'cause my wheels never touch the road

[quatrain]

In the living room of the charming suburban house they've been given to live in, He Ming is possibly more excited than he ever has been in a living room before. They had to move some of the furniture out of the way to make room. The rug's been rolled up and set aside. Like a bat, Cehd'ra said, and He Ming wonders if it'll be bigger, smaller, or a different color than a bat he's seen before. A bat from another world must be different.

"I'm ready!" he says, before going to perch on the arm of the sofa against one wall of the room. "Go ahead."

He's never seen magic before—at least not this kind of magic—so when the spell begins to diverge from normal, he has no idea. He Ming simply blinks in surprise when the summoning finishes and he sees in the center of the circle a being that's over twice his size with a bulky central body and dozens of teeming, squirming tentacles extending from it that are already beginning to spread out and feel around for its bearings.

"That doesn't... look like a bat."

Comments

[stabbersinyerfambles]

In Cehd'ra's defense, he's never actually tried this specific technique before. The principle is the same, using his hands to perform specific gestures, meant to channel the aether and summon and bind an entity to do his bidding. Normally he binds their energy into the form of an element: a flash of fire or a bolt of lightning, but he knows it's possible to create more complicated things that also last longer. The first time he'd seen it done it had been a bat meant for scouting. That's what he'd intended to try for He Ming...and it looks to be going perfectly normally to Cehd'ra at least, a circular pattern of red dots forming on the ground, a visual indicator of the magic at work, a flash of light and smoke and...

"...it does not, no," Cehd'ra agrees, arms lowering and back straightening. Behind him his tail twitches as he looks the thing over. It's large enough to take up the entire space of the circle and beyond, multiple limbs inching along the wooden floor and glistening with mucus... Something about it makes the fur on his tail puff up and his ears draw back even though it hasn't done anything threatening yet. Cehd'ra's not even sure it's noticed them.

"I cannot say what went wrong," he says, starting to edge towards He Ming. The movement is what gets a reaction, the tentacles pausing and then redirecting their creeping towards the source of those footsteps. That doesn't look good at all. "We should leave."

Cehd'ra reaches a hand out to He Ming, beckoning. The thing doesn't look very fast, they'll be able to reach the door and wait for the magic to run its course. Although, the bats he'd seen before, he'd physically destroyed to be rid of them so he isn't sure how long that will take. Still, best to wait it out beyond it's reach, he thinks.