Chapter 16:
The Peanuts were on the run. Without their castles, and with the weight of multiple kingdoms against them, the Peanuts were being driven back and back. It was still costing lives. Precious lives were being burned up–sometimes literally–and it was reaping an emotional toll on Olesia. Even when the Peanut-folk stood and fought them–earning death–she still felt the loss. Those were husbands. They were fathers and brothers. Women and children across the face of the Peanut Kingdom were losing the men who supported their lives. It was a tragedy–and all over one man's foolish pride.
Striding up beside her, Ingrid announced, "I think you can stay in the camp today." The elemental's eyes flicked up to hers. She couldn't have heard that right. A glance at her superior showed her concern was well founded. This was more of the same. "We've got them cornered," said the tall princess. "They're down in the barrens now... clustered around the ruins. We've got them." "Which means you'll need me more, not less," said Olesia. "Trapped rats and all that." Stepping off, her posture suggesting she was in a snit, the plump princess murmured, "there's nothing I can accidentally burn here. I can break them now. You just focus on keeping them from running again."
The Warrior Princess smirked at her back. Yes, that was so very much better. No moping. It was unbecoming of a grown-woman after all. Part of her enjoyed riling the little bitch up, just to see the reaction. Oh, she had a hard little spine hidden inside. She might be twentieth in line for the throne or some such, but she was still quite the princess.
The Minister of War held her usual morning conference, gathering in all the disparate leaders of the various wings of the army. Things were going better these days. The miscellaneous feuds had been settled and the anger calmed somewhat. The Slime Folk were cooperating with the Froyo people and vice versa. It was, to Olesia Okonski's eyes, the best they could hope for among people who had been at war with each other not so long ago.
Prime Minister Plantain was present with his own war-council, and he had a fair amount to tell them about what he'd learned. As the tall banana explained the disposition of the Peanut Prince's forces and the defenses they'd erected, Olesia began to grow more comfortable. The peanut-folk had done their best to dig trenches and lay out defenses. Unfortunately for them, the Dipped had done horrific things to the soil, changing it from the rich, fertile loam that she'd spent so much time trying not to burn these last few weeks into a coarse, grey dust that threatened to blow away if you only looked at it wrong. They'd had a helluva time digging trenches in dirt that tended to collapse without any kind of organic matter to bind it.
Their defenses, at the moment, consisted of the few shells of buildings that still stood here, flanked by wire fencing and whatever scraps of wood they could pull together to support their breastworks. Much of it was flammable. It was an ugly thought, but one the plump woman had gotten herself used to. She was a deadly threat in a world that had so much in it that burned. It was a sobering thought. She'd cried herself to sleep after one unpleasant incident where a fire had gotten away from her. Plantain forgave her, but she'd had trouble forgiving herself. Now, they were coming down to the close of things. The only things to burn here were the peanuts and their pathetic excuse for a bastion. The plump girl turned her sights to the distant patch of lifeless ground. Lady Sarah would fix things when they were done here. In the now, this was her battlefield. It was time to bring the foe to heel.
In the Candy Kingdom, Chelsea awoke to the insistent buzzing of her phone. She'd been out late the previous night. Part of it was drowning her sorrows. She'd been oh, so close to Finn the Human. She'd had him in her quarters! And somehow she had failed to seal the deal. It was mad! It was insane that somehow he would turn her down that way. It... stung.
She was stung by the very idea that a man would choose to talk instead of coming to bed with her. It stung that he wasn't overwhelmed by her beauty. She'd stood staring at a mirror for hours, wondering. Was she getting old? Was she losing her touch? Was something wrong? She'd drank... a lot last night. She'd drank so much, she hardly remembered any of it.
