MQ: Blood Red Blossoms 2 - The Reach of the Tower

[RumpleGrumblePuss]

Looking up the spiral of the staircase, I could only see to the next door before the staircase curved, blocking sight of anything further up. I wasted a long moment, tapping a foot and chewing on my lower lip, hesitating and thinking of the wisdom or foolishness of heading up to explore the Spire. My current companion did little to reassure me of my relative safety. The most Puppy would have done or could do is run screaming for help. What in the world is his name, anyway? I wondered, glancing back at the pale young man.

“Umm, what do I call you? I can’t keep calling you Puppy. Well, I could but that's a little demeaning… unless you’re into that kind of stuff and this most certainly is not the place or time for it.” I smiled slightly, just to show I was joking. I kind of hoped the fear-induced grey tone to his pallor would dissipate if I lightened up a little.

“Ki…Kiyeth Anamolei, that’s my name.” I shook my head at the gaze that darted about, reminding me of a rabbit trapped in a room with a wolf or three.

“Chill for a moment. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you don’t calm down, Ki. Can I call you Ki? Look, I’m going to keep heading up to check out what’s in the Spire and places that would be good for a defense. Undoubtedly, there are weapons or items that can be used as a weapon up there. If you want, you can go back and stay with the other students. With Lillian awake and Godhand there it should be safe for the time being.” A scrabbling noise echoed down the staircase and, for a moment, I cocked my head, frowning as I listened. A sneak attack?

Hugging the wall, I crept forward up to the room where the noise came from. The sound of furniture being moved and heavy breathing was enough to soothe my jumpy nerves. If they are breathing, then I guess it’s fine. I feel a little sorry for the poor bastard that was wandering through the forest. I held my breath and prayed that the door wouldn’t make a noise as I nudged it open just a crack. Thankfully it moved smoothly and silently as if it has been oiled just yesterday. That’s a little creepy.

My first glimpse of the person inside left me with a less than impressed impression. In fact the older man reminded me much of a used-car salesman. Shaking my head, I pulled the door shut and hurried up the stairs. The second set of footsteps behind me freaked me out for a moment.

“Decided to stick around, Ki?” I asked, trying to keep the heartbeat I felt in my throat from being audible in my voice. Frowning at the sheepish smile sent my way, I ignored Kiyeth and contuined past the room with the snake oil salesman. Behind me, Ki disappeared and reappeared as he checked the rooms I passed. By the time I reached the top of the Spire, he held a blade and had pressed another into my hand. I glanced at the pretty dagger; black crystals glittered prettily in old metal that badly needed a good polish. I’m better off with my whips, I know squat about using a sword. This room seems vaguely familiar…I think.

Dusty chairs ringed a table and on a dais, a pedestal rested. A dark patch marred the gleaming obsidian stone. Curious, and blaming my curiousity on the cat parts in me, I got within a few feet of it before I realized that is was blood, probably very old blood. Wrinkling my nose, I stepped away from the blood on the floor. The shouting from outside drew my attention. Cautious, but not foolish, I headed for the nearest window. Give ourselves up to Xem’zund? Yeeeah, I’ve always wanted to be a zombie. That’s what every little girl dreams of being.

“Here’s your answer to that proposition. Sit and spin!” I held a hand out the window in a one-fingered salute. Snorting in derisive amusement, I peeked out the window then promptly pulled back as an arrow struck the stone inches from my face.

“Goddamn son of a bitch.” I whispered to myself. “Go rot in hell you freaks! No one is coming out there.”

[Godhand]

"Goddamnit, quit being so fuckin' tacky! You're making the rest of us look bad! 'Sit and spin'. Jesus."

