A Plague Upon Thee

[Canid]

It was with some trepidation that I stuck my head out into the ruthlessly fresh air. The safety of den begged me not to leave it, but stomach and boredom always prevail over good sense on such occasions, and I ambled sunward with barely a glance aft.

Snow is not a wolf’s enemy. That is not to say that we like it drifting into our nostrils, but we can generally bear with good spirits a healthy frosting of the stuff. This morning I gained the qualifying features of a wedding cake between home and woods.

 

There were several things concerning me as I ploughed forth. First was the emptiness of tum. Second was the cause of emptiness of tum: little glittering sparks of magic that had been drifting through the air like lost raindrops for the past week and scaring all the fuzzy creatures back into their hidey-holes.

Unexplained magic sparks are something every life-loving creature knows instinctively to beware of. Apart from the fact that in other worlds they have been know to precede the ends there-of, they also are liable to occasionally remove a finger, or replace a mole with someone else’s mole, should the mole-bearer happen to be in the way of said spark.

 

Such were my worries as the snow surpassed elbow height around me and I made for a rabbit hole that sounded occupied.

Edited February 18, 2007 by Canid

[Patrick]

"Still just a cub." It was what all the pack's elders always kept telling me. "You should still get wretched-up meat from the grown-ups, not eat fresh meat like us ." But it always smelled so good. Much better than the other stuff anyway. But recently all I could get was half-digested meat.

 

I didn't usually sneak out against my mother's wishes, but she had been busy feeding my brother and two sisters. As most often, I yet again refused it, and while she looked away I was able to sneak from the den. Snow was so much fun! It reached above my heads, but it was easy to move in the tracks of the older wolves. Right now I was following one of them, jumping from one footprint to another, having the fun of my life.

 

I just hoped that I wasn't going to be noticed. Afterall, I wasn't allowed to leave the den...

[Canid]

It was rather like a low budget horror flick. The man just appeared there in the middle of the forest and looked slightly dazed for a few minutes.

He had the appearance of someone who'd just eaten something unappetizing and who now wanted a nice lay down in rubber ducky land.

He was dressed in some manner of shimmery purple cape over a two piece stable-boy affair and wore a pair of nibbled black hide gloves. His pockets were turned out and as blood flowed back into the control room he began doing an excellent impersonation of a haddock.

 

After about five minutes, he spoke.

 

"I will never play with plane shifting again.

Never.

Not if I live to be a hundred thousand billion million years old and the survival of the dynasty depends on it, I'll never try it again."

 

A small, bright purple bird zipped by infront of him.

 

He hit high C, waved his arms in a confused gesture of magic, and disappeared out of the plane.

 

 

~***************************~

 

I froze as a shrill scream pierced the air and then stopped short.

Grit sprayed my face as the blasted rodent resumed its tunnelling and I returned to the vertical chase.

my paw hit flesh and I pressed hard.

Normally I would not have danced with fate in such a way, but like I said, emptiness of tum and all that.

I snapped through the dirt and delivered a fatal bite to the thing before it could sever one of my toes with its own gnashers.

 

I backed out of the dirt covered snow pit with the rabbit dangling from my jaws and came face to face with a puppy.

 

It looked hungry.

 

I stood up straight and made eye contact.

 

It wagged its tail and looked cute.

 

We stood looking at each other for several more seconds.

 

"Fine." I said, tum running claws all the way up my oesophagus in retribution for the word, and I dropped the rabbit.

 

The puppy pranced up to to the animal - plump with early winter fat and gave it an amateur nasal once-over before digging in with enthusiasm.

I sat down and watched my first meal in a week as it slid in tiny puppy bites down the throat of this stray.

He was very young actually - should still be staying close to the den.

"Who are you?" I put forth the question and it looked up from my feast.

 

"Cuan.... and I thought I was following Josephine, who are you?"

 

I winced. Josephine was from Yuld's pack, and they were extremely touchy about interpack communication. I normally gave myself a bit of magical camouflage when passing through their territory, but it seemed to attract the sparks, so I had been unshielded today.

They wouldn't like me feeding their puppy though.

Ingrates.

