So Nippy.

[Ziren]

[Closed thread]

What the fuck did Big Bro do? What an asshole! Forced teleports made Isaiah very unhappy. It was like. . . alright, imagine you're dreaming. It's a nice dream. Some bitch's huge tits are in your face. They're all soft and warm. They're boobs. What's not to like, right? Everything, because suddenly they're cold and hard and she's beating you with them until you wake up with an ear clamoring, cranium splitting, skull eating migraine and a horrible case of blue balls, not to mention there's no food in the ice box and you're so fucking hungry but all you've got is this goddamn Seer's Orb that you can't even pawn for a slice of cheese fucking pizza, then you see that bitch on the street you were dreaming about in her pink pumps and she laughs at you as you walk by, telling her friends how you look like a weird loser and they make sure to trip you so you land face down in the muddy puddle that's probably got a little hobo urine in it.

Yeah. That's what it feels like. Teleportation sucks. Not only was Isaiah feeling inappropriately turned on, starving as fuck, sweating cold and that doesn't even make sense but it totally happens, tired and with a head ache, but he was suddenly in the goddamn middle of nowhere thanks to Malachi and his impromptu magicking and the subtle like being flipped the bird switcheroo that followed. Great. Grand. Gelid?

Gelid. He licked his lips. It was summer and the sun had shifted higher into the sky while they were out. Then why was it so cold? Why were there melting snow drifts on the side of this path leading through the grassy clearing? Isaiah could only tell it was a path because the grass was all flat and shit instead of proud, tall, glorious soldiers of Kingdom Veggie. Wait, Kingdom Veggie? That made no sense. And you certainly didn't put vegetables on pizza.

"PIZZA!" Isaiah screamed in frustration. Oh, yeah, we've all been there. The desperate edge in his voice mixed with the embarassing crack of puberty. He blushed and checked to make sure Big Bro didn't hear. Nope. Still soundly asleep. Then, abruptly, he got up and started talking about orcs and ice princesses and was all absolved of doubt and shit because Isaiah suddenly remembered, hey, pocket dimension inside of the Seer's Orb and visions of crazy bullshit that obviously, clearly, plaintively they had to chase down and solve like a case out of fucking Private Byes: The Sad End of the Aurelius Brothers.

Bellyaching aside, the younger of the two brothers jumped to his feet and did his stretches. Couldn't stretch away the retarded teleportation side affects, though, but he'd sure as fuck pretend they weren't there. No more Cleansing Rituals for him. "Right!" Isaiah pumped a fist, remembering they had at least been victorious in their last endeavor, even if all they got was this lousy T-shirt. And the Seer's Orb.

"Yeah. And our first clue," he jabbed his fist at the melting snow and the path of down trodden grass. "Where do you think it leads?"

Well, Isaiah, maybe if you followed the path with your eyes before opening your mouth. . . yeah, there it is, right in front of your face. It wasn't that the summer day was particularly hot, it was that the village in the distance was consumed by a storming inferno which belched smoke and the stench of offal. "Shit. Trouble already? There's still people alive. Maybe they'll reward us with supper if we save them?"

Leading the way, Isaiah Aurelius sprinted toward the village without waiting for an answer. If the powers couldn't even spare a fucking slice of pizza, he'd have to find his own.

[supernal]

Malachi spent quite a bit of time staring at the seer's orb while his brother blah blah blah'd on about this or that. Naturally, Malachi was paying attention. But his conscious devotion to this attention was not too intensive. Isaiah was low priority right now as Malachi marveled. What he once thought to be as near to a worthless trinket as an artifact could get, turned out to be a rather powerful and useful magical device. When Malachi could finally wrest his attention from the orb, then all of Isaiah's babbling would replay and grow coherent.

This was, of course, excluding any number of buzz words that, if uttered, would instantly grab at Malachi and make him pay attention. Fire was one of these words. Monster, acid, Delilah, dragon, rain of fire, axiomatic, and pizza being a few more that made the last.

Malachi looked up at his brother, suddenly recalling his hunger. He did not know how long they spent in that mountain, but it could be no less than five hours. Including the time spent traveling to the mountain itself, and then up it to get to the cave, it all added up to Malachi not having had a good meal in far too long.

". . . It's fucking nippy over here."

Malachi stood up reluctantly. Slow even, like he was too old for his bones and shit, and gathered the orb with a groan and a heft. He jerked it up and slammed it into his right hip, where it promptly disappeared into the depths of his pocket. There it would stay until they had further need of it. When that was done, he huddled up his arms around his torso and hunched his shoulders in an effort to keep his body heat contained.

"At least it's not as cold as in the mountain. Snow here's melting some."

He rubbed the palms of his hands against his eyes roughly and tried to give them some of their zest. Truth be told he was feeling a little tired, and the past exploits weren't good for the ol' spiritual gas meter.

"Yo, we might have to do a recharging ritual thingy here in a few. I'm wiped. We should take advantage of the sun and all the free energy it's giving away while we got a chance, before night-fall comes. Forced teleportation always leaves me feeling like I have a goddamn cold."

Malachi sniffled in punctuation.

"So what the fuck do we have here?"

Malachi didn't follow the trail. He guessed where the trail would lead and managed to see the village a full second before Isaiah did, but his younger brother was already hot on the trail. Malachi shivered some, sniffled again, and lagged behind a few seconds more, deliberating whether he really wanted to run.

"Well, supper does sound rather nice . . ."

And they ran. They ran so far away. They just ran. They ran all night and day. And they got their way!

The path was rather winding, and Malachi didn't have much patience for serpentine pathways and, recognizing the shortest distance between two paths, just fucking decked it out. Before long, the two of them passed the edge of the village and were met with quite the ghastly vision.

A shaman. Taller than a man, with green skin rougher than rhino hide, tusks for teeth, and covered from head to foot in war paint. Headdress to boot. Malachi immediately identified it as an orc shaman. Their primal energies were . . . powerful.

The shaman had his back turned to the brothers, and was laughing maniacally while waving around his little magic stick. Before him a flaming tornado whorled and razed all that it touched; inside of it were the flailing limbs of the freshly dead.

