I woke up last night with a sudden image in my head, and came right down to write it out. Then I went back to bed. I woke up this morning with another sudden image in my head, came right down to write it out – and it turned out to be absolute crap. …Ach, well, one out of two fever-dreams panning out isn’t half bad.
Cascadia Springsong peered down at the mottled foulness covering her minion’s chest. It was well made, as such things went: all green-black and suppurating, with globules of inky goo shifting here and there. There was no smell, per se — but it looked like it would reek of sweet rot, which was an interesting sensation. Until this project had started, she had never considered the possibility that ‘evil’ might provoke an actual sensory response. It was fascinating, really.
The foulness reacted properly when she prodded at the globules, too, with faint tendrils trying to latch onto the thin stick she was using for a probe. Some experimentation had shown that waiting too long to harvest the stuff would turn the whole thing into a wrestling match, and nobody wanted that to happen. Collect the goo after it had turned tangible, but before it turned surly, that was the trick.
“Hold him steady,” Springsong told the other four minions participating in the ‘ritual.’ Unnecessarily: they were already holding him down with grim intensity, each putting their full weight on a chained wrist or ankle. But since part of the fun of having minions was giving them orders and watching them jump to obey, she saw no reason not to indulge herself. Besides, minions were dumb anyway. That’s why they were minions.