abraxaslogs | Wᴇʟʟ, I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴜɴ ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜɪᴅɪɴ'

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Wᴇʟʟ, I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴜɴ ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜɪᴅɪɴ'

Who: Winchester & Co.
When: September
Where: Free Cities, Libertas, & the Horizon
What: Quests, training, or Roadhouse socializing.
Warnings: Suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, other psychological traumas.

Aɴᴅ I ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴏᴡɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʟᴏᴛʜᴇs I'ᴍ ᴡᴇᴀʀɪɴɢ
Aɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴏᴀᴅ ɢᴏᴇs ᴏɴ ғᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀ
Aɴᴅ I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ sɪʟᴠᴇʀ ᴅᴏʟʟᴀʀ
Bᴜᴛ I'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʟᴇᴛ 'ᴇᴍ ᴄᴀᴛᴄʜ ᴍᴇ, ɴᴏ
Nᴏᴛ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʟᴇᴛ 'ᴇᴍ ᴄᴀᴛᴄʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪᴅɴɪɢʜᴛ ʀɪᴅᴇʀ

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Eventually, they slow to an amble — a patrolling trot, Dean's eyes sharply scanning the planes stretching out before them as best he can through the waves of heat that distort what should be clear and flat.

"They travel in small packs. There's gonna be at least three or four of 'em. You'll see 'em kicking up a little dust, disrupting the earth, leaving trail lines. Cross between a scorpion and a snake, almost, the way they skitter-slither flat across the dirt." That's what he's looking for now. Dust trails. Moving lines. "When they stand upright... could be anywhere from two to eight feet tall, depending on how old we're catchin' em. Once they get big enough, we're talking full-on Tremors."

Pretty sure he doesn't need to say why they wanna catch 'em before that happens.

"Joy."

They're probably hell as they are already. Even bigger hell just took the terrorizing, destruction, and death to another higher level. Her eyes skimmed the sands, twisting and shimmering, in the distance. Days of staring at them had not made staring at them into a skill she could just push through. Not that she ever thought that was possible, but it was a nice dream squinting into the distance.

"Have you gone after them before?"

Oh! [He laughs.] That's a very good point. The legs were a nice touch, I think. And neither of us had any complaints.

[He's only saying --]

Ow. well, he's no longer in his own times, so it's time to catch up... to. The times.

[He's going somewhere with this. Besides, Julie seems much meaner! "Toxic!" That sounds rather terrible.

All right, though. Jaskier does look a bit annoyed now at that.] What do you mean, am I sure? Shall I draw you a portrait next time we're sharing our bed? I don't recall tripping and accidentally fucking you, Geralt. Do you recall such a thing?

[Now that Dean has made such a horrible thing of it, like it is something to be ashamed of (and perhaps pushed even further by Julie's energy), he's decided this entire conversation should no longer be education, but a complete undressing of Dean's character. Or sanity. Since he's going to go and imply someone like he should not be with someone like Geralt.

Dean trying to walk from the table does not save him. Jaskier takes a swig of drink and turns around in his seat.] I'll have you know I've bedded some of the most powerful kings and duchesses of the Continent! I am a prize!

( He settles in beside her — not crowding, but close enough that he can place a firm hand on her shoulder and give it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. )

Hey. ( Look at me. ) You got this.

( The demon, who'd been screeching with burning pain, descends into peels of hideous laughter.

"Got this? You don't got anything. Don't kid yourself, princess," he chuckles hoarsely. A moment later comes an amendment, "Or should I say queen?" )

[While Dean's support is certainly welcome, it's anger that gets Nadine in the right gear. The fear fades and a hot flare of anger rises up in her at the phantasmal demon's words. Her eyes narrow and her jaw sets and her narrow shoulders square.]

I am a queen.

[Of nowhere and no-one, in no way that truly matters, but even so. She was raised to be a queen, and she's certainly more powerful now than she's ever been in her life. Half of what she's done in the last year is practice and build up whatever skills she can that could be useful against Flagg, should he ever return. And whatever had happened, no matter that she mostly rejects him now, he had made her his queen.

She shakes the holy water at the thing violently, eyes still narrowed into furious slits, as though she intends to soak it entirely. Or come as close as she can.]

"Yeah, totally," he says with... arguably strained confidence. It sounds less than one hundo even to his own ears, and he grimaces gently. Concedes to an amendment of, "...Once."

A beat.

"On accident."

He was hunting something else, he was super unprepared for these goddamn things.

Grimly: "They ate my first horse. Whole damn thing. Hooves and all."

Cost him the entire damn contract's worth of coin and then some. Lesson learned, and after that the stable master was only willing to rent him exactly one bitch horse for like the next two months. Some kind of douchey horse probationary period, like he's going around using them for bait or something.

It's a little interesting to watch. The unconvincing confidence that bites back one step at a time on each of the words that follow. The concession that turns quickly toward a confession of it being once on accident and one Dean was just lucky enough to walk away from. Literally.