Malachi cut into an alleyway, scaled a wall and landed on a roof thanks in no small part to the sudden rush of rage and adrenaline, and leaped into the air. A shadow cast across the ground as he dropped the most righteous elbow imaginable atop the very crown of the orc.

[Ziren]

Isaiah, on the other hand, preferred to follow the path. It was silly, but the last thing he wanted was to trip on some abandoned hoe, a branch, or something else inconvenient. Besides, penny loafers weren't such good outdoorsy kicks, were they? Not at all, damn Daddy Dearest's taste. Yeah, the recharging ritual would have definitely come in handy before he ran off, but at least he had Big Bro Backup. Come to think of it, this was kinda stupid. So what when they got there? Put out the fires with what? By blowing on them? Ha. Ha. Ha. Wasn't going to happen. Maybe they would find some abandoned farm animals to cook in the village fire, at least? And if that were the case, did they really need to save anyone? Isaiah had spent his entire life before now helping people that didn't even know it.

You walk down the alley at night. You feel something weird. You see a shadow that's out of place. You hear something odd. It's too hot, or it's too cold, or your intuition is kicking and screaming for you do something, anything, get out, get away, because something is wrong.

But it only lasts for a second. Sometimes barely an instant. You realize there's nothing there. You're safe. You feel like a fool, but you're not. Just ignorant, because Isaiah, or some other Organization member was there. Saving you. You didn't even know. Couldn't. Not even to say thank you.

Damn, Isaiah never even got a thank you from anyone other than Malachi, and it was usually something like, thank you, dumbass!, followed by a hair ruffle and some playfully mocking laughter at Isaiah's irritation.

So what was the point? Guess it was Isaiah's instincts that drove him. Unfortunately, there was a monster. It was a familiar situation. Too familiar. Unlike his brother, Isaiah didn't know what the fuck it was other than big, green, ugly, and smelly. Powerful? Maybe, but he was an Aurelius. As if powerful ever mattered to them. They could be crippled and battling in walkers and still kick ass, not to mention look sicker than awesome in those suits while doing it, age be damned.

"Hey!" Isaiah yelled to get the orc shaman's attention, "I bet you can't skin a rabbit worth your momma's scales! Speaking of, I spit shined that dirty ho the other night," and the taunt worked. Sort of. The orc shaman just looked confused, then annoyed, and then pissed off.

Nasty tornado, incoming. Ew, were those. . . eww! Isaiah didn't want to get hit by that, but he fearlessly stood his ground with that patented Aurelius smugness written in red crayon all over his face. Oh, wait, that wasn't red crayon? It was his aura, spilling from those red eyes of his? Vermilion, to be specific, but the nuance of shade was probably lost on the fugly orc.

And the distraction worked. Malachi elbow dropped it. The fire tornado dissipated right before frying Isaiah. That was about all that happened, you know. Broken concentration. It looked even more pissed off. Mages hate that interruption shit, no matter race or creed or whatever. Otherwise, it was unfazed. Rhino skin and all that. The shaman waved its wand and grunted some mumbo jumbo, probably saying something like "die you weird, beige colored, squishy creature!" and lo and behold, its shadow erupted into four hounds of darkness that leapt at Malachi to tear him limb from limb, baleful green eyes blazing with hunger.

Isaiah looked like he was covered in red paint by this point. Or blood, but that would be gross. Really, he must be tired if his aura was coming out so. . . watery. He knelt down and slammed his palm on the ground, sending the red into the ground; it surged up, consuming the shaman in a waxy column.

Then? It relived Malachi elbow dropping it. One hundred times, to be specific. No, really. A reddish ghost appeared every .001 second and elbowed the orc in the head. By the time it was completed, the orc shaman was on the ground, covered in the red of its own blood instead of Isaiah's aura, which had been consumed in retracing the path of his brother's aura. Partial path, anyway.

"Ooh. . . I don't feel so well. You okay over there?"

[supernal]

Rhino skin indeed. It felt like Malachi smashed his elbow against a granite block. Odd, considering that he had broken through them before and this dude's cranium didn't even budge, but at least it didn't break his elbow in three places. It just hurt like a sonnuva bitch. His elbow still fit neatly against the top of the orc's head (upon closer inspection Malachi noted a small dent in the skull and a slight depression where the orc's feet were planted) by the time gravity attracted him to the ground slow enough for the shaman to get a word in edge-wise.

With a savage grace, that is to say a fluidity and suddenness in movement that could have been born solely from refined reflex, the orc performed a half-turn with a ton of torque, slamming his fist against Malachi's open chest with strength born from the heel. He launched Malachi back like someone pulled a ripcord, a string of blood ribboned the air from the impact alone. He slammed against the outer wall of a residence, sank to the ground, and coughed up more blood. His teeth stained red.

Malachi rolled around on his back for a little while, arms hugged to his torso in rampant, earnest, and futile attempts to ameliorate the throbbing pain in his chest and the upper part of his torso. While he did his best to catch a second wind, the orc turned his attention to Isaiah.

Oh, but the shaman had left a surprise behind. Four infernal hounds, as thirsty for blood as insubstantial beasts could be. One of them pulled ahead of the pack. By now, and given the time it took the dogs to cover distance (not very much time at all, mind you), Malachi had managed to sit up. He brought his legs against the ground and pushed himself into a semi-squatting position, groaning again with the pain. He seemed too weak to do much of anything.

The hound in the lead leapt and spread its maw wide, aiming right for Malachi's throat. With a heft from his lower back and his shoulders, Malachi managed to dig the seer's orb out of his pocket and lunge it forward into the waiting mouth with enough force that it locked into place. It didn't kill the hound outright, but it wouldn't allow its jaw to close and brought it to the ground near instantly, pinning it and likely making useless its mandible.

Malachi spun in a tight circle to his right, pirouetting out of the way just in time, as the second fastest hound slammed against the wall Malachi had only just moments ago occupied. He repeated the motion, this time in the opposite direction, and extended his elbow. Lines of blue light streaked the air, followed the path of his limbs, and when his elbow struck the back of the beast's head, the air rippled in disgust. It fell lifeless to the ground and melded back into shadow-stuff, fleeing back to the body from whence it came.

