[quote]"My name is Grace. What are the two of you called?"

But the only reply given  in return was a stiff shake of the child’s head.

Rain started covering herself in mud and then she started crawling away from the dumb giant. She headed towards the front of the stone towards the drawbridge.

"Xaphan da mihi spiritus autem ignis."[/quote]

The ogre tugged on Rose's arm, nearly -- though unintentionally -- dislocating her shoulder with the force of it. The beast squinted at her and sniffed her, confused by the blabber of words that poured out of her mouth.

[b]BOOM[/b]

A sharp, deep, bloody pain slammed into Rose's chest; a flash of brilliant white fire exploded in the ogre's face; the ogre let go, roaring and stumbling back in frightened pain, waving its meaty hands in front of the bubbling red of its swelling eyes and mouth; something neon blue and brilliant orange swung through the air like a serpent through water, and it curled up in the dead branches of a half-uprooted tree.

The ogre, in his unbalanced confusion, tripped backward on a gnarled bush, bashed his head on a boulder with a sickening squelch, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff.

Inside the Stone, the girl-in-the-pipes gasped in horror, her eyes wide and shimmering with tears.

[b]"GOOK!"[/b] her desperate voice echoed -- and desperately, she waited for a response. She breathed faster, scanned the room, listened for the booming thump of Gook's footsteps, but she was greeted with only silence -- and the presence of a new power that frightened her far more than Rshalogg. She struggled furiously, nearly crazed, yanked out one arm and then another, and screamed as she pushed against the tangle of metal that had grown around her.

She wheezed, stared pleadingly at Amuné, then to Grace, her heart beating like a rabbit's, struggling against the hunter's trap.

[b]"∞ⱷↄℓ₹ ᾣᵷᵠ."[/b] < Help me. >

Outside the front door, Rain -- coated in mud and bits of weeds -- crawled her way toward the ruins of the bridge, away from the blast of fire, away from the screams, away from Rose and the blood on the rock.

[b]"What in the bloody hell do ya think yer doin'?"[/b] Rigby asked through a mouthful of fruit, sitting cross-legged on a crumbled post by the bridge, watching her with confused amusement. He'd got the fruit from a tree a few feet behind him; it was heavy with round purple plums. [b]"Zat some kinda spell? Whatever it is, it didn't work. Yer still a fugly human-witch."[/b]

Rose was now faced with the thing whose power she had used to inadvertently destroy the ogre: the thing that now stared at her from the boughs of a decaying tree. It was wrapped among the branches like an enormous, translucent, electric-blue snake with glowing yellow eyes -- horned, bearded, and striped in neon violet. It ticked its claws against the dead wood, but it did not make a sound.

Rose's chest was bleeding. A symbol had been carved deep into her flesh and bone -- a symbol universally used by witches to call thunderstorms. The god that had answered her call was Lha-tak, god of natural disaster -- and it was staring into her soul.

[center][sup]art by [url=http://nafah.deviantart.com/]Hannah Christenson[/url][/sup]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/3HFxIag.jpg[/img][/center]