and then, more arrows strike it in the rear, from the other force of militiamen who followed the red flare to its source. Attacked from both sides, the monster seems unsure as to who to attack first. This gives Mari the chance to jump onto the chimera's head, stomping it into the ground, while Shrike once again administers a palm strike to its rear end, powerful enough to launch the back of the beast a good ten feet into the air.
"Keep hitting it," she shouts to the militiamen. "You're wearing it down!"
The chimera howls from the sheer fury of the amount of attacks made against it. It was supposed to be the predator here! But the prey-species had trapped it, beaten it, stabbed it, and now... they might even kill it. It couldn't let that happen. It had to survive at all costs.
The flaming, battered monster roars loud enough to be heard across the city, and then it collapses, motionless, to the ground. "Is it dead?" Mari asks, approaching the burning carcass.
"It looks dead," Duro says from beside her.
"Hey guys! It's dead! You killed it!" Mari shouts, and a cheer goes up from the militiamen.
"Although," Duro asks. "How did we miss something that big before?"
"It can change its shape," Gareth replies. "You saw it. It became the cat, which tried to eat Mari."
"But I still sensed it, because of its mass... that didn't change," he nods. He closes his eyes, as though to pray in forgiveness, and then he grimaces.
"All right, this is not good," he whispers to the Celestials. "Something... heavy is moving around in the earth below us. I think it's the monster."
"What? But I thought we killed it!" Mari retorts. That cuts short the celebration amongst the militiamen.
"I think we hurt it badly," Gareth offers. But it is a cunning creature. Observe," he says, as he raps on the chimera's body with a fist. It crumbles to brittle fragments under his hand, revealing that the burning outer layer is little more than a false shell. There's a roughly man-sized hole in the ground under the shell, leading to parts unknown.
"A decoy," Shrike says. "Well, what do we do now?"
"We go after it," Gareth says. "It's hurt badly and won't be able to use its full strength on us, and we have Duro here to follow its movements through the earth. This is our chance," he says.
"But can we kill it?" Shrike asks. "It took a lot of punishment and it still managed to escape."
"About that," Gareth says, his hand sticky with the chimera's blood. "I think I have a plan..."
"Right, so... we find it here, in the tunnels under Chiaroscuro, and then... we beat it up?" Mari asks Duro, who's concentrating on feeling the dragon's bones.
"Roughly, yes. The good thing is that since we're underground, I can sense movements at a much longer distance. Basically, I have a rough idea of where it is, but I can't pin it down unless I can concentrate..."
"Okay, but why did we have to split up with Nee-san and Gary?"
"Well, they're, er, lures, so to say. They attack it, and the thing follows them, and that makes the job easier."
"Okay... then what about us?"
"Well, someone has to protect me... and besides, if it comes after me, you're probably the strongest of all of us. That should give it a nasty surprise - wait. It's... it's coming! That way!"
He points to a nearby wall, and Mari wastes no time in smashing through it with a hard right. Shrike runs through the opened gap, followed by Gareth... and then the chimera, now in the form of a maned bull, its flanks scored with moonsilver-dripping wounds.
"Now, Mari! Toward the tubes!"
The girl obliges, with a mighty punch that catches the chimera in the side and blows it back a good twenty yards down the tunnel they're in. It narrowly manages to avoid being smashed a second time, and counters with a storm of quills tossed from its mane. But Shrike has already closed the distance, and even as she wards herself from the quills with a flowing motion of Essence-enhanced sleeves, she turns the stolen momentum into a skilful counterattack that knocks it back a good dozen yards. Mari takes her turn to surge forward, but the chimera's had it. It flees the Solars, adhering to the ceiling and scuttling down the passageway faster than a horse at full gallop. It turns into a nearby branch... and is cast back out again by Gareth's staff.It roars in frustration and pain, then continues down the passage, hoping to outpace its pursuers. Despite their best efforts, they're unable to keep pace with the monstrous predator, but they can still hound its every step. The chimera glances ahead, unknowable senses telling it that the dead end in front of it is actually quite passable. It howls in triumph as it smashes therough the flimsy obstacle...
...and into the lava tube beyond it. It's going too fast, and received too little warning to stop in time. The hit against the other side of the tube stuns it... and as it bounces off and into the lava, it shrieks in horrific agony as the molten rock melts its impure metal-flesh. Shrike, Mari, Gareth and Duro watch impassively as it shapeshifts ineffectually, trying to take a form which will save it, until it seems as though it acknowledges its mortality and dissolves into a pool of quicksilver atop the magma, which it swiftly dissolves into.
"That's the end of it? Shrike asks.
"Yes," Gareth says. "It had to be done this way. The elder chimerae regenerate from even a drop of blood left behind. Their entire bodies must be consumed in fire or they will come back."
"That's a very hard-to-kill monster," Duro nods.
"Whatever, we got him in the end!" Mari grins. "Candytime?"
"Yes, candytime," Shrike smiles. "Come on, we're done here."
Dawn sees Shrike and Mari passed out on the bed, holding Robin and Lark close to them. Duro and the other "specialists" are spending their coin on amphoras of wine. Damas Kas sits morosely at his desk, pondering Shrike's command to "serve, respect and protect the people; especially women". Khaled and Jamal are getting a well-deserved rest.
Mari blinks the last fragments of sleep away. Through squinted eyes, she can see a vaguely humanoid shape standing in front of her. "Thank you," it says.
"Huh?" Mari yawns.
"Thank you for helping me complete this quest of mine," Gareth smiles. "I... I must leave now. I must report this victory to the Silver Pact, so they may rejoice that the soul of a fallen elder is free once more."
"Ohhhh. Okay," she nods. "Will I see you again?"
"Luna permitting, yes," Gareth replies. "And I'll look forward to it."
He stands there for a while, looking over the four of them. Finally, he sighs.
"Well, I guess I'll have to go now. May the gods be with you, Mari."
"Goodbye too," Mari waves to Gareth. Then, she begins singing the songs of sorcery, to harden her skin and bones, as the sun rises.
And the world turns toward morning.
