Two Encounters with Rare & Terrifying Beasties
Two Encounters with Rare & Terrifying Beasties
Sirius and Adair are somewhat low on money these days. They haven’t had a good meal in over a month, and it’s starting to get on their nerves. They are snappy, grumpy, grouchy and generally in a constant bad mood, and this does nothing to inspire their ever-restless crew.
Sirius, therefore, decides to do something completely untoward and take on a few hunts here and there. Not that they’ve never done a hunt or two before, but these are the big guns, as it were. These are the real nasty bastards that no other life-enjoying sky pirate would touch with a seventy foot mooring pole.
The first game he picks up information on is the ever-elusive Trickster. There is a rumour circulating in the seedy taverns he likes to frequent that the thing is some sort of giant strain of Chocobo, and that it managed to fend off an entire pack of bandits all by itself. Sirius thinks this sounds like a promising hunt, and so, after picking up the papers from an odd Chocobo wrangler, he sets off to the Paramina Rift on the first of his amazing plans to make lots of gil, really quick.
The thing is, he hasn’t really counted on how… well, how tricky the Trickster is to find.
“Sirius, did anyone feel like mentioning to you that Trickster is bloody invisible?”
“No they did not.” Sirius squints into the blizzard, hand shading his eyes as he tries to make out shapes in the whirling snow.
“Oh well this is a pretty pickle and no mistake! How are we meant to find a damned invisible Chocobo? Even if it is gigantic. And not to mention all this bloody snow. Tch.”
“Adair…”
“What?”
“Be quiet a minute, will you?”
“Oh, alright then. What do you hear?”
“Nothing but your bloody giant gob! Shut up Stroud!” Sirius peers to his left, certain that he had seen some glimpse of movement in his peripheral vision.
“Ahah!” He draws his sword with a flourish and leaps through the eddies of snow, only to go crashing into… a bush. Which he promptly slices in half with a growl.
“Come out, you cowardly bastard!” Sirius shouts in a temper.
Suddenly, there is a very loud “KWEH!” at Sirius’ right ear, and he feels a sharp pain, almost as if a Chocobo beak has clipped a chunk out of his flesh. “What the…” he turns swiftly, but only in time to grab at snow and feathers.
The pair watch the disappearing arse of one gigantic pure white Chocobo forlornly, the only evidence it was ever there a whopping, bleeding gash in Sirius’ right ear and one solitary, crumpled feather, left bedraggled in his hand.
“Damned Chocobo bastard!” Sirius shouts after it. “Remind me never to take on a hunt again, will you Adair?”
“But you love hunts, Sirius my man. When else do we get to make loads of gil for hardly any effort?”
“Huh. Hardly any effort my arse. They’re nothing but trouble, and I’m bloody cold,” Sirius grumbles as he sheathes Durrandal. “All this time spent and all we have to show for it is one damnable feather. Let’s get out of here, Stroud.”
“Well, that weird wrangler might take it as a token of victory…” Adair looks hopeful.
“I doubt it, somehow, Stroud. But hey, waste not, want not, I always say.” Sirius twirls the feather once between his fingers before placing it carefully into his belt.
*
The second of these nasty bastards Sirius and Adair encounter is a creature of an entirely different calibre. This one, they have heard, has never been defeated, and, although it is technically not a hunt at all, Sirius feels that a great amount of respect could come their way should they defeat the terrifying beastie.
However, information about said beastie is somewhat hard to come by. In fact, all they know about it is that it lives in the Pharos at Ridorana, deep in the Subterra, or so it is said.
This sounds like a dangerous mission to Adair, who is not entirely sure of the wisdom in pursuing such a creature, but Sirius is adamant, and besides, if they manage to defeat the undefeatable, fame and wealth will be theirs. So why does Adair feel so… uneasy about the whole enterprise?
“Sirius my man, I don’t like it.”
“Oh, snap out of it, Stroud! What’s not to like? Swashbuckling adventures, dashing pirates of the sky, searching out immeasurable riches and fame? And not to mention the women. Think of the women, Stroud! They will fall at our feet, all of a swoon! Desperate to touch the brave adventurers, they’ll be! And what will we do? Why, we shall oblige them, of course. And we will have entire harems at our disposal! And anyway, it’s not like anything’s posed much of a problem so far, is it?”