"Canid."

 

The fuzzball stopped eating again, and looked up at me, eyes the size of cat-heads.

"Canid! The wolf-mage? The one who lives under the Pen?"

Cuan started bouncing.

"Can I follow you for the day? Please, please, please, please, please????"

He tumbled over and landed in the rabbit.

 

OOC: it is so hard to remember to stay in first person!

Edited March 13, 2007 by Canid

[Patrick]

This was so exciting. Mom always used to tell me about Canid. I take another, small bite of the rabbit, savouring the taste of fresh meat in my mouth. I nudge the corspe with one of my paws towards Canid.

 

"You should have some too! Aren't you hungry?"

 

I'm pretty sure she hadn't caught the rabbit just for me.

[Appy]

"Get your paws off that, you mangy little rodent!"

 

Its hard not to giggle at his dash from the table, but I must stay firm in this. My inventions are not play-toys for weasels, even though he seems to think so. No doubt he'll be back soon.

For a small moment my mind drifts back to finding the little critter, but I manage to bring my sleep-deprived focus back to the work at hand.

 

I'm almost there! Careful now.. wedge this right here. Where the hell is my welding torch?

 

*FOOM*

 

White... woah!

 

Blinking brings back the world around .. and it's still white! No wait. This stuff I'm sprawling on is several colours of white, with brown .. stems? Rather cold as well..and increasingly wet. A word arises from the depths of my memory. Snow.

 

"Now listen to this, young ones, this world wasn't always like this. Where now there are sand dunes as far as the eyes of a leopard can see, there used to be forests of plants you have never imagined! Stems as thick as your upper bodies, thicker even! And strong. You wouldn't be able to just pluck them out of the ground. High! As high as the northern wall, with luscious leaves all over!

And there wouldn't just be monsoons either. There used to be seasons of a different kind. Where the world would turn cold and the clouds would shed not rain, but frozen water! And this stuff was soft! It would cover the lands like a soft, wet, white and cold blanket. Almost like the ground ice does in our storage. They called it ... snow."

 

I grab a handful of the stuff around me and shiver. Grandad was right?

 

I sit up to take a better look around me and stare straight into the eyes of a wolf, with a smaller one being engrossed by my chittering weasel.

[Patrick]

I jump back in sheer terror as the furry creatury, about my size, appears in front of me. Fear quickly fades though and is replaced by a healthy dose of curiosity. I sniff out the smell of this new creature, while keeping away from it and from the big one which came with it. It smelled of wet fur, for it had rolled around in the snow. I tentatively approach, one pawstep at a time, and when I'm close enough, I touch noses with the funny little creature.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Meanwhile, not far away

 

"Shhhhh...do not wake the sleeper. He is not ready yet."

 

A shadow moves in the semi-darkness, playfully moving from darkness to darkness. A voice, almost inaudible, follows its passing.

 

"The sssleeper sssleepsss...the ssshadow foressshadows eventsss. We can not wait much longer. You mussst hurry."

 

"It can't be rushed. You know that. Now go and get me that book from the top shelf."

[Canid]

"You're sitting on my dinner" said I.

The man looked uncomprehending and stared at me with amazement. I suppressed the urge to bite him.

"You're sitting on my dinner" I repeated.

He raised a hand slowly, pointing at my mouth and spoke in a soft tone of awe.

"Vol tonal egret?"

I knew what he was saying; I have heard "You can talk?" uttered in all the languages of Terra, and a few more besides. I nodded. Then, putting my head against the man's side I gave him a shove.

He stumbled to his feet and after a moment of confusion, spotted the rabbit.

"Gah!" He twisted around, looking at the ruined seat of his garment and momentarily forgot his shock at meeting a talking wolf, in favour of trying to clean his robe off in the snow.

I took the opportunity to wolf down the remainder of my long awaited rabbit before anything else 'foom'ed into existence on top of it, before the weasel noticed it, and before any more starving puppies showed up.

