Patrol

This is a fairly brief story maybe 2900 words, roughly 6 pages. A friend has a little shared universe and offered it up to a group of people to work within. Having not written anything in a while I figured I’d take a stab at it. The world she’s built is fairly loose, she intended it to be adaptable for any genre. In many ways, it’s less a world and more of a theme or style she’s built.

The following is the rough draft, errors included:

Patrol

“Clear?”

“Aye yea, alley’s good, a little ripe, but tomorrow’s trash day so, ya know…”

“Mate, with a nose like yours everything’s ripe.”

“And with a mouth like yours it’s a wonder I smell anything but trash.”

Conall threw back his head and howled.

Brus stepped out from the alley, a deep grumbling rising from his chest, the man’s version of laughter, and resumed patrolling the neighborhood, leaving his partner behind.

For a few moments he walked alone, pausing to sniff and peer at flittering shadows in the darkened windows of the tenement buildings around him. Behind him, Conall had lost himself in his humor, his howling now a part of a concert across the town. Once he’d regained control he trotted to catch up to his partner. 

His lopsided grin left Brus uneasy, trouble normally followed the slightly manic expression.

“Looks like we’re in for a short night, patrols across town are reporting bupkiss. Another loop and we should be good to call it a night.”

Brus sighed deeply. 

“What?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that out loud. Just go ahead and throw that sort of thing into the ether.”

“C’mon mate, that’s nonsense. It’s been quiet all week. Looks like the scuffle has been put down and moved on. We can go back to dusk and dawn patrols and get ourselves some shut eye.”

“Conall, I rightly hate you. Sound the alarm and call everyone here.”

“What!? Why?”

“We have wisps.”

Before Conall could process what his partner had said, the man had shoved past him and was moving faster than someone of that size should rightfully be able to. As he ran, he shed his clothing, loose fitting sweatpants and shirt worn for this specific reason. Before the clothing had hit the asphalt, Brus was changing.

Conall saw the flutter of blue fire slip into the darkness of an alley they’d already cleared. Brus’ form, already in his half shape tore into the alley after it, the heavy claws throwing chips of asphalt up. He heard an alarmed howl break the still night air. It took a moment before he realized it was his howl.

As the answering howls echoed, Conall began stripping his own clothing. His mind raced as he tried to remember protocol for a Fae encounter. Don’t go alone. Call for backup. Stay in pairs. No one gets taken. Brus was already gone. Clearly he expected Conall to keep up.

A deep breath. Let the change flow.

It started with itching. His skin felt as if waves of gooseflesh were rippling up and down his body. Each wave bringing forth thicker hair. Itching, writhing, prickling hairs erupted up and down his body. Heavy waves of greys and browns. 

His muscles stretched and grew, his body briefly growing warmer at the sudden explosion of energy. Then his tendons popped. His bones grinding as the joints shifted and extended. His knuckles and popped like machine gun fire and claws bore out from his hands.

Then his face. The bone of skill exploding outwards and the itching in his gums as new teeth grew and filled his mouth with weapons to rip and tear. 

In the span of mere seconds, the transformation was complete. Conall stretched and loped into the alley. He was faster than Brus, he’d catch up in seconds, no need to sprint and wear himself out before he got there. More pressingly, Conall was hoping backup would arrive in short order. He wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, but he was terrified.

———————————————————

Brus pressed deeper into the alley. Ten second into the chase he knew things were already a problem. No alley in the area was more than a block long. And no alley, even in the dead of winter at midnight on a moonless overcast night, was this dark. Even his enhanced eyes couldn’t see anything that wasn’t lit by the blue wisp fire ahead.

For a moment he thought about backing off. Waiting for support. It was a single wisp in the center of town. With everyone converging there was minimal chance it would escape. But he could hear Conall catching up behind him. The wolf was still fresh, but he was fast and strong with a good sense about him. The two of them shouldn’t have any issue with a Wisp.

As if it could sense the oncoming trouble, the blue fae flame ahead vanished. Simply vanished like a candle is snuffed. Brus skidded to a stop, sniffing and listening intently. The alley was still abnormally dark and long enough that he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. He could hear Conall sprinting full speed at him, possibly unaware that Brus was no longer chasing the Wisp. 

Brus turned in the direction Conall was coming when a tremendous force caught him in the chest and sent him sailing up and into a wall. For a brief moment he could glimpse the sky before falling backing into the darkness and slamming into a concrete wall. The impact was absorbed by the heavy muscle of his half bear form, but still Brus could feel the muscles knotting. He would be heavily bruised in a matter of minutes. Whatever had hit him was strong.

