My foot had barely stepped into the neutral ground between worlds and realms when an ice spear cracked past my head. I had not consciously seen it coming, but my instinct said to tilt my head to the left allowing the ice spear to pass harmlessly on my right.
A scream of frustration judged my movement to have been successful. I called my feather cloak around me, and armored up under it. Not the Angelus armor, but my traveling leathers. I smiled and nodded in greeting.
“I apologize for intruding. I should have made that left at Albuquerque after all.” I smiled and nodded again. “Good day to you.”
My humor was judged with a bombardment of ice projectiles. The cloak shielded me from the blunt force impact, but not from the temperature or the magic fueling it. The front of my cloak was caught fast in ice.
I wrenched it free, sending ice particles bouncing to the floor. “Hey! The fuck, dude! I’m not here to start shit, but if you persist in doing so, I’ll gladly end it for you!” I flared circle of fire around me in what I hoped would be a threat display. The ice within the circle melted quickly.
“Fire. Oh. I’m so scared.” My opponent spoke clearly for the first time this meeting. “I’m quaking in my boots.” Ke started laughing. “I hope Weaver Burnt Feathers doesn’t cook my ass. Oh wait. Fire requires oxygen, fuel, and temperature.” Ke stomped and an expanding whirlwind of cold air erupted around kir.
The whirlwind enveloped me and my fire, chilling everything around me to far below zero. The fire, having no high energy fuel to keep it going, quickly extinguished. I pulled my cloak tight around me and shivered violently.
“No warmth, no fire. I know your weakness, bitch. Now be polite and die.” Ke conjured another ice spear and threw it at me.
I caught it with my left hand.
The ice magic froze my hand immediately. As the magic invaded my arm, it froze what flesh it claimed. It hurt like fuck.
Ke hooted in laughter. “Let’s see you burn this down, bitch! I’m going to have so much fun with you!”
“Meh.” I shrugged and examined the ice closely.
Ke stopped laughing. “No fight? Aww. I really wanted to have fun.
My left arm was frozen from just below the elbow joint to the hand. I could not see where my hand ended and the ice spear began. “It’s cold. It’s very cold. You did well to mitigate the threat of fire. Before we transition to brutality, do tell me if the cryptid assault on my property was of your doing.”
“Cryptid?” Kir face scrunched in anger and another bombardment of ice shards pummeled me. At the sound of my teeth chattering, ke resumed gloating again. “I sent you a gift. Didn’t you get it?”
So this fuck sent the cryptid. But who sent this fuck? “You really should pack your gifts better. It fell apart on arrival and was disposed of.”
“You bitch! That was my favorite!” More ice shards. The vapor of my breath froze and clung to my face like a dusting of diamonds. I remembered when I encountered cold like this before. I still had a card up my sleeve to play.
“Right. That’s all I need to know. Between the assault at my property, and your treatment of me right now, I am fully justified and my hands are clean. Any last words?”
Ke blinked in wonder at my hubris for a few seconds, then laughed so great ke had to sit down. “Oh man, I was warned you would try to bluff your way out of this! ‘Treat her like a fire elemental’, he said! ‘She’ll try to bluff you!’, he said! He was right about both! Fuck your game. I’m going to freeze you, cut out your heart, and collect a nice paycheck.” Ke summoned another ice whirlwind and focused it on me.
My body started freezing. I tried to smile. I didn’t need a voice to call my hidden trump. Like the wand, I only needed will.
Isa. I yield to you. Let me be Skadhi’s Hound.
The Isa rune carved into my left hand woke and began devouring the ice magic imprisoning my left hand and arm. From my combatant’s point of view, the ice imprisonment was complete. It only served as a protective cocoon for my transformation.
What broke out of the ice block was half wolf, half human, and colder than a grave. No heat signature would be found on what I had become. In my left hand was a runeblade. I growled its name and it woke.
Ke threw ice grenades at me, but the runeblade eagerly devoured all the ice magic it encountered. “What the fuck! No! You’re fire! Your heart is fire! You can’t be anything that can’t support flame!”
In a few short bounds I was on kir. In a few quick swipes ke was done. I didn’t kill kir, though. I merely cut through kir body and spirit until I found the source of kir ice magics. That was carved out and fed to the runeblade.
The bastard now nullified, there was no need for me to remain in this form anymore. Thanking Isa, and reminding myself to send Skadhi a thank-you gift for her boon, I dismissed the werewolf form. But I kept the freezing runeblade deployed.
“Collect a nice paycheck, eh? Who is paying the bounty?”
While kir form was destroyed, preventing physical speech, kir mind was very much intact and screaming from the abuses I had inflicted upon it. At my question, the screaming stopped.
“Your mom, bitch!”
“Fuck it. You’re not worth the rest of this script.” I turned and started walking away.
“Hey! Wait! You can’t leave me like this!”
I stopped. “Sez who?”
“You beat me, you have to finish me off or take me captive!”
“Sez who, bitch?”
“You can’t just leave me out here! That’s against the rules!”
My turn to laugh evilly. “What rules? The only law I was concerned about was if I was justified in kicking your ass. I was. You started it. I ended it. Don’t start shit you can’t finish. Don’t call up shit you can’t put down. You came after me for a bounty. That makes you a mercenary, just like me. Welcome to the merc life. Bitch.”
As I continued walking away, I noted many an audience member hanging back in the shadows. They had been scattered around us the entire time, but this was the first moment I had the leave to examine the surroundings closely. Close enough to see the battle but too far for me to identify them, I wondered if they were going to pickup where the braggart had left off.
I stopped. “Well? If we’re going to dance, let’s go while the music is still playing. Have you a quarrel with me?”
The distant figures all bowed and backed into the shadows, leaving the limits of my perception. A few tense seconds later, I started walking forward again. The figures returned to the periphery, but now they were all concentrated on the other side of the fallen mercenary. They had no quarrel with me, but they seemed to be wishing to discuss matters with what was left of my combatant. Very well. Not my problem.
As I left the realm and the dream, I noted wryly that the investigation into a bounty on my head would have to take precedence over preparing for the Path of Cheth. I didn’t want to dare the trip to the Abyss in the first place, but I certainly didn’t want to be prevented by being the target of a hunt!
Ah well. Merc life.