Style

At first, her sight was focused on the cave they retreated from at a moderate rate of speed, but when he started with his "word diarrhea" as she thought of it, since it was, in fact, a stream of words that were completely worthless to her, she scowled at him.

"Boy, hush and duck..."

Behind her back at the mouth of the rocky hollow, a number of small bits of light, easily mistakable for fireflies, began to swarm around, settling on the grass and the enclosure and lighting it with shimmering colors that faded and changed like some sort of fiber optic fractal. Indeed, the pattern that they settled with seemed vaguely like a self-similar pattern when they finally stopped moving over the vast area they came to cover-- no less than 100 feet.

And suddenly, they'd all explode, washing the surroundings in heat and light for several long moments and blowing the woman's hair forward. She didn't seem very perturbed by the sudden ignition behind her at all, but her bird fled back into the safety of the bushes

"Ah..." the woman purred, turning to the site of destruction. The entrance of the cave seemed pleasantly wide and dry now, the moonlight shining gently over the ashen rock.

A sudden cry came forth from the rubble, a voice broken by age and hoarsened by smoke. "What?" A few coughs later, an old man, bent with his years and with a long beard that reached down to his feet emerged, his origin apparently the lower depths of the abyss that the explosion didn't reach and his tall, wizard's hat appearing a significant interval before he him self did. "What did you do to my house?" he shouted incredulously, standing in his bare feet atop the flat stone around him and clutching his hair.

"Heh... that's a lot easier than it would've been..." the demoness commented with a nod, pleased to see her actions had driven him to the surface. "Gin, get over here... Yea, I need you to fix my pet for me. I heard you could make 'em stronger..."

The old man simply stood there, in pure awe of her audacity, unable to speak for the moment

The old man seemed to find his tongue upon hearing Max speak. "What? Are you insane? Why would I help you with anything and you just blew my roof off?! I've never in my life seen such disrespectful yo--"

His ancient voice continued complaining in the background as Grunty turned to answer the three points. "He'll be ok. People in the past have... stronger constitutions, yea? Oh... you brought yer camera here... right... and... uh... sure, I guess. I've never tried to teach a human anything, though. Are you sure you can actually do it?"

She turned to address the noisy old man while the human snapped pictures. The elderly one found himself interrupted mid sentence as the woman shouted, "I don't give a fuck. Can't you tell? Fix my pet or I'll blow you to hell too."

The sagacious man stopped, pushing his primitive glasses up his nose slightly and calming down. "I see..." he answered coldly, not very happy about the situation. "Very well. Follow me then."

The man turned, lifting one bushy, white brow. "I had an old master, but I cannot be sure if he still lives or if he is dead."

He continued walking ponderously on in grave, gloomy silence. Grunty walked as well, her arms behind her head as she studied the surprisingly smooth ceiling and the primitive art engraved thereon. "Ye live in a hole in the ground? Must have a crappy retirement plan."

After a short time of walking, the elderly sage stopped suddenly and turned right into a chamber of the cave with books and scrolls lined up on some shelves carved out of the rock. He tenderly chose one scroll and snapped it open, nodding at the contents. "Have your beast stand on that circle there."

"Eh? Oh... that one..." she said, suddenly noticing that the entire floor of that particular room bore marks of white and black and red, culminating in an elaborate circle in the middle.

Cautiously, she tugged the beast into that center and, pulling on it a bit to indicate that it should sit, pet it once more and backed up. "Do your thing."

Grunty settled against the de facto doorway of the room, her hands in her pockets and her neutral, preemptively hostile expression returning as she gazed skeptically upon the seated beast.

The old sage moved around the outer edge of the circle, lighting candles as he went until seven of them flickered dimly in the cave winds.

He took his time, moving back towards the outer edge of the circle between the first and last candles he'd lit and suddenly cast off his cloak, revealing a surprisingly muscular torso with many, many runic tattoos inscribed thereon. He brought one hand slamming down on the adamant stone floor and suddenly the runes glowed a very bright shade of red, comparable to a modern day laser perhaps. This light soon infected the runes on the ground and the entire room was awash with sanguine light.

The bird-creature, now a bit panicked, snorted and backed up, but his path was almost immediately checked by the markings that composed the circle generating a barrier suddenly, the shield itself composed of a similar crimson light as came forth from the runes.

Mere moments later, the runes began to snake around the cave floor like some live thing, rearranging into a wholly different pattern as the monk chanted, mumbling in some indiscernible lost language. The marks continued to move until they'd formed themselves into seven concentric circles, the man's tattoos dimming, then the outermost ring, then the next one in, on and on until in a flash of light the final circle surrounding the cock flashed with a hiss.

The bird didn't look much different, simply... darker, and his eyes glowed with a wholly unnatural red light missing before. "Eh?" Grunty said, a bit surprised by the nature of the procedure. "That's pretty cool man..."

"Just get out of my house..." the sage responded unhappily, adorning his coat once more. "The exit's the same way you came in."

