The Tiger in the Bushes [OPEN]

Rune felt the fingers grip him from behind, questing and strong, gathering his coat into dead palms, snatching at his belt, plucking at his hair. The world promised to go totally pear-shaped as he fought the feral weapon back into its holster and skidded backward through glass dust and gin slurry.

Then the young man flashed past him like a mongoose alight. He hear the telltale sounds of fists and elbows, knees and the swinging instep, blows falling dull into the marching meat of the crowd and like a reprieve from the fickle gods of luck and fortune those finger shook loose.

He stumbled a step before turning to see the bar patron standing among scattered and teetering bodies. And that was when the idea came to him, the kind of idea that didn’t come to good people.

“Retreat…” He repeated as the bodies slowly started to right themselves, started to understand what was happening, started to get a little faster.

“Not a chance kid. We have to stop him and you are the one that can do it!” Rune had to yell to get above the laughter rumbling out from behind him. Ev hung in the air how, lifted from the bourbon soaked floor as the snake choked green aura slowly seeped outward.

“He has a mark on him somewhere, that’s where his power comes from. It’s not on his head!” He shouted as the fallen field around Jardin started to stand straighter, their hands coming back up slowly but with the purpose of shutting down the lightning fast fighter. Rune stepped back up to the low windowsill shaking his hands like a piano man in for the arpeggio of a lifetime.

“Get in there and take him out Junior, mess up that mark and leave this bunch to me.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and left room for the young man to get past him on the left.

A clap and the air shimmered with sudden magical energy around Rune’s hands like silver threads weaving upwards and outwards.

Pushing one of the encroaching zombies back into the mass, Jardin glanced toward the Bar once more. He really did not want to go back in there...but it seamed he would be the only one of the two able to handle the necromancer...

The thief shrugged. "Any idea what the mark will look like? I'm guessing a snake tattoo..." The situation was too urgent so Jardin just shook his head. "Whatever, I'll figure it out."

Breaking form the mass in time to dodge a victim's groping hands, Jardin sprinted, vaulting back through the window, careful to avoid the shards of glass this time. His palms had healed from the first time but it still hurt to cut oneself on jagged glass.

He fell to all four, a sad consequence of jumping through a hole sideways but quickly kicked himself up. So, the lunatic could levitate, Jardin noticed. Nothing could ever be easy...

Jardin began to pace around Everet, studying him, forming a tactic. Favoring soft martial arts, Jardin had to draw him into an attack. It would not be to difficult...but why not stoke the fire. "So, this is all about your wife, right?" Jardin changed direction and a twist of his wrists dropped a pair of push daggers into his hands. "She's probable rolling in her grave over the shit your pulling in her name." Invisible, he braced for Ev's strike...

Healed! Son of a gun, that fellow might just make plan B work after all.

Rune braced himself as the young man moved past him, the young panther past the old lion. He spread his hands as the magical energy flowed out from his hands, liquid glass spreading wild in the warm night, an instant ragged window.

When he spoke the words, the call of devotion, the quiet syllables set a tiny crack in the glass that spread in a blink and the whole thing flew apart like a panic of glowing moths. And there in front of rune stood three figures in long pale robes. Their deep hoods obscured any faces but at least one of these seemed vaguely more feminine than the others.

For an instant they stood motionless as the first few streaked creatures stepped over the edge of the window and into the bar. Then each figure moved in perfect unison, four arms stretched out from each one and each arm looked very human down to their five fingers. Their bodies and arms moved in gentle swaying motions somewhere between an island dance and some kind of martial art.

Rune screwed his face into a general “What the…” look, but then he never knew what the Pact of the Beloved was going to call forth. He counted a small blessing that it wasn’t actual spiders, but it was coming, one of these days…

The many-limbed figures ever so gently intercepted everything that entered their space, every questing hand, every careful step, leaning foreheads and bodies heavy with muddy clothes. Each piece and part was redirected back the way it had come with sinuous movements and only the smallest lifts of hidden feet, turns of the hips and those clockwork hands all working ceaselessly together.