 

The man was finished cleaning his robe and turned back to me, wonder again filling his eyes and broke into a long stream of incomprehensible dialogue. Normally I would have understood it, despite the tongue being entirely alien - mind reading was one of the first mage-skills I ever possessed, but now I could feel the fur on my back begin to stand on end as the air buzzed with the creation of magic sparks around the spot where the man had appeared, and self preservation forbade me from calling on even such minor magic in their vicinity.

 

I backed away from the disturbance. The man babbled on, oblivious to danger and slowed in his speech only as the magic became visible. The sparks were all clustered in the air where he had lain, like some miniature, man shaped galaxy; not the odd one or two of these previous weeks, but thousands of them.

I swore.

The man looked down at me curiously.

 

The sparks began to spread out. I danced backward and the human had the sense to do the same.

Cuan had stopped nuzzling the weasel and was staring rapturously at the mass of bright magic.

I grabbed the puppy by his scruff.

"Wait! I want to watch it!" he protested, squirming.

I took a few steps out, and turned giving the man a look that said, as clearly as I could say it with a look, "follow me," then pivoted in the snow and ran for my life.

 

 

 

~***************************~

 

 

 

"Canid, you break my heart."

I shook off the snow in the great entrance hall of The Pen and replied with a distracted "what?"

Cuan curled up on the rug where I had released him and shivered violently from the cold run.

 

"Here I thought you had no mate, and now you have a puppy."

Prospero was grinning at me.

[Appy]

The air is wheezing in his lungs and burns him from the inside.. but not because it's hot, but because it's cold! Too cold!

A long coughing fit prevents all thought for a moment, and then the wonder at this world returns. He didn't even take the time to think about why they had been running in the first place. He only knew that it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

And now, in front of him, there are two huge doors. This in itself isn't that strange, were it not that these are made of wood.

In all his life he has only seen slivers of wood, carefully guarded and maintained by their owners. It was said those pieces brought luck.

And now he's in front of two huge doors.. . appearantly made of wood. Tentatively he steps forward and touches one of the doors, not really believing to feel wood and jumping backwards when he does. He never did see the second wolf.

 

His weasel, who he had flung into his breastpocket the moment they started running, hangs on to his blouse with his hind paws only and smells at the doors more thouroughly while supporting himself against them with his front paws. He's having the time of his life.

Edited April 9, 2007 by Appy

[Patrick]

"Oooh! Who are you? You look really cool! We could be friends!" I was all over Prospero, jumping around him. "I'm not Canid's puppy though, but she was really kind to me! She gave me some tasty rabbit! I haven't had so good a meal in a long time!" And on and on I went...

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Twirp hated being an imp. And he hated the name his master had given him. Twirp...it sounded so...stupid. He also hated running menial tasks for his master. Collect three mushrooms here! Get fourteen red berries there! How the hell was he supposed to find them under two feet of snow???

 

"Sssuch a loveable creature that imp, isssn't he?"

 

"Oh, just shut up and let me do my work. He'll be back soon!"

 

"Sssoon...what if thingsss go wrong?"

 

"They won't."

[Canid]

“…and ‘ee didn’ even wake up…” Lord Adulade bent over the table, wheezing, “until the devul,” he made a sweeping gesture, first with the left, and then the right, nearly clobbering the sotted guests to each side, “knocked the legs,” wheeze, “off’f’is bed!”

He bent with laughter. Lord Brizzeby observed the man’s beard dragging in the fish. He drained and refilled his goblet without a word.

Adulade recovered from his fit long enough to pour half the tankard of ale down his front. The empty vessel was cast aside and he looked up in feigned surprise.

“Herald, my tapestries are fallen. What happened to the walls?”

 

Lord Brizzeby stared at the drink and answered acidly, “Those are not Dominique’s words. It is hollow humour if you must make up faults for which to insult a man.”

 

Adulade raised his messy eyebrows and stared across the table at his host. “I’ll haf you know… I heard it, from the herald ‘imself.” The man nodded and grabbed his neighbour’s drink.

 

Lord Brizzeby drained his own goblet again and got shakily to his feet.

“You’ve… have been telling that cretinous story for twenty years and the oney truth that’sever been in it is that his bashing castle was flattened.”

 

“By my command!”

 

“You command only stories!”

 

“I command the arcane! I command the Purple!”