Brus rolled his neck, the cracking of his bones echoing in the supernatural silence. He paused, taking a deep breath, eyes closed and listening intently. There were no footsteps running towards him anymore. Whatever it was that was behind him, it wasn’t Conall. The darkness around him seemed to only reach a few feet up. It was probably a fairy glamour. A damned good one if it could so easily catch him off guard. That or it was time to retire.

There, a snap of gravel.

Brus ducked and could feel the soft breeze and the form skipped through the place where his head had been. Brus rushed forward and upward, his mouth open and bellowing a roar. From this distance, the magical force that animated his change and enhanced his strength was enough to stun most opponents. Some lesser were crippled by the roar alone.

A clap to the side of his head sent him staggering, his roar cut short by the blow. As Brus staggered he ducked down again, but his roar must have had some impact as a follow up blow didn’t come. Brus hunkered down and focused on changing again. Whatever he was fighting, he needed more raw power to handle it. The hybrid form was great for most situations, but some fights required raw force.

As he felt his form thicken even more, he felt the darkness around him fade slightly. The dire bear eyes were able to readily pierce veils and glamours. That it was still a fog meant he wasn’t dealing with a wisp, or a brownie. Not even a red cap could keep this sort of veiled up. Whatever he was dealing with, it was bad.

The change was rapid. Brus glanced about in the gloom, his new form towering over his human form even on all fours. He could make out the concrete walls of an office building to his right. A portion of the wall was cracked and crumbling, testament to the force that had flung him.

To his left the gloom thickened. Rough mental math indicated that a car park should be to his left. The gloom would be the first floor of a multi story parking garage. A space that should be mostly empty in the evening. He was standing in the middle of a four lane road between the two. Somehow the chase has taken him miles into the town in seconds.

A soft metallic groaning emanated from the end of the road followed by the screeching of tearing steel. A yowl of surprised pain echoed up the road and then silence. Operating on pure instinct, Brus’ threw his enormous form towards the office building, narrowly dodging a streetlight as it crashed into the street and tore a deep rut down the road.

Whatever was at the end of the street was almost definitely fae, incredibly strong, and probably very stupid. Odds said he was dealing with a troll. If he was lucky. If it was an ogre he was in big trouble.

Heavy footsteps began to approach from the heavy shadow. The gait was wrong though. Brus cocked his head, flicking an ear the size of a small satellite dish at the coming noise. Whatever was approaching was walking on all fours.

From the shadows above him horns appeared. Brus stepped back. He was already close to ten feet off the ground on all fours. What the hell was horned and this big.

The answer stepped forward and Brus lost all sense of reason as he laid eyes on it. With a mindless roar he rushed the beast.

———————————————————

Conall had been running for what felt like miles. He could smell Brus’ scent ahead of him. The scent was fresh, as if he was only seconds behind his friend, but minutes of trotting hadn’t brought him any closer. With nothing else to guide him in the darkness, he had no choice but to keep going. But the deeper he dove, the quieter the howls had been until he couldn’t hear anything but his own labored breath.

Dark thoughts began to race across his mind. He’d never actually dealt with any fae before. He’d heard stories, mostly bragging from other wolves, but Brus was reserved on the subject. He’d heard that Brus had encountered more fae than most of the others in the patrol packs, but Brus would never talk about it. Conall had asked once, and the pained looked on his mentor’s face had been enough to dissuade future questions.

Conall’s reverie was shattered by a bellowing roar from further ahead. It wasn’t exactly close but it was the only sound he’d heard since the world turned to blackness. Reinvigorated by the sound, Conall pressed on, tapping into fear to fuel him when bravery had failed.

A tremendous hammering and scrapping echoed from closer ahead. Ponderously heavy footsteps too. Then another ROAR. One with enough force behind it that Conall mistepped and tumbled in the darkness. Conall picked himself back up and was shocked to find he could see again. The area around him was fogging, but the sky sparkled and it looked as if the shadows were being burned away.

Ahead of him, two enormous figures, easily fifteen to twenty feet tall were savagely pounding at each other. One of them was a great dire bear. Brus had shifted completely into his dire form. While Conall had never seen this before, it was as awe inspiring as he’d heard.

The other figure.

Was an obscenity.

It was larger than Brus’ dire form. And incredibly similar. It appeared to be roughly bear shaped, but that was where the similarities ended. Where Brus was an embodiment of raw primal fury the other was corruption manifest. The fur that remained was matted and rotting, the flesh exposed across the body was twisted and pockmarked, weeping ooze and disease. The claws were bloody stumps of exposed razor bone and dripping with unidentified oozes.

The face though. There were no eyes. From the base of it’s skull curved rams horns had wrapped around the beast’s head and back through before bursting forth from it’s eye sockets. The continued outward and marged, forming into a spiked horn between its eyes. The lower jaw was simply gone, the huge tongue hanging like some obscene tentacle. The tongue and head were covered in sores and openly dripping.

