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Cinnamon Swirl #25. Just in Time
and Flavor of the Day - 7/29/10 - Busticate with Hot Fudge and Malt
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : PG
Timeframe : 1260
Word Count : 1960
Malt Prompt : (summer challenge) heroics by accident
Word of the Day : busticate - to break into pieces
Well, this was supposed to be for yesterday's word - behemoth - but today's word works too, and the idea was for the cinnamon all along, the fotds just spurred me into going through with it. Takes place shortly after Kairn and Shasa flee.
“It’s coming,” Shasa whimpered. “Oh gods, it’s coming. It’s coming.”
“Shhh.” Huddled amidst a dense patch of bushes, Kairn gave his sister a squeeze, trying not to wince himself as behind them branches snapped and leaves were flattened beneath the demon’s bony paws.
Still wringing her hands and shaking, Shasa turned on him with her eyes wide and watery. “Can it…can it hear us?” she whispered.
“I doubt it. That’s what the rats are for.” He gave the one at his feet a nudge with his boot. He’d taken to killing anything small and furry that lingered too long around them. Shasa had protested at first, but then he showed her one, an eyeless creature with half its spine exposed, and she was quick to concede.
She shuddered as the tiny corpse rolled over in the grass. “Please don’t let it hear us. Please, oh please.”
“A lot less chance of it if you keep your mouth shut.”
She just pressed even closer to him, dissolving into incoherent blubbering.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
There was another crash as the monster plodded through the brush. He’d caught one good look at it as they were running for cover. The thing had the body of a behemoth, the carcass stripped down to the bones, muscles replaced with tight weavings of silk for added strength, with the full-feathered wings of a roc anchored to its spine. He could just see it trampling the bushes, its great vacant skull, with its massive tusks, swiveling this way and that, the mane of scarves that marked it as Kinu‘s flapping around it. A tree snapped and Shasa twitched.
“It’s going to eat us,” she cried.
Kairn sighed. “It’s not going to eat us.” Well, it wasn’t going to eat her anyway. “I’ve got an axe. I’ve got Reida’s glove.” He gave her shoulder a pat. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“I wish Sethan were here.”
“Say that again and I might eat you.”
For a moment it was quiet. The beast had passed them in its pacing, but if the last twenty minutes of cowering among the shrubbery had taught him anything it was that it would turn around in a moment.
“We’re going to die,” Shasa moaned. “Gods, I don’t want to die.”
“Please!” he hissed.
Shasa shrieked, pulling away from him as she curled in on herself and scuttled back into the bushes. Wordlessly, she flailed a hand at the rat that darted in front of Kairn’s feet. In an instant, he had the axe in hand and brought the blade down hard on the creature’s neck. He grabbed the rat by its withered tail to take a look at it.
“Was it…?” Shasa edged slowly back out of the leaves with a nervous glance behind to see if the demon had noticed her outburst.
“Reida’s.”
She frowned. “It’s a rat. How can you tell?”
Kairn held it up for her to see the scorpion pincers that dangled where its front paws should have been. Shasa shuddered.
“Now, if Reida is here…” He laid the rat on the ground next to the last.
“If you think Reida is coming to your rescue, you’re the one that’s delusional.”
“I never said I thought for one moment she was doing it out of love. She wants your baby.”
With a grimace, Shasa laid a hand to her flat belly. “It seems everyone has designs on him. Dead or alive.” Another tree snapped as the monster headed back their way. “It’s coming again!”
“It’s still pacing. It’s not coming. If we stay still and we stay quiet, it won’t-”
With a sudden thunder of hooves and the tearing and crunching of leaves and branches all around them, a pair of deer came racing through, demolishing their cover. The animals cast them no more than a fleeting glance as they leapt past. Shasa screamed as hooves sailed through the air, just missing their heads. The deer raced on into the trees. Behind them the demon bellowed.
Kairn whipped around to see a skull as tall as a man turned their way, its jaws wide and mane dancing like a ring of tentacles. “Now it’s coming.”
