Monster Party Book Six: Only mortal trust or faerie dust...
Chapter Three: She's cold and she's cruel, but she knows what she's doing.
The cool night air was punctuated only by the cries of night birds and the distant howls of wolves.
It seemed that whatever menace has claimed the shadows of Briggdarrow's inhabitants had gone onto other feeding grounds. Still, there was something foreboding in the air, something that promised death… or worse.
In the distance a terrible baying began to carry through the night. At first it seemed to be the mundane howling of wolves, but then a more sinister and macabre tone began to emerge.
No earthly wolf ever made so baneful and haunting a sound.
Worse than that was the undeniable way that the cries drew nearer with each passing second, meaning that whatever was making those sounds would soon arrive.
Worser yet was that these sounds were being made at the strange time three or four hours before dawn that many honest humans never experienced in their lives except possibly when caring for newborn children.
Alexander Diamondclaw had been awakened from his sleep by the howls, his single green eye quite baleful itself at the moment. Since Kian had been sharing the room with him and Florence he'd gone to bed fully dressed, which at least gave him fewer tasks to worry about.
He slid Wolfclaw's sheath (along with the blade itself) on over his shoulders then headed out of the inn getting ready to 'greet' these new arrivals.
"You know… it really shouldn't be this hard for a man to get a good night's sleep." The blond haired man grumbled to himself.
He wasn't the only one to have been awoken by the howling, Mirri Catwarrior and James Firecat were also awake and outside, their bodies poised and waiting for the inevitable assault.
"Let me handle them, if I do it frequently enough maybe word will start getting around and people will be polite enough to only try and murder me at a reasonable hour." Alexander declared, his eye gazing into the darkness, looking for any concrete sign of the approaching monsters.
He got his 'wish' soon enough as a full half a dozen canine shapes bounded out of the darkness, they were slightly larger with wolves with jet black fur and blazing red eyes. Every single breath they took filled the air around them with fowl smelling dark mist.
Alexander sized up his foes, tilted Wolfclaw to the side slightly and smiled.
"Could be worse." He noted with a shrug as the longsword slid free from its scabbard into his waiting hands.
Two of the huge coal black monstrous dogs leaped at Alexander with teeth bared paws outstretched.
They were both dead before they hit the ground.
Wolfclaw's shining blade had slashed through the dark night air with brilliant speed and bisected both of the canine monsters as if they were made of paper rather than flesh.
Sword in hand Alexander faced down the other four which began to warily start to circle him.
"You've have your orders and you'll follow them, so get this over with. Come at me and die for you masters!" He taunted the beasts.
In response one of them drew in a deep breath and then blew forth a blast of fire.
It swallowed up Alexander Diamondclaw completely.
Then it pressed onward as fire always does, and a moment later the blond haired man cleaved the monster's skull from its shoulders.
Though he and been swallowed by flames, he'd proved too tough morsel for them to devour. Clearly both Alexander and his outfit had been granted magical protection which saw him in good stead against the beast's flames.
That left only three of the beasts for him to worry about. One of them tried to leap at Alexander's back as soon it realized he'd survived the other beast's breath attack. That gave the blond haired man entirely too much time and in another clean slice Wolfclaw claimed its fourth victim tearing the beast's belly wide open.
The last two monstrous dogs attacked him simultaneously from opposite sides. One of them promptly died as swiftly as its companions.
The other however managed to complete its journey, dragging Alexander to the ground, and causing Wolf Claw to slip from his fingers in the process.
The beast's murderous jaws dove towards Alexander's neck, but a single black gloved hand rose up to meet them. Alexander's right hand managed to hold the monster back for a few moments, time enough for his left hand to complete its task.
Then his entire body surged with power and his arm forced the monster's head still further up, before Alexander leaned in, and used his own suddenly sharp teeth to tear out the monster's throat, just as it had sought to do to him.
Alexander spat out the fowl tasting flesh, stood back up, retrieved Wolf Claw, (returning it to its sheath) and otherwise readjusted his outfit. That done, he turned to once again to gaze in the direction that monsters had come from. The hunting beasts had been dealt with, but their masters would be coming for them next.
XXX XXX XXX
Kian McCollin left the safety of the inn his own curiosity getting the better of him. He couldn't help but watch as the ominous figures emerged from the trees into the moonlight.
They had skin pale as could be, pointed ears, each one of them gripping a pair of shinning curved blades. They were dressed in simple looking kilts and tunics that neither offered them protection from their foes blows nor impeded their movements. Their long brown haired flowed out behind them as they moved.
"Dance with us..."
"Dance with us..."
"Dance with us..."
They each called out one by one.
"Can I Sir, can I?" Mirri Catwarrior pleaded with Alexander Diamondclaw.
