Stars Align

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"Hey, time to wake up over there."

Rivkah looked up from the hand mirror at the man standing across the room from her at an easel. The man nodded at her, pushing up his glasses with paint-covered hands, leaving a drop of red on the bridge of his glasses. "How you feeling?"

Rivkah dropped the mirror on the bed next to her, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "...Tired," she said, for lack of a better word. A better word might be... distant? Like the feeling you got after a long time spent daydreaming. "What time is it?"

"Nine," Dylan said, his light brown curls falling down between his glasses and his eyes as he turned back to his painting. He blew up at the hair, trying to get it out without using his hands. "See anything?"

Rivkah shook her head. "Jack shit," she said, blinking hard. "Maybe something, but I don't remember it."

"Don't let it discourage you. Probably we haven't found the right medium for you yet," he said, studying his painting. "It's easy to get lost looking, too."

"I know," she muttered, standing up and stumbling as her legs nearly gave way. She felt way too weak after that.

"I was gonna order pizza soon if you want any," Dylan said, putting down his palette on a table near the easel. "You probably shouldn't go out yet like that,"

"Pizza is awesome," Rivkah said, wandering over towards the window and pulling open the blinds. She stared down from Dylan's window on the fifth floor of his apartment complex to the city below. Clubs were starting to light up already, filling up with college kids drinking and dancing away the weekend. Dylan lived in the heart of the 'college' district of the city, near the university campus - the guys who lived there called it Dinkytown.

She heard the sound of running water as Dylan turned the sink on. "You gonna go out and join them?" he asked.

Rivkah shrugged. "Maybe. Why the hell not."

She felt so out of place in these suburbs, and she squared her shoulders against her discomfort and moved all the more confidently to hide it. Rivkah picked up her pace, running past rows and rows of cookie cutter houses.

Up ahead the houses thinned out, replaced by the beginnings of construction along empty roads. The Silver Surfer was standing there, staring out at the rows of wooden skeletons. Rivkah slowed her pace.

"Hey," she said. "Hold up, jackass." Her voice lacked her usual venom - suppressed just this once.

"Because I miss your charming company," she said sarcastically, shoving her hands in her pockets. In her pockets, her hands curled into fists. "I also don't wanna die," she continued. "And that immortal asshole seemed pretty invested in keeping me alive before, so I think I can trust him to tell me what's gonna keep me alive now. Sucks that its you, but what can you do."

Rivkah crossed her arms. "Oh wow, that sounds so much worse than where I am now," she said sarcastically. "I mean, if you insist, I guess I'll just go home and wait for that headhunter to find me back there, asshole."

She watched him twitch, screwing up his writing and erasing it with a hand as he kept his voice calm. I saw that, loser. That seemed to get to him for some reason or another.

"Yeah, yet," Rivkah said, looking at her nails. "I mean, I guess if you win now I'll be safe, but I mean, what are the chances of that?" She smiled at him condescendingly. "I'll die on my own terms, thanks. I'm coming with you."

"I never said - " she started - but stopped when it became clear he wasn't paying attention. Something seemed to have grabbed his attention, or he had some idea, or something, because he immediately knelt to scribble on the ground.

Rivkah shut up. She circled around to the side of him, trying to get a glimpse of what he was writing and keeping an eye on the suburbs around them at the same time.

She watched as he set off what looked like a locator spell, watching as it shot up... and spread out, expanding over the suburbs they were standing in. Whatever he was looking for was... all around them?

"Well it's too damn late now," she said, reaching in her bag for her knife.

"Oh my fucking god," Rivkah said, watching a kid who looked about five years old crawling along the sidewalk towards them like a cockroach. "I... am so fucking tired of this shit!"

She took her knife and drew a cut deep along her palm - if she wasn't so angry, it might have hurt. "Fucking mobsters with their bullshit traps," she said, before putting her knife between her teeth to free her hand, "anf all fis fuckin SHIF!"

Rivkah reached into her bag, pulling out her spell book and flipping to a page in the middle. She spat her knife out and caught it in the pages of the book and started chanting. She shook out her bloody hand to get some of her blood on her fingers and smeared it in a line across her forehead.

The ground rumbled as she intoned in some language - Arabic, maybe? - and as she neared the end of her spell she glanced over at Teuto. Shit.. Right, him -

Rivkah darted next to him and smeared her bloody palm across his forehead as a crack opened in the sidewalk behind her. Thousands and thousands of scarabs crawled out of the crack, swarming around their feet. The scarabs ignored her and Teuto, rushing out to meet the swarm of suburbanites and crawling all over them, crawling inside them down their throats and up... other orifices.

Rivkah slammed her book shut, a satisfied smile on her face. Nailed it, she thought, looking down at her palm dripping blood. Maybe she shouldn't have cut into it so hard... "Fuckers."

Rivkah watched the houses floating up off the ground, her mouth agape, before Teuto grabbed her hand and pulled her off. A demesne made just for killing them. Son of a bitch.

Anger flared up in her again, and she gripped her spell book tight as she ran behind Teuto. "No shit!" she replied. "I swear to god, if you don't have some genius idea to get out of here I'm going to burn this whole fucking place to the ground with us."

Rivkah blinked as he finished the spell, looking around her at the hellscape they were standing in. "Oh," she said. "This is much better." She looked at the child she'd seen earlier who'd been crawling around on all fours, seeing it was really some sort of hellhound with too many eyes. "Much better," she repeated, backing up and flipping through her spellbook to try and find something useful. Her scarabs were almost all scattered by now.

"I'm not seeing many options besides that blaze of glory," she said shortly, eyeing some of her spells. The spellbook was her own making, written copies of curses she found elsewhere that she found fascinating. The only ones that could save them would likely kill her.

His smile was purely demonic. "I'm all fucking ears," she said, flipping back to her page with the scarab curse. "Just fucking tell me what to do," she said, eyeing one of the 'houses' closing in.

Rivkah peered down at the writing as it appeared, scanning it as quickly as she could. Her eyes grew wide. The curse - and a curse it definitely was - looked incredibly advanced. It was a good he was giving her time with his illusion, because she'd need it just to figure out how to cast this spell without killing herself.

She looked over at him dodging around fire blasts and started the incantation. No blood sacrifice - which was weird - and felt a drag on her magic pool. It was strong enough that she flinched - the whole point of the sacrifice was to reduce the cost there, after all, she wasn't used to it - and she looked up from her spellbook, curious.

She watched as her scarabs transformed, turning into ugly, blue-black bugs, and the creatures they had killed twitched, and rose to their feet. Holy shit. She just fucking raised the dead. How the hell did she do that without a sacrifice, and without killing herself?

They looked like they were waiting for... something. They stared at her. Right. My ghouls. "Minions!" she yelled. "Destroy them!" She pointed.

The zombies turned and pounced on their former comrades, and everything descended into chaos.

Most of the hellbeasts were preoccupied with fighting their former companions - though some of them got the idea to try and cut off the head of this zombie army. While the heat died off Teuto, Rivkah found herself fending off the few beasts that made it past the chaos. She had to call back a small cohort of zombies to act as her guard to keep from getting eaten.

She glanced over at Teuto to see him drawing a circle to begin a spell. Better be something to get us out of here...