Shasa fumbled her way to her knees, tripped and flailed and tried to pull herself to her feet while fighting to cover what ground she could on all fours. “What do we do? What do we do?”
Shaking, Kairn curled his fist around the axe. “You run.”
“You’re not…not with that- It’s going to eat you!” she shrieked.
“Better me than both of us.” He tried to wave her on. Every move he forced from his body was suddenly terribly clumsy. Shasa seemed to be having the same trouble commanding her limbs. She staggered away. “Go!”
Somehow he managed to get to his feet. The hand that held the axe was shuddering so violently he hadn’t a clue how he was going to swing the thing. Empty eye sockets fixed on him, the demon was lurching closer and closer.
He braced himself for the teeth, put both hands to the axe and raised it. He’d have one chance at most to strike. The demon opened its jaw, let out a roar, and… with a deafening crack, collapsed into a pile of rubble.
The axe dropped from Kairn’s numb hands. He barely felt the butt hit his toes. The thump of the blade on the grass seemed to come from a world away.
Through the cloud of rapidly settling dust that spread from the heap of jumbled bones that had been only a moment away from taking his head off, he saw her, standing among the trees, staring back at him.
“Reida?” he said, blinking, his hands still poised in the air where they’d held the axe. “You…you killed it…”
“I did?” She looked from the corpse to Kairn and back. He thought he saw her glance off into the trees, but maybe it was just his neves playing tricks, because now she was grinning at him, as haughty as always. “I mean, of course I did.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“Saving your ass,” she said, picking her way along the edge of the pile of bones. “Isn’t that much obvious?”
“But why?” said Kairn. Shasa was creeping back behind him. He offered her a hand, but she shook her head stiffly and plopped down right there in the grass.
“Because,” said Reida, “you’re so hopelessly inept you can’t save it yourself. Isn’t that obvious too?”
“What I meant was why do you care?”
Reida shot Shasa a toothy grin. “Precious cargo,” she said. “Or maybe I was just worried about you.” She sidestepped a giant tusk that jutted from the wreckage and quickly closed the remaining distance between them.
“Since when do you-”
“Come now.” She was close enough for him to see every one of her pearly teeth. “I just saved your life. I’d think you’d want to melt in my arms for that. You know, maybe carry me off with you, to the next shady little inn on your itinerary and thank me properly between the sheets.”
“So that’s it.” Kairn took a step back.
“Or,” Reida went on, ignoring his glowering at her, “the grass will do just fine.” With a smirk at Shasa, she added, “I’m sure we could set you up with a blindfold, a couple of earplugs…” Shasa’s jaw dropped.
“Reida!” Kairn snapped, and she spun back to face him. He swore he could feel her breath on him, she was so close. “You…you think Sethan’s not here, so you can do what you want. I was ready to fight that demon, and I-I’ll fight you too…i-if I have to. You’re not getting your hands on my sister, and I’ll thank you to keep them off of me.”
Reida rolled her eyes. “Alright, alright,” she said. “I’ll settle for a kiss.” She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him to her.
“Get off me!” Kairn batted at her hands, but she wouldn’t take them away.
“You’d be a bloody smear on that tree about now if it wasn’t for me.”
“I-”
Her fist tightened in his shirt and she jerked him forward and planted her lips firmly on his. She let him go after a moment, her eyes holding his. “Take me with you. Anything comes after you, I’ll take care of it. And it won’t even cost you...much,” she amended, her eyes falling to his hips.
“No,” Kairn muttered, turning away. “Just the world.”
“Pssht. What’s it ever done for you?”
“She did get rid of the demon for us,” said Shasa. “Maybe…maybe we should let her help.”
Reida laughed. “And maybe you’re not entirely useless after all.”
“Shas, you’re not helping.” Kairn sighed, ran a still shaking hand through his hair, and looked at the pile of bones. Ribs and tusks stood out in all manner of odd angles. Bits of silk dangled from their sharp and splintered peaks. “When did you learn to do that anyway? I thought only Sethan could-”
“Oh please, I’m as good as Sethan any day.” Her hand caught his arm. “So what do you say? Are you taking me with you or not?”
