by Yana » Thu Mar 02, 2017 4:41 am
The curse, hm? Is that it?
Annaliese sunk into a seat, fatigued by this onrush of reality. Resting her chin on her palms, she stared. It had always seemed so irrelevant.
She knew magic. It was part of their universe on its very basest level, from the rocks and the trees, to the atoms of stars and the very blood within them. Thus, their curse: as real as any Edict. Her mother was the first to tell her the story. At the time, it was hocus-pocus - fairy tales to scare children into doing their chores by suggestion of unknowable doom, and Annaliese, precocious as she was, wouldn't be fooled. Mom laughed and smiled with her: If they had been cursed, she said, it would have to do a lot worse than blessing her with such a lovely daughter. Time passed, and amid the highs and lows of childhood, a curse bringing death and destruction was an impertinent joke, good only to be pondered on sleepless nights. That was enough for a kid.
Of course, life changed.
As far as her mind could reach, Annaliese had little but good memories. But that hot evening so many years ago where she learned the truth was a swollen bruise – something only the wisdom of age and the love of her parents had helped her process. She could still smell the blood if she thought deeply enough. She was soaked – her mouth tasted like copper. It was too humid. The candle flame howled in agony.
So, it had come for them.
Aunt Elen's touch broke her mental haze. The world flicked painlessly back into focus. Annaliese looked up, her ears twitching automatically. Auntie's hands were always cool and dry. It took a moment for the girl's head to come back online – she nodded blankly to her aunt's question. She knew, as Anna had guessed – there seemed to be little her aunt didn't know, but it was rarely Anna's place to ask what should have been done.
Even more clarifying was Evelynn's comforting hand. Annaliese looked up at her cousin and smiled bashfully – Eve's red eyes glinted with resolve that couldn't be feigned. She was embarrassed to have lost control of herself in front of someone as strong as this. Anna clasped her hand over Eve's: her skin was rough and calloused, something that gave Anna a moment of curious pause before she thought it better to not make a conversation out of it.
With Evelynn's help, she rose to her feet. There were things to do – time to act like a big girl.
“Thanks, Eve. I really appreciate that. I know we all do.” Annaliese said. She gave her cousin a quick squeeze. Hard to resist.
It was true. Evelynn had every reason to be angry at them – at this terrifying stroke of misfortune, whether bound by a curse or not. This didn't have to be her problem, but so long as she was here, Annaliese felt much better. Everything she'd experienced of her cousin seemed to validate Uncle Matt and Aunt Sofia's flowery parental impression of her, and then some. It was odd but welcome to feel such an aura of power and expertise from someone only a few years her senior.
“I'm sorry, I spaced out there for a second. Um, yes, of course. I'll go get my things.” she said, sweeping around the corner to pry her knife from her bulletin board and grab her cloak and the Shopkeeper from the top of her door. She returned a few moments later, funneling shells into the gun one by one to the tune of satisfying clacks. Now loaded, Annaliese expertly racked the slide with a swift gesture and whisked it under her cloak, double-checking her knife as she watched Auntie Elen effortlessly draw up a Stone Sigil against the great room wall. This clicked with Annaliese immediately.
“Oh...!”
She'd always supposed there was plenty of space in this house she'd never known about. Auntie valued her privacy and the arcane arts demanded a great deal of room. While Anna was visibly bemused, it was only a mild surprise that something had lurked behind these heavy bookshelves all this time. Minding the shifting stone, she leaned in to get a better look at the corridor beyond: It was rougher and less traveled than the rest of the house.
A cool draft tickled her cloak. With a glance at her cousin, Annaliese followed, though her steps were weighed by a tingle of hesitation. Even with her permission, Anna was so accustomed to Aunt Elen's life being off-limits to her that it felt strange and risky to be down here.
“Isn't it? There's all kinds of secret stuff in this place even I don't know about.” she whispered to Eve as she scanned the plain walls. She thought of conjuring a flame to light the way, but the slanting passage promptly opened up into a well-lit room.
Annaliese's eyes widened. Not for what she was seeing, but for the fact that she had seen it.
“Whoa.” she mouthed automatically. It was... stone!
This must have been Aunt Eleanor's office – one of them, at least. Top to bottom, the distinctly circular room and nearly everything in it was painstakingly crafted from stone, something that would have meant little in this home were it not clear that her aunt had gone to immense inconveniences to avoid disclosing its existence to anyone: the furniture was nothing like Dad's work, so it must have been bought. Annaliese supposed it would've been suspicious if Aunt Elen asked for so much extra furniture.
True to her aunt's nature, the office was remarkably spartan with only some basic efforts taken to keep it from being an uncomfortable eyesore. While money had never been a problem for them, Mom's tendency to splurge on cute furniture and décor always made for amusing encounters purely on point of principle from Auntie. A toasty fireplace warmed the room. Annaliese stepped inside gingerly, traveling her fingers curiously across some of the arcane tomes and strange paraphernalia neatly sorted around the room.
Most bizarre of all, of course, was the crude hole conspicuously excavated into the wall nearby. A kind of unfinished doorway, she supposed.
Not wanting to seem impolite, Anna followed Evelynn to the couch and sat opposite, folding her hands on her lap. She stole a curious look at the ancient telephone on Auntie's desk – that thing must've been at least two hundred years old. An excellent way to avoid modern surveillance, Anna realised, and distinct of her aunt. She never did have patience for technology – the television especially. But that was only the side effect of a life spent with the arcane and not with modern society. As she made her call, Anna was quietly torn on whether to eavesdrop or not.
