by Virdi, R. R
Great…
Oh and then there was the tail, yeah, she had a thin yet powerful looking whip like tail. More of those obsidian looking protrusions ran along it, they started from the base of her skull and ran down the entirety of her spine and to the very end of that mean looking extra appendage of hers. She gave me a demonstration too, how nice, as she cast it out at a near by table, the sound of it was identical to a whip crack, and it cut clean through the heavy wood of the table.
“I really should’ve kept that fire stoker,” I muttered miserably below my breath.
Chapter Nineteen
The air around her was shimmering; I could see waves like the kind you see when you’re stuck in traffic during a heat wave. The temperature in the room went up, it went up a helluva lot! It hadn’t even been a minute and I could already feel myself perspiring, my clothes began clinging to me in an uncomfortable manner.
She opened her razor-lined shark like maw and I could see the inside of her throat, it looked like the pit of a volcano, she leaned forwards and exhaled.
“Holy shit!” I yelped as I dove out of the way of a superheated blast of air that still managed to glance the area between my neck and shoulder. My clothes weren’t burned surprisingly but my skin certainly was, I felt as if someone had just touched a hot skillet to my neck!
The Ifrit tilted its head side to side, surveying what it had done to me before let out a boisterous laugh, “it is hot in here or is it just me?”
“You,” I panted, “it’s really just you,” I continued panting. Her footsteps made a noticeable sound as she slowly and confidently crept up behind me, I didn’t bother looking at her but rather eyed her vessel and something that I had overlooked. I lunged just as she reached out with her clawed hand and grabbed the Shamshir that I had seen earlier the day before and turned, slashing blindly at her outstretched hand.
I missed the hand but the blade hit her square in the forearm and cut into it…before it passed through and I was holding half a sword…
The other half of the blade, the top and pointy part, the important part, yeah well that clattered to the ground uselessly. Oh, did I mention that the part where the blade had been severed was now melting! The top portion of the now ruined blade I held was also melting, a thick molten orange metal sludge began running down the ruined Shamshir.
“Well,” I sighed, “that sucks.”
The Ifrit held up her arm, looking rather curiously as the gash in forearm, the gash that was now healing. She looked like it was nothing more than an insignificant mosquito bite, something to be noticed, maybe itched and then forgotten about, I guess in a way it was just that.
That wide shark like smile returned to her face when she spoke, “expecting something different to happen?” she asked, rows of obsidian dagger like teeth showing.
I suppressed another shiver, “yeah, a few things,” I said sullenly, “you know, hoping I got lucky and you’d have half an arm or divine intervention and maybe you were just smoted, smited, smitten? Is that the word, smitten? Anyways I was hoping that you know, poof and—”
Her claw like hand darted out and grabbed me by throat, hard, lifting me up and off the ground as her sharpened digits began digging into the soft tissue of my neck.
“Glurck!” I gasped as I struggled against her vice like grip, it wasn’t doing any good though and worse than that, my neck was starting to burn! Never mind the fact that her grip was so hard and her claws were actually drawing blood; her hand was actually emitting heat! Being touched by her felt like sticking my neck into a furnace, I could feel my skin begin to blister and it hurt, it was worse than sunburn and I started getting really, really thirsty.
“Oops,” she said with a small laugh as she released her grip and let me fall rather unceremoniously to the ground, I landed in a collapsed heap. “I promised to burn you with out killing you, it seems I was too enthusiastic.”
“Yeah,” I rasped, trying to rub my throat but a single touch and it erupted into pain, never mind the fact that it felt like all of the saliva in mouth had dried up. She was toying with me, she could kill me oh so easily and she knew it but she was definitely going to take her sweet time doing it.
Lucky me…
I coughed several times as I struggled to get back up; my throat was so dry that the coughs only made things worse. Each one felt like it was tearing my throat apart, the pain from that coupled with the burns on my neck would have been enough to cause most people to at the very least scream.
