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Chapter 76 - Tea Party II
🕑 Added 2024-10-23 16:00:13 +0000 UTCGregory stared mutely as Malvia’s body twitched, a finger-blade pushing through her eye.
Screams broke out. The fake Elise twisted her finger, grinning as the other fingers on that hand elongated. People moved away from the tables while the constant drumbeat of the rain hit overhead.
Rebecca Barnes went limp, still disguised in Malvia, the smile on her face now a confused frown as her legs gave way. The changer’s spear-finger held the corpse up, another pair shooting forward to stab through the side of the throat and the chest, blood pouring out of both wounds.
The last two fingers stabbed at Gregory and he called on the power he’d gathered.
A trumpet’s call blew across the tea party and his sister’s body flew backward into a table with a howl of outrage. The fingers fell out of Barnes, forced out as the spell forced the changer back. Gregory went to her unconscious body, blood pouring out of her neck and chest, the eye missing, nothing but a bloody socket left.
“Tarver, your servant calls upon you for healing, that this day does not become ill-”
“Don’t bother,” Barnes’ accented voice said in his ear. “I’m alright. They aren’t though, so maybe help with them?”
Gregory looked up and his heart fell.
He’d pushed the changer into the Bellman’s table. It rose, finger-blades tearing through them. They’d been trying to flee, but that didn’t save them as those sword-like fingers cut through flesh and bone, turning people into pieces.
Gregory couldn’t look away from Triss Bellman’s face, the look of horror on there. The creature didn’t hesitate to slice through her skull. The expression fell apart as her skull did, brains spilling all over the ground and-
“Move!” the voice in his ear hissed, and Gregory ducked.
Fingers stabbed overhead, halting where he had been standing.
“Either stay down or contribute,” the voice whispered in his ear, and a pair of needles flew across the air.
Gregory’s gut twisted as they buried themselves in Elise’s eyes. It’s not her, he reminded himself. He did not know where they’d flown from, but it wasn’t from Barnes who still lay on the ground next to him. Blood pouring from her throat and chest. Her eye lay on the ground next to her, ripped out by the changer’s finger.
The voice in his head wasn’t Barnes then?
The changer hissed as more needles flew, and a pair of fingers stabbed up into the sky. The borrowed form of his sister melted, dress ripping. Chitinous plates pushed their way through the fabric, forming armor that following needles bounced off of.
Tarver, let your good cheer be instilled in this person, and let them know mirth!
Warmth suffused him. A lute played a ditty and a wave of cheeriness spread through him, but the changer didn’t burst into laughter or even twitched. Not powerful enough. Maybe he needed to recite out loud or physical contact? He’d never had to use this for more than keeping angry parents off his back while escaping bedrooms before!
The other hand’s fingers lengthened, pointed directly at him, and he quickly began mouthing the words to a prayer of protection.
The table next to the changer flew at them, smashing into their side. It didn’t break, bending as the limbs sprang to life, trying to wrap around the shapeshifter. Hissing, it fell to the ground, slamming the table against the ground.
Gregory cut off the prayer before he drew his god’s attention. He’d never tested the limits before of how much power from his god, he’d never had to. Draw too much on your deity’s power, and it could hurt you. Both in the sense of drawing too much divine power through your body if it was unused to it and if you had not fulfilled your priestly duties as you should.
He may have a deficit with Tarver, distracted as recent events had made him.
The only previous time he’d been tested had been the party, and his body had been sore for three days after. How Malvia could sling around so much power without an issue was mind-boggling.
Across the tea party, Edward began shaking, limbs warping. His mouth stretched. It howled as Father backed away, yelling for someone to shoot it.
Two already had, unloading full cylinders. The bullets did nothing.
Rain poured down onto everyone as the mage maintaining the barrier dropped the spell. Instead, the Edward-changer stopped shaking, restrained by her magic. Father was already halfway across the street. Most of the rest of his family had disappeared from sight, except Harry, who was reloading his revolver.
One down. One left to handle. Maybe?
Wood shattered and flew everywhere as the animated table broke. The Elise-changer snarled, turning to look at a space to the right of Gregory. A finger blade shot forward, stabbing the empty air.
“Oh, poor little monster can’t see through my illusions with those useless eyes,” Barnes whispered in Gregory’s ear.
His sister’s pale blue eyes split, new glowing green ones pushing forward.
“Those will. Duck!”
He flung himself to the ground, something passing just overhead. A finger-blade swung down and he moved to the side. The patio floor cracked where the finger landed.
