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“First time?” Foinnich asked.

The other bataille paused in a losing battle (which was not ‘losing’ so much as ‘refusing to go gently into the inevitable night’ and not a ‘battle’ so much as a ‘luridly orange, uncomfortably squelching imprisonment’) to give Foinnich a Look.

It was one of those Looks which, while being completely silent, published a full three-part series of novels complete with a complimentary special-edition combination guidebook and glossary. It was the sort of Look that bore the solemn weight of Judgement. It was particularly impressive, because the other bataille was masked snout-to-forelock in black scales, and only had eyes and ears with which to craft the Look.

Foinnich felt that he did not deserve such scrutiny. Especially not with a bespelled rope tangled snugly around his hindquarters, hoisting him halfway into the tree above, wings akimbo and horn dusty from bonking the ground as he’d been yoinked off his hooves. Far be it from him, a big, strong, proud bataille, to flee from danger, but he’d definitely struck better poses while facing it before…

“This may have drowned a shorter horse,” the other bataille finally said, bluntly. “And it is plainly unnatural.” His eyes flicked meaningfully upwards, although the idea of snares naturally growing on trees was obviously too ridiculous to need stating aloud.

“Agreed,” Foinnich agreed, with his own meaningful glance at the vivid orange slop that the other bataille was mired in. Where Foinnich had been pulled upwards, the other stallion had been pulled down, into a hidden patch of extremely misplaced and unarguably magical muskeg, most likely fashioned during the night prior, if Foinnich had guessed the cause of the chaos correctly.

“If you know who did this -“

Foinnich squawked, with a loud clack of his beak to puntuate the wordless rebuttal. “I have a guess at who did this, but I’m hardly about to take up traps over proper armaments!”

In the ensuing silence, the Look made a second appearance. Foinnich, who was serenely rotating as he dangled from the tree, missed it entirely this time. “I’m called Foinnich,” he said to the tree's trunk, offering up his name like an olive branch. The tree he was hanging from was a cottonwood, so a metaphorical olive branch was the best he could do.

After a considering pause, the other bataille finally offered, “You may call me Skulk.”

Being a practically-minded sort, Foinnich took that as a grudging treaty, and moved right along to thoughts of escape. “The tomtars who set these traps are long gone by now. They roam at night, the better to go unseen.”

“Dishonorable foes,” Skulk snorted.

“Honorable enough, as long as their terms are met,” Foinnich argued. “It’s the way of things, in this part of the world. Gifts given must be returned.”

“You call these gifts?”

Foinnich opened his beak to reply, but the reply was made for him by another voice.

“Gifts given were of oil and wood.”

“If rumors ever tow truths,” a second voice admitted.

Both batailles looked up (and Foinnich had to twist to see, at least until his slow rotation had him facing the right direction again). Foinnich had always believed that a proper bataille ought to be mindful of their surroundings, never caught off their guard, but - well, in these circumstances, perhaps they could be forgiven for missing the arrival of two strangers.

“Yet,” continued the first speaker, with a sweep of broad bronze antlers, “Generosity unreturned beckoned justice.”

“Of a sort,” the second speaker allowed, with a tilt of stubby bronze prongs.

They were both very similar, not just in their dull brown colors, but in their manner. They were both, in a word, odd. Something about the way they stood, and stared, turned Foinnich’s mind to memories of dark catacombs and patient dolls.

“You’re hornless?” Skulk half-asked, bluntly and just on this edge of scornfully. It was a fair question - Foinnich, too, had seen boucles with deerish features, even with antlers - but it was also leading into touchy territory that need not be trod today.

“No,” Foinnich hastily corrected, before any misunderstandings could drive away their potential assistance. “Rukaans, yes? A resourceful and honorable people.”

Foinnich thought for a beat. Diplomacy wasn’t a strength he’d honed; he’d always been able to rely on simple practicality. How might one of his more silver-tongued stablemates put it? “Would that my second meeting with your kind was under less dire circumstances, but I'd found that you and yours lend more honest help than many others.” Most of those others being from his own stable, and perhaps that was odd, but it was nevertheless true.

Skulk was giving them all a calculating look, but at least it wasn’t a Look, and at least he was keeping any hornless comments to himself.

The rukaans were staring at Foinnich, now. This went on for an increasingly awkward moment. At last the pair turned to stare at each other instead. After a decisive nod, they turned back to him, and picked careful paths across the road. Considering that Skulk’s trap had been perfectly camouflaged right up until it had snapped open and swallowed him up in a gout of neon orange, caution was certainly wise. The rukaans made very certain to split apart and step around an innocent-looking patch of road, before coming back together to stand with the hair of their flanks mingling.

Foinnich wondered whether they were very good friends, or Very Good Friends.

“I am Odilia,” said the one with the larger antlers.

“I am Uromys,” said the one with the deeper voice.

“We will assist you,” Odilia informed him.

“In return, assist us,” Uromys… asked? Demanded? Declared?

