Submitted by girl_from_the_crypt t3_10h64is in nosleep
Sitting on top of a craphouse in the middle of the night with a demonic two-headed bear creeping around below us really wasn't the outcome I'd hoped for that night. Casimir had regained some measure of control over himself. He pulled out his gun and took aim with steady hands. Just as he opened fire however, the beast let out another mad cry and started jumping and thrashing about before throwing itself against the side of the outhouse. It didn't even bother climbing, it simply decided to get us down. It was like it was playing with us.
The small structure shook and we were sent staggering, clinging onto each other to keep from falling.
"Get it in the head!" I squeaked. "Hurry!"
"I can't!" Cas yelled. "It's moving around too much! Make it stay still!"
"How am I supposed to do that?"
The bear bashed against the small building once more. Both my brother and I screamed as the outhouse fell. The bear was getting ready to charge, muscles twitching beneath its shaggy fur. It let out another roar, and I took note of a lower, higher-pitched sound swinging along in it like an undercurrent. A cold chill ran down my spine when I realized it came from the second head. Cas shot blindly at the creature as the two of us scrambled across the frozen ground, trying to get some distance between ourselves and the beast. Before it was able to lunge at us though, something descended upon it from above. My eyes flew open when I recognized the half-tree, half-stag creature pressing the stunned bear to the ground.
"Kill it! Now!" the Leshy bellowed.
Casimir needed a mere second to break free from his shocked stupor. Then he took aim and fired, eyes stone-cold. After three shots, the bear fell limp. The Leshy loosened his grip on the beast and withdrew from its body with a long sigh. I clapped my brother on the shoulder, and he grabbed onto my arm as if to steady himself.
"Thank you, thank you so much," I uttered once I'd managed to catch my breath.
To my surprise, the Leshy's body began to quiver, spasming and contorting in a way that made my heart sink. For a moment, I considered the possibility of the Bies having taken possession of the wood-demon now. But when he fell still and straightened up before us in his human form, I realized that he had merely allowed us to witness a transformation of his.
"I thought you were a menace on your own, Fiona, but together with this foolish milksop, you could end not only these woods but the whole world altogether," he said. His words, despite their decidedly hostile nature, held little tonal venom. He wasn't actually angry with us, I could tell.
I was surprised once again when Cas stepped forth, extending his hand. "I'm Casimir. I'm Fiona's younger brother."
The Leshy left his hand hanging in the air for a few awkward seconds before taking it. I've never seen a handshake look sarcastic, but somehow, this one did. "I gathered," the Lord of the woods returned, shouldering his cudgel. "It's only the Novak kids who could muff things up this much. Are you two trying to get yourselves killed? Because that is how you'll get yourselves killed."
"Oh come on, you know it wasn't exactly easy!" I protested. "Also, I'm trying to protect you here. How would you have gone about this? Please, enlighten me."
A smile tugged on the wood-demon's lips, though he was visibly attempting to hide it. "All right, don't go stomping your little feet and yelling at me now; I feel like I'm being assaulted by a mad poodle."
Cas snorted. "You do look a bit like a poodle in that puffy dress," he remarked in a whisper.
"Oh no, you don't get to be saucy, boy," the Leshy warned. "Not when you're shaking like a leaf in front of me, thinking I won't notice. I smell fear, child, and you reek of it, no matter how hard you play the daredevil." He smirked. "And your hands are as soft as a lady's glove."
I broke into a laugh, the pent-up nervous energy finally draining from my body.
My brother, blushing furiously, piped up again. "Just a second, I'm gonna assume that you are—"
"The name's Aleksei," the Leshy suddenly said, a warmth in his tone unlike anything I'd ever heard from him before.
For a moment, I was stunned. "You're called Aleksei? Why'd you never tell me that?"
"You never asked." He shrugged. “Anyways, you two ought to be glad I stuck around the homestead. Maybe next time, let me know in advance so I don’t have to intervene at the very last second. But I know what you’ve been doing back there, and for what it’s worth, I’m…” He grimaced as if he was about to give voice to a thought that disagreed with his very nature. “Grateful… for, well, that. You actually came through for me.”
Deciding not to make the moment any more difficult for this prideful creature, I smiled and gave him a brief nod.
