Feeling that you've done all you can for one day, you say your good-byes to Lu-sensei, Amy, and Larry and head home. You make a mental note as you go that you should probably thank Cordelia for her assistance with your letter-writing, the next time you see her. You also consider doing something to apologize for upsetting her, but you decide to let that idea fade away. You don't feel you did anything really wrong, and besides which, you know better than to hand Cordelia Chase an invitation to exert her will upon you.
She does that often enough as it is.
Days go by. You do more work on your plan to exorcise your uncle's collection of quasi-possessed animal skins, enough so that you believe the ritual to be basically done, or at least as much as it can be without field-testing. All that's left to do on that front is sit down to talk with Uncle Rory about the supernatural, and then make some magic.
In unrelated news, all is quiet on the mail front. Ambrose hasn't responded to your last letter about Beryl wanting to get in touch with him, and you haven't received any further inquiries from Beryl on the matter, whether in written form or through unholy visitations. You half-suspect that Ambrose may have gone around you and gotten in touch with Beryl directly, perhaps even dropping in on her for a visit, leaving you to wonder what's going on. It feels like the sort of thing he'd do. You also don't hear back from Kahlua, but given the nature of the letter you just sent off to her, that comes as no real surprise. After just a few days, it's entirely possible that the envelope and its contents are still undergoing whatever procedures the Shuzens have set up for mystical quarantine.
Come Saturday, you show up for the week-end class at Lu-sensei's and find that Cordelia isn't there. Your teacher informs you that the Chases have left town for the next few weeks, and won't be back until mid-July. It's somewhat inconvenient for you, as you were hoping to use today to make sure Cordy wasn't really mad at you, and now you'll just have to wait and hope.
The rest of the universe can take care of itself for a little while; you've got an issue in need of attention that is much closer to home, both in the figurative sense and the literal.
That evening over and after dinner, you talk with your father about your progress on the ritual to drive the evil spirits out of Uncle Rory's collection of dead animal skins. You are about as ready as you can get, which means the next step is talking to your uncle and letting him know of the danger he's in and your potential solution for it.
Your parents trade looks.
"Sunday barbeque?" your mother suggests.
"Could work," your father agrees. "Rory always mellows out after a big meal."
"He also gets sleepy, dear," your mother says, shaking her head. "Maybe you should try talking to him first, and let him calm down over food?"
That gets a wince. "Might work," is your father's reluctant response. "Maybe. Or Rory could decide I'd been hitting the sauce, and just ignore it."
"If it's proof we need, Dad," you start.
"It'll probably come to that," your father admits. "I'm just not sure whether we should open with the light show, or save it for after lunch."
"Maybe we could show Rory the tapes of that tournament?" your mother muses.
"That's a thought."
You and your folks spend the rest of the evening hashing out a plan.
Sunday arrives, and towards eleven o'clock, so does Rory. Greetings are offered all around, life, business, and other matters discussed for about three-quarters of an hour while some juicy steaks cook on the grill and a generous number of potatoes bake in the oven. Your father and uncle argue over the steaks - where Rory prefers his meat well-done, your father favors medium rare - while your mother handles the potatoes. You mostly work to keep Zelda from getting too close to the barbeque or the oven, particularly when they're open.
Once lunch is ready, instead of taking places around the kitchen table, your family collectively moves to the living room, where standing trays and side-tables have been positioned for use.
"So what's up, Tony?" your uncle asks, after everyone is seated.
"What, a guy can't invite his brother over for lunch without an ulterior motive?"
Your Dad isn't even trying to sound innocent.
"Considering that it's not somebody's birthday or Christmas? No, you really can't. I know you, old man. You've got something you want to tell me, and you're hoping the offer of free food will keep me happy while you make your pitch."
"Well, if you don't want the steak," your father begins.
"I didn't say that." Your uncle doesn't QUITE brandish his fork and knife.
"Okay. But you're right," your father adds. "I do have a motive. It involves movies."
"I don't follow," your uncle admits as he carves up his dark, sauce-dripping steak.
"We never did get around to showing you the tapes for the tournament Alex went to. Alex?"
On cue, you hit Play, and the pre-loaded tape rolls.
"One thing I've got to mention before the action really gets going, Rory; keep an open mind."
Your uncle frowns again, chewing on a piece of meat.
His jaw seems to stop working when he sees the obviously non-human members of line-up. Swallowing, he looks from the TV to you and your folks.
"Not faked?"
"Nope."
"Not even a little?" There is a note of pleading in his tone.
"Sorry, bro."
Rory sighs and then, echoing your father's response, reaches for his beer and takes a long drink.
"For the record, Tony, I kind of hate you right now."
"Quit whining, eat your steak, and enjoy the show."
You take in your uncle's reaction. It seems that, like your folks, he was already aware of the existence of the supernatural. You wonder: how?
You decide not to voice your curiosity. If his tone is any indication, Uncle Rory is taking your admission of knowledge of and involvement in the supernatural less well than your folks did. It hints that his own experiences in the field may be worse than what either of your parents went through, or perhaps that he just isn't as well-equipped to deal with the trauma. Either way, finding out the truth doesn't seem worth the price to him, and it isn't what you're after with this presentation anyway, so you let it lie.
At least for now.
Gained Filial Piety D (Plus)
Gained King of Men C (Plus)
Rory eats slowly and quietly for the first few fights. Then your first bout comes up, and he stops eating to stare at the screen. Slowly, your uncle's head turns towards you, his expression one of shock and strain.
You wince internally.
Taking your uncle's reaction as a cue, you get up and pause the tapes.
"Awww," Zelda pouts. "I wanted to watcth the fighth again."
"Maybe later, squirt," you reply. "I don't think Uncle Rory was enjoying it too much."
Your father glances at his brother. "You alright there, Rory?"
"Been better." Taking another drink to fortify himself, your uncle looks at you. "So. Alex. How long...?"
"You know how I've been taking martial arts lessons? Well, it turned out that my Sensei is one of those mystical old master types. He's been teaching me and the other kids in my class how to do the fancy stuff for maybe a year now."
You take a moment to demonstrate, gathering up enough ki in your hand to generate light. Then you pause to gague Rory's reaction.
He stares at the little ball of light hovering over your hand, empties his glass, and turns to your folks.
"And you're okay with this?"
"We probably would have said no if Mr. Tze told us up-front that he was going to be teaching Alex magic martial arts," your mother admits. "But he didn't, and his reasons for that were... understandable. Not entirely appreciated, but understandable. We found out later, after... well, all that had happened." She nods towards the television, currently showing the frozen image of the half-Brachen O'Hanrahan and the red-eyed elfin shadow Amae.
"And now?" your uncle presses.
"Now, we know that Alex can hold his own against critters about as dangerous as vampires," your father says. "It's a bit hard on the nerves, but also reassuring."
"...I guess." Rory sits there in silence for a time, mulling over what he's been shown and told. "So why bring this up now?"
The adults look at you, and you rub the back of your neck. "Well, aside from the glowy kung fu, I've also been learning magic from a different teacher."
Rory blinks. "'Learning' magic," he repeats slowly. "Would that be as in, 'learning about magic,' or is it more like, 'learning how to cast spells?'"
"...the latter."
Your uncle starts to grin.
"Rory," your father says, "I know that look. What have you done?"
"Nothing. Really, bro, I swear."
Your Dad's expression doesn't change.
"Okay, I MAY have been buying protective charms from that magic shop downtown," your uncle admits. "But I had really good reason!"
Your father sighs and nods, apparently accepting the explanation. It's news to you, as you don't recall seeing or sensing any such thing on your uncle's person or in his shop. But that could just mean he was getting sold fakes.
"So what kind of stuff can you do with magic, Alex?" your uncle asks eagerly.
Trading looks with your Dad - who shrugs and gestures for you to go ahead - you demonstrate a few of your simple cantrips. Basic telekinesis, a Spell of Light, that little trick that summons a flame over your fingertip, that sort of thing. Your uncle is visibly shocked, and you have to wonder why, when he seemed so much more at ease with the idea of magic than supernatural kung fu or demons.
"I can do more than this," you explain, "but casting serious spells is kind of obvious to anyone who has the same abilities, or certain kinds of demons, so I've been avoiding doing that in town."
Your uncle shivers and nods. "I definitely get that. But, you still haven't answered my question: why tell me?"
"As to that, I've got really good news, and some manageably bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"
Rory frowns. "...bad news first."
"Okay. One of the things that learning martial arts and magic have in common is that they both teach you to be more aware of your surroundings - in my case, to the point where I can sense magic and other weird stuff nearby."
"What, like a Jedi?"
"Kind of, yeah. And because of that, well... I sort of sensed the Dark Side in your shop."
"...huh?"
"Your taxidermy collection is possessed, Rory," your father cuts in.
"Oh, come on, Tony! I know you don't like my hobby that much-"
"It's not about what I like or dislike! Alex says there's something bad happening with your critter collection-"
"And I'll bet that made you feel real vindicated, didn't it?"
"Damn it, Rory-"
Oh, dear. Looks like there's more of an argument about your uncle's favorite pasttime than you realized.
"Are you okay, Uncle?" you inquire, as you let your latest demonstrative spell drop. "You seem a little... jumpy."
"Uh... just surprised, Alex." Rory gulps, glances at his empty glass, and then shakes his head. "Sorry, I just... I've never actually seen somebody casting spells before. The stuff I pick up is all... pre-enchanted? And from what the lady at the store said, I got the impression it was supposed to take a lot more time and effort than what you just did."
"It does when you're trying to create items with power of their own," you admit. "And it can take a while to cast spells, too, depending on your personal training and ability. Little effects like this" - you wave an illusion into existence around yourself, making your clothes appear dark brown for a moment - "are a lot easier to create."
Your uncle looks thoughtful, and less twitchy than he was a moment earlier.
Before your father and his brother can really get going, you clap your hands loudly. You may or may not have used a minor cantrip to augment the effect to ensure it got their attention - you'll never tell - but it works, and your elders turn to look at you.
"Sorry," you apologize. "But it was getting noisy, and I thought, well, maybe I should explain this? Or something."
"It's fine, Alex," your mother says, giving the two grown men in front of her what feels like a variation on the Mom Look, and has about the same impact. "I was just about to remind your father and uncle that I'll have No Fighting In The House."
Both brothers cough and look away, fidgeting.
"Tony," your Mom says then, "why don't you get your brother another drink. Something non-alcoholic."
"Aw, Jess," your uncle begins.
She frowns at him.
He shuts his mouth.
"And Rory," comes the continuation, as if no interruption had occurred, "why don't we let Alex explain himself."
You can't help but notice that your mother isn't wording these as questions. From the way your father shuffles off to the kitchen and your uncle leans back in his seat, they noticed as well.
A little on edge despite your mother's smile, you proceed to present a summary of your observations and theories about how Uncle Rory's collection came to be in its current state. While he doesn't appear to like the part where you explain how dead things tend to attract "evil energy," the fact that it took years or even decades to build up to a potentially hazardous level seems to reassure him a bit - though not nearly as much as your following admission that you've worked out a plan that should address the problem without harming his creations.
Your father, having taken his time in the kitchen, gets back about halfway through your dissertation and carefully sets down a tall glass of lemonade on your uncle's dinner tray. In a mutual manly spirit of not ticking off the lady of the house, Rory picks up the glass and takes a sip. He barely touches the juice otherwise.
When you finish explaining yourself, Rory takes a minute to think.
"Four questions, Alex," he finally says.
"Go."
"First, is this home-baked exorcism of yours the 'good' news you mentioned, or is it the 'manageable' part of the bad news?"
"The latter."
"Okay. Second, what kind of odds do you give it working?"
You consider that. You're confident in your work, especially since Briar has been advising you on it every step of the way, but the fact that you've never done something like this before has to be taken into account. Still, you'd give the exorcism's success...
"I give it a ninety percent chance of success," you reply confidently. "I'm sure the spell will work, but since I've never cast it before, I have to allow for the chance that there might be unexpected side-effects. And something completely unrelated to what I'm trying to do could always turn up right in the middle of things."
Rory grunts and smiles crookedly. "Had a few run-ins with our old buddy Murphy already, have you?"
You nod wordlessly.
"Alright. Third question, then: assuming this spell of yours works... what's to prevent this mess from happening again?"
Ah. That's actually a very good question.
