That is a new trick! Leaving his body behind. He's been out of his mind a few times before, and well perhaps out of his body, but certainly not from intention. It was easy, too easy, hopefully getting back will be just as easy. These thoughts occur to him as he falls away, from himself, into the hill. Which, on the surface of it was a very bad idea. So, he's tries to see how well he can hide and run within, as it'll likely become important. Very soon.
This is a spirit place; it doesn't follow the rules of a real fight in the physical world. It's fought through metaphors; the one Yotee views it as now is one such metaphor, but not the only one that fits.
In his metaphor, a stag and a giant wolf are fighting a beast with a hundred legs, a hundred mouths, and a hundred pairs of eyes -- all of them from different creatures. They are fighting over a hilltop; the monster is on top, and trying to grab the stag and the wolf whenever they approach. The stag and the wolf are trying to capture the hilltop, but can't get close. Now Yotee sees why the monster can't capture them: it won't risk leaving its position at the top of the hill to pursue them, and there's just enough room at the bottom for them to stay out of reach. There's enough space there for Yotee to hide, too.
Yotee hides! All the other things he considered flood through his mind. Asking Ms. Pau or Randall to help. He still might be able to, or the Forest spirit if it can be found here. Wilder dreams, like stealing a piece of moonlight or having Shaft's machine trap the hill-beast, seem even more impractical. He looks around, in case the forest spirit is nearer here, but withdrawn and hiding, perhaps as weed. Once hidden, he gives it away by calling, Alorn! St. John! Such are his plans, easily made and discarded. The stay out of reach one, he's still using that.
There's nothing in this metaphor but the three of them. Four, now that Yotee's joined them. Five, if you count that mound of land they're fighting over. Yotee knows how territorial animals can be, but he's never cared about one place enough to fight over it. Alorn, St. John, and the monster sure do want that hill, though. Alorn spares Yotee a glance when he calls, and takes a swipe across the muzzle from the hill-beast for his trouble.
What does the hill represent, the coyote wonders as he runs away from the others, staying at the base and circling around to see if he can come to the other side, and how the hill beast reacts. Is it power? Victory. Could I dig through this and win? He tries a quick scrape, keeping ready to leap clear of any bit that came towards him.
The hill beast seems to be ignoring him, more interested in the two others. Alorn is making a charge at it, knocking its paws aside with his antlers. St. John is circling to the other side -- but how do you flank something with two hundred eyes? When Yotee digs at the hill, he senses something trembling beneath its surface.
Yotee has a bad feeling about this.
It won't leave its position to chase you. He howls, when he senses the trembling, he stops immediately. Is this the weakness the others were talking about? Is that why the gate didn't open before? The hill took it all for itself, somehow. He calls out instructions while he ponders this discovery. You can't flank it, it sees you on all sides. If one of you were to advance like bait, it'd attack, the other could grab and hold it, then the third could destroy that piece.
Yotee realizes this makes him, 'the bait'.
Two could do it! I'm sure it would work equally well. He cries.
How can we hold it? There's too much of it. Alorn falls back under a rain of blows, including a claw stroke that almost drags him into one of its mouths. St. John advances, then falls back as fast, realizing she's having no better luck. She circles back to Alorn's side.
A piece, a piece at a time! It won't come down from the top. What do you see? I see a beast of a hundred eyes and hooves and claws on a hilltop it almost covers. Yotee is circling closer as well. It will only reach so far, stay back, it will attack what moves close. That piece could be bitten and pinned, that piece could be crushed, then there will be one less.
It makes more. Like a hydra. You only think it's crushed, Alorn says. St. John darts forward, grabs a paw in her mouth and mangles it. The hill-monster screams from one of its mouths and beats her back. There's a tangled confusion of paws in the monster, then Yotee can't see which paw was just mangled any more. Just a hundred unhurt limbs.
Yotee stares, but it must get hurt somehow. Does it hide it's wounds well? Is there more of it inside the hill, like a hermit crab. Would seeing it as a crab inside it's shell make more sense, with the other three on the far side just out of reach it can't escape? If then, what does the shell represent? Why is the hill important?
When Yotee squints, he can see it: the hill is the shell, and the hill-beast is the crab with a hundred writing legs poking out from all its sides, and a hundred eyes on stalks, and a hundred stingers. Alorn and St. John are crabs now too, but they are crabs without shells, trying to kill the hill-monster to take its shell.
Yotee doesn't need to take the hill-monster's shell, though. He's already got one.
The crab wiggles its feelers and legs and eyes. He has a shell; he has a body. Up 'there' somewhere. Alorn and St. John, he doesn't know, What did they do to you?