He continued the spin, to his left, as the third dog missed him by an ever lessening degree. Malachi reached a barrel and managed to squeeze his fingers into the rim and pry loose the barrel top. He extended his arms and the spherical piece of wood became both offense and defense; it slapped the third dog over the head with undue force and acted as a barrier when the fourth dog came in for the kill.

They were strong and savage, just like their father. The one dog by itself, as the other was still stunned and recovering from the initial blow, pushed Malachi back along the ground all by its lonesome. Malachi fit the barrel top, which was weakening and due to splinter at any moment, against his shoulder and heaved against the dog like a linebacker. He pushed it back. Another slap on the third dog geared at the side of its head that kept it daze. The fourth dog ran forward, carving trenches into the ground with its razor sharp claws, and leapt.

You'd think they'd learn by now. Malachi spun yet again, but did not move to either side. He bent at the knees and lowered himself beneath the dog's attack radius, leaned back, and launched the flat wooden discus vertically up at the dog's neck. It didn't go all the way through, but it half dented the things neck. It fell. Without a moment's hesitation, Malachi launched himself onto the third dog and proceeded to beat the back of its head in with the heel of his palm. Fists were fine and dandy and all, but the knuckles bruised too easily. The heel of the palm, though, was strong enough to drive nails through wood. So it was strong enough to break some fucking bone too.

He fell back, hands covered in blood and chest heaving so that one might think his breathing patterns belonged to a man two hundred pounds of fat his superior. It hurt too. Like dagger-nails dragging across the inside of his lungs with every struggling breath he took.

"I think – the fuck – caught me in – the fucking – solar – plexus. Hurts – to – breath give me – a minute fuck."

[Ziren]

"Yeah, I saw all that. Shit got real, but I gotta run. Toodles, bro!" Isaiah winked, heaved a sigh, and resolved to earn his pizza. Or beef. Beef was passable. Didn't villages have bread? Probably vegetables, too. Mm. They could totally make pizza from scratch. Sausage pepperoni pizza, extra cheese, awesome sauce. Isaiah salivated, drooled a fair bit since his mouth was hanging open in awe at the thought of pizza. Also because he was out of shape. He didn't have Malachi's "I got punched in the solar plexus!" excuse; he had spent the past year vegging out in a roach motel in some forgotten Sector. Now this. This. Here and now. Focus, time to save people!

First thing was first: dive through a window, right into the fire, and try not to die. Nobody ever said he went to firefighter school. The first building was some lame hut. Burning something fierce, too. And there it was. A crying baby in its crib. With an eviscerated, delimbed woman on the floor, on fire, burning as badly as their home. Damn. Save the baby, don't save the baby, what the fuck would he do with it if he saved it anyway? Commit the ritual of recharging, open a door, and throw it into the Happiness Sector? Too risky. The Happiness Sector was always so. . . hungry. The Organization had made it off limits a decade ago. Considering their heritage, of course, Isaiah and Malachi had been chosen by Daddy Dearest to risk the dangers of Happiness many, many times. One time, they were chased across the Sector by indignant incubi. . .

Oh, another time? Sure, sure, Isaiah was too busy for story time anyway. Isaiah shot through the flames, caught fire, grabbed the cradle, and burst through a fiery wall. Wait. Hold up. On fire? Dammit. Are you for serious? Isaiah dropped the crib, caused the screaming baby to spill out and roll on the ground—oops!—while he stopped, dropped, and rolled. While coughing. Because he forgot about the smoke. Nearly smothered and on fire. Good times. Great times. Too bad they weren't gelid times. Apparently what they told you on teevee was true, because Isaiah wasn't on fire anymore. He felt extra well done, though. Naturally, the suit was undamaged. Unharmed. Not a thread out of place. Isaiah briefly wondered, as he got back up, whether or not the Organization made golems out of this material. Probably not. Daddy Dearest was anti-nonhuman, but mages never listened, those crazy fuckers.

Forgetting the baby completely, Isaiah darted to the next burning building, this one built out of more than straw. There was wood! Good for them, this family was clearly better equipped than the last one. Or not, because there were dead people all over the floor of the living room. People without limbs. Blood coating everything. Smelled like shit. Isaiah hated the stink of dead human bodies. It pissed him off. He rarely had to deal with the odor, since the Organization required he remove the evidence of anything on the job—including the corpses of victims. Back to the present, Isaiah bolted through the house, sure he had sensed something alive. And. . . more children. At least these were older. They were hiding in a closet in a room the fire hadn't yet spread to. They wailed when Isaiah ripped the door off and tossed it aside, grabbed them both, and threw them out the nearest window, where they tumbled with a thud and a couple of cracks to where the baby was. Next, he leapt out of the window, and stormed the largest building in the village.

And he came out with a grandma slung over his shoulders and a young man. At that point, Isaiah was completely black, head to toe covered in grit and burns. He tossed them to the ground in the same safe spot, a pile of people, a new family, or something like that. Whatever. Isaiah looked around the village one last time and groaned. That was harder than fighting some stupid orc shaman!

"Alright. . . not done yet. Keep breathing, bro!" Zip. MOO. Wait, moo? MOO. MOO. MOO! What the fuck? Oh, supper? Isaiah had sprinted out into the flaming fields of wheat, hopped a fence, charged into an inferno destroyed barn, beaten the shit out of an uncooperative cow, tackled it to the ground, grabbed it by its back leg and was dragging it to the people pile and Malachi. It was pretty much dead already, definitely unconscious after its final MOOs. Isaiah looked down at it, cringed, stepped on its neck, snapping it, and then dragged it into the first building he had saved the baby from. Not really a building anymore. More like a stove. An oven. Cooking tasty, tasty steak. Ooooooh, yeah.

"Okay. Okay. I am so filthy right now. There better be a creek around here. . . and you better get started on that ritual of recharging, bro," Isaiah emerged from the improvised oven. "I'm emptier than our stomachs. Gotta refill while dinner's cooking. That is how you make a steak, right? Right? And that was the only monster, right? Right?" Oh, it better have been. Isaiah did not want an ass kicking after all of that.

[supernal]

By the time Isaiah returned, Malachi not only anticipated the critical need for the ritual but was nearly done with it. While Isaiah ran around getting himself burned, an unfortunate necessity if it meant saving the lives of those in most peril. It had been a long time since he last wondered what it was that drove him and his brother to such dizzying heights of valor. If valor it could be called; another thing Malachi had come to question in his latest years.

