Sipping at her tea, the lady in red stared out along the ocean, listening to the sound of the waves and the shouting beachgoers. No longer with what one might arguably construe as joy or shenanigans. No, now their vocal occillations reflected only terror and agony. Such a vast change for all of two minutes of applying the toxin.
She'd have to turn it down considerably to market it in UN regulated nations.
"What sort of pestilence is this?"
"One unrelated to us."
The three had entered the beach from a Joe's Crab Shack patio that touched the sand; they each had white hair, but there the similarities ended. One crouched on her haunches and passively watched a man die; the two behind her stood silently, one very tall, the other very short.
"An agent of some kind?" Asked the kneeling one, standing and turning to look at them both. When her eyes met the vacant ones of the Famine, she looked down deferentially.
"In more ways than one. I scent toxin from their suffering." The other, older Conquest said passively, like she was remarking on the weather. Her simple white dress fluttered in the dead ocean air. "How efficient."
"There." Said the Famine, pointing with her staff toward a figure in red; the only other person not currently dying. Unlike a certain other glowing destroyer of sustenance, this one's killing light sparkled around her like powdered snow being hit with sunlight. "We'll go. Be wary."
"Aye, Grand Magister." She said as she returned to her feet. She was a Conquest as well, although wearing simple white leathers and traveling gear; a bow was slung over her back. The three proceeded towards the other, the two warriors taking point in front of their smaller leader.
Viewing the three over the edge of black sunglasses, the woman in red slowly lowered the cup and stood, stretching before she dove to burrow through the ground. Not in the manner of a mole, or a dog, or such, but as a crab might when securing shelter on the sea floor below. Placing odds at what looked like a hundred pounds of fairly human meat's ability to disappear from view in trying to do such might impoverish a few bettors, for there was soon little left visible but an abandoned sandal and her possession.
Something surviving, three armed, ready looking somethings, was either evidence the toxin had less lasting effect as well as more immediate effect than intended, or that there were variables she hadn't accounted for that made them immune. Either way, she didn't intend to stick around and answer for it. If she could help it anyway.
The welcome wetness of the waterline obscured her, albeit less so than she would like, as she stopped digging and watched for a second. Just the moment, surely.
"...Hah! How do you like that?" Said the Conquest, putting her hands on her hips and laughing out of surprise. She truly hadn't been expecting that response. The other one had drawn her bow, her hand on the wire, her eyes trying to be everywhere. She was probably under them-
"Calm down." Said a thin, quiet little voice. The older Conquest was armed with a long, sharp red blade, but she hadn't drawn it. Instead, she gestured around them, at the piles of the dead.
"If nothing else, this bears investigating. A month in this island, and naught but nothing in our hands. As long as we're playing by the laws, we may as well make nice with neighbors. That means being ready, but not overtly threatening."
"Who's being overtly threatening? You saw that? She could pull us under and choke us to death-"
"But she hasn't. Do you see that ending well for her, no matter what manner of thing... Digs like that, in any case? Sheathe your stick-poker, I will handle the first contact."
The ranger scowled before stowing her bow. The other turned the to Famine behind them, who looked up blankly. "Permission to engage?"
"Advance and be aware."
"So be it." She intoned, before drawing her blade and driving it into the sand, point first. She walked away with her hands at her sides, calmly looking around. When she reached the entrance to the hole, she picked up the sandal and glanced to her sides.
She stood there and held up her empty hands, before pointing to her front and then gesturing to her mouth, before holding up her hands once again. Her eyes scanned everything she could see, trying to spot a disturbance in time to run, just in case.
The strange merchant might well have tried something stupid despite their clear military bearing and armaments out of desperation if she hadn't heard rowing and song. It made her skin crawl. She knew of those songs, and the pickle breath that it came out on between flesh coated teeth, from tiny men whose coats were dyed in the blood of victims and foes. The powries were coming.
She fled and fell at the feet of the one at the mound. "Red dwarves! They come!"
A distinctly distant part of her reflected that even if her gas hadn't killed the people on the beach, they would still have died horribly after all. Some of them might have even been fed their own organs while they were being made into jewelry and apparel for the wave riders, the men hiders.
"Ah, there you ar- Red Dwarves?" The tall woman asked, tilting her head after taking a step back."From your tone, I suspect-" she held her hand out before a long white strip of cloth unwound from her sleeve and seized her sword, snapping it into her hand. "-they'll be a bit more red once we're done with them."
"I knew we'd end up fighting." The other Conquest said morosely, frowning at the woman who'd come back from the hole. Her bow was back in her hands, and an arrow was nocked, ready to draw.
"If it's inevitable, being right becomes less impressive." Returned the other, her long hair waving lightly in the wind. She hefted her sharp blade up, panning the area again before looking back to the tunneler.
"When we are once more the only living on this sand-span, perhaps we can have a civilized conversation. I suspect we've no business that crosses you, and, well-" she looked around appraisingly at the carpet of corpses. "-I've seen and done worse. Or would that be better? Either way, your efficiency pleases me-"
The rest of her words were cut off by a sudden storm of cracking and creaking; the ornately lace-dressed Famine raising her hand as parts of the surf in front of them began to flash-freeze. The saltwater turned to blue ice in an instant, shapes of waves and swells leaving disturbances over the otherwise flat plane in a wide cone emanating and continuing to grow from the shoreline.
One raised her bow and drew the string, aiming hard at boats and sharp teeth aboard them; the Famine lowered her hand and impassively watched, her aura waving like a heat-shimmer now. The other Conquest smiled serenely, her eyes flat with murder.
"Try and keep up~" she sang, before her sword alight with white fire.
