Paroxysm

The treant emitted a loud rustling sound, the sound of its branches and leaves combining with a low rumble in its chest, that might be recognized as a close approximate to a laugh, twice removed. Not easily recognizable as such, it menaced Gabriel, whose frantic kicking, and screams of retribution combined with simpering pleas to let him go. As its laughter abated, however, the treant’s stoicism returned. “You’re all dead!” Gabriel screamed. He was red faced and panting when Eddie entered the house. Eddie, bare chested, wringing a shirt between his hands, lashed out with his makeshift whip and got the halfling in the face, between two of the treant’s fingers. Eddie celebrated his skill with a whoop. His elation died as he remembered his jacket and vest left on the porch, and then he was sullen and angry, and just on the verge of whipping Gabriel again when Jackson called out. The safe was man-size, if the man happened to be a halfling, which put it waist high for Eddie. The size of the painting made sense in that context. Acquainting himself with the safe, Eddie found it to be standard, as far as locking mechanisms went, radial dial, four number sequence, nothing excessive. Even the wards had been an exterior security measure, with nothing to do with the safe itself; it was likely that Gabriel didn’t consider warding the safe itself, or inscribing runes, worth the expense. Not when an angry nature spirit tethered to a network of security wards could travel from node to node and deal with any intruders. Eddie reached out and turned the dial right, without paying attention to the number; he turned the dial left, right, and then right again, never paying attention to the number. With the fourth number, Eddie pulled the latch down and opened the door, turning away from the safe to give a bow and flourish. Probability magic was easy magic, one of the easiest, even. But that luck still had to come from somewhere and Eddie had used up all his years ago, so he really wouldn’t want to be Gabriel when the Lady came calling. “Voila!”

As far as ships go, I generally prefer large and blocky designs, rather than those that would traditionally be aesthetically pleasing. Even so, my favorite is still probably the Outlaw Star, despite it being a sleek design. But it's an unfair comparison with other ships, because grappler ships are bae.

Yes, villains and their life blood are a thing Eddie is passionate about too.

To put to rest whatever doubts Jackson might have had about Eddie’s taste in women, especially his taste in women of the non-human variety, Eddie began citing the numerous benefits there would be, such as the possible, inheritable traits that might improve the species. Except to Jackson’s rudimentary grasp of Terric, Eddie’s well thought out, exquisitely constructed response, delivered in as succinct a tone as such a thing had ever been spoken, would translate to, “Why would I not want to, ya cunt,” with an accompanying look of disbelief. That disbelief turned from Jackson to their targets, and then to Jericho, as Eddie, now aware of what to feel for, felt the link between Jericho, the he was sensing, felt the link between Jericho, the ghost pouch, and the children. It helped that the former of the three held the second in his hand, too, but only a little. “Mage!” Eddie looked up from his diagram, his words carrying just far enough to be heard by his two compatriots. The scaled temptress, her elongated, vaguely inhuman appearance now twisted and distorted further by a mixture of anger and fear, hissed a curse, throwing her hands up with her fingers splayed wide. She drew the digits back, some stopping at awkward and improbable angles. But her spell never came, and, as Eddie looked back over to Jackson, he reasoned that it was probably because Jackson was whom he had sensed. More humiliating, Jackson fired off his spell in less time than it took Eddie to draw his circle. Several good oaths crossed Eddie’s mind, some more than capable of making any Casper born sailor proud, but he said instead, “Oh. Everyone’s a gods damned mage then.” The not-casting-a-spell half-breed snapped one of her oddly positioned hands out and palmed one kid’s head. A master in some unknown foreign martial art, probably. Silent, Eddie told his heart to be still. With another thought, Eddie decided that was it. Enough was enough. He scrubbed a couple of symbols from his diagram, rewriting them to complete the circuit again. He stood from his crouch to flick a hand in a direction behind the group, a swirl of color, vibrant and pink, growing in intensity until it was almost a bright white, traveled the length of his arm and pooled around the hand. A lone oak tree, its trunk twice as thick as a man was wide, stood in a circle of mulch. One of its lower branches supported a tire swing, attached to it by a thick hemp rope, or at least Eddie assumed it was thick. And hemp. That wasn’t important. He only noted, and dismissed, the tree because of the swing. “Neh nih ominehchii neh nih,” Eddie muttered, cobbling together a ritual of binding in his head, pulling from their surroundings a nature spirit, its cries coming as a stiff, cold breeze. “Get on in there, ya git.” The light impacted the tree, spread along its trunk, its brilliance diminished as it began to thin out, until it was just a faint outline that encompassed the oak. The wood creaked and groaned, and roots tore themselves free of the earth, whipping up only to slam back down, leaving furrows in the ground where the wooden appendages lashed the earth. The tree turned slowly and regarded Eddie, its face, for two knots and a hollow had formed to suggest a face, held an indiscernible expression. The tree did not wait for any verbal orders. With more speed than looked possible, the newly birthed treant sped forward in an awkward, shuffling gait and hit the water still running and managing—Eddie was not an expert in treant physiology and buoyancy—to mysteriously not break surface tension. Arriving at the house, there was little to deter the creature. The wards, and the alarm Eddie had triggered earlier, was dealt with when he bound the spirit, seeing as they all involved the sprite anyway. From his vantage point afar, Eddie was surprised to see the treant not bust through the window, but politely go up the steps leading up to the rear deck of the home, where it opened the door and entered, closing the door behind it as it did so. When the treant appeared again, it was from behind the window that Jericho and Eddie still used to view through, and, without so much as a ‘hey, how are you doing?’ the treant, much as the woman had done with the child, swept down with one of its arm-like appendages and grabbed her by the head. The scaled woman let go of the child as she was lifted up, and before Eddie could stop it, the treant whipped its arm to the side, breaking the woman’s neck and discarding her with casual indifference. Its eyes turned to focus on Gabriel, who was slowly making progress in crawling away, but had thus far only managed to cross half of the room. The treant pinned the small man with its hand, fingers lengthening into the bars of a cage, stabbing into the floor in a quick-and-dirty prison.