“Not.” He twisted away. “Come on, Shas.”
Shasa wasn’t paying him any attention. She aimed a finger at the air behind him and squealed, “What’s that?”
Kairn and Reida’s heads whipped around to see where she was pointing. A black silk bat hovered just beneath the lowest branches. “Sethan’s,” they said together.
Kairn turned on Reida. “If he followed you…”
“If he followed me?” she said.
Shasa was listening to none of it. She was on her feet and racing towards them. “He couldn’t just let me go without checking to see I was alright,” she said. “Oh, Sethan, you must be so worried!”
“Get down!” Kairn caught her shoulder as she came charging and shoved her back. He reached for the axe, found a branch instead and smacked the bat out of the air.
Reida was staring at the girl in shock. “That bit about not being useless,” she muttered to Kairn. “I take it back.” Shasa was gaping at the bat with tears welling in her eyes.
“I thought you might,” said Kairn. He prodded the bat with the toe of his boot. It rolled in the grass, a lifeless piece of cloth. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
“What?” said Reida.
“Kill that demon.” He looked up slowly from the bat, and caught her eye. Her lips were drawn tight and she hastily ducked away. “Sethan did. He’s right behind you and you’ve stalled us long enough that he’ll be here any moment.”
“I never meant…I was supposed to kill that demon, you know.” She sighed, still not looking his way. “What if I hold him off for you? Will you believe me then?”
“What?”
“You go on. I’ll cover for you and catch up later.”
“But-”
Reida turned back around and smirked at him. “For you,” she said. And then her hand was in his shirt again and she was pulling him down, kissing him. “Now go.” She pushed him away and he stood there sputtering for a moment while she laughed. “Go!” she said again, with a light smack of her palm against his chest. With that, she turned and raced off into the trees, the way the bat had come.
“Crazy.” Kairn spat into the grass. He looked at Shasa, sprawled on the ground again, staring, bemused and teary, at Sethan’s bat. “Both of you. Crazy.” He bent, gave her shoulder a nudge, and picked up his axe. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be here when she gets back.”
and Flavor of the Day - 7/29/10 - Busticate with Hot Fudge and Malt
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : PG
Timeframe : 1260
Word Count : 1960
Malt Prompt : (summer challenge) heroics by accident
Word of the Day : busticate - to break into pieces
Well, this was supposed to be for yesterday's word - behemoth - but today's word works too, and the idea was for the cinnamon all along, the fotds just spurred me into going through with it. Takes place shortly after Kairn and Shasa flee.
“It’s coming,” Shasa whimpered. “Oh gods, it’s coming. It’s coming.”
“Shhh.” Huddled amidst a dense patch of bushes, Kairn gave his sister a squeeze, trying not to wince himself as behind them branches snapped and leaves were flattened beneath the demon’s bony paws.
Still wringing her hands and shaking, Shasa turned on him with her eyes wide and watery. “Can it…can it hear us?” she whispered.
“I doubt it. That’s what the rats are for.” He gave the one at his feet a nudge with his boot. He’d taken to killing anything small and furry that lingered too long around them. Shasa had protested at first, but then he showed her one, an eyeless creature with half its spine exposed, and she was quick to concede.
She shuddered as the tiny corpse rolled over in the grass. “Please don’t let it hear us. Please, oh please.”
“A lot less chance of it if you keep your mouth shut.”
She just pressed even closer to him, dissolving into incoherent blubbering.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
There was another crash as the monster plodded through the brush. He’d caught one good look at it as they were running for cover. The thing had the body of a behemoth, the carcass stripped down to the bones, muscles replaced with tight weavings of silk for added strength, with the full-feathered wings of a roc anchored to its spine. He could just see it trampling the bushes, its great vacant skull, with its massive tusks, swiveling this way and that, the mane of scarves that marked it as Kinu‘s flapping around it. A tree snapped and Shasa twitched.
“It’s going to eat us,” she cried.
Kairn sighed. “It’s not going to eat us.” Well, it wasn’t going to eat her anyway. “I’ve got an axe. I’ve got Reida’s glove.” He gave her shoulder a pat. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“I wish Sethan were here.”