The two fingers she’d shot at him formed knuckles. One on each side of him.
“Tarver, protect your servant in his time of need!”
He barely got the desperate prayer out before the two fingers swung at him from the side, forming a sharp edge as they closed in.
They scraped along the sides of a formed shield, golden divine energy humming through an opera. The blades failed to find purchase, instead halted in place. The changer hissed as it tried to close them like the world’s largest pair of scissors.
His sister’s face split in half, flesh forced to the side as an armored mask forced its way through. Bone-white and with eight holes dotting its oval surface, it moved to the side, something moving inside. His shield flared as the dart impacted, failing to penetrate.
Something rumbled underneath, the crack from the finger spreading. Vines shot out, stabbing into chunks in the chitin. Thorns burst from the changers skin as the vines burrowed, cutting through skin and chitin.
Gregory overturned a table between them just to be safe. The creature snarled and writhed, finger blades cutting at the vines for now.
On the other side of the party, the Edward shifter had gone limp. Two guards and the mage approached the latter, gesturing. Trying to tighten the bonds.
His brother’s stolen head lolled to the side, facing her. His mouth opened, and his tongue shot out, growing in size. It wrapped around her head, muffling her screams. Her entire head was covered in grey flesh. One guard hacked with a sword, trying to cut through. Something cracked, and the screaming grew only louder. The sword parted flesh.
It was too late; the mage’s concentration was already broken, and the restraints with it.
The changer grew with flesh puffing up, swallowing the limbs. More tendrils emerged, holes opening up in flesh as they seized nearby guests and pulled them inside. The creature swelled, already past an ogre in size. They finally hacked the tendril restraining the mage, only for what was left of her cracked-open skull to gush out.
Something. There has to be something-
Gregory’s cover broke as a single blade-finger punching through before expanding, splitting the table in two.
Gregory got to his feet, footing unsure on the rain-slicked patio.
Fingers stabbed out. No prayer, just instinct, and suddenly he was off his feet. He hit something, breaking wood, then an impact that drove the breath from his lungs.
Finger blades crawled over his shield, trying to find a weakness as the warmth in his body grew. He gasped, the heat feeling like a fire being pressed against his insides.
The operatic noises rose in pitch and the shield thickened, the color of gold blotting out anything beyond it. His veins burned as he continued repeating the prayer over and over again as the shield sparked and whined in the tunes of a cello.
The back of the shield shattered, his back landing on the soaked patio floor. The front stayed solid, only to suddenly turn opaque as the blades withdrew.
The Elise-changer writhed, vines and animated chairs grappling all over it. Shattered wood and shredded vegetation flew all over the place.
Off in the distance, the changer that had impersonated Edward had half a dozen people partially pulled into its fleshy body, some still struggling, others gone limp.
Please let no one be fully inside the creature’s body.
Another mage had emerged, the one controlling the weather. Spikes of ice stabbed into the changer at different angles. Trying to avoid stabbing anyone stuck inside meant only a dozen icicles had been driven in. Would they even slow it down.
Meanwhile, Barnes harassing the shapechanger here seemed to be slowing down, the vines and animated furniture slowing. The shapechanger however was backing away, additional eyes opening and closing all over its body.
The changer hissed, looking around as more eyes opened along its chalk-white skin. It shrieked as two needles flew from up above, puncturing the eyes.
Gregory took the opportunity. Attempts to influence the minds weren’t working. They’d shift out of restraints. Blasting with divine magic wouldn’t have the same effect it did on Infernals. All he had was raw force, and that had to be enough.
A blast of the trumpet again and the changer jerked back, the mask-face cracking. Pus poured out of those cracks, falling onto the ground. It hissed, blade-fingers pulling in. Would it try stabbing him with them? It hadn’t worked when it tried cutting, but the force behind those slashes hadn’t seemed a tenth as powerful as its finger extending in instances.
More animated furniture swarmed it, while across from them both guards had surrounded the Edward-changer. Ice had frozen sections of the changer while guards pulled those captured out. The ice shuddered, then broke apart, chunks sent spying as the creature collapsed in on itself. It thinned, wings emerging from its back.
Wings burst from the Elise-changer’s back as well. They launched themselves into the sky, bits of furniture and spikes of ice flying through the sky after them.
No one else was really on this side of the destroyed party. Nothing but the dead as Gregory sat down in the middle of it all. He’d done nothing that had helped.