“I’m thinking maybe we should stick together,” he gritted out, like he was trying the words on for size. “I’d feel safer and I could keep you safe. I’m not much of a team player, so this isn’t exactly easy for me, but…” He trailed off, regarding me with probing eyes.
I suppressed a very, very wide smile. “Would it be easier for you if I asked you for help? Something like, please, Sir, protect us?”
The Leshy (Aleksei?) threw his head back, glancing heavenward as if to ask what he had done to be punished in such a manner. “I’m not that vain,” he grunted. “And you’d do well not to disrespect me, wench. I've saved your life twice now, and I could break your bones like twigs.”
“But you’re not gonna,” I said softly.
He tilted his head. “No,” he replied quietly. “No, of course not.”
“Okay, so we’re all friends now?” Casimir asked, bouncing back and forth on his heels. “What’s our next step here? That thing, the Bies… I’m just gonna be the first one to say it scares the shit out of me.”
“Normally, I’d just call in a priest but I guess that’s not gonna work,” I added. “So, uh, Aleksei, any ideas whatsoever? I mean, you’re more like that thing than us…” Calling him by his name was simply awkward, and I decided not to do it again for a while. I motioned for us to get moving, starting off into the direction of the house once more. The Leshy followed reluctantly.
“There’s not much I can tell you about that,” he replied. “The only reason I know what a Bies is in the first place is because this isn’t the first time I’ve met one. When I was really little… before we came here, that is…” He trailed off, lost in thought.
“Who’s we?”
“Unimportant. We didn’t kill that one either though, we basically just fled from it. But as for similarities between that creature and myself, I suppose neither of us is very manipulatable by spiritual energies. Yes, we both avoid religious items, but we can’t be killed by someone reading from a bible. We’re a little less sensitive in that aspect, but we also aren’t as powerful and a lot more vulnerable.”
“There’s no big Daddy-type who has your back,” Cas offered, and the Leshy touched a fingertip to his nose.
“Exactly. If the black miller needs assistance, he has his master to fall back on. I don’t. But I’ve also sworn myself to nobody. There’s no higher entity I need to answer to. God has cast out me and those like me, so we can’t, say, cross a threshold if it’s been blessed, but we also can’t be destroyed by a cross being shoved in our faces.”
“So we’d need to trap that thing somehow,” I thought aloud, feeling myself get more excited by the second as an idea slowly began to worm its way into my foggy mind.
“We really ought to discuss that inside,” Cas remarked.
I started skipping, unable to suppress the spring that had suddenly entered my step. Once the three of us found ourselves inside my own living room, the Leshy looking around with furrowed brows, the words came spilling from my lips like a fountain. “So it can switch between bodies freely, right? If there was a way we could trap it inside a body though, and then either trap or kill that body, we could destroy it cleanly, once and for all. I know demons from hell can be trapped with a pentagram! I’ve seen Jacek do it.” To the Leshy, I added, “The black miller, you know? That's his name. He used my blood for a ritual on our first date.”
“That constitutes a date for you?” Cas threw in.
“Sure it does. Well, kinda. Doesn’t matter. But if you earth spirits can be manipulated using religious symbolism, too, that’d mean we could use that to trap the Bies inside of a body. Once it can’t leave anymore, we kill the body, and then it won’t be able to use it anymore, but it can’t exit it either. We know it’s not able to animate corpses, otherwise it wouldn’t leave the animals it uses behind once they’re dead. We’d basically be imprisoning the Bies forever. At least until the body has rotted away completely, but we don’t have to let it come to that.”
“We could make a kind of blessed coffin,” Casimir suggested readily. “Sounds dumb, but—"
“No, no, I know what you mean,” I interrupted him.
“How do you intend to mark the body as blessed, though?” Aleksei inquired, stroking his beard. “Because it needs to be alive before the Bies enters it, and it has to be blessed when the demon is already inside.”
“That’s the tricky part,” I said. “It’ll be an icky affair, but hey, that’s what knives are for."
"What happened to you, gentle soul? I remember how you used to loathe bloodshed," the Leshy remarked.
"I still do. But it's necessary."
"So we're expecting a bit of a fight, are we?" Cas asked, wiping his brow. "Sucks, but I'm up for it. I think."
"Me too," Aleksei said comfortably, petting the couch cushion he was sitting on.