The blond haired man half drew his sword for just a moment and then firmly shoved it back into its sheath.
"You can handle them as you see fit." He agreed.
"Keep them alive though! I need them alive!" Insisted Florence Bastien.
"Huh, guess 'fun' Florence isn't nearly as fun as I thought she would be. All right, if you insist I'll try not to kill them..." Mirri declared sounding far too calm about the subject.
Kian watched as the black haired woman stepped forward on her own to faced eight of the pale skinned fiends who had overwhelmed his entire village. As she approached all of a sudden her slow steady movements became disrupted and jerky as she broke into a wild jig.
"Dancing magic... cute, oh I'm a blind also, that's fun." As Mirri spun as if twirling an invisible partner she suddenly pulled forth a piece of cloth from her outfit and wrapped it tightly around her own eyes, even as the dancers started to spin themselves in tighter and tighter circles around her.
"So I hear you boys and girls like to dance, don't worry I've got room on my card for all of you. Just let me get properly outfitted for the occasion." As she was forced into another magical twirl Mirri tossed aside her hat, and her jacket leaving clad in only the simple white shirt beneath.
She threw an extravagant bow to the creatures that surrounded her.
To Kian's surprise the dancing men bowed right back to her in preparation for the 'dance' to come between them.
"Almost ready, there's only one thing left I require, James a little music if you please?" James Firecat nodded and blew into his harmonica.
Almost instantly Kian found his ears buffeted by far more sounds than any one instruments should have been able to produce. The music continued even when James removed his lips from the harmonica and began to sing in a vibrant but inexperienced voice.
"Her breath began to speak, as she stood right in front of me. The color of her eyes was the color of insanity..." Mirri's foes seemed to only too pleased to have music by which to do their fighting and advanced in time with the beat ready to slice her to pieces.
Their attacks came faster than Kian's eyes could follow, the movement of their arms becoming nothing more than blurs of speed.
"Crushed beneath her wave like a ship I could not reach her shore!" James called out as Kian making a shocking discovery.
As fast those dark dancers were... Mirri was faster still.
She did not even blur, and while Kian could at least tell what the dancers were doing (if not see them doing it) when Mirri wanted to, she moved so fast that she seemed to simply vanish. One moment she had been in the middle of a circle of dancing foes who had turned to plunge their blades inwards, the next she was throwing off a dismissive curtsey from several feet outside the ring of flesh of steel they had woven around her.
"Your hearts beat so loud I can hear it even over the music..." Mirri mocked them.
"We're all just dancers on the devil's dance floor!" As he watched all of a sudden Mirri's white gloves began to glow with strange luminescence as if fey lights had decided to bless her fists.
"Heh, now that we've both a feel for the beat, lets make this interesting..." Mirri announced playfully licking her lips.
"We love interesting!" One of the dancers declared while licking their blade eagerly.
"You move fast, but can you strike with any skill?" Yet another asked blades flashing wildly.
The dancers came forward once again, and their 'prey' came to meet them. Mirri's was still dancing, but her movements were no longer jerky as if her limbs were being compelled to movement by some greater force, no now there was a vibrant energetic confidence in her steps.
Birds flew, fish swam, cats stalked, Mirri Catwarrior danced.
"Well swing a little more, a little more 'oer the merry-o. Swing a little more, a little more next to me. Well swing a little more, a little more 'oer the merry-o. Swing a little more, a little more next to me!" James continue to sing as he and his companions simply stood back and let Mirri fight on her own.
The eight dancing figures met Mirri, and the music gained additional percussion. It was supplied by Mirri's fists shattering bones all but perfectly in time with moments in the song when the drums beat their loudest. Already one of the black dancers lay upon the ground, his nose broken all traces of sense driven from his body.
She withdrew away from them and raised up her gloved hands kissing them dramatically.
"Flit like a dragonfly, slay like a dragon." Mirri vowed.
In response the dancing men slammed the swords together in approval.
"Pressed against her face I could feel her insecurity..." James sung as Mirri spun in among the dancers, and two of them thrust their blades at her.
With bizzare ease, she grabbed their wrists and jerked, causing them be yanked forward and slice into one another one's shoulders. Then she twisted their arms until they snapped making them drop their blades.
"Her mother'd been a drunk and her father was obscurity." She grabbed the defenseless dancing men by their shoulders and slammed them into the ground, rendering them both unconscious.
Then Mirri promptly moved on with that same blinding speed just barely managed to avoid being skewered by a third dancing man's blade.
She seemed to vanish completely for a few moments and then emerged into being again still unharmed.
"What do you fight for? Is it the blood, the death, the screams, or the brilliance of the battle itself?" One of the five remaining dancing men called out to her.
