Lafitte clung tight to the oath that Firia had sworn, dragging himself along its unbreakable iron links. The oath was his mooring to the incarnar realm, steady but still precarious in a frightening way. The depths of transition between realities were like a tempest. The safe, reliable feel of surinnar shook around him. As he plunged down, Lafitte felt vertigo lean on him and sink into his mind.
Where am I? The thought rushed to Lafitte's head as he lost his sense of direction. It was completely alien to Lafitte not know where he was at all times. Surinni, in their home reality, had a perfect innate sense of location. But that knowledge had been ripped away from him now, replaced by ignorance and confusion.
He wished fervently that Xelloss was here with him now. He'd never made this journey on his own before. Xelloss had always guided him very closely on these trips, leading him through the walls of madness that made up the edge between astral and physical. A surinni was badly adapted to any travel outside of its own reality, and it was rare for one to make it incarnar without anything to guide it past the veil and into some sort of physical host. Lafitte's saving grace was that he had Firia's will to lead him down. Without that, he would be lost.
Lafitte wanted to move faster now, but his progress slowed. He was approaching incarnar now. He couldn't just move through space as if it were nothing, traveling in a blink. No, movement incarnar actually required effort.
"Ugh." Lafitte swallowed his distaste for the bland aspects of incarnar. It wasn't all drudgery, he knew, but the plane certainly had its drawbacks.
...had its drawbacks...Laffite blinked. Oh, shit.
He was almost there now, which meant that a new alien factor was rearing its ugly head.
Time.
Lafitte hated time with a burning and murderous passion. It didn't settle right with him. Time had no relevance to surinni. They weren't beyond it in surinnar, but they didn't have to pay attention to it either. In fact, they couldn't. Even with Xelloss' explanations, Lafitte hadn't understood time until he'd experienced it incarnar. Being time-bound in reality was disorienting. It didn't work correctly for him, anyways. Time at points hiccupped around him without warning, misplacing itself in tiny jolts. And as far as he was concerned, time could go bugger itself with a-
THUNK.
Lafitte's first action incarnar was to curse out the floor. It was too damn hard, especially when his head was hitting it. And it was too hot, too. What was wrong with Firia? Was she trying to turn this place into a furnace?
"Holy Dissonant Mother!" Fire! There was fire all around him!
Lafitte scrambled awkwardly past the shards of an iron stove and to the mercifully untouched bed where Firia and Xelloss lie. There was no time to push them surinnar. He had to drag them out of this death trap. Lafitte glanced at the window above the bed and then searched for something he could throw at it. His eyes ran across a large, ornate vase full of heat-wilted flowers. Quickly Lafitte covered Xelloss and Firia's bodies with a blanket and then grabbed the vase. His arms strained from the abrupt amount of physical work. Surinni weren't made for labor! He swung the vase back, then lurched forward and heaved it at the window, ignoring the pain in his muscles as they burned from the effort.
The window splintered open with a crash. Shards of glass sprayed through the air, mostly landing outside. Lafitte wrapped a nearby sheet around his hand and knocked away the shards still attached to the windowpane. He then scrambled out, careful to avoid the splintered glass on the ground. He spread the sheet over it and leaned inside again. Lafitte grabbed Xelloss and pulled him outside, thanking chaos itself that the incarnt was so light. He set Xelloss down and then reached inside for Firia. Damn it! Why were dragons so heavy?! Laffite strained as hard as he could, his heart beginning to pound as the heat inside grew more intense. Hot wind rushed around him; the air was as desparate as himself to get out.
Finally Lafitte pulled Firia's body over the sill and lurched to support her full weight. He stumbled away from the crackling inferno of a house and dropped her at a safe distance from it into the thick dewy grass. Lafitte ran back to the house, grabbed Xelloss, and carried him to Firia. He collapsed next to the dragon, his master still in his arms.
Air - he had to breathe here, that's right - burned through Lafitte's lungs as he panted with exhaustion. Drowning in oxygen, his head throbbed. His body cried out for rest from the shock of abrupt physical labor. But Lafitte couldn't stop now. He had none of this damnable time to waste. He reached for Xelloss' hands and grabbed the incarnt's wrists. The mazoku's body was made for interplanar transit, and thus Lafitte could pull him into surinnar effortlessly.
