I resolved to be more prepared the next time I closed my bedroom door.  It wasn’t a rule that something terrible was destined to happen, but it did seem like it was becoming a bit more of a habit than with which I was comfortable.

The front door was hanging open again, and I could hear growling and other disturbances.  I picked up my keys, unconnected the charger from my phone, stuck both of them in my pocket in case I was sucked into some other world, and then grabbed my notepad like a shield, my pen like a sword, and pushed the door open so that I could see what was outside.

I remember thinking first that there was no such thing as giants. I couldn’t remember what author had proved it to me, but it’s that “desperately clings to rationality” part of my brain that seemed to govern a good bit of the panicked part.  I mean, most people have fight or flight drilled into them (is the other “fornicate”?  It’s amazing what years of perverting instinct will do to the mind) but no, I have to have “philosophize,” which doesn’t start with the right letter, but at least it was the right sound.

But there was a giant.

And then that desperate, terribly put-upon part of my head interrupted and said, “And there’s no such thing as demons, either.”

But there was a demon.

There are times I wish I was an artist, but this scene belonged more in a comic book than on canvas.  Nen, or the giant that was now Nen, was about seventeen feet tall at the shoulder. (That’s how you measure things that have gotten bigger than you expected, I’ve noticed.  Dogs, horses, and I guess now these spriggan-like entities.  Because from toes to head misses some kind of horizontal plane.)  He was holding down a creature made of tentacles and teeth, and slime.  That sad, lonely part of my brain didn’t even interrupt and call it “mucus,” or insist on some other word.  It was slime.  It was grey and greasy, and it made it difficult for Nen to hold onto it.  The tentacles seemed to form from a central core, like one of those cu sithe balls (or however they’re spelt – I might have some odd presumptions there) you could get that were rubbery and wiggly, and then some of the tentacles had mouths with teeth, some were useful for manipulating things, and some worked as limbs, tail, antennae, something like that.  The middle of the body seemed to have a beak and some eye-like things, very krakenesque, if you got that opinion from a Jerry Bruckheimer film or four.  Nen’s body shifted in size, this time slightly smaller and his hands slightly bigger, and while a quivering (I’m sure that was the venery) of tentacles seemed to have been pulled off from the beast (meaning there might have been blood in that mix) they continued to shift and dance and do no major harm to the creature.

While observing the both of them (and trying to ignore the damage Nen was doing to the sidewalk, the asphalt, and one of the neighbor’s bikes) I decided the demon was actually some kind of echinoderm from Beyond.  More of a sun star than a traditional radial shape, but that hopeless part of my brain kicked into gear just long enough to suggest other correlations including the idea of some kind of slime vascular system and then it kind of exploded.  That is, both the demon and that sad, doomed part of my brain just as the science was getting interesting. Only one, literally.  Apparently Nen had pulled it apart significantly enough for it to collapse on its pseudopodic arms.

Nen turned to me, and there was something feral in his eyes, something that made that strange shape of mouth and teeth more like a movie werewolf than a kind doggie, and he was coated in ick.  Parts of his outfit were ripped away, and I saw that his hands were reminiscent of sharp rocks, and that his hair was the sea and his breath the maelstrom, and then after a moment, he was simply Nen.  Nen in the center of what was almost a crater of destruction.

“What was it you called me, man?  Sir Wrecks-a-lot?” he asked.

I stuttered for a moment.  “Y-yes, that was it.”  Did I put the Sir in?  I didn’t remember.

He looked forlorn for a moment, turning around and looking at bits of yuck and street and sidewalk.  “That may have been a foretelling I would have rather have avoided.”  He sighed.  “I’m no house-elf to be cleaning this up, but the bit that hid the battle from untrained eyes will need to be made stronger for dawn’s light, and shaped to make it look more like the cause was re-directed.”

“I should hope it was hid,” I said.  “You were some twenty-feet tall, and it was,” I watched as remnants of it melted away into the darkness of the road.  “I forgot what I was saying.”

“The slightest of us weave a gossamer of untruth to best protect our wards from the consequences.”  I decided to parse that together later. “Where did this creature come from, and wherefore did it come so close as to be caught in your defenses?”

“Perhaps it was a message?” I said.

“A shot above the bow? A present for your birthday?”  Nen scoffed, but he was still considering it.

“Who are you protecting me from?” I asked again.

“I repeat that I am bound not to say, although you are a keen observer of the obvious and can see that these stargazers are amongst them.”  He shrugged.  “Let me complete my shroud of lies, and I would like to use your shower.”

“Shroud of lies?  That sounds a little more self-denigrating than ‘glamour,'” I pointed out.

“Does it?” he asked, and I felt very much put in my place.

