Hunting Midnight • Ep 5 • Part 15: Sounds 👸🏻
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Part 5-15: Sounds
“Typical,” I muttered, then returned my attention to the orbiting specks. “Fergus, if you fill up with clues any time soon, hit me up.”
“Step one,” he said, “share pointy stick with Fergus.”
I eyed him and tossed the polearm over. He caught it.
“Step two is probably something to do with these little bastards.” He attempted to kick at one that whooshed through his foot.
I knelt and switched the rapier to my left hand, leaving the right free so I could hold the Queen’s Band out to the blobs. They didn’t seem to respond.
“With the first book, when it pulled me in, I saw the pattern we needed,” I said. “With the second one, same thing, plus I remember feeling pressure and heat.”
“And this one?” said Fergus.
“Sound. Wings. Lobster’s I thought.”
“The Minder said you couldn’t do this one without learning to channel sensation.”
“He did, didn’t he?”
I closed my eyes, and listened. There was no wind here, no people, nothing but us. It was easy to pick out a light, constant swishing noise. It pitched almost imperceptibly, rising and falling in irregular sequences. It was easy to imagine this as the sound of the blobs as they scooted about. And there were wings. Up high. Deep, confident flaps. Rustling snaps with long seconds between—it reminded me of a big flag in an intermittent breeze.
Fergus coughed, and it sounded deliberate: “Ech-hrrm.”
I peeped open an eye, keeping most of my brainpower on the sounds. The lumps were orbiting me, or at least the nearby ones were. They formed concentric circles, the direction of each one opposite its inner neighbour. I’d seen ‘em do this around the Walkerby house. Around the source of the rogue signal.
The swishing did seem more orderly now. I imagined the wispiness of it as more of a flat, even static. Fine and snowy—hsshhhh. It did not grow loud, but it grew deeper. It did not get deeper in bass, but rather weightier in my jaw and gut. More and more of the creatures—these keyshards—fell into rotating circles. The ones nearest me slowed their rotation, stopped. Then the next circle stopped. And the next. Before I knew it, the grass was once more a mass of almost-mushrooms, although much more neatly arranged. The sound dropped away, becoming white noise. Background status, much like the way the diamonds and squares rested after I’d put them to work.
“You always have to be the centre of attention, hey?” Fergus said, winking.
“Tends to happen, when you’re the ringer of the group,” I tried, wiggling the fingers on my right hand.
“Pah! That’s a solid six, six point five outta ten.”
My budding smile flattened out when another series of wingbeats cut through the air, this time much closer. We found that the evil rooks had indeed descended. They angled in, spiraling downward. And they had riders. I stood and brought my weapon to half mast. I figured I might be able to shoot them down easy enough, but that wasn’t the point of the lesson, was it?
Then, a green streak came shooting around the tower. A rook keened and dove for it.
“Lobster!” I cried, and fired a shot at the big black bird.
My blue bolt missed, but the predator had to break its dive to avoid it. Lobster came flapping towards us, perhaps recognizing my voice. The other flying demons had moved out of formation. Those I could spot were tracking the green parrot with interest.
“Here, ya dumbass!” I said, and stuck my free arm out to my side. I’d seen Deluxe do it a hundred times.
Her pet zoomed over and clutched me around the bicep, his fat wings pummeling my ear. The sound was identical to when I came in, so I ignored the sharp claws and tried to key in on the noise: whap! whap! whap! All the blobs near me sprouted little, knobbly antennae. Before I could fully process that, one from my closest circle sprung into the air, hit my knee and went curling up my body, leaving an invisible trail of icy coolness.
“Hey, whoah buddy!” I said, kicking my leg uselessly.
It slithered up my hip, around my waist, across my chest and to my parrot-arm. Then it climbed onto Lobster’s back and popped its probes into the base of his skull. My ears popped and a classic post-rock band ringing noise came and went.
“Seriously, hey!”
“Seriously, hey!” repeated Lobster.
