The Witches Road: Rictor & Emily
Oct. 23rd, 2025 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_rictor posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsRictor and Emily are ambushed and attacked by mysterious forces on their way home, but prevail.
Emily hummed along to the radio as she sat comfortably in the front seat, occasionally looking across at Rictor with a shy smile. She’d requested a lift home and she lived with the man but sometimes she just felt incredibly awkward. Especially given he was 1. Attractive as hell and 2. In no way interested in her. It was all she could do not to just apologise for looking at him.
She hoped it wasn’t obvious, she couldn’t think of anything worse.
She was saved from potential embarrassment by his characteristic obliviousness to anyone else's attention, his own focused right now entirely on the drive home. Or maybe it was because he was inured to any interest from women after surviving his bosses' daily catcalls and lewd comments for the last year and a half.
In any case, he could not wait to get home, shower, and accost Shatterstar for the rest of the evening. He got so lost in that thought that he nearly missed the figure standing in the middle of the upcoming crosswalk. If it weren't for horn honks from the other cars snapping him back to reality, he would not have slammed his brakes in time.
Emily had cut off her ‘watch out!’ Scream when Rictor hit the break, and instead had reached for the oh shit handle on her door. She managed to not have her body perform one of a dozen panic based magic changes she’d happened upon over the past few months but it was a close thing. Her hair had taken on sparks of flame at the end, even so.
“Um, we should see if they’re okay. Maybe they’re having an episode?”
Emily couldn’t think of any other reason someone would stand in the middle of a crosswalk and apparently glare at them.
Getting out in the middle of the road probably was not the safest idea, but neither was just standing there. So Rictor nodded, shifted to park, and turned on his hazard lights, and then stepped out of the car with Emily.
"Excuse me," he greeted, cautiously approaching them, "are you o . . ." He was forcefully flung several meters away, crashing into the windshield of another car, before he could finish his question.
The Figure cloaked in all black, only a dark Fox Mask covered their face. They cocked their heads to one side as another one figure slithered out from behind them, almost like they formed from the shadows of the first one. This one had a Snake Mask covering their face. The breeze came to a standstill and the sounds cut out, leaving behind an eerie silence. The one with a Snake mask pointed towards Rictor and Emily's direction as they prepared to cast a spell towards the pair.
Emily’s abilities reacted before she did, almost as if the magic inside her noticed a threat and moved to counter it. Obsidian rushed down her arms as she threw them upwards in reaction, moving in front of Rictor on pure instinct.
The road was clear of other people in the moments after Rictor collided with the other car, that car's passengers among the first to flee. Which was good, because Rictor did not have to worry about bystanders when he returned the favor to the pair of masked weirdos. As Emily armored up, he gingerly slid off the car hood and got to his feet, and the air thundered as he called on his gift, catching the other pair in a wave of force that tossed them aside with the same disregard they had shown him.
"Do you know who they are?" he asked Emily, his eyes never leaving the enemies. "Or what they are?"
“Why would I know?” Emily asked, suddenly confused. “Maybe they’re overcome with road rage?”
She hoped her new armor stuck around, she could never tell how long a magic reaction would last. The universe was a petty bitch at times.
“They’re standing, so um, probably human…or really intelligent bears.”
Suddenly, time just stopped. Everyone and everything around them had just frozen in time. The eerie silence was deafening as if someone muted the t.v. during a show. From behind a car, the Fox Mask figure appeared, with the Snake mask figure slowly raising from behind the other. And then another appeared, then another, and another, until more than a dozen Fox Mask and Snake Mask figures were starting to encircle the pair. The world began to feel very tiny.
With a blink of an eye they were standing only a feet away from Emily and Rictor, the only human qualities that could be seen was their blue eyes staring at them from behind their masks. The Fox Mask began to raise their arms again as if reaching out for them, their gloved fingers barely touching their faces while the Snake Mask started another spell, with black smoke coming out from underneath their robes.
Without his bare feet touching the ground, Rictor would have thought his next move would need more fortitude, more energy, more oomph. But being in mortal danger—not mention a friend in peril with him—was curiously invigorating. So, even with his shoes as barriers, the pavement rumbled and shattered. Rictor wrapped an arm around Emily's waist to pull her close to him and keep her in the small circle of safe ground at his feet while the rest of the street exploded underneath the masked witches.
Time stops and whatever it was they were doing to throw them around were completely outside Emily’s wheelhouse. That was more Topaz and Amanda’s thing. Illusions weren’t going to work here and she’d yet to figure out how to make her changes that weren’t physical solid.