Trouble isn't sure, can they both share a shell? They're small, but wouldn't they end up fighting over it so only one would emerge. Even then, wouldn't their real body just become, 'the hill'?
Killed us, Alorn says, shortly. He's a crab to Yotee's eyes now, but he moves like a deer yet. St. John like a wolf, not a human or a crab.
Not exactly 'us'. That comes from St. John; Yotee senses it rather than hears it, as if she hadn't meant to say it out lod. Or maybe she didn't at all. There's something wrong with her throat: a wound there, oozing black blood.
Yotee realizes he's not the only one hiding in this metaphor. There's someone else here.
Yotee... Trouble... the little crab with a shell, whatever he is today scuttles to the side, avoiding the flailing limbs and stingers and concentrating on that oozing wound on the neck of what was St. John. Trying to see what it might be hiding. Only one can win. They destroyed your bodies, didn't they?
A spirit can't live in a corpse, Alorn says, and Yotee knows that's true.
We could break its shell, and kill it from inside, St. John says. But then where would we live?
I think that would be a bad idea! Yotee cautions immediately. What do you need to live? You'd be trapped in the hill if you could take it over.
Better than letting it eat us, Alorn answers. He and St. John jump into the fray together, in a flurry of legs and stingers, wrangling and pulling at the hill-monster as they try to yank it from its shell.
Yotee howls, or clacks, or screams, or whatever spirits do, as loudly as he can in the hopes that Ms. Pau and Randall will hear. Even Caliban, he'd take Caliban. It'd be a good trick if he could pull it off, but it depends on so many other things, so many things he can't control. A leap of faith like no other. Just before he does, he tries to distract the hill spirit, with a taunting dance that says: Look at me, look at this shell. It's brightly coloured, it's small, it's nimble. It can go places. It's a much more fun shell than the one you're in now. You'll like it! Just squeeze yourself in. Then he pulls himself free, to tempt the hill-crab-beast with the opening to his. His desperate plea to all that can hear. It's going to posess me! Trap it! Or Kill it! Or take advantage while it's distracted!
When Yotee wriggles out of his shell he feels something ... break. It doesn't hurt, and it's not exactly something inside him. No, it's something outside him. Or maybe something that was inside and now it's outside. Whatever it was, he feels very free all of the sudden, light-headed and without a burdens or concerns. He dances on little crab legs in the metaphor, but he feels like he's flying!
He doesn't need that shell! What do the others want a shell for? But they do: the hundred-fold monster is still struggling to eat Alorn and St. John, while they struggle to pull it from its shell. The hundred-fold monster eyes Yotee's abandoned shell covetously: it won't abandon it's own, but it's trying to sidle its way over to Yotee. Maybe it thinks there's enough of it to fit in two shells.
Yotee has broken a lot of things, and usually it hurts. To not hurt is rather strange, though he does do a happy little dance. Shells, why would he need a shell? Oh right, it was to trick someone, the monster, and get Alorn and St. John to be his allies. Which, he probably should have explained to them instead of jumping straight to the trick part of his plan.
Also, there's that strange thing on St. John's neck. A darkness? A parasite, a big gigantic tic perhaps. He's not sure what that could be. It occurs to him it would be a good time to start filling them in. "Alorn! St. John! The Closers and Openers are going to work together to open the gate and finish the game. They want you to help fight the dark spirits on the other side when they do!"
Wait... would that darkness mean St. John is on their side? It's so hard to think properly while dancing and floating!
Alorn and St. John seem to have their legs and claws full with trying to outfight the monster. St. John glances at Yotee's abandoned shell as the monster edges that way, dragging them with it. Alorn gives a shake of his eyestalks to her; maybe he knows something she doesn't. At Yotee's words, Alorn seems to take heart, though St. John looks growly. Nonetheless, she attacks in tandem with her Companion. Their pincers trap two legs of hundred-fold monster, and jerk on it hard.
The monster, meanwhile, lurches and swipes for Yotee's shell.
Yotee pulls his shell away! He has to get the monster to pull out of its. It won't do if it grabs both. He tries to do this quickly, because it is rather big.
The shell doesn't move when Yotee tugs on it, as if it's too heavy for his new and lighter self to shift.
Yotee looks at his shell, it brings back fond memories. That crack across the ridge, the big scar on the back. He's pretty sure his plan wasn't to get rid of it entirely, even though it doesn't seem that important now. Maybe there's a way to colour it quickly, like some fish have strange spots, to make it look like the opening is on the wrong place. Or he could just squeeze down in it and hide. It makes some weird sense to him, that if the huge monster can fit into his shell, there'll still be room for him, because everything would squish down. Though, that doesn't sound real pleasant. He hangs onto the shell, trying to avoid the monster's swipes and get back in if it looks like it's about to as well.