By the bar Everet hung in the air as if hooked there. His ghoulish aura seeped outward like a black lit murder scene and those snakes swung around with the speed of bullwhips, blunt heads shooting out randomly; great fanged fists whipping around; rib smashing blows begging for bones to shatter.

The Necromancer’s head was nearly whole now and only the slightly lighter skin suggested anything had happened. Both his eyes were rotten-milk white now and dark veins pulsed in his neck, inky corruption under mahogany skin.

“You don’t know nothin’ boy. Cain’t you see Rune is just givin’ you up. He throwing you to the snakes son.”

The dark figure laughed and his pale lips split wider than a human mouth should revealing the curve of his teeth as they turned back into his head.

“Ain’t that just like that dern ole Rune. Ain’t it just like that man to play you like a joker card, Son.”

Rune turned from the window, his fingers still tracing out the hidden symbols of whatever magic bound these figures here. Two of them shifted slightly to keep the figures at the window sedately pressed back while the more feminine one stepped in front of him making a triangle, pinning him inside the geometry of their beautifully moving arms. Rune might be safe for the moment but he wasn’t going anywhere.

The strong whiskey vapors wafted around the scene as the table wedged at the door tumbled to one side. Dirty figures pressed forward slowly, fingers wrapped around the frame to pull their bulk through.

“Tick tock kid!” Rune shouted. But Everet didn’t have to shout. His voice seemed to bleed out of the very air, it scratched at that space just behind the ear like a cockroach along for the ride.

“Bring me Rune’s heart, boy. And with his power I can give you whatever you want for. Bring me that heart.”

So, it seemed revenge was not the core of what Everet was after.  The man had simply become a common megalomaniac.  And he seemed to assume everyone else around him was as weak willed as him.

"You know," Jardin said, glancing to the window.  He was a bit surprised at the three odd figures that had seemed to come from nowhere.  They seemed to be doing a heck of a job protecting Rune.  Neat.  Turning back to E, he continued.  "Tempting as that offer is, I'm rather content at the moment."  He gave the Necromancer a wink.  "So, pass."

In the next second, Jardin was again rushing forward.  Though only capable of human feats, his natural athleticism meant he could still close rapidly.  Hoping to catch the magus off guard, Jardin leapt upwards, hoping to slash Ev's shirt open with an exaggerated uppercut that would plant the dagger blade through the target's chin, tongue and into the roof of his mouth.

Using the momentum of his assault, Jardin also drove forward with the blade in his other hand.  A punch with his left hand would plant two inches of steel in the lunatic's chest.  And, if all went as hoped, the impact of flying into the barkeep would bring the pair down to earth...

“You think I’m jokin’ boy! You bettah…” Everet started as growling tones rolled under his words. But before he could complete the thought, the young man was moving in. Heavy python heads came striking down like mottled thunder. Chairs and tables leapt into pieces, smashed to flinders just inches past his moving body, splinters twirling like shrapnel

Nictitating eyes, albino and slitted, tried to track him and coiling bodies flexed with impossible strength and power. Hammer blows flashed around him.

From within his sanctuary of weaving hands, Rune looked on amazed. Holy cats! That fellow moved like a kung-fu quarterback. All in the space of a scotch scented blink.

The knife blade had no trouble sliding up into the jaw of the necromancer, punctuating the annoyed look on his dark face with a semicolon of steel, glinting one second and then buried the next.

The group at the door tumbled inward, awful forms falling over each other as if pushed through a press, the mass of their flesh coming apart into bodies as they fell in.

Rune didn’t see the hand that remained unturned by his monk guards. A lone mud streaked set of fingers that instead locked onto one of the many wrists weaving their martial spell of protection. Another few digits tangled into the hanging robes, still more hands made connections among the drifting movements.