They spoke oddly, in flat tones. Something about them made his gut churn with unease, but Foinnich didn’t feel threatened. Merely… queasy.

Foinnich caught Skulk’s eye, and the other bataille glanced meaningfully at the road, then at the rukaans, then looked back to Foinnich with a suspicious squint. Foinnich understood. Somehow, these rukaans could detect the traps - it had to be the only reason to avoid walking across that particular bit of ground, and it certainly explained how they could wander through this tomtar-tampered town without getting caught themselves.

Still. They’d offered help, and Foinnich decided to take it.

“I am Foinnich, and he is Skulk. We would appreciate your aid,” he told them. “I can cut myself free, but I’m leery of damaging myself in the fall.” He shook his bony wings meaningfully.

The rukaans exchanged another wordless glance, then ducked their heads and got their shoulders underneath him, kindly tilting their antlers out of impaling position as they took up his weight. Foinnich arranged his wings in what seemed to be the safest position, before calling on his magic. The rope was woven through with a foreign spell and threads of metal, but neither held against the sharp edge of his conjured axe.

Despite being noticeably smaller than himself, the rukaans held fast, ensuring that he hit the ground rump-first, and allowing him to get back on his hooves without landing on his relatively delicate wings. It took a few more careful cuts with his axe before the rope relinquished his rump, and then Foinnich allowed his weapon to dissipate. It seemed a shame to use a battleaxe for something so menial, but dangling from a tree until starvation for the sake of pride was the worst of two shames by far.

Skulk was giving him another Look of Judgement. What, the big mighty bataille couldn’t handle a wee fall? Foinnich snorted in his general direction. He’d managed to avoid falling on his wings thus far - despite a number of close calls - and he had no intentions of looking for that sort of trouble as long as he could safely avoid it.

“You’ve got something solid to stand on down there?” Foinnich asked him, just to confirm the level of urgency required.

“Yes,” Skulk confirmed, in a clipped tone.

“This trap is of circuitous spellwork,” Odilia said.

“Break the circle, and step free,” Uromys added.

The rukaans gave Foinnich a pair of contemplative looks.

“A weapon formed of thought,” Uromys mused.

“What other thoughts can you form?” Odilia asked.

The more this odd pair spoke, the more Foinnich found himself expecting them to quote riddles from one of those goofy, self-important books Gavin liked to read. “I've a fair number of armaments... thought-forming spells." He'd never seen a rukaan cast a spell, so either they had no magic, or they had a fundamentally different sort of magic. "What did you mean by 'break the circle'?”

The rukaans had to muse on their answer for a long moment. Eventually, Uromys offered, “Split the slime.”

“It is bespelled,” Skulk muttered. “I can move almost freely - but not in any useful direction.”

“I can conjure a shield?” Foinnich offered. “It would be enough to physically… split the slime.”

“Don’t bother.”

Summarily rebuffed, Foinnich watched with no little interest. In place of a shield, Skulk built a shimmering force field, extending the fortification brick by fractal brick, first from his own chest to the edge of the trap, and then downwards, splitting the disgusting orange sludge with nasty squelching sounds. The going seemed slower than it ought to be - Foinnich hadn’t discovered such a power as that, yet, but calling up any of his own armaments took seconds at most.

There was a palpable change in the air, like a stable door thrown open to reveal snow fallen overnight. But instead of frost scraping at his lungs, Foinnich felt a wash of stickiness over his coat, a false sensation that still made him snort and shudder.

“It is done,” Uromys said.

Skulk wasted no time in releasing the force field and lunging free of the nasty orange pit. Unfortunately, he brought entirely too much of the viscous orange slime with him. His coat was black with white blotches that reminded Foinnich of skeletons, but from a point about halfway down his barrel, the stallion was neon orange, scaly shawl and all. And sticky. Skulk restrained himself to a severely irritated flicking of an orange-tipped tail, but Foinnich could absolutely understand the urge to shake in such a predicament. He was also profoundly grateful that Skulk did not indulge. Skulk could keep the slime all to himself. On himself.

Foinnich would choose a bit of rope-burn on the haunches any day, over… that.

“Water won’t help, but it will peel,” Uromys consoled. By the squint of his eyes, Skulk was not mollified.

“Now, your assistance,” Odilia said, with another considering look at Foinnich.

Skulk said nothing, so Foinnich shrugged off the touch of trepidation which the very blunt request had evoked. “Aid for aid. How may we assist?”

It turned out that Foinnich and Skulk were not the only ones to be caught in the crossfire of a town-wide prank. The locals were fairly quiet, many of them holed up in shuttered houses, evidently hoping for all the traps to be sprung by others. Those that were out and about wielded talismans of questionable potency and purpose, from forked branches to stone rings. None paid the rukaans, and by extension the batailles, more than a passing glance.

Foinnich would have expected rather more screaming.

