Chapter 2.3 - In which Percy pillow-fights a revenant

Percy

Month 12, Day 17, Thursday 9:55 a.m.

Before Percy could respond or even process the accusation, the sorcerer grabbed a handful of slimy intestines. With a snarl of rage, he hurled the ropy mass directly at Percy’s face.

Percy ducked instinctively, the grotesque projectile arcing past his left ear and draping themselves over his shoulder and back. Without thinking, he retaliated. Letting out an embarrassingly shrill shriek, he flung the limb he still held at the sorcerer. It struck the man’s chest with a wet smack.

The absurd and horrific fight escalated quickly. Both participants grabbed whatever unspeakable objects were within reach, hurling them at each other with increasing desperation. Blood and viscera flew through the air, splattering against walls, furniture, and their own bodies. Percy kept looking for an opening to run away, but he didn’t want to give the man a chance to remember that he had a much more effective weapon at hand.

Percy dodged a flying kidney, only for one of his knees to pop and send a debilitating wave of pain up through his hip and spine. He hopped forward on one leg, grabbing onto the sorcerer for support. The man was precariously balanced due to the remaining full barrel on his back, and Percy’s sudden weight pushed him back.

The man’s boot caught on a cobblestone, and he flailed backward.

Seeing the opportunity, Percy hopped once more, shoving the man so hard that he bounced off and fell backward too.

The thickset man tilted too far for even his absurd strength to compensate, and he toppled. As he hit the ground, the barrels burst underneath the man with a sharp crack, sending their contents spilling out beneath him in with a rippling, slurping sound.

The sorcerer groaned in pain, rolling back and forth to get out of the harness.

Rather than try to get the wand, which might allow the man to grapple him, Percy hobbled away as quickly as he could, some unknown red organ still held in one hand. His fingers were clawed from panic and wouldn’t release it.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the blood sorcerer had remembered his battle wand. He was aiming it at Percy with shaking hands. The man’s eyes were wild behind his goggles, filled with a mixture of fear and manic determination.

Percy froze, his heart pounding in his chest as he stared down the tip of the deadly artifact. He raised his hands slowly. “I surrender.”

The man pulled the trigger switch, and a foggy ripple burst from the tip of the wand.

Percy threw himself to the side while simultaneously hurling the dripping, soft meat in his hands at the man, directly into the path of the oncoming spell. The resulting explosion splattered everywhere, and some of it hit the man in the face, blocking his goggles with an opaque layer of gore.

That…was an amazing piece of luck. Percy glanced down at his tattoo, but didn’t wait around to tempt fate. Taking advantage of his opponent’s temporary blindness, Percy threw himself onward and around the edge of the house without care for his injuries.

The sorcerer screamed with rage behind him.

Percy didn’t dare look back, but he knew he was in no shape to get to a safe distance. Spotting another house with its door blown in, Percy ducked inside, trying to avoid any wet viscera so that he wouldn’t leave footprints.

He stumbled to a room at the back of the house, closed the door, and crouched down beside the narrow bed within, his eyes darting between the door and the small window.

As he tried to catch his breath, Percy muttered to himself, panting with exhaustion that was as much emotional as physical. “Why is it always me?” His voice cracked as a lump grew in his throat. “I just wanted to take some pictures of shrimp, for Myrddin’s sake. Is that too much to ask?”

His self-pity was abruptly cut short by a sudden noise from behind him.

Percy whirled around, his eyes widening in horror as what appeared to be a blood-covered corpse lurched out of a nearby closet, its mouth moving as if to speak—or to bite.

Percy’s scream caught in his throat. He grabbed a pillow from the bed and swung it with all his might, hitting the revenant so hard that feathers exploded everywhere.

Under the force of Percy’s blow, the bloody corpse stumbled to the side and fell, letting out a soft, wounded sound. Feathers drifted through the air, some sticking to the blood dripping down the side of the man’s face.