The left hand punch-blade sank in as well, easily. It rasped across a rib and complained lightly of the cartilage but even that parted for the keen edge. Everet did not however dip from his terrible station above the ground. He did not shudder like a thing on a wire but the impacts stuck him solidly. He was a thing in unseen amber, a body in glass motionless above the spirit soaked floorboards.

Suddenly, as suddenly as the bar patron moved, as sudden as a camera flash, one of the monks was pulled off his feet. He was yanked into the roiling mass, a ripple of robes and then gone. No scream, no moment of protest. Just there one second and then gone the next. The awful sounds, ripping and tearing, fabric and flesh, told a tale of last moments.

The remaining two monks shifted slightly to cover more space, orbiting Rune in long, slow turning strides; taking turns to press back the horde, losing a little ground each revolution.

Rune cut eyes from the fetid mass rising to their feet across the room to the field of the dead bearing down on him.

“Uhh oh.”

Jardin was growing annoyed.  He was covered in glass, had somehow out run a mess of snakes bent on his death, a horde of undead was not far off and he had to find where a mark of power was on the skin of a man fully clothed. He had managed to open up the front of the Necromancer's shirt, but a chest mark would have been too easy.

A more pressing issue was that Jardin had started to slip, his daggers not acting as reliable handholds. Before the blade burried in Ev's chest could slide free, its twin tore down, changed direction arching up and down again, burying into Ev's shoulder.

This one looked to stick firm and could act as an anchor. The blade in the necromancer's chest soon lashed aside as well, opening up Everet's sleeve. If all went well, it would leave the shirt hanging from the sleeve still pinned to the Barkeep's shoulder.

Of course, that still left the man with his trousers, and if the mark was on the man's leg...So, Jardin did the only thing that made sense to him in the most nonsensical manner possible. Feet and knees curling, Jardin kicked against the still levitating man. This caused him to pivot around the dagger until his upward momentum pulled him free.

However, Jardin still managed to have complete control and already, he was falling. Angling both blades he aimed. They would slide down Ev's back, opening shallow wounds but that was not his real target. No, Jardin wanted to slice into the barkeep's pants, opening them down each leg and letting them fall away. That was the idea, anyway.

Briefly, the young thief realized he was about to pull off one spectacular stunt and the goal was to see a grown man naked? No one could learn of this...

Rune watched the young man contort and then flip up over the necromancer with a deceptively slow twist, the knives flashing in the oozing light, ichor webbed across their metal widths.

“Sunova… “ he said in a moment of stunned realization. Fellow wasn’t a joker, he was an ace. And that might turn out to be a bad thing. Well done Rune, out of the frying pan…

The dark crowd closed on the rotating guards, shadows falling over their pale robes. Their many arms worked quickly now to press back the throng, shifting them back and to the sides, turning grabs and swats aside, buckling knees and making a barricade of their fallen forms even as they lumbered over each other.

The group from the door spread inward toward the action at the bar and toward Rune with his paltry remaining wardens. Chairs and tables slowed them until the first few seemed to notice them, milky eyes turning downward to take in the clutter. Rune could almost recognize the thoughts building, becoming a speed to the wet limbs, the cracking fingers.

They began to sweep the tables and chairs aside, clumsy and awkward but with growing dexterity. That was the terrifying thing about curseborn zombies, they just got better and better.

Everet’s shirt came apart in strips as the blades painted razor lines down his back healing almost as fast as they formed. It did reveal the coruscating black mark across his lower back. It moved like a thing alive under dark skin raising the flesh like an infection, making it an ugly scarlet, biology itself fighting back in vain.

As the young man passed it in his downward arc it pulsed into half a dozen shapes, skulls, tattoos, faces. It seemed to reach out to his mind, a silent question between the two of them, would you be stronger, better? Did you want to change the world, own it, bend its most basic injustices to your will?