Jesus, just what kind of a grabass unit had he been railroaded into protecting? Most of these kids weren't even old enough to grow facial hair, and even his so-called comrade was nothing but a foul mouthed cretin and, he suspected, a dominatrix. And the rest of 'em? Hell...You had the kid from before, the one who tried to get in on ground zero of the zombie attack. He had balls but not much to back it up. The rest of them? Who the Hell were they? The only one in the tower besides Godhand that was worth her weight in, well, zombie meat was Lillian. She was still spent from taking down that Queen Demon though, so he certainly couldn't count on her to get them out of this jam.

Godhand walked up the stone stairs, supressing a smile when the cat woman barely managed to dodge an arrow. They'd gotten the kids to go up. As high as they could go. Treat the tower like a sinking ship, which was basically what it was. The idea was that whatever enemies that made it past the Godhand/Lillian meatgrinder would be too beat up to do any real damage. Still, the tower apparently held many treasures. It'd been protected from looting thanks to the extremely hostile flora that surrounded it, and that meant that it was still filled with useful items. It was as he was contemplating this that that girl from earlier, the "We're all sixteen!" kid came running down the stairs. She was a pretty girl; glasses and smock and everything. She reminded him of Lillian.

"Mr. Godhand, Mr. Godhand, come quick!"

"What can I do for you, sweetheart?"

"There's something you need to see!"

She grabbed him by the hand and practically dragged him up the stairs, her shyness discarded in favor of self-preservation. When they made it to the top floor, that's where it was. The most beautiful Goddamn armor he'd ever seen. It was made of some kind of glassy dark metal, probably Delyn or black diamond or something. It was a full plate, so black it almost hurt your eyes. Horns on the helmet, too. Every piece fit together perfectly so that there wouldn't be an inch of flesh exposed for whoever was wearing it. It obviously belonged to the long departed master of the tower, and it was held in place by stark white chains coiled around it. He had no idea what they were made of, but he was certainly not going to walk away from there without that armor. The mercenary's hands gripped the chains, the young students watching with bated breath. Godhand began to pull, his forearms bulging and his face fearsome. There were a couple of steps back from the children when he bared his teeth, but finally there was a loud snap and the chain dissipated into this air. The gunman stumbled backwards, falling on his ass and looking up at the fearsome armor much like a child would at his father.

It was his, now.

[Ataraxis]

Before she had seen the rows of decrepit archers nock their black-tinted arrows, Lillian had moved away, her attention drawn by the ruckus that came from above. It was strange, like the snapping of massive chains that had restrained some unearthly beast. The librarian swallowed a lump in her throat, feeling a vile darkness that escaped from the upper floor on unseen waves. Perhaps not a chthonian monster, but something had been unleashed, and there was no denying it.

“Steer clear of the windows for as long as you can,” she said to one of the students after making three steps on the stairway, her tone one of precaution. “If you need to look out the window, ask the girls to lend you some mirrors. Never look out directly, unless you enjoy the idea of being riddled with arrows.” With that she resumed her ascent, crouching low every time she saw dim lights coming from the outer world, where the dead besieged the living.

Soon, she was upon a room of the same unliving obsidian, yet here there were lines through the stone, more like veins than the crackling of thunder. It might have been a hallucination, an illusion brought by the damage she’d sustained in her previous battle or the grand headache that had suddenly seized her mind in a vice grip, but she could have sworn that the walls had pulsed. ‘Not so unliving, perhaps?’ When she saw the mercenary on his hindquarters among a pool of bone-white shards, however, all her questions had vanished as one. “Oh, no… what have you done?”

If he even answered, she could not hear. The black armour had taken the whole of her attention, had made her breathless. Yet it was not its fine craft and obvious quality that had stolen her eyes, but the onyx stone that had been fused into the chestplate. All sound had been buried behind its thrumming voice, one that filled her mind to the brim. Her body answered by approaching, by extending a hand to touch the sorcerous stone.

Black chains lashed out, wrapping around her like a swarm of snakes. A second later, and not even the smallest fold of her white dress could be seen under the shroud. Then, without a warning, the caliginous mass burst into a storm, then vanished through a window, a dark wave that resembled a murder of crows.

Lillian was gone.