The Slaver's Enclave in Genesaris, if it's still a thing, was, as you can guess by the name, a location (a city?) with institutionalized slavery.

The first powder mage book has been sitting in my to-read list on Goodreads for a long time now.

I recently finished the first two Wheel of Time books. The first book was pretty typical but I liked a lot of things about the setting. The second book was better, had better characterization, but I still felt there was room for improvement. I've got the third book on hold since it was a bit of a slog to finish both of those books. Currently, I'm reading Theft of Swords by Michael J Sullivan, which is a bit of a mixed bags. I like the characters, but I don't like the pacing at all.

From the moment Jericho voiced his objection to their use of the barn as cover, Eddie made apology after apology to Jericho. It was not precisely that he felt bad about using the man as an executioner, so much as the assumption that Jericho would not mind. That was an insult to Jericho’s character, and an unintentional one, at that. So he apologized, saying things like, “No, for real, mate; I’m sorry,” and, “It was just me being a wanker, honest. Didn’t mean anything by it.” Eventually, Eddie figured Jericho would either have to forgive him, or be driven insane under the weight of the apologies. Whichever came first. Jericho did have the opportunity to enjoy a small lapse in Eddie’s profuse apologies and remorse, however. For about five minutes when Eddie excused himself to restock his supplies and to grab his own weapon, a rune-inscribed length of wood, near as thick as a man’s arm, and not much longer, with a mean, bulbous protrusion at one extreme and a metal spike at the other. The cudgel passed for Eddie’s magic staff. Eddie stared at the woman with red scales. Pensive and contemplative, it was a wonder the the weight of his attention didn’t alert the woman to her being watched. Instead, the group continued eating. “Think maybe the red one is single?” Eddie subconsciously pulled on the sleeves of his jacket. He decided, “No,” and looked between Jericho and Jackson, dismayed. “Where is my head at? She’s probably got a line of gents a mile long just wanting to talk to her. Huh—? Oh, right. Not sure about punching kids, but I’m better prepared now; I can probably set someone on fire. Can’t go wrong twice in one night, can it?” Eddie crouched down and began drawing on the ground, his scrawl a childish, simple diagram, more a gesture of what a magical circle was than a proper rendering, but no less powerful for its modest lines and figures. When the last line was inscribed and the circle was completed, it snapped closed, prickling the skin on Eddie’s arms. It also triggered the wards—which Eddie probably should have checked for, rather than checking out the woman—that had been set up in the area. A smell like ozone wafted in on the breeze as Eddie scrambled to dismantle the alarm. “Ignore that smell. Nothing important,” Eddie said, still crouched over his circle. He sounded more sure than he felt. He was really messing up today.