Soon within vision atop the ships came a set of what appeared at first glance to be swarthy, sturdy old men, if short not only from their lean but from their small legs and stature as well. They were a folk of girth outwardly almost as much as they were lacking for height, and their rippling muscle left their skin and sinew almost as crimson even in action as their burgundy eyes and deep garnet caps. Their taloned hands gripped various weapons, almost every man of them bearing a pikestaff alongside another accouterments of murder, and their short legs were almost entirely encompassed by the heavy iron hobnailed boots they wore, with points almost as cruel as their smiles.
Swiftly, though, they were blotted from view, as were their barrel-like vessels, by a mass of wooden arrows with shale and obsidian barbs that blotted the remnants of the day's light in a hideous whine that impaled the beach thoroughly in barbs and certainly killed anyone that might have vaguely held on through the gas.
A decently extraordinary crustacean businesswoman of Conquests-and-Famine's recent acquaintance winced at the sounds of the skewered flesh and the sound of the roiling rollicking ships landing more properly, the murderous faerie pirates, very red dwarves indeed, flooding across and scalping everything in range to dye their gear in an orgiastic whirl of geysering gore.
"...the moment I saw a red sunrise, I knew it would be a good day." The Conquest murmured, her upward eyes filled with barbed black points. She heard footsteps in the sand as her ward got over to her. She knew what was coming. The white flames burning the red sword grew, throwing a sharp, furious light around her, as she braced and got ready to-
The air screamed.
The arrows immediately above them-a small clearing in the forest- burnt to ash as they hit the roiling heat mirage of oxygen heated incredibly rapidly; if the force had been closer, it would've set them both afire. As it was, the disturbance winked out before the rest of the arrows had impacted into sand and corpses.
They both turned and looked at the Famine, one whipping around, the other slowly and calmly. The Magister's thin glove was smoking; she didn't stare back at either one as she lowered it, eyeing the advancing forces. Her aura had weakened, but the glow from her body was more pronounced.
"Carnifex. First Contact is yours." She said flatly.
"I don't believe these raiders will much care for diplomacy." Said the woman, watching an advance party rip the watch off a man's arm, with his hand still attached. The other looked up, her eyes widening.
"They're readying another salvo-" She started, raising her bow and readying an arrow of her own.
"Unfortunate. Carnifex, stand ready. One, stand ready. You-" she very briefly looked down at the hole. Not inside it, just at it. "-stand ready."
The Famine raised her hand once again; what had formerly been a large semicircle of solid ice on the waterfront cracked and squeaked as it began to shatter and drift apart. The ice shattered into chunks, bobbing with the surf; the waterfront was broken apart by their sudden presence.
"Form a triangle." She absently sketched the shape with her finger. "The corridor is down."
The two nodded assent and hurried to their positions, both readying their weapons to fight as the Famine gathered her power in a sudden storm of sea-green diamond dust around her and prepared to add many more dead bodies to the beach.
"There was once a set of fools," a voice murmured. "They fled the world over with ill gotten gains, kin dead at their hands. But they were pursued, even through the blackest tempests the Pacific had to offer. By many, some those same kin, others foes acquired on the way. They did not learn until they came to shore here that you cannot outrun some monsters."
"You can only kill them."
The powries would normally belong within their old ruins and bairns, safely clustered in the borders between England and Scotland. Clearly this was not the case. In chasing the men who would one day be foreign barrow-wights and draugr themselves terrifying the night watches of the further flung islands, they had come across entirely new populaces to hunt and ravage, both undersea and on the land. And the cruel red dwarves had relished this place in the Archipelago ever since.
Some of the oldest of them had memory of knights and powers, dominions that could oppose them, salt and prayer or spell and sorcery; but many of those now native by birth to Kuwahawian lands had no idea of what they were running straight into.
The difference was marked in part by the oars moving some of the ships subtly away from the beach and into open waters in a few cases, while the others used the remnants of their own vessels as a wall against the broken icy waterfront smashing their hulls to bits in Famine's cryomantic maneuver. At least before they pulled into a headlong rush, knives and pikes alike swinging akimbo for the mighty women in their triangle.
"Yes! YES! Show me what passes for FURY-" the Conquest howled, stepping forward and putting the motion into her swing. The sword whipped with a white aftertrail before it shattered points and tips of pikes. Her backswing ripped into weapons, faces, and stomachs proper. "-amongst your kind!"
Her Aura crackled into life, the white and red circle reaching from behind her knees to over the back of her head; In it's killing light, she set to work.
The other Conquest's Aura was already up, but it was a much smaller circle; partly because she was a smaller woman, and partly because she'd been made a little different. Having an aura was unavoidable, but an archer with a lit-up target on her at all times was obviously a bad idea. Hers shone softly, with a morning-fog pale white as she drew, nocked, and sent arrow after arrow at any Red Dwarf looking at her or the Magister. More than a few burned with white fire, and occasionally they exploded after they'd stabbed deep into flesh.
In contrast to the Carnifex's serene face and shining eyes, or the Magister's almost disinterest, she was keyed up and frightened. There were many foes on this beach, and only three of them...
The Famine stuck her staff in the sand and raised both her hands this time; her glow dimmed dramatically before her own aura made everything around her into a shimmery mirage, from the heat. Power rushed from her hands, the air burning, everything from her place in the Triangle down to the Ocean superheating in an instant. The sand of the beach was glassed, and anything unlucky enough to be in it's path roasted and torched to ash.
When it hit the water and the small rime of Ice, the waves began to boil; gouts of steam hissed from the ocean as the ice around the impact area rapidly died. She lowered her hands and heaved a tired sigh, taking noticeably deeper breaths and staring down at the glass trail. Her glow and her aura were both minimally present and diminished.
In many cases the blazing bodies and cleaved corpses simply fell where they had been struck down. That was, after all, the natural way of things. In some odd ones, however, they lasted two, even three or four lethal blows. Over the course of the arduous minutes of conflict, the Conquest would notice that in these cases, the Powries she hacked apart partially reformed seconds later at a significant loss of hue to their apparel.