Truth be told, your ritual won't really do anything to stop Rory's collection from getting infected by the Hellmouth's energy a second time. Oh, the lingering influence of the cleansing power of Light might keep the evil magic out for a few months, even as long as a year, but as long as those effigies cloaked in dead animal skins are in Sunnydale, demonic power would start to seep back into them eventually. You could keep the problem in check by casting minor Spells of Purification over the statues every so often, providing a mystical equivalent to the regular maintenance your uncle and father perform on people's cars, but there'd always be the chance of you missing one of the animals, or somebody - or something - noticing the repeated use of Light magic in the building. As an alternative, you could make the major purification ritual a regular event, but even that would stance some chance of being noticed.
The only other long-term solution that comes to mind is to put a ward on the garage. Given the size of the place and the intrinsic differences in its threshold as a place of business rather than a place of residence - Rory's second-floor apartment notwithstanding - it'd take a lot longer to ward than your room did. Maybe as much as six months. And that would just be to keep out the Hellmouth's radiation; if you wanted to hide spellcasting in the building as well, in preparation for your automotive parts restoration plan, you'd have to double the time spent setting up the ward. Either way, it'd be a major project.
"To be honest, Uncle, the ritual won't really do anything to prevent a repeat of the problem. This situation was created because all the conditions were right for it to be created: parts of dead animals; effigies of living beings; Sunnydale. It happened before, and it will happen again. It may take longer the second time around, since the purification will make it harder for the animals to get contaminated again for a while, but eventually..." You trail off meaningfully.
Rory frowns.
"That said," you continue, "regular maintenance can keep the problem in check. The question then becomes, do you prefer constant low-level inspections, or would you rather schedule a yearly overhaul?"
"What's the difference?"
You explain that it's mainly an issue of time and efffort. If you were to visit the garage every week and cast a relatively minor spell, you could probably keep the contamination of Rory's collection in check. At the other end of the spectrum, you could perform the full ritual again once a year, which would probably require you, your uncle, and your dad to make a day of it. Maybe a weekend. It really depends on how well the ritual goes the first time, and how much trouble you have moving all of Rory's creations back and forth between the garage and the planned ritual site.
You pause for a moment to consider the other major problem: the risk of discovery. You can't currently hide your use of the low-end purification spell you'd need to use for the former approach, and the garage gets plenty of walk-in - or drive-in - business. The odds of your magical signature being noticed wouldn't be huge, but there'd be many, many opportunities for the revelation to occur. Doing everything once a year would minimize the odds on that side of the equation, with the drawback that people would be a lot more likely to notice Rory's collection... migrating, for lack of a better term.
Do you mention this problem to your uncle and parents?
Rory mulls over what you've said for a long time. "Well, making that call's going to take some careful thought."
"Damn straight," your father mutters.
"That leaves my last question, Alex."
"Which is?"
"When can we do this thing?"
While there may be advantages to not letting your parents in on the risks associated with the options for long-term management of Rory's collection, you decide that it'd be best to inform them anyway.
They listen closely, but none of them say anything in response.
"I'm all for this plan," your uncle agrees at once. "I'm excited to be a part of it." He chugs down his lemonade, slams the empty glass down on his dining tray, and leaps to his feet. "Let's do it!"
"Yeah!" Zelda chimes in, jumping upright in mimicry of your uncle.
"You're staying home, Zelda," your mother says firmly.
"Aw, Momma," your sister complains. "Can't I go thee the thtuffed animalth?"
You, your folks, and Briar shudder collectively and reply, "No."
"...phooey."
"Tell you what, munchkin," Rory says. "I'll make you a bunny."
"Really?!"
"NO."
"It'll be really cute," Rory protests, as Zelda complains again, louder than before. "I promise."
"No, Rory. Just... no." Your father sighs and runs a hand over his face. "Alex," he says then, turning to you, "while I'm all for helping my brother out with his... problem... didn't you just finish saying people were likely to notice if we tried doing this all at once?"
"Uh... yeah, I kind of did."
"So don't you think it's MORE likely they'd notice if we just lit out of here, raided the garage, and drove out of town with an overflowing trunk and backseat full of animals?"
There is no condemnation in your father's words, only a gentle but firm tone that asks you to think about what he's saying. You do, and you wince, because your old man has a fair point. Uncle Rory's collection is pretty big, and the family car isn't going to hold all of them. Possibly not even half of them.
"Hey, no problem, bro. I'll just load up the truck-"
"Rory, you've been drinking."
"It was just the one beer and the lem- er, I mean, I can handle that, fine." He glances nervously at your mother. Your father does likewise, and you can't help but echo your elders. Fortunately, Mom is busy explaining to Zelda why she can't have one of Uncle Rory's "stuffed" animals, and doesn't appear to have noticed the slip of the tongue.
"Do we need him to get sober, Alex?" Briar asks. "Because I can totally do that."
You blink. "Really?" you murmur, trying not to seem like you're talking to an imaginary friend in front of your uncle, who you have yet to tell about Briar.
"Yeah. I mean, only for a few hours at a time, but alcohol's just another poison, right?"
TV, school, and your Mom would seem to support that statement.
It strikes you that the best course of action in this situation may well be to let the adults work out a plan that they feel comfortable with, and then suggest any adjustments that you feel are necessary on the supernaturally-involved side of things. So you shake your head, whisper for Briar to keep the sobriety spell in reserve for now, and turn to your father.
"So what's the plan, Dad?"
"Well, let me think. How many of your critters can you get in the truck, Rory?"
"I'd say three-fifths or so, if I load them up carefully." His tone suggests that not being careful is not really an option.
"And how long would that take?"
"...hard to say." Rory rubs his head, thinking. "Getting them all down from their places and packed for travel will be the real time-waster. Probably four or five hours there, all told... Alex," he adds with a look in your direction. "Are you going to need the pieces out in the open to do your thing? Or is it okay if they're packed in something?"
"Open air would be best," you admit. "Any kind of cover or insulation would interfere with the spell, at least a little."
Rory winces at that. "Maybe I should rent a U-Haul or something instead..."
The three of you discuss options, and what ultimately emerges is a workable plan. Rory will go home after lunch and spend most of the rest of the day getting his work down from where he's hung it all up on the walls. Your father, meanwhile, will call the other guys who work at the garage, as well as some of their current customers, to let them all know the place will be closed for a day. Tomorrow, your uncle'll take some time off to find a rental hauler - he and your Dad argue about who'll pay for it, before your mother cuts in and tells them to just split the cost. Then they'll close the garage early and pack the animals up that afternoon. On Tuesday, you'll join them in getting up early and heading out of town. You'll unload the hauler, do the ritual, then bundle everything back into the trailer and be home before dark. Rory can put his creations back in their places the next day, return the rental, and that'll be that.
For the time being, anyway.
Listening to the outline, you can't help but notice that it's going to take just this side of forever to move all of Rory's stuffed animals around. You could speed things up a bit, particularly once you're beyond the town limits and freer to use magic. This is exactly the sort of boring, repetitive labor that the Spell of Unseen Servant was designed for. Then again, you have to keep in mind your uncle's odd reaction to your demonstration of magic. He might be more comfortable doing everything by hand.
"Would you mind if I came over and helped you pack, Uncle?" you ask Rory.
"I wouldn't, actually," he admits. "Just as long as you promise to handle everything with care."
"I promise."
You decide not to mention that you plan on using magic to speed up the process.
After lunch, Rory makes his apologies for "the dine-and-dash," thanks your Mom for the invitation and the meal, and then - after a brief, not-really-heated argument with your father - climbs into the front passenger's side seat of his car, while your Dad takes the driver's side.
As you hop into the backseat, you reflect that your folks are serious about that whole "don't drink and drive" thing. Trying to set a good example, you assume.
A few minutes later, your father parks outside the garage and the lot of you get out of Rory's car and head inside the shop.
"So, clear out the office area first?" your father suggests.
Rory nods. "Sounds good. Let me just open the back and make sure the truck is clear."
'The truck' is a large blue pickup with the words "Rory's Repair and Restoration" and a phone number emblazoned on either side. Though you once saw your uncle driving around with a client's banged-up motorcycle lashed into the back of the bigger vehicle, he mostly uses this truck to haul bits of scrap between the garage and the local junkyard. As such, when he pulls the tarp off the back, there are more than a few metallic bits and bobs lying around.
Your uncle goes to fetch a few pairs of work gloves, while your father drags a small, mostly-empty bin over next to the truck. When Rory gets back, it's to find your father looking on with some surprise as the last of the parts from the truck are deposited into the bin by invisible forces under your control.
"Alex?" your uncle asks, staring at you as a bunch of nuts and bolts go floating past. "Is my scrap possessed, too?"
"No, this is all me. There's a spell called 'Unseen Servant' which creates... well, like the name says, an invisible general-purpose workhorse. It's not a spirit or anything - it's not even intelligent. It just does what the creator tells it to, within its limits."
"I see." Rory looks at the empty and surprisingly clean bed of the truck. "It cleans, too?"
"The spell was originally created for housekeeping purposes, as far as I know," you admit.
"Is this why your room is always so neat?" your father asks suspiciously.
"...maybe."
"How many of those things can you make?" your uncle asks.
"The basic form of the spell only creates one, but it lasts for hours at a time. I modified this version a bit, gave up most of the duration for more, er, 'hands.' I've got about half a dozen of them going now, and they should last for an hour or so."
Your uncle looks thoughtful. "Give me a minute, would you?"
He rushes back inside, clomps up the stairs in the back, "office" section of the shop, and is briefly visible through the windows of his second-story apartment. He collects... something... and then tromps back downstairs. When Rory reappears, you see that he's carrying a couple sheets of transparent plastic.
"Alex," he says seriously, "come here and watch closely."
You do as instructed, and observe as your uncle carefully takes a brown squirrel down off the wall, lifting it by the base on which it's mounted rather than grasping the animal itself, and wraps the whole thing in a sheet of plastic.
"Can your ghosty buddies do that?" he asks.
You momentarily debate whether or not to repeat that the Servants aren't spirits, but settle for a succinct, "Yes."
Rory grins, and hands you the remaining sheets of plastic.
The next hour passes in a storm of levitating animal statues. Your Servants can't reach the ones that would normally require a stepladder to fetch, but you just calmly cast a Mage Hand cantrip to unhook and lower the lighter of those, leaving the rest to Rory. Your uncle seems to find the whole spectacle awesome and really, really convenient, while your Dad just stares at everything with a haunted look in his eyes before shuddering and taking refuge in the emptied-out office to start making phonecalls. You reflect that it's probably a really good thing that Briar didn't come with you for this one.
You run out of space in the back of Uncle Rory's truck before you run out of stuffed animals. That's fine; you just spend the remainder of the hour wrapping the mounted figures in plastic and lining them up in the back of the garage, away from the grime of the main work areas, so they'll be easy to fetch and load up tomorrow.
When the flight of the dead animal things ends, it takes a few minutes for you to talk your Dad out of the office. Once you've got him off the phone and out of the small room, however, he's extremely eager to get out of the shop. You call out a hasty good-bye to your uncle - who shouts back in kind from where he's sliding a cover onto the bed of the truck - before joining your father on the walk home. Your old man is silent for the first couple of blocks, and then speaks up suddenly.
"Would it have been like that? If we'd waited for them to come to life on their own, I mean?"
"Maybe. But it's a lot more likely that they'd have gotten down off their mountings and started moving around like actual animals. Angry animals."
Tony shudders again, and you decide not to add that the demon-zombie-things would probably have been HUNGRY as well.
Monday passes without note. Your uncle has no trouble acquiring a rental hauler, and when you pop over in the afternoon, it takes barely twenty minutes to load the last of Rory's collection into the thing. Your father seems to handle this display of free-floating dead things better than he did the one on Sunday. The fact that they're all wrapped up in semi-opaque plastic may be helping, or perhaps he's just grown a bit numb to the scene.
Or he could be in shock. You hope it isn't shock.
Finally, Tuesday arrives. For the first time since school let out for the summer, your alarm goes off; you have a fair amount of work to do today, and neither you, your father, nor your uncle want to waste any of the daylight. Joined by Briar, you and your Dad have breakfast, pack a lunch, and then get into the car and drive off. To help limit the chances of being noticed, you've arranged to meet up with your uncle at the planned ritual site, which is...
According to Harris Family Tradition (such as it is), about eighty years back, an uncle came out to the woods and built himself a cabin. This uncle's name and his location on the family tree both tend to change according to who's telling the story, as does the motivation underlying the deed, but the cabin is real enough. Although it's technically owned by one of your Dad's older cousins, the taxes on the place are paid collectively by the entire family, in exchange for the right to argue about who gets to use it. You've been up here a couple of times before when your father won the family feud, and for all that it looks like an abandoned shack in the middle of the woods, the cabin is pretty nice, in that rustic sort of way.
