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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:33:58 GMT -6
The hatchling with her had been brought before she had even known of the true threats the soft-skin dwelling contained. He had been meant to be a distraction for whatever heretical creature had lived there, and at worse an excuse to be on the property if the soft-skin she expected dwelled there turned out to be as harmless as the rest. With thought, she gave a small tug on the already taut leash, her amusement at his panicked squeak enough to help balance the horror of what was to come.
The third emotion, curiosity, battled with the first two. The horror of what was contained within, of what could happen to her blended with the past relief of leaving the property, both seeking to send her back to the kennels and avoid the hellish home. Curiosity fought back, sending her wondering what manner of beasts now roamed the property, a small place within her excited to tread a place touched by the soft-skin godlings. Perhaps she would be able to hunt one in it. 6
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:34:08 GMT -6
Then there was her original reason for coming back. For all that she now knew Juggler was little more than a beast created by heretical magic, she had originally set out to find out what had made it. The threats of the curse building seizing her mind could not be ignored, but neither could she bow to them. She would not be proven weak by some fancy soft-skin hut that randomly changed its hide every month. She refused to be.
For all that, she still took a deep breath before reaching out to the gate with her free hand, gently pulling it open as she tugged again on the rope to get the hatchling’s attention. He could still prove useful, and if the mansion snared the mind of the small beast, she had no doubts she could easily fend him off and escape. She might even be able to take him back out with her. 7
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:34:19 GMT -6
The hatchling was completely against this act. One of the little yellow things had drifted closer to him, revealing a fuzzy little body that seemed much too fat to float around in the air. It made a peculiar sound as it hovered around him, a buzzing sound that set him on edge as he recalled similar sounds from the much larger bird-bug inhabiting a cage near his own. It did not make him want it any less though, and he had stood on his hind legs as the rope stopped him, tiny forearms grasping at the buzzy thing.
Then he had been jerked back, falling as his legs proved inadequate to keeping him upright as he tripped backwards, His forelegs flailed in the air, and an instinctual kick was all that saved him fro landing squarely on his wings. Instead, the stone slapped against his side, and his stomach gurgled uncomfortably after the hit. 8
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:34:32 GMT -6
There was no time to do more than squeak as the tug continued into a full-out pull, threatening to drag him against the stone after the lizard. Twisting on the ground, he managed to get his feet back under him, not so much standing up from his prone position as walking out of it. The overpowering stench of where he was being forced to was enough to make him sneeze several times, once nearly knocking himself back to the ground with its force. The pull of the rope did not stop until all he could make out was the stench, his eyes screwed tightly shut as he sneezed repeatedly, trying to make the smell go away.
As he stood there, sneezing uncontrollably, Haix slid the gate shut. Then, as if this were her own home, she untied the part of the rope that held the hatchlings, coiling the slack around her arm as she watched him. 9
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:34:42 GMT -6
There was no sudden change in his color, his eyes failing to turn from their clear golden hue to a clouded red, green, or any other color that might herald a change. Instead, he only sneezed, their intensity gradually lessening to the point that he no longer shook with the force of them. Sure that he would remain still a little while longer, she turned to look at the grounds and once again marvel at how much it had changed. Gone was the sea of dead leaves that had never allowed the earth beneath them to be seen, the pathway now obvious and lined with blooming pale purple roses. She could see other plants beyond them, stems wrapped around ornate structures of wire that twisted them into an illusion of more complex shapes. It had been changed, carefully tended to, yet the notice outside warned that no being was responsible for the current state but the house itself. 10 ((Iago-2.0))
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:34:52 GMT -6
There was something odd about it.
Not the magical changes the house had apparently wrought upon its grounds, nor the sea of lavender-colored flowers that did not appear to contain a single flower of the color’s namesake. Both had been roughly described by the warning that was posted to the gate, and she had stared at the grounds long enough to be slightly less disturbed by the sea of purple. Whatever it was that so unsettled her was not forgotten as the sarane gave one final huff, and opened his watery eyes to look around the grounds.
She watched him, trying to determine if he was the source of the unsettling feeling that plagued her now that they stood on the mansion grounds. He merely turned his head side to side, viewing what was to him two walls of leafy green sticks and the purple flowers that topped them. He could barely make out other shapes behind them. 11
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:35:04 GMT -6
The smell that had choked him upon entering seemed to have vanished with the last of his sneezes, blown away by the great gusts of air he had blown out. And with them gone, he was free to stare at the two walls, the path ahead of him that was blocked by the lizard, the the metal bars behind him that reminded him of his cage. Unsure of what to do, he kept an eye on the lizard as he approached the wall of plants. He lost sight of her upon reaching the wall and thrusting his head between the stems, ignoring the chirp of alarm the lizard made as his head disappeared between them. Then went his body, stems leaning away as he forced his way through them but never appearing to break, the few bent by his passage springing back up an instant later as if they had never been touched. 12
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:35:17 GMT -6
Plants did not do that. When a stem bent, when it broke under some force, it should have continued to remain so, the heavy flower pointed downward and swaying with the stem until it snapped off altogether. But the roses remained as perfect as they had been before the hatchling’s journey through them, the stems that should have broken against his back or underneath his claws no worse than they had been before. Thankfully, the wall of roses was not so tall that she could not watch the progress of the sarane through the swaying roses. Nor so thick that it prevented him from crawling out of the other side a few moments later.