In an eyeblink, it's obvious that the monster is going to get at least some of its limbs into Yotee's shell if Yotee doesn't stop it; Alorn and St. John aren't going to. So he attempts to squeeze back in.
Leaving didn't hurt a bit, but trying to get back is somewhere between agony and a miserable discomfort. It feels all wrong, like trying to eat food with your nose. The legs of the monster are jammed in the opening to the shell alongside him. They wriggle and poke at his side, trying to fish him out at the same time that he's trying to stuff himself back in.
Yotee is very determined to occupy the monster's attention, and still interested in getting back in his shell. Fortunately, trying to do the latter probably helps the former. But why is it so hard? Caliban, Randall, they wear clothes and go in and out of them all the time. Is he trying to stuff his head up a sleeve? He pushes at the monster's limbs, trying to get them out, away, or at least stay partly jammed in.
Coyote-crab and hundred-fold monster tussle for possession of the little shell. It's not a good fight; it's just the kind of direct fight Yotee tries not to get into. He manages to shove one leg out, but another is still jammed in beside him and the shell itself feels like it's poking him in the sides as he tries to stay in it. He's dizzy now, heavy and burdened by the weight of the shell. It's hard to resist as the monster hauls both him and the shell towards one of its mouths. A dark maw closes around two of Yotee's legs. The maw sucks, as if to swallow him up and pull him out of his shell that way.
He never could understand clothes. Maybe there is a proper way to put them on, and shells. He'd really like to hide in a pocket right now, but it appears he's going to be pulled right out, and not in a good way. He squirms, trying to get free of shell and maw, hoping it will forget about him once it gets its prize. He tries to scrabble out and around the far side of the shell, so it won't see him if it concentrates on the opening.
There's another opening in the shell at the far side? Well, of course there is, it's Yotee's shell and he knows it better than anyone. He hunches in, squishing backwards with all his free legs and pulling the maw in with him. It lets him drag it inside -- it wanted to be in anyway. Then he pops out the back. The maw is still wrapped around his legs, somehow, and stuck out the back with him while part of it is stuck in the front and middle. The hundred-fold monster looks pretty ridiculous, trying to wear Yotee's shell.
Alorn has his legs wedged against the base of the monster's shell, while St. John has her claws around its many legs, trying to pull it out and in the same direction it's been pulling part of itself by attempting to take Yotee's shell.
Trouble, the coyote-crab, finds his predicament expanding in new and unusual ways. He wasn't expecting to get free, yet still be stuck. The maw around his legs is unpleasantly like a leg-hold trap, and while he knows how to get out of those it's kind of painful and he doesn't want to go that extreem, yet. A memory is nagging at him, the time he watched some woman trying on a fancy gown and how much assistance she required. He's feeling a lot like a butler or a maidservant now. Perhaps he can help the monster put on his shell. No, clothes. No, dress! Help it into the dress, but in the wrong way, so that it gets stuck and can't move or or see. What was that thing the woman was complaining about? Yes, the corset. Maybe he can tighten the corset down while helpfully burying it's head in petticoats. Hopefully, his dress was made tough.
And Yotee's not a crab any more: he's a little man with a tailor's tape drapped over his neck and a pincushion in one hand, trying to fit an enormous woman with a hundred legs and a hundred arms into a corset much too small for her. She's got several arms in it and her head poking out the top, while her hands grab at the Yotee-tailor as if it's his fault the corset doesn't fit. And maybe it is.
Yotee has two other tailors helping him -- well, trying to help the hundred-armed woman out of the voluminous robe she's currently wearing. "You don't think you can wear both, surely?" one of them says, in a human voice oddly akin to Alorn's. The big woman is batting away their attempts to 'help', while still trying to get at Yotee. And stay in both outfits.
"Madame!" Yotee's voice has a disturbing accent, a little like Gustav's and a little like French. Heaven knows where he heard someone who spoke like this. Remembering how much the corset was poking him, he believes hobbling her with it is eminently feasible. She just needs some encouragement. "Yew muzt not struggle zo hard, the corset, she iz nimble, she iz meant to be tight. Yew should let the breath out, and shrink, like zo! Yew muzt let of thoze old robes, they iz how we say? Not a good shape for madame, it iz, showing madame with the bulges and not the concealing of them."