Was it courage when their responses to these types of emergency situations was, for lack of better phrasing, purely instinctual? If it hadn't been for the fact that he saw Isaiah, a lethal and well-trained agent of the Organization, rushing forward to save lives, Malachi would have been halfway there himself before realizing that his diaphragm hurt too much to draw a breath properly.

Fortunately for the brothers, despite being in so weakened a state there were many tools and avenues open for exploration. Malachi, personally, hated having to rely on rituals and runic symbology and incantations. The internal power source of his soul was much stronger, and much more immediate, than anything he could do with these little gimmicks. But they came in handy when that power source was restricted or forcibly turned off, as was current.

He reached into his shirt pocket with his right hand while deepening his breaths and slowly stretching his diaphragm until it relaxed the fuck out and let his lungs fill the fuck up with some goddamn air! He pulled out a velvet satchel, pried it open weakly with his fingertips, and rummaged around. He placed the satchel in his lap, feeling around with his left hand, while his right hand began to draw symbols in the dirt.

The symbols were, to those not of the esoteric knowledge, keenly incoherent and wholly separate from conventional or recognizable systems of language. The end product was a medium sized circle, as large as he could make it from his seated and cross legged position, with something like an asterisk with curvy vectors instead of linear ones.

His right hand withdrew from the satchel and gripped in the gap between each finger there rested a thin, white, wafer-like disc with a raised insignia on its surface. These handy doohickeys were of Malachi's own invention and liked so much by the pencil pushers that it became part of the field-agent standard. Each disc had an 'essence' of a spell component. The symbol on it was a pictograph for easy visual identification and was raised so that one could differentiate discs by touch alone.

He placed a disc at strategic points in the circle. One disc represented about 8 oz's of clear liquor, another represented a nightingale feather, and a third was a sprig of mint. He was placing the last wafer in line when Isaiah rolled up to the scene.

"Only one I saw, which is the really surprising part. That tornado wasn't child's play or anything. It'd usually take a cell of shamans to make and maneuver something like that around. There's definitely something fishy going on. But you're right, let's refill before we do anything else."

Malachi took a deep, painful breath and raised his hands to about sternum level, hands frozen in place in an awkward sign. He closed his eyes and chanted in a way that sounded like bubbles bursting and the tide sweeping against a shore. The circle lit up and the wafers were consumed by something that moved like fire but that looked like water.

Two will'o'wisp looking orbs of light shot out from the ritual origin point and spiraled up the two brothers, showering them in a curtain of scintillating light. When the pixie dust settled, the brothers were left near to bursting with energy. Malachi rose and brushed himself off, taking clear breaths with ease.

"Good idea with the cow."

[Ziren]

"I love this part," Isaiah whispered as Malachi chanted. No, not that part in particular. His brother's voice thundered in his head, causing his body to shake. All his eyes could see were the symbol he was making with his hand. All his mind could abuzz was swirling fireworks. He forgot hunger, he forgot thirst, he forgot pain and wants and anything he ever needed as the light bathed him. For a split second, Isaiah forgot himself, was free from suffering, and caught a glimpse of nirvana. When the refreshing shower of light ended, when everything came rushing back to him, when that one second of purity was over. . .

His eyes ignited, ribbons of bright scarlet cut the air around him, and he let out an scream of rage. Isaiah was consumed in a pillar of red light that bridged the sky and earth, lifted him off of his feet, and expanded to consume the village before fading away. The fire was snuffed and the village was as peaceful and as quiet as it had been in his head. Isaiah hit the ground and stumbled to regain his balance, eyes glossy like he'd just taken a shit load of the most amazing drugs ever and his face was tingling all over. What happened? Isaiah lacked the finesse of his brother. Whenever he used his abilities, the seal which prevented them from fully manifesting? He just brute forced it out. There was a build up around the seal that was released every time they did the recharge ritual. And it was always amazing. Even if Isaiah had accidentally blown important shit up on more than one ocassion.

A couple of dead birds fell out of the sky.

"Holy shit that felt so good! Oh shit," he struggled to put a frown on his numb expression, and instead ended up cackling like the Final Boss right after he delivers his Big Speech. "The cow. The cow! Supper! Be right back," Isaiah darted into the once oven, now just some lame straw house that was partially decimated, and dragged out their dinner. He had two forks in his hand. Tossed one to Malachi, sat down cross-legged, and furiously dug in. It was. . . disgusting. No, not the cow, it was delicious, but the way Isaiah just. . . just. . . tore into it like a crazed, starving wolf! If Malachi didn't hurry, Isaiah could probably scarf down the whole thing by his damn self. "Mm, the skin is so—nom—crunchy, but the inside—nom—so juicy—nom—dig in, dude!

"Nom. . . hey. What's that?" he was distracted from his yummy steak by one of the dead birds. It was some crazy fucking hawk decorated in bits of skeleton from the orc shaman's defeated foes. Some kind of tribal paint decorated its feathers. Or maybe it just looked like freaky by itself? Whatever the case, it had something tied to its leg. Like a carrier pigeon! Isaiah had used one of those before, except it had been a shapeshifter on the Organization's pay roll and fastened with a Sector-traveling device. More than a few times, he had used it to inform Malachi of bounty hunters and all that other crazy shit Daddy Dearest compelled through the super secret underground Sectors.

He swallowed the last bit of meat and wiped his mouth and chin with his sleeve, and scampered over to that weird dead bird. Isaiah picked it up, but oh my god it was alive! Oh my god no it wasn't! It was a zombie bird! Sick! It thrashed and kicked and squawked and broke free, fleeing by soaring high into the air. Stupid fucking thing. "Dude! It's got some kind of. . . message or something on it! Do we follow it or shoot it down?"

[supernal]

Malachi never burned bright. Though this lacked the shock and awe of Isaiah's resuscitation, a bright and splendor-laden thing that would have brought a lesser culture to their knees in worship, the veteran eye saw something as equally terrifying coursing throughout the elder brother's body. Whereas Isaiah exploded, Malachi churned like ocean waters. Still waters ran deep.