Emily patted the hand around her waist for a moment, trying to get her mind to work beyond ‘he smells nice’ when Rictor’s scent of dirt and growing things hit her nose.
“I don’t know how to help.”
"Just stay close, chica, I'll protect you!" Rictor reached into the ground under the crumbling pavement and urged it to rise again. He wished Shatterstar were here. They had a good strategy, with Star taking any enemies head on while Rictor picked them off at range. At least he would have fun relating today's events to Star once they got home. Assuming they got home at all.
The broken pieces of the asphalt went flying as the wind picked up, the witches had disappeared into a black mist. The world got darker as the black mist blocked out the sun. "Tempus vestrum effluxit." The voices on the wind emerged, deafening. "Ad vos omnes venimus." The wind got faster and faster, almost like a tornado was forming, and just when it felt like they would be pulled off their feet it stopped. When the light came back, the entire road was back together as if there was no battle. The next to come back was the sounds.
HONK! The sounds of a car horn. "GET OFF THE ROAD YOU MILLENNIALS!" An older man yelled.
Emily gave the driver who had stopped behind their car an incredulous look but started back to it. How the hell did someone do all that and then have everything just go back to normal?
Of course, 'It's Magic' was always the answer.
The people had been speaking Latin. Who even spoke Latin these days? Magic users apparently, and Emily was glad Amanda had been making her learn dead languages. Obviously if people were going to start just talking in them, you needed a good basis for comparison.
Tempus meant time but she didn’t know the other words.
“Do you speak Latin?” Emily asked Rictor, sliding into her side of the car and fastening her seatbelt. If the place was just going to go back to normal, then she was going to entirely fail to have a panic attack as well.
"I speak Spanish, so no." Rictor got them out of the middle of the street as fast as humanly possible while still obeying the speed limit. Last thing he needed after evil witches was the cops. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you at all?"
“I don’t know,” Emily responded honestly.
Her skin had changed back to normal now, and she whispered a quick thank you to the universe, even though it still felt deeply weird and she wasn’t sure ‘who’ the universe actually was other than an esoteric personification but who was she to argue with results? She’d had to take less allergy meds since she started paying attention anyway.
“We should probably let Amanda know there’s weird magic creatures.”
Rictor nodded. Why did these creatures go after the two of them and why did they retreat? He could not make sense of it. But at least he and Emily were safe and, for once, had avoided a potential kidnapping.
Emily hummed along to the radio as she sat comfortably in the front seat, occasionally looking across at Rictor with a shy smile. She’d requested a lift home and she lived with the man but sometimes she just felt incredibly awkward. Especially given he was 1. Attractive as hell and 2. In no way interested in her. It was all she could do not to just apologise for looking at him.
She hoped it wasn’t obvious, she couldn’t think of anything worse.
She was saved from potential embarrassment by his characteristic obliviousness to anyone else's attention, his own focused right now entirely on the drive home. Or maybe it was because he was inured to any interest from women after surviving his bosses' daily catcalls and lewd comments for the last year and a half.
In any case, he could not wait to get home, shower, and accost Shatterstar for the rest of the evening. He got so lost in that thought that he nearly missed the figure standing in the middle of the upcoming crosswalk. If it weren't for horn honks from the other cars snapping him back to reality, he would not have slammed his brakes in time.
Emily had cut off her ‘watch out!’ Scream when Rictor hit the break, and instead had reached for the oh shit handle on her door. She managed to not have her body perform one of a dozen panic based magic changes she’d happened upon over the past few months but it was a close thing. Her hair had taken on sparks of flame at the end, even so.
“Um, we should see if they’re okay. Maybe they’re having an episode?”
Emily couldn’t think of any other reason someone would stand in the middle of a crosswalk and apparently glare at them.
Getting out in the middle of the road probably was not the safest idea, but neither was just standing there. So Rictor nodded, shifted to park, and turned on his hazard lights, and then stepped out of the car with Emily.
"Excuse me," he greeted, cautiously approaching them, "are you o . . ." He was forcefully flung several meters away, crashing into the windshield of another car, before he could finish his question.
The Figure cloaked in all black, only a dark Fox Mask covered their face. They cocked their heads to one side as another one figure slithered out from behind them, almost like they formed from the shadows of the first one. This one had a Snake Mask covering their face. The breeze came to a standstill and the sounds cut out, leaving behind an eerie silence. The one with a Snake mask pointed towards Rictor and Emily's direction as they prepared to cast a spell towards the pair.
Emily’s abilities reacted before she did, almost as if the magic inside her noticed a threat and moved to counter it. Obsidian rushed down her arms as she threw them upwards in reaction, moving in front of Rictor on pure instinct.