As the phone began to ring again, Fedir came through the door. He stood there a moment, staring at her. Then, he said, "your business partner is calling. She call me after you fail to answer." Annoyed, Chelsea snatched the phone off the charger, snarling, "what?!" "What," Peihong repeated? "You owe me a scientist." "I'm working it," Chelsea retorted. "I've got men in place to raid the science center tonight. There's a conference." There was silence on the other end. "I have a man working on finishing our rockets," said Peihong. "I need a payload. He can't finish until he has the size of the payload." They needed the bombs. At least, they needed a size and weight for one. "I'll have an egghead tonight," muttered Chelsea. The ogress hung up in her face.
The evil woman threw herself back on her back, howling her frustration. She lay there a long, long while, shouting curses and threats. She wanted to skin the bitch. She wanted to flay that pale skin off her body. She wanted to chop her tits off and grind them up. She wanted to make the bitch suffer.
Sitting up suddenly, she found Fedir standing there at the door. Motioning for him to come to her bedside, she studied the former bandit. Cautiously, he approached her. He didn't know how long the venom on her nails was good. "I got home last night," she murmured. "You must have brought me home. That was good." Flushing, he said, "that was Lorenz." "I'll have to thank Lorenz then," she said in airy tones. Soberly, he told her, "you slashed his face last night with your nails. I had to make his body disappear." Chelsea goggled at him. She'd been grooming Lorenz! He'd seemed like a loyal man. "Fuck," she howled!
"Is there else, Lady," Fedir asked? Her eyes came back to his. He was steady. Steady, faithful Fedir. She always came back to him. It was a strange wonder. She always came back to this man. "Are we ready," she asked? "We could have used another hundred men," he admitted. Frowning, Chelsea rumbled, "I thought Bronwyn was back on the job..." "She is asking questions," Fedir replied. That answer set off another ugly tirade from the evil witch. She was muttering very dangerous things. This Bronwyn wasn't a nobody like the party-bear. Her family had money and connections.
"Here's how we're going to do this thing," Chelsea rumbled. Fedir blanched. She was about to ask him to do something very dangerous–maybe suicidal. At the same time, she could kill him right now. Even if he got out of her presence, she had men in seemingly every low place imaginable. He might not even see the dagger coming. He had to get away. Far away. In the now, he listened.
Several floors above them, Nieve the Muscle Princess awoke from a glorious sleep to a sudden bright light. The maid had just thrown back the curtains on her, letting in painfully bright sunlight. The young princess opened her mouth to start shouting and shut it again when she caught sight of her grandmother standing there in the doorway. Her blood ran cold as the old hag asked, "how goes the honeymoon?" Nieve flushed.
Eyes burning into Nieve's, Odessa came striding across the room. Sitting down on the edge of her bed, the old woman asked, "how was your wedding night?" "Uh... It's... Things are going great," Nieve replied! "And the wedding night," Odessa pressed? "Successful?" Flushing, Nieve lied, "it was great! He's well... experienced as you might imagine...!" Odessa pounced, demanding, "then why was he seen with that scaly cougar on his arm twice in the last week?"
Nieve sputtered protests, but Odessa cut her off, declaring, "you have just one job right now, Nieve. That job is to keep that man's dick wet. You're failing. Against a middle-aged has-been. You have two choices. Come back with a Royal Heir in your belly or don't come back at all. Clear, my girl? I'll expect a blow-by-blow description of the event and a positive pregnancy test." Without another word, the nasty old woman rose and strode out, leaving her grand-daughter red-faced and in tears. The angry young woman hurled curses–and her pillows–at the door.
As Nieve came to grips with her fears, in Wildberry Kingdom a nervous Olesia sat her mount beside Princess Ingrid, waiting. They'd sent a soldier ahead under flag of truce. Ingrid, per the King's instructions, was giving the Peanut Prince one last chance to throw in the towel. Olesia hoped he would take it, but she was certain of what his answer would be. He would be put to death. The King had made that clear. He'd taken this too far, and too many lives had been lost. At the same time, his followers could be spared. They could go home to their families.