As long as you can survive for a couple of days without electricity. Or running water. Or flush toilets.
It takes the better part of half an hour for you and your father to drive up to the place, mostly due to how the road transforms into more of a gravel-lined dirt path about ten minutes out of Sunnydale proper. Rory isn't there when you arrive, but that just gives you time to scout out the area and get a feel for its mystical energies, something you had no real reason to do on your prior visits (nor the ability, to be honest).
You don't detect any spirits in the area, except for yourself, your father, Briar, and the general "background noise" of ordinary plants and animals. You also don't pick up any magical presences, aside from the ones that came with you. Even a tentative attempt to reach out with your mind, as devoid of magical or spiritual power as you can make it, reveals nothing.
Gained Mental Sense F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
One thing you do notice is how much cleaner everything feels. The Hellmouth's contamination dropped off steadily as you got futher away from town, but once you hit the woods, it began falling sharply. You're not entirely sure what that means, but Briar seems to appreciate it. She's been flying around investigating the trees, skimming across a nearby stream-fed pond too small to be called a lake, and just generally enjoying herself almost from the time she got out of the car.
"I like it up here, Alex," she says as she drifts about. "We should visit more often."
"Maybe," you answer noncommittally. "Should it be this clean this close to the Hellmouth?"
"Hmmm? Oh, yeah, this is normal. See, when we were in the desert, there wasn't much there to soak up the ambient demonic power the Hellmouth spits out. It's like ash from a fire, just piling up thick because there's nothing to get in the way. These trees, though? They have surface area. Lots of it. And they're alive, which means they can purge the taint faster than non-living sand, stone, or building materials. AND they're plants."
"Which is good, because...?"
"Plants have purifying properties, Alex. Did I not teach you this already? No? Then pay attention."
She starts talking about how, in the same way that plants respire air that is "poisonous" to animals and give off "good air" in exchange, they can also purge the environment of various supernatural contaminants. It's a slower process, and it's not without some risks to the plant in question; Briar figures that this neck of the woods sees more outbreaks of botanical diseases and forest fires than it would if the Hellmouth weren't there, and that's not even getting into the demons that wander through on their way to Sunnydale, or the ones that just lair in the region full-time.
Listening to Briar go on about plants gives you an insight into the advantages and uses of nature that you were, admittedly, lacking before. It also gives you some interesting ideas in other fields.
Gained Corruption Resistance E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Elementalism D
Gained Ki Concealment D (Plus)
Gained Ki Filtration E
Gained Wood Elementalism F
The lecture ends when Rory arrives, about half an hour behind you and your Dad. His truck crawls up the hill.
"Oh, come on, Rory!" your father yells. "They can take a little jostling, can't they?"
"Shut up, Tony!" comes the answer from the cab.
Eventually, your uncle parks and climbs down from his vehicle. Giving your father an annoyed look and gesture - and getting the same in kind - Rory turns to you.
"You ready, Alex?"
You nod. "I found a place near the pond that feels like what we need." You point it out.
Rory nods and strolls over, looking pensive. "Ground's kind of damp," you hear him mutter. "But if we lay down the plastic..."
Your father sighs and goes to open up the hauler.
You call up about the same number of Unseen Servants that you used at the garage on Sunday, and set them to work emptying the hauler and the bed of Rory's truck. You instruct your mindless work force to unwrap the animals and set them down - on the sheets of plastic that your uncle insists on getting from the truck and laying out - in groups of ten. You'll still need to empower the purification spell, but simply doubling up its number of targets isn't that much more likely to cause problems than the basic form of the spell was.
Besides, if you'd stuck with five heads per group, you'd have been running on magical fumes by the end of this trip. This way, you'll still have a fair amount of energy left. It'll also take less time. It turns out that even your uncle wasn't entirely sure how many of these stuffed animals he'd made over the years, but the final count for the ones in the shop came to a hundred and thirty-ish. Plus however many he'd given away to family and friends.
Given that number, and going with groups of ten, you've got fourteen groups total to purify, at about ten minutes per group - which leaves you looking at two and a half hours of work, give or take. If all goes well, then, you could be home by lunchtime.
Before you cast your purification spell, you decide to cast a Spell of Consecration on the area where you'll be working. This divine magic is right on the edge of your ability to cast; it'd be considerably easier if you had some holy water and silver dust, like the basic spell calls for, but you can still do it. And since you don't need the magic to last nearly as long as it normally would, you'll be able to save some mana by reducing the spell's duration.
This leaves one question, though: if you're dedicating this area to a divine power, which one is it going to be?
Though you are slightly tempted to call solely upon Din for this spell, you feel that it just makes more sense to invoke all three of the Golden Goddesses at once. Some guidance from Nayru to ensure your shiny new ritual goes off without a hitch would not be remiss, and since your uncle's collection was contaminated due to a rift in the fabric of reality, you feel that the Goddess of Time and Law is likely to be willing to lend her blessing to your efforts to clean up this small part of the greater mess. Farore might be a little put off by Rory's habit of creating effigies from the skins of dead animals, but you're willing to bet that she wouldn't pass up this chance to prevent the thing from turning into demonic undead mockeries of the creatures they resemble. Plus, you're in the woods. That's Farore's stomping grounds; it's only polite to invite her to take part.
So you cast the Spell of Consecration, invoking the three divine sisters. Still not completely familiar with the proper formal rites - you spare a moment of frustrated annoyance that the church is taking its sweet time going over those samples of "payment" you sent - and just a little shy about doing this in front of your father and uncle, you decide to keep things simple.
"I dedicate this site to the Golden Goddesses," you murmur, taking a knee and pouring mana into the earth. You try to control the flow more tightly than is necessary, hoping to suppress the signature as you do with your lesser spells, but this magic proves much too powerful for you to hide - it surges forth, willing to be guided but refusing to be bound. "Din, watch over me here, and grant me Power. Nayru, watch over me here, and grant me Wisdom. Farore, watch over me here, and grant me Courage. Goddesses, watch over me here."
A slender column of golden light shines down upon you, and for a moment, the emblem of the Triforce glows upon the grassy forest floor. Then the energy surges outward, roiling across the turf like a low-lying incandescent cloud, and in its wake, the ground seems to glow.
Gained Hyrulean Theology D
"Whoa," you hear your uncle say.
"Alex," your father asks slowly, "was that the spell?"
"That was just setting the stage, Dad."
Preparations complete, you gather your power, focus on the group of ten tainted animal forms gathered before you in the heart of the consecrated area, and begin the ritual. Once again, you attempt to enforce precise control over the magic, and once more, you find your skills at suppression and concealment unequal to the task.
A couple of minutes into your chanting and building of energy, you sense... resistance. Without breaking your concentration, you look at the animals, and find them glaring back at you with burning red eyes. They shake in a wind that is not there, and for a moment - just an instant - it seems as if one of them, a dark brown cat posed as if on the prowl, opens its mouth to hiss.
"Holy shit," Rory breathes.
"I'm going to have nightmares for a month," your father groans.
Creepy as it is to see real evidence of the evil clinging to your uncle's work, the resistance they throw up against your magic is faint, and carries a tinge of desperation. They are many to your one, but they are also weak and unformed where you are strong and whole. And you have divine backup. Halfway through the ritual, you feel the demonic force falter, collapse, and release a wail of protest that is almost instantly burned away by the holy power of the Light. After that, it's just a matter of guiding the radiant energy through the animals, driving the taint from all the little nooks and crannies where it has taken root. Tedious work, to be sure, but not difficult.
Gained Light Affinity F (Plus) (Plus)
When you can sense no more evil within this group, you let your spell go and look around. Briar hovers a short distance away, far enough back not to get caught up in the direct manifestation of your power - which would have risked throwing off the ritual, thanks to her own, distinctive magical presence - but close enough that she probably caught the edges of the Light's cleansing force. Your father and uncle are further back, and where Rory is still, staring in amazement and holding one of his half-unwrapped animals, your father has taken a step or three away from the remaining statues, and seems to be dividing his attention between watching you and watching them.
"Did they move, Dad?" you ask with a frown.
"Not that I've seen," he replies, eyeing the animals warily. "But there may have been some eye-glowing."
There isn't now. You're not sure if that's a good sign or not. Checking on the first batch, you find no signs of damage from the purification - while you might not have been able to hide your use of the Light, you appear to have managed to use it to fulfill your intended purpose. That's nice to know, anyway.
You extend your senses towards the crowd of animals waiting on the ground, trying to determine if the evil energy that contaminates them has been affected by proximity to your purification ritual. You pick up a sense of something that, in a living - or even properly undead - entity, you'd call agitation, but as far as you can tell, the Hellmouth radiation hasn't changed or moved beyond that.
"You getting anything different off of those things, Briar?" you inquire.
"Beyond the fact that they didn't like being so close to a wellspring of Light, you mean?"
"Yeah, that."
"Just a minute."
Drawing her wand, Briar flits over to one of the nearer critters and gives it a close inspection that involves prodding and some simple spellcasting. While she's doing that, you have your Unseen Servants begin wrapping up the cleansed animals, moving them out of the consecrated area, and replacing them with another batch of targets. Since purifying ten animals at a time went off without a hitch, you decide to step things up a bit, increasing the number to fifteen.
You're just about ready to perform the purifying ritual again when Briar flutters back.
"Still possessed, still lacking individuality or awareness, still creeping me the hell out," she reports. "But I'm pretty sure that something did happen, beyond the usual clash of cleansing Light and Darkness tainted by demonic evil."
"But you aren't sure what it was," you conclude.
"Sorry. Want me to keep watch, just in case?"
"Please, and thank you. And if you could keep half an eye on the forest while you're at it, I'd be grateful." You glance around. "I probably should have considered setting some kind of circle to limit the spread of the holy energy... no?"
Briar is shaking her head. "Magic circles stop creatures, Alex, but they don't do much - if anything - to stop matter or energy that hasn't got a consciousness attached to it. You'd need a proper ward to do what you're thinking of, and a pretty powerful one at that. Heck, with all the power you had to pour into the Spell of Consecration to get it to work, Lu Tze's wards wouldn't have hidden the flash."
You wince.
"Anyway," Briar continues, "back to work. You've got a lot of evil little monsters to make... well, less evil."
Briar is definitely not a fan of your uncle's hobby.
You proceed to purify the next fifteen animal figures. This time, you sense resistance to your magic almost from the first syllable of the spell that crosses your lips, and it's measurably stronger than the last time. You did just add fifty percent more evil to the target area, so it makes sense that it would be trickier to get rid of, but the near-instantaneous reaction is a little concerning. Especially with the glowing-eyed accompaniment.
"Son of a-!" you hear your father hiss, right before he engages his parental profanity filter and forces his mouth shut.
"Alex," Briar whimpers from behind you. "They are LOOKING at you-!"
Ah, that would explain why the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up like that.
You shrug. If the evil little proto-demons would like to register a complaint about your activities, they're going to have to do better than the scary eyes. You refuse to let your concentration waver over such a cheap trick.
The unfriendly pressure at your back remains throughout the eight minutes and change that it takes for you to finish purify the fifteen animals assembled before you. In that time, the tainted energy stays constant, right up until the point where you feel the resistance of your current targets bend, buckle, and break. Then the collective hostility of the still-unpurified animals falters - but when you complete your spell a couple minutes later and turn to examine the crowd, their eyes are still glowing that dull, ominous red.
"That ain't right," Rory mutters, looking around at his work, even as he holds one of the still-wrapped figures in a vaguely protective manner.
"I've been saying that since high school," your father replies. "Alex, is this supposed to happen? Is it safe?"
You wonder how to answer that. You DID sort of expect SOMETHING to happen, but the furry stares of menace are really pretty tame compared to what you were waiting for. As for it being "safe"... the evil eyes aren't dangerous in and of themselves, but that they've appeared tells you that the nascent spirits within the animals just got a lot more active and a lot more potential dangerous than they were before you started the ritual. If you leave them like this, they'll likely be ambulatory within a matter of days, but if you try to finish purifying them, some of them may well lodge a more forceful protest...
While considering your answer to your father's questions, you gesture for your Unseen Servants to clear the ritual area once again, and bring in the next batch of animals. You notice in passing that they've unloaded what looks like two-thirds, maybe three-quarters of Rory's creations, although most are still wrapped up in their protective plastic sheets. You consider whether or not it would be wise to speed things up by taking on more purification targets in one go. You handled the last batch well enough, but if the resistance increases again, you could start having problems...
