N'inktober #12

Stygian Squirrel

Cedar Sanderson is doing N'inktober, so I'm going to follow along and do what I've been trained to do by the Raconteur Press Postcard books: come up with a story to match her visual prompts. I can't guarantee that I'll have a complete story for every image, but I'm going to at least try to come up with a scene, a start, or an idea!

Stygian Squirrel

“Where is that damned crustacean?”

Heustu flicked a finger, igniting the twigs in front of him. As the fire blazed up, he pulled out his nearly empty flask and contemplated it glumly. His master was long gone, taken by the forces of the Dark. All the wizard had left his squirrel familiar was a boosted intellect, some minor training in the ways of magic, and a powerful thirst for peach brandy.

He shrugged, popped the cork, and held it up to whatever gods might be paying attention to an old squirrel. “To Dustin of the Plains. Wherever th’ poor bastard ended up.”

Wherever that was. It certainly wasn’t here. Time moved strangely in the Underworld, so it was hard to be sure how long it had been since Dustin’s demise. However long it was, Heustu felt like he’d spent a lifetime exploring the nooks and crannies of the place, searching for both his master’s soul, and a source of peach brandy.

“And what have I found? Bupkis, I tell you.” He tilted the flask back, sucking down the last of the brandy. The potent brew made his eyes water. “Which is what I’m getting paid, too, now that I think of it.” He blinked away tears and contemplated the empty flask sadly before popping the cork back in with a sigh.

He held up the carefully carved cypress wand he’d fashioned to track down his master in the Underworld. It had taken him three days and three nights to carve it. Then another three days and nights to bind the minor enchantments that would lead him along the path to his master’s spirit. In theory, it was supposed to lead him exactly where he needed to go.

In theory.

“Find th’ spirit, break th’ bond, haul it back home. Easy peasy!” He hiccuped. The brandy was doing its job, warming him from the inside and helping him not care. “Except there’s nobody in th’ damned Underworld anymore, is there?”

He tried not to think about that. There were supposed to be trials and tricks, obstacles that a clever squirrel could outwit or outthink on the way to rescuing his master. That was the way things were done! Not this. A vast underworld, with nobody in it, was - if anything - even more unsettling than vast plains populated with the wailing dead.

In the end, he’d had to do the unthinkable. Utter words that should not see the light of day. Call upon forces he would rather not subject himself to. What choice did he have? After scouring the seemingly infinite darkness of the netherworld, he had to admit that if he wanted to find his master, he was going to need help. Which meant calling on his old classmate.

“Plus, now ‘m out of brandy.” He hiccuped again. “Where the heck is he?”

“That would be my cue,” said a voice from behind him.

Heustu spun around. Approaching out of the mist was an iridescent figure, broad and low to the ground, sparkling and shimmering in the firelight. As it came closer, he could make out pincers, and eyes, then the vague shimmering resolved into the figure of a jeweled crab. 

Heustu sighed. “You never could resist a dramatic entrance, could you?”

The crab halted and spread its pincers wide, looking for all the world like a human throwing up his hands. “Really? I come all the way to the stygian depths to find you, and  you want to start with that?”

A figure loomed in the darkness behind the crab. Heustu scrambled backward as it drew closer, until it came close enough to the firelight for him to see what looked like an old woman. Superficially, at least. While she had gray hair and some lines on her face, her bearing was more imposing than matronly.

“He’s like that.” The woman stomped into the circle of firelight and crouched, holding out her hands to warm them next to the fire. “You’d be Heustu, I suppose?”

“Told you I’d find him,” the crab said smugly. “Just a matter of reading the psychic resonances and cross-correlating with the ley lines.”

Heustu’s eyes bugged out. “You… seriously?” He turned to the woman. “You realize that was a pile of gobbledygook, right? Any serious magical practitioner wouldn’t even use those words in the same sentence!”

The crab pulled itself up. “Magic? Excuse me? I am a herald of the gods! My ways are divine, and inscrutable to mere mortals!”

“Oh, stuff a sock in it, Harrold.” The woman’s voice was weary. “Please to meet ya, Heustu. I’m Guz. We’ve been wandering down here for more’n a day, until I caught sight of you.” She jerked a thumb at the crab. “I had to hold Mr. Divine here up so he could take a gander. Had to point you out three times before he saw you. He said you might be able to help us.”