The road was clear of other people in the moments after Rictor collided with the other car, that car's passengers among the first to flee. Which was good, because Rictor did not have to worry about bystanders when he returned the favor to the pair of masked weirdos. As Emily armored up, he gingerly slid off the car hood and got to his feet, and the air thundered as he called on his gift, catching the other pair in a wave of force that tossed them aside with the same disregard they had shown him.
"Do you know who they are?" he asked Emily, his eyes never leaving the enemies. "Or what they are?"
“Why would I know?” Emily asked, suddenly confused. “Maybe they’re overcome with road rage?”
She hoped her new armor stuck around, she could never tell how long a magic reaction would last. The universe was a petty bitch at times.
“They’re standing, so um, probably human…or really intelligent bears.”
Suddenly, time just stopped. Everyone and everything around them had just frozen in time. The eerie silence was deafening as if someone muted the t.v. during a show. From behind a car, the Fox Mask figure appeared, with the Snake mask figure slowly raising from behind the other. And then another appeared, then another, and another, until more than a dozen Fox Mask and Snake Mask figures were starting to encircle the pair. The world began to feel very tiny.
With a blink of an eye they were standing only a feet away from Emily and Rictor, the only human qualities that could be seen was their blue eyes staring at them from behind their masks. The Fox Mask began to raise their arms again as if reaching out for them, their gloved fingers barely touching their faces while the Snake Mask started another spell, with black smoke coming out from underneath their robes.
Without his bare feet touching the ground, Rictor would have thought his next move would need more fortitude, more energy, more oomph. But being in mortal danger—not mention a friend in peril with him—was curiously invigorating. So, even with his shoes as barriers, the pavement rumbled and shattered. Rictor wrapped an arm around Emily's waist to pull her close to him and keep her in the small circle of safe ground at his feet while the rest of the street exploded underneath the masked witches.
Time stops and whatever it was they were doing to throw them around were completely outside Emily’s wheelhouse. That was more Topaz and Amanda’s thing. Illusions weren’t going to work here and she’d yet to figure out how to make her changes that weren’t physical solid.
Emily patted the hand around her waist for a moment, trying to get her mind to work beyond ‘he smells nice’ when Rictor’s scent of dirt and growing things hit her nose.
“I don’t know how to help.”
"Just stay close, chica, I'll protect you!" Rictor reached into the ground under the crumbling pavement and urged it to rise again. He wished Shatterstar were here. They had a good strategy, with Star taking any enemies head on while Rictor picked them off at range. At least he would have fun relating today's events to Star once they got home. Assuming they got home at all.
The broken pieces of the asphalt went flying as the wind picked up, the witches had disappeared into a black mist. The world got darker as the black mist blocked out the sun. "Tempus vestrum effluxit." The voices on the wind emerged, deafening. "Ad vos omnes venimus." The wind got faster and faster, almost like a tornado was forming, and just when it felt like they would be pulled off their feet it stopped. When the light came back, the entire road was back together as if there was no battle. The next to come back was the sounds.
HONK! The sounds of a car horn. "GET OFF THE ROAD YOU MILLENNIALS!" An older man yelled.
Emily gave the driver who had stopped behind their car an incredulous look but started back to it. How the hell did someone do all that and then have everything just go back to normal?
Of course, 'It's Magic' was always the answer.
The people had been speaking Latin. Who even spoke Latin these days? Magic users apparently, and Emily was glad Amanda had been making her learn dead languages. Obviously if people were going to start just talking in them, you needed a good basis for comparison.
Tempus meant time but she didn’t know the other words.
“Do you speak Latin?” Emily asked Rictor, sliding into her side of the car and fastening her seatbelt. If the place was just going to go back to normal, then she was going to entirely fail to have a panic attack as well.
"I speak Spanish, so no." Rictor got them out of the middle of the street as fast as humanly possible while still obeying the speed limit. Last thing he needed after evil witches was the cops. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you at all?"
“I don’t know,” Emily responded honestly.
Her skin had changed back to normal now, and she whispered a quick thank you to the universe, even though it still felt deeply weird and she wasn’t sure ‘who’ the universe actually was other than an esoteric personification but who was she to argue with results? She’d had to take less allergy meds since she started paying attention anyway.
“We should probably let Amanda know there’s weird magic creatures.”
Rictor nodded. Why did these creatures go after the two of them and why did they retreat? He could not make sense of it. But at least he and Emily were safe and, for once, had avoided a potential kidnapping.