Not unakin to many monsters that fed on souls and blood or other intricacies of life, the Powrie would die if they went too long without a victim or if they lost that which they dyed their coats and caps in. Some had far more lives stored away than others. Red coronas of their own spent claret and the stolen essences of others spread in place of punctured corpses or hewed sinews. At first, at any rate.
None made it past five, although the vicious little monsters took full advantage of their at first surprising secret.
With time and victims to harvest they might have been nominally invulnerable in theory during a raid, but they were being slain far too quickly and furiously to begin restoring in application, and there simply wasn't enough blood to save the invasive parasitic fae from destruction wreaked in powers and dominating injury. Spears and arrows lay along the shores in muted tones and carcasses by and large, many ashen and unrecognizable.
One leader lay with his head impaled on his own pike, a barb through his eye from a failed attempt to stab the largest Conquest through her face turned into a parry that sent his weapon flying back too fast to react to. Another was slumped over her shoulder, a knife embedded in a soft point of her armor but wholly and utterly dead himself from a crushed in throat. By the time the cacophony of chaotic carnage had finished, there was not another sail in sight; the remainder had retreated up the coast.
For now.
The Conquest turned in place, her eyes lancing around; when there was no more movement or aggressors incoming, she straightened, held her arms out, and laughed joyfully up at the sun. Her formerly white dress was covered in red blood, a mirror of the Powries, and her hair ran with it. She was injured, but of the scrapes and slices, She only paid one any mind. She reached and grasped the knife stuck fast in her shoulder, hauling it out with a slight wince to examine the blade. She was still chuckling a little, good cheer crinkling her eyes.
The other was still fully alert and tense; Her shoulders were up as she panned around the beach, looking for the slightest signs of anything moving. More than one Powrie had dropped to an arrow only to get back up and silently close with her from a blind spot. Her extremities were gashed and bleeding; Her bow was cracked, following a hasty but necessary parry, and her eye was blackened. Of the three, she'd taken the most damage- Her leg grinded in places it shouldn't have, following her knee meeting a maul.
The Famine was unharmed and unchanged; Her delicate gloves had burnt to grey ash off her hands, but otherwise she looked just as disconnected as before. She picked her staff from it's place in the sand before the two trudged over to her, one like a triumphant dog coming from a hunt, the other wincing and fragile.
"Hostiles?"
"Dead, gone, or both." Said the Carnifex, wiping the blade of her sword onto a body before hefting it and shattering it's chest with a wicked smirk. The other Conquest sat down heavily, putting her hands on her knees and lowering her head.
The Magister looked at her, but said nothing, instead walking over to the hole in the sand and looking down inside it for the first time. Today had been for watching the Island and finding the likely hiding places certain others of their kind would be drawn to; From the moment she'd lost a bet with the Carnifex and been forced by social conventions to pay for both of their meals, she'd felt this day steadily but surely slipping away from her micromanaging.
The literal floor of corpses, glass trail down the beach, the steam still wafting around- these were not subtle. Then again, neither were They.
"You may unearth. The Other monsters are gone."
"I'd thought First Contact was my onus?" Asked the taller one, sauntering over with her dripping sword on her shoulder.
"Wonderful going of it so far." Muttered the rookie under her breath, although she got up and joined them as well. Together, all three looked down into the hole.
"...She left." The Famine guessed in the silence.
"She left. She watched. She came back, reconsidering," appended the subject of inquiry. "-they're raiders. Murderers. They gain most easily from swift strikes to unwitting targets. They weren't prepared for warriors like you. But they will be. Somewhere out there, they'll be watching, waiting, to take you. When you sleep; when you're wounded; when you're ill. They never stop."
"I would like to surrender to you, because I am afraid to leave."
She sat gingerly beside the messy pile that had formerly been a head properly attached to a body that wasn't bisected from shoulder to hip, and stared up.
"You mean to say we've found foes who live for battle and will never cease their efforts to murder us so long as we stay on this world? Who will keep coming regardless of their own number we slay?" The Carnifex asked slowly, in a just-making-sure tone heading toward glee. Her small smile was at odds with the bloodlust that hadn't yet left her eyes. "Life is truly wonderful at times."
"Why are you afraid? Did you kill a beach full of their people too? Or are they after you for other reasons?" Asked the one with a bow, eyeing her mistrustfully.
"You needn't surrender. We don't take prisoners." The Famine said quietly. She studied the woman, especially her hands. That digging disappearing act had been rather unexpected. She looked at the other two steadily; despite her shorter stature and much less intimidating build, she was obviously in command. "...Do you have a name? We don't. Only titles."
The Famine looked over; One Powrie was clinging to life and crawling away. She pointed at it before it's stomach superheated within a second, making it's body explode and shower the sand around it in flesh and gore. She lowered her hand while the other two looked on, one letting out a bark of laughter, the other fighting a smile.
For a scant second, the coating of blood did not seem to obscure a view of the Carnifex, but this quickly changed.
"Me? Oh, dearie, you should never ask a witch her name," the creature the Famine was asking slowly laughed. "Whoever made you knew what they were doing! Names have power. Titles are just ways to label a thing, but -names- have power."
She dusted herself off and emerged more properly, glasses reaffixed and glamour also. "Most just call me the sea witch. Or a sea witch."
"I make potions and compounds, but I find lately arms dealing poisons is far more profitable and entertaining. I almost thought you'd come to fricassee my poor old shell."
Dropping the glamour, she looked nothing like a brunette lithe little lady in an overly clinging red beachwear anymore. She looked, in fact, entirely chitinous and crustacean.
A guard that looked akin to her, but in muted tones, rose from the water and started to draw a sword with an apology on its lack of lips, until she silenced it with a motion.
"This place is bountiful with ingredients and subjects for them, but we may have to return to the Korean isles if this menacing keeps up."
