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| - It was Troy Reilly who had the idea of watching Spider-Rats V. He and his big brother used to stay up late on holiday weekends, watching horror movies, each one worse than the last, as a bonding ritual. If Nikki really is his former big brother, she'll be up for it. At least that's his reasoning. Nikki's reaction? "Bring it on! I've seen real eldritch horrors, nothing Hollywood can come up with will faze me!" Riiight. Hollywood does pretty good at this kind of thing. Add slightly uncontrolled magical powers, and... But those were accidental hobgoblins, the uncontrolled kind.
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| abstract
| - It was Troy Reilly who had the idea of watching Spider-Rats V. He and his big brother used to stay up late on holiday weekends, watching horror movies, each one worse than the last, as a bonding ritual. If Nikki really is his former big brother, she'll be up for it. At least that's his reasoning. Nikki's reaction? "Bring it on! I've seen real eldritch horrors, nothing Hollywood can come up with will faze me!" Riiight. Hollywood does pretty good at this kind of thing. Add slightly uncontrolled magical powers, and... There, regarding them calmly, was a creature the size of an extra-large potato. It had matted black fur, like a rat, with eight black, insectile legs springing from its misshapen body. The pointed head was also rat-like, save for the glowing red eyes and the gleaming black mandibles of its alien mouth. The naked pink rat tail lashed behind it like a whip. They're out of band-aids. And Mrs. Reilly isn't sure how to explain the teeth-marks on the furniture. And the drapes are all raggedy-edged now. But she's more understanding about the need for someplace like Whateley. But those were accidental hobgoblins, the uncontrolled kind. If deliberately summoned, spider-rats can be useful... not controlled, precisely, but still, you can aim them, and give them a proper attitude... and if you've been through enough, that may be just the attitude you're after! So the newly supercharged mage gathered a large portion of energy (enough to give any of her teachers a heart attack, had they been there to see), shoved it into her hobgoblin-maker, and squeezed. -- POP! -- Something appeared at her feet. A black hobgoblin. It was about six inches long, vaguely rat-like, except that it had eight hairy insectile legs and a set of horizontal, clacking, pincher-like mandibles instead of a mouth. It scurried about in a way that was deeply disturbing. POP! POP! POP! POP! Four more appeared. Then a dozen more. Then a hundred. Then five hundred. Nikki scrunched her eyes and gave one more squeeze, forcing all the energy through her hobgoblin-making spell. Then she opened her eyes and gasped in alarm. “Goddess!” In a circle that stretched twenty feet in every directions around her, the hobgoblins were piled three feet deep. It was a writhing, swarming carpet of alien terror. As one, the horrid creatures turned and stared at her with beady little glowing red eyes. “Well?” she demanded. She pointed out with one finger, toward a half-dozen enforcers that were shooting off their rifles. “There’s the enemy! Go get ‘em!” The carpet seemed to melt and flow forward like a spider-legged tide, sweeping toward the enemy forces.
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