The rukaans paid no mind at all to any of the humans, not even as they passed by a few who were trapped in increasingly elaborate and unlikely snares. For his part, Foinnich paused to sling a spell wherever he thought it would help. Ropes parted beneath the blade of his axe. Rings of stones marked with glowing runes were broken with scoops of his shield. Skulk made use of his own armaments. Foinnich silently admired his warhammer. All the while, the rukaans continued apace, unperturbed by the chaos, miserable atmosphere, or efforts of the batailles.

They came to a shady glade at the border of the village, in the backyard of another silent house. Strewn across the yard were suspicious lumps of grass. Right in the middle was a… black-coated creature. A horse, perhaps, if one squinted, but with bat’s wings and four eyes and paws that belonged to no other animal Foinnich had ever seen. All four paws were stuck in toothsome traps.

Further back, nearly in the treeline, was a second, similar creature. This one also had bat’s wings and two-toed paws, but bore a white-coat and a longer tail tipped with half an arrowhead. Only the long tail was caught in a trap. The white bat-horse watched their approach with a look of shamed regret.

The black bat-horse, in contrast, looked explosively excited, to the point of wagging a poofy black tail. “Hello again! You brought new friends, that’s nice!”

Foinnich sighed. "I don't think either of you two are supposed to be here, Caper, Algae."

The white bat-horse groaned. “Foinnich. Caper, if you don’t stop talking, I swear I will manage to teach you regret. I’ve heard more than enough from you today for a lifetime.”

“C’mon, Jiji -”

Algae roared, flapping pink-skinned wings hard enough to send grass clippings flying, exposing a great many more of the magical wooden-toothed traps all around the pair of trapped bat-horses. “Do NOT call me that!”

“If we can free them, they’ll be able to fly clear,” Foinnich observed, deciding that he didn’t need to participate in this very long-standing argument.

Skulk, still mostly orange, all but steamed. He stamped once with a forehoof. During the trip, the sticky orange slime had collected twigs and pebbles and other detritus, which turned the stamp into more of a clatter. “Do you still defend the honor of these tomtars, with your own allies caught in these?”

“Allies? I suppose I know them well enough not to be surprised," Foinnich muttered. "...these aren't ordinary footholds. Look. Made of wood.”

“The irritant lies in the spells interwoven,” Odilia informed them, dryly.

“Rarely is a tomtar’s trap able to kill,” Uromys added.

Well, that might be true, Foinnich supposed. For Skulk, there’d been hard ground at the bottom of the pit, and the squelching slop only came halfway up the bataille’s barrel. And the bespelled rope had avoided Foinnich’s hindlegs, even as it had pulled him off his hooves with speed that might've managed to break them. Designed to inconvenience, and embarrass, but Foinnich could believe that they’d been designed to avoid actual damage.

And these traps before them now were not clamped shut around the limps they’d caught, so much as curled like rose thorns. Prickly and uncomfortable, probably, but Foinnich smelled no blood. Ignoring Caper's wheedling and Algae's snarling, he watched Skulk poke one of the traps with a conjured spear.

Four of the traps latched onto the spear, wrapping half the shaft in gnarling wood. Three of them jumped off the ground to reach it. Foinnich had never seen anything made of wood jump before!

“Destroy the lodestone,” Odilia instructed.

“There.” Uromys pointed off to one side with a tilt of bronze tines.

The batailles looked. Tucked into the coil of a tree’s roots, there sat a small rock, utterly unremarkable except for the faint glow of runes etched into it. Foinnich conjured his flail.

There was a loud THRONK noise, and sparks flew, and Foinnich found himself hastily dispelling his weapon before it could recoil and hit one of his companions.

The rock remained untouched, squatting serenely in its little nest of bark.

“What happened?” Algae yelped. She was plainly reluctant to move too much, and for good reason. At some point during the brief argument, another trap had latched onto the leading edge of one of her wings. Foinnich winced in sympathy.

Caper made a wordless sound of awed appreciation. “Pretty! It’s magic? You have magic too? Wow!”

“Of course,” Foinnich grumbled, glaring at the rock. “There’s always a trick to these things.”

Skulk hummed in affirmation, and then turned to the rukaans. “Well? You two seem to have all the answers.”

“Hurry up with said answers, please!” urged Algae, who was now shaking an encumbered wing in a vain effort to detach what was plainly a source of immense and thorny discomfort.

“This is so cool,” Caper gushed, his own wings spread high, having forgotten all about his own entanglement in favor of watching an impromptu magic show with four wide red eyes. “Is that like, the stem or whatever? These flowers aren’t as pretty as the last ones that tried to eat me, but Nice just cut the stem last time. With magic! Ooh, this is gonna be cool!”

“…hmm,” said Odilia.

“Cut the stem,” Uromys mused.

The rukaans looked to Skulk, whose frown was (and had been all day) no less potent for being obscured beneath his scaled mask. Begrudgingly, the black bataille brought magic to bear. The stone, inanimate though it must be, seemed to fight him. Gradually, Skulk’s force field solidified, steadily spiraling shut, until the stone was severed from the rest of the world.

