[center][h3]Christmas Village - Snowy Impedance[/h3]
Heismay, Blazermate, Ganondorf
[b]Setting:[/b] Cloudy Thursday Afternoon
[b]Wordcount:[/b] 3082 (+4 EXP / +8 REXP)[/center]

By the time Heismay set foot outside the village’s workshop lodge again, he’d been baking bread and frying fish for so long in the toasty warm kitchen that the cold came as something of a shock. The eugief shivered as he pulled on his parka, stuffed his long ears into the hood, and then layered his new red coat atop it. [i]Much better[/i]. By virtue of the snowy gusts and biting windchill, it was easy for him to believe that it was colder today than yesterday. Hopefully the townsfolk back in Snowdin were staying warm as well, and hopefully the Seekers would be prepared to venture even further along the Midnight Walk to Moon Mountain. Though he looked to the north, he couldn’t see that mountain right now, not with that huge blizzard in the way. Something told Heismay that the Christmas Village would be the last bit of hospitality they’d see before reaching that desolate peak. Everyone had better make the most of it.

Speaking of the night’s festivities, preparations were now well underway. Somehow it was around three o’ clock in the afternoon already–time had flown by while fishing and cooking. He’d definitely spent some quality time with Mokou, Layton, and Ramattra, even if he didn’t get to know the other two as well as the Phoenix. Nothing to do but talk and wait while fishing, he supposed. That did get Heismay curious about what everyone else had gotten up to today. He expected that Geralt would be out hunting monsters to keep the village safe, or perhaps going after less dangerous game for once, in the hopes of adding some extra meat to everyone’s evening meal.

While looking around, Heismay happened to see one person whose very nature made him curious: the automaton, Blazermate. She seemed to be flitting here and there as if searching for something, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what she was doing. Tracking down lost fleas, perhaps? Well, since he couldn’t see any other ways to make himself useful at the moment, Heismay figured he might as well help. Jogging over, he waved to get the Medabot’s attention. “Ho, there! Looking for something?”

Nearby - though he hadn’t spoken up yet - was Ganondorf. For the moment the man was taking bites off of a fish that had been fried a little while ago and was just now cooled enough to be safely eaten. Something about the nature of the Gravemind spirit had increased his appetite as of late. It likely had something to do with how his biomass regenerated but the Gerudo couldn’t be sure as he was not particularly knowledgeable in those topics. Either way it meant he was here at this moment and munching on a fried fish. He too had seen Blazermate flitting about but for the moment was still keeping to himself.

[color=0072bc]”Oh hi Heismay, I’m looking for those snow imps. They’re in all kinds of weird spots. Wanna help?”[/color] Blazermate said, following a set of tracks to the location of another one that seemed to be hiding inside a pile of snow.

When Blazermate reached the spot, however, she was in for a surprise. Even though she heard mischievous giggling coming from the snow bank, sifting through the snow turned up no sign of any imps, and sure enough a scan reported that the signal she previously detected was no longer present.

In the silence that followed, a familiar voice reached the three Seekers. “Oh, did someone say snow imps?” The pixie, Maeve, flitted over from the direction of the village center. “You should’ve asked me first! These imps, like all implings, have the ability to teleport! Not to mention, they also fly, so if you see any ‘imp tracks’ you can bet it’s a trick. Even if you do somehow get your hands on one, they’re not gonna stay caught for long!” Blazermate would quickly realize the truth behind Maeve’s words as she checked on the implings she’d already obtained, only to find that they’d all disappeared without a trace. “If you’re going to catch them, you need impling jars to nullify their powers,” she recommended. “Plus, you can’t go wrong with an impling net. Luckily, I’ve still got all the equipment I ordered a couple days ago. Everyone who’s tried imp hunting so far has given up pretty quickly…” Although she looked very weary and annoyed for a moment, the Pixie quickly perked herself up again in an unconvincing manner. “So, uh, good luck!”

After handing Blazermate and Heismay a set of four nets and twelve jars, she zipped away to attend some other duty. The eugief gripped the net he’d been given like a sword, testing its balance and heft. Much lighter even than his fishing rod, it would lend itself to quick, accurate movements. He glanced at Ganondorf nearby, then turned his attention to Blazermate. “I’m willing to give it a try. Six jars apiece, then?”

[color=797979]”Make it four apiece.”[/color] The Gerudo said, slowly standing up. [color=797979]”This sounds rather similar to catching fairies with bottles in the world I hail from. How hard could it possibly be?”[/color] The man wasn’t normally keen to do these kinds of side games, things had been rather dull since the Seekers’ arrival to the village and he needed something with which to alleviate his growing boredom. May as well do this, he decided.

He grabbed a net and tested its weight and heft. It looked no different than the kind of Bug Catching Nets some Hylian lads would play with. But from the description of it he had to hazard a guess that the net was enchanted somehow to be effective against these, what were they, snow imps?

“Very well.” Heismay hadn’t expected the huge warlord to join him and Blazermate in netting pests, but he wasn’t about to object. “Oh, and let us keep a sharp eye out for fleas while we’re at it. There are a fair few still to be found, I believe.”