As the alcohol vapors rushed past, it made a long promise. All this horror would be different for you. Everything would be different for you. You can fix everything, just take the power. Just cut it out of him and everything can be yours.

One of the remaining guards around Rune was suddenly snatched to his knees and then into the fray. The female monk reached out to grab him but she was too slow, one hand outstretched and the other on that side out in the universal gesture for “No, please no”.

A single instant passed as grief wrote itself into her posture. And then she slid a foot out under the loose hem of her robe, firming her stance, a will of iron descending over movement and muscles.

The soft style was gone, fists and open palms flew like a covey of doves, wild and untamed. Zombies flew backwards or slammed to the glassy floor. With one hand on Rune the other three blurred in form after form, desperation crafted a fatalistic wall of prowess. Teeth flew and eyes shattered but the group only grew closer, an unnatural force ceasing only long enough to devour everything in its way.

Rune’s heart briefly clenched at the loss. Was there ever a time when he wasn’t busting up someone’s life? His eyes flashed back and forth with a tingle of panic. Time was up. Someone needed to do something and right now!

Looking upon the blackness, Jardin felt the power worm its way into his thoughts and memories. It drew out many secrets, phantoms and fears...

There were his sisters. Sarah, straight-laced and rightous: was a thief truly the extent of what he could; what he should be doing? Playing an outsider while nothing changed? Couldn't he do better? And Heather, innocent and honest: she believed in superheroes. Would she still be able to look up to her big brother? Or would his fall break their bond?

Then came the faces of those with power. He saw corrupt politicians, pushing the interests of their benefactors, all the while ignoring the voices of the people crying out for help. Businessmen, lording their successes over others, allowing good fortune to masquerade as talent. The "Virtues" of Greed, Gluttony, Pride and Sloth...

Then came a wisper in the back of the boy's mind. A distant voice asking a simple question. "Would you serve in Heaven, or rule in Hell?" In an instant, Jardin understood. He knew what he had to do. Raising the dagger in his right hand, the keen edge slid through the air, slicing toward the Barkeep's back.

The blade drove toward the center of the mark...

Rune felt the blade bury itself in the pit of green, in the seething wound of the mark. The feeling rushed out from the hit like a crashing tide, like a lightning bolt of nausea and repulsion arcing through the vodka reek. He felt it punch him in the gut and all the dark and pale bodies stopped in their tracks. The tight semicircle swayed to a halt.

Everet shuddered and went limp, a sudden rag-doll, and slowly slid to the ground as the putrid luminescence faded into an oily sheen and then nothing at all. His body folded unnaturally into a heap behind the bar, an origami of a human barely recognizable.

The swinging snakes dropped to the floor as if lopped off the hanging body, chopped loose and left to tumble thick and curling, pale mouths cracked open wide. Hitting the bar and floor they shattered into an oily gruel splattering apart, each one its own sewer offering. If there was an odor, it did not trump the licorice waft of Jager.

The last remaining monk being stopped immediately turning her hidden head warily back and forth, gazing into their midst for the ruin of what she had lost to their teeth and clutching fingers. Her shoulders shook with fatigue but her body shifted just slightly, just the tiniest bit, a postage stamp of her clear desire to step into the killing wall that no longer killed, to break ranks and retrieve what lay lost and defiled.

Rune pulled his hands apart and the silvery gleam that strung among his fingers snapped like a taunt thread. The creature flickered and was gone back to wherever she had come from; back with a story either no one or everyone would believe.

Stuffing down an all too familiar regret he stepped backwards, away from the awful fence of bodies, kicking chairs and tables out of the way just to have the sound of it in that instant quiet, scrape and clatter, toss and crash. He promised the sense of betrayal in his chest a few extra glasses later. Just keep it together Vigil, stay between the lines a little longer.

“Way to go Kid! Way to go. I was sure we were in some trouble there, but you really came through.” He could not make himself turn his back on the mass of bodies that stood still and soundless blocking the front of the grill, plugging the window and door. Speaking now, he could feel the glass dust crunch lightly between his teeth, a personal chorus for his gravely voice.