She had half expected he would never emerge, the thorns of the roses growing thicker and stronger, snarling him like teeth and dragging him into some unseen gullet. What little relief she felt at his emergence was mitigated by the fact she might have to cross the roses to fetch him. 13
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:35:27 GMT -6
The rest of the garden was as still as the roses were, the only movement in it that of the small hatchling. His head swiveled around as he looked over the grounds, noting the lizard towering over the wall behind him and the many angular cliffs and plants in front of him. His first few steps were slow, as if he was waiting for the harness on his body to grab him as it always had before, then grew bolder as it continued to do nothing more than loosely hang on him. He charged at one of the small cliffs, clambering up it with a flutter of his wings.
Haix watched him climb the planters a moment longer, then risked looking away from him to squat next to the roses. She could make out thorns, but they were neither so long nor as numerous as she might have expected. It made sense why they had not caught the makeshift harness at least. 14
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:35:40 GMT -6
Still, she had dealt with roses before, at least their wilder cousins. The thorns should have slowed the sarane at the least, leaving a few scratches on his hide and causing more than a few squeaks of pain. It would be possible for the hatchling to have made it through, but it should not have been nearly as easy or as quick as it had been. And while looking at the dirt and roses, the feeling of oddness only intensified, something that she should have noticed and yet had not. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let the sarane off the leash. Or a bigger mistake to have set foot on the grounds after she had escaped last time intact and with baubles she had scavenged.
The sarane felt the same oddness, and that sent him snooping around the sprouts, sniffing their bases then their tops. Once he was done with one small box planter, he leapt for the next, it clearly close enough for him to hop to. 15 ((Iago-3.0))
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:35:56 GMT -6
He missed it.
Wings fluttered as the next planter seemed to drift away from him, his feet kicking at the air as if that would propel him through the air. For all his efforts, he crashed into the dirt just ahead of it, missing a collision with the solid wall of the planter by a few inches. He paced around the outside of it, looking upwards at the planter, the lip of it clearly in reach now. With a little jump, he reached up for the edge as he had done before, and it appeared to stretch away from him, his claws instead scraping the sheer surface of the wall as he slid back down.
He tried three more times as Haix was distracted by the flowers, the ssashirk never noticing the way the sarane seemed to fail to make a jump he should have completed easily. No, she was instead focusing on the flowers. 16
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:36:09 GMT -6
It was a hiss of frustration that caught her attention, dragging her interest away from the flowers that she had thought would prove to be the source of the oddness she felt. The sarane stood, his front claws resting against the pristine stone of the planter, hissing angrily at the buds that stood silently within. They did not move, and she could not see so much as a hint of movement among the dirt in the planter that could reveal what had annoyed the sarane so much.
That was roughly the moment that she realized the two things contributing to the odd feeling. There was no movement in the garden beyond herself and the sarane, no breeze to gently sway the thinnest of the stems. The only plants that moved were ones that she and the sarane touched, and they would quickly return to the same stillness the second they were no longer being touched. 17
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:36:21 GMT -6
The second was the lack of bugs. There were hundreds of blooming roses lining the path to the mansion door, a wall so thick that it would take effort to leave the path. With the sheer amount of flowers surrounding her, there should have been dozens of yellow flecks buzzing around her even if the rest of the garden was still green and not yet bloomed. But there was not a single buzzing bee darting around the flowers, diving into them to come out covered in golden dust. Now that she knew what to look for, she realized she had not seen a single spider or beetle hiding among the leaves, no ants crawling across the dirt, not even a single chewed leaf that may have warned of a caterpillar.
The hatchling was realizing a few things of his own while she stared around the grounds, trying to find a single sign of nonplant life. 18
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:36:35 GMT -6
Sarane were not known for being especially intelligent beyond what one would expect of a vulticus, and, as a species that had been released into the wild to thrive, they rarely needed more than the instincts the labs had built into them. Either they succeeded with brute effort and a little cunning, or they died and other, fitter specimens would take their place.
The hatchling was not enormously smart for a sarane, but even he realized that leaping up onto the planter was not working. He did not know why, for standing on his hind legs with his wings furiously flapping was enough for him to see over the planter’s edge if he stretched out his neck, but the instant he tried to jump up onto it it seemed to stretch away. Being able to see over it inspired him to try a few more times, be he ended up on the ground next to it as he always did. 19
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Post by Alma on Feb 28, 2020 23:36:45 GMT -6
It reminded her of the same stillness that warned of hungry and obvious predators, when all creatures would hide and hope it would find something stupider and let them live another day. Even that did not scare away insects, for why would a cloud of gnats bother to hide from a loud soft-skin? Whatever had scared away even the envoys of Yasog was not something that most of her kind would ever want to encounter.
So she challenged it. Slowly spinning in place as she dared whatever had scared away the insects, creature or house or godling, to come out and show itself to her. The hatchling froze at her initial screech, turning to stare at her over the hedge of roses as she spoke. She was pretty sure she could snap his neck if the hunter cowardly attempted to use him against her. She paid little attention to the sarane. 20 ((Iago-4.0))
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