All across the clearing, the wood-toothed traps bounced and snapped at empty air, thrashing until they thrashed no more, down to the last. Many of them crunched and cracked as they... withered? Were they truly flowers, grown by some magical means from special seeds, or constructions fashioned with tools? Bit of a pity, Foinnich thought, that he'd never know. For all that he'd heard plenty of rumors, and now seen for himself the legendary tricks of tomtars, he'd never once seen an actual tomtar.

But from there it was a simple matter for the batailles to conjure their blades - Skulk conjured a spear again, and Foinnich wondered if he didn't have anything more knife-adjacent - and carefully cut the two bat-horses free of their spellbroken bonds.

Caper immediately bounded across the small backyard, straight into Skulk’s personal space, and Foinnich almost thought the oblivious creature was going in for an immensely inadvisable hug. Fortunately - for a given definition of fortune - Caper slid to a stop three inches from Skulk's nose, making sweeping gestures of excitement with grey-skinned wings. “Gosh! Hello! That was amazing. You’re amazing! I love your coat; it’s so bright! Orange is a great color on you.”

Foinnich gazed upon this inbound train wreck with pure stunned awe at the sheer audacity. Even knowing of Caper's antics through plentiful rumors back at the Grange hadn't prepared him to see this kind of foolishness in real time. Skulk, meanwhile, proceeded to demonstrate that just as he could look at things and Look at things, he could also be quiet, and be Quiet.

Odilia intervened before Skulk had quite settled on an appropriate reaction. The broad-antlered rukaan smoothly slipped between the kettle and the flame, staving off the boiling-over. "Unharmed?" the rukaan questioned, successfully diverting Caper’s attention, for the moment.

Uromys followed Odilia’s lead. “All's well?”

Foinnich locked eyes with Algae across the yard, and flicked his eyes questioningly at Caper. The expression on the mare’s face was one of exasperated resignation - a chemist who knew full well the folly of mixing two particular reagents, who was nevertheless unable to keep them apart. Misplaced enthusiasm was definitely a chronic problem for Caper, then. Foinnich didn't envy her the task of corralling her energetic companion, although it was probably a very good thing for Caper's health and wellbeing that she was willing to try.

"Unsafe for unwary... paws," Odilia told the bat-horses. Caper was managing to look contrite, if barely. Algae looked affronted at the blatantly obvious statement.

"Safer in the sky," Uromys concurred.

"Go home, travelers," Odilia commanded, with more authority than Foinnich thought the rukaan had any right to - but, he acknowledged the common sense of the command.

"These traps were not for you," Uromys added. Foinnich wasn't sure whether that was meant to be soothing, or scolding.

“Seems we’re no longer needed here. There are likely more trapped souls in need of rescue?” Foinnich suggested, with an idle spin of the axe he hadn’t yet dispelled.

Skulk only snorted in reply, and spun on a single hind hoof to trudge away. If he collected much more dirt, twigs, pebbles, and splinters with that sticky film of orange, he wouldn’t be orange much longer. Foinnich wasn’t sure if that would make the problem better or worse. The rukaans had claimed that the stuff would ‘peel’… hopefully sooner rather than later.

Foinnich took the opportunity to make his own exit. With a bit of luck, the two bat-horses would escape before they could find any more trouble, and the rukaans would... do whatever pleased them. They clearly didn't care about the fate of this town: the innocent passerby had been freed, and whatever befell the less-innocent locals seemed to be of no concern whatsoever to the strange bronze-crowned pair.

If Skulk or himself were trapped again, without their guides to pick the path, well. At least they had a better understanding of the spells at work here, and could be confident in using their armaments to break free.

_______

37/25 MP for OfDarkestFantasies ~

Features B845 | ODFS Skulk and A908 | Foinnich .

3500+ words - +35

Use of magical powers (Weapon Conjuring, Fortification) - +1
Including another breed (Rukaan ) - +1

Features Candy Corn Caper and Algae Smears .

1500+ words - +15

Import Link: R-0862 Odilia
Rune Mark Tracker: [Odi's Runes ]
Rune Mark points and bonuses: Headshot, Colored, 3000w Story, Completely by Owner, Other ARPG (Boucle )
Quest Bonuses: Overcoming Obstacles Together [Tallow Hollow Herd ]
Quest Type: Solution
Quest Prompt: Tomtar Trouble
Quest Tracker Link: [Odi's Quests ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-1403 Uromys
Rune Mark Tracker: [Uro's Runes ]
Rune Mark points and bonuses: 3000w Story, Completely by Owner, Other ARPG (Boucle )
Quest Bonuses: Overcoming Obstacles Together [Tallow Hollow Herd ]
Quest Type: Solution
Quest Prompt: Tomtar Trouble
Quest Tracker Link: [Uro's Quests ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Prompt: (Free) Mission accomplished - Four innocent passerby freed from tomtar traps. Of course, those truly deserving of that vengeance... well, a bit of discomfort and embarrassment isn't lethal.