"Fuck." Her whole imagination widened the picture of the full size of each mouth on this multi-headed monster to each one potentially able to eat a horse. "That takes 'don't get eaten' to a whole other level, doesn't it?"

And, maybe it tucks the question about this being her first on something he couldn't manage before into its own pocket because she's not asking it. It can set into the back of her teeth and the line and her spine and her eyes going back to the silent, still, stretched ground that wouldn't be so forever.

( Wow. Okay.

Not exactly the reaction he'd have banked on, and his expression flashes a mixture of surprised and a little impressed. You know, in another life, Nadine might've made a damn fine hunter.

Not that he'll ever say that to anybody that isn't one already, lest it be confused with him approving of a career change. )

Atta girl, your majesty. ( Said lightly, approvingly. The demon screams, smokes, sizzles, and Dean reaches into his pocket to pull out a scrap of paper. ) Hang on to some of that, you're gonna wanna use it to shut that thing up while you read this.

( It's a short string of word scrawled in Latin.

Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica. Ergo, omnis legio diabolica, adiuramus te. )

It's gonna say whatever it can, whatever it thinks will get you to stop and respond. Don't. Just power through.

Doesn't occur to him to specify they hadn't eaten it whole as in one bite, but rather that a pack of three or so of them descended on the thing like equestrian freakin' termites in the world's most morbid cartoon. She'll see soon enough anyway.

"Yeah," he exhales a breathy agreement. She's damn right about that. This world's a little less find the corpse with its throat ripped out and more try to identify if that scrap of leftover meat used to be human-shaped. Provided there's any left over at all. It's a whole different experience here. "Wait 'til you see the Geralt Jrs."

Which is a statement that probably absolutely bears clarification, but it's at that moment he spots it. All joking switches off in an instant, and he jerks his head in direction of the dust trails.

"Alright, showtime. Stay back, keep moving. I'm gonna get in close and keep 'em busy while you Duck Hunt." As in, pick them off from the sides one by one while he preoccupies and directs the center. Seems like the easiest way to give her the breathing room to line up a shot she wouldn't otherwise get if the both of them tried running around in circles like jackasses trying not to get a leg torn off together. "Oh, and uh. Mind the fangs, the venom's a paralytic."

Probably useful information to know, right as he kicks his horse into gear and starts galloping toward their quarry.

Of course, there are monsters named after Geralt. Or he has monster offspring. She'd say she wasn't surprised, but she's not in for the flavor of insulting Ciri in that. It doesn't matter anyway because Dean hitches to attention off in the direction where the ground is hazing rock and dust from a shaking ground, moving fast.

"Nice of you to remember that now," Jo calls after his vanishing back.

Go time. Jo's only said she wanted this for weeks. Her toes press into the stirrup, and she pulls up the crossbow from its side carried, stripping one of the bolts from the thigh holster. She gets it comfortable on her lap and pats her horse on the neck.

"We've got this," she says quietly.
Not sure how much of it is for herself.

She's wanted this for weeks. She'd been doing the job for years. The nerves and the fear don't actually stop. You just learned to walk through them. She settles a hand on the crossbow and sends them into a trot in the same direction. Letting Dean have his lead, but getting closer still to wherever that stopping point is about to be.

Yeah, I don't think that's going to get the response it wants.

[Nadine's angry now. It's about far more than this facsimile before her, but it makes a very nice target to let it all out. She wants to hurt it. It's awful, she knows the impulse is awful, but...

It's not even a real thing. It's all mist and magic, just a figment born of Dean's and her own minds. If she really wanted, she could probably just vanish it or turn it into a puppy. Not that she would, it would defeat the whole purpose of this. But she could, and so there's no guilt or shame at letting out some long-pent up anger at it.

Taking a deep breath, she begins reading from the slip of paper Dean's given her. At least her Latin pronunciation is flawless - one benefit of a strongly Catholic upbringing.]

( Scratch that — Nadine would've made a fucking fantastic hunter.

He knows that pain, that anger, that ugly desire to hurt. He knows what it feels like to be fueled by spite, to feel satisfied by it.

He knows it intimately.

It's not something most standard civilians would pick up on right away, but like recognizes like. Even so, the few who did sense that in her would probably be more likely to scale things down. Reel it back. Feel concern, come at this with a softer touch, maybe we should stop, or are you okay, or the awkward uncomfortable silence that follows seeing someone do something a little too morally grey for their tastes.

Not him.

Call and response. He senses it on a subconscious level, and what radiates from him in turn is cold, hard approval. )

Good.

( Simply, but knowingly.

Midway through her reading, insults turn into choking. Choking turns into coughing. A thick cloud of black smoke erupts from its mouth, filling the air, circling organically, something alive and thriving and angry — and powerless.

At the last word, it plunges downward and disappears into the floorboards. )

Twenty or so yards away, Dean hops off of his horse and sets into a jog. Tempting as it might be to ride the thing into combat, at the end of the day, this is a civilian horse. This is a loaner, a rental, one that sure as shit wasn't bred for combat. Even if he fully owned her, he wouldn't be able to trust for certain she wouldn't throw him off the moment one of those things erupted up from the ground. You know what's more dangerous than being on your own two feet?

