Beware those who become drunk on hahnu. The substance pools around the bones of Hahnu themself, the deceased Titan of Dream, across the northern wastes. In moderation, it allows one to see possibilities beyond the possible, to live a moment of time elsewhere, free from the world born from the Titans’ death.
But to sail unmoored from reality is a risky thing. Dangerous things lurk in those liminal waters, things that devour the minds of men, hollowing out the real until only a figment remains.
Hahnu thought on this, as they died. They gave their gifts freely, not seeing the danger until one dreamer, a warrior with an unbreakable blade, saw something in that shadowed sea:
The end of the Gods.
-Mortis, Chapter 8:3
CW: Violence, blood, death.
The sun was halfway down in the southern sky as the streets of Stinjul were packed with workers returning from their shifts, the poorer ones spilling out of barges from the outlying islands to head into West Quarter. A small crowd began to part, as a figure in dark armor running down the street, almost on all fours as a mage with horns ran to keep up behind her.
“What about the old man?” Zelith called out, breathing heavily as she was pushing herself to stay next to Grey. “Kevyn! We shouldn’t be going in by ourselves!”
Grey stopped as she said that, growling as she looked up at the sun. Her body felt red-hot, like a poker in a fire. The effects of the full moon were lessened by the presence of the sun, but she could feel the wolf screaming behind her eyes.
“Right. Right,” Grey muttered. “You can get them, yes?”
“It’s a lot of jumps, but the boat’s not moved,” Zelith said, shrugging. “Be right back.”
Zelith hopped up on the tips of her feet to peck Grey on the cheek before there was a cold snap in the air and she disappeared, blue flames flaring in the space she was as Grey began to pace. Something was off.
As she looked out towards the docks, wondering if she would see a glimpse of Zelith manifesting, she frowned as a smell hit her nose.
Blood.
Sniffing, she shot her head around for a moment, before freezing in place as other citizens seemed to notice what was happening.
Floating in midair, a dock worker sagged, arm twisted up at a painful angle as Grey heard a bone snap. Claw marks had been torn through his torso, blood dripping down as another crack sounded through the street. The man was hanging like some cruel mockery of a crucifix.
The space between the man’s eyes was suddenly punched inwards something blue flaring for a second before vanishing, the man’s expression going vacant before he was dropped to the ground with a sickening thud. After a moment, the body twitched, red flames flaring along his body before the thing on the ground let out a hideous gurgling scream, running towards one of his fellows as Grey could see another citizen hit by some unknown force, slamming into a nearby wall.
As the street erupted into chaos, Grey let out a howl.
Zelith’s vision went dark as she shifted the coordinates of her offset again, manifesting in an alleyway as she glanced around, trying to find the right direction to head towards the Sunvaar’s ship. The midafternoon air was brisk, although how much of that was a result of the spell’s effects she wasn’t sure of.
Just as she concluded another spell, she heard an earsplitting scream from down the street.
Appearing three hundred feet away, Zelith’s eyes shot back to where she’d been, trying to find a source for the scream before her eyes fell on a woman, sliding rapidly along the cobblestones like she was being dragged by something unseen, a trail of blood behind her.
Zelith’s panic was immediate, but her hands were already raising. Time slowed as she looked at the woman, the situation, everything that was visible. The woman was in her thirties. A basket of baked goods had fallen to the ground some fifteen feet away, where the blood trail began.
She was moving backwards, fresh wounds in her back, like something with claws had dug them into her flesh. Nothing visible. Even blood splashing up from the body didn’t hit anything.
The scream had been a moment before. Numbers came to Zelith’s mind, a coldness coming to her as she looked at the situation before her. Spellwork was difficult, requiring calculations on distance and coordinates to be made at a moment’s notice. She had seconds at best before the woman was likely dead. Targeting the woman, casting some effect on her that would hit whatever was dragging her, was the logical choice.
Heat flared in Zelith’s chest, her brow furrowing as her attention drifted just above the woman. No.
Two seconds. Twenty-five feet. Three hundred feet to the point of her original teleportation. The creature was not physical, which would mean it had to be within the liminal plane, hiding in that frozen place and striking those outside it.
The stars were drawn, the numbers racing through Zelith’s mind as she crunched the numbers. Half a second, five feet. She targeted a space in the air another five feet back, clenching her jaw as she pulled whatever aspects she could gather, drawing coordinates in the spell for a set of kitchen knives sitting outside a nearby butcher’s shop and the edge of a lawn across the street, consolidating all of those vectors into the space in the air the woman was above to pass under.
Time began to move normally, the spell resolving. With a flare of blue and red light, a thin line flashed in space right above the woman’s back. The next moment, a blue and black creature, like some kind of horrifying bat the size of a large dog, was suddenly visible. Thrashing, it let out a horrible sound like a deflating balloon as oily black blood spilled from the thin, half an inch hole Zelith had cut into its torso.
As the crowds around the woman screamed, Zelith’s gaze was scanning through the air, looking over towards the ship and gritting her teeth as she turned towards where she’d left Grey.
This would have to work.
Zelith started to draw more stars in the air, the screams and noise of the nearby river going strangely silent as Zelith pulled on them. Noise. She needed to be as loud as possible.