The bow-armed girl took a step back and double-took at the chitin and the shells where before had been a woman and nothing at all, respectfully; The Carnifex raised her eyebrows, while the Famine's expression didn't change.
"The Sea Witch, then." She said, investing the title with proper noun status. "I am the Famine. I am the Grand Magister. These are Conquests. She-" she pointed behind her without turning away. "-is the Carnifex. And she-" same deal, unlooking pointing."- is a Rookie."
"Technically, I suppose at the moment you'd be more of a Sand Witch."
Now she turned, to stare blankly at the taller executioner.
"Well, I thought it funny..." She grumbled. The Famine didn't answer, instead looking around the body-strewn beach once more and putting the pieces together. There was no lightbulb over her head, but her glow made up for it.
"...Our apologies for ruining your test run." She said. "Your toxin seems to have worked well."
She nodded, although her posture suggested some displeasure. Her face, of course, was utterly unscrutable aside from the waving of the stalks with her motions. "Too well, actually. Far too high a kill ratio with too quick a time elapsing. Oh, my customers will be ecstatic if I publish it as it is, but it's going to raise quite a lot of hell from the humans' United Nations and 'rules of war', and all of that paper mockery.
"But that's exactly what testing is for, after all; I can tone it down. I assume, oh Grand Magister, The Carnifex, and rookie," she added, "that you are not yourselves Human as such. Or from here. Actually, I thought that when it didn't kill you, but the combat certainly put it almost beyond questioning."
"Is there some means I might perform to help you? Or repay you for preventing my very likely demise by the Red Dwarves?"
"Rules of War? They have those here?" The Carnifex rolled her eyes. "How droll."
"We are weapons. Gene-forged. Science and Magic entwined." Said the Famine, looking down at herself solemnly. "Conquests cannot be brought low. Except through violence. And I... Well." Paused the glowing, vaguely ghosty little girl.
"We are from far, far away-"
"Should we be telling them this?" Asked the newbie, staring between the two crustaceans while trying not to stand on her hurt leg. Now it was her turn to be stared blankly at, after which she winced and quieted back down.
"The humans who made us named our genotypes after the bringers of an Apocalypse- fitting, don't you think?- but we aren't the only ones. There are already too many others abroad and converging here in the coming months." Said the Carnifex lightly.
"...We've come so far. They sent us. These others are... Disturbances. Do you know the Kobbers? Things have grown complicated." Said the Famine, frowning unhappily at the Sea Witch's eye stalks. "Our orders are to simplify these problems."
"In the future... Will you watch from the water? There are five Others. Four, and one most important. The sooner they die, the better. By our hands." The Magister said, her thin voice unchanging. Four renegades and an unbound War elemental... Fools, one and all.
"War- an Apocalypse, like you? What are the other Four?" She amended herself and peered at the white haired paled augmented beings. "That you wish of us to watch for?"
"War. Famine. Conquest. Pestilence. Death." The Famine said, in a hollow tone. "Born to wage proxy wars. Wizards hate dirtying their own hands. Cowards. But they held all the cards. They held all the leashes. All the power."
"Until the armistices, and the treaties, and the de-aggressions, at any rate." Interjected the Carnifex. She sounded just a little bitter. "Once we weren't truly needed anymore..."
"There was a cull. Many of our kind died. Many were put down in their sleep. Many starved. Many were torn apart by mobs. Streets ran with glowing blood. They forged us as weapons before snapping us over their knees. But not all. Not all." The Famine continued simply, as though the past didn't bother her. It DID, but that was too far buried deep down to come out in her voice or eyes. It wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
"Some of us still live. Obviously. But... The four we seek are renegade. Too unsubtle, too bright. They will bring trouble. Attention. They'll bring the storm back to Solis. THEIR master works for his own ends. A Death- in her black dress, silent and cold. A Conquest-"
"Just barely. More an abomination. A half-breed." The Carnifex chipped in again, with a disgusted sneer.
"-an angel, wreathed in white. A Famine- glowing and small. Sickly and weak. Just like me. And a Pestilence- armored, rotting from the inside out, tired and weary. They seek the fifth. A War that belongs to no one. Unbound. Free from any chains but her own."
The Rookie spat on the beach, looking disquieted.
"A War that serves no master. A war that fights for others and herself. That is a Kobber. That has free will... This cannot be allowed. The four seek her. To re-shackle her. To enslave her. Their master wants her badly."
"But Ours cannot permit this. So We will end it." She said, with quiet finality. "You will know them when seen. There will be no doubt in your mind. The sooner they fall... The safer the rest of us are."
"We will be on Kuwahawi for a time. Until the mission is over. You don't need to fight in our battle. But if you see any of them... Please tell us. I want to go home. In return- we can keep helping each other." The Magister finished, looking more than a little drawn and tuckered out from all the words she'd had to use. Normally she kept talking to a minimum, but she had to make sure the situation was clear.
"If nothing else... We'll ensure the Red Dwarves do little more than bleed and die at your feet, as long as they intend to come for you. Mostly out of bloodlust, but still. More besides, anyone who'd kill this many humans to test their wares is quite alright in MY book." The Carnifex said, smiling and using her swordpoint to flip over a charred, poisoned corpse for emphasis.
The crab stared at them impassively before passing over a small conch. "If you require my contact or to order weapons, speak into that and listen into it. When you hear erupting volcanoes instead of the swirling ocean, I will be beginning to answer. I'll even let you test some of the experiments for cheap, if you'd be interested."
"I can hardly be everywhere, after all."
The pair slowly slipped into the briney drink and out of sight again thereafter, leaving only Apocalyptic figures and corpses in their wake. The moon sank, leaving the waves bathed in gold around the lathe of their white and green lapping borders against the isle, and setting the pale stones against the waterline seemingly ablaze. Fruited trees and palms swayed with peaceful ignorance of any ill transpiring in a breeze not quite yet able to be called of the morning, but nearly so.