The surinni turned to Firia. This was going to be much more difficult. Dragons had as much business being completely surinnar as he had being on the physical plane. At least there was the oath. Such a pact could often enforce itself with a little encouragement. Lafitte mentally searched for the unfinished deal that linked him with Firia, his thoughts scrambling in a panic when it didn't immediately appear. He had to hurry! Dynast was fast, and his anger made him faster. If the King found Firia here...he did horrible things to dragons, and that was only as a sick pastime. Now he would have revenge as his motivation.
There it was! Relief surged through Lafitte as his mind tripped across the thread binding him to Firia in a spoken contract. It was so difficult to find such things incarnar with no practice and a blunted sense of reality. But now the lifeline was in his mental grasp, and a quick tug on it did the trick. It really wasn't that hard at all - the contract fulfilled itself with the surinni's nudge. Firia's body vanished in a flash of light, joining her astral soul and fortifying it.
Lafitte felt his limbs go slack as panic flowed out of him, relieving the unbearable weight that tension had placed on his shoulders. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair, brushing the large coffee-colored streak from his eyes. Like all surinni, his physical appearance differed from his astral features. He still had the same green eyes and honeyed skin, though, and the hump in his nose hadn't left. He smiled, letting himself truly adjust to his new body. Xelloss and Firia were safe now, and that made everything so much better.
Suddenly, the house across the yard groaned in pain as it began to collapse within its cage of fire. Lafitte almost jumped out of his newly accquired skin at the sound. He watched with numb, detached horror as the whole structure fell in a rush of searing wind and crackling sparks. His chest ached with the pain of loss. That had been the first house he'd known, the first incarnar place that he'd loved. And the strange family that had lived in it...he could feel those memories. He knew the souls of places with the same familiarity that any mazoku had with the souls of the living. He couldn't go on watching this house burn to death. It was too tragic. His legs shook as Lafitte tried to stand, the shock and exertion taking their toll heavily. Lafitte hit the ground as his knees gave way beneath him, a grin as cold as a shark's lurking on his face as his eyes raked over the body of his newly captured prey-
Panic screamed through Lafitte's senses as he tried in vain to scramble to his feet. Finding it impossible to stand up, he made a mad lunge on his hands and knees towards the concealing darkness in the taller grass a few yards away. A sharp blow to his ribs threw the surinni to the ground. Another blow hit him in the stomach and sent him rolling in the dirt. He flailed for balance, trying to lift himself up from his prone position without wilting from the pain. A foot planted itself onto the middle of his back and shoved him down again. It remained there, pressing just hard enough to keep Lafitte still but allowing him enough room to catch his breath. Lafitte slumped against the dewy soil, feeling his lungs recover from the assault, supressing the urges to retch that his stomach gave him. The moment he twitched the boot shoved him down harder, knocking the wind out of him again.
"Don't you dare move, you wretch." The icy voice froze Lafitte's blood. Though the tone was even, the surinni could feel fury radiating from above him. The pressure on his back relented again. "All I want you to do is breathe."
Lafitte obeyed, not daring to move a muscle again, just concentrating on the rise and fall of his chest as any vestige of hope crumbled into ash and blew away on the hot breeze. He swallowed, the fear making him feel even sicker now. He let himself go slack as the boot slid up his back, traveling along his spine until it reached his shoulders. The boot pressed down on Lafitte's neck and rocked back and forth against it. A trickle of possessive delight washed over him from above. He suppressed the rebellious cry within him that demanded he rise and fight. Fighting was the last thing he should try right now. The surinni remained limp as the boot's heel dug into his skin.
"You follow orders remarkably well considering what insolent stock you hail from. I suppose you're smart enough to stay where you're told to lie." The boot slid off of Lafitte's neck and rested on the ground next to his shoulder. "Now...you seem to reek of my newest servant's scent."
Lafitte balled up the urge to retort and shoved it into his stomach, where it could churn with the rest of the turmoil there. Xelloss did not serve Dynast. He never would!