"Why not all of the above?" Mirri answered with a smirk.
"A woman after my own heart." Her pointed eared foe replied with relish.
"If Florence hadn't insisted otherwise I'd rip it out and show it to you." Mirri promised him.
"But nothin' ever came form a life that was a simple one." James kept right on singing.
The five dancing men approached her together as one group, and blades began to flash at her from all sides, and yet even completely blind Mirri was able to dart between them with ease! Kian could only gape in amazement.
"Pull yourself together girl, and have a little fun!" Did it really matter how? All that mattered to Kian was that she was doing it, and it looked like the dancers (those that remained) were similarly astonished as she delivered a powerful elbow to one's pelvis smashing it to pieces.
"Well she took me by the hand, I could see she was a fiery one." In time with the music Mirri stopped one dancer's attack midway through by grabbing his hands and squeezing tight.
When she let go, his sword fell from limp and distorted fingers wrenched to uselessness.
"Her legs ran all the way up to heaven and past Avalon!" Mirri kicked off the ground, and turned her leap into a kick that involved her leg traveling a crescent moon shaped path straight into the head of another dancer slamming them to the ground and staining Mirri's boot red and pink.
"Tell me something girl, what it is you have in store? She said come with me now, on the devil's dance floor!" There were only two of the dancing men left now, the wearily circled Mirri blades ready to strike if they got the chance.
"The apple now is sweet. Oh much sweeter than it ought to be. Another little bite, I don't think there is much hope for me!" They both came at her, but Mirri managed backhand one of them away from her. The other, her hands tore at his neck, and ripped a bloody gash in his throat causing a small spray of blood that splattered against Mirri's face.
"The sweat beneath her brow, travels all the way an' headin' south. This bleedin' heart's cryin', cause there's no way out!" The last remaining dancing man started to rise to his feet, but Mirri jammed her foot against his back, and then began to stomp and stomp and stomp until his spine had been splintered.
"Please… just a little more?" One of the dancing men who was laying on the ground unable to fight but not yet unconscious moaned.
"Since you asked so nicely..." Mirri reflected before kicking him in the head.
"Swing a little more, on the Devil's Dance Floor!" James finished the song, before slowly taking Kian's hand in his own.
"I think it's time for us to get back to sleep now that it's safe again..." He insisted.
XXX XXX XXX
"Not these two..." Alexander told Florence as they inspected the subdued dancing men.
"You can't be serious." Florence's voice was far harsher than normal.
"Not these two." Alexander repeated as he adjusted the fallen fey's outfits slightly.
"Why not?" The dryad practically hissed.
"They're not dancing men." Alexander explained, pulling their outfits tight against their flesh.
Like the other six they were pale skinned, eerily beautiful, with long pointed ears, and equally long hair.
Only when their outfits were adjusted did it become clear that they had something the other six didn't, breasts.
"I can't let you illuminate dancing women." Alexander groaned, his voice becoming more strained, as if he would have much rather not have spoken at all.
"Ordinary 'death' as we know it will teach them nothing." Florence insisted.
"We don't know that. They take so long to pull themselves back together that no human has ever been able to properly study what happens." He insisted.
"So you want to be the first then? Such things are best left to Rudolph Van Richten. You're not the scholarly type." Florence pointed out.
"I refuse to have this argument with you Florence. Go ahead, hate me for this, I'm used to being hated, even by you." Alexander declared stoically.
Then he grabbed the skull of each fey and squeezed until their was a sickening sound.
Before he even had a chance to stand up both of the dancing women had completely and utterly ceased to be. There was not so much as a single drop of blood or fragment of bone left to mark their passing.
"GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!" Florence screamed at the top of her lungs and Alexander did exactly as she asked.
He simply turned and walked away, leaving the six dancing men for her to deal with as she saw fit.
XXX XXX XXX
Florence Bastien had prepared the dancing men to face their fate. Each one was bound hand and foot against the trunk of a tree by thick tight vines, with still more wrapped around their mouth in order to gag them.
"I have little wish to hear what you have to say, and even less to give you a chance to cast spells." Florence declared as she paced back and forth before her captives.
"You disgust me. You play at war, make light of death, think that what is serious to others need not concern you! You believe that you are above, are better than the natural order of this world." She insisted ominously.
One of the dancing man began to transform into a ferret, not that it did them any good, the vines tightened as quickly as their body could transform.
"No. You will not escape from me today. You will not escape punishment for a lifetime of brutality. This is not a game, this is not fun, there is nothing more serious in this world than life and death.
You seemed to have been unable to realize that though, so I hope you find this educational. Tell me, does battle seem any less joyous now that you know that your own lives are about to be forfeited?" She demanded.