He spared a quick leaning peek at the compost heap that used to be Everet.

"Damn it you dumb bastard. Damn it."

The victorious metahuman stepped away from the remains of the bartender.  His actions and movements were slow, methodical.  He was coming down from his adrenaline rush so the world seemed slightly faster.

Setting his knives down on the counter, Jardin began to undo his shirt, sleeves stained brown by blood.  Beneath he wore a simple t-shirt, also flecked with traces of is blood as well as a pair of small scabbards strapped to his forearms.

The thief-turned-killer moved toward the sink nearest the bar, nabbing a bottle of blue cleaning agent.  The cleaner reeked of amonia and would break down the blood as he poured it over his shirt, which he had dumped into the sink.  He was a criminal after all.  He took this opportunity to speak with Rune.  Without looking up from his work, he said, "I guess now that we aren't fighting for our lives whe can talk about what just happened."  He thought he might have some handle on the situation but it could not hurt to get a full picture.

Bottle empty and DNA evidence thoroughly ruined, Jardin wrung out his shirt and began to turn back to Everet's body.  "Is there anything I can do to help break the curse on those...zombies?  I assume that's why you wanted them kept alive."

Using his shirt to cover the nude corpse, Jardin finally layed Everet out, crossing his arms and sliding his eyes shut.  Whispering a silent prayer, the metahuman payed his respects to the dead.

Rune kept his face towards the terrible forest, the standing bodies crowded together, pale shoulder to moist back, thick pressed all the way back to the door and window and wall. Their dead eyes looked nowhere and everywhere. They swayed ever so slightly like wheat in the bare breeze before a storm.

“Curse? Nah…” wariness leapt from word to word. Something was wrong.

“What’s moving them is a little bit of his power so if you dust one, that power just…”

The fumes of alcohol danced with the cleaner scent before devouring it. Something about their eyes. He watched them sway. Were they all looking up?

“All that power just rushes back into, um…”

The bodies were all looking upwards, their sharp chins tilted upwards or protruding from their bloat.

“That power just…”

Suddenly a body near the front, a woman in a jacket and skirt combo that might have been pink before the swamp made it the same color as her puckered flesh, threw her bald head back with a sharp crack.

Her whole frame shook and a familiar green luminance welled up inside her, leaking out from the ruined neck, her flattened ears. It traced the bones in her spasming hands and bled out from her shrunken fingertips. It poured out of her open mouth, a sickening excretion of light.

And then came the voice. It boiled up out of her body like something fermenting there.

“Waz it do Rune? What that power do, huh?” Laughter bubbled after. Everet’s laughter.

Rune's first movement was to reach for his jacket, for his gun but he stopped short with a sideways glance at the young man. Odds were good it would go for him before a dead body.

Other bodies had their heads thrown back, shaking, green flowing up from them. And that voice hemorrhaged up from each one like a horrible chorus or flitted from body to body; a ribcaged ghost calling out.

“I live in the flesh, boy! So long I thought of it. Jes let you swing away. But you see now. Ain’t nothing you can do. Cain’t kill all of me even with hop-n-chop there. Cain’t put me down. Imma have you Rune. No way ‘round it.”

Rune was going through his spells, mentally paging through his experiences and knowledge and he had to admit it:

“This… is new.”

It did not matter that Jardin understood where the power went.  Seemed a side effect of having a few dozen meat puppets was that Ev could jump into a new vessel.  Slapping the bar, the young metahuman vaulted out.  It was almost impossible to spot the slight of hand that returned the daggers to their scabbards.

A few dives, a spin and a dash vault latter and Jardin took up a loose stance beside the mage.  "So...I'm guessing the same trick won't work again," Jardin quipped.  Mostly to himself, he mumbled, "Should'a taken the damn mark."