Percy scrambled backward, his injured knee grinding as he tried to put distance between himself and what might be a reanimated corpse or some other blood magic horror that he’d only heard about in stories.

But then the thing spoke, its voice hoarse and trembling. “Stay back, you fiend!” Its accent was disarmingly upper-class.

Percy froze. He blinked slowly, taking in a young man’s features and the head wound that was spilling blood down his face, matting his blonde hair and ruining what looked to be a very fancy suit. It wasn’t a revenant. It was a person, maybe only a few years older than Percy. He let out a trembling gasp of relief and pressed a hand to his chest. “Oh!”

The relief was short-lived, however, as the young man scrambled backward and grabbed a wooden hanger that had fallen from the closet, then brandished it at Percy. “I won’t let you use me for your vile rituals!” The hanger shook as his hands trembled.

“Wait, I’m not—” Percy began, but the young man cut him off.

“I’ll fight you to the death! I promise you, you will find no victim more inconvenient than me!”

Percy raised his hands, palms outward. “No, no! I’m not with the blood sorcerer.” His realized that his hands were absolutely filthy and probably not helping his argument. He curled in his fingers and pressed his hands to his stomach. “I look like this because I fought with him. I just barely managed to get away.”

The posh young man looked Percy over slowly, eyes narrowed. But then, as if a flip had been switched, he dropped the hangar and let out a breathy laugh of relief as his face lit up. “Oh, of course! You’re here to rescue me? I should have known someone would try to ensure my safety.”

“Uhh…” Percy’s mouth stayed open in confusion.

The young man continued excitedly, “Did my parents send you? But how did you know where to find me? I thought I was hiding so well.”

“Actually—” Again, before he could speak, the young man grabbed his hand, shaking it enthusiastically.

“I’m Tennyson Bourgeron,” he introduced himself, his grip surprisingly strong for someone who looked so thin—and, frankly—reedy. “Oh, but of course you knew that already!” He laughed awkwardly, smacking himself in the head and then wincing hard at the pain he must have caused in his head wound. At least Tennyson wasn’t from one of the Thirteen Crown Families. While that might have seemed like a boon, because Percy was more likely to be rescued just standing near such a person, in reality—and with his bad luck currently spiraling out of control—it would have been just another avenue for things to go horribly wrong. He could imagine being accused of Tennyson’s murder, for instance.

“I’m Percy,” he replied automatically, glancing again toward the door and window. “But we need to be quiet. The blood sorcerer is still out there, and—”

Tennyson nodded sagely, cutting Percy off again. “Of course, of course. Stealth is key in these rescue operations.”

Percy had very little confidence that hiding here would be safe for long. The blood sorcerer would probably find them soon. Their best bet would be to escape the area entirely, either to an emergency shelter or to the nearest copper station.

The house was on the nicer end, and probably had a back door which they could exit through. But something about leaving the perceived safety of the bedroom made him tense up. And wasn’t using the back door pretty predictable? If he was a bad guy, he might think of that and be lying in wait.

The bedroom window was a little small and set high into the wall—a deterrent against thieves—but he and Tennyson were both probably slender enough to wriggle through it.

“I say,” Tennyson’s voice came out loud, only for him to drop into a whisper immediately afterward, “Percy, you seem to have had quite the scuffle.” He pointed at the blood and other fluids soaking into Percy’s clothes and drying on his skin. “Do you need a healer? Oh, I should have taken one of mother’s healing potions from the manor. You wonder why people don’t just carry one around in their pocket all the time. It seems like…” His eyelids fluttered and he swayed, then caught himself on the bedside table. “It seems like an gregious—and egregious oversight.”

Heart sinking, Percy realized that Tennyson’s head injury was even worse than it appeared. That might explain his outlandish behavior. Percy shushed him again with an exaggerated finger over his mouth, which Tennyson mimicked back to Percy like a small, wide-eyed child.

Author Note:

Weekly discussion thread: https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-2-3-weekly-discussion-in-which-percy-pillow-fights-a-revenant/853