Dressed to Kill, Chapter 10 (ASOIAF FI)

Ladon noticed the incoming cavalry well in advance, grass and the rare tree, insect and bird granting him perception across the plains. Dothraki in equipment and the fact they all rode horses, but completely unlike everything he knew of the pillaging hordes from all the minds he’d eaten. There was no baggage train, no slaves following along on carts, only what they could carry, hunt, or steal as they converged towards his fortress.

If that didn’t cinch it already, they were superhuman, if barely so. Endurance and effort were both stretched to their breaking point as they pushed themselves and their mounts to traverse the distance towards him in five clusters of a hundred each, taking different routes that all gradually curved towards the heart of his power. And they were not doing so under their own power - their minds felt… bound. Sealed, almost, into a manner of thinking that was distinctly unnatural, especially coming from the wild and savage tribesmen; and it was done by something he could recognize as something similar but not identical to his own efforts. A probing attack from another psychic parasite, maybe?

It would have been far more effective if he did not have nearly three full weeks of advance warning that they were coming.

Plans were aggressively set into motion. Calling Temareh to an audience with himself and explaining the situation was the first - the godswife continued to serve as a leadership figure to the Lhazareen under his protection, and her staunch zealotry meant she wouldn’t be tempted to question his orders.

Her prompt arrival at his request only backed that assessment. “Great spirit. You wished to notify me of something?” She asked, kneeling in submission. 

“Yes. I have felt the pawns of another spirit trampling on my grass. Five groups of mind-shackled Dothraki, a hundred each and riding towards my heartlands as fast as their bodies will allow. They will be here in roughly three weeks, by my estimate, and while I don’t know this entity’s intent for sure…” The displeased grunt from Boro’s massive body said plenty enough about what Ladon thought. Those weren’t the actions of someone coming in peace. “I do not wish my guests to be caught in the crossfire of something that all but certainly concerns only me, especially with a spirit who may very well treat you as targets of opportunity. I had already planned to build more outposts, this is simply an acceleration of those plans so I may evacuate you from this potential battlefield in good order.”

There was a pregnant pause that stretched on for several seconds, before Temareh answered his words. “I shall not question your judgement, spirit. You have given us far more warning than the kicked-up dust the Dothraki gave us, and for that I am grateful.” She lifted her head. “Permission to begin making preparations?”

“Granted. I have preparations of my own to attend to, expect a surge of plants old and new. They will trouble you none.” Ladon said with a heavy nod, waiting two heartbeats before stomping off Boro’s body to the private tanglewood he and Adevara used. He may be able to fool this other psychic into thinking this was his one true body, which meant he would be refining it further and seeing if he couldn’t erect some proper defenses in its hollow psyche.

From that plan flowed others, the small, fast prairie-birds under his influence darted across the skies to both scout a route for his guests and to expand Ladon’s access to lifeforce. Trees and shrubbery sprouted, bushes of berries and fruit-bearing trees to serve as waystations, ponds with the purifying sponge forming as watering holes that would conveniently paralyze intruders for conversion. The effort expended to grow them promised a return on investment fast enough he would gain more benefit from it than simply using it to refine Boro’s body in the here and now.

The avian scouts also spotted the occasional Ko or even lesser force of Dothraki, although he did not bother to suborn them fully - minds were consumed, and so was the vigor of their bodies, reallocated to grow the flora elsewhere. A handful of them were even from the khalasar Boro was formerly a part of, recent memories of panic standing out in harsh contrast against their general mental state. A radiant coruscating crystal lashing out with beams of light to cut down dozens of their comrades in an instant, Boro’s former Khal being visibly suborned on touch but not a moment before. Ladon could very much connect the dots.

The question was how to stop it from turning his puppets into breathing corpses - more than they already were, anyways - and his fortifications into kindling for a wildfire. Reinforcement was of… questionable use. Lasers fit to flash-sublimate even bone were probably hot enough to penetrate any resilience he could add at this stage and there weren't enough signs of where the crystal would shoot to allow for dodging its aim. Armor was likewise of questionable use. His plan of wooden lamellar over gambesons would likely provide no protection, and there was a brief consideration in using fired clay - it was, after all, fireproof and resistant against heat - before the idea was placed aside in hopes of a better solution.

It would not be an insulator, and experiencing the sensation of being baked alive was not high on his list of priorities.

…He had slowly but permanently refined bodies before. A lot of his powers were centered around modifying living matter, just in general. But what if he just… skipped some of the usual steps? Didn’t bother pounding down the rush of vital energy like one would the soil in setting a foundation, but rather just allowed it to temporarily supercharge his units?

As per usual, he drew on a tithe of vigor from the plants under his command, everything from grass on upwards contributing as it flooded into Boro’s body. The first indication that something was happening came in the form of everything else slowing, momentum seemingly lost right up until he realized that the body just became that much faster. The second sign were the jagged, geometric tattoos of light spreading out across his body, a steady white glow tracing angled lines with no apparent pattern - they followed neither veins, muscle groups, nor the planes of the body.