(Temporarily hopping from this FQ quest to another. Link forthcoming.)

[Ignition]

Tom groaned. This was the kind of scenario a young warrior would have dreamed about. One tower, only a few people left inside, the fall of Eluriand saturating the air and hanging heavy within the heads of all Raiaera. If Tom survived, he would become a legend, the kind of person whose name or alias was told to children so that they too would have the courage should they ever end up in an impossible situation.

That was why Tom knew that he was doomed. Legendary heroics only happened in fairy tales, and no fairy tale started with a tired and sweaty survivor of a shipwreck.

A woman who may have been better cast as the leader of that fairy tale offered a refusal for them. Tom tried to smile, but he couldn’t. It felt comforting knowing that there was someone out there willing to defy Xem’zund, even if the words were hollow. More likely than not, they were.

With his lungs still weary just from running to the tower, Tom didn’t move to the windows. He didn’t want to reveal his position. Certain that there was someone in the tower of greater interest than himself, he secretly hoped that Xem’zund’s army might find the people that revealed themselves, kill them and leave. The Obsidian Spire seemed full enough that it would have been easy to hide, just so long as the forgotten one’s minions had no sense of smell. If they did, no amount of hiding would be enough, Tom’s living blood would be all but a homing beacon for them.

The only problem was, Tom wasn’t sure if they could sense the living.

“They would have had to,” he figured. “They knew there were people in here… but then, they would have guessed that from the barricade, either that or they saw me try and get in.” Tom sighed. “If I can’t scare them out of here, then I’m zombie fodder…” he realized.

“No fucking way out but through,” he said out loud, either in a vain attempt at a little sympathy from whatever celestial beings might be watching or to convince himself of this unfortunate truth.

Not knowing what else to do, Tom made his way towards the sound of the voice. He found it in a room with dusty chairs and a dias. As he entered, the woman had just moved out of the way of one of the zombie’s arrows. Tom nodded solemnly. “I expected as much,” he thought pityingly. “Damn rot-lungs would have shot her even if she’d wanted to surrender.”

“I’m Tom,” he offered, knowing the situation was one in which niceties weren’t needed and that a stranger, as long as he was still breathing, wouldn’t be treated as unwelcome. “If you go near a window again, make sure you go at it hard. Even those damn decay brains don’t miss twice too often…”

[Skie and Avery]

The tower shook once, then twice, and then a final time. From the sloped roof, debris that had been caught there came cascading down. The doors rumbled, and shouts of derision floated up to the ears of those at the top. At the bottom, with a fallen tree supported between them, Akashiman soldiers with small features and solid armor were pounding at the door. Desperately trying to undo what Godhand had done, they weren't making much headway.

Behind them, Lady Idril stood, watching, yelling. She had taken a cat of nines, corded seemingly innocently around her wrist now. However, every single one of the men that stood, their eyes glued to the higher reaches of the Spire, knew how wrong that assumption was. The Lady turned, her azure eyes searching those of Braedan's.

"Sure, there is a faster way to infiltrate?" she asked. The commander nodded, his eyes sweeping up to where a pale flash of skin against the obsidian had come under siege by a flurry of arrows.

"They will not come to meet us again." He turned, as if to walk away, and then paused, looking over his shoulder at his general. "Send five of the Archaos. That should be enough."

After a few moments, there came a rumbling in the ranks, as a handful of the patchwork creatures came skittering to the base of the tower. The torsos of men, the faces of spiders with eight black beaded eyes and crushing mandibles, they were every bit as sickening as the furry, seeking length of their eight legs. They reared up, shouting a battle cry as their feet found purchase on the side of the tower and slowly, they began to ascend.

In the room our heroes occupied, small holes in the wall were carved, large enough for a bolt to slip through and for a peek above that. It was as if this room were designed to be used for the managers of the large bolt bows to do battle against archers below. In the room directly underneath them, a kitchen, ethereal fires lit the hearth, pots full of stagnant rainwater that had seeped down through the well concealed chimneys began to steam and bubble.