The thief had noticed Rune go for his gun but not draw it. It took only a moment to understand. Without taking his eyes off the zombies, he said, "You wanna try that crazy gun again, go ahead. I'm harder to kill than you might think."

"But..." he added as an worry came to mind. "What's to keep their power from jumping to the other vessels?" A furrowed brow and a thought later and Jardin asked, "You wouldn't happen to have a 'scanner' spell, would you? Something to track the flow of magic?" He glanced sideways. "Or am I talking out my ass?"

The dead bodies began to move again with their heads thrown back, dead eyes rolled up into mushy craniums. Green luminance floated up from every open mouth. Every set of shoulders shook and every hand was a claw shaped clench twitching with tearing power. From their throats the sound of the voice was barely recognizable with laughter that spiraled up into ear torture.

“Gonna have ya. ‘Caint get away. HAHAHAH!”

Tables were slowly ripped apart as the front line of creatures reached them, thin aluminum and paneling coming apart with squeals and crunching. Pieces fell to the floor as the blind wall of death advanced.

Rune shook his head. “It’s a good thought kid. But he’s everywhere. He is in all of them. He is all over this place.” He took a step backwards and then another looking left and right.

“There is a mark somewhere here, attached to this place or a thing here. It could be anywhere. There could be several.” The spells flew though his brain and none of them solved this, saved them and stopped the Loa Beast that Everet had become. Best he could was a stalemate. He could get the kid out but not follow. He could slow them down but not enough.

“He was ready for me but I can get you out of here.” Rune reached around inside his being for the power, for his magic, drawing it invisibly up into the moment. Out of a habit that felt an awful lot like necessity, he shot a forlorn look at the tall set of shelves behind the bar.

Bottles and flasks crowded there in ruin. Shattered and crushed, most of them missed their fronts and some were little more than scatters of colored glass. Their precious cargo still dripped down the wood, ran over the bar and stained the floorboards under their feet. It was everywhere as well and its fumes dance all around them, strong spirits among the dead.

The dead were no longer shuffling, no longer tentative. Their movements were sure and powerful. Some of them wound forward like snakes in carcass costumes. Some walked imperiously while others bent like beasts. All of them still had their useless eyes suffused with green but it was apparent that a different sense was developing among them, a kind of fledgling sight created by the hive of them, a group sight in the offing.

He could not help but think that he really should have had his drinks first, before this tiny part of the world went to hell.

Then his brain finally dropped into gear.

“Okay kid, I’m going to… wait… Holy crap, I am an idiot.” He gazed at the broken bottles, the alcohol soaked bar and the gas grill right next to it.

Another few backing steps brought them to the rear wall and the framed pictures of jazz musicians that covered it like wallpaper. Rune’s hands flew over his jacked, snatching at pockets.

“C’mon! C’mon!”

Horror in many forms crawled and crept closer, tables and chairs came apart in dead hands barely two yards away. Laughter shrieked across them like a nail grinder on a chalkboard. Solid heads, shoulders, bodies packing inward, unstoppable.

He suddenly plucked something from his pants pocket, jammed it into Jardin’s hands and then started the spell, golden threads whipping around his fingers.

“The bar kid. Throw it!” And then a set of syllables barely meant for human throats that caused the magic to fern out in fractal brilliance from his palms. A warm brightness that lit the patchy faces of the ragged wall, long human teeth and claw-hands, arms out, moments from grasping, moments away from death.

The youth understood the plan, even as the cold metal of the lighter entered his palm.  After all, the bar as it was just screamed fire hazard.

With one hand, Jardin flipped open the top; then the thumb of the hand that held it awoke the spark that brought life to a pitiful flame.  The precious little thing flutter.  It begged to be seen as great.  Perhaps that wish should be granted...

The meta stepped, tossing the lighter behind the bar.  It landed amid a pool of accelerant.  Predictably it caught.