The woman growls and gnashes her teeth at Yotee. She kicks with fifty of her hundred legs, but the tailors are light and unburdened and dodge easily. She wriggles a score of her arms, limp as snakes, inside the corset, trying to pull it down her body. She wedge her shoulders inside while her face, red and angry, glowers at Yotee with a hundred eyes through a tunnel of cloth.
Tailor-Yotee continues to assist, encouraging her forward, to tuck an arm here, oh wait that wasn't right over here. He also instructs her that she must relax, let go, loosen her old clothes and then she will be able to fit in the new ones, because it isn't possible to wear two at once. He indicates the corset strings to the other tailors, telling them to try and find the equivalent on the robe and undo them so it will slip off.
The other tailors are having a hard time staying close enough to do anything -- and in the middle of Yotee trying to assist, the woman does succeed in grabbing him by the neck with three hands. She shakes him like a doll, squirming in the corset. Then Alorn grabs the strings of the corset and yanks them tight. He leaps onto her back while her free arms flail and try to reach him, but he holds fast, pulling back on the strings of the corset like a man holding the reins of a horse.
Yotee yelps! Concentrating on surviving being shaken around. It's not a pleasant feeling. He tries to get her to grab one of the strings, or one of her own limbs, in the hopes that she'll start attacking herself since she can't see properly and might not be totally aware of what all her bits are doing. Another analogy leaps to mind, spiders and webs. Spiders know where the sticky bits of their web is, and which threads are safe, and an even bigger spider will still get stuck in a small web if it touches the wrong parts. He tries not to think of the damage that gets done to the web when that sort of thing occurs, it's just an analogy... hopefully. He tries to grab a safe strand, hopefully the others can convince the monster-spider to let go of its web, or push it further into his.
The spider with a hundred legs and a thousand eyes is thoroughly entangled in Yotee's web; this would be more consolation to Yotee if he wasn't getting hit again and again with the spider's hundred venom injectors as he scrambles for the threads of his own web. A smaller spider is scuttling at the monster's many feet, picking them up one by one and shifting them from the monster's own web to Yotee's while it's preoccupied with Trouble.
But Alorn -- he's not a spider in this metaphor. He's a wasp. No: she's a wasp. She lowers her abdomen, and injects the back of the hunderd-fold spider with her eggs.
What is the wasp doing! What will her eggs do? Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Well the hundred venom injectors is definitely a bad thing and Trouble would like to avoid getting hit by those so he spirals and dodges along the lines, looking for some safe place out on a strand he can rest for a moment and take a closer look at what is going on. Particularily, if the wasp eggs are growing in the monster-spider, or making more of the monster-spider.
For whatever reason the wasp did it, the hundred-fold spider doesn't look happy about getting egged. It flings around to brings it leggs and injectors to bear against the wasp, snaring it in newly-spun webbing. Yotee feels sick and weak from being half-throttled, and woozy from the poisons. Nonetheless, he swings around on his line, and manages to carry himself out of the fray. He finds other key lines, the anchor points for his web, the one the monster spider tried to take over.
The wasp doesn't even try to dodge the spider's web attack. Instead, it spins about, wrapping itself tighter in the web.
Yotee-spider is not feeling like a perky little spider anymore, in fact he's feeling rather washed out. Can spiders lick themselves? He doesn't know. Maybe he could shoot the poison he was injected with out. Or spin a web. It was his web, he did make it, he's pretty sure. Though, perhaps in the middle of a fight isn't the best time to make repairs. He could throw a few more of his own sticky loops down, try to bind the big spider and tug it away from his key-lines, onto some part of his web that would be okay to lose. He ponders the likely effectiveness of these while he rests, and watches what is going on with the spider, the wasp, and the wasp eggs. And Alorn spider, so he's probably watching everything from his perch point.
Alorn-wasp is getting more and more entwined in the newly-spun web, to the glee of the hundred-fold monster. The hundred-fold spider's abdomen is bulging and squirming with injected eggs, as it rests uncomfortably in the tangle of Yotee's web. Almost unnoticed below, St John -- a hunting spider that cannot spin a web -- plucks the last of the monster's feet from the hundred-fold web. She casts the guide lines of it to the wasp. Alorn-wasp folds hisher wings and falls into the web. "MINE," she says, and suddenly the hundred-fold monster realizes its mistake.
Yotee-spider quickly assesses the state of his web, the minor strands he'd have to snip so the great-spider would drop free and the sort of damage that would leave his web. If it's even remotely possible to do that without damaging a key line, or leaving a huge hole that couldn't be repaired, he'd dance down and start cutting. Although, will the webbing stay once it's cut free? He looks at St. John-Spider and gestures his intent, waiting to see what she says. Otherwise, well he'd be relying on his friends to pull it free, and something tells him Herbert's machine wouldn't do it nicely.