She'd have to turn it down considerably to market it in UN regulated nations.
"What sort of pestilence is this?"
"One unrelated to us."
The three had entered the beach from a Joe's Crab Shack patio that touched the sand; they each had white hair, but there the similarities ended. One crouched on her haunches and passively watched a man die; the two behind her stood silently, one very tall, the other very short.
"An agent of some kind?" Asked the kneeling one, standing and turning to look at them both. When her eyes met the vacant ones of the Famine, she looked down deferentially.
"In more ways than one. I scent toxin from their suffering." The other, older Conquest said passively, like she was remarking on the weather. Her simple white dress fluttered in the dead ocean air. "How efficient."
"There." Said the Famine, pointing with her staff toward a figure in red; the only other person not currently dying. Unlike a certain other glowing destroyer of sustenance, this one's killing light sparkled around her like powdered snow being hit with sunlight. "We'll go. Be wary."
"Aye, Grand Magister." She said as she returned to her feet. She was a Conquest as well, although wearing simple white leathers and traveling gear; a bow was slung over her back. The three proceeded towards the other, the two warriors taking point in front of their smaller leader.
Viewing the three over the edge of black sunglasses, the woman in red slowly lowered the cup and stood, stretching before she dove to burrow through the ground. Not in the manner of a mole, or a dog, or such, but as a crab might when securing shelter on the sea floor below. Placing odds at what looked like a hundred pounds of fairly human meat's ability to disappear from view in trying to do such might impoverish a few bettors, for there was soon little left visible but an abandoned sandal and her possession.
Something surviving, three armed, ready looking somethings, was either evidence the toxin had less lasting effect as well as more immediate effect than intended, or that there were variables she hadn't accounted for that made them immune. Either way, she didn't intend to stick around and answer for it. If she could help it anyway.
The welcome wetness of the waterline obscured her, albeit less so than she would like, as she stopped digging and watched for a second. Just the moment, surely.
"...Hah! How do you like that?" Said the Conquest, putting her hands on her hips and laughing out of surprise. She truly hadn't been expecting that response. The other one had drawn her bow, her hand on the wire, her eyes trying to be everywhere. She was probably under them-
"Calm down." Said a thin, quiet little voice. The older Conquest was armed with a long, sharp red blade, but she hadn't drawn it. Instead, she gestured around them, at the piles of the dead.
"If nothing else, this bears investigating. A month in this island, and naught but nothing in our hands. As long as we're playing by the laws, we may as well make nice with neighbors. That means being ready, but not overtly threatening."
"Who's being overtly threatening? You saw that? She could pull us under and choke us to death-"
"But she hasn't. Do you see that ending well for her, no matter what manner of thing... Digs like that, in any case? Sheathe your stick-poker, I will handle the first contact."
The ranger scowled before stowing her bow. The other turned the to Famine behind them, who looked up blankly. "Permission to engage?"
"Advance and be aware."
"So be it." She intoned, before drawing her blade and driving it into the sand, point first. She walked away with her hands at her sides, calmly looking around. When she reached the entrance to the hole, she picked up the sandal and glanced to her sides.
She stood there and held up her empty hands, before pointing to her front and then gesturing to her mouth, before holding up her hands once again. Her eyes scanned everything she could see, trying to spot a disturbance in time to run, just in case.
The strange merchant might well have tried something stupid despite their clear military bearing and armaments out of desperation if she hadn't heard rowing and song. It made her skin crawl. She knew of those songs, and the pickle breath that it came out on between flesh coated teeth, from tiny men whose coats were dyed in the blood of victims and foes. The powries were coming.
She fled and fell at the feet of the one at the mound. "Red dwarves! They come!"
A distinctly distant part of her reflected that even if her gas hadn't killed the people on the beach, they would still have died horribly after all. Some of them might have even been fed their own organs while they were being made into jewelry and apparel for the wave riders, the men hiders.
"Ah, there you ar- Red Dwarves?" The tall woman asked, tilting her head after taking a step back."From your tone, I suspect-" she held her hand out before a long white strip of cloth unwound from her sleeve and seized her sword, snapping it into her hand. "-they'll be a bit more red once we're done with them."
"I knew we'd end up fighting." The other Conquest said morosely, frowning at the woman who'd come back from the hole. Her bow was back in her hands, and an arrow was nocked, ready to draw.
"If it's inevitable, being right becomes less impressive." Returned the other, her long hair waving lightly in the wind. She hefted her sharp blade up, panning the area again before looking back to the tunneler.
"When we are once more the only living on this sand-span, perhaps we can have a civilized conversation. I suspect we've no business that crosses you, and, well-" she looked around appraisingly at the carpet of corpses. "-I've seen and done worse. Or would that be better? Either way, your efficiency pleases me-"
The rest of her words were cut off by a sudden storm of cracking and creaking; the ornately lace-dressed Famine raising her hand as parts of the surf in front of them began to flash-freeze. The saltwater turned to blue ice in an instant, shapes of waves and swells leaving disturbances over the otherwise flat plane in a wide cone emanating and continuing to grow from the shoreline.
One raised her bow and drew the string, aiming hard at boats and sharp teeth aboard them; the Famine lowered her hand and impassively watched, her aura waving like a heat-shimmer now. The other Conquest smiled serenely, her eyes flat with murder.
"Try and keep up~" she sang, before her sword alight with white fire.
Soon within vision atop the ships came a set of what appeared at first glance to be swarthy, sturdy old men, if short not only from their lean but from their small legs and stature as well. They were a folk of girth outwardly almost as much as they were lacking for height, and their rippling muscle left their skin and sinew almost as crimson even in action as their burgundy eyes and deep garnet caps. Their taloned hands gripped various weapons, almost every man of them bearing a pikestaff alongside another accouterments of murder, and their short legs were almost entirely encompassed by the heavy iron hobnailed boots they wore, with points almost as cruel as their smiles.