Eddie declined to persuade Jericho of his capacity for healing. He could be effective—Jericho was walking now, wasn’t he?—but nobody was going to feel like sunshine and rainbows after treatment, let alone ferocious and capable of getting back into a fight. Now, with Owen being stubborn, Eddie was not adversed to persuading the fat man of his healer’s touch and how effective it was. With magic, fingers that had been removed re-grew, pink and new, but never quite right enough for Eddie’s discerning eye. Owen tried to convince him each time that they were perfect, better than perfect, even, but time and again, Eddie gestured and Sally saw to it that the new fingers joined the small pile that was building beneath Owen’s quivering quadruple chinned head. It went without saying that manly screams no longer came from his throat, only whimpers and pleas. Sometime during this, Eddie plucked the enchanted ring from the ground, and deftly deposited it in his bag of holding. Later study might provide information on its origin, if the enchanter was anyone of note. Who knew? Not Owen, Eddie confirmed that with ease enough. All said and done, Owen felt pleased to spill his guts, if it meant not literally spilling his guts, or his fingers, all over the ground. When bled of everything useful, Eddie crouched in front of Owen and inspected the man’s brow. “This is where I’d draw a sigil on you and let you burn, you great bloody git.” Eddie frowned. There was too much sweat to draw anything that wouldn’t smudge. “Well, don’t want it to become a habit, anyway.” Owen didn’t respond; instead, he looked between Jericho and Jackson, wide-eyed and pleading. “Besides, limited resources.” Eddie shrugged. “So you’re going to go the straight and narrow, are ya? Legitimate business again, in Genesaris or Tellus Mater, or the moon, maybe?” Owen nodded frantically, as if his sincerity would catch on the breeze and the smell of it would be proof enough. Eddie paused, thinking of an appropriate one liner. “You can go to Hell instead, you slaving cunt.” Eddie straightened and stepped out of the way with a gesture, letting Jericho know he could go ahead and deliver the executioner’s blow.

The rat ogre bellowed one last time before its movements stilled, a combination of exhaustion and it choking on its blood, Eddie decided. He cradled the shrunken head in the crook of one arm. The thing didn’t want to leave him alone, so he might as well bring it along. Owen’s tantrum won a snort, but not as much fear as the Purveyor of Exotica might expect from his threats. “Don’t be such a ponce, Owen. Your rat ogre’s dead.” Eddie tried to ignore the stench that wafted in on the breeze. He turned away from the transport to Jericho, or at least where he guessed Jericho lay, and briefly excused himself. Owen wasn’t going anywhere, and whatever damage he could do, he would do before they got him out and subdued. Besides, Prince Charming being his or not, Eddie liked his mind squarely between charming and murderous psychotic with a heart of gold, not whatever state Owen put him in. Gross. He rummaged in his sack as he walked, but came up empty; it might be a Bag of Holding, but it only contained what was put into it, and Eddie never did put much stock in regular schedules and high-minded concepts such as ‘replenishment’. “That looks like it hurts.” Eddie prodded Jericho’s leg with the toe of one loafer. “Let me think for a second.” With a prayer to Gaia and several specific herbs, there was a potent poultice Eddie could apply that would increase Jericho’s natural healing to a considerable degree, while providing secondary benefits, like relieving soreness, inflammation, and bleeding to death, the typical stuff that worries an injured person. Those, and several alternatives, he meant to restock a few weeks ago. It slipped his mind, however. Eddie pushed the sleeve of one arm back up to its corresponding elbow and looked at the skin. After a pensive moment and a frown, he decided that blood magic wouldn’t do either, and shook the sleeve back down. After a long stare at the ground, Eddie kneeled beside Jericho. He muttered a prayer for his dry cleaning, but put it out of mind a moment later as he cupped his hands around his mouth and breathed out, until the point that his lungs could give no more and red rimmed his vision, and a faint, hazy nimbus, like the one that collected his eyes when he stood still too long, surrounded his hands. “This is all just symbolic,” Eddie said, “but the magic is int he symbolism, probably. I’m not just putting on airs, right? Swear on me mum, I’ll shiv you one in the kidney if you say otherwise.” That said, and before his mouth could provide further defense, Eddie cast Regeneration and pressed the energy into Jericho. It would be painful. Eddie was more a magician than a mage, and what magic he could cast, while done expertly, did not come easy or with anything resembling talent. His Regeneration lacked the frills of the priesthood might put on, unnecessary things like nerve deadening, a sensation of twilight, and other such nonsense he declined to muck up his spell formulas, incantations, or his thoughts, for that matter. The process was efficient, sterile; it was the restitching of muscle, sinew, and flesh, the severed nerves drawn back together, faster and more painfully than naturally, which itself would not have been a pleasant experience. With a hand, and a shoulder, Eddie would escort Jericho to the transport, where a sulking Owen, his face red from a tirade of angry ranting, had managed to force an arm and his head through a small hole in the earthen wall. How he had opened it, Eddie didn’t know, but it’d have made a great front page spread in the Daily Weekly.