Description

“First time?” Foinnich asked.

The other bataille paused in a losing battle (which was not ‘losing’ so much as ‘refusing to go gently into the inevitable night’ and not a ‘battle’ so much as a ‘luridly orange, uncomfortably squelching imprisonment’) to give Foinnich a Look.

It was one of those Looks which, while being completely silent, published a full three-part series of novels complete with a complimentary special-edition combination guidebook and glossary. It was the sort of Look that bore the solemn weight of Judgement. It was particularly impressive, because the other bataille was masked snout-to-forelock in black scales, and only had eyes and ears with which to craft the Look.

Foinnich felt that he did not deserve such scrutiny. Especially not with a bespelled rope tangled snugly around his hindquarters, hoisting him halfway into the tree above, wings akimbo and horn dusty from bonking the ground as he’d been yoinked off his hooves. Far be it from him, a big, strong, proud bataille, to flee from danger, but he’d definitely struck better poses while facing it before…

“This may have drowned a shorter horse,” the other bataille finally said, bluntly. “And it is plainly unnatural.” His eyes flicked meaningfully upwards, although the idea of snares naturally growing on trees was obviously too ridiculous to need stating aloud.

“Agreed,” Foinnich agreed, with his own meaningful glance at the vivid orange slop that the other bataille was mired in. Where Foinnich had been pulled upwards, the other stallion had been pulled down, into a hidden patch of extremely misplaced and unarguably magical muskeg, most likely fashioned during the night prior, if Foinnich had guessed the cause of the chaos correctly.

“If you know who did this -“

Foinnich squawked, with a loud clack of his beak to puntuate the wordless rebuttal. “I have a guess at who did this, but I’m hardly about to take up traps over proper armaments!”

In the ensuing silence, the Look made a second appearance. Foinnich, who was serenely rotating as he dangled from the tree, missed it entirely this time. “I’m called Foinnich,” he said to the tree's trunk, offering up his name like an olive branch. The tree he was hanging from was a cottonwood, so a metaphorical olive branch was the best he could do.

After a considering pause, the other bataille finally offered, “You may call me Skulk.”

Being a practically-minded sort, Foinnich took that as a grudging treaty, and moved right along to thoughts of escape. “The tomtars who set these traps are long gone by now. They roam at night, the better to go unseen.”

“Dishonorable foes,” Skulk snorted.

“Honorable enough, as long as their terms are met,” Foinnich argued. “It’s the way of things, in this part of the world. Gifts given must be returned.”

“You call these gifts?”

Foinnich opened his beak to reply, but the reply was made for him by another voice.

“Gifts given were of oil and wood.”

“If rumors ever tow truths,” a second voice admitted.

Both batailles looked up (and Foinnich had to twist to see, at least until his slow rotation had him facing the right direction again). Foinnich had always believed that a proper bataille ought to be mindful of their surroundings, never caught off their guard, but - well, in these circumstances, perhaps they could be forgiven for missing the arrival of two strangers.

“Yet,” continued the first speaker, with a sweep of broad bronze antlers, “Generosity unreturned beckoned justice.”

“Of a sort,” the second speaker allowed, with a tilt of stubby bronze prongs.

They were both very similar, not just in their dull brown colors, but in their manner. They were both, in a word, odd. Something about the way they stood, and stared, turned Foinnich’s mind to memories of dark catacombs and patient dolls.

“You’re hornless?” Skulk half-asked, bluntly and just on this edge of scornfully. It was a fair question - Foinnich, too, had seen boucles with deerish features, even with antlers - but it was also leading into touchy territory that need not be trod today.

“No,” Foinnich hastily corrected, before any misunderstandings could drive away their potential assistance. “Rukaans, yes? A resourceful and honorable people.”

Foinnich thought for a beat. Diplomacy wasn’t a strength he’d honed; he’d always been able to rely on simple practicality. How might one of his more silver-tongued stablemates put it? “Would that my second meeting with your kind was under less dire circumstances, but I'd found that you and yours lend more honest help than many others.” Most of those others being from his own stable, and perhaps that was odd, but it was nevertheless true.

Skulk was giving them all a calculating look, but at least it wasn’t a Look, and at least he was keeping any hornless comments to himself.

The rukaans were staring at Foinnich, now. This went on for an increasingly awkward moment. At last the pair turned to stare at each other instead. After a decisive nod, they turned back to him, and picked careful paths across the road. Considering that Skulk’s trap had been perfectly camouflaged right up until it had snapped open and swallowed him up in a gout of neon orange, caution was certainly wise. The rukaans made very certain to split apart and step around an innocent-looking patch of road, before coming back together to stand with the hair of their flanks mingling.

Foinnich wondered whether they were very good friends, or Very Good Friends.

“I am Odilia,” said the one with the larger antlers.

“I am Uromys,” said the one with the deeper voice.

“We will assist you,” Odilia informed him.

“In return, assist us,” Uromys… asked? Demanded? Declared?