“Ha! Harrold. That’s a good one.” Heustu chittered in appreciation, then stopped mid-chuckle. “Wait. You were lost? Impossible! I called you!”

“Oh, yeah, that.” If a crab could look embarrassed, this one did. “I, uh. Yeah. Got that call. I was kind of busy, though. God stuff, you know.”

“God stuff.” Heustu’s voice was flat. He put his hands on his hips and stepped forward. “God. Stuff.”

Harrold scuttled backward, claws up and waving. “I was going to get around to it! Once we were done with —”

“God. Stuff.” Heustu jabbed a finger at Harrold. “I swear, if you say that one more time, I will turn you into a stew!”

Heustu and Harrold both jumped back as a lined and weathered hand appeared between them.

“You know, Harrold, he’s right. You’d make a delicious stew. I haven’t eaten for longer than I care to think, and there’s a fire. Right. There.”

Heustu chittered his approval. That ended abruptly as Guz shifted her scowl to him. “I’ve made squirrel stew too, kid. Don’t push it.” She withdrew her hand. “Now, could you two boys please get along for a bit? Just long enough for us to get out of here?”

Crab and squirrel glowered at each other before simultaneously throwing up hands and claws.

“Fine!”

“Sure!”

“Great.” Guz rolled her eyes. “Harrold, why do you think Heustu can help us?”

“They psychic resonances —” he stopped as Guz lowered her brows. “Uh. He’s got a wand that will help him find his way?”

Guz turned to Heustu. “Is that the truth?”

The squirrel slumped, holding out the cypress sliver. “I guess. I made it to help me find my master, after the Dark took him.” He held up the sliver of wood. “It’s supposed to work that way, but it isn’t. It seems to want to point everywhere and nowhere at th’ same time.”

“Parallelities!” Harold blurted out. Guz and Heustu stared at him. “Don’t give me that! It’s a real word. We’re already in a pocket dimension that’s parallel to the real world. Unless you account for that, any locational magic is going to get mucked up.”

Heustu frowned. “What? You mean he’s not here? Where is he, back in th’ real world?”

Harrold flicked his eye stalks in irritation. “No! Did you not pay attention in divinatory logic 101? If it led you here from there, then there must be another there from here!” His eye stalks shifted over to Guz. “Come on, work with me here.”

Guz rolled her eyes. “He’s in one of his moods. Did any of that make sense to you?”

“Maybe.” Heustu furrowed his brow in thought. “But there’s no place parallel to this. Except…”

“The House.” Harrold pulled his eyes and claws in, making himself an irridescent little puck. 

Heustu shrunk in on himself as well. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Ahem.” Guz glared at the each of them in turn. “For the benefit of the non-magical, non-divine, would one of you be so kind as to explain just what you two are blustering on about?”

“We’re in the netherworld,” Harrold said.

“Underworld. Land of the dead. Th’ final resting place of all souls.” Heustu whispered.

“Except.” Harrold sighed. “There’s a House with a thousand and one doors, a place that anyone in the Underworld can find if they really want to. It’s one of the ways out of here, but nobody - and I mean nobody - ever uses it.”

Guz raised an eyebrow. “Because?”

Heustu shivered. “It’s the House of Death. There’s no escaping him, and if he finds you? Your soul is his.”

“And he always finds anyone who enters his demesne,” Harrold added. “I mean, he’s Death. Nothing escapes him.”

“Hmm.” Guz looked up contemplatively. “The way I see it, we have two options. First one is that all three of us enter the House of Death, and hope that we can somehow convince him to let us go.”

“Like that’ll ever happen!” Harrold waved his claws.

“What’s the second choice?” Heustu asked slowly.

“I make myself some crab-squirrel stew, and then I enter the House of Death with a full belly.” She shrugged. “Might not make a difference, but you know, at least I’d get a last meal.”

Heustu and Harold stepped back. Words were inferred, even if not spoken.

“Option one sounds like th’ way to go.”

“No argument from me.”

Guz smirked. “Thought you two would listen to reason. Now. How do we find the damned place?”