The fire spread rapidly.  First it climbed the booze soaked wall and shelve, ascending the cascade of alcohol from earlier.  It even reached he ceiling and could easily become a flash-over.  But up, was not the only way for fire to go.  As the floor was where it began, it quickly grew into a orange carpet that began to reach in all directions.

Only for an instant did Jardin wonder about the gas line.  Then it was rejected.  Natural gases burn too fast to feed a fire.  The explosion could just as easily kill the fire with its concussion.  If that considering the windows were open...er, gone.

As the bar became a crucible, Jardin stepped closer to the chanting mage. Whatever else Rune had planned, it would not do to let him be interrupted.

All the while, the room grew hotter...

The golden light spread out like wild vines blooming suddenly into leaves of sunlight and then blasting outward, shattered glass sunlight flying apart into brilliant motes. What remained was a mind bending hole in space, a tunnel with its edges described on the space just in front of them, edges of golden light crumbling away. And past that, only a step away a pink marble floor of cut blocks and shot through with dark blue veins that shone like polished iron.

The horde still showed as a vague and gauzy shape through the flat image of the hole in space, like a curtain and they advanced just on the other side. But an instant of taking it in showed the hole and the floor on the other side pressing the brain to believe both sides of this perceptual war.

Rune grabbed Jardin with authority, a hard grasp high on his arm. “Stick with me, don’t stop unless I stop, don’t touch anything, don’t let go of me.”  And then, teeth clenched tight, he stepped across the threshold.

It was the step that should have taken them both right into the gibbering wall of death. But instead it turned the world inside out with a gut flipping suddenness.

Rune’s shoes clomped on the pristine marble as he dragged the young man along. The room now around them stretched upwards so tall that the hanging tiers of crystal chandeliers ringed with lights barely reached up into their vaults. Deco columns and pilasters climbed the wide walls upward in gold leaf vine and leaf motifs. The delicate strains of a waltz tinked through the humid air like Mozart on wine glasses and hidden somewhere in the melody an even higher frequency peeked out by pricking at the ears.

The fire and the bar still bled through, vaguely visible like a reflection of somewhere else tossed up on glass, a moving double exposure. The voice of the necrotized madman thrummed and shrieked sounding like nails ripped slowly from an old plank. A geyser of fire jolted upward from the bar flashing in a tall fan that showed the low ceiling becoming more of a lie with each passing moment.

The coppery scent of blood stalked around them. Near the walls crouched long tables with pale lace covers and silver platters and dishes piled high with raw meat, roundels and medallions of still red flesh.

Standing around them, like a hundred nightmarish statues, swayed creatures that only a fever dream could create. Eight feet tall and slim as light poles, pale festooned gowns or dark robes hung from their segmented shoulders. From within those garments nests of legs and arms slowed as mantis heads turned to take in the newcomers with jerky movements.

Rune only gaped for an instant. Crossing the Exovarian threshold was always different and never dull.

“Umm… new plan.” He said as half a dozen of the onlookers produced mantis-like forelegs as sharp and fast as switchblade machetes. He turned and caught up Jardin’s other hand in a clumsy grip and took a long step pulling him around to one side clicking his tongue along with the music under his breath.

He cut his eyes to a spot some thirty yards away down the dance floor while counting out the awkward waltz.

The first thing Jardin noticed as he passed into the portal was not the size of the the room. Nor was it the exquisite-ness of the marble structures and crystalline chandeliers. It was not the food. It was not even the odd, insectoid giants that now stared at the newcomers.

The first thing his mind focused on was the feeling of his own stomach turning inside out...

He did not speak as the magician pulled him into a poorly choreographed dance, lest the liquor from earlier end up on Rune's shoes as soon as he openned his mouth.

Why? Why of all things did translocation make him sick? Planes, trains and automobiles were one thing. But teleporting?

His stomach kept Jardin miserably unaware of his surroundings. He did what he could to keep up with Rune's jarring motions but he had to trust the older man for now.