Swiftly, though, they were blotted from view, as were their barrel-like vessels, by a mass of wooden arrows with shale and obsidian barbs that blotted the remnants of the day's light in a hideous whine that impaled the beach thoroughly in barbs and certainly killed anyone that might have vaguely held on through the gas.
A decently extraordinary crustacean businesswoman of Conquests-and-Famine's recent acquaintance winced at the sounds of the skewered flesh and the sound of the roiling rollicking ships landing more properly, the murderous faerie pirates, very red dwarves indeed, flooding across and scalping everything in range to dye their gear in an orgiastic whirl of geysering gore.
"...the moment I saw a red sunrise, I knew it would be a good day." The Conquest murmured, her upward eyes filled with barbed black points. She heard footsteps in the sand as her ward got over to her. She knew what was coming. The white flames burning the red sword grew, throwing a sharp, furious light around her, as she braced and got ready to-
The air screamed.
The arrows immediately above them-a small clearing in the forest- burnt to ash as they hit the roiling heat mirage of oxygen heated incredibly rapidly; if the force had been closer, it would've set them both afire. As it was, the disturbance winked out before the rest of the arrows had impacted into sand and corpses.
They both turned and looked at the Famine, one whipping around, the other slowly and calmly. The Magister's thin glove was smoking; she didn't stare back at either one as she lowered it, eyeing the advancing forces. Her aura had weakened, but the glow from her body was more pronounced.
"Carnifex. First Contact is yours." She said flatly.
"I don't believe these raiders will much care for diplomacy." Said the woman, watching an advance party rip the watch off a man's arm, with his hand still attached. The other looked up, her eyes widening.
"They're readying another salvo-" She started, raising her bow and readying an arrow of her own.
"Unfortunate. Carnifex, stand ready. One, stand ready. You-" she very briefly looked down at the hole. Not inside it, just at it. "-stand ready."
The Famine raised her hand once again; what had formerly been a large semicircle of solid ice on the waterfront cracked and squeaked as it began to shatter and drift apart. The ice shattered into chunks, bobbing with the surf; the waterfront was broken apart by their sudden presence.
"Form a triangle." She absently sketched the shape with her finger. "The corridor is down."
The two nodded assent and hurried to their positions, both readying their weapons to fight as the Famine gathered her power in a sudden storm of sea-green diamond dust around her and prepared to add many more dead bodies to the beach.
"There was once a set of fools," a voice murmured. "They fled the world over with ill gotten gains, kin dead at their hands. But they were pursued, even through the blackest tempests the Pacific had to offer. By many, some those same kin, others foes acquired on the way. They did not learn until they came to shore here that you cannot outrun some monsters."
"You can only kill them."
The powries would normally belong within their old ruins and bairns, safely clustered in the borders between England and Scotland. Clearly this was not the case. In chasing the men who would one day be foreign barrow-wights and draugr themselves terrifying the night watches of the further flung islands, they had come across entirely new populaces to hunt and ravage, both undersea and on the land. And the cruel red dwarves had relished this place in the Archipelago ever since.
Some of the oldest of them had memory of knights and powers, dominions that could oppose them, salt and prayer or spell and sorcery; but many of those now native by birth to Kuwahawian lands had no idea of what they were running straight into.
The difference was marked in part by the oars moving some of the ships subtly away from the beach and into open waters in a few cases, while the others used the remnants of their own vessels as a wall against the broken icy waterfront smashing their hulls to bits in Famine's cryomantic maneuver. At least before they pulled into a headlong rush, knives and pikes alike swinging akimbo for the mighty women in their triangle.
"Yes! YES! Show me what passes for FURY-" the Conquest howled, stepping forward and putting the motion into her swing. The sword whipped with a white aftertrail before it shattered points and tips of pikes. Her backswing ripped into weapons, faces, and stomachs proper. "-amongst your kind!"
Her Aura crackled into life, the white and red circle reaching from behind her knees to over the back of her head; In it's killing light, she set to work.
The other Conquest's Aura was already up, but it was a much smaller circle; partly because she was a smaller woman, and partly because she'd been made a little different. Having an aura was unavoidable, but an archer with a lit-up target on her at all times was obviously a bad idea. Hers shone softly, with a morning-fog pale white as she drew, nocked, and sent arrow after arrow at any Red Dwarf looking at her or the Magister. More than a few burned with white fire, and occasionally they exploded after they'd stabbed deep into flesh.
In contrast to the Carnifex's serene face and shining eyes, or the Magister's almost disinterest, she was keyed up and frightened. There were many foes on this beach, and only three of them...
The Famine stuck her staff in the sand and raised both her hands this time; her glow dimmed dramatically before her own aura made everything around her into a shimmery mirage, from the heat. Power rushed from her hands, the air burning, everything from her place in the Triangle down to the Ocean superheating in an instant. The sand of the beach was glassed, and anything unlucky enough to be in it's path roasted and torched to ash.
When it hit the water and the small rime of Ice, the waves began to boil; gouts of steam hissed from the ocean as the ice around the impact area rapidly died. She lowered her hands and heaved a tired sigh, taking noticeably deeper breaths and staring down at the glass trail. Her glow and her aura were both minimally present and diminished.
In many cases the blazing bodies and cleaved corpses simply fell where they had been struck down. That was, after all, the natural way of things. In some odd ones, however, they lasted two, even three or four lethal blows. Over the course of the arduous minutes of conflict, the Conquest would notice that in these cases, the Powries she hacked apart partially reformed seconds later at a significant loss of hue to their apparel.