Only when Isaiah 'came down', as the keynote speakers in the Organization have labeled the complex physiological processes, could one tell Malachi had even been affected at all. Even then . . . the signs were all there but were subtle, some could say. Especially when compared. Subtle yet utterly significant. His eyes burned a bright, vivid teal that almost leaked light into the air. Certainly, it drowned out the pupil and washed the whites of his eyes with the same color, giving the two spheres a uniform hue and intensity. The end strands of his hair floated around as if caught in a perpetual breeze or as if floating underwater.

Isaiah tossed the fork at Malachi. The poor thing twisted and bent the closer it got to the elder Aurelius until, ultimately ending as a useless heap of metal some foot and a half away to Malachi's right. He strode up to the cow, the people surrounding the two suited siblings completely disregarded for the time being, and knelt at the cow's side.

It was pretty gross from that point on. Malachi used his bare hands to grasp chunks of cow meat, rip it from its bony frame, and then push it towards his mouth. He took savage bites of it, chewed rapidly but without much thought put into it, swallowed and took another bite. In this fashion, Malachi put away a good three or so pounds of meat. He sat back and sighed.

"FUCKING shit I was hungry. Do you even know? I don't think you even know. All that running around and the fucking cockroaches and the shit and the fucking bullshit and all that. It really takes it out of a guy. So does getting your solar plexus fisted. I know I'm harping on about it too much, but they have huge arm muscles and even huger muscles. As a matter of fact, I think that that specific shaman dude may –"

Isaiah pointed at something in the sky. Malachi looked over his shoulder. In the next moment, he was mid-air with his hand wrapped tenderly but uncompromisingly around the bird's neck. The man floated gracefully back to the ground, disregarding the laws of gravity with the biggest middle finger you could imagine, and touched down with the soft billow of dust to act as the only indicator he had done something great.

The locals still looked at them slack-jawed. Malachi was beginning to think that they weren't even in the same Sector anymore, the way these people looked at them. He wondered if they had stumbled across a place where the magically inclined were rare.

Malachi walked calmly over to Isaiah, one hand fiddling with the bird's leg in an attempt to free the message from it, while the other repeatedly snapped its undying neck.

"Here, catch."

Malachi unfurled the short note, written all fucked up but luckily he still had that tongues'-in-his-eyes thing going on. Tongues like the language spell, not the organ. That'd be . . . fucking weird. So while Isaiah busied himself with a thrashing, undead necro-bird, Malachi mumbled to himself and translated.

"Hah! Check this shit out. It's like we walked into a bad production or a soap opera. The orc-king's kidnapped the king's daughter. He wants to make her his wife. I think that's the chick we saw before." Malachi held his hand up, with the note, to the crowd. They flinched back from him apprehensively and Malachi frowned. This was not looking good . . .

"The orc kingdom. We need to get to it, where is it?"
"The orc kingdom!?" Some faraway voice called back. "No no no! You mustn't go there young man!"
"Yeah I'm sure." Malachi responded, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Can we get there walking?"
"You must take a horse." A closer, feminine voice called back.
"Where can I get a horse?"
"Here." A third voice, masculine but neither as young as the girl's or as old as the old man's. He raised his hand and the crowed parted. He had a magnificent beard. "Take two of mine. Not the best, but they'll get the job done. Promise me you'll take care of those filthy orcs."
"Sure, can do. Now about those horses . . ."

[Ziren]

Malachi was so much better at talking and gathering up that informational shit than Isaiah was, so he just watched as his big bro talked the talk and horsed the horse. Wait, what? Horses? He'd never rode a horse before! To be honest, ever since meeting Ed in that one Sector, Isaiah hated horses. He prayed these ones didn't talk. Please don't talk, please please please.

He stomped his disdain into the bird, who had had wrestled to the ground and had turned into mush under his penny loafers. Stamp, stamp, stamp! Take that! And that! Die, zombie bird, die! Die again! Stop moving! Damn, what a bird, holding on to its unlife for so long. Now it didn't look like anything, just some kind of feathery tar. Isaiah's shoes were, of course, spotless. Typical.

"Filthy orcs? What about the evil equines?" Isaiah piped up.
"Uh. . . what are you talking about?"
"Evil equines! Why, in my day, kids had respect for animals."
"Hey, fuck you," Isaiah punched the guy with the magnificent beard, knocking him out cold. "Who else wants some? Who? Now bring us the fucking horses so we can kill us some orcs and reap the ultimate, S-class reward for rescuing that king's skank bitch, who's probably inbred so don't try to fuck her Malachi, this place seems kinda backwaters, anyway, she probably ran off of her own choice with our luck. Some orc fetishist, I'm betting, but shit. I bet the reward is so good we'll just knock her out, too, and turn her in anyway. Hot damn, I can't wait for the reward! Horses, horses!" Isaiah yelled until the dazed people brought them. Hadn't their village just been raped by orcs? Wasn't Isaiah being a little inconsiderate?

No, damn it all, they had a job to do. They brought two brown, average looking horses to them. Isaiah sneered.

"Is this how you treat the defenders of your hovel? We are as if gods! These shall not do! BRING US BETTER HORSES!"

is that he wanted to say.

In reality, he didn't even sneer, he just shyly kicked a rock and wandered over to the average looking horse, who snorted at him in disapproval. Isaiah glared. The horse glared. There was an unspoken argument. A lot of cuss words in that argument, then the horse tried to kick him. Then bite him. But Isaiah wasn't having that, no. He punched the horse in the nose and it cried little horse tears. When he got up on that evil equine, it didn't make a fuss at all.

"HI-HO, Big Bro, let's go bag us a princess!" he ribbed the horse with his foot and it took off, bolting off into the distance. Night was falling. The further they got, the darker it got. Isaiah fell asleep and woke up multiple times on their journey through endless grassy plains. Some of them on fire. Some of them not.

Eventually, they came upon a battalion of orcs. There were. . . hundreds of them. No, thousands! No, wait, more? More? More than more? How was that even possible? And why weren't they killing the shit out of Malachi and Isaiah? Well, you see, apparently there had been some kind of battle. It was suddenly colder than usual. Gutted, delimbed, burnt, and otherwise terribly brutalized elf corpses lay on the ground between the orcs.

The orcs, who were all frozen solid. It was snowing. Spires of ice twisted toward the sky. Isaiah sneezed, then got a mad case of the sniffles. "What's up with the scenery? My ass hurts. Are we there yet?"