I’m no stranger to pain, I’ve been beaten up, shot, burned, hit by vehicles and the list goes on unto infinity. I can tolerate a lot, that’s not bragging, it’s fact. This however was unbearably painful, if I could’ve screamed I would’ve but I was struggling to talk so screaming was out of the question. Hell, my coughs were killing me, what would’ve screaming done?
“No clever retort?” she asked in amusement.
The bitch was enjoying this.
“What’s the expression, cat got your tongue?” she asked with an ear splittingly loud laugh, her basso voice echoing inside the room.
I told her to go fuck herself except it came out more like, “eeeeeeeee,” the sound a pining dog makes. It was more like a really high-pitched wheeze, or a really bad sharp whistle really.
Talking seemed not to be an option, at least at the moment; if the fight went on for a bit then I would probably heal enough to talk, not that I wanted the fight to be drawn out. I’m not a fan of losing and I’m definitely not keen on having my ass kicked into and in overtime.
So I decided to talk with my fists. I balled up my left fist and swung as hard as I could, it connected with the Ifrit’s jaw and I could see her head rock fast and hard to the side. The impact caused her to stumble a bit, I know how to throw a punch, I was once inside an Olympic level boxer not to mention all my years of throwing them in the first place.
Of course I also have memory issues, some more severe than others because I had forgotten all too quickly what had just happened to my throat. The second I finished following through on my punch, I was instantly yanking it back in pain; my knuckles and fingers were scalded. A brief second of contact and my fist was burned.
The Ifrit righted itself rather leisurely, my punch apparently served only to stagger her and not cause any harm. She made a clucking sound as she spoke, “you don’t learn well, do you human?”
No, no I really don’t, I thought.
Suddenly all of my breath was knocked out as she spun with supernatural speed and grace, her whip like tail snapping into me and sending me soaring towards the wall.
OW! Was the only thought that was able to go through my head as I impacted the wall and fell onto the table below, scattering all of the artifacts and doo-dads that were strewn all over it. One particular item managed to stay on the table; the dullish brass oil lamp that was the Ifrit’s vessel and it was only an arm’s reach away.
I stretched out my arm as far as I could, snatching up the Ifrit’s vessel, which elicited a helluva reaction from the Ifrit herself.
“My vessel!” she roared, her body flared in anger, I could actually see her skin erupt into bright white and blue flames for an instant before they subsided. After her skin had returned to normal, there were now clouds of smoke hanging around her, just bits of smoke floating in the air here and there. I got an idea of just how pissed she was that I stole her vessel when she swung her tail overhead and brought it crashing down on the table I was currently laying on.
I rolled out of the way as wood shattered and splintered but the sheer impact and force jarred my body, man this chick was violent! The second the table split in two, gravity did its thing and caused me to roll back down towards the now collapsed middle of the table, I fell once again to the floor.
She let out an incoherent scream as again she reached out to grab me with both of her arms.
Fuck that! I thought as I quickly scampered to my feet and away from her grasp. I lurched towards the door, swinging it open and then
slamming it back closed as soon as I had left the room.
Now I’m no coward, I wasn’t running so much as luring the Ifrit to a larger section of the museum where I would have more room to maneuver, it’s called tactics. I ran down the length of the hallway and into the massive storage section, looking around frantically for a place to duck into or behind.
On the far side of the room were a series of massively long but not so high containers, I sprinted towards them, diving over the top and landing behind them. I scrambled up and against the backsides of the containers, keeping my profile low so that when the Ifrit passed by it wouldn’t be able to see me.
Now that isn’t hiding by the way, it’s obtaining a secure position from where to launch an ambush, whether or not I actually planned to launch one is irrelevant.
The sound of water hitting a hot skillet filled my ears, over and over again, it was in sync with the way footsteps would sound. The Ifrit was drawing closer.