[RumpleGrumblePuss]

A moment of insanity. At least, that’s what I was claiming. I cast an acid etched grin at Godhand and shook my head. Jeez, the people of Althanas have no sense of humor. I’m glad I only look the part. I could swear that the stress was getting to me and I was splintering into a thousand Jennifer non-friendly pieces. Then again, I wasn’t completely Jennifer anymore, so hey, what was the problem? Sure, I did some odd things, but I was still me. Wasn’t I? If I question my sanity, then I must still be sane, unlike a few people nearby. The googly eyes Godhand and Lillian had been sending back and forth were a little sickening. The undead are attacking and Lillian looks like she wants to be picking out drapes for a cozy little nest. Jeez, get a room people. I changed my mind as I saw the flock of starry-eyed students following Godhand. I wondered if I pushed him out the window, would they follow the jerk? I almost hoped so.

“So, how did you manage to run through an undead-infested forest without becoming lunch? I’m sure we’re all dying to know. Excuse the pun.” I smiled nastily at Tom as I rounded on him to give an oh-so-polite response to his greeting, letting my fangs drop into the toothy smile for a moment before snapping them back up into place.

“The hulk over there is Godhand, I’m Kahlina, and the little cute librarian… Lillian!” My hand pointed out Lillian just as she vanished into the shadows. Just great, perfect. What’s next? Waldo is finally found? Some where in the back of my mind a once cute song was ringing through my head. There were five in the bed and the little one said. Roll over! Roll over! So they all rolled over and one fell off. Then, there were… I wonder if I should just skip to two in the bed, or does Tom count?. Disgruntled and more than a little angry, I turned on Godhand. Pieces of the broken chains flew and ricocheted off the walls with tiny high-pitched pings as I viciously kicked at them.

“This is all your fault. If you weren’t so gung-ho about acquiring your shiny new armor, Lillian would still be here, and we need her abilities a whole hell of a lot more than we need some muscle bound, would-be hero. Especially one that prefers brute force to using their brain! I so miss guns. It was so much easier on Earth. Grab a gun, aim, fire and presto! They’re dead. Also, the dead stayed nice and dead. If I ever get a hold of a gun, I’m going to shoot you.” A gauntlet, part the damned suit of armor, gleaming almost wetly in the light, was within toeing reach. Despite what had happened to Lillian, I kicked at it too, sending it skittering across the floor. With something between a snort and a huff, I turned away and headed for the stairs.

“Stay with the sheep and chicks. Someone needs to baby-sit and you’re just the man, Godhand. Call me a bitch all you want, it doesn’t make it an un-truth. Kai, follow or stay but help someone none the less.” From the cool stone beneath my thin-soled shoes, I faintly picked up the vibrations from the blows to the tree blocking the entrance and the walls around it. I set out to find something that would help me take out my anger on someone else. As snarky as I wanted to be, and could be, it would do us little good for me to keep snipping away at egos. Even if it was badly needed.

A single curve of the poorly lit stairwell, and I came to the first door. Peeking into the room, I saw a kitchen. Well, actually I saw dust, a table covered in dust, a shelf with a few decaying books on it and dust, and a half dozen simmering cauldrons. I drew back, then froze. Simmering cauldrons? I had a moment where I was confused. Boiling hot water would be handy as would the hot metal of the cauldron itself, but how had it appeared? Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, I opened the door again and looked in just to make sure I wasn’t seeing stuff. Seven cauldrons filled with boiling liquid, check. One nervous break down…nope.

“Kai! Come… oh, you’re already here. Umm, okay. Help me drag these up the stairs to where everyone else is waiting.” Studying one of the cauldrons, I glanced over to see if he could move one of the heavy cauldrons himself only to see him singing quietly over it. Huh, must be casting a spell of some sort. Resisting the urge to start humming ‘A hunting we will go’, I hurried out to check the next room.

