My My, What Fetching Horns You Have

[Morry]

A squealing sound rang in his ears as if something in his brain had burst from the sudden contact with the object. The simple drum he had grabbed sent a heat through his finger and his hand, and before he understood what was happening a terrible pain gripped him. He could see rain, and feel storm clouds lofting somewhere overhead. The burning in his hand was sudden and quick and then he had no strength in it, and then he could feel his blood being leeched out of its capillaries, and then his veins out of his skin. The thunder rolled heavy and sharp in his lupine ears, and the noise or the pain or the suddenness made him forget or never realize that he was screaming, loud and harsh and horrid. The muscles shriveled and the bones thinned. The skin turned a nasty, dead color of grey and the wolfish fur upon it frayed and burned off. It was in a span of hardly a couple seconds that Morry lost the use of his right arm.

The thing fell from his grasp almost immediately, but not nearly immediately enough. The wolf yelled and screamed and clutched his arm; he made strange yowling noises like a dying animal. His heart beat roughly in his ears and unlike other wounds, it was cold, not heat, that flushed its way through the remnants of his arm. It crept from his now twig-like fingers all the way to a few inches above his elbow. He felt a profound weakness there and he shook with either fury or fear or pain or some combination of those emotions. He sat scrunched on the ground in the mud and dirt, his fur filthy while he rocked himself childishly back and forth, wailing and whining and whimpering like an old, stray dog.

Mere inches from him, the thing swirled and lived with the life forces he had given, strange designs dancing across it beautifully. The sound and smell of rain and dampness had risen around him despite the sky being clear and cold. As he breathed quick and fast, his breath fogged and he watched it dissipate. He ran his tongue smoothly over his teeth for a moment and then clenched his jaws together and rocked more, looking briefly over his sorry state of an arm and then moaning as if the sight of it had struck him hard. He glared at the thing, wanted desperately to ruin it, but he could not.

And then a thought flew into him, and he wondered with utmost hatred burning in him whether Dianelopa had known.

[Dianelopa]

During those few seconds as Dianelopa hesitated, a horrible screeching, hair-raising beyond anything she'd ever heard, emanated from the direction she had come. Was it Morry? Was it that thing he'd stolen? It was a terrible sound, full of pain and angst. It was difficult for Dianelopa to imagine someone in trouble and not feel she had to help somehow. But the charm now for the first time was getting a little warm. That must mean there was some kind of danger. So it was Morry who was in danger, she thought. And thus it was that she turned around and headed back. But she didn't run.

If it was risky she didn't want to hurl herself into a hopeless situation. She remained behind a tree when she'd gotten close enough to see Morry and stared. What she saw, she couldn't believe. I must be dreaming this, kept running through her mind.

" the thing swirled and lived with the life forces he had given, strange designs dancing across it beautifully."

Morry on the other hand seemed twisted and bent and if it was true, which maybe it wasn't, one of his arms had turned to an elongated twig. He was obviously in great pain.

Dianelopa didn't know what to think. The thing, whatever it was, was probably alive, but it had neither human nor animal form, no head, no arms or legs. How had it done that to Morry? It didn't seem to make any attempts to attack Morry again. It just swirled around. Following it with her eyes, Dianelopa was mesmerized, almost forgetting the dreary figure on the ground behind it, forgetting Thad completely.

It was only when the thing suddenly swirled off course in her direction like a top losing speed that Dianelopa got back in focus. Her charm was warmer against her chest. But as she had nothing to fight it with, she ran. Not back to the road, but at an angle into the forest.

It seemed to be following her. Now her heart was pounding. Perhaps it was aiming to sear off her arm the way it had done to Morry. For once she was terrified and being terrified she was not her usual nimble self. She tripped on a tree root and fell flat on her face, screaming in mortal fear as she went down.

[Zou]

The pitter-patter of rain began, strangely isolated. None of it struck the ground; instead, it fell in a narrow, direct column, from the sky to the drum. Trickles formed on the skin, flashing aquamarine as they moved of their own volition, and where the rivulets moved, they left behind them inky patterns which resolved into a single image in the centre, directly between the coiling markhor horns. It was Morry's head in profile, exquisitely rendered, and frighteningly lifelike.

The supernatural column of rain let up as quickly as it had begun, and for a moment, there was silence in the grove. Then, there was a flicker of movement across the drum's head. The illustration had come to life and turned to look directly up at the shaken, bedraggled wolf.