“Say that again and I might eat you.”
For a moment it was quiet. The beast had passed them in its pacing, but if the last twenty minutes of cowering among the shrubbery had taught him anything it was that it would turn around in a moment.
“We’re going to die,” Shasa moaned. “Gods, I don’t want to die.”
“Please!” he hissed.
Shasa shrieked, pulling away from him as she curled in on herself and scuttled back into the bushes. Wordlessly, she flailed a hand at the rat that darted in front of Kairn’s feet. In an instant, he had the axe in hand and brought the blade down hard on the creature’s neck. He grabbed the rat by its withered tail to take a look at it.
“Was it…?” Shasa edged slowly back out of the leaves with a nervous glance behind to see if the demon had noticed her outburst.
“Reida’s.”
She frowned. “It’s a rat. How can you tell?”
Kairn held it up for her to see the scorpion pincers that dangled where its front paws should have been. Shasa shuddered.
“Now, if Reida is here…” He laid the rat on the ground next to the last.
“If you think Reida is coming to your rescue, you’re the one that’s delusional.”
“I never said I thought for one moment she was doing it out of love. She wants your baby.”
With a grimace, Shasa laid a hand to her flat belly. “It seems everyone has designs on him. Dead or alive.” Another tree snapped as the monster headed back their way. “It’s coming again!”
“It’s still pacing. It’s not coming. If we stay still and we stay quiet, it won’t-”
With a sudden thunder of hooves and the tearing and crunching of leaves and branches all around them, a pair of deer came racing through, demolishing their cover. The animals cast them no more than a fleeting glance as they leapt past. Shasa screamed as hooves sailed through the air, just missing their heads. The deer raced on into the trees. Behind them the demon bellowed.
Kairn whipped around to see a skull as tall as a man turned their way, its jaws wide and mane dancing like a ring of tentacles. “Now it’s coming.”
Shasa fumbled her way to her knees, tripped and flailed and tried to pull herself to her feet while fighting to cover what ground she could on all fours. “What do we do? What do we do?”
Shaking, Kairn curled his fist around the axe. “You run.”
“You’re not…not with that- It’s going to eat you!” she shrieked.
“Better me than both of us.” He tried to wave her on. Every move he forced from his body was suddenly terribly clumsy. Shasa seemed to be having the same trouble commanding her limbs. She staggered away. “Go!”
Somehow he managed to get to his feet. The hand that held the axe was shuddering so violently he hadn’t a clue how he was going to swing the thing. Empty eye sockets fixed on him, the demon was lurching closer and closer.
He braced himself for the teeth, put both hands to the axe and raised it. He’d have one chance at most to strike. The demon opened its jaw, let out a roar, and… with a deafening crack, collapsed into a pile of rubble.
The axe dropped from Kairn’s numb hands. He barely felt the butt hit his toes. The thump of the blade on the grass seemed to come from a world away.
Through the cloud of rapidly settling dust that spread from the heap of jumbled bones that had been only a moment away from taking his head off, he saw her, standing among the trees, staring back at him.
“Reida?” he said, blinking, his hands still poised in the air where they’d held the axe. “You…you killed it…”
“I did?” She looked from the corpse to Kairn and back. He thought he saw her glance off into the trees, but maybe it was just his neves playing tricks, because now she was grinning at him, as haughty as always. “I mean, of course I did.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“Saving your ass,” she said, picking her way along the edge of the pile of bones. “Isn’t that much obvious?”
“But why?” said Kairn. Shasa was creeping back behind him. He offered her a hand, but she shook her head stiffly and plopped down right there in the grass.
“Because,” said Reida, “you’re so hopelessly inept you can’t save it yourself. Isn’t that obvious too?”
“What I meant was why do you care?”
Reida shot Shasa a toothy grin. “Precious cargo,” she said. “Or maybe I was just worried about you.” She sidestepped a giant tusk that jutted from the wreckage and quickly closed the remaining distance between them.