Let’s see, door… needs a fresh coat of varnish. Wow, a nearly dust free room. I bet the brownies have been hitting up most of the tower. Mmm, I wonder who has been paying them all these years for their hard work. Faced with a empty room, I returned to the kitchen to help with moving the cauldrons. Promptly, I found it to be heavy, far too heavy to lift and almost too heavy to drag on my own. Feet slipping across the smooth stone, I slowly forced the water-filled cauldron to scoot across the floor with a headache-inducing shriek of tortured metal on stone.

“I’ll do that. I have a feather weight spell I can cast.” Between jumping in surprise and slipping once more, I found myself sitting on a backside that smarted from the sudden impact. Biting my tongue on a curse I glared at Kai, daring him to laugh at me. Other than a quirk of his lips, he seemed wise enough to not laugh, so with my bruised dignity drawn around me like a cloak, I got up and flounced indignantly over to the books to check them out. It took a lot of effort to not rub at the abused muscles.

“You’re lucky I like you. I’m going to check the books. Perhaps there is something usefull in them.” Even if it’s a recipie for zombie stew. Badly moldered, the books had to be handled with caution, and rather than hold one in my hands, I laid it on the table and turned the pages with the tip of a claw. The faint ticking of something hard against stone halfway caught my attention as I studied a recipie that had to do with vegation. Perhaps it was a spell, I’d never heard of a recpie that called for the person to say something to the veggies. Saying ‘obey me’ or sorry that I’m going to make you into lunch to a head of broccoli just sounds odd, after all. Some of the words were faded and hard to read. I really needed more light to make them out. The clicking on the other side of the wall reached the level of the window. An appendage, encased in chitin and black fuzz, reached into the room. Cross-eyed, I watched the hooked end wave an inch from my nose. Higher up in the slit of the narrow window, in an inscet’s face too many glittering eyes stared at me, burning with hunger but with little intelligence behind them.

I screamed when the second leg was forced into the room and flailed about, trying undoubted to snag something on me and pull me closer. The dagger found earlier was suddenly in my hand though I had no memory of drawing it. I lashed out at the legs. The blade skipped across the hard casing of the legs and lodged itself in a joint. Another shrill shriek was torn from me when the other leg brushed against my cheek, the sharp end of it scoring a line across my face. My face? The semi-coherent thought that the overgrown spider had cut my face flashed for a moment along with the first sting of pain and blossom of liquid warmth.

“Hey!” I yelled and yanked on the dagger. Putrid fluid oozed from the partly broken joint. Snatching up a book I hadn’t read from yet, I threw it at the spider-like creature and scrambled up on the table. I stabbed at the creature, aiming for the eyes and chest of it.

“Don’t you know it’s not nice to mar a lady’s face, you over grown pest.” The surprised, hissing chitter from it made me feel a little better. I felt even better when it fell away from the window, and a moment later I heard a satisfying thud from outside. Ignoring the tickle of blood tricking down my cheek, I raced to reach the others in the upper room and warn them. I started shouting even before I reached the landing.

[Ignition]

Tom was fairly surprised by how much the woman named Kahlina liked to talk. He had rarely seen anyone talk so much in a such a situation. “I’d have thought she’d have covered everything important with sit and spin,” Tom thought, readying his crossbow. He always made sure to load the weapon with its first bolt before he started, since he lacked a thumb on his left hand, it was difficult for him to reload quickly when he needed. Now, with the foundation beginning to rattle with a new attack, Tom began to follow Kahlina, hoping that she had a plan.

Once Tom saw the cauldrons, he realized exactly what Kahlina was thinking. He smiled, leaving her to that business. Impressed with her foresight, he knew that as currently constituted, the cauldrons wouldn’t be weapons for long.

Quickly, Tom began to gaze around the kitchen. There were fire pits for roasting, but there was nothing of use there, just firewood. Unless it came to the point where they needed to bludgeon the undead for security, then firewood was of no use. If it came to that point, they might as well have used the firewood to bludgeon themselves, because it would have been a much more human death.