"What would Xelloss be doing fraternizing with a surinni?" Dynast tsked. "First dragons, now astral rats. I'm going to have to teach him not to associate with riff-raff. It might damage his image, and wouldn't that be a shame? After all, that could reflect badly on his master. And he wouldn't want that."
Lafitte bit his tongue, his mind reeling with disbelief. This King's mind was completely deluded!
"He can be such a bad boy at times." Dynast licked his lips. "But I'm sure you know all about that." He hooked his fingers into the folds of Lafitte's cloak, lifting the surinni to his height effortlessly. His gaze pierced into Lafitte's eyes, freezing his muscles and his mind. "Now, what in the thousand golden planes of Chaos are you doing here, with my most prized servant gone, his scaly whore nowhere in sight, and her house utterly destroyed?" Dynast raised an eyebrow while concern washed over his features. "Did you burn it down yourself, or did someone have to show you how to make fire first?"
Anger surged through Lafitte so quickly and strongly that he couldn't possibly dam the flow. "You'll never find them! You'll never touch Firia, and you'll never have Xelloss in your clutches again!"
Dynast's face transformed into a mask of fury. The Supreme King shook Lafitte, his fingers clutching the surinni's brown cloak in a grip of steel. Lafitte felt the world lurch around him, his head snapping back and forth, his vision swimming until all he could see was a soup of molten vertigo. He grabbed Dynast's arm's, grasping in terror for any stability he could find. He didn't understand this plane, didn't understand how everything could hurt so much here. Why was he so weak here? A spinning fusion of nightmare and reality gripped Lafitte's head until the shaking stopped and his vision slowly cleared. He came to with his cheek resting against Dynast's chest, his body slumped against the Lord. Lafitte began to jerk away but halted as the King's hand encircled his neck.
Dynast chuckled, a grin as cold as a shark's lurking on his face as his eyes raked over the body of his newly captured prey. He hadn't enjoyed a meal that much since Xelloss started behaving. "Why are surinni so fragile?"
Lafitte couldn't drag a reply up without passing out again.
"I like to think it makes them more fun to play with and easier to tame." Dynast stroked the underside of Lafitte's chin with his thumb. "Perhaps we'll find out before Xelloss comes back for you."
The two mazoku vanished from sight, leaving the ashes of the house to smolder alone.
Where am I? The thought rushed to Lafitte's head as he lost his sense of direction. It was completely alien to Lafitte not know where he was at all times. Surinni, in their home reality, had a perfect innate sense of location. But that knowledge had been ripped away from him now, replaced by ignorance and confusion.
He wished fervently that Xelloss was here with him now. He'd never made this journey on his own before. Xelloss had always guided him very closely on these trips, leading him through the walls of madness that made up the edge between astral and physical. A surinni was badly adapted to any travel outside of its own reality, and it was rare for one to make it incarnar without anything to guide it past the veil and into some sort of physical host. Lafitte's saving grace was that he had Firia's will to lead him down. Without that, he would be lost.
Lafitte wanted to move faster now, but his progress slowed. He was approaching incarnar now. He couldn't just move through space as if it were nothing, traveling in a blink. No, movement incarnar actually required effort.
"Ugh." Lafitte swallowed his distaste for the bland aspects of incarnar. It wasn't all drudgery, he knew, but the plane certainly had its drawbacks.
...had its drawbacks...Laffite blinked. Oh, shit.
He was almost there now, which meant that a new alien factor was rearing its ugly head.
Time.
Lafitte hated time with a burning and murderous passion. It didn't settle right with him. Time had no relevance to surinni. They weren't beyond it in surinnar, but they didn't have to pay attention to it either. In fact, they couldn't. Even with Xelloss' explanations, Lafitte hadn't understood time until he'd experienced it incarnar. Being time-bound in reality was disorienting. It didn't work correctly for him, anyways. Time at points hiccupped around him without warning, misplacing itself in tiny jolts. And as far as he was concerned, time could go bugger itself with a-
THUNK.
Lafitte's first action incarnar was to curse out the floor. It was too damn hard, especially when his head was hitting it. And it was too hot, too. What was wrong with Firia? Was she trying to turn this place into a furnace?