I stayed quiet, but I could feel the screeching fork against a blackboard of a partial Opening, and smell the acrid and pungent asphalt melt and reform as he painted what I knew of Reality slightly differently.  It was a  dizzying thing to watch, a thing of  art and Art and I could almost feel it like a wave of heat and I brushed against it with the thing I thought my talent, and almost felt the weave of it, thin and burning like ice against my fingers.  It dissolved away almost sweetly, and I found myself holding on to the railing near the door and wishing for its stability, as if it were connected to the roots of the earth.

“Um, how do you do that?” I managed.

“Magic,” he winked, as he turned back towards me.

I sighed.  “What about all the size shifting and stuff?”

“It’s what I am,” he said.

He passed me and went back inside, so I followed him.  I put my keys down and closed the door.  Really, I probably needed to make some kind of “sucked into another reality” kit.  What would you put in there?

“Well, it fits the Wikipedia entry,” I shrugged, sliding onto the couch.  He went into the bathroom and a few minutes later I heard the sound of running water.  A thought occurred to me, and I knocked on the door.  “Hey, what if another one of those tickly things shows up and you’re all getting un-gunked?”

“I would not be worried about that, Door-closer,” Rayya said, sitting in the very spot Nen usually took.  “There are other guardians.”

I jumped.  I hate being snuck up on.  Sneaked up on.  Sneakered.  Snookered.  Whatever. “Aiiigh!” I meeped.  “When did you show up?”

“Demanding answers will not get you them, Wizard-friend.  Nen will be touched that you think the crashing wave to suffice against the lingering flame.”

“Lingering flame? Is that what’s after me?”  I thought I had it, then I frowned.  “Of course, what a lingering flame might have to do with some kind of undersea triffid…  Well, if it was a plant it’d be more a pentid, I guess…” I realized I was talking kind of for the sake of talking as Rayya just did the silent statue stare at me.

“How many?” I asked, sitting down next to her.

“You must learn to be more specific with your words, Dragons-bane, or our conversations will be generic ones.  Shall I delight you with the little I care about the vagaries of the environment, or the combative nature of some local cluster of therianthropically named groups?”

“Sports?”

She grinned a toothy grin.  “You shake up well, but you continue to function and think.”

“I’ll…take that as a compliment.”

“I am not inclined to argue,” she smiled and hid some of the teeth.  “At least about that,” she amended with more of a flash of tooth.

“And not inclined to answer?”  I smiled back.  “How about I ask again, and this time identify more specifics?”

“If it amuses you,” the smile started to fade.  It was an affectation.  They don’t need to smile – they probably send out subatomic wave particles of evil glee.  They only smile to manipulate us.  Alas, it works.

“How many guardians are established to my protection?” It was clumsy, but seemed solid enough.

“You try too hard. I could simply answer, ‘Enough,’ and have it be true.”

“Are you leaving me to wet my feet in a swamp?”

“That sounds like curious fun,” she replied.

“You know, having all of these people around for my safety kind of makes me want to go passive-aggressive and do really dangerous things,” I tried.

“You may have more ability than most of your kind to pick up on the transcendental, but you have less than the usual for prevarication.”

“I’m sure I could do something dumb enough to get hurt,” I said, realizing about halfway through that my pride certainly wasn’t at stake and maybe I should quit while I was ahead.

“I hold that truth to be self-evident,” she merely remarked, but I realized she was also disappointed in me.

“What do you guys want from me?” I raged, standing up.  I hadn’t realized how loud I was and it made me uncomfortable.

“That is a fair question unfairly asked,” she said.  “How do you want it answered?”

“Unfairly,” I said, staring at a wall of books.  I heard the water turn off, and the shower door open.

“That I can give you,” she said.  She rose from the couch to stand at my hand, just a little taller than that, and she reached up with her own fingers to touch mine. “The veil cannot be lifted, Ghost-caller.  You know the name of the one who seeks you.  If we shadows have offended, our misty ways have but pretended, to whirl in smoke and quench the flame, of the one that holds our hero to blame.”

“That’s not Shakespeare,” I said.  Her hand felt very small in mine.

“No.  We have few poets of our own, which is why we steal yours.”

“I wrote some bad poetry in junior high.  Does that grant me access to the fair kingdoms?”

“There are those who lock themselves up in oubliettes of their own design, and those of the realms that have a dubious taste for the wanderings of the young.”  I looked down at her as she sneered, and then laughed.  “It is translation, my friend.  We enjoy the work of making thought to word and word to shared language.  It is a game for us, and rhyme is one of the ways we … score points.”

“Ah.  Can anyone play?”

“You are at a disadvantage,” she said, letting go of my hand.  “The game will be done too soon.”

“Another crack at my mortality?” I grimaced.

“No,” Nen said, coming out, and shaking his hair dried with a towel. “In some fashion, ours.  After all, we must throw ourselves at the beast for your safety, and at that, you’ve already gotten one of us killed.”