There wasn’t much else to look at. There was a table in the center of the room, a small basin over in the corner, but despite the well kept nature of the room, Tom couldn’t find any cooking oil or other liquid that might have served as an adequate replacement when the cauldron water ran out.

“I’ll go look for some more liquid,” Tom said, beginning to run back up the stairs right before the spider-like creatures descended on Kahlina. By the time they had attacked her, Tom was back up on the floor where they had originally meant, pushing over empty crates, debris and whatever furniture stood in his way as he searched for something that might help them with the cauldrons. He could hear the pitter patter of long chitinous legs as they moved their way up the side of the building, and as they grew closer, Tom feared that they might have already reached Kahlina.

“Lose her and there goes our weapons…” Tom realized solemnly, more concerned with holding their position than the welfare of the woman.

Seconds later, Tom saw the first of the creatures. It was insect like, long mandibles clicking eagerly as it pushed a barricade out of the way with two long arachnid legs. Large compound eyes surveyed the room, as the creature looked for something to attack. Tom cringed. It might have been insect like and undead, but it seemed smarter than the mindless hordes Tom had expected to fight.

His nerves taking control, Tom fired his bolt, his impulse dictating it even though he knew it would be his only shot against the creature. Luckily, it hit. The spider-like creature hissed, puss and green fluids oozing from its punctured compound eye. Before it could recover, it lost its grip and fell back down.

Tom gulped, shocked and humbled by his luck. Quickly, he began to reload his crossbow. He knew there was more where that creature came from.

[Godhand]

God, she was insufferable. Godhand did the old 'yak yak' motion with his hand as the catgirl went on and on about how he was a moron and an idiot and what have you. Still, coming from someone who if she had one more synapse fired in her brain she'd be in a coma, the warrior didn't think too much about that. He was more worried about Lillian; much as he didn't like to admit, he'd been depending on her. Everybody in the tower was...Weak.

He understood how egotistical that sounded, but it was true. The only ones who could really hold their own were Godhand and Lillian, and now she was gone. Things were starting to look pretty grim. He could not as one man defeat an entire army. Plus, his interest in the librarian wasn't entirely a selfish one. That is, he wasn't just worried about her because she gave him better odds of surviving. He liked the kid; she had class. She was classy.

Now he had that on his mind, plus the barbarians at the gates plus some catwoman bimbo yelling at him for being an asshole, and who knew wether Kross would be back. He needed an edge; that's where the armor would come in. Godhand picked up the gauntlet his female comrade had kicked with such scorn, inspecting the material. He still couldn't quite get a bead on what it was. He'd heard somewhere that black diamond had been mined into non-existance, but then again the armor looked so ancient and otherworldly that he assumed it was crafted by some monstrous God before mankind even knew about mining. It was dark inside the metal; he couldn't get a look inside the gauntlet even when holding it up to a lantern. It was black like a hole in the ground. The swordsman paused for a moment, hesitated, then remembered his situation. With a tense sigh, he pulled it over his hand.

Next came the boots, the greaves and the chest plate. It was a bad feeling, getting helped into that armor by the students. It felt like a prison. He started to look at the helmet with dread; he knew it'd have to go on eventually. The spiked pauldrons were next. The whole suit left no part of him exposed; whatever the obsidian metal didn't protect, some dark leather stretched over. Black dragon skin, and it'd been a truly ancient dragon to boot. He started getting a bad case of claustrophobia inside the goddamn suit, but he couldn't wuss out now. Not with those bright-eyed student girls looking at him. He grit his teeth as the helmet was pulled over his head and fastened. He could hear the dull hiss of his own breath inside the obsidian; it was deafening.

One of the students shakingly offered him his Muramasa, and he slowly accepted it. He gripped the handle in his hand; it felt good. He was starting to get used to the Necromancer's armor. The clawed gauntlet tightened around the blade, and the warrior smiled.