The trio spread out, searching for snow implings. With the creatures’ propensity for making mischief, it didn’t take long for them to find one of the [url=https://i.imgur.com/daUyErY.png]festively-dressed gremlins[/url] gnawing at the cord of some Christmas lights strung between two candy cane poles. At that altitude, it lay beyond even Ganondorf’s reach. Blazermate could fly up to reach it, but the medabot wasn’t the fastest, so it would probably have plenty of time to flee. Still, it was worth a try, so rather than jump to conclusions about his allies’ abilities Heismay waited to see how they’d handle the situation.

Well, Blazermate was simple at the end of the day, and rushed the imp. But as she got close and it juked her by moving around, taunting, Blazermate got an idea. She got into range of it once again as it flew around making fun of her attempts and Disrupted it to get next to it with her net as it was banished into a plane of shadow for a few seconds. Once it came back, it met her net that caught it and its 2 illusions, the illusions poofing soon afterwards.

Heismay raised an eyebrow at her achievement, impressed. From the outset it looked like Blazermate would be outmatched and made sport of by the wily little fiend. If anything, Maeve had undersold the impling’s evasive abilities. It turned out, though, that Blazermate had a trick up her sleeve that could restrict its movements. “Well struck,” he called up to her. That gave him an idea of his own to try on the next imp they found, based on his brief but memorably strange encounter with that frozen thing from the coal chute.

With Blazermate’s scanning abilities, and Heismay’s sharp hearing, it didn’t take the hunters long to spot a second impling. This one had infested the fishing pond, attempting to gnaw through the fishing line. This time, the eugief stepped forward, but not to pit his own agility against the imp’s. “Allow me.” He focused, geometric streaks of orange light spreading across his body, and assumed his new Gunner Archetype. Taking aim with the cannon he hefted on his shoulder, he waited for the imp to stop moving, then fired.

His first shot whizzed by a few inches to the right of his target. It struck a tree, and the noise alerted the imp as it stared in the impact’s direction. “Damn,” Heismay muttered beneath his breath, adjusting his aim. When he pulled the trigger again, his next bolt struck the imp dead-on. Rather than doing damage, it instantly put the gremlin to sleep. Heismay had plenty of time to revert to normal, stroll over, pluck the imp from the snow, and jam it into a jar. “Simple enough,” he commented. “Although my magla is limited, I should have enough to subdue three more.”

After another minute of searching, a third imp was spotted trying to sabotage the ornaments of a Christmas Tree. This time it was Ganondorf who stepped forward, though the man had no desire to chase down an imp on foot. Instead he summoned one of his strikers, the Maverick Reploid known as Blast Hornet. The Reploid in question had a tool in his arsenal that could be helpful for situations like this, and so Ganondorf chose to rely on it for this instance.

He let Blast Hornet do his thing, and the Reploid took a moment to lock its crosshairs onto the snow imp before unleashing his bee drones in a Search Attack. They were seekers, and so they’d continuously chase and close in on the imp regardless of how it tried to zig and zag. Eventually it slipped up and got tagged by one of the bee drones, which in this instance didn’t attack or explode. Instead the drone latched into the imp and carried it back toward Ganondorf and Blast Hornet where it was then stashed into one of Ganondorf’s jars.

 “Twould seem we’re all well-suited to the task, in some way or another,” Heismay remarked. Sure, professional hunters like Geralt and Ace probably would’ve had even better ways to nab their quarry, but it was comforting to know that the Seekers could accomplish a task like this without them. More than anything, this experience seemed to underscore the importance of having a variety of spirits under one’s belt. Heismay’s Archetypes were born of his own power, of course, but still.

With everyone capable of capturing implings, there was no need to stay together, so the three split up to cover more ground. Over the course of the next half hour, each tracked down another two imps up to no good around the Christmas Village.

Heismay identified one snow imp at the to-do sign, bullying Maeve. After discussing strategy with the pixie, the two successfully baited the imp and knocked it out with a Sleep Shot. The hermit found another bothering the reindeer, which proved difficult to tranquilize without hitting the beasts themselves; eventually, he gave up and tranquilized everything in the area, exhausting the rest of his magla. He also found a flea cozily snuggled up against a sleeping reindeer, which he gently prodded awake and encouraged to return to the caravan.

Blazermate now with a net in tow, could continue her hunt for these imps. She remembered one of them she had found that had escaped her loved candy canes, so with an inspired idea, she grabbed a candy cane out of one of the barrels and put it in the middle of an intersection clearly in view of many houses as she hid in a snowbank. Hunters laid traps like this right? Although it took a little while, eventually that snow imp took the bait. Blazermate let it eat its candy cane for a little bit before catching it, letting it get a bit full and thus lethargic before she caught it so it wouldn’t run away. 