It was also practically setting his reserves of Vim on fire, the vitality pushed into the body blazing bright but fast. He had no hard numbers or measuring units to work with, but keeping Boro in this state for ten minutes would eat up as much energy as pushing another of his shells to the former Ko’s new baseline would.

Speaking of his other shells, it looked like some experimentation was in order.

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The colors of the plains were drab, a yellow-green field of grass stretching ever-onward with the rare tree or shrub breaking the monotony, all beneath a bright blue sky. As such, certain colors stood out. Drew attention. Like the bright red flowers, petals well over a square meter individually as they fanned out around a central nub, too flat and even to be where the seeds were stored - that role went to the spiky pods almost vigorously shaking along its stem.

In another place and another time, they would have been recognized as a feral lah. In the here and now, it was merely seen as an anomaly to be investigated, as one of the five detachments shifted course to examine it closer. Some things became immediately apparent, of course, like the fact that said plant was far from alone. There was an entire meadow of them, flowering freely and chattering with the sound of hundreds of hard-spiked tumble-pods.

The mind-shackled riders approached. The fields remained noisy, the pods continued to tremble in place, but it was merely strange. And so, they investigated more closely - either to confirm it as a threat or something of benefit to their new master. They went unopposed, an intelligence holding back the plants’ instinct to let loose their weaponry.

That made the sudden ambush all the more effective, the pods breaking loose from where they adhered to their parents, twitching and shaking as they threw themselves towards the mind-controlled Dothraki. The spines that propelled them broke from the effort frequently, the plains filling with the sound of brittle plant-matter cracking under its own exertion and shouts of alarm, before both were drowned out as the pods detonated. More force than fire, rock-hard seeds and the spikes still extending out from the ‘offspring’ were sent scything through the air as lethal shrapnel, embedding into dirt and flesh alike, punching through the crude armor the riders wore as well as the skin of their steeds. Horses stumbled and fell, taking the men atop them along and pinning or outright breaking limbs, cutting off their escapes. Others died immediately, brain or heart or lung struck by a seed.

They had the presence of mind to wheel around instead of wading deeper into the crimson meadow, retreating as fast as they could - and far faster than the pods could follow, but that did not matter particularly much. They lost a quarter of their number in a matter of minutes, and in the coming days infection, blood loss, and exhaustion would increase that to a third as the zeal sealed within their minds refused to let them stop and recover. The matter was not helped by the seeds still left in the injuries, extending tendrils of Ladon’s psychic presence as it slowly drained their energy, slowing them and harvesting their Vim as they rode. He could have made them into desiccated husks in short order, but that would result in less income that could be directed to his defenses.

It was not the only trap laid for the enthralled horsemen - foot-impaling ivory spikes lashed out at passing mounts while they were at a gallop, riders thrown off or crushed beneath their own beasts; elsewhere rows of trees taunted them with more than enough space to ride between them, stretching from horizon to horizon only to reveal the lashing, thorny, ambulatory vines hidden between branches and in the grass. Exhausted Dothraki found ponds of clear water that paralyzed and drowned their horses. Suborned rodents and canines dug pits in the path of the advance, concealed by grass that created a cover indistinguishable from the terrain around it until it broke an ankle.

As the injured and exhausted warriors piled up in number and lagged behind the advance, the very plains themselves came alive to pursue them - from the lowliest insect biting to inflict the barest amount of further pain to wild horses charging and kicking, shattering bone and crushing men under their hooves.

The material layer of the conflict was under control and firmly swinging in Ladon’s favor - something that gave him both room to work with and the opportunity to do so, the psychic parasite assaulting the minds of the Dothraki. It was… different, facing someone so fanatical.

Like an egg, almost. Temareh was similar, but her own zeal was completely homegrown, it was a hardened shell that let anything she disagreed with simply bounce off, be it the words and opinions of another or a lesser psychic probe. The mentally-shackled warriors were more extreme but ultimately in the same direction, a solid outer layer of ‘have to obey Master, must obey Master, do what Master wants’ keeping a jumble of thoughts and memories sealed inside.

It meant that effort was needed to break them open, however minor it may have been thanks to the disparity in psychic ability. But once that shell was cracked, Ladon could slurp out the contents without resistance, with a minor caveat: the Dothraki did not seem to be able to withstand the process. As soon as the barrier around their mind broke, the backlash of their instinctive defense killed them on the spot.

Considering what exactly he was doing and the fact he couldn’t slip into a psyche after he was done, he’d bet… a good five elite puppets that the cause of death was an aneurysm. Didn’t stop him from vacuuming up all the vim and ego once he knew what to expect, though. 

His opponent didn’t seem to be keeping a too close an eye on the minions, so Ladon had a perfect opportunity to prepare and practice for his true target, already shifting into the range of his senses on the ‘horizon’ of the Psychic Aether. A distant yet hostile glow inching closer, slow but inexorable.

Ladon licked his ethereal chops and got to work.