(no subject)

Pollnivneach
Ali is acting weird, calling himself Ali the Murderous and staring into the desert all the time. Ali and Ali think that Ali bumped into Sumona, the weird lady who is afraid of cats.

I have been watching her. She is up to something. A couple years back Ali disappeared and then Ali also disappeared. Then Ali, then Ali, then Ali. The thing they have all in common? Sumona. They began obsessing over her then they disappear. Sumona replaced our Ali with a new Ali, one who gets into fights all the time. He broke Ali's nose, and keeps on sticking fudgesicles in Ali's hair.

This morning, a pirate came to Sumona's house with a wooden crate. A pirate! Everyone knows that no one trades by sea anymore, but I saw a pirate delivering a crate! How far is the nearest seaport? But the pirate was very grumbly about being in the desert. When Sumona asked about the trade with the East the pirate became very angry and he left the crate and he walked away angry and he used the carpet to go back south. He was from Menaphos. I bet.

If Sumona catches me now you know why.

Ali

---

Southwest of Canifis
"How can anything live here?" asks the man-sized scarab beetle-thing. "I can't even see the sun though all these miserable clouds." The beetle-thing, another of the scarabite race which inhabits this world, is one of the grey-shelled, and female. She, like the rest of her race, walks upright on her two hindlegs, leaving her two other pairs of limbs free to use tools, use weapons, or carry loads, a task which two of those limbs of hers are currently occupied with. On one side she carries a cage full of the cutest grenades ever seen, on the other a mini-icebox.
"Life is a stubborn thing," comments the scarabite behind her. At least that is what this woman looks like to the scarabite in front. "If your study hasn't shown you that, you will soon learn, Cheles Khepri." Cheles, like almost all of her brethren, have eyes that are easily deceived by the Deceiver. The human following behind her, carrying their food, does not look or even register as human to Cheles. No, it isn't the red haired Scourge of the Desert following her; it is the resplendent, red-shelled Mistress, spiritual guide to the awakened brothers and prophet of Scarabas. It is the Mistress who is checking the food and commenting, "Curious, no ghast has come by to rot our food."

It is the Devourer ███████ who eats any ghasts that come near, tempted by the food and the lifeforce of the scarabite wandering through the swamps. It is the goddess of destruction who finally grants them an end to their terrible, hungry existence.

"What a blessing that is. Scarabas watches over us even in this place," says Cheles.

Wrong God. "Yes, it is." The Mistress looks ahead. "I think this is a good place to stop. Look, swamp lizards," she points out. "We will perform our first live test on them."

"I do not mean to question your wisdom, but won't they just set the chinchompas on fire before they get in range?" Lizard is a misnomer. Swamp lizards are actually a variety of salamander, and here they have plenty of swamp tar and volatile gases to gulp down and spit back out as flaming balls of death.

"They will, but here's the thing. Chinchompas have learned not to hunt salamanders. It will control for natural behaviour," ███████ says with a smirk. "We are attempting to convince them to go against their instinct, remember?"

"Ah, yes, but the chinchompas will still explode prematurely."

"We'll see, we'll see. They might be able to contain their explosions a bit better. Or we might, rather. I want to see how they do under stress. Prepare the first subject as we discussed."

Cheles plucks a cute fuzzy red chinchompa out of the cage of cute fuzzy grenades, and with her other forelimbs she opens the icebox, scoops out a wad of ground spiced grub, and closes the box. After rolling the meat into a tiny ball, she gives it to the chinchompa, which happily takes the food in its two front paws and starts nibbling on it. When the food is gone, Cheles points the chinchompa toward the swamp lizards and whispers "food".

She sets the chinchompa on the ground.

The chinchompa make a beeline toward a swamp lizard.

A burst of fire erupts from the swamp lizard's mouth.

The chinchompa's fur gets singed, but it continues its charge toward the lizard.

On the second burst of fire from the lizard, the chinchompa dies. Explosively. So does the lizard.

███████ is giggling. Cackling. "That worked! That worked!" Bog water and mud, thrown into the air by the explosion, rains down on ███████ and Cheles. "It worked!"

"If ground-up slugling didn't work, I fear what we would have had to do to get something stronger," Cheles says, clearing her head of mud and bog water.

"Oh, probably just developing an extract and concentrating it, probably. If not, we would just have to hunt for adults."

"Adults? So there is a legitimate reason they are called sluglings and not just slugs..."

"There was a long time ago. But things changed. Their life cycles were much different."

"The old stories about the Slug Queen are true?"

"I only know what is in the stories of that time. I am not that old." LIES LIES LIES. "But now is not the time to discuss ancient history, now is the time to perform the experiment again. The swamp lizards are going to be a bit more prepared this time, I think. I want to see what happens."

