Kevin Hearne - Hunted

That red couch deserved my eternal gratitude. I loved that couch and promised it in a fit of sentimentality that, if I survived, I would buy one just like it and build a memorial. Perhaps I could move it along with me through a series of bindings, screening my slow crawl?

It was risky. There was no such thing as a kinda-sorta binding. Either you bound something or you didn’t. So if I bound the leather on the end of the couch to the far wall to make it move, there was no telling how fast it would travel—or how far it would continue to move on after I broke the binding. If I didn’t break the binding at precisely the right time, it could wind up leaving me exposed to more fire from the manticore.

I looked down at my right hand, still resting in the hole and clutching a handful of crumbled stone, and it occurred to me that a wall of marble would protect me far better than a floor. If we were back on earth on bare ground, I could ask an elemental to create a wall for me, but elementals always remain on earth even though their magic can be tapped, and they wouldn’t be able to help me with dead, quarried stone anyway. Despite the time it would take me, the wall was a much safer option than gambling with the couch. And it would give me something to do while my body continued to purge the manticore’s toxins. I rolled myself over so that I was facedown again, in the original position of my fall.

Beginning with the hole in front of me, I modified the unbinding spell so that the affected area would be a thin sliver of stone, only as wide as the thickness of a fingernail; the length was about six inches, starting from the ragged, crumbled edge of my hole and extending toward the pillar. I repeated it twice more, at ninety-degree angles, so that when I was finished I had “cut” a rough square of marble, with the hole side looking chewed up. Those three cuts I bundled together in a macro and then proceeded to the second operation.

Looking at the flat surface of what was now a marble tile, I mentally selected the right third of it and then bound it to the inside edge of the cut floor facing the manticore. The effect, when I completed it, was that the tile wiggled up off the ground and then flipped so that it stood facing the center of the room, but the newly bottom portion of it was bound to the rest of the floor. It left a small crater of exposed earth—they pour no cement foundations in Tír na nÓg, since it’s tectonically stable, lacking actual tectonics. As more marble left the floor and became my shield wall, I would be left with an easy source of magic to tap.

I tacked the tile binding onto the end of the slicing macro and then cast the whole thing as a new macro. It executed much faster, and I grinned when the next tile cut itself and clacked into place. I repeated it again and again, creating a trough of earth and the tiniest of walls, only four inches high above the surface of the floor.

Once this self-erecting wall appeared beyond the edge of the couch, however, toxic thorns fired into the upper lip of the wall—Ahriman’s reflexive response to movement, perhaps. The barbs bounced off in a wholly satisfying manner. A few more sailed high, presumably in case I was trying to get across using camouflage. The manticore waited for me to scream, but when I didn’t and the marble squares kept rising and clicking into place all the way to the pillar, his voice pressed into my brain as his growls filled the room.

~Hrrr. What nonsense is this?

“It’s a modified Cask of Amontillado. Treat your foe like Poe.”

~Explain, Werner Drasche.

“Call me Montresor if you like. Explanation won’t be necessary if you will be patient.”

In response, several thorns thunked into the ceiling above. Ahriman had tried to ricochet them down on top of me, but they were too sharp and plunged deep into the sexy fresco, pumping their venom into hapless plaster fornicators. Ahriman roared his frustration—impotent rage in the Hall-O-Love.

My base completed to the first pillar, it was time to practice masonry without mortar. First I unbound some more of the marble around my hand so that I would have a squared edge near me, adjacent to the side that had just been sheared off. I began on a new set of macros for what I supposed must be thought of as skinny bricks, or perhaps really beefy tiles. Since I now had two sides of the squares exposed, I needed only two cuts for squares in this row, and then I had to bind the bottom of each square to the top of the foundation. When that binding executed, the tiles flew off the ground to land on top of the wall, adding six inches of height. As the row passed the couch and proceeded to the pillar, Ahriman divined my purpose and moved. Cables stretched and slithered across fur, and squelching noises from the mud reminded me of gastrointestinal discomfort. He did not bother announcing his intention; he merely fired more of his poison barbs over the couch at as steep an angle as he could manage. He had raised himself to improve his chances—and they weren’t bad. The thorns landed mere inches beyond my mangled left side. There was no need to inform him how close he had come. Continuing to build the wall and simply not screaming in agony would let him know that he failed.

He gave up after a short while and I could hear him pacing, wet splortches mixed with the clank and rattle of his confinement. I continued to cannibalize the floor to build the wall, a bit higher than I had originally intended to cut off the manticore’s field of fire. I didn’t want him to be able to nail me from afar once I started moving toward the kitchen door.

Gods below, I hoped there was something edible in there.

The last of the poison had been broken down and a modest skin covering had closed the wound on my shoulder, but my tattoo wouldn’t heal up all on its own, and I was running on fumes. Once the wall was completed to my satisfaction, I began to drag myself along the ground, using my right arm and leg. Ahriman heard me moving and he lost it. He didn’t speak; instead, he roared and attempted to pull free of his chains, though he had doubtless tested their strength long before and found them sufficient to restrain him. He made quite a ruckus back there, but it didn’t stop my long slog to the kitchen. After picking up Fragarach and realizing how profoundly unable I was to use it right then, I had occasion to reflect that crawling away was not my most heroic moment.

Ahriman spoke one last time, as I pushed open the kitchen door and hauled my body out of the sex hall. That half-human voice slithered into my head, menace in every syllable.

~I may die here, Werner Drasche. But if I am freed, I will hunt you.

“Okay!” I called back, and let the door close behind my feet. I hoped that, if he did escape somehow and found me instead of the arcane lifeleech, it would be far enough in the future that I would be in better condition to fight him.

An important step to improving my condition would be to eat something. Magic could boost my base strength, which was barely keeping me moving, but it couldn’t boost low blood sugar or stop the growling in my belly, and since the kitchen had been tiled, I was now subsisting on my bear charm until I could find some other source of energy.

The kitchen appeared to be well stocked, and should it prove to be the case, I silently swore to give Brighid a fruit basket and no explanation whatsoever.

Since Tír na nÓg lacked electricity, food was kept safe in iceboxes—the enchanted sort one could find at the goblin market. Midhir had three huge ones and a prep area made entirely of wood; his faery servants wouldn’t have appreciated the modernity of stainless steel. The cutlery and cookware were bronze, copper, and glass.