[supernal]

Night was falling and this didn't groove with Malachi none too much. He'd lost track of time. This was common. He didn't keep track of time that way. Not the 24 hour day or the 7 day week, doing so only when his hand was forced and he had to work with a vast majority of people that did live their lives like that. Whatever. The question that arose was how long ago they stormed that castle and took the orb?

It had already been day when they first started the business of going around and seeing about that bright, burning beacon inside the heart of that lone mountain amidst the Genesaris range and they spent quite some time in the mountain itself. They were pushed around the Sector like a couple of French fries and woke up in this more-normal-but-equally-odd place.

Hungry as all get out, to boot. What he thought was an hour or two could have turned out to be . . . as far as Malachi was concerned, he gave them a range with a minimum of a day and a maximum of a week. By then Malachi, the rotational degree of the sun would have told him what the axis tilt could not. It distressed him to think that they may have been set back that much time. How much closer was the Old Man now? And they had nothing to show for it.

Luckily for his peace of mind, they arrived upon a scene of carnage in time to take Malachi's focus off of himself and turn it to the world at large. The trails of bright red against powder white or glacial blue was a stark contrast and it did not fail to captivate him. Malachi didn't tie his horse up. It may not have been the wisest thing to do, since the beasts tended towards running away when something or someone inspired their fear. It was for this reason that Malachi didn't want to tie them to a tree or the like. The poor things might break their necks trying to rip the reins from the tree.

Malachi procured a tuning fork that fit between the tip of his middle finger and the very bottom of the palm of his hand. He gnawed on the single pronged end of it, twirling it between the grooves of his teeth over and over again while he paced back and forth.

"Alright. So we got some elves that got really fucked up, and we have some orcs here that are frozen solid and, arguably, equally dead. I'd put my money on it. See, the question is. Did they do this to each other?" Malachi motioned towards the orcs and elves. It was harder to tell with the elves, given their rampant disfigurement, but the orcs were perfectly persevered and all their faces were stretched taut with dismal fear.

"I'm not saying they were banded together, but perhaps a mutual enemy snuck up on them all. And perhaps that enemy . . . I don't know yet, I'm still trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. But doesn't it strike you odd that an orc would kidnap a princess for a bride? They don't like humans in general, and the fleshier we are, the worse. You can't get much fleshier than a corn-fed princess."

Nodding a head towards a crest in the hill, Malachi led the way and brought the tuning fork from his mouth, wiping the prong against his pant leg and leaving behind no residue. Malachi brought them both low but then pointed near the base of the wicked spires jutting towards the sky. Four titans, see-through with jagged edges themselves, lumbered about with dead eyes and dope faces. Malachi returned with two tower shields from the orc side of the war, holding one out to Isaiah.

The dude jumped ship, sailing over the edge and landing on the snow banks, feet fitted against the interior grooves of the shield so he could maneuver his way down the slope with ease. And so he did, cutting arcs and swooping paths down the incline until he hit level ground and then continued to speed forward. One of the ice titans turned towards him, making his insides quiver when he looked into those dead fucking doll eyes, and then Malachi launched himself skyward.

The fist barreling at him was not unexpected. He placed one hand against the titan's fist, miniscule in comparison, and pivoted his whole body off that single limb, swinging himself around to rest on the titan's arm. He launched himself into the air for the second time as if off a springboard and landed atop the titan's cranium. Without much fanfare, Malachi lifted his arm and jammed tuning fork through the ice creature's skull.

He leapt off, the wind whistling through his hair and in his ears as he sailed down to the ground, and the glacial giant had little chance in hell. The fork wiled the fuck out, exploited all manners of structural integrities, and the titan all but exploded into unpleasantly sharp icicles. A number of them hit Malachi, but his suit seemed unaffected and so did he.

The two things were not related.

Immediately ducking into the snow, Malachi burrowed towards shelter where he would have time to regroup his thoughts before the other three found him.

[Ziren]

"Oh, great. A corn fed princess. Not only are we going to have trouble carrying her back to her dear old King Daddy, but it'll probably be a gassy trip. Who the fuck engineers our destinies, Bro? Why, I oughta jump through to the Loom Sector and slap the fuck out of some Fate bitches," he rambled on, not noticing Malachi had left him until he was already gone and returned with a tower shield. Isaiah held his and gave it a blank look. He didn't know what the fuck it was. A slab of metal and wood? Who would want that? What a shitty gift. He glared after his brother, but Malachi had already left to. . . somewhere. Damn it all. Always leaving his kid brother behind!

Aaaaaand, action! Isaiah turned toward where Malachi was brawling with an ice. . . something or other. Golem? Elemental? Lame. Isaiah didn't want to fight one, but there were four, and four on one wasn't very fair. And he had to pay Fate back for being so very unfair.

"Ah-hah! I know what this is," he suddenly yelled, gaining the attention of the towering ice somethings. An epiphany had hit him over the head. This thing in his hand, this slab of metal and wood, was obviously a giant firsbee. When you're a giant ice something, you can't throw regular frisbees, can you? No, not at all, because that wouldn't make sense, and you'd just crush the plastic, besides it'd probably just slip out of your giant ice something mitts. Yeah, yeah, most definitely! Isaiah nodded his approval at such ingenuity. After all, he was the premier Ultimate Frisbee player at the Organization. Daddy Dearest frowned on his extracurricular activities, what with the only people around to play with being insane psychics, crazed mages, and all other sorts of undesirables the Organization grudgingly employed and more often than not happily brain washed.

One of the big ice somethings stomped toward him. The other one which had noticed him ignored him. Isaiah was much smaller than Malachi. Why bother, when one giant ice something could easily crush him? No, one giant ice something had already failed to crush Malachi, so clearly it needed to help the third remaining ice something to crush Big Bro. They lumbered toward Malachi's hiding place, snapping pieces from the ice spires, giant chunks of ice held in strong ice something mitts and propelled by mighty ice something arms, throwing boulders of frozen orc bits at Malachi with tremendous force and surprising accuracy for their empty eyed faces.

