Stir Around Dead Part 12

Chapter 11: A Herd That Should Not Be

It was colder now.

The shadows grew deeper, the twisting thorny briar trunks took on a more jagged appearance. It seemed as if their thorns were claws reaching out to drag Jadah into their deathly embrace.

It was colder now.

Jadah, though flustered was not a complete fool. With a cry of defiance she pulled out a potion, a ruby bottle with a raging flame within. The ruby was over taken by an orange glow as she raised it above her head.

Yet… it was colder now.

“O flame nurtured by my will, sing out your warm protection!”

The fiery brew grew brighter still, and the crackle of flames wafted out into the thorn maze. The shadows due back, the claws raised themselves in supplication to the power of the brew of many fires.

Yet… it was colder now.

Jadah felt it more clearly in the flow. Snow and night essence. The prime element of Phantasm, the aspect of the nonphysical, illusions and spirits. She was a small child, lost and alone on a cold winter night. Snow and darkness. Endless snow, endless darkness. Weakness. She would give in, alone, abandoned, astray.

Inside Jadah’s dress there was a charm, a charm recently made, a little bit greasy but it was filled with the hope of three sisters, their hope to live and survive. Divided and united. The charm did not shine or glow or sing, it did not rage or make a shell of power.

Yet… it was not as cold now.

“Burn” Jadah said, refusing to be drawn into the flow.

A flame with a voice sang from its bottle, and the flow, shifted. She saw it then, the spirit that was wanting to eat her. Not a malevolent being, or at least no more malevolent than a tiger of Nortrieln stalking its prey.

Its eyes were as the stars of the anchor tree’s sky, it had a head and legs like that of a dusky deer, but with no mouth. Its body was covered by a hooded cloak of snow. It had no horns nor hooves, though it stood as if it did. Under the cloak of snow there was restless rustling.

It was a nakfyggr, a spirit that appears to those lost and gently ends their worries. A spirit of snow and darkness, possessing even a bit of pure phantasm. Normally they are cowardly scavenger spirits, appearing only to those already dying. They are not spirits that are usually born of their own accord instead other spirits either advance to them or degrade into them.

Something was keeping Jadah from being relieved. She was not weak, or at least not weak enough for a nakfyggr. She could probably take out quite a few of such spirits. She was not weak, yet this spirit had sought to eat her.

The spirit drifted towards her rustling under its snow cloak. Jadah wasn’t having any of that.

She thrust the brew of singing fire toward the nakfyggr, and the spirit recoiled, distressed squawking coming from beneath its cloak of snow.

“By flame I abjure thee, lesser one, I command power of flame, greater than thee, brewed by my hand, thou canst not stand to my authority! I name thee nakfyggr, wastrel of snow and darkness, picker of corpses, I am no corpse, avaunt! Begone foolish spirit, meddle not with your betters!”

A lion’s roar of a crackle issued forth with Jadah’s intonation, and the spirit was compelled by its nature to flee, as spirits of a weaker nature give way to those of greater strength.

She could have simply ended the spirit, but Jadah was a gentle soul, perhaps filled with too much mercy, and all else considered it was less of a strain of power to simply intimidate the spirit.

Shaking her head, Jadah moved on seeking some remnant of the frail golden white line that had guided her thus far. She could no longer see it, but she felt the remnants of her power in the flow of magic. Whiskers twitching she followed it. She did not put away the singing potion of many flames.

It did not feel safe to do so.

No longer did she move on broomstick. She went on foot, pausing now and then in the darkness that her potion barely held back to find the trail she was seeking. In her passage she found the briar trees growing more convoluted, and her sense of up and down vanished. All she had was the faint trail of her own power, her charm against the loop, and the potion in her paws.

She was being followed, she had ignored it, but she felt her follower getting closer and closer, growing bolder, even trying to bring back the helpless feelings it had emanated before.

“Those who do not learn perish” Jadah sadly whispered.

She collected motes from her hatbush and swirled them around her potion, a strand of the flow followed, darkness in essence, not cold, darkness was a better fuel. There was a roar and a fiery lion’s paw clawed out from the potion, swiping into to the dark at her stalker.

There was a distressed shriek and something now shrouded in flame fled away but death is not something that can successfully be fled from despite the efforts of mage, spirit, mortal and those considered gods.

Jadah did not relax, she did not put the potion away in satisfaction.

There were eyes watching her. A gallery that stretched out into the dark. Nakfyggrs do not form herds, yet that was what had unknown to her surrounded her. The first one had just been a distraction.

Before her emotions were turned against her, she smashed her potion against the ground and the flame let forth a mighty roar! It did not spread as normal flames but moved to her will forming a ring of blazing lion’s mane around her.

A few nakfyggrs rushed forwards, hunger for her abundant magical power in their eyes. Their cloaks parted and many stick thin limbs with fingers that were beaks slashed at the flames. A lion’s head would arise with each strike and devour the limbs, thus the barrier sustained itself.

“Something is very wrong here” Jadah worried.

She did not think that she could deal with so many nakfyggrs, at least not without great cost to herself and she did not want to draw something else more powerful towards her. Was she going to have to just wait and hope that the nakfyggrs would tire and leave before her barrier fell?

Jadah comforted herself with the thought that she couldn’t truly die in the loop.

As if her resigned thought was heard a cry rang out, there was something else amid the nakfyggrs!

Something that was quite familiar to her.

Author: SnowyMystic