Opening her mouth, the words she spoke echoed across the nearby districts like thunder, amplified loud enough she could only hope that the old bear and Kevyn would hear:
“DEMONS IN THE STREETS. EXIST BETWEEN REALMS, CANNOT BE SEEN. RUN AND HIDE. WEST QUARTER. LASAIR.”
As the sound echoed across the west of Stinjul, Zelith had already vanished, leaving a frozen patch on the ground where she’d been standing.
Grey was breathing heavily, her breath visible in the air as she claws tore through another one of the mindless mutilated bodies that were being turned on the others.
She had seen this before, when she was younger. During the Harbinger Crisis. Demons would devour souls, and ones that were clever enough would only devour one: the blue. A body without a blue soul was feral, driven only by the instincts and rage of the red.
As the body crumbled before her, she let out a pained grunt as something she couldn’t see tore through her arm. Even as her claws moved through the air, they couldn’t catch whatever it was. As she turned, frantically trying to find whatever the hell it was, another flash of pain shot up from her leg as she almost fell over.
As she breathed heavily, the beginning of panic setting in, there was a loud noise, something she recognized after a moment as Zelith’s voice.
Between realms?
Instincts were starting to take over, Grey starting to run as she could see claw marks appearing on a corpse next to where she had just been, like something had just slammed a clawed limb down for balance. The turned citizens were mostly dealt with, and Grey began to run for cover. As she watched, the glass window of a nearby shop exploded, screams coming from inside.
Everything grew cold as a snap shot through the air, Grey breathing a sigh of relief as Zelith appeared in a blue flash next to her.
“We need to get out of the street,” Zelith said hurriedly, putting a hand around Grey’s shoulder as she started to draw stars in the air.
“Fucks can’t be hit. Can’t even see them. Need to get where they are. Tear them apart,” Grey snarled.
“Can’t,” Zelith said, sounding genuinely terrified. “Liminal space has no heat, no air. Your eyes would freeze solid before you saw anyth-“
Before Zelith could finish drawing the coordinates, Grey felt her jerk away from her, the mage letting out a scream of pain as she shot through the air, slamming hard into the wall of a nearby building. As Grey watched in horror, the witchblood’s right horn was starting to crack, blood spilling out, like something trying to pull the leg off an insect.
Grey rushed forward, screaming as the horn snapped in half, Zelith falling to the ground, eyes bugging out of their sockets. Grey’s claws found no purchase, moving through air even as a fresh wound opened in Zeliths’ arm.
“NO,” Grey roared, red flames flaring around her arms as Zelith feebly tried to draw a spell in the air before her arm was slammed into the stone, Grey feeling as something collided into her, forcing her to move back. “NO!”
The next moment was like an eternity. Zelith was pinned to the ground, her right front horn shattered and bleeding as something above her was threatening to kill her, something pushing Grey back, the Sunvaar trying to desperately reach out.
A smell. Like something in the air was burning, before a streak of lightning shot through the air in front of Grey. For a moment, the skeletons of the demonic creatures were illuminated, before the bodies fell thrashing to the ground, smoke drifting out of them. As Grey fell to her knees, her training kicking in as she started to attend to Zelith’s injuries, she looked down the street.
Standing at the end of the street, clearly having just been drinking but quickly sobering, stood Kevyn. The massive Sunvaar’s golden mane of hair was drifting in the air as his eyes flared. A broken greatsword was gripped in his armored fingers, electricity crackling down the length before another crack of lightning shot down the street, in the air. The wild random shot took down three other demons, the creatures slamming into the ground and bursting like pumpkins.
Zelith gasped in pain as agony thudded down her skull, looking over as Kevyn staggered closer, eyes looking around as Grey looked at the lightning-wielding fellow hunter.
“It’s a blood mage,” she shot at him, Kevyn breathing in heavily.
“Damn streets are off. Somebody’s fucking with the barrier,” Kevyn said, his voice hoarse and direct as he looked down another street. “You take the mage. These flying bastards are trying to open more rifts. I can feel it, like the air is trying to bite me.”
Grey put an arm under Zelith, helping her up to her feet.
“…You plan on telling us about that trick before now?” Grey said, frowning and narrowing her eyes.
Kevyn just looked at her, his scarred expression hard to read.
“I’ll handle the surface,” he said, not answering. “Hopefully the old bear heard. Go. We don’t have time. Something big is coming.”
With that, he began to move down the street, swinging the greatsword through the air as the lightning caught a demon. Grey looked at Zelith, an awful feeling in her chest as the witchblood looked at her.
“…Had a deal,” Zelith said, her tone dull, the mage clearly still shocked from her injury as she grabbed Grey’s arm for support, an iron grip on her arm as the mage almost fell. “Seeing it through.”
Grey wanted to protest, wanted to force Zelith to get more medical help, but something in the mage’s posture and tone made it clear that the witchblood would never listen. Instead, Grey nodded, standing straighter.
I’ll keep you safe, Zelith began.
No matter what it takes, finished Grey.
And with that secret, unspoken pact they had both unwittingly made at the same moment, the pair began to move.
Strike The Horizon 