“Since when do you-”
“Come now.” She was close enough for him to see every one of her pearly teeth. “I just saved your life. I’d think you’d want to melt in my arms for that. You know, maybe carry me off with you, to the next shady little inn on your itinerary and thank me properly between the sheets.”
“So that’s it.” Kairn took a step back.
“Or,” Reida went on, ignoring his glowering at her, “the grass will do just fine.” With a smirk at Shasa, she added, “I’m sure we could set you up with a blindfold, a couple of earplugs…” Shasa’s jaw dropped.
“Reida!” Kairn snapped, and she spun back to face him. He swore he could feel her breath on him, she was so close. “You…you think Sethan’s not here, so you can do what you want. I was ready to fight that demon, and I-I’ll fight you too…i-if I have to. You’re not getting your hands on my sister, and I’ll thank you to keep them off of me.”
Reida rolled her eyes. “Alright, alright,” she said. “I’ll settle for a kiss.” She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him to her.
“Get off me!” Kairn batted at her hands, but she wouldn’t take them away.
“You’d be a bloody smear on that tree about now if it wasn’t for me.”
“I-”
Her fist tightened in his shirt and she jerked him forward and planted her lips firmly on his. She let him go after a moment, her eyes holding his. “Take me with you. Anything comes after you, I’ll take care of it. And it won’t even cost you...much,” she amended, her eyes falling to his hips.
“No,” Kairn muttered, turning away. “Just the world.”
“Pssht. What’s it ever done for you?”
“She did get rid of the demon for us,” said Shasa. “Maybe…maybe we should let her help.”
Reida laughed. “And maybe you’re not entirely useless after all.”
“Shas, you’re not helping.” Kairn sighed, ran a still shaking hand through his hair, and looked at the pile of bones. Ribs and tusks stood out in all manner of odd angles. Bits of silk dangled from their sharp and splintered peaks. “When did you learn to do that anyway? I thought only Sethan could-”
“Oh please, I’m as good as Sethan any day.” Her hand caught his arm. “So what do you say? Are you taking me with you or not?”
“Not.” He twisted away. “Come on, Shas.”
Shasa wasn’t paying him any attention. She aimed a finger at the air behind him and squealed, “What’s that?”
Kairn and Reida’s heads whipped around to see where she was pointing. A black silk bat hovered just beneath the lowest branches. “Sethan’s,” they said together.
Kairn turned on Reida. “If he followed you…”
“If he followed me?” she said.
Shasa was listening to none of it. She was on her feet and racing towards them. “He couldn’t just let me go without checking to see I was alright,” she said. “Oh, Sethan, you must be so worried!”
“Get down!” Kairn caught her shoulder as she came charging and shoved her back. He reached for the axe, found a branch instead and smacked the bat out of the air.
Reida was staring at the girl in shock. “That bit about not being useless,” she muttered to Kairn. “I take it back.” Shasa was gaping at the bat with tears welling in her eyes.
“I thought you might,” said Kairn. He prodded the bat with the toe of his boot. It rolled in the grass, a lifeless piece of cloth. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
“What?” said Reida.
“Kill that demon.” He looked up slowly from the bat, and caught her eye. Her lips were drawn tight and she hastily ducked away. “Sethan did. He’s right behind you and you’ve stalled us long enough that he’ll be here any moment.”
“I never meant…I was supposed to kill that demon, you know.” She sighed, still not looking his way. “What if I hold him off for you? Will you believe me then?”
“What?”
“You go on. I’ll cover for you and catch up later.”
“But-”
Reida turned back around and smirked at him. “For you,” she said. And then her hand was in his shirt again and she was pulling him down, kissing him. “Now go.” She pushed him away and he stood there sputtering for a moment while she laughed. “Go!” she said again, with a light smack of her palm against his chest. With that, she turned and raced off into the trees, the way the bat had come.
“Crazy.” Kairn spat into the grass. He looked at Shasa, sprawled on the ground again, staring, bemused and teary, at Sethan’s bat. “Both of you. Crazy.” He bent, gave her shoulder a nudge, and picked up his axe. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be here when she gets back.”