You have to admit - out loud, even - that you weren't expecting the evil eyeshine. You don't find this manifestation of supernatural evil particularly concerning, but it is enough to get you thinking about additional security measures. You have a quick chat with Briar on the subject, and reach the following conclusions:
Firstly, for all that you've been mentally referring to them as "zombie" animals - and for all of Briar's theatrical moaning about feeling their poor, angry, envious little souls - Rory's creations are not actually undead in nature, or even threatening to become so. The only once-living matter incorporated into them is the skin and the fur (or feathers) attached to it, and that, you're given to understand, has been chemically treated to prevent decay. Unless done with very particular methods, such an action would diminish if not entirely destroy the material's potential for transitioning to undeath, and you're not sensing that especially-unpleasant "flavor" of necromantic power at work. No, what's really going on here is demonic possession, with a bit of sympathetic magic kicking in to make the resulting proto-spirits act like the animals they resemble.
That eliminates a number of possible responses from consideration.
Secondly, although they've become an issue thanks to the extradimensional energies of the Hellmouth, the possessed animals are not proper summoned entities. There's no Spell of Conjuration at work; it's more akin to a curse.
That renders several more courses of action moot.
Thirdly, from what you and Briar can tell with a little careful probing, while the animals are not directly linked to each other, their common origins do make them alike enough to be confused for a single entity. Especially - and you wince at this - when you've got so many of them grouped closely together and in close proximity to a common threat.
That suggests that splitting the things up is a good idea, as long as you take some additional precautions to prevent them from running off or attacking you while your back is turned, should they animate. Conjuring up a mini-fortress as a makeshift jail might be a bit much, though, when you could just create some pits or raised-earth cell-walls in a fraction of the time.
Fourthly, you and Briar agree that direct handling of the animals in their current state is not a good idea. Mind-control or outright possession probably aren't an issue, given how weak and primitive these might-be-demons are, but you can't rule them out entirely. And having a potentially-hostile demon of any size that close to a living human being is a wiggins-inducing idea in general.
Speaking of which...
"Tony?" Rory inquires, looking askance at you. "Why is Alex carrying on a conversation with thin air?"
"He's talking to a friend, Rory."
"An invisible friend."
"Yeah, but one that actually exists."
"...you're sure?"
"If you'd like proof, she can turn your shirt pink...?"
Your uncle seems to be seriously considering that.
You decide to separate and secure the uncleansed animals before proceeding any further with the purification. Distance will help, but actual physical separation, as by walls and ceiling, would be at least as good.
That in mind, you turn where you stand and gesture at an empty patch of ground beyond the bounds of the consecrated earth. The area trembles briefly, as two patches of grassy turf rise from the surface on walls of packed soil. The resulting cubical "cells" are roughly five feet to a side and stand ten feet apart from one another, with a single narrow "doorway" in one face. You gesture again, and two more such chambers appear off to the right - and then two more. All of them together form a loose semi-circle around the still-glowing area touched by the power of the goddesses.
Holding pens established, you summon more Unseen Servants, easily doubling the number you already had active, and order them to stash the still-tainted animals inside the chambers, fifteen to a cell. You make an exception for the birds, and have fifteen of them gathered for the next purification. This still leaves a good two dozen avian statues to worry about, so you also conjure up some crude wooden crates and have your mystical workers load the bird-statues inside - an added precaution to prevent them flying away if they should happen to become animate.
One of the Servants gets into a brief tug-of-war with Rory, before your uncle lets go of the animal he was holding. By the shape, you think it was a rabbit.
"Okay," your father asks, looking around. "What's all this about?"
"Breaking up the crowd before they got nasty," you reply, before explaining in more detail how distance and barriers should help mute the animals' reaction to your work. You also tell your father that, in light of the non-zero chance of demon animals running wild, you'd like to put some protective spells up for him and your uncle, as well as yourself.
Your father has no objection to this plan. Rory takes a bit more convincing. In the end, however, each of you are walking around under multi-layered physical protection spells, and feeling pretty confident about the odds of success for the remaining purification rituals.
Morale-boosting magic is nice that way.
The whole process takes about twenty-five minutes to sort out. Many hands make light work, even if the hands in question are invisible ones. You're left with a batch of fifteen animals in front of you, ready to be purified, and your Servants are busily wrapping up the figures that have already been cleansed and putting them back into Rory's truck. As a final measure, you seal the empty portals with "doors" of thinly-packed earth, easy enough for you to kick down, but hopefully solid enough that the diminutive animals won't be able to force their way free.
Gained Conjuration D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Earth Affinity E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Enchantment D (Plus)
You take a moment to check your reserves. Creating the cells, bringing in the extra Unseen Servants, and adding the boxes for good measure ate a full 14% of your mana, leaving you with a hair over 64% still in the tank. You'll use up another 20% just finishing the purifications, and that will take a good hour and a half, once you factor in the time to open and empty each cell. It's a good thing you cast those buff spells ritual-style, or you'd be down another 15%, easily.
All this, and it's not even nine o'clock yet. Sheesh.
With all preparations made and precautions taken, you get to work driving the evil spirits out of your uncle's creepy creations. The fifteen animals gathered in the circle resist from the start, but you can feel a definite difference in the force they're able to call upon when all the other animals are sealed away behind solid-ish walls. Not to mention how much smoother everything goes with no ominous evil stares at your back. The proto-demon essence within the current batch gives up in barely half the time the last group held out for.
While the Unseen Servants are moving the purified figures out of the way and re-wrapping them in their protective plastic, you consider which of your sealed sod huts to open up.
You were concerned enough about the possibility of Rory's feathered creations coming to life and flying around to add an extra layer of containment, so you figure you might as well get them out of the way. Having made that decision, you tell some of your Unseen Servants to pack up and move the latest batch of cleansed figures; while they're doing that, you stride over to the turf-hut where most of the boxed birds were stashed and give the door a shove.
It proves a bit hardier than you were expecting, but not so much that you need to break out the ki enhancement to bring it down. Since the birds within are packed in solid crates, you have no compunctions against just tearing the packed-earth door down by direct force. Once the way is clear, you cast a minor cantrip to clean the dirt off your hands - and again, to sweep it off the crates - then cautiously lever open the nearest box and take a quick look inside to make sure the birds haven't gone all Hitchcock on you in the last ten minutes or so.
They're still doing the glowing-eyed thing, but none of the plastic wraps appear bunched up or torn, so they probably haven't moved. You'll take that as a good sign.
Exiting the hutch, you send your Servants in.
The next round of purification proceeds without issue. The resistance put up by the tainted birds feels less than that of the previous batch of animals, which seems to suggest that the more of these things you cleanse, the less energy the remaining ones have to fight back with.
Buoyed by this success and the morale-boosting Spell of Heroism you cast earlier, you go ahead and break open the other cell that still contains birds, and purify them in turn.
Gained Light Affinity F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
With the birds safely out of the way, it occurs to you that you've purified a bit over half of Rory's creations. You can't help but pause at that and spend a moment taking in the situation in its entirety. Your father and uncle were content to watch you work magic for a while, but apparently even the spectacle of your own flesh-and-blood bending the forces of creation to his will gets a bit dull after a while; your elders have withdrawn to the cabin and taken up seats on the porch step, where they appear to be playing cards.
You wonder where they got the deck.
Briar is still close by, keeping an eye on the area like you asked earlier.
"Found anything yet?" you inquire.
"Nothing that shouldn't be here," she replies. "You know, besides the little abominations." She studies you. "Feeling tired?"
"A little, yeah," you admit. "I have been casting spells more or less constantly for the better part of two hours, now."
"And you've still only used up, what, a third of your available mana?"
You check your reserves, and find them at 60%. "About that, yeah."
Glancing at the four remaining unopened huts, you calculate that it should take you one more hour at most to finish up, assuming everything keeps going as it has been. Mana-wise, you expect to spend 12% more for the purification, then another 8% or so clearing away the traces of your activities - the sod cells, the patch of consecrated earth, maybe something to soak up any lingering evil energy from the animals.
Given all the work you've done, 40% of your mana isn't too bad a finishing point.
After making a quick visual sweep of the area - admittedly far more of a nervous tic than a focused search for trouble - you turn back to the task at hand. Opening the next of the four cells takes a little more patience on your part, as you have to bring the door down without it falling on any of Rory's creations. That results in you getting a fair bit of dirt on yourself, but it's neither particularly hard nor especially heavy, and easily cleaned off with minor magic. You do get a bit of dust in your eyes, but you know better than to rub it in, and another cantrip clears away the material without incident.
Gained Earth Resistance F (Plus) (F without Heart of Fire)
When your vision is no longer impaired, you find that your Unseen Servants have just about finished readying the next batch of animals. You also discover a problematic issue: in addition to their glowing red eyes, the animals in the consecrated circle are now twitching and growling. Not often, and not loudly, but with all the menace their tiny furry forms can muster.
You start purifying this batch immediately.
Your spell is greeted with a chorus of snarls, and motion that almost qualifies as actual movement. The resistance of this batch is considerably stronger than any of the previous ones, and you're not sure why. Leaving the question aside for now, you focus on driving the demonic energy out of the animals.
It takes almost six minutes before you feel their resistance begin to waver, at which point the fidgeting and snarls intensify, and another two for it to break - which occurs with a collective howl.
From the porch, you hear your father and uncle shout in surprise.
When the ritual is complete, you take a moment to study the purified figures. Although no longer possessed, they don't feel quite as "clean" as the previous batches. You're not entirely sure why, but when you step over to one of the three remaining cells, you can hear more of that faint growling from within - only not-so-faint.
"Alex," your father says as he hurries up alongside you. "What was THAT?"
"I'm trying to figure that out myself, Dad," you admit.
The first batch of animals put up very little resistance, most likely because they WERE the first batch. You hadn't completely unloaded the truck or the trailer yet, so the majority of the proto-demons were still "dormant" and unaware of what you were doing to them.
The second group was where the real resistance and scary side-effects started, and your response of separating the animals and sealing them off from one another seemed to help, because the next two batches - the birds - were much easier to deal with.
But then this happened.
Unsure what it means, you back away from the sod hut, gesture for your father and uncle to do likewise, and cast a low-level Earth Elemental spell to return the door to the earth. The growling immediately gets easier to hear, and you can see the shaking spots of dull red light, but nothing comes rushing out to attack. You send in the Unseen Servants, who emerge with the still-plastic-wrapped animals.
You order one of them unwrapped.
Its movements grow stronger almost immediately, but are still awkward; were it on the ground, it wouldn't be at the level of crawling yet. Taking that as warning and opportunity both, you have the batch unsealed and set down for purification.
This round is the most difficult yet. Several of the possessed effigies manage to find their footing, even under the purifying pressure of the Light, and take slow, staggering steps towards you before the effort exhausts them and their unholy energies gutter out with animalistic shrieks. Most of the group don't even try to stand, but focus on crawling towards you; you have to take a moment between syllables to kick them back into the center of the consecrated ground.
At last, your spell concludes. You now have seventy wholly-purified animals, thirty more that are no longer possessed but also don't feel entirely cleansed, and another thirty that - from the sounds escaping the packed turf walls - would be well on their way to mobility, if not for their plastic wrappings turned restraints.
"Man, this is messed up," your uncle groans.
Though still not certain why these animals are coming to life so quickly compared to the others, you consider what to do from here.
Din knows, you're tempted to just break out the fire magic and have done with it, but you've come this far, purified better than half of your uncle's creepy little works of art, and neutralized another fourth. The idea of just giving up and letting the last quarter go up in flames, without at least trying to find out what's going on here and how you can deal with it, feels wrong.
"Dad," you say aloud, "is there an axe or a crowbar or something in the cabin?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Could you go get it for me, please? I'd like to knock a hole in one of those doors, without using my hands, so I can take a look in and try to figure out what's going on with these things."
Your father frowns, but nods. "Alright. But if I see one of those things come after you, I'm using the axe on it." He gives his brother a firm look. "We clear, Rory?"
Your uncle nods.
You just kind of grin. Did you mention, recently, that your Dad is Awesome? Because he is.
While your Most Excellent Sire heads for the cabin, you cast a couple of spells. The first will help to improve your ability to correlate the information you get from this little investigative sidebar, while the second will let you study the auras of these possessed figures more broadly and with improved detail over your standard Mage Sight - though you bring that up as well, along with your other senses. There's a third spell that you'd like to cast, but unfortunately, it requires a blank book as a focus, and you don't have one of those on hand. Nor can you make one, at least not one that's permanent and mystically-stable enough to serve as the anchor of another spell.