“Where are you?” Boomed its voice, “I’m not in the mood for a hunt,” its echoing voice called.
I had the grave temptation to yell back, “Marco!” But I thought against it, wisdom triumphed over my witty sense of humor; besides, it wasn’t like I could really yell anyways.
The hissing sound of pressurized steam got louder, the Ifrit was really getting close now, I shouldn’t have hid here, I should’ve kept going through the room but I needed to buy Ortiz as much time as I could to get clear and safe.
“Are those crates fireproof?” asked the Ifrit.
Shit, how? I wondered as I jumped to my feet and started running.
The crates exploded with the force of a grenade, I knew what that felt like having once been near one.
I landed several feet away, my entire body was throbbing and part of my midsection was stinging horribly, there was a large piece of wood, from the crate no doubt, running through my sides. I didn’t really try to remove the massive wooden shard that’s current occupation was making me into a Graves shish kabob, hell, I couldn’t even move. So I just lay there in agony, blinking my eyes slowly and trying not to even twitch, my everything was just hurting. The force of the explosion coupled with me impacting the floor caused my whole body to throb and then of course, there was the giant piece of wood skewering me!
“Aww, poor little human,” she cooed in false sympathy as she sauntered over to me, clearly savoring my pointy predicament. She was standing over me now, her hellish features blurring in and out of focus, which tends to happen when you’ve got a jagged piece of former two by four going through you.
I struggled to reach for the piece of wood that had impaled me, hoping to pull out and try stabbing her with it, see how she liked it.
Apparently she thought it best to lend a hand, “here,” she said sweetly, “let me assist you with that,” she said as she grasped the large piece of wood. It started smoldering the second she touched it, as disconcerting as that was, what she did next is what really pushed me over the edge. In one swift movement she wrenched the piece of wooden shrapnel out of me, tearing it so forcefully that I found something else out.
Minutes ago my throat had been burned and prevented me from making any sort of coherent noise. Turns out that I had healed from some of the damage already, at least enough to do this, “gaaaaaaaaah!” I screamed as she tore the wooden skewer out of me, that hurt! I am an expert on getting hurt, when I say something hurts, it hurts.
“Ooooooh,” she said merrily, sounding like a child who had just opened a Christmas present, “that looked excruciating.”
It was…
She was really getting off on hurting me but then, that’s what did it for Ifrits, either getting us to kill ourselves or they do it to us the old fashion way, either or worked for them.
“Let’s fix that for you,” she said, that booming voice of her making my head spin even more since she was so close and not to mention I had just endured a minor explosion. She reached out towards my gaping wound, I tried to squirm away from her but I think the most I was able to do was flop in place like a weak fish. Her index and middle fingers dug there way into my injury and I could instantly feel the heat radiating from them. My insides started to burn quickly and painfully.
She was cauterizing my wound!
This was far more painful than having the wooden shrapnel yanked out of my torso. Cauterizing a wound this severe is like jumping into an Antarctic pool of water…naked! The second it happens your body is overwhelmed in shock, everything contracts horribly and then there’s the pain. It’s the kind pain that’s so excruciating that it’s literally mind numbing, everything in your body is overwhelmed, you don’t know what to do, you can’t think. It’s so painful that you can’t even scream, you have to endure it silently, by endure it I mean not pass out because it’s really tempting and very likely to happen.
All of that happened in an instant, there was that unbearable pain and heat and the next instant she was pulling out of my wound. “There,” she said oh so smugly, “I promised I would keep you alive until I’ve had my way with you.”
I told her to fuck off; it came out as, “gah.”
She bent over at the waist, bringing her obsidian eyes very close to mine, in fact they were hovering mere inches from me. I gazed into the empty pools of black as she spoke, “I’m sorry, what did you say, it was incoherent?” She asked, although her tone was neutral, those demonically black eyes glistened with delight.