The reek of Morry, a pungent cocktail of sweat and soul, clung to Zou's consciousness like an unwanted limb; he couldn't amputate it, it was a part of him. He covered his revulsion well as he addressed his master. His voice emanated from the illustration, resonating as it struck tones within the hollow frame. "I had never imagined the afterlife to be quite like this. I suppose I'm still in Thar Shaddin, yes?"

[Morry]

There was pain, but more profoundly there was weakness and a sense of trapping in his limb, like it had been sitting under such weight for so long that he had nearly lost all feeling in it. He couldn't lift it, and he was afraid to move his twigged fingers for fear that they would break off and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. His teeth were clenched fast and the shock from the robbery and violence had worn swiftly to the shock of the thing breathing with his own blood, sweat, and malice. He could feel it breathing, as strange as it seemed, and he could feel it living while the rain fell upon its skin. The patterns that formed were only half-watched by him, the wolf, too concerned with his own well-being to care about its sorry-ass magicks and curses.

It was only when his own face looked back at him that he watched, and was quieter than he had been in that hour of violence. Fear crawled across his skin, and then the voice hit him.

He didn't know if it was coming from the drum, his brain, or if somebody in the brush was screwing with him. The sound of the voice after such silence made him flinch, as if someone had taken a knife to his skin. The air of the woods suddenly felt sticky and he had the distinct urge to leave its confines.
It took him a long time to answer. This time was spent staring with a bemused and terrified expression at the drum's surface.

Finally, "Th-Thar Shaddin, gghyes," with that growly attempt at speech.
"The feck is this.." he muttered, more to himself than the drum. "The feck," and he pulled his arm close to him, disbelief at what had just happened plaguing his thoughts.

[Dianelopa]

Dianelopa tried to get up after her fall, but as soon as she moved pain shot through her twisted ankle and the gash on her knee where she'd landed on a tree root. Expecting the crazy twirling thing to land on her and suck her up she dug her face into the earth and smothered her tears. But nothing happened.

Finally she turned her head in the direction she;d come from to see what had happened. The flashing light was gone. In the darkness she could only see the outline of Morry still crouched where he'd been before. She saw the rain which fell nowhere certainly not where she was and then stopped. The drum itself, she couldn't see. But she heard something. It wasn't coming from Morry, a strange sound, coming from that drum, a sound that could have been language, a talking drum. This was all to weird to fathom.

Then Morry did say something, but it made no sense. Nothing made sense. Dianelopa tried again to get up. The pain in her ankle stabbed and throbbed. She couldn't repress a groan. But she pushed herself up anyway and half-limped, half hopped back to the road where this madness had begun. Back to see if she could find Thad.

He wasn't there. She hadn't really expected him to be. With her ankle aching and unable to take her weight, she wondered how she would ever get home. But would Thad even be at home? The mud and tears, the blood and carcasses were diluting her sense of smell and she wasn't picking up Thad's scent. She remembered that she had once stumbled across some kind of cavern in the earth that had emanated traces of Thad. Now she thought that it could have been some kind of place where he hid when he was in trouble or hid things he'd stolen, something like that. That place wasn't so terribly far away. The chance he'd be there wasn't that great, but Dianelopa didn't think she could make it home, so she headed toward that place.

It wasn't such a bad guess after all. When she got close to it, she knew for certain that he was there. But how then, if she were to go there could she explain her presence in this place. Yeah, how? The pain in her ankle was too overwhelming to allow her to think clearly. She felt she needed to rest, to sleep, to get away from it all, to see Thad.

"Thad", she whispered, now on her knees in front of the entrance. "Thad". He was asleep. She crept in and laid down beside him.

[Dianelopa]

Some time before it had gotten light outside, Thad woke up and at first was completely confused. Dianelopa was sleeping beside him as if he were at home. But the ground was hard and he obviously wasn't on a bed. He felt around and realized he was in the hideout. It all came back. The hopelessly damaging failure to get the package for Benjamin, the monster running away with it. But Dianelopa beside him didn't fit. How come? It made him uneasy. Had she seen anything? He decided it would be best to leave, go back and find some companion, as he'd planned the night before. He collected the loot he'd taken from the scene of the crime, doing his best not to disturb Dianelopa and left without waking her.

When Dianelopa woke up several hours later, she too was confused. Her last memory was of lying down beside Thad, but he wasn't there. Had he ever even been there? She'd been so tired last night, so much in pain, maybe she hadn't paid attention. Why would he leave, knowing she was there?

She tried to get up, but the pain in her ankle was still excruciating. Nonetheless, she had no desire to stay there. She crawled out of the hideout, looked around for a thick solid stick which she could use as a crutch and when she'd found one, she pulled herself up, leaning on it, groaning, she slowly set off, hobbling along toward Marn.