As Cheles prepares a second chinchompa, ███████ scans the sky. Someone had to hear that explosion. Someone has to be listening. Listening for thoughts, for sentience.

But not for thoughts with teeth. Not for her name, not…
████████████████████████████(yum)████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

The chinchompa makes a beeline for its target.

███████ slides over a set of throwing knives to Cheles and scurries off to hide in a bush.

Cheles, bewildered, protests.

"Vyre," answers the bush.

"But I don't know how…"

"That is your advantage," the bush answers back.

A dark winged shape sweeps in from the sky, a humanoid sporting the wings and fearsome facial features of a bat. "Scarabite! Why are your kind invading these lands?"

"Filth that feeds off the ichor of filth!" Cheles shoots back. "We come to cleanse this land! We bring blessed purity to this place of rot, which hides from Tumeken's wrath!"

"Tumeken!" The vyrewatch patrolman laughs, "Who worships him outside of the desert? And even there, not all do. He is weak; even ones such as our Lords can cast a shadow over the land so that He cannot gaze through."

"FILTH!!" shouts Cheles as she begins wildly throwing the knives her Mistress gave her.

The vampyre did not need a warning from Cheles that an attack was coming, as her thoughts were plain to him even before he brought attention to himself. He dodges the first knives but as Cheles throws more, her thoughts become clouded with rage and her aim confused by her deepening realization that she doesn't know how to throw knives.

He can't dodge the knife that isn't aimed.

A knife finds its way to his right leg and produces a nasty, jagged gash.

BOOM!

The exploding chinchompa takes him by surprise and the vampyre is knocked to the ground, right in front of the bush ███████ was hiding in before she pounced on him.

Horror is apparent on the vampyre's face. It is the red haired monster of the desert, little red riding hood, Death come to claim her rightful dues. He can already feel her thoughts devouring his.

A memory creeps up to the surface of his mind and he truly begins stuggling against her. She hasn't been killing her victims, not lately. She has been scarring those she catches, calling down the wrath of her father and the wrath of the clouds to paint cruel messages on the bodies and minds of her victims.

Why hasn't she killed him yet?

"Not my eyes! Not my eyes!"

Cheles gets up after being knocked down by the explosion and walks over, "Mistress? What is he talking about?"

███████, still holding down the vampyre, considers the question. "I do not know, except that he does not see what you see, perhaps." Addressing the vampyre, "You are awfully young. When were you sired?"

"Please, do not leave me alive! Kill me! Please!" pleads the vampyre.

"What are you blathering on about? Of course I am going to kill you."

"LIES! You have been using us to send messages to the royal family."

"Really?"

That gives the vampyre pause. ███████ hasn't shut off her memory devouring thoughts yet, but through them, he can feel… curiosity? "You really don't know?"

"What kind of message can I send by plucking out eyeballs?"

"Blinding with the sun and sealing our eyes behind burned eyelids, breaking wings, calling the lightning to knock us out of the sky?"

"Why are you giving me ideas? What was the message?"

"I don't know!"

███████ calls Cheles over, "Hold his arm down for me."

Cheles wonders why the Mistress can't just use one of her free claws, but she complies.

███████ moves her now free hand over to one of the vampyre's eyes letting him watch as the coalescing fire magic bends the light around it. "Well, since you don't know, I will let you in on the secret. That means you get to live. Or unlive, whatever you call it."

Bomf!

"Gyaaah!" the vampyre's head is briefly engulfed in flame.

"Tell Vanescula that I grow tired if her father's inaction. These clouds won't shield him forever from my father's intentions, especially if I no longer am amused by their presence."

"Your father?" asks Cheles.

"Our Father Who art in heaven." ███████ answers. She gets off the vampyre.

"My eye! You have blinded me," the vampyre laments.

"Half-blinded. Cheles, sit him up. Can he still fly, do you think?"

Cheles inspects his wings. "Nothing broken or torn. Some bruising, but he'll fly."

"You have ruined me."

"You are fine, except for your eye and that leg-OH," Bomf!

"Gyaaah!"

"There, now fly."

The vampyre doesn't budge.

"Fine, you are suicidal now." ███████ plucks a chinchompa out of the cage and feeds it a wad of ground slugling. "You die in 275 heartbeats," she whispers to the furry critter. She hands it to the vampyre, who embraces it.

"That probably isn't enough to kill you, just maim you severely. But if I did truly ruin you, there is a small chance you will die."

███████ and Cheles teleport away leaving the vampyre alone with the chinchompa.





Soon after, the vampyre leaves the cute fuzzy on the ground and flies off.


BOOM!