Not unakin to many monsters that fed on souls and blood or other intricacies of life, the Powrie would die if they went too long without a victim or if they lost that which they dyed their coats and caps in. Some had far more lives stored away than others. Red coronas of their own spent claret and the stolen essences of others spread in place of punctured corpses or hewed sinews. At first, at any rate.
None made it past five, although the vicious little monsters took full advantage of their at first surprising secret.
With time and victims to harvest they might have been nominally invulnerable in theory during a raid, but they were being slain far too quickly and furiously to begin restoring in application, and there simply wasn't enough blood to save the invasive parasitic fae from destruction wreaked in powers and dominating injury. Spears and arrows lay along the shores in muted tones and carcasses by and large, many ashen and unrecognizable.
One leader lay with his head impaled on his own pike, a barb through his eye from a failed attempt to stab the largest Conquest through her face turned into a parry that sent his weapon flying back too fast to react to. Another was slumped over her shoulder, a knife embedded in a soft point of her armor but wholly and utterly dead himself from a crushed in throat. By the time the cacophony of chaotic carnage had finished, there was not another sail in sight; the remainder had retreated up the coast.
For now.
The Conquest turned in place, her eyes lancing around; when there was no more movement or aggressors incoming, she straightened, held her arms out, and laughed joyfully up at the sun. Her formerly white dress was covered in red blood, a mirror of the Powries, and her hair ran with it. She was injured, but of the scrapes and slices, She only paid one any mind. She reached and grasped the knife stuck fast in her shoulder, hauling it out with a slight wince to examine the blade. She was still chuckling a little, good cheer crinkling her eyes.
The other was still fully alert and tense; Her shoulders were up as she panned around the beach, looking for the slightest signs of anything moving. More than one Powrie had dropped to an arrow only to get back up and silently close with her from a blind spot. Her extremities were gashed and bleeding; Her bow was cracked, following a hasty but necessary parry, and her eye was blackened. Of the three, she'd taken the most damage- Her leg grinded in places it shouldn't have, following her knee meeting a maul.
The Famine was unharmed and unchanged; Her delicate gloves had burnt to grey ash off her hands, but otherwise she looked just as disconnected as before. She picked her staff from it's place in the sand before the two trudged over to her, one like a triumphant dog coming from a hunt, the other wincing and fragile.
"Hostiles?"
"Dead, gone, or both." Said the Carnifex, wiping the blade of her sword onto a body before hefting it and shattering it's chest with a wicked smirk. The other Conquest sat down heavily, putting her hands on her knees and lowering her head.
The Magister looked at her, but said nothing, instead walking over to the hole in the sand and looking down inside it for the first time. Today had been for watching the Island and finding the likely hiding places certain others of their kind would be drawn to; From the moment she'd lost a bet with the Carnifex and been forced by social conventions to pay for both of their meals, she'd felt this day steadily but surely slipping away from her micromanaging.
The literal floor of corpses, glass trail down the beach, the steam still wafting around- these were not subtle. Then again, neither were They.
"You may unearth. The Other monsters are gone."
"I'd thought First Contact was my onus?" Asked the taller one, sauntering over with her dripping sword on her shoulder.
"Wonderful going of it so far." Muttered the rookie under her breath, although she got up and joined them as well. Together, all three looked down into the hole.
"...She left." The Famine guessed in the silence.
"She left. She watched. She came back, reconsidering," appended the subject of inquiry. "-they're raiders. Murderers. They gain most easily from swift strikes to unwitting targets. They weren't prepared for warriors like you. But they will be. Somewhere out there, they'll be watching, waiting, to take you. When you sleep; when you're wounded; when you're ill. They never stop."
"I would like to surrender to you, because I am afraid to leave."
She sat gingerly beside the messy pile that had formerly been a head properly attached to a body that wasn't bisected from shoulder to hip, and stared up.
"You mean to say we've found foes who live for battle and will never cease their efforts to murder us so long as we stay on this world? Who will keep coming regardless of their own number we slay?" The Carnifex asked slowly, in a just-making-sure tone heading toward glee. Her small smile was at odds with the bloodlust that hadn't yet left her eyes. "Life is truly wonderful at times."
"Why are you afraid? Did you kill a beach full of their people too? Or are they after you for other reasons?" Asked the one with a bow, eyeing her mistrustfully.
"You needn't surrender. We don't take prisoners." The Famine said quietly. She studied the woman, especially her hands. That digging disappearing act had been rather unexpected. She looked at the other two steadily; despite her shorter stature and much less intimidating build, she was obviously in command. "...Do you have a name? We don't. Only titles."
The Famine looked over; One Powrie was clinging to life and crawling away. She pointed at it before it's stomach superheated within a second, making it's body explode and shower the sand around it in flesh and gore. She lowered her hand while the other two looked on, one letting out a bark of laughter, the other fighting a smile.
For a scant second, the coating of blood did not seem to obscure a view of the Carnifex, but this quickly changed.
"Me? Oh, dearie, you should never ask a witch her name," the creature the Famine was asking slowly laughed. "Whoever made you knew what they were doing! Names have power. Titles are just ways to label a thing, but -names- have power."
She dusted herself off and emerged more properly, glasses reaffixed and glamour also. "Most just call me the sea witch. Or a sea witch."
"I make potions and compounds, but I find lately arms dealing poisons is far more profitable and entertaining. I almost thought you'd come to fricassee my poor old shell."
Dropping the glamour, she looked nothing like a brunette lithe little lady in an overly clinging red beachwear anymore. She looked, in fact, entirely chitinous and crustacean.
A guard that looked akin to her, but in muted tones, rose from the water and started to draw a sword with an apology on its lack of lips, until she silenced it with a motion.
"This place is bountiful with ingredients and subjects for them, but we may have to return to the Korean isles if this menacing keeps up."
The bow-armed girl took a step back and double-took at the chitin and the shells where before had been a woman and nothing at all, respectfully; The Carnifex raised her eyebrows, while the Famine's expression didn't change.