Isaiah hopped forward, snorted at being underestimated, and spun around as his ice something opponent charged at him, shaking the earth under its heavy ice something trunk legs. Spin, spin, spin. After all, Isaiah was Master of the Compass Dance, having already done it twice today. The huge ice something would regret its last days! Isaiah let the tower shield frisbee fly. It spun. It blurred through the air. Whistled, too. It slammed into the big ice something, hammered into its midsection, and buried halfway into it. The ice something stopped, looked down, pulled it out, and threw it right back.

It was a pretty nasty throw, too. Isaiah had been right, apparently, because it was an expert at frisbee. It curved expertly toward Isaiah and clocked him right in the face, sending him twisting through the air and headfirst into a big pile of snow. Nice and cold for his head ache. Isaiah was surprised the frisbee didn't break his neck, or rip his head off. Not yet, anyway. The ice something, figuring the frisbee was fucking useful as hell, snatched it back up and went over to clobber Isaiah with it some more. He blinked away the spots in his vision and rolled backward just in time.

If he hadn't, the tower shield would have cut him half. The ice something, apparently having an appallingly simple mind, ignored Isaiah and tried to pry the tool from the ground, where it was embedded. Isaiah shook the snow from his head and charged, kicking the stupid ice something in its big, stupid, ice face and it stumbled back. Its weight tore the frisbee from the ground, but it couldn't keep a grip, and Isaiah snatched it up and repeatedly mad thrust it into the damaged ice something's torso. Eventually, it simply fell into two pieces, and Isaiah lifted the frisbee and smashed its dumb ice something head.

"Fucking ice something," he grunted and turned toward Malachi's position, where he was being sieged, and yelled after him, "Hey, Bro! Leave one of them alive so we can extract some info!"

[supernal]

At the end of Isaiah's admittedly impressive interchange with a creature two or three times his size, five times his girth, and not made of fleshy-bone stuff the two remaining ice-cretins lumbered loudly towards where they remembered Malachi to have taken refuge.

The ground shook with the coupled heft of the giants. Malachi was busy at work, fingers twitching nervously at the laces that bound his shoes to his feet, desperate to remove them and then rip the socks off his feet, exposing his flesh to the arctic bite of the tundra they were currently in.

"Shit, shit, shit." Everything around him quivered in trepidation. The banks of snow stored in tightly woven branch clusters fell to the ground, noiseless in comparison to the intermittent roll of thunder elicited when the titans struck ground.

"Shitshitshit."

Malachi slammed his hands against the ground and lofted himself half a foot up in the air. He turned at the waist mid-air, tucked his feet beneath him and then shot them at the ground as fast as he could. He managed to turn around just in time to see a foot thick icicle with a wicked point already on its way to him and too close to dodge.

His feet touched the ground. Rushing was never a good idea, and he almost botched the whole thing. But just in the nick of time, Malachi managed to open his Root chakra and energy flowed from the earth beneath him and made the swirling pool of power inside of him thrum. The earlier rejuvenation cycle helped immensely in this regard.

But for now, he needn't use it for anything more than facilitating the process. So long as he kept his feet on the ground, he had power.

Left hand extended as his nostrils flared and his lungs expanded with breath. Malachi looked almost sleepy, but in truth was concentrating immensely, when the icicle struck his palm. He exhaled the entire time that the mere force of the projectile shoved him back and carved a trench through the snow and into the ground.

Malachi grounded himself with a twitch of his legs and stopped suddenly. He inhaled again; his lungs swelled with air and his body filled with power. With the coming exhale, Malachi shot his arm forward with blinding speed and jettisoned the icicle back at the giant that'd thrown it at him in the first place. Perhaps stunned by the sudden reversal of roles, perhaps not too bright to begin with, the giant was nonetheless taken by surprise to find a weapon of his own making to be his undoing.

The elder Aurelius took its head off.

Too much time spent basking in triumph, even if that time was infinitesimal. Because in that time the second giant closed the distance and knocked Malachi clear off the ground with a savage uppercut. The link tethered, Malachi was too aware of his regained fragility as his body crashed into the body of a tree with enough force to dent and topple it.

[Ziren]

Isaiah slapped his forehead in exasperation.

"Oh, brother. . . I said leave one alive, not let it kick your ass. Here I go," he ran at the tree Malachi had been kicked toward, his aura thrumming as he went over what Malachi had done to open his Root chakra. Isaiah could see it. Every nuance, every fluctuation in his aura, and the spinning wheel that drew energy up and spindled it through Malachi's body; he copied it without much trouble, every footstep causing the Root's engine to thrum a little louder until he was running full speed, and the sound of the Root chakra was thundering in his mind.

When he reached Malachi and snatched him from mid air, driving them both into the tree with Isaiah as a damage buffer, his feet remained steadfast on the ground as the bark fractured behind him and his back cracked. The Root ignited, driving its energy through Isaiah's body, through his aura, and into Malachi's. Earth tones colored Isaiah's already red aura as it spread, drenching both of them in stone cold power.

The giant ice something scratched its confused ice head.

Isaiah knelt down, Malachi feet first over his shoulders, and pointed Big Bro's head toward the soon to be incapacitated ice something by grabbing a fistful of his hair.

"Combination Cannon," he screamed, causing the tree behind them to finally topple over. "Big Brother Bazooka Blaster!"

It was. . . exactly what it sounded like. All of their combined power shot out through Malachi's mouth like one of those nights where you've had way too much to drink and then when you got the munchies and had way too much to eat. Although it was an altogether unpleasant feeling, the Root vomit itself looked a lot like Christmas, if Christmas were an energy beam launched from one's mouth without one's permission.

The ground fissured beneath the pressure, venting yellow motes of light: visible earth aligned mana.

The not moving fast enough ice something was struck in its left ice leg, which was instantly petrified. Isaiah not so gently shoved Malachi onto the collapsed tree and ran toward the turning into stone ice something, and tapped it before it could become a dead rock something. Now it was a half ice, half rock something. Its head was in tact, as was a portion of its upper body. If its stupid ice something face had eyes. . .

. . . its lack of eyes really bothered him. Isaiah bent over, gathered up some snow, and stuffed it into those empty sockets.

"Success! Applause?" he looked for Malachi. "I'm no good at magic. You cast the spell for extracting. . . stuff. I'll go make sure the horses aren't. . . uh, giant ice something food."