"We'll need to be quick about it, though. I bet we've made it pretty angry," I remarked. "It's probably out for revenge, and we've got to use whatever advantage that we got from smoking out its hideout. And we've got to be prepared for it to try and take possession of us, as well. That should be easy enough, though. We just all wear crosses and it'll be alright."
"And what about me?" the Leshy inquired.
"Oh, right," I mumbled. "I didn't think of that. Do you think you're strong enough to fend it off again? It'll definitely be a great risk, but you've done it every time thus far."
"I don't know. I didn't want to say this but I've gotten far sicker these last couple days." He sighed, burying his face in his palms. "I can feel the infection eating away at me."
I considered him with a tilted head. His affliction wasn't comparable to any one I'd ever known, but I figured it would do him some good to rest inside where it was warm and cozy. I extended the offer of staying over and he very reluctantly accepted. Seeing as it was rather late at this point, we figured depriving ourselves of sleep would do none of us any good. I went back up to my room. My whole body was aching and I had half a mind to fall asleep right away, but my thoughts were still running wild.
Despite myself, I found my fingers fumbling for my phone again. I typed and deleted the message to Jacek thrice before finally sending it.
"Are you still up?"
The reply came almost immediately. "Seem to be, yes. How did it go?"
"Good enough. No one died."
He sent a smiley. "I'm glad."
"We've also come up with something of a plan. I'm pretty optimistic."
"I wanna hear. I know it's late but call me?"
My heart leapt, and it did so once again when he picked up and greeted me with an adorably sleepy voice. I told him about our scheme and he said it sounded just fine.
"The only thing you haven't mentioned yet, how are you going to set the trap?" he argued. "I mean, how are you going to motivate the Bies to possess the body you're going to use as bait? And what body is that even going to be? Will you just watch out for the thing to take over another creature and fight that? Or are you going to pick something out? And if you do, what's it gonna be? It's gotta be something that's easy enough to fight, so a weaker kind of animal would do nicely, but the Bies isn't likely to attempt to possess that. Not if it's out for your blood."
"I see what you mean," I replied, chewing on my bottom lip. "What do you suggest?"
"A human would certainly be more appealing to it. It could do more damage in a human form, I think. Especially since it would allow it to, like, sneak up on people. I don't know if the Bies is actually going to possess a human next, or if it even has enough of a mind to consider the pros and cons, but… I would."
"M-hm. So we'd need a human sacrifice, is what you're saying?"
"Probably."
"I really don't wanna do that."
"Understandable, but if you want to bait it, that's your only option. And it also begs the question who you'd be using." He paused, and I could practically hear him smile. "There is, of course, a rather attractive option—"
"Tom Hayes," I muttered.
“Precisely. How about him? He’s responsible for several deaths. Besides, he did capture your soul, by means still unknown to us. And he tried to blackmail you, he spread news about your property, abused your trust; the list goes on.”
"Yeah but what if he's not actually in his right mind? The Bies can plant ideas in people's heads; what if Tom Hayes has been influenced by it? That'd make more sense than him just being a deranged murderer."
Jacek sighed. "Don't turn your mind over with all of that. That only makes it harder to follow through. How are you gonna choose a human to kill like that? It's as if you're looking for reasons not to."
"No shit," I snorted. "Do I have any other options, though?"
He hummed. "Technically, you do. But they involve me. You could always ask nicely and then I could bring you up a sinner, is what I'm saying." His gruff voice had an amused edge to it. "But that would leave you with the question of what to do with Hayes when this is all over."
"I guess so." I groaned, stretching in bed. "I'll sleep on it. So what are you doing right now?" I asked, trying to get my mind off the murder-stuff for the moment.
"I'm taking a bath, actually. Got a death grip on the phone here." He let out a chuckle that sent a warm shiver up my spine.
"Brave," I remarked. "So you got your own place?"
"Of course. I'm hella messy, though. I could never let you see it. I oughta be embarrassed, really."
That kind of got us talking and I ended up falling asleep with him still on the phone. I realized that when I woke up to a text from him mocking how I allegedly snored. I took some time this morning to think about everything and clear my head. The Leshy is snoozing on my couch, which is definitely weird, especially since he's in his "true" form again. What's more concerning is how small he's gotten. He actually fits into my living room. I don't want to know what's going to happen to the woods if he really were to die.
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