Poultrygeist (15) : As Destiny City is a bustling metropolis, it’s not unexpected that there should be some strange animals running the streets. Sometimes it’s a tiger, sometimes a monkey, sometimes a chicken. Sometimes it’s something worse. Strange egg clusters have appeared in Destiny City’s parks and officials aren’t really sure what they are; these eggs have nothing inside of them. Though it’s an anomaly, they are chalking it up to teenaged pranks. However, they have advised to just leave the eggs as they are. Nobody wants to say why, but if you’re out late at night, you’ll find out. In the darkness, whispered between the sounds of the city: a guttural, rasping cluck. The creature stands on stilt-like legs, rooted to the ground with razor-sharp talons. It wears a cloak of long, oily feathers that drag on the ground with a sinister scraping. If you stare into the darkness, piercing red eyes stare back at you. That’s all it takes for a confrontation: a mangled bird, maybe a chicken in another life, comes barreling out at you. It stands easily as tall as a person, but the proportions are all wrong. The smell of sulfur follows it as it lunges, pecking and screaming and scratching as it attempts to chase you away. Maybe, from the nests full of empty eggs. The battles are fierce, but fleeting; it will viciously try to chase you away but the effects are always the same: at some point, the eggs are crushed. As always, there’s nothing inside of them, but with one final wail, the bird will vanish into a plume of foul smoke.
Too stunned to scream, Hekate remained rooted in place. Pupils blown out into wide discs as she stared down an alleyway that was dimly lit by yellow light from a lamp overhead.
She’d just finished gathering energy with her wraith and been on her way towards the closest mirror she knew of that wasn’t in a store. It had been beside her, floating lazily in its corporal form, its expression looking unimpressed with the world and overall bored with the evening.
And then…
Then…
What… The ********… Just happened…?
Her heart hammered against her chest as the smell of sulfur assaulted her senses. It made her stomach twist and churn, but her adrenaline was so high that the nausea barely registered. Every nerve in her body felt taut and ready to snap, hands trembling as she took a cautious step back from the shadows.
Hekate had no idea what it was she was looking at.
It was like a horror film where dinner last night was making a comeback, but not in the form of food poisoning. No… that would have been much kinder.
Cluck Hekate visibly flinched, from the sound of long talons dragging along concrete cut through the silence, giving the distinct impression that it was sharpening them in preparation for its next attack. Cluck At this point, she dared not even breathe while this monstrosity stalked towards her, stepping into the halo of light, looking like a disheveled mother hen who had nothing left to lose and no more ******** to give. Cluck Oily feathers swept over the dumpster runoff that dripped into the drain that had been between them, and then it lowered its head to eye level…
In the second most fight or flight moment of her life, it seemed her voice had run off without her. But upon a whisper, she managed a single word, “Jinx”.
A trail of purple smoke, barely visible in the evening light, fell from her shaky fingertips and snaked its way towards the creature, wrapping around its bony legs and up its body like a snake. It pulled its head back when her magic reached its face, and though it tried to retreat a few steps away, the smoke did not dissipate and was absorbed into its eyes, its nose, and its mouth when it opened its beak to let out an ear-piercing screech.
That sound was all it took to snap Hekate from her trance and set her into motion. Fear gripped her, causing her to stumble multiple times but somehow she managed to keep running despite her legs feeling weak but at least the beast that was running after her wasn’t having much luck staying upright either, as it pursued her in a drunken-like state. Its body knocking over trash bins and falling into storefront windows.
Help.. She tried to call out, but her voice was silenced in her panicked state, while her mind struggled to remember where the nearest mirror was so she could actually escape.
xxKyuseisha no Hikari