“Oh crap,” said Fergus, scrambling closer to me, and holding the polearm out before him. A second later, there were four heavy thuds as our friends made landing all around.
“Don’t worry about them,” I said.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Lobster.
“Knock it off,” I hissed, twisting around to see where the other two were, and immediately braced for the mocking echo.
Lobster was quiet, and shifted painfully on my arm, which was starting to grow numb under his heft.
“Go bother Fergus,” I joked, mostly from nerves. I pointed the rapier at the closest bird. They and their riders had made no further moves.
The parrot pushed off my arm and attempted to perch atop Fergus’ head. He flailed in surprise, dropping the polearm, yelling and stumbling forward as Lobster flapped madly, one foot tangled in the poor guy’s hair. I started to laugh, mostly because I wondered what the death knight squad must think about the wiggly blob riding a crazed parrot riding a shouting man.
As Lobster started to squawk laughter too, my intuition finally clued in.
Lobster, just chill on the damn grass for a second, I thought.
Fergus was released and the bird did as I asked.
“Oh, cooool,” I breathed.
“Not. Cool,” said Fergus, rubbing his head and casting embarrassed looks at the audience.
“No, I think I got it. The lesson. Which means we won’t need the original test subjects any more.” With that, I snapped shots off at the two big rooks in front of me (left handed at that!) As they shrieked and dissolved into a riot of exploding feathers, I pivoted and got the third. The fourth one managed to leap up and get a burst of altitude, but that just made it more fun. I materialized the polearm in my right hand, leaned back, then spear chucked it.
The golden lance arced straight into the thing’s gut and it went corkscrewing down into the lawn, trailing plumes like a wrecked fighter jet. Its knight fell too, and popped into its own grave of plumage as it slammed into the stony courtyard wall.
“That, now that was cool,” said Fergus. “I don’t think these hombres think so though.”
Three knights remained, emerging from the dark piles of their dying mounts. Three big shields came up, each shimmering in a glossy way, like they’d applied a dozen coats of varnish. I tested a shot at one, and found myself unsurprised when my beam ricocheted off the big blocker.
“I probably could’ve used their rooks against them,” I reasoned. “Oops.”
“Huh? How? What?” said Fergus.
“Through the blob boys. Keyshards, if you will. I think that one on Lobster is giving me control of him. Or something like that.”
“Oh, that’s what you thought was cool? Agreed, coolness confirmed. But what about tin can crew here?”
The knights all inched forward, peering carefully around their shields.
“These idiots are near harmless, come with me,” I said, and strode towards The Jailer’s Tower. “You too Lobster! We’ve a detour to make before The Minder resumes his lectures.”
I led the way between two of the tall, armored demons, who backed away and made ample room after receiving a few loose shots near their exposed kneecaps. Lobster followed on the wing, while Fergus ran backwards behind me, brandishing a resummoned polearm.
As I got to the entrance, The Minder called out.
“Alena, what is this? The lesson is not entirely concluded, albeit you’ve taken to the fundamentals handily enough.”
I grabbed the handle of the door with my right hand, and my special ring hummed silently with a frequency I instinctively knew as glad. The Minder had reappeared back where we had stood, in the middle of the blob rings. The knights now all loitered around like bored extras between shots, shields askance. I swear one was picking at its sword’s pommel.
“Appreciate the schoolin’ pal,” I said, tempted to blast the absentminded knight, to make some sort of point. “But I’ve got to cut it short per the whole wolf-about-to-eat-kids timing problem. Gonna take this guy here down for a tour of the cells in a bit, yeah?” I nodded towards Fergus, who’d backed himself up against the curve of the tower.
“As you wish.” The Minder crossed his arms and quirked his eyebrow. “But—”
“Ciao!” I said, and pushed into the foyer beyond, Fergus scrambling in on my heels as Lobster ‘n’ blob swooped in neatly overhead.
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Alena the bada$$ to the rescue.😁😁
Alena really is coming into her own :) I love this series!!!
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Over confidence??