It's a real shame that you can't pilfer the world's libraries for magical lore relevant to this incident, but you suppose you'll just have to make do. Besides, you tell yourself, with your luck, odds are that all the texts containing data you'd find helpful are under wards that would stop you from accessing them, alert their owners to your attempt at information-theft, or both.
Your father returns with the axe, which is a slightly weathered example of its kind. It's pretty clearly meant for chopping wood, not for just as a weapon, but it can doubtlessly serve the latter purpose if need be.
You let your Dad know that you're ready and take a step back. Once you're clear, he readies himself, adjusts his grip on the axe, and then hacks a hole into the dirt door with one, two, three easy swings. The breach is just about at your eye level and wide enough that you could reach a hand into it without issue, were you so inclined. Stepping forward, you peer inside.
The interior of the turf-walled chamber is a confusing mass of different auras. Squinting against the glare, you quickly note that there is no ki within the chamber, and thus no reason to leave your ki sight on; you let that particular sense lapse and refocus your vital energies to further enhance your cognitive abilities.
Gained Mental Control F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Mental Sense F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Magic-wise, you're not picking up anything you didn't already know was there, and after a minute you let that sense go as well to reduce the "glare." That leaves your corruption sense and your spirit-sense to focus on, and both of those are returning interesting results. The cell is a bit more contaminated with demonic energy than you'd expect, but with the increased activity level of the proto-demons, that only makes sense. The telling detail is how the interior of the holding pen is devoid of ambient spiritual energy, as if all the bugs and worms and plant root systems caught up in the dirt, and all the microbial life-forms there and drifting about in the air, just up and died.
Like ordinary living things, demons tend to be stronger when they're well-fed. Could it be that these nascent demonic essences have been "preying" on the spiritual energies around them since they woke up, and getting stronger from that? It sounds good, but kind of shaky, too. That much progress in only a couple of hours...
One of the corrupt auras moves. Your eyes track it, your mind analyzes it, and you realize that this particular figure is very heavily contaminated by the Hellmouth's energy. The taint is thick, and it runs deep - the only logical conclusion is that this particular animal is one of the older products of Rory's hobby. As you watch, the red-eyed shadow shifts and rolls slowly towards one of its neighbors, whose aura is considerably weaker. The old animal's energy seems to expand outward, going from a loose cloud of vile darkness to a more defined silhouette - a cat, by the looks of it.
It "pounces."
The other animal shrieks.
The other thirteen auras within the cell begin to coalesce into ghostly animal forms and start eyeing one another. The weaker spirits hunch down and seem to be trying to back away from the four strongest ones, which manage to radiate a sense of smugness and hunger.
"What's that noise?" your father asks, tightening his grip on the axe.
"They seem to be eating each other," you report dully, as you back away.
That WOULD explain how these figures got so much stronger so quickly. If the oldest animals were drawing on their link to the weaker members of the group and drawing some of the demonic energy out of their "doomed" counterparts, concentrating the taint within themselves even as you burned away the greater part of it with Light...
Yeah. That sounds just about right.
Gained Demonology D
Gained Parazoology E (Plus) (Plus)
The screaming inside the hut is getting louder, and it's no longer coming from a single source. Grimacing, you cast a Spell of Deep Slumber through the breached door, filling the interior with a storm of glowing silvery motes. There are animalistic cries of surprise and some rustling, as if the creatures are trying to take shelter, but in just a few seconds, everything goes silent. Peering inside once again, you find that the auras have settled, and the bloody gleam in the animals' glass eyes has dimmed to mere pinpricks. They've gone dormant - for the moment.
"Dad, could you open up another hole in the other door as well? I'd really like to put the rest of these things under before they can pull any more surprises."
Your father does as requested, and you fire off another Spell of Deep Slumber. As before, the demon-animals fail to display any special resistance to your magic or its specific effect, and go silent. You take a moment to check on them to make sure they're down, then start tearing down the door. Once again, you're careful to keep the dirt falling outward as much as possible - you don't want to accidentally awaken these things by dropping a slab of soil on them. That means you get more of the dirt on you and in your eyes again, but it's a lot better than the alternative.
Gained Earth Resistance F (Plus) (Plus) (F (Plus) without Heart of Fire)
With the door open, you send in the Unseen Servants, with orders to be extra-careful as they pick up, transport, and unwrap their hostile cargo. Once all fifteen of that hut's occupants have been put into the consecrated circle, you search your mind for a spell that could be used to secure them in the consecrated circle. One comes to mind, a simple but effective magic that falls within Farore's sphere of influence, and you quickly cast it, causing the grass to grow up and around the little demons, securing them at least as thoroughly as any rope could have. Such bonds might not be sufficient to fully immobilize a human or comparably-large animal, but these much-smaller figures have little hope of getting loose. Particularly not with how the magic is interacting with Farore's blessing on the area.
Gained Wood Elementalism F (Plus)
Reassured, you quickly start casting your Spell of Purification again. In deference to the reduced effect the last few castings of the magic had against the awakened and active demonic entities, you opt to target only ten of them this time around.
As soon as the Light washes over them, the ten animals in question awaken from their induced slumber and begin to thrash and snarl. Their bindings prove up to the task of holding them, particularly as you ruthlessly exploit their initial total lack of resistance to your magic. The ritual proceeds without issue from there, with the possessed figures' struggles rapidly growing weaker and quieter until they give up with faint, final whimpers and go still. Your Spell of Aura Sight has since lapsed, but now that you're watching for it, your sense of the demonic taint is keen enough to track the movement of the foul energy, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It's only towards the tail end of the ritual that you notice some of the dark cloud begin to react to a force other than the Light, and by then you've burned away in excess of ninety-five percent of it. You bear down and complete the ritual less than a minute later, with perhaps two percent of the Hellmouth's energy being "consumed" by the now-reawakened animals.
You pause to check your reserves, which come back registering 51%. Those two slumber-spells and the Spell of Entanglement ate a fair amount of mana, but you'd say they were worth it. Speaking of which, you can sense that the latter spell is running down; by the feel of it, Farore's favor is all that's keeping the overgrown blades of grass together at this point. Working quickly, you open the last of the huts, blast the occupants with another Spell of Deep Slumber, and then have your Unseen Servants transport and unwrap five of their number. You quickly cast the Spell of Entanglement on those and their five companions that were already in the circle, re-securing them. It drops you to 47% of your maximum mana, but you didn't exactly have time to spare for ritual-casting.
You proceed with casting the Spell of Purification again, and at first, all goes well. About halfway through the procedure, however, you sense Briar making a sudden, sharp movement.
"Crap," the fairy groans. "Alex, we've got... something... moving around in the trees."
Naturally. You check your progress, and confirm that you've got three minutes of spellcasting left, four if you want to be completely thorough. You, your father, and your uncle are all still protected by... okay, the Spell of Protection From Evil lapsed a while ago, but everything else is still up and running. And Dad's got an axe. And Briar's here to run interference. That should be plenty to buy you enough time to finish off this batch of beasties, right?
You've got an unknown in the trees. It could be anything. A hiker wondering what the hell he's looking at, a demon on the prowl, a local animal just doing its thing - anything. Though since Briar doesn't recognize it, it's probably not an animal, or at least not a natural one. Unless your ritual is throwing out too much interference for her to work through, which to be fair, is a distinct possibility given all the mana you've been slinging around.
The point is, who- or whatever is out there, they're a big question mark. In contrast, you've got close to a dozen unfriendly little beasties born of (im)pure evil energy gathered in front of you, all of them now very much awake and struggling against their grassy roots for a chance at freedom - and more likely, messing you up. It will take you just four minutes - less than that, now - to make sure that these things are no longer a threat, and that in turn will free you to deal with your mystery guest.
All you have to do is focus on the task at hand... and leave yourself, your father, and your uncle open to whatever's watching you.
"Where?" you ask of Briar, in between invocations.
She zips into your field of vision and points almost directly behind you. Of course. You start shuffling to your left, slowly, so as not to disrupt the purification ritual or make it look too much like you're trying to spot your uninvited audience.
"Alex?" your father inquires.
Voice occupied with an incantation, you nod towards the trees in the general direction Briar indicated.
From the way he blinks, stands up straight, and tightens his grip on the axe, your father gets the message.
"Tony?" your uncle asks in puzzlement. "What's going on?"
"I think we have company," your father answers, peering warily at the woods.
Now in position to do likewise, you join him, keeping half your attention on the spell you're working while the other half probes at the scenery. Visually, there's nothing ob- wait, that bush is rustling. Can you... yes, there's... SOMETHING in there, but between the distance, the shadows there, and the light of your ritual getting in your eyes, you can't be sure what. You try to test for demonic taint and spiritual energy, but all you can pick up is the cleansing Light surrounding you. Probing for ki finally gives you something to work with; the greenery shows up normally, your lurker's presence is faint, faded... kind of like the part-demon kids you saw back at the tournament.
Probably NOT a hiker or cabin-goer, then.
It takes you about a minute to reach this conclusion, and once you've made it, you start channeling additional mana into your ritual in the hopes of speeding things up.
It works, but it also causes the animals to shriek loudly and start giving off slow-roiling plumes of a dark, thick, oily-looking smoke. You don't think objects this small could produce that much smoke if they were set on fire-
Behind you, there is a snarl.
"Briar!"
"Oh, hell - SLEEP!" the fairy cries. Through the interference of your ritual, you sense her magic reach out, a small, comet-like cluster of those same starry sparkles you produced when subduing the demon-animals. It hits the bush and explodes, scattering glittering motes of magic throughout the area.
The snarling cuts off with a yelp, sneezing, and the sounds of stumbling amidst the greenery.
What staggers into the clearing - prompting exclamations from your father and uncle that you don't think your mother would approve of - is a vaguely dog-like demon. It's bigger than Moblin and twice as ugly, with sparse patches of greasy black fur and a leathery hide the color of old blood. It gets its paws under itself just as it sneezes again, spraying you don't even want to know what all over the place.
When the demon looks up, its bleary bloodshot yellow eyes are fixed on Briar in a vicious glare.
Briar promptly takes cover behind you.
Watching the supernatural hound as it hunkers down, growling, you think fast.
You withdraw the excess mana you were flooding into the purification ritual, which has the immediate result of causing the agonized shrieks of the possessed animals to fade to pained whimpers. You don't simply let the power bleed quietly away into the environment, however; instead, you re-channel the energy into your aura, giving it an extra kick even as you take the restraints off and let.
It.
BURN.
POWER explodes from you in a golden halo. Magic and spirit and life, light and sound and heat - all these and more radiate out from you with the sudden force of a bomb, bending the grass over backwards, blowing dust and leaves and one surprised, loudly protesting fairy away on a gust of wind. In the same instant, you can feel the divine power overlying the earth here surge in response to your presence. The grass gleams gold. The soil shines.
Beneath your feet, the Triforce CALLS.
And faintly, from a vast distance, you hear the Goddesses SING.
Gained Aura of Power C (Plus) (Plus) (C when not casting, D (Plus) (Plus) suppressed)
Gained Din's Favor D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Farore's Favor D (Plus)
Gained Ki Power E (Plus)
Gained Mental Power E
Gained Nayru's Favor E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Totem of the Raging Boar C (Plus)
Your father, your uncle, and the dog-thing flinch backwards, your elders' heads whipping around to stare like they've never seen you before - and for a split second, you see yourself as they do, a boy-shaped silhouette at the heart of a vortex of unfathomable energy, eyes shining with the same aureate incandescence in a face too shadowed to make out, voice rising in a chant of music and thunder. Those radiant eyes narrow slightly as you fix the demon-dog with a stern glare, seeking words that will fit around your spellcasting without ruining your efforts, a tone that will carry no OVERT threat, and yet still adequately express your... displeasure... at this disrespectful intrusion.
For some reason, you suddenly think of Kagome - and then the perfect words enter your mind, a single short phrase which you do not hesitate to speak:
"SIT, BOY."
The demon sits.
Actually, it's more like it throws itself prone, covers its head with its paws, and whimpers piteously, but hey, whatever works.
Gained Animal Handling D
Gained King of Monsters F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Nodding in satisfaction, you let your aura diminish back to normal levels and return your attention to the rit-
-oh. Um. Well, that's... certainly interesting.
