The night passed rather plainly after the awkward tension. As the dinner went on and bowls were emptied and seldom refilled, tension gave way to ease, questions traded over the tabletop coming more predictably, not as invasive, not nearly as hard to answer. The family's curiosity hit a peak of wondering how she'd liked the cider.
Whether the children's curiosity had been sated could be argued, but Nala made short work of any complaints about being sent to bed. The three had all said their goodnights to Amaris before they'd ran off upstairs. The house was spacious, as Holly informed, the room she offered to the blood witch away from the family's rooms.
Holly gently poked at the glowing array of ivy on the walls, light sapped away from her hasty fingertips, giving a warm glow to the otherwise dark room. A bed, simple and generous in blankets, sat along the far wall of the room, a window perched near the bed; beyond the glass was a peek of the farmland that sprawled around the house. Fog stole most the view, however.
Satisfied with how much light had been cast throughout the room, Holly straightened up with a pinch of pain, a hand resting over her side. "Those'll go out soon," she assured, hands resting over one another, light sinking back into her skin. "Just wanted to give you some light, hope you don't mind." Holly made her way to the door, eyeing the room, none too pleased with the bare state of things. "It's yours for tonight, Amaris," Holly said from the doorway, hand easing it closed. "Thank you, sleep well."
And then it was just Amaris.
It'd been
just Jukheyr for far too long. Call it contrary, but being out was only worth it if Ansell was awake to give a damn. The sheep were - amusing, at best; their stamina wasn't anything near a hound, catching them was only worth the bleats it got out of them. Between it's paws, it held a sheep and squished it, tips of it's claws slicing through the tangles in wool. It might not have been wise for Jukheyr to be using one of Ansell's precious sheep as stress relief, but it hoped it jogged Ansell to
get up.
It waited, like it'd been waited, for nothing. It growled, claws popping out and scaring a bleat out of the ram. It echoed over the farm, acres bathed in fog.
"Dramatic - overly so. Such a ridiculous whelp." It muttered, working over the ram's fur with a seething calm. "It was a
flesh wound, you hear me? I fel - saw it myself." Over the ram's head, Jukheyr stuck a claw through it's wool, cutting through it easily. The ram was hardly calm for it. "Hush, meat, I'm speaking."
The ram was anything
but quiet, Jukheyr still kept on. "He is
fine. He is fine because
I fixed him. Better than
ever, if you ask me-" The ram bleated, Jukheyr narrowing it's eyes sharply. "He is
foolish. Death is the price of defying me, that shrub got off lightly."
Ansell had dealt with Thumil in his own way and nearly gotten himself poisoned
and killed in the meanwhile. Jukheyr growled, ram clutched in it's paws bleating warily. "Foolish boy and your foolish
heart." Killed. And for what? Some dead tree that would've seen him dead, a town that deserved to be- a bleat, from Jukheyr's right. Most of the sheep had gathered around it, wary but feeling safer around it.
Muscle memory, Jukheyr reasoned. This would be the herd's first night without the threat of hounds. They were anxious.
"I
said hush," Jukheyr cemented, actually rising to it's full height, letting the ram between it's claws slip away. "Do you need a lesson in silence, cotton ball? I would be all too-" Jukheyr stuck out it's head, ears sharpening to a point and flicking about, listening ahead.
Heartbeats, erratic and omnipresent from where it was standing. The sheep. The cows, chickens, various
meat. Jukheyr let it's senses stretch, it's body branch into the earth, metal spreading thin and needling through stone. It
felt, the shifts in the earth, the waves that came with movement radiating through it's body.
Movement, and a lot of it. It felt like a
stampede. Fast and rippling through the ground
and-
"-with us?"
Holly blinked into the fire of the candles, then at Nala, blinking a few times at her, too. Holly took a moment to choose her words. "Of course, I am. Always."
Nala didn't look or sound convinced, giving a scoff and a roll of her eyes. "Then what did I say?"
Holly took her lip into her mouth, releasing it pink and chewed. "That you were - you. Say again, please.