"Holy Dissonant Mother!" Fire! There was fire all around him!
Lafitte scrambled awkwardly past the shards of an iron stove and to the mercifully untouched bed where Firia and Xelloss lie. There was no time to push them surinnar. He had to drag them out of this death trap. Lafitte glanced at the window above the bed and then searched for something he could throw at it. His eyes ran across a large, ornate vase full of heat-wilted flowers. Quickly Lafitte covered Xelloss and Firia's bodies with a blanket and then grabbed the vase. His arms strained from the abrupt amount of physical work. Surinni weren't made for labor! He swung the vase back, then lurched forward and heaved it at the window, ignoring the pain in his muscles as they burned from the effort.
The window splintered open with a crash. Shards of glass sprayed through the air, mostly landing outside. Lafitte wrapped a nearby sheet around his hand and knocked away the shards still attached to the windowpane. He then scrambled out, careful to avoid the splintered glass on the ground. He spread the sheet over it and leaned inside again. Lafitte grabbed Xelloss and pulled him outside, thanking chaos itself that the incarnt was so light. He set Xelloss down and then reached inside for Firia. Damn it! Why were dragons so heavy?! Laffite strained as hard as he could, his heart beginning to pound as the heat inside grew more intense. Hot wind rushed around him; the air was as desparate as himself to get out.
Finally Lafitte pulled Firia's body over the sill and lurched to support her full weight. He stumbled away from the crackling inferno of a house and dropped her at a safe distance from it into the thick dewy grass. Lafitte ran back to the house, grabbed Xelloss, and carried him to Firia. He collapsed next to the dragon, his master still in his arms.
Air - he had to breathe here, that's right - burned through Lafitte's lungs as he panted with exhaustion. Drowning in oxygen, his head throbbed. His body cried out for rest from the shock of abrupt physical labor. But Lafitte couldn't stop now. He had none of this damnable time to waste. He reached for Xelloss' hands and grabbed the incarnt's wrists. The mazoku's body was made for interplanar transit, and thus Lafitte could pull him into surinnar effortlessly.
The surinni turned to Firia. This was going to be much more difficult. Dragons had as much business being completely surinnar as he had being on the physical plane. At least there was the oath. Such a pact could often enforce itself with a little encouragement. Lafitte mentally searched for the unfinished deal that linked him with Firia, his thoughts scrambling in a panic when it didn't immediately appear. He had to hurry! Dynast was fast, and his anger made him faster. If the King found Firia here...he did horrible things to dragons, and that was only as a sick pastime. Now he would have revenge as his motivation.
There it was! Relief surged through Lafitte as his mind tripped across the thread binding him to Firia in a spoken contract. It was so difficult to find such things incarnar with no practice and a blunted sense of reality. But now the lifeline was in his mental grasp, and a quick tug on it did the trick. It really wasn't that hard at all - the contract fulfilled itself with the surinni's nudge. Firia's body vanished in a flash of light, joining her astral soul and fortifying it.
Lafitte felt his limbs go slack as panic flowed out of him, relieving the unbearable weight that tension had placed on his shoulders. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair, brushing the large coffee-colored streak from his eyes. Like all surinni, his physical appearance differed from his astral features. He still had the same green eyes and honeyed skin, though, and the hump in his nose hadn't left. He smiled, letting himself truly adjust to his new body. Xelloss and Firia were safe now, and that made everything so much better.
Suddenly, the house across the yard groaned in pain as it began to collapse within its cage of fire. Lafitte almost jumped out of his newly accquired skin at the sound. He watched with numb, detached horror as the whole structure fell in a rush of searing wind and crackling sparks. His chest ached with the pain of loss. That had been the first house he'd known, the first incarnar place that he'd loved. And the strange family that had lived in it...he could feel those memories. He knew the souls of places with the same familiarity that any mazoku had with the souls of the living. He couldn't go on watching this house burn to death. It was too tragic. His legs shook as Lafitte tried to stand, the shock and exertion taking their toll heavily. Lafitte hit the ground as his knees gave way beneath him, a grin as cold as a shark's lurking on his face as his eyes raked over the body of his newly captured prey-
Panic screamed through Lafitte's senses as he tried in vain to scramble to his feet. Finding it impossible to stand up, he made a mad lunge on his hands and knees towards the concealing darkness in the taller grass a few yards away. A sharp blow to his ribs threw the surinni to the ground. Another blow hit him in the stomach and sent him rolling in the dirt. He flailed for balance, trying to lift himself up from his prone position without wilting from the pain. A foot planted itself onto the middle of his back and shoved him down again. It remained there, pressing just hard enough to keep Lafitte still but allowing him enough room to catch his breath. Lafitte slumped against the dewy soil, feeling his lungs recover from the assault, supressing the urges to retch that his stomach gave him. The moment he twitched the boot shoved him down harder, knocking the wind out of him again.