It seems that your display of POWER while in the middle of working a purification spell had some... side-effects. On the positive side, the ten animal figures you were purifying are no longer possessed. In fact, you'd wager good money that, were you to examine them closely, there'd be no hint whatsoever of the Hellmouth's energy.
On the down side, it seems that when you kicked your aura into high gear, the power of Light you were calling upon also got turned up. WAY up. To the point where it bleached the animals' preserved skins, started little patches of their now pure-white fur and feathers smouldering - with REAL smoke this time, not fleeing, writhing demonic essence - and partially-melted some of their little glass eyes.
Also, a couple of the figures, the ones that you recall having the strongest evil auras when you started, look to have... er... exploded. Pure Light and demon-tainted Darkness came together, and mutually annihilated one another, taking their unfortunate vessels along for the ride.
"Wha... buh... the hell..." your uncle stammers, boggling at you.
Your father stares wordlessly, looking like somebody smacked him over the back of the head with that axe.
The dog is still cowering.
And Briar is flying straight at you, screaming, "WHAT. THE. HELL. ALEX?!" at the top of her tiny little lungs.
You turn your attention to the fading Triforce emblem around your feet. It's the simplest manifestation of the divine symbol, three geographic shapes done in golden light with no obvious indication of orientation, and yet you can tell in an instant that Power is directly before you, with Wisdom and Courage behind.
You raise one hand in a gesture half-salute, half-prayer, and murmur, "Thank you, great Goddesses, fo- OW!"
Briar just whacked you across the nose. It's far more surprising than painful - the more so because you can't believe she hit you when you were trying to be respectful towards divinity.
"Is a little WARNING too much to ask before you go messing around with the local weather patterns?!" Briar shouts in your face. "Is it?! Giant, inconsiderate, over-reacting- don't think I can't find someone with their own pocket hurricane to throw you in to see how YOU like being blown around, mister! Because I'll totally call Ambrose in if that's what it takes!"
"Briar, what the heck-"
"That's MY line, buster!" the Fairy of Feminine Fury snaps. "What the heck were you thinking?!"
"I wanted to stop the hellhound-"
"Well, mission accomplished! And as a bonus, I think you just blew your father's mind, and whatever your uncle uses for one!"
You frown at that. "Oi. No picking on family."
"And even better," Briar continues, not having heard you, "you lit up like a freaking SOLAR FLARE! If we weren't surrounded by trees, everything within five miles of here would have seen that! As it is - we're not under the Hellmouth's creepy weirdness filter out here! If Hellassie there has any pack members within a mile-"
You clear your throat at that, and look meaningfully at the cowering canine in question
"...okay, they're probably running for cover," Briar grumbles. "But if there's anything SMARTER out here, then WE really shouldn't be!"
"That, I'll agree on. Can you keep an eye on Cujo while I try to clean up?"
"Yeah, yeah... but we are NOT done talking about this, mister." With that, Briar flies off.
You look back at your feet, where the Triforce emblem has faded away. "Sorry, ladies," you apologize, before getting to work.
The issue of the smouldering animals is easily resolved; you just cast a cantrip meant to extinguish minor fires.
Handling your father is... more difficult.
"Dad?" you venture, deciding not to hug him when he's looking at you like he expects you to blow up again. "Are you alright?"
"Am I...?" He blinks, shakes his head, and comes back from wherever he was. "Am I alright? Am. I. Alright?! Alex, I think I should be asking you that! What the he-ck was THAT?"
"THAT," you repeat, "was me putting on a show. I took some of the power out of the ritual, so that the animals would stop screaming and upsetting Cujo over there, and channelled the energy into looking impressive to try and resolve the situation without anyone getting hurt."
Gained Honest D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Your father blinks at you, looks at the still-cowering hellhound, then at his brother - who you note is staring at the contents of the ritual circle, wide-eyed and white-faced, but not moving to get any closer - and then back to you.
"Well, nobody's PHYSICALLY hurt, I'll give you that one... but damn, boy. I mean, yeah, I saw you do stuff like that on the tapes, but not to the point where it looked like you were standing at the heart of an explosion! And the feel of it-!" Tony shakes his head. "The footage didn't convey that at all..."
You wince. "I'm sorry if I worried you, Dad. I really am. But... can we talk about this later?"
He frowns, and you hasten to explain.
"It's just that I put out a lot of light and noise with that, and Briar's worried that someone or something might show up and start asking questions. Plus we still have to deal with our uninvited guest, there."
Your father considers that, and nods. "Alright. But," he adds, finger raised for emphasis, "when we get home..."
You nod as he trails off, getting the unspoken message.
That issue tabled for the time being, you turn back to your stunned-looking uncle.
"Uncle Rory?" You wave one hand slowly to get his attention.
He gives a short start. "Alex? What- you- and they-" He points from you, to his ruined figures. "How-"
"Sorry about all that, Uncle," you apologize. "I'll explain the details, but later. And as it happens, I can fix this."
You pause to consider whether to try repairing the bleached and blown-apart animals now, or later. You can probably get away with using the Spell of Mending on the ones that are just burnt and melted, but the pair that blew up are going to take nothing less than a Spell to Make Whole, each. Regardless, that's ten minutes of work apiece, something you may not have time for.
Actually, on second thought, the repair work will have to wait regardless; you've still got a nervous wreck of a hellhound to deal with. Walking towards the beast, you stop at a distance of about ten feet, keep a firm mental grip on your mana and your ki, and speak.
"Can you understand me?"
The demon dog whimpers. It makes no sense to you beyond, "Scared," and when you glance at Briar, she shrugs in mutual incomprehension. Considering that Briar can talk to all natural animals without even having to cast spells, that presents an issue.
You consider casting the Spell of Tongues for a moment, but pass it over when it occurs to you that including Briar in the impending "conversation" might be a good idea. There's a slightly less powerful language spell that is better at enabling group conversations, and it has the side-benefit of not requiring you to touch the recipient(s) - which, since you're planning to talk to a jittery demon dog, is a definite plus.
The Spell of Codespeaking does have one drawback, in that it doesn't work against "unwilling" targets. The hunkered-down hellhound probably counts as one of those - at the very least, you're sure it isn't your ally as far as magic is concerned. Fortunately, there's a simple way around this; you just need to get its permission.
"I'm going to cast a spell on you so we can speak to each other clearly," you tell the canine.
The hellhound shivers. You frown.
"Bark if you don't want me to."
The demon spawn makes no sound.
"Silence implies consent," you conclude, before casting the spell.
"The hell it does," Briar protests.
There is a decidedly odd feeling as the magic takes hold a moment later, but from what you can tell, the spell is in effect.
"That can't possibly have worked!"
"What the-?!" The hellhound yips in shock, and stops cowering long enough to stare up at the fairy. "I understood that!" Then it glances at you and goes back to hiding its head. "Please don't eat me, please don't kill me, merciful dog-father, I'm gonna die..."
Briar stares at the hellhound, then at you. "What."
You smirk.
"No. No, there is no way- it is not supposed to work like that!"
Leaving aside Briar's protests at your apparent re-writing of the laws of magic, you have managed to establish a working line of communication with the hellhound.
You take in the creature before you: cowering; whimpering; pleading for deliverance from a higher (or lower?) power.
Why were you afraid of this ugly dog again?
...right, demon. Or part-demon. Still, it's hard to see him as any sort of threat when he's down on his belly like that. Particularly now that you're close enough to see that this dog has been pretty messed up in the past. There's a lot of old scar tissue on him, and maybe a third - okay, a quarter - of the reason he looks so ugly is because his muzzle got slashed up by something.
"I think we started off on the wrong foot," you sigh. "I'm Alex. What's your name?"
"...Runt."
The supernatural hound that's as big as you are is called "Runt." Of course.
"Okay... Runt. You don't have to be quite that scared. I'm not going to kill you-"
Runt interrupts you with a tragic whine. "Oh no, he's going to keep me ALIVE and do HORRIBLE things to me! Dog-father, what did I ever do to deserve this?"
"That is NOT what I was trying to say," you cut in firmly. Geeze, you're starting to feel like the bad guy in this situation, and that's just unbelievably wrong! "What I meant was that I won't kill you out of hand, unless you threaten me or my pack. And if it comes to that, I'll make it quick. I'm NOT going to torture you."
Runt's paws shift slightly to reveal an eye like a smouldering coal. He seems... disbelieving.
You consider how to prove your words.
You shrug at Runt's open suspicion. You don't really have time to prove yourself, and you're not terribly inclined to do so in this particular situation. If he comes to believe you after seeing your actions, fine, and if not? No skin off your nose.
"Right, so; question time. First of all, why are you here?"
"...Alpha sent me," Runt replies carefully. "The pack sensed the Light, and didn't like it, but Alpha wanted to know what was happening before we attacked."
And that answers the second question you were going to ask. For the sake of clarification, you inquire, "Is Alpha another hound like you?"
Runt flinches. "No, no, no! Alpha isn't like Runt at all! Alpha is much bigger and stronger and better a hound than Runt could ever be!"
"But Alpha IS a hound, right?"
"Yes! Alpha is the best hound!"
Okay, so there's a pack of demon dogs running wild out in the woods. Terrific. Well, you suppose it's better than wolves... and you promptly shake your head, throwing off that dreamed-of memory of savage blue eyes in a grey, canine face.
Hero-phobic flashbacks aside, it would seem that you're just dealing with a bunch of abnormally-intelligent wild dogs, rather than a pack kept in service to some sorcerer or more potent demon. Then again...
"Are all of your pack hounds?"
"Yes." Runt looks confused. "Why would they be anything else?"
You take a moment to consider how to express it. "Does your pack... share territory with any other predators?"
"The pack doesn't share territory!" Runt half-snarls, before remembering himself and cowering.
"Alright, but is there anything Alpha tells you not to hunt?"
"Alpha says not to hunt the humans, unless they attack the pack." Runt's tattered ears press down against his skull, and he seems to glance around warily before adding, in a low voice, "Alpha also says we should stay away from the cave where the Ugly One lives, or run if we smell it in the woods." Runt shivers.
You wonder what a hellhound would consider as "ugly," or find scary in a "It Must Not Be Named" kind of way. Turning to Briar, you drop the Codespeech for a moment and use English instead.
"What do you think, Briar? Is he telling the truth?"
"Seems to be," she replies. "Most dogs in my experience are pretty honest. Heightened senses of smell and hearing make it difficult to lie to them to their faces, and they just never bother. He COULD be throwing me off because he's a demon, but... he doesn't really seem that bright."
You'd have to concur. "And this... 'Ugly One'?"
She shrugs. "A demon?"
You snort. "Thanks, Briar. That's really helpful."
She smiles brightly. "I do my best!"
Turning back to Runt, you resume your use of Codespeech. "Where is the cave that this 'Ugly One' lives in?"
"A day's run towards the rising sun from here, where the ground turns to rock and the air starts to smell bad," Runt replies. "Or so Alpha says the Pack-Mother once said. I have never been there." He whines. "Runt is a coward."
Well, that's somewhat useful to know. Much too far to investigate now, though. You consider asking Runt what Alpha or the rest of his pack say the Ugly One looks like, but decide that since you're nowhere near the creature's lair and not really at risk of encountering it, there's not much point in wasting more time getting a description that would be third-hand at best.
"Right, then," you declare. "Well, I am human, and you said earlier that your pack is not to hunt humans unless we threaten you first. That would mean that human lairs like this" - you point at the cabin - "are not your hunting territory, correct?"
Runt nods slowly, ears drooping as you point out that he is technically intruding on another pack's domain.
"As for the Light, you may consider it to be a threat, but it was not meant for you." You turn slightly and point at the consecrated earth, where the Light-burned remnants of your last purification still lie. "Do you see those small figures?"
"Not-animal demon-things," Runt growls distastefully.
"Yes, those." You try to cast your explanation in canine terms. "They were infesting my pack's territory, and the best way to kill them all was to use the Light. There are many demons in our territory that would have reacted badly to that, though, too many for us to fight off, so we brought the little things out here, to human territory that is away from the territory of other predators."
Runt's ears droop further as he nods, whimpering.
"Now, I'm almost done killing the not-animals, and once the last of them is dead, I'll stop using the Light here and go home. I have no reason to harm your pack, as long as they don't try to harm mine. Understand, Runt?"
"I understand."
"Good boy. Now go and tell your Alpha."
Runt backs away carefully, crawling until he's half-hidden by the bushes. Only then does he stand up, wheel about, and take off at something approaching a run.