As the young woman watched, the berry-person sent as an envoy came riding back. The plump princess felt hope rise. She found herself hoping they could get through this until the peanut-folk showered the envoy with arrows, slaughtering him and more than slaughtering him. It was needless violence, much like they'd done to the envoy at Harrow. "It is death, then," said Olesia, and even to Ingrid it sounded awful and terrifying. "They'll try to drown you," the Warrior Princess reminded her. In a voice like stone grinding stone, the elemental replied, "let them..."
Pointing, Olesia sent a massive bolt of flame hurtling at the enemy lines. That bolt exploded in a horrifyingly massive conflagration. Ingrid could see men burning alive through her spyglass. "Remind me not to piss you off," huffed the soldier. Turning to her officers, the tall woman snarled, "charge!" Booting her wolf into motion, the young elemental rushed into battle right alongside her.
The battle was joined immediately, with the peanuts unleashing cannons and firing clouds of arrows and darts. As the range closed, men on both sides died, compounding the tragedy of this stupid, pointless war. Olesia found herself in the thick of things, with apocalyptic violence swirling around her. Careful of her allies, the young woman unleashed smaller strikes against the peanuts, killing a few here and there, always looking for a chance to end things with one good strike. Unfortunately, Ingrid being Ingrid and down at the bottom of her patience besides, the Warrior Princess waded right in, leaving no time to organize or look for weakness.
The battle see-sawed back and forth, with men coming to grips at close range with bows and guns and swords all at once, and Olesia found herself swept apart from the older woman in the swirling melee. As the young princess searched this way and that, a catapult hurled a cask of water, barely missing her. A second catapult joined the fray as she struck at the first. Both seemed to have been cobbled together from steel scrap, making them frustratingly difficult to destroy. The elemental torched the gun captain of the first machine, but the machine itself was dug in deep. As the second machine began to find the range, she killed a second gun captain. Closer, she decided. She couldn't stay here.
As a second and then a third cask of icy water slammed down in the spot where she'd stopped, the plush princess charged the first catapult. The men in the pit panicked. The catapults were supposed to support each other, but they hadn't let themselves think too much about what it meant to get this woman's personal attention. Two men fled immediately. Two others leveled weapons, preparing to sell themselves dearly, as the wolf leaped the parapet, landing down in the pit with them.
Olesia slaughtered the nearest fellow, as he went to smash open a heavy valve. As the soldiers fired steel arrows at her, the new-minted soldier held her ground. There was water in the pipe. That was deadly for her. Of course, as the peanuts had been learning, so had she. The plump girl heated the air far in front of her, causing arrows to go awry and spoiling the soldiers' aim. That bought her time to get them sorted out. The man on the left was a better shot, and she set him alight, turning him into a human candle. Blotting the screams out of her mind, the elemental turned to the other man, giving him a chance to run. Instead, he charged. Alrighty, then, she decided, as she burned him down to his boots. And then it was time to move. Water-casks were falling on the pit now, aiming to drown her.
Back in the Candy Kingdom, Billy stood stealing time with Hamest in defiance of the ugly agreement his family had made. It had honestly been days since he'd seen Nieve, and their relationship had improved not at all. The younger woman had been smugly threatening, suggesting she would blacken his reputation–making everyone in the world think he was an abuser and rapist. Billy had stayed away from her as best he could. It hadn't been hard to do that when the Lizard Princess was so happy to distract him.
He'd brought Hamest up to the peak of the Candy Palace to look out on the vastness of Bonnie's personal empire. The strange woman from the east was in absolute awe. It was one thing to pass through the gates and through the warren of streets, seeing all the wonders the Candy Kingdom had to offer. It was quite another to look down on it from above to see just how grand it all was. Hamest had grown up in the shadows of the fallen civilization that had preceded her kingdom. As a child, she'd day-dreamed of what that world had been like. Now, looking down on Bonnie's kingdom, she could see some of those dreams brought to life.
Of course the endless honking horns was annoying.