I could feel the heat emanating from her face, I felt it wise not to piss her off this close to my borrowed visage, so instead I asked her she knew where I was, “how?” I managed to wheeze.
“How did I know you were hiding behind those?” she said, interpreting my single syllable question perfectly as she nodded to demolished crates.
I gave a weak nod.
“My vessel,” she said simply, “I can sense it.”
Great, I was walking around with an ancient magical GPS device in addition to being a container for a malevolent type of Jinn.
The Ifrit stepped back and allowed me to get back to my feet, it took a while though but I was able to wobble back up to a standing position. That’s when swiped at me with her tail, I didn’t try to dive out of the way, I was too weak. Nope, I simply went limp and fell back to the ground, her tail snapped over me harmlessly.
Holding on tight to the Ifrit’s vessel, I began crawling as fast as I could away from the creature. She must’ve found the sight amusing because she didn’t exactly pursue me with as much gusto as I thought she would’ve. As I kept crawling towards the hall leading back to the museum, the Ifrit leisurely ambled behind, taking her sweet time.
As I continued reenacting the military’s infamous belly crawl, I noticed a series of appliances nearby. There was one of those heavy duty deep set metal sinks with all manner of faucets used to clean yourself up when working on cars or artifacts in this case. Nearby was a small pan with a hose attached to it, one of those safety eye wash things for when you get something in your eye you’re not supposed to have in there. Next to it one of those safety showers in case you spill something hazardous on you and next to that mounted on the wall, a fire extinguisher.
Thank you OSHA!
OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health administration. They’re the ones responsible for making sure every workplace ranging from a tiny auto repair shop to a massive museum are safe. They’re also the ones who make sure that those workplaces have things like fire extinguishers everywhere to put out fires or, smother a demonic fiery primordial monster.
Either or.
I pushed my self up, teetering as I tried to right myself, once I was able to do that, I lurched towards the extinguisher. Pulling the extinguisher from its resting place, I whirled about, okay; it was more of an awkward lazy spin. I ripped out the stupid health and safety pin and aimed it at the Ifrit.
She kept advancing calmly despite the fact I had the bane of all things fire in my hands, the almighty foamy fire extinguisher.
“Uh, y
ou might want to stop now,” I panted, waving the hose like attachment at the front of the extinguisher to accentuate the fact that I had something that could really put a hurtin’ on her in my hands.
The Ifrit stopped, wow and all I had to do was ask, who knew? She stood there regarding me with a neutral expression on her face, then out of nowhere her black lips slowly spread into a massive smile. “Go ahead, make my day mortal.”
Oh wow, seriously? A Dirty Harry reference, did she get cable service or something all those years trapped in her vessel? “Okay, I’ll call,” I said, “do you feel lucky, well do you punk?” I snarled in my best Clint Eastwood voice.
“I most assuredly do,” she purred.
“Okay, enough of this coy crap,” I growled, depressing the lever on the extinguisher, aiming the rubber black hose and wide bell like attachment at the end, towards her. I doused her completely in fire suppressant foam from head to toe and waited for the inevitable shrieking and writhing in agony.
Yeah…that part never really came…
She stood there in a mountain of foam, looking like a giant mound of snow but that’s all, she just stood there beneath it all and didn’t so much as twitch. The foam around her eyes quickly vanished as she blinked several times, those pools of jet contrasting heavily amidst the rest of her foam-covered body.
“Well…” I said as my face contorted in confusion, “um, that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Her shark like smile returned, black lips and obsidian teeth appearing from out underneath the foam, “wasn’t it?” she asked in delight.
“Not really, no,” I sighed.
“What were you expecting to happen?” she asked pleasantly, still smiling and clearly overjoyed to see me standing before her and failing constantly at trying to stop her. Hell, I was having trouble just trying to hurt her!
“Oh I dunno,” I began, shrugging nonchalantly as I spoke, “I was kind of hoping that you’d be on the floor writhing, screaming, twitching all in pure agony.”