They spoke oddly, in flat tones. Something about them made his gut churn with unease, but Foinnich didn’t feel threatened. Merely… queasy.

Foinnich caught Skulk’s eye, and the other bataille glanced meaningfully at the road, then at the rukaans, then looked back to Foinnich with a suspicious squint. Foinnich understood. Somehow, these rukaans could detect the traps - it had to be the only reason to avoid walking across that particular bit of ground, and it certainly explained how they could wander through this tomtar-tampered town without getting caught themselves.

Still. They’d offered help, and Foinnich decided to take it.

“I am Foinnich, and he is Skulk. We would appreciate your aid,” he told them. “I can cut myself free, but I’m leery of damaging myself in the fall.” He shook his bony wings meaningfully.

The rukaans exchanged another wordless glance, then ducked their heads and got their shoulders underneath him, kindly tilting their antlers out of impaling position as they took up his weight. Foinnich arranged his wings in what seemed to be the safest position, before calling on his magic. The rope was woven through with a foreign spell and threads of metal, but neither held against the sharp edge of his conjured axe.

Despite being noticeably smaller than himself, the rukaans held fast, ensuring that he hit the ground rump-first, and allowing him to get back on his hooves without landing on his relatively delicate wings. It took a few more careful cuts with his axe before the rope relinquished his rump, and then Foinnich allowed his weapon to dissipate. It seemed a shame to use a battleaxe for something so menial, but dangling from a tree until starvation for the sake of pride was the worst of two shames by far.

Skulk was giving him another Look of Judgement. What, the big mighty bataille couldn’t handle a wee fall? Foinnich snorted in his general direction. He’d managed to avoid falling on his wings thus far - despite a number of close calls - and he had no intentions of looking for that sort of trouble as long as he could safely avoid it.

“You’ve got something solid to stand on down there?” Foinnich asked him, just to confirm the level of urgency required.

“Yes,” Skulk confirmed, in a clipped tone.

“This trap is of circuitous spellwork,” Odilia said.

“Break the circle, and step free,” Uromys added.

The rukaans gave Foinnich a pair of contemplative looks.

“A weapon formed of thought,” Uromys mused.

“What other thoughts can you form?” Odilia asked.

The more this odd pair spoke, the more Foinnich found himself expecting them to quote riddles from one of those goofy, self-important books Gavin liked to read. “I've a fair number of armaments... thought-forming spells." He'd never seen a rukaan cast a spell, so either they had no magic, or they had a fundamentally different sort of magic. "What did you mean by 'break the circle'?”

The rukaans had to muse on their answer for a long moment. Eventually, Uromys offered, “Split the slime.”

“It is bespelled,” Skulk muttered. “I can move almost freely - but not in any useful direction.”

“I can conjure a shield?” Foinnich offered. “It would be enough to physically… split the slime.”

“Don’t bother.”

Summarily rebuffed, Foinnich watched with no little interest. In place of a shield, Skulk built a shimmering force field, extending the fortification brick by fractal brick, first from his own chest to the edge of the trap, and then downwards, splitting the disgusting orange sludge with nasty squelching sounds. The going seemed slower than it ought to be - Foinnich hadn’t discovered such a power as that, yet, but calling up any of his own armaments took seconds at most.

There was a palpable change in the air, like a stable door thrown open to reveal snow fallen overnight. But instead of frost scraping at his lungs, Foinnich felt a wash of stickiness over his coat, a false sensation that still made him snort and shudder.

“It is done,” Uromys said.

Skulk wasted no time in releasing the force field and lunging free of the nasty orange pit. Unfortunately, he brought entirely too much of the viscous orange slime with him. His coat was black with white blotches that reminded Foinnich of skeletons, but from a point about halfway down his barrel, the stallion was neon orange, scaly shawl and all. And sticky. Skulk restrained himself to a severely irritated flicking of an orange-tipped tail, but Foinnich could absolutely understand the urge to shake in such a predicament. He was also profoundly grateful that Skulk did not indulge. Skulk could keep the slime all to himself. On himself.

Foinnich would choose a bit of rope-burn on the haunches any day, over… that.

“Water won’t help, but it will peel,” Uromys consoled. By the squint of his eyes, Skulk was not mollified.

“Now, your assistance,” Odilia said, with another considering look at Foinnich.

Skulk said nothing, so Foinnich shrugged off the touch of trepidation which the very blunt request had evoked. “Aid for aid. How may we assist?”

It turned out that Foinnich and Skulk were not the only ones to be caught in the crossfire of a town-wide prank. The locals were fairly quiet, many of them holed up in shuttered houses, evidently hoping for all the traps to be sprung by others. Those that were out and about wielded talismans of questionable potency and purpose, from forked branches to stone rings. None paid the rukaans, and by extension the batailles, more than a passing glance.

Foinnich would have expected rather more screaming.