"I see why he fought so hard for this," the blonde murmured. "He fought hard for everybody to have this," Billy agreed. "It's the legacy of the human race... His people blew it all up feuding over nothing. Now Bonnie's managed to salvage some of it." Hamest nodded, her mind going down old, worn pathways. She'd collected books and treasures, hoping to capture a piece of this. Now she found herself wanting to ask a very dangerous question. Billy was heir to all of this. Their child might hold a piece of this in his hands. As the pretty, older woman turned to her companion to ask a deadly question, a voice from below intruded with the problem of the day.
Billy turned to the stairs to find a trio of lizard-folk coming up. They looked travel-worn and dusty, seeming as though they'd been riding for days, and they'd clearly not stopped to rest when they reached the city. Instead, they'd come straight here, looking for their mistress. Before Billy could say a word, they were on their knees at the lady's feet, laying out dangerous news–news that had him immediately angry at Hamest. And shortly after that, he was headed down the stairs, half-dragging his would-be wife, headed for the one man with the power to get this mess straightened out.
The ruckus came to the King of Ooo as he was finishing up the latest installment of the task that had bedeviled him for the last few weeks. Sarah's gift of a replacement arm had been almost as much a trial as a boon. He'd been having a helluva time getting used to it, and Sarah herself had been almost too busy to be bothered adjusting it. He'd been forced to train himself to make it work. And that had meant stretching the limits of his mental capacity under the strict supervision of Dr. Chips.
He was three hours in this morning, and close to tears of rage both at the doctor and at himself, as he struggled with the prescribed therapy. "Good, Finn," cried Dr. Chips. "Very good." Finn nodded, though his face was covered in sweat and focused with laser precision on the task in front of him. It was not something that Simone had ever seen him sweat over before. In times not long past, he would have been sweating over a workout or sweating out the arduous task of hauling up firewood or even sweating over their stove as he cooked up supper. Today he was sweating over the job of putting together a puzzle. He was sweating because his arm was not cooperating. Or rather he'd ended up with a new one that felt completely different than the one he'd had for the last twenty-plus years of his life.
He'd taken the puzzle apart twenty times today and put it back together a like number. It was getting easier, but it was costing him a lot to get it done. He was exhausted. She could tell he was exhausted, and she'd been lobbying the rest of the family to keep Billy right where he was a little longer. Her husband needed some rest. He wasn't a young man anymore. When Dr. Chips would have asked the big man to do it again–one last time for the day–the pretty wizard intervened. Resting her hands on Finn's shaking shoulders, she said, "I think that's enough, doctor."
The doctor looked as if he might argue that, but the Ice Queen's expression warned him that he might not like the results. As the doctor gathered up the things he'd brought for today's therapy, Simone Mertens retrieved a towel and rubbed down her husband's quavering shoulders, drying the sweat covering him. "I'm sorry I'm such a fuck-up," he muttered. The tall woman shushed him. He was in one of his self-destructive funkes today. Honestly, she couldn't remember the last time he'd been his old happy-go-lucky self. A dark corner of her mind suggested it was the day she'd decided to wander off on a political campaign that helped nobody–not even the woman who wanted it.
It was anger whispering dark thoughts into her mind. She was angry at her mother. Still. She was angry that Betty Grof-Petrikov had decided to blow up their family. She sometimes felt that if her mother hadn't dragged them down this road, her father would still be alive. And all of that served as a screen against the anger she had for herself. She'd had everything–most everything. She'd had a wonderfully unique family and six lovely children to raise. She'd had a wonderful husband that she'd shared–happily–with one of the closest friends she'd ever had in her short life. And she'd led them all here.
She'd skirted the edge of cheating on her husband with her mother all but egging her on with a nudge and a wink. If she let herself once be honest, the only reason she hadn't was that most of those men had been too terrified of her father's once-ugly reputation to try anything more than putting their hands on her ass or tits. She knew she'd come close to ending up in bed with another man because she'd lacked the spine to stand up to Betty and her incessant demands that she 'play nice' with the disgusting shits who held the power in Wizard City. Truth be told, if her mother had pushed, she'd have gone along with it, just like she'd gone along with putting Emeraude's life at risk to win the Matriarch's support.
