2. A raging army
Grimaulkin left the caverns not caring about the buddy system. He was too distraught, too upset, and too scared to worry about any sort of mundane creatures or persons coming after him this early in the holiday season.
Cap du Diable was quiet tonight. This quiet usually forbodes some kind of strangeness in the year. Ghosts and goblins and other dark sorts would be coming out of the woodwork, with all intents and purposes to cause havoc, fright, and fear throughout all the residents of the Cap. Grim knew from experience that this wasn’t the only time that the The Cap was overrun by creatures of the night. However Halloween was one of the worst.
He wandered initially aimlessly, heading towards his home, taking the long way intentionally. He traveled up through Aeon City, noting the darkness feeling the heavy fog waiting heavily upon his skin and shoulders. He hadn’t worn a jacket, he only wore his tank top that his lover, Scott, enjoyed so much to see him in.
He decided to think about that for a while as he walked, and a smile came over his face. He had two lovers it seemed: one older, one younger; one teacher, one student. The Academy, in a way, still lived on in this way though not in the way that he had expected. The teacher learns, and the student teaches. That was his motto for the Academy, that all came through its doors would teach everyone else and learn from everyone else. Everyone was ask an expert on something, and everyone was a novice on everything.
Then he stopped walkin. He looked around the darkness which seemed to be thicker now and he couldn’t quite see where he was. Something was wrong here; something felt terribly wrong.
Grim readied some spells. A spell of light issued from his fingers as he drew a rune in the air. In a moment, a sickly green light covered the area around him for about 5 feet in front of him, even then that should have gone at least 10 feet. The darkness itself was palatable and coming at him, closing in on him.
He knew the darkness, he had worked with darkness and worked with other magic for so long that it was nearly ingrained in him. Some spells were instinctive: Fire, light, flight, and Coke. Although he knew that he had so much more to learn about anything and everything. He wanted to be a man of knowledge, the master mage. He would not die not today. He had too much to learn.
Then came a keening scream that almost that would turn any man’s blood cold immediately. But Grim had heard the scream before, a scream not of fury, not of anguish, but of both together and disappointment as well. He knew the voice that belong to that scream, he knew the creature that spoke his name.
So he ran. He ran at near at breakneck speed using only his inner compass to guide him. He knew that his home was to the north, and all he needed to do was get out of a in city, take a right down the ramp, and follow the pipes.
The sickly green light followed him and he bade it go forward before him so that it would let in light 5 feet ahead of him. The green light bobbed and weaved in a sickly manner casting constantly moving shadows around him. Were there eyes in the shadows? Were eyes looking at him? Was he being followed? And still the keening went on.
The keening stopped, the light stopped, and he could smell water. He was near the pier with a fairy was and it wasn’t too much further until you get to his home. He stopped leaning over to take a breath while the light shined just a little bit ahead of him.
“Mister?”
Grim whirled around to face a little girl, dark-haired with eyes like pools of the dark between the stars. She stood about up to his thigh and looked maybe eight or nine, and approached him very calmly. He noticed that she wasn’t walking while she neared, she floated toward him.
“Get the back spirit or I shall–”
“You shall what? You shall take my life force? You shall make sure I no longer exist? You shall bind me to your will to have me carry your milk and cookies? Is this what you demand of us now?”
Grimalkin began reciting a spell of banishment. And still the girl advanced. As she advanced, so Grim retreated. He concentrated entirely on the spell not even noticing that she had gotten very close to him and actually touched his skin. He felt the chill of the spirit, the spirit of the ectoplasm beginning to try and enter him. But he had been against far worse, more powerful than a child this newly dead, probably within the last year or so, possibly by his hand he wasn’t sure. He completed the last of the spell and the little girl vanished with not a scream but a whimper. Vanished forever to the realms of Hades, the little girl would no longer walk the earth.
Satisfied in his completion of the spell he turned to the light and started walking until he heard again “Mister?”
And there was the girl again
“No, no, no. I banished you, I banished you to Hades.”
“Didn’t you hear mister? The realms the gates to Hades are wide open and the spirits are allowed to come out. We come forth a bit at a time.” The girl advanced and as she advanced she grew taller and thinner and more lanky, turning into what looked like sticks. At the end of her arms of the sticks were points where hands should be. She looked like a huge tree with one large, pointy thorn for arms.
Her voice was the same as she opened her mouth, full of huge teeth, “Some of us come for you.”
Grim took this as a good time to run.
The girl came down against his light extinguishing it, but he knew where he was even through the gloom. And as he read he heard the words of his master, that Jamie had channeled somehow from the depths of Hades, from the Keeper of the Dead himself on his ebon throne, his old master’s words to him:
“I am watching you, and I am very, very patient. But there is an army here, waiting for you; and they are not so patient…”
Words: 1096.
Using Dragon Speaking, took about fifteen minutes to dictate, 10 minutes to edit.