Death By Irony

As she walked towards the Forbidden Forest, Cass consulted the sketch in her hand. It was a ghastly drawing of a wolf-like creature's head darting towards a bare throat - but instead of canine teeth, it was all gums with two long, thin fangs like a snake's. Behind the animal's head were several tall, burnt trees. Apart from the curve of a chest, there was no detail of whose throat the creature was about to bite. There was nothing geographically useful aside from the burnt trees, either; she had put together the tales of strange, surreal creatures in the Forbidden Forest with her premonition. Cassie had been about to draw her apartment window and the rising sun outside it when her right hand started moving by itself. It was the worst way to get a premonition, her arm suddenly disengaging from her brain and wandering off as if it had a mind of its own, usually producing a snapshot with nothing useful on it. At least dropping out of college meant that it didn't happen during art class anymore; some of the grotesque things her hand had decided to draw had made her teachers worry about her mental health.

She hadn't come unprepared - Cass was a natural planner. In her other hand, she carried a metal baseball bat, which she swung at hanging vines of ivy as she entered the woods. There was a compass hanging from her belt to guide her back out. And, if she found the victim too late, the wad of bandages in her back pocket might make all the difference. It had to be said that she wasn't expecting to actually find the wolf's dinner; a section of burnt trees in a big forest was not exactly a map. But Cass had spent more than two years ignoring her premonitions and then feeling guilty as hell when someone ended up on the news that night, and she'd finally decided that she could try to do something about her visions. It wasn't going to save anyone, but at least she'd have a clear conscience for once.

An hour and a half later, Cassie's legs were starting to ache and the trees around her, while twisted and dark, were leafy and alive. Not for the first time, she cursed her stupid, useless power. Why didn't it pop into her head - or hand - with a timestamp and directions? She wasn't a damned private detective, she was a college drop-out. The woods around her seemed to bristle with malice, strange noises sounding in the distance, and yes, she took Tae Bo to stay fit, but that didn't mean she was some sort of martial artist, and now she was expected to fight off some kind of nightmare monster, and how is this fair? Inwardly grumbling, she crunched over a patch of frozen bracken and sidled between two oak trees, then stopped dead, breath caught in her throat.

The shock melted after a second, and she raised her sketch to compare the scenes. The small clearing matched the background of her picture completely, right down to the filtering winter sunlight. But she was the only person there - perhaps the victim hadn't arrived yet. Great; she'd wait around for some twit walking in the Forest of Doom to get their ass attacked, rather than be given a face or name and have the option of tracking them down and telling them not be such a friggin' idiot. Cursing quietly under her breath, Cass balled up the drawing and tossed it onto the damp, frosty undergrowth. Leaning against a tree, she checked her watch and ground her teeth. She should have been in work today, earning her rent money, and instead she was in some stupid forest waiting for some stupid, girly victim--

The realisation dawned on her just before she heard the low snarl; if the sunlight in the picture matched the sunlight in the clearing, then... well, then the attack was going to happen now, and if it was going to happen now and she was the only woman around, then... ohshit! When the wet, drooling snarl sounded behind her, Cass' fight-or-flight instincts picked the latter, and she took off like a deer across the little clearing, holding the baseball bat in both hands. She could hear the creature following fast, and knew her only option was to try and slow it down through the trees - she'd never be able to outrun it in an open space.

She was almost through the clearing when it barrelled into her.

Hitting the dirt with a sharp cry, Cassie rolled over, one hand against the animal's chest and the other arm bent across her throat, protecting it from the outcome in her premonition. The creature was drooling, and behind its manic head, she saw a scorpion's tail waving above it. There was no time for a healthy what the frig; she drew her knees up to try and unbalance it, to no avail. It got its fangs into the arm she was using to keep it away and her throat turned raw from her screech of pain. She couldn't spare a hand to grab her fallen baseball bat; it was darting for her throat, jaws snapping with a hollow clunk. Its claws were tearing her vest top to shreds, its weight on her suffocatingly heavy and real. Her arms were getting tired, and she dimly wondered why she was given a premonition of her own death that caused her own death.

Her mind was paralysed. Cass always knew what to do, always had an ace up her sleeve and a goddamn plan, yet here she was, completely helpless. She felt a tension, a burning in her forehead over her third eye, and then the call burst out with such force that the wolf creature froze in shock. It sizzled through the trees like a chainsaw, searching for anyone in the remote vicinity, and forging a connection to their mind, so they could hear her thoughts, feel her distress, and sense where she was. If her ability knew that it was irreversible, it really didn't care.