Hugging Finn, the tall woman kissed his cheek, and she finally felt him relax. He was down deep in an ugly place, still blaming himself for something that had only been partly his fault. He'd been rolling with the punches, and she'd thrown a lot of those punches herself. Anger doesn't help, she reminded herself. Being angry at Betty–who was doing a lot of being angry at herself–wasn't going to bring back their old life. Instead, she focused on what she had now. She still had a wonderful husband, who was doing all he could for her and everyone else in their mad little family. The tall woman knelt beside him and held onto him, whispering soothing words into his ear. She still loved him more than anything else in the world.
As she knelt there, a commotion outside announced the intrusion of their unhappy reality. Someone needed the King of Ooo. Simone Mertens stood up, straightening her dress in reflexive habit. She wore the big poofy dresses almost as a reminder of her father. When Finn would have taken her hand with his left–his remaining natural hand–she moved to his right and took the other one as her mom came in, leading a pack of people, including the Lizard Princess herself.
The pack began talking at once, shouting over each other to deliver today's dose of bad news. Simone whistled harshly, cutting off the blather. "One at a time," she growled. "Mom?" Betty turned to their husband and said, "that army that menaced the Lizard Kingdom is back. They're prowling around in the hinterlands, probing at some of the outlying villages." Finn glanced at Hamest. His old flame flushed and glanced away. Yeah, fucking up again. He'd warned her about spending her time on things that were important. One more princess doing what princesses couldn't seem to help doing.
"Billy will go to the Lizard Kingdom," Finn declared. "Take Princess Nieve's bodyguards as a force-in-being." The young princess gobbled soundlessly. Her grandmother shushed her. This was the work of ruling the world. She'd been feeling her way and more than a little worried when first Yolanda and then Nieve had gone off the rails. She'd been guilty a time or two of thinking of men as inferiors and fools–nothing more than raw muscle to do the work that women needed. She was becoming more and more comfortable with this man, who was starting to show signs of being the sort of insightful person who could hold this enterprise together.
The guards were just men to the Dowager Princess. They were the necessary coin to buy her family into a better position in this new empire. She could only hope her idiot grand-daughter was sharp enough to learn that. After all, who was going to come after them now? The Dessert People?
One of the lizard-men frowned and said, "our people are in need of Your Majesty's urgent attention. We're facing destruction." "You have my urgent attention," Finn replied. "My son is breaking off his honeymoon to go attend to your troubles. Is there else?" Insistently, Hamest's First-Minister said, "we were counting on your... personal attention to this matter, Your Majesty." It was flattery, and it was a very real barb directed at Finn's habits of taking care of business personally. He was a man of action. Still. Every face there was focused on the King's as he digested that.
Of course, there was an elephant in the corner. Hamest hadn't been doing very much to fix her own problem. A part of him wanted to very publicly dress her down–remind her of her own failings. He knew it would do little to help things. She was what she was–a day-dreamer handed a kingdom she was poorly qualified to rule. Finn's eyes narrowed on the Lizard Kingdom's envoy, and he coolly told the man, "King's don't adventure, Mr. Nazaryan." Without another word, he got up and strode out, leaving not just the envoy but his whole family staring after him. The question figuratively hung there in the air. What had just happened? Finn had turned down the chance to get his hands dirty.
Betty broke the spell. She immediately grabbed for Simone's hand, causing the tall woman to flinch in pain. Drew, who'd been staring at Finn's back just as much as the rest, turned to Simone when she saw Betty flexing her daughter's injured hand. "Let me see that," she burbled. With a sigh, Simone consented to being fussed over. Turning to Billy, she said, "you get going... I'll let Rags know where you've gone."
