The Bloodforged Kin

Chapter 243 - 237: Safehold - Jaidy and Lady Tutu Get Bored

"I'm bored!" Jaidyn threw Teddy across the room, scowling at the stuffed bear as if he was to blame. She'd been at Safehold for over a month now and she'd done nothing. In the beginning, everyone took care of her - the little girl and her Teddy that was just looking for family. But once they put her in her own bedroom they forgot about her.

Even that was fun for a while - she could explore all she wanted, playing hide-and-seek with Lady Tutu, and rummage through the houses that ringed the cul-de-sac of Safehold. Everyone forgot the cupboards once the monsters started coming, and nobody had to eat anymore so there was usually something fun or interesting to find.

But here she sat - every cupboard opened, every closet explored, and every person facing only outward. The big TVs in the sky had been fun for a while, like movies where she knew the people in them, but even those had stopped lately. Now everyone just had all the fun fighting the monsters and she wasn't allowed to play at all.

"Go back to the house, Jaidy," she mumbled to herself in a mocking tone.

"You'll get hurt, it's safer inside Jaidy."

"Go sit with Lady Tutu, she'll protect you." She picked the pillow up off of her bed and screamed into it. She threw it against the wall and pounded her small fists on the bed until she collapsed backwards, her anger exhausted. Her screams were replaced with sniffles. She wiped her eyes as she talked to an uninterested Lady Tutu.

"I'm nine now - at least I think - and I was fighting monsters before any of these people found me! I did fine all by myself without them and didn't even die. They get to have fun and get stronger and get new skills and stuff and I have to stay here in my room all day like I'm grounded. I didn't even do anything!" She flipped onto her stomach and screamed into the mattress. This time the screaming was not followed by exhaustion.

Jaidyn stood up, pushing herself off the bed. She searched the room, finding Teddy - the blood stains on his chest a deep brown with age. "Hey, ugly - get up!" She kicked and Lady Tutu gave a half-hearted snarl and snort without even opening her eyes. Jaidyn grabbed the dog by the ear and pulled her head up. Lady Tutu's eyes flashed open and the Rage began to build, but Jaidyn thumped her on the nose and channeled a little energy into her Charismatic Influence skill. Normally that was the skill she used to trick people into playing her games, but it turned out it worked pretty good on this dumb dog. The anger faded from Lady Tutu's eyes and she licked Jaidyn's hand, then face.

"Ew, stop!" Jaidyn laughed, wiping her face with her arm. "Hey, do you know how to go outside? I want to go play."

Lady Tutu cocked her head in confusion so Jaidy pointed through a window to a section of the wall. "Outside! Play! Want to go play outside?"

This got through and Lady Tutu leapt to her feet and began bouncing in place, her huffing, raspy breaths sounding asthmatic despite that being impossible, post-System. Somehow Lady Tutu pulled it off. She ran to the front door, crashing through the solid wood before Jaidyn had a chance to open it. Jaidyn laughed as she squeezed through the opening. "You're bad! We're not supposed to break doors!" There was no heat in her voice - finally she was doing something fun!

Lady Tutu sprinted through the cul-de-sac in a sort of sideways run, some part of her brain knowing which direction it wanted to go without actually informing her body which direction to face. Jaidyn followed at a sprint to a small shed that had been buried in the wall. Lady Tutu had taken over the small enclosure and no one had given any thought to trying to kick her out. Jaidyn sprinted into the small space, looking around.

"Where are you? Where did you go?" The room was only about 10 feet in each direction and the floor was hard-packed dirt, scattered with the random detritus of Lady Tutu's rampages. Jaidyn started kicking through piles of clothes, blankets, and furniture until a head popped out of the ground in front of her. Jaidyn squeaked and jumped back.

"You scared me!" But she was laughing again. This was fun! Lady Tutu disappeared again and Jaidyn realized that she'd disappeared down a tunnel that the dog had obviously dug. She was on her hands and knees in an instant, following the sounds of Lady Tutu's snuffling scrambles ahead of her in the darkness. She realized that the tunnel went down a little bit before straightening out, then back up. When light finally appeared and she poked her head out they were well beyond the walls, having climbed underneath it to emerge into one of the basements left over from when they'd moved the houses off of their foundations to build Safehold's walls. She hesitated - she knew that they'd put traps in a lot of these, but Lady Tutu was bouncing in a circle in the middle, dipping her head and pawing at the ground.

"Well, I guess it's safe if you come through here." She shrugged and climbed out of the hole, stretching. Lady Tutu stared at her expectantly, eyes wide with eager anticipation.

"I don't know! I didn't think we'd go out here. But I like it, though. Let's go find some things to play with!" They climbed up the old staircase that now went nowhere and walked into the woods, looking for fun.

They ran, played tag, twirled, kicked dirt mounds, picked up sticks, and generally did all the things that kids and dogs do when there are no adults around to tell them to calm down. It was random and full of innocent child-like glee. Perhaps that's what attracted the sprites to them.

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The trees here were far apart and the underbrush was pretty much non-existent, but small saplings and bushes grew here and there - enough to make Tag and Hide-and-Seek interesting. Not the ones within Jaidyn's domain skill, just the normal kind that requires no magic to play and yet generates its own anyway. It was as they were scuffling around a patch of brush, each trying to tag the other without getting tagged themselves, that the first sprite appeared.