The old man frowned; the years taught him distrust as well as the wisdom he now possessed. "What I do is nothing but a gift. I give freely as I have been given." His voice broke with a cough. "You may come back when you please; I offer this service to all who seek the betterment of themselves and the beasts around them. Really, I do this in the name of... it's not important."

He yawned and began strolling out of the room.

Grunty stroked her creature's soot shaded feathers, purring all the while. "That's a good cock. You'll grow big and strong... heh heh. Maybe I should take you back with me to the future realm."

Having finished up the business she came there for, she held little wonder at the cave magix and hopped atop her mount, making her way back towards the surface. "Come on Max."

They began to proceed at a pretty quick clip, the fowl dodging stalagmites and outcroppings as they barreled through the darkness. "Ah, a very interesting question, yea?" The fact that he'd asked cheered her up visibly: her tone warmed and a grin grew across her face. "It's simple, really. You got two options, you can find 'em while they're little and see if you can train 'em up in the way they should go, or however they put it..." She referred to a proverb from an old, dusty code she'd read in Koutaku-shi. "Or you could find a grown one like I did and just show it who's boss. I had to hit this one quite a few times; thing was half cooked by the time I was done, but I met a healer chick who fixed it up for me after he'd finally learned his lesson. Would you believe this thing took three lytflies to the face before it'd listen? Ha ha ha..."

The bird burst from the cave and into the moonlight of the bare, ashen rocks where they'd first arrived and continued on out of the scarred ground, more slowly since they no longer seemed to have an apparent destination.

"Ya want one yourself? I'd help if ye wanted me to."

"Mmm..." she thought for a moment. What sort of creatures were there back here? "Hell if I know..." she finally concluded. "I guess we'll have to look until we find something that suits you, huh? What sort of beast might ye be lookin to conquer?"

"Bless you..." she said briefly before realizing the word was supposed to be some class of creature. "Oh, a shiny thing. Yea, I'm sure we could find some shiny things out here..."

The bird settled down and crowed once, she kicked it in the head, "Keep moving you flying bitch. I didn't tell you to stop."

The creature grudgingly stood back up to its feet and continued on in a steady trot. "There ought to be plenty of things like that, huh? You know what sort of places they live in? Might be able to hunt some down like that..."

The woman thought for a minute. "An old tree... well, we got plenty of those..." she thought, looking up at the impenetrable canopy above. "I guess I'm a kami, I should know about summoning spirits, but that's the thing. I guess a lot of humans don't know this, but... right now..." she gave an almost depressed sigh. "There ain't no spirits. In this age ye only had two options: Koutaku-shi or Onitoshi. Dem was our Hogasha and I ain't know why he just upped and left hell, but it made things a lot better in my opinion... more fun anyways."

A short laugh, almost a snort followed the sentence. "Won't even find any of them sexy incubi back here, eh? How much fun could that be?"

"Bah, all things have spirits? That's silly. Only humans have spirits... souls even."

The statement seemed more an assertion than anything else, and she didn't seem to find the idea depressing beyond that she'd already expressed. "Wouldn't be right otherwise. Animals can't choose between... I guess good and evil. They wouldn't have a place to go... though I guess fence sitters end up in Onitoshi..."

"Who doesn't?" she answered back steadily. "I actually prefer them over all other kinds of men. They always slip between my fingers, though..." she scowled at the dark path in front of them that opened up to a lake. "They're sly little things... eh heh heh. Ima catch me one someday, though... and I ain't gonna let it go..."

The bird seemed uncomfortable with the red sand that stuck in its rough feet and it chirped its displeasure as it made its way gingerly over the sand.

She looked at the body of water... it didn't seem so big. "Eh? Yea, it's possible. Actually, incubi come from normal humans. Really interesting process actually, but it's a bit random. A wandering spirit finds and likes you and 'boom', you're an incubus. There's different ways to attract them I guess..."

The woman thought. "People can't hurt 'em. It's weird, it's like... they just give off this spell and even if they're hurting you you can't do shit about it 'cause they're too cute. As for how they get that way... uhh... actually, I don't know that much about the process, yea? We'll have to find an incubus and ask him. Mmm..." she studied the water with a hand on her chin.

"I guess we'll have to fly over, yea? Ah... I haven't done this in awhile..."

She hopped off of the bird and landed, one knee and one hand touching the ground as she crouched. After awhile, the customary black fog would begin to steam from her form, beginning to cover the ground about her until there was a flash of black energy. When it cleared, a dark beast much larger than her ordinary and previous form stood in her place,a little about twice the height of a horse, tentacles and sparks sprouting from its fur. It stretched lazily, its manner less becoming of a viscous beast and more becoming the small fox it'd formed from, and it yawned, sparks forming in the areas its breath touched. "Ah, yea, that feels right..." she murmured before laying on the ground. "Hop on..."

By now, regardless of whether or not the young man had seen fit to dismount, the bird would promptly buck off the extra weight and disappear at full speed into the underbrush.

"Damn scary thing..." the beast would growl after it apathetically.