Gained King of Monsters E
Letting the Spell of Codespeaking lapse, you go back to the ritual site and explain what just happened to your father and uncle. Tony is clearly not thrilled by the news that there's a pack of intelligent supernatural carnivores running around out here; even your comment that they don't normally attack humans doesn't help much, since it implies there are times when they DO. Rory's reactions are more muted, his attention clearly reserved for the parts of the ruined figures he's collected.
Sighing, you cast a modified version of the Greater Spell to Make Whole, restoring the two exploded animals to a near-pristine state. The only issue is that they're still bleached white.
Rory doesn't seem to mind that so much, now that he has his ruined works back.
Shaking your head, you have your Unseen Servants wrap up the damaged batch of figures and pack them into the hauler, and then do the same with the thirty figures that still bear hints of the taint. You can cleanse these with a relatively minor purification spell later, at no real risk to yourself or your family. All that leaves are the ten still-possessed figures, which you have brought out, unwrapped, and tied down by rope-like lengths of grass in short order.
Since you want to get out of here quickly, before anything else shows up or Runt's Alpha decides to get aggressive, you pour extra power into the ritual to speed the purification along. This almost halves the time required, at the cost of more bleaching and minor burns to the figures - and a great deal of agonized howling, although that dies off after the first two minutes or so.
Finally, it's done. You hand the figures off to your Unseen Servants, and while they pack, you cast the Spell of Earth-Shaping three times, returning the sod-walled cells to the ground from where they rose. After that, you thank the Goddesses for their support in your efforts and perform an invocation of Darkness to counter and neutralize the built-up Light energy. The entire process is a bit fatiguing, leaving you with just above 25% of your maximum mana, but you don't really see a way around it: you want to clean up the traces of your presence as much as possible; and you don't have the time to spare to defray the costs by ritually-casting everything.
Gained Earth Affinity E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus) (E (Plus) (Plus) without Heart of Fire)
Gained Transformation D (Plus)
You take a final look around. You can still sense the presence of the Light and the abundant amounts of magic that were worked here, but they're much less than they were even ten minutes ago, and fading quickly. You'd give it another hour, two at the outside, before everything returns to what passes for normal in this place. Within a few days, even standard methods of magical detection won't notice anything out of the ordinary.
There is also, you note, no sign of any partly- or wholly-demonic presences nearby, nor any spiritual entities. The hauler and truck are packed, the cabin is locked, and your Dad - who appears to have decided that he's more comfortable with the axe close at hand - is warming up the car.
Your little convoy returns to Sunnydale in short order, and you, your father, and your uncle proceed to empty out the hauler. You can only conjure a handful of Unseen Servants now that you're back in town, but you do so, knowing that you'll have your own hands full doing last-minute purification and emergency repair work on Rory's damaged animals.
You have a go at patching up the burned and slightly-melted figures with the minor Spell of Mending, and it works - somewhat. You can't seem to restore the melted glass eyes to normal, nor can you return the original colors to the Light-bleached fur and feathers. The burns clear up nicely, though, as do the traces of damage due to sudden explosive fragmentation of those other animals you already put back together.
When you display your efforts to your uncle, he's a little dismayed, but says he can just replace the eyes himself. He also admits that the "albino" appearance of his overly-purified animals is kind of neat, and he could find some red eyes to play that up...? Then he starts muttering to himself about trying to bleach a skin himself, to see if he can get a similar effect, and you start to worry.
"What?" your father bursts out. "After all that, you're going to keep making these things?"
Rory blinks. "Well, yeah."
Tony sighs. "Rory, you are my only brother, so I hope you'll understand that I'm expressing my concern rather than trying to be a jerk when I say that you are not right in the head."
Your uncle extends a finger. "Love you too, bro."
"You didn't see that, Alex," your father notes.
"See what?"
"Good answer."
As for the follow-up purifications, you take a minute to assess the remaining traces of demonic corruption within the animals and then decide to go with ritually-cast first-circle spells. The end results are perhaps not as "clean" as they might have been if you'd been able to use your full purification rite, but given the choice between this outcome and risking an attack by a pack of jittery demonic dogs when you overstayed your welcome, you're satisfied with the path you've chosen.
You manage to have that talk with your father as well, in and around all the light lifting and minor sorcery. It wasn't as bad as you were worried it might have gone; your Dad wasn't hurt or even really frightened by his first in-person encounter with your aura, just very, very surprised. He admits that he might have reacted very differently if you'd sprung that surprise on him without having shown him the tournament tapes and talked to him about magic beforehand, though. Even your interaction with the might-be-a-hellhound goes over pretty well, mainly because you were able to handle the encounter with a minimum of violence. Tony isn't particularly bothered that you decided to scare the dog down; he was actually getting ready to take the axe to it when you lit up like the sun, and he's not sure how that would have turned out. Really, this outcome, with no bloodshed on either side, is much preferable to his way of thinking.
Little else of note has happened when you finally break for a late lunch. It's closer to one than to twelve, and you've got the hauler about two-thirds to three-quarters empty, though only a couple of the animals have been returned to their original places on the walls. Most are just sitting around in their protective wrappings, waiting for Rory to get a chance to inspect them and hang them where they're supposed to go - you don't actually KNOW, yourself, so you can't simply have the Unseen Servants do the work, and Rory seems to prefer the idea of putting everything back by himself anyway.
Lunch is... fairly quiet, to begin with. Perhaps you should talk to someone?
The four of you have gathered around the desk in Rory's currently animal-free office, papers carefully moved aside to provide a mostly-clean dining surface, and extra chairs dragged in from all over the garage. The two older men needed a couple minutes to get used to seeing Briar's tiny serving disappearing in even tinier bites, but they're dealing. It probably seems like an insignificant detail, after everything else they've witnessed today.
"So, Uncle," you say between bites of lunch.
"Yeah, Alex?"
"Not to spoil our meal or anything, but... how many of those animals have you given away to people over the years?"
Rory pauses in the middle of biting a sandwich.
In the next seat over, your father pauses right as he is about to take a drink from a can of Coke.
And in the small place to your left, Briar facepalms.
"Oh, dammit!"
You take that collective exclamation as a sign of bad news. "A lot, then?" you venture.
"Yeah," Rory sighs, putting down his sandwich. "I try to make one for every household in the know, every other Christmas or so." Your uncle looks thoughtful. "I should probably reconsider that policy this year."
"Please do," your father sighs. "So three or four per year?"
"Sounds about right, yeah. I used to give one to Uncle Jim for his birthday each year, 'cause of how he got me interested in the practice to start with, but after he passed, well, Mary always made it clear that she never liked his hobby or mine."
"I remember the bonfire she had that year," your father reminisces. "So that was...?"
"Uncle Jim's entire collection, except for a couple pieces he'd left to me and some other folks in the will. Old bat had no appreciation for craftsmanship."
"So that leaves, what, another thirty to forty of these things? Plus whatever of Uncle Jim's work is still floating around?" Your father shakes his head. "God, Rory, where do you even find the time? I mean, between running the garage, following the team, keeping up with your dating life-"
"Hey, I actually met some of those girls through mutual interest in the art!"
"...I don't even want to know."
"Oh, Farore," Briar groans. "There are MORE like him? And they're BREEDING?"
You aren't sure how to respond to all this.
As you consider how to respond to the conversation at hand, something catches your attention. It's a small thing, just a tingle of unfamiliar magical energy, but that's enough to put you on alert and give the office and the adjoining room a sweep with your senses. You see and smell nothing out of the ordinary, not even on the supernatural spectrum, but you do pick up a trace of spirit and life-force unconnected to anyone currently in the garage, as well as the faintest whisper of sound. Your passive senses can't pinpoint the origin, but one thing is certain:
You have a visitor.
"Hello?"
Behind you, your father and uncle break off their discussion. "Alex?"
"I think someone else is here, Dad."
Briar frowns and looks in the same general direction you're looking.
You hear a sound not unlike dry, reedy laughter- wait, check that. You're not actually HEARING it; the laughter is appearing directly in your brain, bypassing your ears entirely.
The seemingly-empty patch of air just outside the door to Rory's office darkens and shifts, and is suddenly not empty anymore. What stands there is... difficult to describe. The creature's basic shape is humanoid, but its form is shadowed and indistinct as though wreathed in its own private fogbank, making most of the specific details impossible to discern. It stands perhaps seven feet tall and seems exceptionally thin, a lanky, almost skeletal frame wrapped in a long shroud that trails to the floor and flutters oddly now and then. Two long, fuzzy tendrils arch up from the top of the head before trailing down along the back. The rest is lost in a blur that almost seems to jump about in place, like badly-edited video footage.
There is one aspect of the being you have no trouble identifying. It has two eyes, glowing bright red from its thin, otherwise indistinct face. Looking at those eerie pools of crimson, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
/ It seems I must work harder on concealing my use of magic, / the unfamiliar creature muses in a soundless murmur that you quickly identify as some form of telepathy. The entity then draws itself up to its full height, and adopts a more formal tone. / You are Alexander Harris. /
It's not a question, but you answer anyway. "I am. And you are...?"
/ My name is of no importance. I am but a messenger in service to the Shuzen Clan. /
And from within its shroud, the creature produces an envelope, which it holds forth - with clawed digits that you have NO trouble whatsoever in following, you cannot help but note.
It would seem that this creepy guy is what Kahlua's folks use as their personal mailman.
Although it grates against your Hellmouth-honed paranoia survival instincts to simply take a letter that is a potential delivery method for explosives, curses, diseases, and plain old bad news without first probing the envelope extensively for hazards both deliberate and unintentional, you realize that doing so could be taken as a sign of mistrust and disrespect towards the Shuzens on your part. And so, telling yourself that if Kahlua's folks meant you harm, they'd be much more up-front about it than certain ninja of your acquaintance, you reach out and accept the letter.
While doing so, you glance sidelong at your father and uncle. From this angle, you can just make out the motion of their chests, so they haven't fallen silent due to temporal shenanigans on the Shuzen messenger's part - though the way they've both all but frozen staring at the creature, Rory clutching the arms of his chair, your Dad once again with the appropriated axe in hand, makes you think it's doing something. Briar is out of your line of sight from here, but...
Gained Protective C
The messenger's eyes close and its body shivers more obviously as it makes a chittering sound. For some reason, you think this is its equivalent of a chuckle.
/ You are one suspicious mammal grub, aren't you? Then again, ninja, wizards, warlocks, demons... /
"Hellmouth," you reply in summation, as you shore up your mental defenses. "And I'll thank you to stay out of my head."
The creature make that amused noise again, but you do dimly sense its psychic presence withdrawing.
/ Fate makes interesting patterns around you, Mister Harris. I am quite tempted to stay and observe how they unfold. Alas, my work here is done, and my prompt return expected. / It leans down and forward, as if to look you more squarely in the eye. / Perhaps we'll meet again. Until then... /
The messenger's cape abruptly unfurls, revealing that "it" is, in fact, a huge pair of wings like those of a moth. The blur that surrounds the creature renders the black and white patterns on the translucent grey membranes indecipherable - they actually seem to be changing as you watch. Then the shadows of the office gather around the mothman, first as a dark halo that emphasizes its presence and bloody stare, and then as another shroud that spreads over the creature, obscuring it entirely. At some point in the process, the messenger's mental presence vanishes-
- behind you, your father and breathe simultaneous sighs of relief -
-and the shadows break up, revealing once-again empty air where the creature stood.
"Everybody alright?" you ask, turning to face the rest of the group.
"Been better," your father admits, running a hand over his face. "Man, that thing was creepy. Worse than the vampires."
"Brrr," Rory agrees. He's actually pulled a fairly clean rag out from somewhere and is wiping sweat from his face.
"I really hate giant insect monsters sometimes," Briar grumbles. "All big and smug with their bigness."
...okay.
You're interested in hearing what Briar knows about that mothman, but seeing how badly the creature in question has spooked your father and uncle just by looking at them, you decide to rein in your curiosity for now. You can make inquiries on the subject later, when it's just the two of you.
On a similar note, while you're tempted to open up the letter right here and now, you're worried that waving it around in front of your father would prompt questions about the content - and that the answers might further upset him. After the morning he's had and the state it's left him in, you don't really feel right about potentially putting even more stress on your old man, so you tuck the envelope away in your expanded pocket for later perusal.
That settled, you turn your attention back to your elders, wanting to resume the fairly important discussion about the works of taxidermy your uncle has scattered around town. It's important that you work out how to get them purified or just destroyed before somebody gets hurt-
"What the hell was that?!"