She should have used the delay to attack the creature - just grab the baseball bat and smash its monstrous skull in, but Cass was even more shocked than the chimera. There was a new sense blossoming in her mind, a sort of distant shimmer, like a glow caught in one's peripheral vision. It was a person, someone she knew was coming to her aid - she could feel them getting closer, bringing an indescribable aura with them. At that moment, the creature recovered and went for her throat, and Cass' priorities reasserted themselves in a hurry. Even though she knew help was coming, her arms were bloodied and shaking, and her blocks were getting slower and clumsier. Time seemed to slow, and her consciousness was split into three levels; survival instinct and tracking the figure in her mind, with the third layer absolutely disgusted with the way things had turned out. It was so stupidly ironic that, for the first time in her life, Cass suspected there might be a higher power after all. And clearly, it was pissed.

The aura drew closer as her arm slipped, projecting such purity and sheer goodness that half of her wanted to worship it, and the other half wanted to throw up. The slip was just a couple of inches, but the chimera's muzzle darted in under it, fangs bared, and Cass had just enough time to close her eyes and hope that the higher power wouldn't be so mad at her if she died. Instead of the sting of teeth, though, there was a bright flash against her closed eyelids, and the weight on her body lifted instantly. Breathing heavily, she opened her eyes, wondering if she was dying after all, and it just happened to be a lot more pleasant than she'd expected. The figure of a man standing beside her matched the sense in her mind, and the powerful aura that accompanied it. There was also a solid serenity, evidenced further when he spoke without the slightest tremor.

"Well then, it would appear I have come across something akin to Little Red Riding Wolf."

Cassie recognised what was happening; she had forged another mind-link, which was of course terrible and awful and all the rest of it, but she had bigger mutated fish to fry right now. After rolling over and grabbing the bat, she clambered unsteadily to her feet, her ripped jacket and top clinging damply to her skin. An unsteady step later, she looked past her new mind-mate at the monster that had almost eaten her, quite freaking literally. She couldn't feel any surprise from her rescuer, but her own emotions were so tangled up that she wasn't sure if she was feeling anything except slight nausea. "I have a weapon," she volunteered, lifting the bat with the last of her strength. "If you hit the base of the skull you should snap the spine."

Then I'd like you to move to another continent, she thought, wiping sweat off her face with the back of a bloody hand, blissfully unaware that the link - just like with Elise - was going to broadcast her thoughts until she learned to hide them. It wasn't that she was ungrateful; once she recovered from general shock and horror, she would be very grateful indeed. But Cass' track record with her telepathy was less than shining, and the idea of someone constantly knowing what she was feeling was, for her, almost as frightening as being attacked by a big freaking wolf with snake fangs and a scorpion tail. And that was pretty damn frightening.

Someone more prickly might have taken offense at his words, but they made perfect sense to Cass, who shuffled through dead leaves to lean against a blackened tree. Still, she wasn't prepared to put all her faith in a stranger, no matter how confident he felt, and she shifted slightly, ready to lurch out of the way if the creature reached her. With some difficulty, Cassie drew the bandages from her pocket, attempting with limited success to bandage the wounds on her left arm. It must have looked like she didn't care what her rescuer and the chimera were doing, but she was simply prioritising. Limiting the amount of blood loss was a good place to start, otherwise she'd probably pass out and be of even less use. As insane as her life had become at that precise moment, she was thinking clearly, and wished to remain that way.

A dizzy spell struck her not long after she'd begun making wide, loose loops around her forearm. Not the loss of blood that she was trying to avoid - it was like an influx of nonsensical information, bursts of combat tactics that never would have crossed her mind. They struck her all at once and the nausea grew exponentially, causing her to take calculated breaths and try and weather the storm, acknowledging that she may well have been hearing his intentions, possibly even his thoughts. Whoever he was, she was apparently in good hands; when she glanced up, she saw that glowing flash again, and then the wolf shot past her at shoulder-height, hitting a tree at the clearing's edge with a sickening crunch. Hm. Impressive.

With the immediate threat gone, Cass' eyes swept the clearing for a rock to sit on. Finding none, she dropped the bandages and managed, with not a small degree of pain, to drag the jacket off her frame. She spread it over the sharp bracken and knelt down, lifting the bandages again. Yeah, Cass. Of course you can bandage yourself with one arm. And afterwards, you could turn sheep into clouds and end all war.