 

“Your plane-shifty is haf dead and you’ve commanded nothing greaterer than wurms since Dominique fled here.”

 

Adulade blinked in surprise. “Fled here? Why the ‘ell did he fled here?”

 

Brizzeby stiffened. In vino veritas. Curse the drink.

“He happens to be my cousin. I entertained him for two months while your buffoons searched for his body.”

 

“You ‘id that traitor here and played friendly neighbour with me for twenty years?”

 

“Speak carefully neighbour.”

 

Adulade turned red. “You filthy, shceaming, bl- blue, kniving-“ Adulade attempted to rise but fell back promptly.”

 

“Guards. Shee Lord Adulade out.”

Brizzeby turned carefully around and stumbled towards the stairs.

Adulade pulled himself to his feet and grabbed his plate, lobbing it at his departing host, missing by some considerable degree.

Brizzeby gestured obscenely as he leaned on the wall and Adulade was dragged out, struggling with his retainers, most of them nearly as drunk as their master. They were simultaneously flung out the door, and brought their horses. It took Adulade several minutes and several falls to mount.

Clutching hard to the horse for balance, he raised his fist to the tower window.

 

“A plague upon thee!”

 

 

~***************************~

 

 

Anverp the Guard shuffled from foot to foot.

Plane-shifters made him uneasy. It wasn't that they could disappear right in front of your eyes, only to reappear behind you three seconds earlier, so that by the time you noticed they were gone, they had already tied your hair in a pony tail. In fact, there was only one recorded incident of that ever happening, and it was almost 100 years ago.

No. Such antics were beneath modern plane-shifters and didn’t concern him.

It was that craftiness in their eyes. That intelligence about their manner that really unnerved him, because everyone in the realm knew they were all quite insane.

They didn’t start out insane, it developed and festered over the years. Old shifters like Enguda here were the worst. Completely mad... but clever, very clever.

Anverp’s hand strayed upwards to finger his curly hair.

 

Lord Adulade stood a couple feet to his left, watching passively as the plane-shifter circled the stable boy, looking over his hands, sniffing him like a dog.

Enguda was clothed in the garments of the high court. He was clean and sported a tidy beard, but even so, managed to look dishevelled and dirty. Were it not for the bright, shimmering purple cape, tied like a sash about his waist, he might have passed as a common merchant.

Enguda plucked a hair from the boy’s head, and after careful inspection, ate it.

He turned around with a flourish and a half grin.

“The force is strong with this one.”

He grabbed his cane and started dancing wildly about the room with it, whistling some bizarre tune.

 

“He is a shifter, then?” Adulade didn’t flinch as the guard to the right parried off a swing of the cane.

 

“Yes, sir. And it will be my pleasure to guide him to the Purple.”

 

Lord Adulade’s mouth twitched with satisfaction. “Good.”

[Appy]

The chittering of my weasel as he spotted the third wolf woke me from my revery at finding the wooden doors. I look inside the building and notice him too. He doesn't seem all that threatening and I reason that since I appearantly had just been brought here by the first wolf (and a talking wolf at that!) that I needn't be alarmed. So I look around a bit to see if I can judge where I landed.

 

It might be the past.. or maybe even the future! Afterall, the device I had been working on, and which might've caused this, was designed to alter small pockets of time. I thought it might be useful in everyday life. You know, so you can cook a meal really fast, or grow plants which normally take a whole season in just a few days. I realise I'm still clutching part of it and carefully place that in one of my many pockets. Afterall, I might need it to get back.

 

The building seems mostly made of stone. No, not the bricks of my homeland, but cut from living stone, straight out of the mountain! This place is most perculiar indeed.

 

Without warning, and leaving a few marks straight through my leather robe I might add, my weasel scrambles out of my pocket and runs off towards a staircase. I run after him, telling the wolves that I need to catch him again. They might not speak my language, but they might've understood since at least the one who rescued me seems to nod.

 

Why do I run after him into an unknown building? He's my weasel. I rescued him from certain death when he was still a tiny thing. The one companion who I know will definitely .. well, I was going to say understand me, or listen to me, but he doesn't really do that.. but he will definitely recognise the sound of my voice and so far, it's the only living thing reminding me of where I came from.