He was ready.

[Skie and Avery]

When the body of one of the Archaos fell to the ground before Idril, she was more startled and possibly more angry than their own creator was. Why would any of Xem'Zund's army fall before mere children and four warriors? With her jaw clenched and her eyes hard, she walked past the Akashiman conscripts who were still trying to break down the door, ignoring the splintering of the wood with each pound they gave it. It was, after all, a far slower process for the destruction of the lives inside than she had in mind. She did what she never thought she'd do in such an insignificant scuffle as this; she walked up to the tower, and melted into the wall. Coming out the other side was the only part of her power that ever even stung, but despite the pain, she stood at the bottom of the spiral staircase smiling. Lady Idril unrolled the whip around her arm as she began to make her way up the staircase and a waiting kitchen.

In the room with the armor, Kahlina had disrupted more than just the tension in the room. The fragments of chain she'd kicked struck a wall, and let a filtering of black dust come down. This was quite unusual in the Tower, where the obsidian was nigh unbreakable by such a paltry blow as this. In fact, if one would look close enough, the dust flaked off in such a way that a square furrow could barely be seen on a place in the wall. A rather large square at that.

On the edge of Raiaera and Alerar, in a large building that belonged to no town or city, there was a great cheer. The roof of the place was nothing more than a tarp, and it was let loose from it's tethers on the outside walls as a great shadow began to rise upwards. From the moment the seige began, an ally of Raiaera, in the guise of a diminutive Dr. Kehron Elendrie had been feverishly working to perfect the machine that had stalwartly refused to do a damn thing he said for the last fifteen years. Now, the airship, made from plans bought in Ettermire for great price, was finally rising to the air.

"Where shall we head?" asked an assistant, who had finished loading the last crate of coal that would help power the furnace for the steamer to keep air in the great balloon.

"Anywhere we can help!" the man said as he took his place at the wheel of thing. As his workshop became a mere speck underneath them, Dr. Elendrie pointed his device south.

[RumpleGrumblePuss]

The spell book. It could be useful. Halfway up the stairs the thought froze the near panicked shouting in my throat. I stumbled a little, my toes slipping off the end of a stair as I halted my mad dash up the stairs. For a long agonizing minute I hesitated, torn between the idea of wanting to join the group and needing to head back for the damned book. Cursing a storm under my breath I turned back. Everyone will be okay, I hope.

Light, stained a faint red from the forest surrounding the Spire, lit the kitchen in an almost depressing manner. I bee-lined for the tome that rested on the table and quickly skimmed the book until I found the spell from earlier. My lips moved silently as I pieced together the spell. The echo of footsteps behind me caught my attention.

Shutting the book, I shoved it into a deep pocket and crept forward. At the door I listened to the footsteps. Both whips were loosened as the sound creeped me out slightly, they sound confident as if who ever were walking up the stairs had no need to hide. If I were the religious type, I’d be praying by now. Hail Mary or something like that.

Straightening from my defensive crouch in the doorway, I took both whips in hand and slapped some steel into my spine before stepping out into the hall to meet whomever was so graciously coming to visit us. On the next landing, only a half dozen steps away an unknown woman appeared, whip in hand. A smile, more a baring of teeth than an actual smile quickly tugged at my mouth. Slowly I stepped down the last few stairs as I studied her. Damn near ugly for a woman. Must be a peacock with the jewels she wears in her hair, definitely over compensating for that face and lack of chest. I finished my snap judgement and did a slow, blatant once over starting from her feet and ending with her face. Oddly enough, I was half hoping to make her feel self-conscious and to make her angry.

If I’m going to be praying perhaps ‘though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. Would a better one to recite. I pasted a smile on, one as bright and shiny as a 60 watt light bulb and fake as a three dollar bill.

“Hi! Wanna be friends? Let’s play!” I chirped in my best brainless blonde fashion. After all, I had once been blonde by both bottle and by birth.