Nothing he’d heard of could ever had prepared him for the sight of a Cursed. For a moment, he was unable to do anything else but stare in horror. When his body caught up with his mind, he sensory overload was too much. His body convulsed in disgust and he dropped to his knees retching.

A few deep breaths and he was stable again. The fight continued on, his presence unnoticed by both titans as they savaged each other in the street. Brus let loose another roar, the Cursed staggered back and loosed a raspy bellow of its own. But the magic of the shifters had been dampened by fae magic, the two incompatible at their cores. 

Brus’ roar had another effect. The darkness around them lessened and more of the sky sparkled. The flesh of the Cursed one shriveled where Brus’ breath washed over it. He must be tapping into some deep powers. Conall had no idea what was happening, he’d never heard of this.

He could spectate no longer. The Cursed staggered under the onslaught and slipped backwards. In an effort to dig in and maintain its balance debris was thrown up from the street. Conall moved, but still caught a glancing blow from a piece of asphalt.

Scampering to the right, Conall took momentary refuge in the parking deck. He focused, pressing change again. He wasn’t as old or as powerful as Brus, so he didn’t focus on his dire form. Instead he’d need speed. The change came over him easier this time and in seconds Conall was an oversized wolf of black and grey. He turned and sprinted into the garage, rushing on the stairs to the third story top deck.

Reaching the edge, he could look down on the two. He wasn’t much higher than either of them, and if it saw him, the Cursed could easily reach up and slap him off the garage deck. But Brus was doing plenty to keep it busy. He could hear the howls again. Brus’ roars had cleared enough of the shadows that the outside world was peaking in. He fought the urge to call his pack, howling to signal them would also alert the Cursed. Besides, it looked as if Brus had this well in hand.

For the second time that night, fate mocked his naivete. 

As Brus swung to rip open the Cursed’s belly, it bowed and buried the horn in it’s head into Brus’s chest. Brus swung his other paw, catching and snapping the bone off. The act was so swift that even Brus didn’t realize what had happened to him at first. The Cursed bellowed, gurgled, and collapsed to the street, the force that snapped the bone also snapped its neck. The damned beast was now pouring out fluids into the street. 

The fading darkness shattered audibly like glass being smashed under a cloth. From the gaping hole that was its mouth, blue fae fire flickered and shot into the night sky. 

Conall howled in triumph. The howls around the town reignited and he could hear the distance closing. His tongue lolled out of his mouth in joy and he looked down from the garage, excited to congratulate Brus.The dire bear was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Brus’ man form lay sprawled in the street.

Conall leapt from the roof, shifting into hybrid form as he fell, landing hard. He leapt forward, shifting into man form and he sprinted towards Brus’ unmoving figure. An unfamiliar sound stopped Conall a few feet from his down friends. It sounded almost like sobbing.

Stepping forward lightly, Conall cocked his head. It was sobbing. It was coming from Brus.

The large man lay on his side, curled into the fetal position. At least as best he could with  a four foot skewer of twisted bone impaling him through his chest. It seemed as if he didn’t notice it at all. Brus lay on his side and sobbed deeply. The sobbing of a man who’d just lost someone dear to him. 

Conall stepped forward, tentatively, “Brus?”

Conall would later describe the sound he heard and Brus spoke the first time he understood what it meant to be haunted by a sound. The wailing cry would mark itself into his sound indelibly for the rest of his life.

“They took my boy!”

Brus’ repeated the sentence, in varying tones of anguish and terror, while Conall held the man’s lap in his head. How he was still alive was a miracle, but the very least Conall could do was hold his friend. 

———————————————————

On the top floor of the parking garage a blue flame flickered. The wisp peered out at the carnage on the street and drank in the wails of a broken man. It flickered brightly, casting shadows on a tall slim figure sitting on the garage rooftop next to it. The figure kicked its legs, idly swinging them over the scene below. 

“Huh, guess  you win that bet. I didn’t think he’d kill his son. Mortals normally have those family bonds that make them stupid.”

The fire flickered in response.

“I suppose so. But we didn’t lose anything. I mean, he’s been stabbed. The taint it’s probably seeping into him as we speak. If he doesn’t die, he’ll be ours soon enough.”

The blue flame dimmed then brightened. The figure looked to the sounds of nearing howls.

“Maybe, but-”

The howls were coming from down the street now, the packs were converging on the site. 

“I’ll talk to you when I get back. The cavalry has arrived and I’m not sure I want to find out how many of them it takes to kill an UnSeelie Prince.”

The flame flickered then winked out. As the light faded the figure melted into shadow. A slipped away into the night.