Tasha Unveiled
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Midway into the next day they made their way slowly up the dry and rocky face of a tall foothill. They came to the edge of a ravine mouth, about halfway up. There the path turned, and made its way up towards the mountain peaks beyond. Far below Trevor could see a small waterfall.
Michael called a pause at the curve for dinner. As Trevor wolfed down his meal, Michael gazed around. The waterfall was close enough to suggest a scenic overlook while far enough away to dispel any hopes for such satisfaction as might be held by prospective picnickers.
Trevor was a young man intent upon seeing a dragon, and had no great interest in enjoying the sights along the way. He downed his meal without ceremony or disappointment. Michael, on the other hand, had seen enough to appreciate such things. He stared down, oblivious to Trevor’s noisy show of donning his backpack.
“Well, now I’m rested! Are you ready Michael?”
“Yes, just about. I think that we have something to attend to before we head out,” he replied.
Trevor did not have to sit in pained silence for too long before he became aware of some commotion off in the distance on the path behind them. Two figures, a man and a woman, were hustling along while being harried on either side by a group of hill trolls.
Their belligerent chanting might have been taken as only an intimidation tactic, had it not been accompanied by a bit more rearrangement of the hillside along the path than would be predicted by chance alone. Trevor felt the sound of grinding and rending rock travel through his bones from the ground as the earth responded to the trolls’ song. Stones would appear at their stumbling feet of the pursued, boulders would roll down from above, and most alarming of all, shafts of stone the height of a man would occasionally erupt at the figures from the ground.
Michael rose at once, and in his deep voice he began a deep chant, unfamiliar and harsh to Trevor’s ears. Trevor pulled out the spear and extended it, and hurried to follow Michael as he strode towards the disturbance.
The hillside seemed to crackle with barely suppressed energy around them. Stones and soil shifted as Michael passed, as though a great invisible cloth was being dragged over them.
They drew close enough for Trevor to realize that one of the figures was Don, looking battered and exhausted, ineffectually jabbing his trident at the assailants past the roiling earth. The other was a clumsy girl that Trevor didn’t recognize immediately, though something about her seemed somehow familiar.
Michael’s tone changed slightly, and the quiescent patch of earth around him stretched out in front of him, as he strode towards the melee. Wrapping about them now, they became human figures standing, staring at one another and breathing hard.
Don took the opportunity to lunge at his nearest assailant with his trident. There was a sinuous motion by his feet, and he sprawled awkwardly forward. The troll in turn dropped the rock he was holding above Don’s head.
Michael’s chant reached a thunderous climax, as the stone turned to fine powder just before connecting. Don slowly pulled himself up, coughing in the growing white plume.
As Michael drew up, he waved his arms as though dispersing a flock of chickens from the path, at which the trolls withdrew to just outside the edge of the strange counter-chant, glowering darkly at them. The eyes of one widened and narrowed at Trevor, and suddenly he recognized the troll girl from the day before. She stared defiantly and flared her nostrils at him, until he broke his gaze.
Don’s companion hissed, baring rows of pointed serrated teeth at her retreating foes, and with a start Trevor recognized Tasha. Unaccountably there were two scraped and battered legs in place of her long tail and the crimson flesh of her gills cascading from her neck was missing, but it was indeed her.
And yet it didn’t feel like her to Trevor.
Her appearance was unsettling. She now had scars on either side of her neck where her gills had been. Her sharp teeth, inky eyes, and clawed hands were distinct and alien. While a siren in full wrath is alarming, it wasn’t the appearance of his friend that he found the most disturbing; it was that he had never noticed, no, had never been allowed to notice before.
Trevor felt a wave of nausea creep over him. He cast about for the familiar feelings, but they didn’t surface. It was numb and hollow where they had been, like they had been cut away. The depth of the manipulation of her glamours struck him like a blow.
She turned and saw him then, and stepped clumsily toward him. She caught his gaze with now unfamiliar oily black eyes. Taking his hand, she made as though to lead him back the way she had come. Trevor pulled his arm free, and she turned and searched his face with her eyes. Her mouth worked for a moment, trying to find words that wouldn’t come, and she sunk to her knees and wept silently, as Trevor withdrew to where Michael was questioning Don. He felt a sting and looked down. The back of his hand had been scratched by one of her claws, a line of blood traced unfelt down a finger.
“She just limped in not long after you both left,” Don was saying, “asking about Trevor. Well, not asking, exactly. She doesn’t talk, but writes though. I didn’t know that they could write.”
Michael sniffed at this. “Of course they can write. Their magic is mostly in their spell books. They write better than you do, to be sure!”
Don blinked at this. “Well, I guess so. Anyways, I brought her here as fast as I could. I kept going all night. Had to carry her most of the way, since she doesn’t walk very well. We took her to see the Ghost Lady first, and she sent the two of us after you. She said it was ‘a loose end that you should tie up.’”
This reminded Don of something. He reached into his tunic and pulled out a sealed letter, slightly worse for wear, and handed it to Michael. Michael broke the seal and read the letter, frowning slightly.
Looking to Trevor, Michael asked, “Is that the one who tried to turn you into a thrall?” To which Trevor nodded. “Yes, that’s… that’s Tasha.”
“Hey, hey,” there was commotion from one of the trolls, who had stepped forward from their huddle while the rest held back with evident trepidation. “Old man, why are you dragging water spies into our land? We are the masters here. The Sirens are supposed to stay by the waters, and leave the highlands to us!”
“We wish only to pass through to see the Dragon,” Michael replied, pulling out a medallion from the front of his shirt and holding it up.
“You may have leave from the Dragon, but these do not!”
“Bring your village elder, I would like to talk with him about this.”
For a moment the troll glared belligerently at them, before finally nodding his head before turning back to the others.
“We will set up camp just there,” Michael said, gesturing to where Trevor and he had been having their dinner. The troll did not look back, responding only by spitting rudely on the ground as he stalked away.
“Come on,” Michael said. “It will be tomorrow before he returns. We will be able to get our situation sorted out tonight.”