The rukaans paid no mind at all to any of the humans, not even as they passed by a few who were trapped in increasingly elaborate and unlikely snares. For his part, Foinnich paused to sling a spell wherever he thought it would help. Ropes parted beneath the blade of his axe. Rings of stones marked with glowing runes were broken with scoops of his shield. Skulk made use of his own armaments. Foinnich silently admired his warhammer. All the while, the rukaans continued apace, unperturbed by the chaos, miserable atmosphere, or efforts of the batailles.

They came to a shady glade at the border of the village, in the backyard of another silent house. Strewn across the yard were suspicious lumps of grass. Right in the middle was a… black-coated creature. A horse, perhaps, if one squinted, but with bat’s wings and four eyes and paws that belonged to no other animal Foinnich had ever seen. All four paws were stuck in toothsome traps.

Further back, nearly in the treeline, was a second, similar creature. This one also had bat’s wings and two-toed paws, but bore a white-coat and a longer tail tipped with half an arrowhead. Only the long tail was caught in a trap. The white bat-horse watched their approach with a look of shamed regret.

The black bat-horse, in contrast, looked explosively excited, to the point of wagging a poofy black tail. “Hello again! You brought new friends, that’s nice!”

Foinnich sighed. "I don't think either of you two are supposed to be here, Caper, Algae."

The white bat-horse groaned. “Foinnich. Caper, if you don’t stop talking, I swear I will manage to teach you regret. I’ve heard more than enough from you today for a lifetime.”

“C’mon, Jiji -”

Algae roared, flapping pink-skinned wings hard enough to send grass clippings flying, exposing a great many more of the magical wooden-toothed traps all around the pair of trapped bat-horses. “Do NOT call me that!”

“If we can free them, they’ll be able to fly clear,” Foinnich observed, deciding that he didn’t need to participate in this very long-standing argument.

Skulk, still mostly orange, all but steamed. He stamped once with a forehoof. During the trip, the sticky orange slime had collected twigs and pebbles and other detritus, which turned the stamp into more of a clatter. “Do you still defend the honor of these tomtars, with your own allies caught in these?”

“Allies? I suppose I know them well enough not to be surprised," Foinnich muttered. "...these aren't ordinary footholds. Look. Made of wood.”

“The irritant lies in the spells interwoven,” Odilia informed them, dryly.

“Rarely is a tomtar’s trap able to kill,” Uromys added.

Well, that might be true, Foinnich supposed. For Skulk, there’d been hard ground at the bottom of the pit, and the squelching slop only came halfway up the bataille’s barrel. And the bespelled rope had avoided Foinnich’s hindlegs, even as it had pulled him off his hooves with speed that might've managed to break them. Designed to inconvenience, and embarrass, but Foinnich could believe that they’d been designed to avoid actual damage.

And these traps before them now were not clamped shut around the limps they’d caught, so much as curled like rose thorns. Prickly and uncomfortable, probably, but Foinnich smelled no blood. Ignoring Caper's wheedling and Algae's snarling, he watched Skulk poke one of the traps with a conjured spear.

Four of the traps latched onto the spear, wrapping half the shaft in gnarling wood. Three of them jumped off the ground to reach it. Foinnich had never seen anything made of wood jump before!

“Destroy the lodestone,” Odilia instructed.

“There.” Uromys pointed off to one side with a tilt of bronze tines.

The batailles looked. Tucked into the coil of a tree’s roots, there sat a small rock, utterly unremarkable except for the faint glow of runes etched into it. Foinnich conjured his flail.

There was a loud THRONK noise, and sparks flew, and Foinnich found himself hastily dispelling his weapon before it could recoil and hit one of his companions.

The rock remained untouched, squatting serenely in its little nest of bark.

“What happened?” Algae yelped. She was plainly reluctant to move too much, and for good reason. At some point during the brief argument, another trap had latched onto the leading edge of one of her wings. Foinnich winced in sympathy.

Caper made a wordless sound of awed appreciation. “Pretty! It’s magic? You have magic too? Wow!”

“Of course,” Foinnich grumbled, glaring at the rock. “There’s always a trick to these things.”

Skulk hummed in affirmation, and then turned to the rukaans. “Well? You two seem to have all the answers.”

“Hurry up with said answers, please!” urged Algae, who was now shaking an encumbered wing in a vain effort to detach what was plainly a source of immense and thorny discomfort.

“This is so cool,” Caper gushed, his own wings spread high, having forgotten all about his own entanglement in favor of watching an impromptu magic show with four wide red eyes. “Is that like, the stem or whatever? These flowers aren’t as pretty as the last ones that tried to eat me, but Nice just cut the stem last time. With magic! Ooh, this is gonna be cool!”

“…hmm,” said Odilia.

“Cut the stem,” Uromys mused.

The rukaans looked to Skulk, whose frown was (and had been all day) no less potent for being obscured beneath his scaled mask. Begrudgingly, the black bataille brought magic to bear. The stone, inanimate though it must be, seemed to fight him. Gradually, Skulk’s force field solidified, steadily spiraling shut, until the stone was severed from the rest of the world.

