Head for the Hills (Vanilla, Rhubarb, FotW + Malt, etc.)
'Verse: Natural Forces
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Vanilla #5 (friendly competition), Rhubarb #7 (easier said than done), FOTW: Vinegar #30 (at your own risk) + Malt (when I said death before dishonor, I meant alphabetically) + Butterscotch + Sprinkles
Rating: M - graphic gore, death, perfectly natural reactions to unnatural fear
Title: Head for the Hills
Summary: Of monsters and men.
Notes: Takes place 15 or so years after the Awakening, in 2070, during the height of the monster outbreak. Events here preclude certain events mentioned in A Web to Catch the Wind. The namedrop is a clue.
According to my sources, Ilma is Finnish for “air”. Vainar is from väinä, which is Finnish for “wide and slow-flowing river” apparently. Louhi is... well it doesn't matter now. These meanings were supposed to be Significant with a capital S, but it didn’t come out like I wanted it to. Perhaps later.
The first clue should have been the silence.
It should have been, but Ilma was talking the entire way, filling up that silence with babble. He never had been able to stand the quiet, Vainar realized, but it was a vague realization; he was not consciously aware that but for the breathy excitement of his friend and the crunch of their boots in the snow, everything was silence. Nothing alerted to their noisy advance through the bare-branched trees. No birds called to them and no squirrels chattered in alarm, though Vainar knew from previous experience that the woods around here were full of the bushy-tailed beasts. Still, Ilma's constant barrage of high-strung energy was distracting enough that he ended up ignoring the information from his ears entirely.
Or trying to.
"I'm going to kill that monster before you can even fire a single Curse," Ilma said, eyes wide and bright.
Vainar rolled his own eyes, shoving his gloveless hands in his pockets again. It was too cold to be out monster hunting, and he was rapidly sobering from the early-morning trek, even if the snow only compressed two inches with each step. Two weeks before he would have needed snowshoes or a specialized Change spell to avoid sinking down to his chest. That would have killed the buzz.
Ilma twirled a large stick in his hand, a branch from one of the skinnier trees, and was merrily ignoring the cut on his hand from when he had broken it off as they passed by. Without breaking stride, and he was well and truly high if he wasn’t screaming every time the bark scraped against the wound.
“You don’t believe me,” Ilma continued, “do you? I swear, it’s around here somewhere. Louhi was very clear on that-”
That should have been the second clue, that the information had come from Louhi of all people, but Vainar wasn’t listening. He’d turned his attention to the wild at last, and noticed something strange.
“-and I know I heard her tell Div that she saw a shadow as big as a house moving in this direction-”
Vainar stopped walking. “Shut up!” he snapped. “There’s something… out there.” He shivered, though the air was as unnaturally still as the rest of the world in that moment, and looked up.
The treetops were whipping back and forth as if in a gale, making no noise though they should have been riotous.
Ilma was already ahead by a few paces, still chattering, when he noticed that Vainar wasn’t beside him and stopped as well. He turned around, arms folded. “What are you doing? We’re going to kill the monster, right? Come on!”
Vainar was still looking up when the branches stilled.
He slowly lowered his eyes back to Ilma, and thus was too late to see the monster before it vanished back into the trees.
He only saw the other man, still standing there with his hands on his hips… though his head - his handsome face - was nowhere in sight. Then, not two seconds after Vainar realized, in the strange detached way that only comes from drunkenness combined with shock, that his friend was dead, the body crumpled. Blood spurted out from his stump of a neck, filling up his own footprints and turning white red, before the snow melted from the still-warm fluid.
Ilma’s head, irritated expression and all, descended to earth almost gracefully, like a clump of confetti that burst upon impact with the ground.
“Ilma,” Vainar breathed, feeling like his innards were going to come up through his mouth. “Oh, God-” Something came through - perhaps he truly did sober in that moment, perhaps he had been in the process since stepping into the chill and the sensation of the urine running down his leg helped him along - something that said run. He obeyed the instinct, whirling about so fast he nearly fell, and launched himself in the direction he thought the village was. He ran as fast as he could, the adrenaline pumping through him making him faster than he had ever been. But the hormone did not help him think clearly, and if only he had thought to use Change magic to boost his speed, he might have lived.
A howl came from behind him, a split second before something hit him in the back: something large and heavy that smelled like sulfur.
He felt its breath on his neck. He knew he was going to die… then he knew nothing at all.