To that end, Evelynn's mention of Aunt Sofia was a welcome coincidence. Annaliese pulsed with excitement, smiling widely. When her phone chose that moment to ring, the girl had to restrain a giddy little snicker. Like mother, like daughter. The tinny blast of noise that greeted her cousin from the other end of the line nearly had Anna in tears, a moment of humour that was quickly cut down by Aunt Eleanor's anger. Annaliese's face straightened in an instant, and she glanced over her shoulder with concern.
Her aunt was tense with cold anger, her brow furrowed deeply as it often was when the sorceress was frustrated. But true anger wasn't something that came easily to Aunt Elen, even in difficult circumstances: She was very efficient about erasing the source of her troubles before she let herself become emotional – especially people. The girl did her best not to stare as her aunt's voice rose, instead doing her best to look at Evelynn.
Most concerning of all was that someone was getting the better of her aunt. That never happened.
Who in the world could do that?
She smiled politely at her cousin.
“Tell them I said 'hi'!” Anna leaned in to whisper. She could hear Aunt Sofia barking at her daughter through the speaker and didn't need to hear to know what was being said. Arguing over the phone was just about programmed into every parent. As the two tidied up their little spat, Anna returned Eve's smile with a warm look. She would have to give her aunt and uncle a call when she had a moment – it was grim to consider, but if things went poorly for Patria it would be her last chance to talk to them... or say goodbye.
The crack of a phone hitting its receiver overtook that thought. Sensing her irritated aunt had something to say, she stood. A sidelong glance to Eve confirmed her cousin was reasonably apprehensive, but Anna could tell that she'd do whatever needed to be done. It was all of them at stake, after all.
“Oh, yes. Of course!” Anna nodded immediately. Help was something she was used to giving, and in times like these she trusted that her aunt would be the one with a plan. She followed, albeit a little disappointed they had to go into the sketchy little hole. The girl minded the draft as she stepped inside, squinting to adjust to the sickly yellow light that illuminated what looked to be an enormous, roughly hewn tunnel – not too dissimilar to a mine shaft, Anna thought, and wide enough to pass a lot of people or gear through. It was too crude to be an extension of the house.
“Wow, this is certainly a tunnel.” she observed, tracing the pitted surface of the rock as they turned down a fork in the path.
Venus?
Annaliese winced. It was hard for a Patrian to not know that name – Venus was the woman in charge of leading the Overlord's forces on this planet, and crazier yet, she was a member of the Council! Anna knew her aunt consorted with many powerful people ranging from the political to the arcane, but it was spectacular indeed to confirm her influence reached as far as Councilwoman Venus and maybe beyond. Still, that was definitely a person who could give even her aunt pause – not that she would let that disrespect go unpunished in the end, of course. She was a woman who held grudges.
Honestly, out of all of this, what disturbed her the most was the thought of some greasy soldiers stomping through her house on their way to Bavaria, but she supposed Aunt Elen would dig an entrance elsewhere. Until now, Anna had no reason to care about the direction of this dumb war. It all seemed so petty and childish – one walk in Passerna was proof enough that a lot of people felt the same when they had some privacy, and heck, even the soldiers themselves would rather hang out than waste their time shooting at some random guy on some peaceful little planet they had no reason to care about.
Anna bit her cheek. She didn't imagine her aunt had anything to gain from all this trouble, either. If she had to guess, it was why she bothered working with Venus in the first place – after all, it was easier to dig a tunnel and help end all this silliness than fend off an army. And besides, right now it was looking like Homeland's victory would just spell the whole planet blowing up.
Thus, they came to Aunt Elen's problem.
“Oh... yes. That's quite a problem.” Annaliese said matter-of-factly.
She cringed. Big spiders weren't new to her, even if their stature could give Grim a run for his money. There were plenty of creepy-crawlies on Patria, after all, most of them harmless or poorly evolved to handle gunfire. No, what concerned her was the nest, something she'd actually never seen before since they lived so deep underground: the walls and the ceilings were fortified with a structure of thick gossamer webbing, suspending clutches of disturbingly large cyst-like objects Anna wagered were eggs.
A good number of spiders trudged indolently back and forth, tiny fledglings skittering around them or in between the strands of webbing. A couple were hard at work spinning new material to expand the nest. It was a big one, and judging by the colours on the belly, these were Yellow-Fangs: a particularly territorial breed of Patrian arachnid with a bad attitude towards humans.
“Well, Patria's atmosphere is high in oxygen... it's part of why the tourists get all happy. I think it means organisms grow bigger or something?” Anna explained to Eve, although her cousin's complaint was probably rhetorical. Her half-remembered science classes couldn't provide the best explanation anyway. The black-haired young woman was aflame with alarm, something Anna found amusing – there wasn't much wildlife on Ainheim, she understood. Wasn't much wildlife like Patrian wildlife, either.
“Mm, you could do that, but Yellow-Fangs like these are kinda tenacious. They only need a few eggs to make a whole new nest.” Anna said. Still...
“Eve's got a point though, Auntie – why not just kill them all with a spell? One of your Fire Sigils could burn this whole nest in a minute, right? Is something wrong?” Anna said. There were plenty of more elegant options that'd be child's play for her aunt, of course: Engineering an Atrophy spell to infect and destroy the entire colony was a classic if you wanted a permanent solution, but such a thing had to be done a la carte and took time to perfect.
Anna hummed thoughtfully. Spiders, eh?
“Hmm... I really wish we had Dad's flamethrower right now. Guess we don't have enough time to run over. Grim likes to squish 'em, too.” she said, rubbing her palms and exhaling in preparation.
“Well, there's not that many. Guess we can do it the old-fashioned way, right?” she said, offering a light smile to Eve.
She swept the Shopkeeper out from its holster. It could turn anything into mist inside 20 metres, and she already knew the big bugs were no exception.
“One pump each should do the trick.”
We can live forever if you've got the time.