All across the clearing, the wood-toothed traps bounced and snapped at empty air, thrashing until they thrashed no more, down to the last. Many of them crunched and cracked as they... withered? Were they truly flowers, grown by some magical means from special seeds, or constructions fashioned with tools? Bit of a pity, Foinnich thought, that he'd never know. For all that he'd heard plenty of rumors, and now seen for himself the legendary tricks of tomtars, he'd never once seen an actual tomtar.

But from there it was a simple matter for the batailles to conjure their blades - Skulk conjured a spear again, and Foinnich wondered if he didn't have anything more knife-adjacent - and carefully cut the two bat-horses free of their spellbroken bonds.

Caper immediately bounded across the small backyard, straight into Skulk’s personal space, and Foinnich almost thought the oblivious creature was going in for an immensely inadvisable hug. Fortunately - for a given definition of fortune - Caper slid to a stop three inches from Skulk's nose, making sweeping gestures of excitement with grey-skinned wings. “Gosh! Hello! That was amazing. You’re amazing! I love your coat; it’s so bright! Orange is a great color on you.”

Foinnich gazed upon this inbound train wreck with pure stunned awe at the sheer audacity. Even knowing of Caper's antics through plentiful rumors back at the Grange hadn't prepared him to see this kind of foolishness in real time. Skulk, meanwhile, proceeded to demonstrate that just as he could look at things and Look at things, he could also be quiet, and be Quiet.

Odilia intervened before Skulk had quite settled on an appropriate reaction. The broad-antlered rukaan smoothly slipped between the kettle and the flame, staving off the boiling-over. "Unharmed?" the rukaan questioned, successfully diverting Caper’s attention, for the moment.

Uromys followed Odilia’s lead. “All's well?”

Foinnich locked eyes with Algae across the yard, and flicked his eyes questioningly at Caper. The expression on the mare’s face was one of exasperated resignation - a chemist who knew full well the folly of mixing two particular reagents, who was nevertheless unable to keep them apart. Misplaced enthusiasm was definitely a chronic problem for Caper, then. Foinnich didn't envy her the task of corralling her energetic companion, although it was probably a very good thing for Caper's health and wellbeing that she was willing to try.

"Unsafe for unwary... paws," Odilia told the bat-horses. Caper was managing to look contrite, if barely. Algae looked affronted at the blatantly obvious statement.

"Safer in the sky," Uromys concurred.

"Go home, travelers," Odilia commanded, with more authority than Foinnich thought the rukaan had any right to - but, he acknowledged the common sense of the command.

"These traps were not for you," Uromys added. Foinnich wasn't sure whether that was meant to be soothing, or scolding.

“Seems we’re no longer needed here. There are likely more trapped souls in need of rescue?” Foinnich suggested, with an idle spin of the axe he hadn’t yet dispelled.

Skulk only snorted in reply, and spun on a single hind hoof to trudge away. If he collected much more dirt, twigs, pebbles, and splinters with that sticky film of orange, he wouldn’t be orange much longer. Foinnich wasn’t sure if that would make the problem better or worse. The rukaans had claimed that the stuff would ‘peel’… hopefully sooner rather than later.

Foinnich took the opportunity to make his own exit. With a bit of luck, the two bat-horses would escape before they could find any more trouble, and the rukaans would... do whatever pleased them. They clearly didn't care about the fate of this town: the innocent passerby had been freed, and whatever befell the less-innocent locals seemed to be of no concern whatsoever to the strange bronze-crowned pair.

If Skulk or himself were trapped again, without their guides to pick the path, well. At least they had a better understanding of the spells at work here, and could be confident in using their armaments to break free.

_______

37/25 MP for OfDarkestFantasies ~

Features B845 | ODFS Skulk and A908 | Foinnich .

3500+ words - +35

Use of magical powers (Weapon Conjuring, Fortification) - +1
Including another breed (Rukaan ) - +1

Features Candy Corn Caper and Algae Smears .

1500+ words - +15

Import Link: R-0862 Odilia
Rune Mark Tracker: [Odi's Runes ]
Rune Mark points and bonuses: Headshot, Colored, 3000w Story, Completely by Owner, Other ARPG (Boucle )
Quest Bonuses: Overcoming Obstacles Together [Tallow Hollow Herd ]
Quest Type: Solution
Quest Prompt: Tomtar Trouble
Quest Tracker Link: [Odi's Quests ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-1403 Uromys
Rune Mark Tracker: [Uro's Runes ]
Rune Mark points and bonuses: 3000w Story, Completely by Owner, Other ARPG (Boucle )
Quest Bonuses: Overcoming Obstacles Together [Tallow Hollow Herd ]
Quest Type: Solution
Quest Prompt: Tomtar Trouble
Quest Tracker Link: [Uro's Quests ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Prompt: (Free) Mission accomplished - Four innocent passerby freed from tomtar traps. Of course, those truly deserving of that vengeance... well, a bit of discomfort and embarrassment isn't lethal.