None of the dancing men could speak up of course any words they spoke came out as mumbled gibberish.
"Those who mock the natural order, who refuse to recognize the lives of others as beautiful and unique, who treat them as nothing more than playthings, I have sworn to see them brought low as wheat before the scythe.
Darkness has infested you, darkness has corrupted you, I will drive it from you and purify whatever remains of your spirits. Every twilight inevitably gives way before the dawn." Florence Bastien declared as the sun began to rise and its rays fell upon the dancing men.
Their lithe bodies began to smoke and soon caught fire. First their hair ignited, but then it spread to their skin and clothing as well. Florence knew this would happen and had magically enchanted the trees to protect them from the flames. Those trees would not suffer, and their prisoners would not be able to escape….
They burned no less thoroughly than vampires, in fact they were so completely consumed by the sunlight that not even piles of ash were last behind.
Once the fires subsided Florence allowed the vines she had magically animated to relax and a smirk began to touch at the edges of her lips.
"It is well that the dispensing the judgment of Gaia is so horrible or I should grow far too fond of it." She reflected.
XXX XXX XXX
"Well, here we are again..." Admitted Alexander Diamondclaw.
"You have no one but yourself to blame for it." Florence Bastien couldn't help but point out.
The pair had returned to their room in the inn and now sat back to back with one another on the bed.
"You know, I really wish this would be one of our normal arguments. The kind where I could just admit that you're right and we could move on. This time though, I won't… I can't… I still feel so sure I did the right thing." Alexander insisted.
"It is no bed of roses for me either." Florence Bastien reflected.
"I don't like how you act when you're around them." Alexander warned her.
"That's what I hate about them most." Florence answered, her voice pained.
"Mirri agrees with the way you treat them." Alexander pointed out.
"Mirri agrees with a great many of your plans." Florence countered.
"Yes, typically those are the plans I count on you to talk me out of." Alexander responded, his voice alight with bitter irony.
"You'll still have James." Florence noted, her voice also touched with traces of irony.
"I count on James to speak from the heart, but I like being able to depend on you for sage wisdom." Alexander explained.
"My sage wisdom says that there is too much evil in this world. If you wish to make a difference you need to pluck it out by its roots, otherwise it will just grow back." Florence declared calmly.
"Were you ever tempted to pluck my roots?" Alexander inquired slowly.
"You're not like them." Florence insisted.
"Yes I am. I'm so very, very, like them." Alexander lamented.
Florence stood up, walked around the bed, and grabbed Alexander's face, forcing his left eye to gaze into her own.
"You are NOT like them." Florence repeated.
"The problem is I can't be sure if you're saying that for my benefit or your own." Coming from another man those words could have been a condemnation, from Alexander Diamondclaw's throat they were simply sorrowful.
"Stop, just stop Alex. You can't solve this problem by making a monster of yourself." The bald woman warned him.
"Then I don't know what you want from me... that's the only thing I'm good at." The blond haired man insisted with dreadful earnestly, a tear starting to form in his single eye.
Florence answered him with a deep kiss.
"You always try, no matter what. That is why I love you." She insisted.
After a moment's hesitation Alexander kissed her back.
"We haven't actually solved anything though..." He muttered when the kiss finally ended.
Florence reached over, grabbed the bed's pillow and walloped Alexander over the head with it.
"You're a beast." She teased him.
"None beastlier." Alexander agreed with a smile.
End Chapter Three
AN: Alex is first attacked by Hellhounds in this chapter. His outfit is still protected against fire thanks to Florence, just like it was during the last book, that's the wonder of the permanency spell.
Once they're dealt with, the song that James plays while Mirri fights is "Devil's Dance Floor" by Flogging Molly, which is an appropriately Irish band. I removed a lot of the repeats of the chorus to get most of the lines in.
Mirri's glowing fists are her turning on the "Dancers Strike" ability that she has from her levels in Battle Dancer. Most of the time she just uses the fact that she's a vampire and her extremities (natural attacks) thus count as "magical" to defeat a foe's damage reduction, but if she isn't sure if that alone will do the job (she's never fought dancing men before) she'll turn on Dancer's strike.
Also Kian's inability to follow Mirri is less her being super speedy and more her using the Quickchange feat to take on her gaseous form as a move equivalent action,
Anyway, as we've been slowly building up to, yes Florence does get exponentially more bloodthirsty and violent when Shadow Fey are involved.
On the other hand, these dancing men invaded this particular village "just cause" so one can making a very convincing argument that they deserve everything that happens to them. Florence isn't herself when she's around Shadow Fey… but it's not like she's wrong, to a great degree the Dancing Men do treat war more like a game than humans do, and they don't respect the lives of human beings as existing for any reason other than to provide them with entertainment