Fine."
Nala sighed, relaxing back into her side of the bed. "Amaris? She staying with us until she's out of town or what?"
Oh, that. Holly shook her head. She wished she could say yes, that Amaris had expressed a want to stay, but she hadn't. "Not quite? She's, ah, not wanting to intrude."
Nala made a knowing sound. "Don't blame her for wanting to leave. She did what she said, what's here for her?" Holly did care to think about the hunters; they'd been a thorn in the town's side, without anything to hunt she couldn't imagine they'd stay.
"You believe her?" Holly asked, in good faith. She believed, she had no reason not to. Ansell had been impressed with her, he was delighted to tell them about her. Holly had no doubt in Amaris' skill, in her
magic, as Ansell called it.
"Do you?" Nala asked back, lights flickering just then. Holly fixed them, flame jumping back into brilliance. Holly stepped to the windowsill, candles lighting with a gesture.
Holly worried a hem on her gown. "Yes."
"She's a capable hunter, does by her word, from what I see. Short supply of that, y'know."
Holly chuckled, wrinkles forming around her eyes as her smile grin. "Well, I'm glad I have mine." It warmed Holly's heart to see the cheeky smirk on Nala's face.
"'fraid I didn't do shit with those hounds-"
"I
thanked you for
not doing -
that. "
Nala scoffed, shaking her head at the loss. Been a while since she twirled a spear, would've been good practice. "Tell you what, now that those mutts are dead, how 'bout we take the kids out to the woods?"
Holly hummed, drumming alight fingers over melting wax. "Goodness, with this weather? We'd never make it back." Holly tsked her tongue at the window. "I think I hear thunder now," she lamented, resting a hand over the wood of the window, shaking incessantly in her palm. Holly cocked her head, looking curiously to Nala.
"...Do you hear that?"
There was a stirring in the fog. The grey clouds made it hard to see, but the disturbance could be felt, even from the house. It felt like a struggle - thrashing felt through the earth, thunderous split of rock cracking, and the cry of a god.
Jukheyr was flying through the air. On any other occasion, this would've been fine, only it had been forcibly set through the air. In it's defense, it was outnumbered.
There were -
bears, in the loosest version of the beast. Huge, swollen hunks of rock and vines and overgrowth. Mutated, their variation came with the burden of their numbers. There were some with more than one head, half grown into another. They were giving, like flesh, under all the green and algae. Sensitive like flesh, they'd screamed and fought when Jukheyr sunk it's claws into them, fought even harder when it went for one of their heads. Rock sharpened into claws had left gouges in Jukheyr's frame, trying to tear it apart in their clash.
The fog split open with a wailing maw of fire, Jukheyr breathing it from deep within it's body, bathing it over the grass and it's attacker. Claws long as swords swept up at Jukheyr, the god dodging the swipes as it's chest opened, vents forming through it's metal as it breathed an inferno. The swell of fire engulfed the thing. It's body lit up, fire eating through the thick flora, it's reach for Jukheyr not stopping for a second.
Jukheyr was a nimble breath of fire and steel around them, between them, always moving and
flowing - it's shape changed constantly, a formless death carved a path through the bodies.
And there was always more.
More
creatures, twisted aberrations of natures, spilling green over the land and always growing. The bears were the least of Jukheyr's worries before long, not with new types of hideous birthing itself every time it cut something off one of them. The bears were covered in a living, budding algae, which not only made them hard to cut, it made
more of them.
Flowers bloomed into yawning, shivering gyres of pollen and poison, Jukheyr's body feeling rough from the exposure to the corrosive slick. Teeth, or whatever the plants used, raked painfully over it's form, Jukheyr fighting them back for room to
escape. Severed limbs gave way to new bodies, another split of a bloom, faceless and furious and seeking out Jukheyr. As their blood spilled, more emerged from the soaked earth. Jukheyr could only stretch so far, hold the hoard back for so long.
Jukheyr bent itself, twisted itself, warped itself to
stop them-
The hoard stormed on, across the bloody field, to the house that sat untouched.