Yotee thinks he can do it, and St John helps -- the hunting spider seems to have the knack of prying the monster out of webs now. Its hundred legs and poison injectors wave and scrabble blindly, trying to get to the wasp that's fallen away with its web. But the hundred-fold monster's abdomen is all out of web ... all that's left are EGGS.
As Yotee pries back the pieces of his web, the hundred-fold spider's abdomen splits. Things spill from it -- not wasps or spiders, but a hundred different thing, great and small. As each comes out, the giant spider grows a little smaller, losing a limb, an eye, an injector, a spinner with each hatched egg. In moments, it's an empty carcass, animate no longer.
The troublesome little spider works dilligently, nimbly dancing around and detaching the monster-spider carcass from his web. He waves limbs to shoo away any of the little things that approach, hopefully he's big and scary to them now, and they were Alorn's eggs, maybe they're nice things. He waves gratefully at St. John's assistance, but keeps his distance as she's pretty intimidating. Primarily he's trying to get his web back in order. "We can talk now?" He asks both.
"We can talk -- " And Alorn is standing alone on the hilltop, his hide gleaming with sweat and streaks of blood, while Yotee climbs into a canine body like a suit of clothes and St. John the great Wolf stands to one side below the crest of the Hill " -- now. Thank you, Coyote." He bows to the coyote, one foreleg straight and the other curled, his rack of horns brushing the ground of his Hill.
Coyote, (well one name is as good as any other) dips his head and returns the bow. He's shaken, his fur ruffled and dark in spots, and his legs tremble from exhaustion as he does. He gives a second to St. John, standing near the crest, and shakes his head trying to put his thoughts back. As much as they're ever ordered. "I needed to make a better impression. I'm an Opener, I forgot to say, and I don't recollect much of the game or the rules. What happens now, are you both going to stay with this hill?"
"We will. We must. It is the only home we have now." Alorn drops his head, looking humbled. "I apologize for my error, Coyote. What you said earlier -- is this true? You have convinced all of the Closers to Open now?"
St John rests her head on her paws, looking bewildered and worn-out. "I don't understand. What did you mean by fighting what's on the other side? That's why we want to Open! To let them in!" Her fierceness is only an echo.
Yotee accepts the apology as gracefully as he can, "I should not tried my typical crooked path. Habit." He bunches his forequarters, "They are not fully convinced, but one of them told us all how the Game was made because we escaped some place, where dark spirits had mastered all the light ones, and the few that remained came to this refuge. Yet we still need something from the other side, and you and the Unicorn arranged this way of opening the gate to get it. I had a dream, of a Darkness, and you and Mother fighting it and hiding away. So, the Closers accept opening the gate might be a good idea, but want to keep the Dark ones out. What is on the other side? Is this the refuge or the place of darkness?"
Alorn lifts his head again, his ears pricking forward. "Mother," he whispers, like a man reflecting on a half-forgotten dream. "And I told her we could not save them all ... " He blinks, several times, and shakes his head. "This was supposed to be our refuge, but it's nothing but a tomb."
"She, Bernice, said there was some food we needed from the other side. That spirits have grown weak, and some persisted by absorbing others." Yotee sits, "My dream was true then. They asked me if I could look through to the other side. What is there?"
"I barely remember," Alorn says, his eyes unfocused. "It's been so long. Power. Power beyond imagining, and Evil beyond measure. And life. Our only chance to escape from sure, slow, inevitable destruction. You're an Opener, Coyote. You must understand."
"I don't." St. John flats her ears. "What do you mean, 'evil'? They hate men, don't they? They'll wipe out mankind and bring paradise to the world. That's what you told me, Alorn. Isn't that true?"
"My player, Randall, has convinced them that humanity will also wither and die. At least he is enough to Open. I remember things were stronger before... but I don't think about that much." Yotee listens intently to St. John, equally curious about the answers. "Bernice said spirits found ways to hide within other things, even man? I've met two that have nothing within."
"We all live inside things. Even men. Or die even faster." Alorn paws at the ground with one hoof, and does not meet St. John's gaze.
St. John gets to her feet slowly, baring her teeth. "What's this about, Alorn?"
"Peace, Sarah. Later," the stag answers. "Coyote, you cannot stay. You must return to the waking world. Your hold on your body is more tenuous yet than you realize."
"Okay. I'll tell them... something." The warning is enough. Yotee closes his eyes, concentrates. Up, he has to go up, just like before. At least he hopes that's the trick of it. Getting here was easy enough, so getting back should be hard and hurtful. He struggles to feel 'himself'.