In the beginning, it was a nice day.
This is a word which here means 'pleasing', 'agreeable', or 'delightful', so it may come as a surprise to you, dear reader, to hear the day described as such, given the situation in Milliways these past two weeks. But then, 'nice' is such a relative term, don't you agree? And certainly it would be difficult for
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And yet they do, time and again, churning the hard frost to mud beneath their feet, and staining the shallow scrims of snow as red as the sky above.
One place, though, remains untouched: a patch of land by the lake, neither so large nor so small as to make a difference, but remarkable only because of the two silver hemispheres still sitting there, quietly humming their skin-crawling hummmmmmmmmmmmmm.
It's louder now, though.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Rising a little in pitch and volume, in fact, every time an arc of lightning crackles over the silvery surface, grounding itself in the earth or spitting away into nothing.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
And if you couldn't smell it before, you certainly can now; an acrid, cloying smell, like ozone and rotting meat and wrongness, crawling down your nose and clinging to the back of your throat like a disease.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
That's the smell of Free Magic.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
There's no time to breathe it in, now.
The monsters are coming again.
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Everything just got far worse.
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If she was still capable of thinking in terms of apologies, anyway.
Instead there's an Other out there, dancing on the edge of oblivion, swimming through and around the shadows, dragging creatures into the darkness behind the world with talons and hands and magic and leaving... bits, scattered over the battlefield. One creature that she takes is the one that was about to take a swipe at Will's head.
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He says thank you to the air as he keeps fighting, he'll have to rest soon or get back to where the healers are as he can't keep this up.
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"It's just like fair-day in a plague year. Or maybe a Blight."
Probably a Blight, really. But it's not as if Flemeth has not weathered several of those before.
And there's a great deal of fun to be had with darkspawn. Or whatever these creatures are.
Plus there's the added benefit of watching all of this magnificent chaos!
It fair warms an old woman's bones, it does.
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You don't forget what you smell the day you deliberately let something that eats humans swallow you so that you can kill it from the inside.
"What the ass is goin' on?"
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Flemeth's answer is probably unwarrantedly sprightly, but she makes a habit of that.
Even here.
"Without a body is an entirely different story! Though it would make it easier to live next to a swamp. Hmm."
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The eyeball critter at his side hoists herself up on one foot to have a better look around. Her sense of smell isn't worth mentioning, so she has no idea she ought to be disturbed.
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She never heard the end of it.
"As for the stench, they do say what can't be fought must be borne."
Her smile is quick and predatory, flashing teeth.
"Tell me, are you in the habit of bearing such as this?"
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For a given value of capable, likely, but that is often the way of it.
"Or almost equally capable. One can't have everything, after all."
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He cracks a crooked grin and looks around for something in need of hurting.
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Her smile then is a terrifying thing, full of teeth.
"Would you object to a more than fighting chance?"
A woman only gets so many opportunities to participate in an event like this, after all.
Particularly without affecting the strands of so many other delicately-laid plans.
Perhaps the time is right to indulge.
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"I'm willin' to cheat if you are, ma'am."
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Her laugh rumbles deep in her chest, even as --
Well.
Even as Flemeth starts moving just far enough away to make her transformation into a dragon complete.
Ah.
It really has been some time.
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Blink.
"Shit, ma'am, you know Kreyu by any chance?"
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