"Don't you dare move, you wretch." The icy voice froze Lafitte's blood. Though the tone was even, the surinni could feel fury radiating from above him. The pressure on his back relented again. "All I want you to do is breathe."
Lafitte obeyed, not daring to move a muscle again, just concentrating on the rise and fall of his chest as any vestige of hope crumbled into ash and blew away on the hot breeze. He swallowed, the fear making him feel even sicker now. He let himself go slack as the boot slid up his back, traveling along his spine until it reached his shoulders. The boot pressed down on Lafitte's neck and rocked back and forth against it. A trickle of possessive delight washed over him from above. He suppressed the rebellious cry within him that demanded he rise and fight. Fighting was the last thing he should try right now. The surinni remained limp as the boot's heel dug into his skin.
"You follow orders remarkably well considering what insolent stock you hail from. I suppose you're smart enough to stay where you're told to lie." The boot slid off of Lafitte's neck and rested on the ground next to his shoulder. "Now...you seem to reek of my newest servant's scent."
Lafitte balled up the urge to retort and shoved it into his stomach, where it could churn with the rest of the turmoil there. Xelloss did not serve Dynast. He never would!
"What would Xelloss be doing fraternizing with a surinni?" Dynast tsked. "First dragons, now astral rats. I'm going to have to teach him not to associate with riff-raff. It might damage his image, and wouldn't that be a shame? After all, that could reflect badly on his master. And he wouldn't want that."
Lafitte bit his tongue, his mind reeling with disbelief. This King's mind was completely deluded!
"He can be such a bad boy at times." Dynast licked his lips. "But I'm sure you know all about that." He hooked his fingers into the folds of Lafitte's cloak, lifting the surinni to his height effortlessly. His gaze pierced into Lafitte's eyes, freezing his muscles and his mind. "Now, what in the thousand golden planes of Chaos are you doing here, with my most prized servant gone, his scaly whore nowhere in sight, and her house utterly destroyed?" Dynast raised an eyebrow while concern washed over his features. "Did you burn it down yourself, or did someone have to show you how to make fire first?"
Anger surged through Lafitte so quickly and strongly that he couldn't possibly dam the flow. "You'll never find them! You'll never touch Firia, and you'll never have Xelloss in your clutches again!"
Dynast's face transformed into a mask of fury. The Supreme King shook Lafitte, his fingers clutching the surinni's brown cloak in a grip of steel. Lafitte felt the world lurch around him, his head snapping back and forth, his vision swimming until all he could see was a soup of molten vertigo. He grabbed Dynast's arm's, grasping in terror for any stability he could find. He didn't understand this plane, didn't understand how everything could hurt so much here. Why was he so weak here? A spinning fusion of nightmare and reality gripped Lafitte's head until the shaking stopped and his vision slowly cleared. He came to with his cheek resting against Dynast's chest, his body slumped against the Lord. Lafitte began to jerk away but halted as the King's hand encircled his neck.
Dynast chuckled, a grin as cold as a shark's lurking on his face as his eyes raked over the body of his newly captured prey. He hadn't enjoyed a meal that much since Xelloss started behaving. "Why are surinni so fragile?"
Lafitte couldn't drag a reply up without passing out again.
"I like to think it makes them more fun to play with and easier to tame." Dynast stroked the underside of Lafitte's chin with his thumb. "Perhaps we'll find out before Xelloss comes back for you."
The two mazoku vanished from sight, leaving the ashes of the house to smolder alone.