There was a tinkling sound that made the two stop, looking around. The tinkling was followed by faint auras of green, and brown, and all the earth-toned colors in between, emerging hesitantly from behind and out of the plant life around them. The tinkling became clearer and Jaidyn realized it was giggling. The auras took on human shapes, small, but not so tiny. Stick-thin figures materialized, each only as tall as Jaidyn's chest. On an adult they would be somewhere between the knees and waist.

At first glance they appeared to be clothed in materials made out of plant life and the earth itself, but as she looked closer Jaidyn could see that it was actually just their skin that looked like that. It was impossible to tell if they were boys or girls - they all had doll-like, alien faces that were a bit too skinny and a bit too tall. Their bodies looked frail - stick-thin and waspish.

Jaidyn gasped in delight, kneeling down as one approached her. "Who are you?" Jaidyn whispered.

The sprite tinkled a response that was not meant to be understood with mere human ears, but Jaidy was a smart girl and she knew it was a name. She didn't know exactly what it was but she was going to practice until she could say it just right. She said "Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle," trying to mimic the tones she heard.

Tinkling laughter erupted around her and Jaidyn looked around, a blush of embarrassment rising to her cheeks, only to be quickly replaced with her own laughter. The one closest to her reached out and patted Jaidyn's face gently, smiling with a mouth a little too big and eyes a little too wide.

There was a crash and the copse erupted in the sound of glasses shattering and bees swarming. The sprite in front of her whipped around scarily fast, a sharp hiss escaping its throat. Jaidyn looked up to see that Lady Tutu had one of them in her mouth and was shaking it back and forth, chewing through its bark-hard skin with gnarled and jagged teeth. The sprite turned to face her, its eyes narrowed and its mouth split wide open from ear to ear, showing multiple rows of needle thin, needle sharp teeth.

"No! I didn't do it!" Jaidyn cried. She jumped to her feet and ran to Lady Tutu, but the Sprites beat her there. They moved faster than the wind and were covering Lady Tutu before Jaidyn could reach her. Blood misted into the air as their teeth ripped through even Lady Tutu's hardened hide.

"No! Everybody stop! Don't!" Lady Tutu had taken off running in random directions, her Enraged empowerment taking her over and filling her with a bloodlust that wouldn't be sated until everything in the vicinity was dead. Jaidyn chased her around, waving her arms and throwing sticks and rocks - always too far behind. Blood was slicking the leaves under her feet and she began slipping as she ran. Something that the people of Safehold always forgot was that, although she was a kid, she was a veteran of as many fights and battles as any of them. She'd probably killed more humans than most of them combined, and she had fought as many System-spawned creatures as any of them they had.

She knew the signs of a fight about to go bad. Lady Tutu was doing her best to kill everything around her, but the creatures and people she'd fought up until now hadn't been as magical as the ones that were covering her now. She'd never experienced anything that could tear her apart so easily while remaining mostly invulnerable to her physical attacks. For as magical as she was, Lady Tutu's attacks were mostly physical, empowered by magic rather than being magical themselves.

There was a sickening crunch as she finally broke through the sprite's natural armor and the woods were filled with a shrill keening that cut to the bone. Every sprite there raised their heads to the sky, crying out as one. The keening stopped and they all turned to look at Jaidyn as one, their eyes unforgiving. Their auras returned with intensity - what previously felt so safe and playful now filling the space with a miasma of rage and betrayal so deep that it transcended human feelings. Jaidyn had broken enough rules to know what it felt like when one had been broken, and Lady Tutu had broken a deep and ancient rule - one that could not be forgiven without a debt being paid.

Their heads all jerked towards Lady Tutu with inhuman speed. Jaidyn felt that the debt was about to be taken.

"No! Stop! She didn't mean it! Lady Tutu, you stop too! Everyone stop fighting! Everyone stop!"

"EVERYONE STOP."

Charismatic Influence pulsed off of her in waves and she realized that the spell had felt full for a long time. She had a vague idea that that meant it was time for the spell to get better, but she didn't know exactly what to do with it. Only this time and right now, she did.

Every being in the copse froze for an instant. The sprites began to move first, their motions looking like they were in slow motion or underwater. Lady Tutu began struggling against it as well, her rage blocking most of the mental influence her skill had.

"I. SAID. STOP!" This time the skill became something new and she could feel it grow stronger right then and there. All she had to do was want it enough - to need it enough. She needed it now if she didn't want her old friend and her new friends to die!

Magic clamped down on the area and Lady Tutu was frozen, eyes wide in terror but unable to even move. The sprites only froze for a few moments, their limbs starting to jerk in tiny ways. Jaidyn watched in horror as their fingertips began to grow, pointed things that looked half-stick, half-bone growing from the tips, angling their way towards Lady Tutu. Jaidy's new magic was strong, she knew, but she also understood, somehow, that it wasn't as strong for creatures that were pure magic like these were.

"Please," she hitched a small cry, tears streaming unnoticed down her face. "She's my friend, please don't."

The sprite that had greeted her first turned, the gold-green beauty of its eyes belied by a deep and ancient danger. There was no mercy there and never would be, not for one who owed a price.