Parasitic Peony

Chapter Eleven

Getting it over with turned out to be a fair amount harder than they'd figured.

The goblin assistants were evacuated for their own safety and promised a paid vacation day. Moxie and Lilac moved the altar to face Lilac's summoning circle from the west so when Demmy came it'd be met head-on. More salt was scattered. Caromine gave Lilac's hand a quick squeeze and left to go make Garbage Land's politics her bitch while Moxie and Plum wandered off to some corner and prayed for luck.

"Scared?" Honey inquired from where she was lounging on a pile of pillows and dried-out Sharpies.

"Not scared. Cautious." the young witch quipped back, winking. A cigarette hung off her lip.

"Smoking's bad for your health you know."

"Literally everything in this kingdom is bad for my health. It's literally called Garbage Land."

"Fair."

The older witches walked over. "I'm getting woozy from holding the gas masks this long. Got any extras?" asked Plum.

Lilac rummaged around in some trunk and came out with three. The gas masks the trio wore disappeared with a swirl of violet glitter as they changed hastily and Plum groaned in relief.

"I guess that's all there is to it then." He said with a sigh. "Close your eyes. Focus on drawing any sentient extraethospheric entity you can sense to you and then when you hear a giant crash and me screaming, it'll probably be here. Recite the chant I taught you earlier. Don't open your eyes"

"Got it. I hope you don't die."

"Thanks kid."

Moxie could see in the crinkle of his eyes that he was smiling fondly. As the adults stepped away into the corners of the room together, Lilac took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She could do this. If she could bring a demigod into this world she could damn well take it back out.

...

...

...

They watched in tense silence as Lilac's expressions changed from focus to frustration, to epiphany, to apprehension, to focus again.

And then a huge wad of tentacles crashed through the wall.

Demmy was -wow. That name really did sound stupid- a horrifying sight. Easily over half the size of a high-school gym, it tore through the room, dragging cracks and lines in the ceiling and ripping through the floor, dragging a tidal wave of sand and seawater in its wake, a mess of flabby flesh and tentacles and rippling muscle, limbs both human and reptilian sticking out in seemingly random places in a veritable freakshow of differing sizes, milky blind eyes and gaping, slobbering toothy maws and beaks of songbirds and seabirds and vultures and to be frank it looked like some god-child had been asked to draw a "monster" and just drawn a big purple blob and gone hog wild putting arms and mouths wherever.

Plum, true to his word, screamed, but Honey screamed louder. Demmy, however, took home the award for "loudest hellfire banshee choir howl". Moxie covered her ears and hissed as the being thrashed around the room, stopping over the circle, suspended in the air.

Lilac's lips were moving, but nobody could hear her under the noise. Venus, mother and source, protect me. Moxie prayed.

Suddenly, Lilac went still. The wind in the room seemed to still with her. She turned to the trio with eyes full of horror and mouthed "I'm sorry."

No.

Grimacing with the effort not to cry, Lilac's eyes rolled back in her head and her limbs went slack. An intricate pattern of dark smoke whirled over her skin like tattoos. Her jaw dropped open in a cathartic, ear-shattering cry.

She had entered a gloomwilt fit. In the middle of the ritual.

Still unable to move, Demmy shrieked, tentacles lashing out at the young witch. She stumbled away from the blow and then leapt into the air, swinging at the beast with her bare hands. Demmy cried out as she landed on it, digging her nails into the mounds of flesh and prying out a tentacle at the root. Stray veins and cartilage trailed after it, then snapped under the pressure.

A torrent of emerald blood came out in a glittering spray. Demmy's many mouths and beaks shrieked again, arms and tentacles shooting out to wrap and crush her.

Moxie held the others back. This was not their fight. These were two horrifyingly powerful forces and their best chance of survival was to stay out of it.

Lilac burst out of Demmy's grip, chattering nonsense, and went back at it again, punching and scratching and ripping with all her might, bathed in a sea of foaming green god-blood until they could no longer see her. The witch had burrowed into the writhing mountain of gore. Plum's grip tightened around Moxie's shoulder.

All of a sudden, the air went cold and Demmy exploded. Limbs and guts and a torrential rain of viridian blood hit the walls in every direction. Lilac hung there, suspended in the air, not glowing, rather seeming to suck the light out of the air around her. Her shoulders heaved with each breath.

"I guess you can kill an eldritch god." Honey breathed, awed.

"Technically it's a demigo-"

"Shut the fuck up Moxie."

Lilac descended slowly, hitting the ground on her hands and knees, peering around absently. Her gaze landed on the trio in the corner, and her lips curled into a snarl.

She launched herself across the room, babbling in the tongue of the extraethospheric gods. Plum waved his hands frantically and conjured a wall between her and them. It would buy them some time.

Lilac's fists pounded on the brick. Plum put up another layer as holes began to appear, breath coming in ragged, eyes wild.

"How could this happen? Why didn't we have a plan for this happening?" Moxie demanded, pacing back and forth. "Who am I kidding, we didn't have a plan about any part of this mission. But we should have! This is horrible and we're going to die and I'll never be able to go home to my Sanctuary and my coven and Pearl, and Phosphora , my Phosphora, oh fuck fuck fuck we're going to die we're going to-"

Honey stalked up to her and punched her in the face.

"Get it together!" she yelled. "You think you're the only one who's scared here? Well you're not! I'm terrified, okay?! I'm terrified! I want to see my daughter too! I want to live to drink coffee again! I'm fucking terrified! But being scared isn't going to get us out of this so get your shit together and-"

A haze-swirled fist broke through the bricks. Plum squeaked and the whole wall dissolved.

Moxie held her bloody nose in one hand and summoned a fireball in the other, lobbing it at the haunted figure of Lilac as she darted away, Honey and Plum already running ahead. She hissed under the assault of the flame. They barrelled out into the hallway, Lilac hot on their heels. She chased them down for approximately ten seconds before stopping short and snarling, then going limp and passing out.

Everyone paused.

After a brief moment, the young witch's body quivered, and then she lifted herself up weakly on one shaking arm. Her eyes were normal again, though bloodshot and bleary. "How long was that one?" she croaked.

Moxie sighed, letting her tense muscles go slack. It was over.

They were done.