Gone.

When he returned, Isaiah had both horses, who were none too keen on the idea of being dragged close to the trapped half rock, half ice something and made their disdain known. Loudly. "Shut up, you big babies. Damn," he was definitely no horse whisperer.

[supernal]

Malachi didn't much like being used as a weapon without his consent, but after years of similar and worse treatment under the Old Man's jurisdiction, to say he was used to it was a bit of an understatement. Filling the roll of a weapon had become second nature to his humanity. For a brief, dark period in his life it had been the first.

He was lowered to the ground and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand the moment that he had control over his body again. He didn't fault Isaiah for it too much. For the ambivalent cold-hot flashes struggling for dominance inside of his body while his chakra centers strove for homeostasis, which they would undoubtedly achieve in due time. Or for the bad taste stuck in the back of his throat. It was a necessity . . .

You know, come to think of it, Isaiah was probably just being a fucking dick. He's been known to indulge in bouts of dickishness quite often, all the more recently, now that the hormone-amped teenager doesn't have to duck and hide from the Old Man's watchful gaze.

"Yeah, I'll extract. Whatever. But listen, and this is just fair warning. I don't know when or where, but at some point in the near-to-distant future I'm going to slap you in the fucking mouth."

Malachi extended his index finger and then outstretched its respective arm, pointing at Isaiah with a most solemn air and stolidity of form.

"This, I promise you brother."

You know. And then Isaiah was off to collect the horses. Malachi flipped him off a little before focusing on the work set out before him. The half-petrified ice titan. Every ounce of danger had been robbed of the once-proud, once-fearful behemoth. Its lower body was completely immobilized and the greater portion of its arms, its last bastion of offense or defense, were covered in stone as well.

Malachi walked forward with caution, regardless. In the last three minutes, he re-learned the lesson that he must not operate on assumption, and that taking things for granted often got him a fistful of super hard ice in the goddamn face. With every step forward, with every thudding contact of his foot against the ground, bursts of energy surged through his body.

The root chakra pinwheeled. The sacral followed suit. The energy continued to blossom and wisps of it streamlined up the whirlpools of energy inside of Malachi's body, resonating with one another. The solar plexus spun like a dervish and the heart thrummed with growing vigor.

The throat chakra unhinged and spilled forward; it was Malachi's favorite. The whole of him was sheathed in blue, teal eyes shining off the chain, by the time he was within arm's reach of the titan. And boy, did his arms reach. He was placed precariously atop the stone knees of the beast, still connected through the earth with the creature in the role of conduit, as he placed one hand atop the creature's forehead and the other atop its heart.

Of the PEMS strata (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual), Malachi focused on the primary; despite being the most 'basic' level, it nonetheless offered him quite the array to choose from. The blue nimbus surrounding Malachi creeped all along the titan's body and enshrouded it as well.

There.

No more secrets.

Isaiah returned and Malachi was wiping his hands off on the sleeves of his suit as he shook off the excess energy, the remaining ice melted. He remembered the previous version of the suits. They were spill resistant, to guard against acid splashes, but were so goddamn slick that if you had sweaty hands right before you met with a Commissioner, you couldn't wipe your hands off on your pants and make yourself decent.

Much to Malachi's teenage dismay.

"So get this fucking shit. I knew something was off when we read that note. So the orc-king dude? Not even in the big picture. He's just a pawn for the dude in this fucking tower. The ice-king. He's getting all these orc tribes to kidnap princesses, to marry them so that they'd own a stake in the land, then he was going to unify the tribes and take over all the land. Then kill them or transform them or something. I don't know, the idea gets a little fuzzy there. The giant didn't know that much, I had to piggy back on his creation hologram and couldn't go that deep anyway.

"So this dude! This ice-king has ALL the princesses in his tower and is in there right now."

[Ziren]

Isaiah returned the bird to Malachi over his shoulder as he went off to get the fussy horses. Those apples didn't fall from the tree, did they?

"Don't do that. Your suits not a napkin. You get in that habit, and then when we get these things off, you'll keep doing it to stuff that isn't eternally immaculate. . . you know? Don't make the Aurelius name synonymous with slob!" as if he were one to talk. You saw how they both dug into that cooked cow. It was gross, but at least Isaiah had the manners to use silverware.

He listened intently, nodding and hmming and crossing his arms and shifting his weight and looking thoughtful and blinking and giving blank stares or surprised eye widenings at all the appropriate moments. By the end of Malachi's dissertation on giant ice something purpose, Isaiah was shaking his fist in rage as faux as his interest.

"How dare the giant ice something King capture princesses? What a devious devil! I bet they're all going to be plump princesses, too. Why can't we ever have pretty princesses, Bro? Just once, I would like us to swing in and rescue a hot bunch of rich bitches who pledge themselves to the Official Aurelius Fan Club and Harem. . . and not a bunch of nude demon succubi temptress killer crazies," he babbled on about the gross injustices of womankind, devils all, as he mounted on his horse.

untaidake.jpg

. . . which is where they rode to, in a far away place. Well, it wasn't that far away. There was one giant ice something tower, and plenty more stretching into the background. The biggest one, of course. . .

"That has to be the Ice King's layer, right? That big ice something spike? . . . how do we get in? There has to be some way inside. I can't see through the ice. I wonder what's inside? How do we cross this lake?" Isaiah dismounted, as if discovering the answer to his own question, and hopped across the big pieces of ice floating in the lake that led to the big ice something spike tower thing whatsit.

There sure were a lot of orc and elf corpses in the water, some sunk all the way to the bottom, others floating on the surface.

The water got bloodier as he went on. Ew.

Isaiah stopped about 3/4ths of the way to the Ice King's lair. It was. . . a lot more daunting up close.

"Wow, do you see all of those protections?" Isaiah referred to the chain-like runes wrapped around its entirety. "Good luck scrying or breaking in, right? What a haughty bitch, he doesn't even post guards because he thinks his protections are so good. Not that they aren't. I mean, do you see that white one that looks kind of like a dove and is wrapped by those twisting rainbow symbols? That's a nasty hex. Remember the Happiness Sector? Something like that." Isaiah shuddered, then suddenly. . .

"Uh, we have the Seer's Orb. Do you think it could. . . teleport us in?"