Being on your back. No, thank you. It's not worth chancing it.

The things that he's content to refer to as sand worms feel the vibrations in the dirt even from as far away as they are. It's obvious enough they detect him when the momentum seems to suddenly stop, and then the dust clouds promptly redirect. Oh yeah, they're coming for him. He'll draw his sword once they're within fifteen or so feet, but for now?

He shifts the rifle strapped to his back. Brings it up, levels it carefully at the dirt, and then pulls the trigger.

One of them bursts from the ground, maw gaping, an ungodly pissed-off gurgling sound roaring from its gullet. He fires again, and the bullet tears through its head in a splattering of gore and viscera. It takes one more shot to bring it all the way down, and by that point they're close enough for him to quickly switch weapons.

It's about to get risky.

Edited 2022-10-16 11:21 (UTC)

Dean sends the horse off running for any number of reasons she can put to the guess, and it really is a commentary on all of them. They'd spare animals they have no stake in, where they don't choose the same path for themselves. Hand bracing the crossbow, eyes on Dean, she has the second to catch the flicker of it. The one that starts with that's a special level of insanity right there, one small man, with the whole roll of land and that threatening cloud, and ends up in bone-deep, grim, glinting respect, solid as a diamond, and just as hard to shift.

(A little bit of awe that gets one breath before she's banishing it down hard. No distractions.)
The crossbow gets leveled, with his ability to get a wide arc of movement across her viewpoint.

The ground settles, the dust hangs in the air, and even before it can have the chance to float down, the ground erupts with a monster. One, and then another, and Dean's working one side, and she starts with the center. Not shooting too close to him, considering shot time is longer than a bullet for it to land, but aiming to shoot through the head of whichever one realizes what Dean's doing to its closest neighbor.

Dean finishes off one, and her first is sailing toward the ground dead or not quite yet (he'll be able to tell better than her from here; it's part of why she doesn't like distance all that much either), and she sends another bolt pegged for it still. Safer than sorry. But more heads are pushing up out of the ground and the cloud of dust, all the more angry-vicious for the smell of blood, death screams, and flying viscera.

[By the time it's done, Nadine is breathing hard and tense, but she hasn't backed down. It made her feel powerful, despite this being the Horizon. The whole point of these lessons is that they replicate what would happen in real life.

Maybe it's because of her childhood, so heavily steeped in the laws and lore of Catholicism, but the idea of exorcism is one that means something to her already. While many of her newly acquired skills had lived in the realm of fantasy, exorcism was a sort of 'magic' that had always been accepted as part of life. Not hers, exactly, but she'd never doubted there were priests out there doing the real thing.

And now she can. Or at least the basics.]

That felt good.

( That confession earns Nadine a faintly arched eyebrow — amused, still visibly pleased. It's a hell of an improvement, going from that uncertainty at the start to this. )

You ready to go again?

( And if she is, they will — a few more times, the scenario similar if perhaps a bit more vitriol rolling out of the manifested demon's mouth to push her buttons. He just wants to get to the point where it seems like she can just about recite it without the paper — maybe not outright memorize it so soon, but anything close is a win in his book.

By the time they wrap up, she'll earn herself an I'm proud of you beer for her troubles. )

One small man though he may be, he does have a few things that help balance it out. Maybe baseline, maybe back home, this would've been damn near suicidal. Here, now?

Well, maybe he gets to show off just a little.

The first time one of them gets too close for comfort, he throws out a hand and blasts it back a dozen yards with a flash of white light. It doesn't kill the thing, but it does a good enough job stunning it long enough for him to chop off another thing's head.

The second time he gambles, and it pays off for the first time outside of training — that goddamn shield, that sign he spent forever trying to get right and just couldn't until not too long ago. One of the sand worms bashes itself into the thing over and over, but it doesn't falter. Gives her plenty of time to take aim, fire a bolt, and put it out of its misery.

A tank and a marksman, it's a classic combo. You gotta love it.

Jo isn't expecting either thing, but it's becoming a bit normal with Dean and this place—and there's no time more than a vague flicker of annoyance, here and gone, full focus demanded already elsewhere. Because. Powers were sprouting up out of people and things that never had them to begin with all over this world. She's starting to accept that—more of a speed bump, less of a personalized flash of fire to the face.

But. Maybe it delays Jo a second longer than it should. The comically weird, unmovable trainwreck pause of just watching the monster bash its head again and again toward where Dean is standing and, each time, get stopped by a near-invisible wall. It's only the glitch of the record, and then she's reloading and aiming for that one. Rage-confused and single-minded. One shot. Two.

There's a prickle of something she's trying hard not to label this early, about being this far away. Left out of range, like there are still kid wheels. On her horse. Whatever. I want to do more than sit somewhere out here, playing Duck Hunt, safe as houses, the way none of them ever were or are.

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Wᴇʟʟ, I'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴜɴ ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ʜɪᴅɪɴ'

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