Ganondorf’s efforts were comparatively more dull, though not without at least some minor incident. The first snow imp he located was simply trying to tangle up some colorful Christmas lights that somebody had strung across the roof of their cottage, and Blast Hornet’s Search Attack was enough to snag it as before. The second one? That one was darting around a local cafe spiking people’s hot cocoa with salt and pepper to ruin their flavor. And unfortunately Blast Hornet’s drones weren’t a viable option here since a sudden appearance of mechanical bees might cause a small panic. So for that one Ganondorf had to pursue the imp the old fashioned way, which took him a frustrating amount of time compared to how simple his previous catches were.

After about an hour, Heismay chased down Blazermate, then Ganondorf so the imp hunters could compare notes. With nine of the ne’er-do-wells snagged, that left only three at large, and fortunately Heismay had an idea where they might be hiding. “Twould seem that a few of them realized that we’re hunting them down,” he reported. “I followed one away from the village using my ears. I spotted a lonesome cottage amidst a copse of tall, slender pines, all bowing toward it in an eerie manner. The whole place was of a rather loathsome aspect, and I suspect they’re hiding there.” He left it implicit that he’d decided to round up his comrades rather than braving a potentially dangerous location on his own.

[color=0072bc]”Huh…. Well if any are on the roof then I’ll be the one to get those I guess.”[/color] Blazermate said, shrugging. Finding these things was kind of annoying just due to the whole ‘hunting’ part. Why were they faster than her? That wasn’t fair!

[color=797979]”Hmph, trying to make a last stand?”[/color] Ganondorf scoffed, [color=797979]”Let them try. It won’t work.”[/color]

The three set off, quickly leaving the bustling activity, colorful lights, and festive warmth of the Christmas Village behind. Heismay followed his own tracks in the snow, literally retracing his steps as the sounds of chatter and laughter gave way to the low roar of wintry wind. Finally, after a couple minutes of walking, the Seekers caught a glimpse of their destination.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/7KoPNbw.png[/img][/center]

That house on the hill, and indeed the whole scene surrounding it, were exactly as Heismay described it: eerie. The house itself, gutted and half-ruined by a disastrous fire, stood atop a set of four chicken legs as thick as tree trunks, and a crooked staircase of worn stone wound up to the red door, like the gullet of some nightmarish creature. To the side of the [url=https://i.imgur.com/OWN3WFs.png]house[/url] lay a well without a pulley or bucket. Even with two allies at his side, Heismay curled his lip at the odious house. “I strongly mislike this place. The wind…tis as if it whispers, but I cannot make out its meaning.”

[color=797979]”The sooner we find the imps, the sooner we won’t have to look at this place anymore.”[/color]

“Right.” Although Hismay didn’t like taking the lead, neither Ganondorf nor Blazermate pushed forward, so he steeled himself and climbed the staircase, one step at a time. At the top he inhaled, though pushed open the old red door.

In a chair opposite the door, immediately visible, was a dessicated corpse. Burned, then left at the mercy of the elements for who knew how long, it has skin like leather stretched over gnarled bone. It sat in a moth-eaten chair, motionless, but in the deathgrip of its upraised hand struggled a single snow imp, pale with fright.

Heismay stood, stock-still, half-expecting the cadaver to lunge any second. When it did not, he carefully circled around it to let the others in, then peered around the ruined hovel. Precious little remained of the interior, though the barely-audible sound of whining led him to the kitchen table. Underneath it cowered a young flea, shivering in fright. Heismay pursed his lips, then bent down to carefully remove the flea so he could toss it through a broken window, sending it on its way.

He could not see any more imps. The only other thing of note within the house was a strange gizmo laying on a countertop, a shell made of metal. When he picked it up, it buzzed, and the sound of raspy breathing began to emanate from the shell’s hole.

[i]“I lost my way again. It’s getting dark now. But the dark is a well of ideas, a blank canvas full of possibilities. The dark itself is the key. All I need is a little spark, and then I get what I need. It hungers for fire, so I take a match, I light it, and I offer it. I give it freely. I have to…surrender…”[/i]

He swallowed, set the shellphone down, and unceremoniously hopped back out through the window, not even bothering with the door. He landed next to the well, disturbing a snow imp that had been hiding behind it. With a yelp, the imp flew upward, then darted down into the well. When Heismay approached and looked down into it, however, he saw only darkness. Roiling, bubbling, pitch black nothingness, darker than a moonless night.

While Ganondorf wrested the caught imp from the corpse’s grasp, Blazermate followed Heismay out, just barely able to spot the fleeing imp before it disappeared. Taking the words delivered by the shellphone literally, she put her new firemaking skills to work by using her tinderbox to turn a pine branch into a makeshift torch. After Ganondorf joined her and a tentative nod from Heismay, she dropped it into the well. Immediately, the darkness began to stir. For a brief moment, the Seekers could see what looked like a single white eye staring out from the abyss, garbled with static distortion as spine-chilling white noise issued from the depths. Then the eye vanished, and up from the well flew two snow imps, comatose with faces frozen in expressions of abject terror.

As he fought to control his breathing, Heismay nudged one imp into his last jar with his net, careful not to touch it directly. Blazermate did the same with the other one, and the moment she had the impling captive, the Seekers left the house on the hill behind.