“Sirius, we’ve had to scarper from mobs of giant bloody frogs three times already! If you don’t call that a problem, I don’t know what is!”
“Pfah, frogs. Mere amphibians, good Stroud, and I shall not sully my blade in their cold blood. No, the big bastard, that’s why we’re here. I just wish the bugger was a bit easier to find…”
“That’s precisely my point, Sirius! If this thing is as big as and terrifying as everyone says it is, then surely we’d have come across it by now. It’s suspicious, that’s what it is.”
“Nothing suspicious about it, Stroud! We’re simply not looking in the right places.”
“Which is hardly surprising, since it’s bloody pitch black down here!”
“Well, I admit, you have a point there. I sure wish we’d brought… ah, wait a minute! I knew there was a reason I packed that torch!” Sirius reaches for the length of wood stowed in his belt in triumph. “Ahah! Now Adair, if you’d be so kind…” He holds out the torch to Adair, who proceeds to cup his hands around the oily end and whisper a word or two, and in seconds, there is a blaze of fire and the torch is lit. Sirius waves it around with a grin, illuminating shadowed corners of the Subterra which were previously hidden from sight.
“That way!” he points dramatically, and leads the way, torch held high in one hand, and the other resting lightly on the ruby pommel of Durrandal, just in case.
“Sirius my man… I had a thought. You know what’s more suspicious than not being able to find the giant beastie?”
“What?”
“The fact that there’s nothing at all in these rooms… I mean sure, outside there were frogs and giant horses and allsorts, and then there were the dragon lichs and the ghosties,” Adair shudders, then gets a hold of himself. “I mean, it just feels a bit… odd that there’s nothing around, you know?”
“You could be onto something there, Adair. Maybe we’re close!” Sirius drops his voice to a whisper. “Do you think we’re close?”
“If the beast is as terrifying as people say, it sure makes sense that nothing else would want to come near it…”
“Wait a minute… what’s that over there?” Sirius holds up the torch to better show Adair what he’d seen.
“Looks like a pot.”
“A pot! Pots have treasure in, Adair! We could be onto something here!”
“I wonder if there’s treasure in this one…” Adair pads softly over to the immobile pot and, crouching down, he peers inside. “Hey Sirius, I think there is something in here! Bring the torch a minute, I want to get a better look.”
Sirius tiptoes over and hands the torch to Adair, who points the flaming end carefully towards the black mouth of the pot.
“There is something in there! What is it?” Adair squints against the brightness of the fire.
“Ugly looking thing isn’t it.” Sirius nudges the round base with his toe.
The pot begins to rock, gently but ominously and Sirius gives it another good kick. This time, the movement is much more pronounced, and Adair falls over backwards with a shout as something tickles his face.
“What the hell was that!?” Sirius stands on tiptoes, looking down into the pot, and is very surprised to see something wiggling around inside it.
“Sirius my man, something tells me that’s not treasure…” As if on cue, a head pops out of the pot and a pair of malevolent eyes glares at Sirius and Adair, and, suddenly, their torch goes out with a sad little fizzle and they are night-blind and terrified in the dark, with a scary pot.
“Sirius, what the hell is that thing?”
“I think this might be what we came here to find, Stroud…”
“What, this is the fearsome, undefeated Magick Pot? Somehow, I didn’t think it’d actually be a pot…”
There is an eerie sound coming from the pot. An ominous sound, a rolling kind of sound… almost as if the pot was gently rolling across the floor to eat them alive.
Sirius backs away from that sound and promptly falls over Adair, who is still on the floor clutching the extinguished torch.
They are illuminated briefly by a greenish light, and the pot looms at them out of the shadows, the sphere-topped antenna atop its head waving in time to its rocking motions as it inches ever closer.
“Sirius, I’m not sure I want to stick around to find out what this pot wants to do to us.”
“I am heartily in agreement with you, Stroud. Bugger the fame, bugger the wealth and especially bugger the women!”
“They only love us for our fame anyway!”
“We’re better off without them, Stroud! But now I feel the need for good, clean deck beneath my feet, and the open sky above me. This Pharos place gives me the willies with its bloody frogs and its demented pots.” They hoist themselves from the clammy floor and Sirius dusts himself off fastidiously. “Let’s scarper, Stroud!”