Cherry herded the pack of assorted problems out the door, closing it behind her. Drew immediately dragged Simone over to the exam table and made her sit down. Running her fingers over the Ice-Queen's bruised and battered fingers, the pretty doctor noted every wince and grimace. "I don't like this," the pretty doctor rumbled. "You shouldn't be letting him hold your hand, when he's..." Simone cut her off with a curt, "so I should let him develop a complex? I should make him afraid to touch me?" Drew flushed to her hair and glanced away. Yeah, he was already doing a lot of that. Her mind went back to Betty's ugly speech from the gathering at the Tree-House. Changes. Finn was getting changed. Again. And nobody seemed to be giving him any space to adjust to it all.
Back in Wildberry Kingdom, Olesia had finally rejoined the Warrior Princess after slagging the last of the catapult crews. They'd tried every nasty variation on her, and she'd found herself close to checking out a few times there. Things had gotten so cold that she'd honestly had no time to think about anything but survival. Now, as she raced along at Ingrid's side, shielding the Warrior Princess from the enemy's machinations, she found a moment to reflect. William hated war. He was sick of it, and she could easily see why. William's father was profoundly disgusted with it and sick of the bloodshed, and Olesia agreed. This had to end. Death to anybody who wanted to continue it.
The enemy's defenses seemed concentrated around a broken, shell of a building. The plump woman imagined it was once a factory or something. It reminded her of the primary holdings of her father's business-partner. The thought of that nasty old man creeped her out and left her shuddering. He'd forever been hinting at her. The disgusting old man had been trying to get in her pants since she was fourteen! It sort of figured that the idiot who dared to call himself a prince held forth from this place. "Stay close," announced Ingrid, as they stepped over a few corpses. She sounded as if she was worried. Well, she might, Olesia, thought the plump girl. These men were cornered. They had nowhere to go now.
Inside, Rolf, the would-be Peanut-Prince, stood before the ugly, ugly creature in the glass bowl. "Not going so well," asked the entity? He might have been asking about yard work or an onerous chore that Rolf was avoiding. "I need your help," the terrified prince babbled. "You know my price," chuckled the monster. "I demand sacrifice..." The would-be prince glanced back in the direction of the exit. He could hear shouts and screams. They were close now and getting closer. "You're running out of time," chuckled the creature.
"Ok," said the prince. He beckoned some of his men. The fearful nut-folk came striding haltingly forward, dragging a gagged Ludwig. His lieutenant had done all he could to talk his master out of taking this step, and Rolf had come close to butchering him a time or two. Things had gotten a little easier when they discovered the artesian spring under the capitol. That had let them build defenses against the evil little bitch who ran with Warrior Princess. Unfortunately, all that had gone for nought. It had all come undone, and Rolf had found Ludwig plotting to sell him out. Ludwig had tried to meet with the enemy envoy in secret to scheme up a way to hand over this master, but it had all gone for nought.
Even now, the terrified fool stared around him with wild eyes. "You brought this on yourself, Ludwig," Rolf growled. "You'd have screwed me. You tried to fuck me. This is your penance." He nodded for his men to get busy. Fighting with the plump noble all the way, the soldiers dragged him to a hoist near the center of the room. Lashing his belt to the hook, the men lifted Ludwig aloft, raising him up above the level of the glass bowl. Dragging on a rope attached to his feet, the soldiers brought him over the prison that held their awful new ally. And then, as Rolf watched, the soldiers lowered the fat man in.
The evil creature wasted not a moment. He all but leapt to get at Ludwig. The fat peanut howled in terror the whole way down, audible in spite of his gag. Rolf made himself keep watching. He would have to keep bringing this thing sacrifices. He would have to figure out how to keep it fed. Ludwig was just a down-payment. Indeed, as the fat man came finally into reach of the awful creature, Rolf began formulating his arguments for how the army outside was enough. He was giving this thing hundreds of lives. So busy plotting was he, that he scarcely noticed Ludwig meeting his end in a horrid, blood-curdling scream that got choked off into awful gurgling that eventually dissolved down to nothing.