 

So off I go, into the structure..

Edited June 9, 2007 by Appy

[Patrick]

Twirp might have been an imp, and a stupid one at that, but even he wasn't as stupid as to not be able to find some glaringly red berries. The snow had not been able to fully cover the bushes. He had less luck with the mushrooms though. He could only find one of them, when he accidentally dislodged it with his foot.

 

Grinning happily to himself like a little boy, who spots a lost coin in the middle of the road and takes it, he pocketed the mushroom, wiping his hands in his already dirty leather trousers afterwards. The childish joy was replaced by despair and fear of the beating he might receive. No other, filthy, stinking mushrooms managed to manifest themselves and Twirp was fed up.

 

However, the beating did not happen. Master only pointed at a table to put the berries and mushroom on, not even looking up from his experiment. Twirp sat down in a corner and fiddled with the bone from a chicken leg, remnant of a meal several weeks ago. He didn't even notice the shade creap up on him. When the shadowy creature let out a sharp hiss, almost next to Twirp's ear, the unfortunate imp jumped up in shock and let out a piercing shriek.

 

"That's enough!" came the harsh voice of master. "Twirp, stand in the middle of that circle!" he said, pointing at a circle surrounded by dozens of colourful candles and a strange, bluish-green powder. The imp stepped carefully into the circle, taking care not to touch anything on the diameter. He knew how much master hated having to restart an experiment.

 

A foul smelling gas from a vial was poured over Twirp, master chanted in that strange language, that to Twirp resembled the foul croaking of elves, blinding lights flashed and then suddenly Twirp was no more.

 

In the middle of the circle, candles now extinguished, stood a six-foot tall, glaringly white skeleton. Unseen muscles moved the joints and the undead creature tried placing a foot outside the circle. An invisible barrier prevented even the smallest fragment of bone to leave the area. The skeletal jaw opened, moved and then snapped shut, the only sound leaving it the clink of bone against bone.

 

"It's time," the voice of the mage solemnly pronounced. The shadow, circling around the circle gave out a low hiss, but did not move. "I said that it is time!" annoyance crept into the voice and the shadow rose up, filling the room almost to the ceiling. "Or do you want to test my patience?"

 

"Nooooooooooo," the shadow let out almost a moan and shrunk to its usual side.

 

As the shadow entered the circle, the mage started chanting again. A dozen different powders were thrown inside the circle, covering the bones of the slowly wavering skeleton in fine layers of multiple-coloured dust. The chanting abruptly ended in a blinding flash of light.

 

When the mage could once again open his eyes, the circle of bluish-green, protective dust was gone. Only the skeletal figure remained in the middle, but the bones were no longer glaringly white.

 

"It worked?" the mage asked almost unbelievingly. "Did it work?" he asked as though he were speaking to the now black skeleton.

 

"What do you think sssorcerer? I haven't made a ssstep to kill you yet, have I?"

 

A triumphant smile spread along the mage's face, only to be replaced by a hint of fear as the skeleton continued speaking.

 

"Thisss body isss woefully inadequate. If you don't finisssh what you've ssstarted, I might jussst find motivation to kill you."

 

It took more than nine more hours to craft a body, through skillful combination of magic, rare ingredients and the bodies of some peasants from a nearby farm, before it was done. Standing in the middle of the room, now robed in a dark cloak, only the remnants of the hiss could have told one, that the handsome middle-aged man, had been just a shade a dozen hours earlier.

 

"Now. Tell me everything that you know about thesse sstrange purple things. No, wait. First tell me again how thosse who robbed me of my body for sseventeen monthss died. It iss a pleassure to my earss."

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

These walls, this warm air, I've only ever heard of them in stories told by my mother. Powerful, unexplainable beings live here, she always used to say. Dabbling in ancient and dangerous magicks, others would add. It just looks like walls and celings to me. Nothing special about it at all. The little furball of a weasel manages to free himself from the confines of some pockety thing in the man's robes and runs off. I happily bound after him, up the stairs. What a great game! I always liked to play catch!