-and it looks like Rory has something else in mind to talk about.
"It was like, a seven-foot-tall moth, only it was a man! And those eyes...! And... it gave Alex a letter?" Rory looks at you, wild-eyed. "Why are you getting letters from giant insect-people, Alex?"
You trade concerned glances with your father. Rory appears to have hit his weirdness threshold for the day, and then some.
"The insect-people aren't the ones writing to me, Uncle Rory," you reply carefully. Not as far as you know, anyway. "That was just a mailman, making a delivery."
Your uncle's stare does not meaningfully diminish. "A mailman? A giant bug is a mailman?"
"The supernatural side can be pretty weird. Some folks have Lurch as a butler. Others have mailmen who are... well, whatever that guy was. Briar? Any ideas, beyond 'huge creepy insect-person?'"
"That was a Mothman, Alex."
"Yeah, I got that-"
"No, really, that's the proper name for that guy's species. They're a type of monster that claim to be agents of Fate. They normally only show themselves when something significant is supposed to happen, either to watch, or to make sure it comes about."
"And how do they do that?" you ask.
"They have a bunch of powers of illusion and enchantment on top of the telepathy - or maybe because of it?" Briar trails off for a moment before shaking her head. "Anyway, they don't control people or compel them to act against their nature, but they'll play tricks on folks, show them visions, or plant ideas in their heads, and then let events take their course. Mothmen are supposed to have greater powers they can call on when something is actively interfering with Fate, but I think that's just good press." The fairy pauses. "Probably."
You dutifully repeat most of this for your father and uncle.
"What sort of powers?" your father asks.
"Well, the story I heard was that there was a group of sorcerers in West Virginia about thirty or forty years ago who'd made a pact that stopped them all from ageing and allowed them to revive any of their number who died from illness or violence. A Mothman showed up, spent a few days spooking the locals while it tracked the sorcerers' movements, and then disappeared again. About a month later, a suspension bridge in the area collapsed and killed over fifty people - including all of the sorcerers, who'd been on their way to a meeting. With none of their group left alive to perform the necessary ritual, they couldn't revive."
You blink at that. Do you really want to repeat that story in front of family?
You entertain a brief impulse to repeat Briar's account verbatim, perhaps adding a rider that the story might just be a case of coincidence or hype.
Then you consider your father's likely reaction to being told that the "mailman" he just saw is the kind of creature that can work out how to kill a band of immortal magic-users a month in advance of the actual deed, and furthermore seems to have no issue with taking out dozens of uninvolved bystanders in the process of eliminating its targets. You further consider you sire's response if and when he found out that such a creature was working for the Shuzens.
Forget about being forbidden to go to Kahlua's birthday; it's far more likely that you'd be told to break off contact with her and her family altogether.
You'd rather it didn't come to that, but you're not comfortable enough with lying to your parents to completely (or even significantly) change the details of Briar's account. So instead of coming up with a bold-faced lie, you decide to... massage... the truth.
"From what Briar says, one Mothman was apparently able to come up with a plan to take out a cabal of sort-of-immortal sorcerers, and had the power to engineer the necessary events at least as much as a month earlier."
Your father and uncle say nothing to that at first.
"Why is a creature like that delivering mail?" your father asks after a minute.
You're curious about that yourself, but you really have no idea. Oh, you can speculate all kinds of reasons. The Mothman could be using its "day job" as an opportunity to travel the world, meet important people, and read their minds and plant psychic suggestions that will, in time, give rise to what he considers a desireable outcome. Alternately, there could be inhuman politics at work, with the Mothman agreeing to take on a suboordinate role to the vampiric aristocrats in exchange for the patronage of a wealthy, politically-powerful group. There could be a more personal arrangement at work, like a member of the Shuzen family being owed a favor by this particular Mothman, or maybe it's just that being an agent of Fate wasn't paying the bills, and the Mothman needed a more mundane nine-to-five career. It could be any of the above, or a mix, or something else entirely - you just can't say for certain.
You repeat some of this to your father, leaving out mention of the Shuzens.
He thinks on it, and nods. "So where does that leave us?" he asks then. "Was that guy working his magic on us, or what?"
...um.
You don't think there was any Fate-manipulation going on. At the very least, you didn't sense any high-level magic at work until the Mothman disappeared himself - and that effect was entirely focused on HIM - while the psychic stuff didn't feel anywhere near as significant. Then again, your psychic senses are pretty underdeveloped compared to your magical talents. Who knows what kind of far-reaching mental powers the Mothman might have been working behind its glowing, multifaceted eyes?
You find that little voice in your head that is squeaking like a frightened mouse about "unknown," "threat," and "security," and quell it.
There is no need to panic and go nuts with the extrasensory skills. True, your sensitivity to psychic shenganigans isn't anything to write home about, but your other forms of mystical awareness are pretty good if you do say so yourself. Altering Fate in a manner that bestows any kind of control over the outcome is not an easy process; if there HAD been such a warping of destiny in your general vicinity, you're pretty sure you would have noticed SOMETHING beyond the Mothman's skin-crawling gaze and lack of respect for mental privacy.
"I'm pretty sure it didn't mess with us, Dad," you say. "You know, beyond just playing up the 'creepy telepathic bug-person' angle. I mean, it was hiding under magic in the first place, and I still picked up on it even though I wasn't really looking for anything. I doubt it slipped anything past when I was paying attention."
You pause, frowning.
"I don't like that look, Alex," your father says.
"Huh? Oh, sorry." You relax your expression. "I'm not worried, really, I'm just... well, I'm kind of curious."
"...curious."
You nod. "This is the first time I've met a creature with telepathy or the ability to muck around with destiny. It's neat!" You point at him and your uncle. "Would you mind if I looked you both over anyway? I might learn something, and I can at least make sure the Mothman really didn't mess with you."
Gained Scholar's Soul F (Plus) (Plus)
Your uncle looks wary, but then something seems to occur to him. "Alex, if you were able to work out how to... nudge Fate... would you be able to, say, tell us the winning numbers in the lotto?"
"RORY."
Wow. That may be the first time you've ever heard the Voice of Dad. It's not quite as terrifying as the Voice of Mom, for some reason, but it speaks to a part of you that has previously only responded to the Enlightenment Stick and the overwhelming presence of martial arts masters.
"What?!" your uncle protests.
"You are not using my son to cheat at gambling!"
"It wouldn't be gambling if it was a sure thing!"
"Not. The. Point!"
Should you... head this off?
"Sorry, Uncle Rory," you speak up, cutting the two grown men off before they can really get into it. "Gambling and the like doesn't work nearly as well as you'd think. I had a chance to speak to an expert a little while back, and from what he said, every magic user thinks of it eventually, so every magic user tries. And then gets tripped up by what everyone else is doing."
Your uncle frowns. "Really? Well, that sucks."
"Kind of, yeah. It doesn't help that the private sector is apparently full of magic-users, all of them looking to catch what the old guy called 'financial wizards' - basically anybody who tries to play the markets with magic. Likewise for organized gambling."
"Hold up." Tony raises a hand. "Who is this 'expert,' and why was he talking about the stock market and organized gambling with you?"
"His name's Ambrose," you reply carefully. "He's from Britain, and he was chaperoning one of the girls I met at the tournament. You remember Altria?"
"The tiny blonde who almost fought you to a draw?"
Rory, who started grinning when you mentioned "girls" for some reason, abruptly blinks. "Wait, what's this?"
"It was the division final," your father explains. "Alex stopped the tapes a good while before that."
"...I may need to watch those," Rory muses.
"Anyway," you continue, "Ambrose was Altria's chaperone. Or maybe she was his, he can be pretty annoying when he's not being all, 'Oz the Great and Powerful.'"
"Please," Briar mutters. "He's annoying even then."
True enough. "That aside, everything Briar and I know about magic said Ambrose knew what he was doing, and he was helpful in solving a couple of other matters at the time, so we've sort of stayed in touch. I admitted to wondering about ways to use magic to make money, and Ambrose came down firmly against the idea of trying to play the market or get into gambling."
Your father considers that, and nods.
"He was surprised when I asked about using magic to restore car parts, though," you add. "It seemed like the idea had never occurred to him, and he admitted as long as I didn't go overboard fixing up more machines than it looked like a group of good, ordinary mechanics could, it should be alright."
"And that was when you started hanging out here and listening to us talk shop," Rory infers.
"Pretty much. I hope you're not mad."
"The prospect of making a few extra grand a year is very soothing," your uncle assures you.
"I can't do it yet," you point out.
"Even as a long-term prospect, it's still good."
With the brotherly argument on gambling tabled, you take the opportunity to slip in some scans of your uncle and father, as well as yourself and Briar, to see what you can learn of the Mothman's methods.
The answer appears to be a Big Fat Nothing. Either Bug-Boy didn't do anything to any of you, or he's subtle enough with those particular talents to slip under your radar. It's academically disappointing and a touch concerning from a totally-not paranoid personal and familial safety angle, but there's not much you can do about it. It is what it is.
You spend a little time discussing future possibilities in the field of magically-aided automotive repair and restoration. It seems that Rory and Tony once tried to restore an old car when they were in high school, and it turned out well enough to be driven in public, but not really worth resale. You can only do so much when you're working with a typical teenager's budget. There were plans to have another go at fixing up a car once they both had steady work and the funds to get the best parts and materials, but that fell apart due to work (and in your Dad's case, family) being major time- and money-sinks.
Your talents offer an interesting potential revival of the old "family project," though both men agree that it will take some time to get up to the point of doing full-body restorations. It's not just a question of your skills needing improvement; they need a certain amount of capital to buy a car that'll actually turn a profit on resale, plus the parts, which can be expensive or just really annoying to track down. Rory's got a fair-sized stash, and he knows some guys who know some guys, but still.
Since the conversation already involved practical, everyday applications of magic, as opposed to the flashy evil-cleansing, combat-grade, demon-cowing stuff you were throwing around this morning, it fairly naturally gets around to the topic of the protective charms your uncle mentioned the other day. Rory pulls one out of his desk drawer and hands it to you.
You study the charm carefully. Rather than an amulet or bracelet, it's a small, tightly-drawn pouch that rustles in your careful grasp and smells faintly of dried plants. You think you recognize one of the scents from your recent venture into the inter-dimensional spice trade. Briar identifies most of the others, although she adds that half of them don't do a thing as far as protective influences go, and the rest are pretty low-grade. They've a bit more when taken together, and you can just make out a fading wisp of mana binding the contents of the bag together with one another and the simple protective symbols sewn into the material.
Gained Herbalism F
Gained Item Crafting E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Scenting E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Wood Elementalism F (Plus) (Plus)
"It's genuine," you admit. "It's not very strong, but it's real magic. Have you had it for a while?"
"That one, about two and a half months, now," Rory admits with a nod. "The lady at the shop recommends replacing them every month - every full moon, actually - but there's only a limited supply, and everybody and their grandmother seems to want the things. Doesn't help much that Fiona - that's the owner - was out of town last full moon. Something about helping her sister kidnap a husband."
You and your father give Rory looks at that. He just shrugs, apparently not knowing what to make of it either.
You hand the bag of protective herbs and spices back to your uncle, having decided to say no more on the matter.
After taking some time to let lunch settle, you spend the best part of the next two hours emptying out the hauler and the truck. On-and-off discussion during the transportation of the purified animals with regards to the still-uncleansed ones leads to a tentative plan for Rory to approach the folks he's given his creations to over the years and let them know of a "recently-announced potential health and safety hazard" involving certain taxidermy materials. Your uncle isn't particularly eager to see the good name of his hobby besmirched, but he has to admit it's a fairly accurate description of the problem, and he'd rather see people think badly of the fine art of preserving, stuffing, and mounting dead animal parts than have them get hurt or killed, especially by things he created himself.
Your father, for his part, is quietly optimistic about the prospect of retrieving the objects in question. He doesn't go into too much detail as to why he thinks it will work out, and from the dire, suspicious looks Rory shoots him, that's probably just as well. You have your own hunches, but you leave them unspoken.
The day's work finally over and done with, you hop into the family car around three and wait a few minutes while Rory pulls out in the truck, driving off to return the hauler, and your Dad locks up the shop behind him. Then you drive home, where you are greeted by Moblin, Zelda, and your mother. The former is eager to hear about how your "boys' day" went, while Moblin gives you a sniff and looks puzzled and wary. It occurs to you that even though you never touched that demon-hound, you were close enough that some of its scent may have caught on you.