Extremely reluctantly, she gave up and - apparently - addressed her jacket. "Could you, um..." No, she couldn't ask the guy who'd saved her life to bandage her like a little birdy with a broken wing. Even she had some lines she couldn't cross.

As Cass made another loop of bandage, she finally allowed her mind to stop pulling away from the new connection. Tendrils of thought and intent reached out, probing gently at the edges of the man's mind. It was hard to describe in conventional words; a little like concentrating on how her foot was feeling. Information reverberated back through the mental link, giving her the name - Alistair Fordren, that's kinda dorky - and more of that determination to be Good and Kind, which wasn't helping her queasiness at all. When he spoke, who the hell says m'lady these days?, he was being so damned sincere that Cassie began to suspect this mental link was even worse than the one she'd forged with Elise. She wanted to hide all these rather unfriendly thoughts, but she didn't know how. It was horribly intrusive to have somebody knowing everything she thought and felt. The more Cass wanted to think inoffensively, the more offensive her thoughts became. Feeling almost defensive, she looked closer into Alistair's mind - but hers seemed to run into a concrete wall, and at quite a velocity. Her own thoughts scattered upon impact, and after a few moments of sitting in silence, staring at nothing, Cass shook herself a little and focused on the bandages.

Pride be damned. She'd just forgotten what it was she'd been doing; clearly the blood loss was progressing. "Mm. I mean - yeah, please. And thanks. And whatever."

Unable to bring herself to show any level of sincerity, she cringed internally. Cass was almost positive that he could read her mind just as she could read his; that was how the connection worked. But Alistair showed no surprise at being able to, nor curiosity, not even fear. The whole pure goodness thing was fairly disturbing, too. People called her an alien because she was just the opposite of her rescuer, but this was as alien to Cass as a twelve foot Martian.

Tension was at last beginning to seep out of her muscles, fine tremors taking hold at the backwash of adrenaline. She wasn't going to start crying or screaming - there was no point - but she did acknowledge a sudden, strong desire to go home and lie in bed for the rest of her life.

Cass had the good grace to look abashed when he referred to her careless thought about his dorky name. She couldn't help it; every instant reaction in her mind lay in full view, and unlike some people, she wasn't a saint who thought only useful, pleasant things. She was, contrary to popular opinion, a human being. Much of what a human thought went unsaid, and for good reason. Ignoring his charitable smile, she kept her grey eyes on her bedraggled arm, trying - vainly - to conceal her emotions, which were less complex and thus more visible in the telepathic link. Gratitude sloshed around aimlessly; she didn't know how to thank someone for saving her life, and tried to avoid the whole 'expressing emotion' bull, which discomfited her beyond measure. When he thought something admirably practical, but also grammatically perfect, though, Cass began to wonder exactly what Mr Alistair Fordren was.

True, she really ought to have started wondering earlier, but there was a chimera on top of her at the time. Even someone as sensible as Cass needed a few minutes to process everything.

There had been that glow, for starters, first when her eyes were closed, then when he was fighting the wolf-snake-scorpion creature that she knew would have a starring role in her nightmares for years to come. His utter nonchalance at the fact that Cassie had telepathically linked their minds up like two computers sharing a, what was it, a modem or something? And she had tried to get a closer look at his mind, which was just reasonable when dealing with a stranger, but something had happened. Something she couldn't quite remember. All in all, he was definitely in control of the situation, and that got to her. Taking the cloth from his hand, she glanced down at the tattered vest top and shook her head slightly as she spoke. "Nothing as serious. We should get going now, though, in case it has a pack or something."

Straightening, the telepath brushed at some dead leaves stuck to her jeans before unclipping the compass on her belt. Due east; an easy way to get out of the forest. The long walk would be a good chance to figure out what Fordren was - she hated this nagging feeling of ignorance. Fair enough, she could tell that he had no immediate plans to hurt her, but his mind wasn't open to inspection like hers was, and it made her a little paranoid. "I suppose you have an interesting ability?" she hazarded, abandoning her missing baseball bat and picking an eastern direction. "Probably something that involves a pretty glow and an endless supply of calm?"

What she really meant, and what snuck in beneath her voice, was what in god's name are you?, a thought Cass promptly tried to squish.