More than a few things happened without Eddie being conscious of them. He was only just standing on wobbling legs when a shrunken head hit one side of the cargo hold, rebounding off and thumping into Eddie’s chest, where it dropped into his waiting hands, its eyes, lidless and empty, staring up at him. “Well hello there, mate,” Eddie said, smoothing the tangle of hair that curled up from its leathery scalp. It only just occurred to him, but Eddie realized he lacked any real reagents on his person. In his rush to get to where all the commotion was, he brought nothing to feed his craft, and his natural talent didn’t permit many options of spontaneous arcane expression. A gift from Gaia, this shrunken head. This, even if Eddie didn’t know what the difference between a shrunken head and what it was that Owen called a tsantsa. Mysteries he would investigate later. A heavy, fur coated arm swung at Eddie, which he narrowly avoided by ducking and, tumbling backwards, crab walking until he had the other side of the transport as cover from the fight. A viscous goo that was not quite blood soaked through the front of Eddie’s shirt, eliciting a curse even as he wiped one hand over the substance, coating it, and then spreading it over the head. Eddie traced a Power word over the creature’s brow. The design was sloppy, given his lack of appropriate materials, but, important to the endeavor, legible. The word was round and smooth, its lines flowing into one another, the ink, despite its origin, backlit by a soft glow. The light faded, replaced by a gasp as the head’s mouth, already slightly agape, stretched wide open, and wider yet when Eddie stuffed his hand down the thing’s gullet until the limb was down to its elbow. The head vanished when Eddie brought his arm back out, or, rather, it was no longer a head at all. Eddie held a sack by its neck. He reached into it and withdrew the head again, only to discard it without much thought. One more reach and he had want he wanted. Eddie walked back round the transport in time to catch the rat-ogre, having broken a fist-sized——its fist, at any rate——portion of the transport free, swinging wildly at Jackson as their fight continued. Is revenge justice, Eddie wondered. He wanted to rearrange Owen’s fat face. At the same time, leaving Jackson to fight the rat-ogre was a bastard of a thing to do. “Sod it.” Eddie hurled one of the two vials he had pulled from his bag at the creature. The alchemical grenade, which contained a phosphoric powder suspended in an inert substance, its effects derived from Aballin grease, broke on impact and ignited with the air. Mixed with the smell of sewer and unwashed fur was the smell of cooking flesh and burning fur. Eddie brought up his lighter, thumbed the flint wheel, and galvanized from afar, calling fire. Absently, Eddie said, “This better not be like that time in Biazo.” Which didn’t help much. The rat-ogre bellowed in pain, its arms flailing, swinging, threatening to break anything or anyone that got caught in its path, and all the while it spread the fire, streaming and splashing fire that was liquid in its consistency, forcing Eddie to retreat some distance away. It was exactly like that time in Biazo. “Wanna duck in after the fat man?!” Eddie yelled to be heard over the rat-ogre’s pain. He wanted the fat man for himself, but Eddie hadn’t yet removed the contaminate; he would be playing right into Owen’s hands if he went for the man. Better Jackson stick him than Eddie get sticked.

Welcome back.