"Tasty," the creature growled. "There's hope for you yet." "Attend," said Rolf. "The enemy is almost on us. I'll let you out. I need you to take their center." "Of course," said the Dipped. "I could use more blood sacrifices..." Nodding–the creature was falling right into his plan–Rolf motioned for the guards to upend the mixing bowl. The soldiers had found–and refurbished–the heavy mechanism that dumped the mixing bowl. Now they strained against the gears as they slowly, ever so slowly, lowered the lip of that bowl. Rolf waited in eager anticipation as the bowl got closer and closer to the horizontal. This would all be over soon. He'd be back on the path to conquest, and it would be Chelsea bowing to him.
As the bowl reached the point of no-return, the creature came flooding out–much faster than Rolf or any of the soldiers could have followed. It was on the would-be prince before he could even register that it had betrayed him. He died in a terrible wail of terror that was cut off in mid-cry. And then the ugly show really began, as the Dipped moved against the very soldiers that had freed it.
Olesia and Ingrid entered the ruins of the old factory in the hunt for the missing peanut-prince. Prince Rolf had gone missing at the height of the fighting, and all his men believed he'd gone this way. He'd made the old factory his rallying point, though he'd forbidden all the soldiers from ever entering without his present or explicit permission. Olesia felt a sense of unease and foreboding as they walked into the cool darkness. Where was their missing prince? He couldn't have escaped. Ingrid had moved troops around the peanuts to surround their camp. There was nowhere for him to go.
Warrior Princess was filled with the joy of the day. It had been a close-fought contest–the best sort for a warrior–and she'd come out on top. Her mind was on the next moves. She wanted to move her army up to the Grey Forest, establish a base in the wilds beyond the gates, and use that as a stepping stone to march against whatever nasty little tyrants were trying to establish themselves there. If she had her way, the wall would become a footnote in history.
In the darkness, a terrible thing stalked the pair, as they cast their eyes this way and that. The elemental was a problem. The elemental could kill him–boil him to nothing. On the other hand, he'd heard the fool prince talking about an artesian spring nearby. He had options here. He had ways to skin this cat. At worst, he could simply flee into the wilds to restart the war against life and bide his time for better opportunities. Of course, he couldn't help wanting to have one last bite of the apple–one last taste of life.
The evil creature came out of the darkness, pouncing on the tall warrior, shouting, "I have you!" Olesia screamed in horror, as the ugly thing enveloped the King's wife. She was prepared for screams. She knew what a Dipped was, and she'd heard what happened when one of them got you. Instead of screaming, Ingrid actually began to grapple with the thing, startling both the elemental and the creature itself. The thing twisted and turned, even seeming to try and envelope the tall woman's head. Calmly, the warrior pulled and grappled, twisting and turning in that darkened room, as Olesia stared in fear and horror with no idea what she should do.
Part of her wanted to join the fray. She could kill it with her flames. She could boil the thing away, but that risked Ingrid too. The plump girl stood rooted to the spot by indecision, as that insane battle played out. Ingrid finally got the upper hand by the simple expedient of inhaling the evil creature, and then, exhaling, she sent the thing evaporating into the ether in a cloud of oily black smoke to the accompaniment of a horrific screaming.
Huffing and puffing, the tall woman shucked sweat from her face with one hand as if she'd merely had a particularly intense sword-fight instead of a death-struggle with an entity that should have been able to dissolve her on contact. "Y-you're still the Angel of Death," Olesia babbled! It was only when she'd said it that she realized that she'd spoken rather out of turn and maybe drawn negative attention to herself. "Say nothing of this," Ingrid growled, her voice low and dangerous. The plump woman shut her mouth. Severely, the tall woman told her, "you're to forget what you saw." Knowing she was in danger, the plump girl swore that she would.
So who was expecting that outcome? Rolf learns that a scorpion is going to act like a scorpion, no matter what it says it wants to do. And Nieve... learns that Grandma means business.