"The Sea Witch, then." She said, investing the title with proper noun status. "I am the Famine. I am the Grand Magister. These are Conquests. She-" she pointed behind her without turning away. "-is the Carnifex. And she-" same deal, unlooking pointing."- is a Rookie."
"Technically, I suppose at the moment you'd be more of a Sand Witch."
Now she turned, to stare blankly at the taller executioner.
"Well, I thought it funny..." She grumbled. The Famine didn't answer, instead looking around the body-strewn beach once more and putting the pieces together. There was no lightbulb over her head, but her glow made up for it.
"...Our apologies for ruining your test run." She said. "Your toxin seems to have worked well."
She nodded, although her posture suggested some displeasure. Her face, of course, was utterly unscrutable aside from the waving of the stalks with her motions. "Too well, actually. Far too high a kill ratio with too quick a time elapsing. Oh, my customers will be ecstatic if I publish it as it is, but it's going to raise quite a lot of hell from the humans' United Nations and 'rules of war', and all of that paper mockery.
"But that's exactly what testing is for, after all; I can tone it down. I assume, oh Grand Magister, The Carnifex, and rookie," she added, "that you are not yourselves Human as such. Or from here. Actually, I thought that when it didn't kill you, but the combat certainly put it almost beyond questioning."
"Is there some means I might perform to help you? Or repay you for preventing my very likely demise by the Red Dwarves?"
"Rules of War? They have those here?" The Carnifex rolled her eyes. "How droll."
"We are weapons. Gene-forged. Science and Magic entwined." Said the Famine, looking down at herself solemnly. "Conquests cannot be brought low. Except through violence. And I... Well." Paused the glowing, vaguely ghosty little girl.
"We are from far, far away-"
"Should we be telling them this?" Asked the newbie, staring between the two crustaceans while trying not to stand on her hurt leg. Now it was her turn to be stared blankly at, after which she winced and quieted back down.
"The humans who made us named our genotypes after the bringers of an Apocalypse- fitting, don't you think?- but we aren't the only ones. There are already too many others abroad and converging here in the coming months." Said the Carnifex lightly.
"...We've come so far. They sent us. These others are... Disturbances. Do you know the Kobbers? Things have grown complicated." Said the Famine, frowning unhappily at the Sea Witch's eye stalks. "Our orders are to simplify these problems."
"In the future... Will you watch from the water? There are five Others. Four, and one most important. The sooner they die, the better. By our hands." The Magister said, her thin voice unchanging. Four renegades and an unbound War elemental... Fools, one and all.
"War- an Apocalypse, like you? What are the other Four?" She amended herself and peered at the white haired paled augmented beings. "That you wish of us to watch for?"
"War. Famine. Conquest. Pestilence. Death." The Famine said, in a hollow tone. "Born to wage proxy wars. Wizards hate dirtying their own hands. Cowards. But they held all the cards. They held all the leashes. All the power."
"Until the armistices, and the treaties, and the de-aggressions, at any rate." Interjected the Carnifex. She sounded just a little bitter. "Once we weren't truly needed anymore..."
"There was a cull. Many of our kind died. Many were put down in their sleep. Many starved. Many were torn apart by mobs. Streets ran with glowing blood. They forged us as weapons before snapping us over their knees. But not all. Not all." The Famine continued simply, as though the past didn't bother her. It DID, but that was too far buried deep down to come out in her voice or eyes. It wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
"Some of us still live. Obviously. But... The four we seek are renegade. Too unsubtle, too bright. They will bring trouble. Attention. They'll bring the storm back to Solis. THEIR master works for his own ends. A Death- in her black dress, silent and cold. A Conquest-"
"Just barely. More an abomination. A half-breed." The Carnifex chipped in again, with a disgusted sneer.
"-an angel, wreathed in white. A Famine- glowing and small. Sickly and weak. Just like me. And a Pestilence- armored, rotting from the inside out, tired and weary. They seek the fifth. A War that belongs to no one. Unbound. Free from any chains but her own."
The Rookie spat on the beach, looking disquieted.
"A War that serves no master. A war that fights for others and herself. That is a Kobber. That has free will... This cannot be allowed. The four seek her. To re-shackle her. To enslave her. Their master wants her badly."
"But Ours cannot permit this. So We will end it." She said, with quiet finality. "You will know them when seen. There will be no doubt in your mind. The sooner they fall... The safer the rest of us are."
"We will be on Kuwahawi for a time. Until the mission is over. You don't need to fight in our battle. But if you see any of them... Please tell us. I want to go home. In return- we can keep helping each other." The Magister finished, looking more than a little drawn and tuckered out from all the words she'd had to use. Normally she kept talking to a minimum, but she had to make sure the situation was clear.
"If nothing else... We'll ensure the Red Dwarves do little more than bleed and die at your feet, as long as they intend to come for you. Mostly out of bloodlust, but still. More besides, anyone who'd kill this many humans to test their wares is quite alright in MY book." The Carnifex said, smiling and using her swordpoint to flip over a charred, poisoned corpse for emphasis.
The crab stared at them impassively before passing over a small conch. "If you require my contact or to order weapons, speak into that and listen into it. When you hear erupting volcanoes instead of the swirling ocean, I will be beginning to answer. I'll even let you test some of the experiments for cheap, if you'd be interested."
"I can hardly be everywhere, after all."
The pair slowly slipped into the briney drink and out of sight again thereafter, leaving only Apocalyptic figures and corpses in their wake. The moon sank, leaving the waves bathed in gold around the lathe of their white and green lapping borders against the isle, and setting the pale stones against the waterline seemingly ablaze. Fruited trees and palms swayed with peaceful ignorance of any ill transpiring in a breeze not quite yet able to be called of the morning, but nearly so.
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