Under normal circumstances, Mercury was far too nice a girl to leave someone frozen and face-down in a deep pool of water, even if the individual in question was a murderous demon that had attempted to trick her into damning her eternal soul and then tried to kill her. That said, she was also far too intelligent to let such a dangerous creature simply go free. The proper thing for a magical girl to do in this situation would be to finish the monster off while it was trapped and vulnerable, but Mercury didn't have the means to do it: even her new Senshi power was more strategic than tactical in nature; and the few spells currently available to her through her Dungeon Heart were almost entirely logistical.
In the end, it came down to the simple fact that Mercury had no easy way of moving the Reaper from his current position. He wasn't bound to her service and hadn't been knocked unconscious, so her Keeper's Hand - which manifested as a floating, giant-sized version of one of her armor-backed gloves - couldn't get a grip on him. She might have been able to float him to the surface by commanding the water in the Heart beneath and around him to freeze up, but she'd have needed to be rather close to the pool for that to work, and if it did succeed, it would leave her within arms' reach of a truly furious demon. Not an option. And as for getting her workers to move it, well...
When Logos granted Mercury her new Keeper transformation, he'd stabilized the bond that the Dungeon Heart had so hamfistedly attempted to force on her soul. This allowed energy and information to flow freely between artifact and master, letting the former serve as an overspill reservoir and emergency release valve for the surging power of Mercury, while the latter gained access to the same basic knowledge that all new Keepers received upon claiming a Heart. It was, in essence, a mental download of An Idiot's Guide to Dungeon Hearts, and Ami had reviewed it very carefully before attempting to cast her first Keeper spell. Said spell was the most basic in any Keeper's arsenal, the aptly-named "Create Imp," and from what her user's manual said, it was supposed to conjure green-skinned, bug-eyed little monsters that would perform whatever menial and degrading task their master chose to give them, without food, rest, or monetary compensation. Knowing that exposure to her planetary powers had seriously altered the inner workings of the Heart, Mercury had gone into her first casting of Create Imp half-expecting the spell to produce an entirely different kind of creature.
As it happened, she did get Imps, just very unusual ones. They were still green-skinned, bug-eyed little monsters, but they wore dark blue coveralls instead of minimalist loincloths, their extremities were sensibly protected by bright yellow hardhats, steel-toed boots, and thick work gloves, and the belts wrapped around their waists sagged under the weight of an assortment of tools - at a glance, one could easily make out a pick, a hammer, a slide-rule, a level-slash-yard stick, an abacus, and one of those plastic notepads that came with a tied-on eraser and a wipe-away marker clipped to the brim. There was also a hint of intelligence in their bulbous blue eyes, as if the creatures actually knew how to properly use each and every one of the tools they appeared with. Normal Imps, the manual claimed, were just barely smart enough to know how to properly wield a pick.
However different they appeared, Mercury's Imps functioned basically the same as the conventional model. Among other things, this meant that they couldn't swim, and so were quite unable to do anything about retrieving Horny's frozen form from the Dungeon Heart. Her conscience satisfied that there really wasn't anything she could do about the Reaper for the time being, Mercury put her excessively high mana to good use, conjured up another sixteen Imps in rapid succession, and then put the lot of them to work.
After a great deal of consideration, Horny's nemesis had chosen the out-of-the-way hamlet of Dunshire to build his Reaper holding cell. The terrain there was slightly flat, slightly hilly, slightly marshy, and slightly wooded, in a very inconvenient mix that tended to preclude profitable ventures like farming, mining, or forestry. With nothing to draw the interest of merchants or the king, his lords, and their taxmen, the only road that led to the region was more of a foot-path, and one that didn't get used more often than once a season: nobody had reason to go there; and the people of the village of Dunshire - whose numbers hovered around seventy heads or so, depending on their fortunes over the last year - were a mix of subsistence farmers and hunters, with neither the time nor the inclination to go roaming themselves.
Of course, this had all been centuries earlier; Dunshire was a rather bigger place these days, with a stable population of nearly four hundred. As their numbers and their need for new fields grew, the local agricultural engineers started reclaiming the land, flattening a few of the smaller hills and dumping the resultant turf into the marshes to soak up the excess water. The current result of their efforts was a reasonably level, relatively dry swathe of farmland, which included a few modest pastures as well as crop fields and vegetable gardens. There were about as many trees as there'd ever been, the local wood being well-known for its general uselessness in construction, but the road had gotten much broader and better-defined once the farmers started trading some of their produce with nearby Eldershire - which as its name implied, had access to much better-quality wood - to get the building materials they needed to house their growing families. Merchants, lords, kings, and taxes had inevitably followed.
Despite its growth, modern Dunshire remained a relatively unremarkable region. No Keeper had ever tried to seize it, and the distinct lack of caves, dark fortresses, or other obvious strongholds of Evil completely failed to draw the interest of the heroic population. The local lord was three days' ride and two whole shires away, and the closest thing to an actual magic-user in the entire region was a seedy old tramp named Garath who possessed a seemingly mystical ability to detect beer from about a mile off.
So it came as quite a surprise to all concerned when a patch of earth in one of the current reclamation projects split open that afternoon, releasing a bubbling spring of crystal-clear water and misty vapors, both of which glowed faintly sapphire and sparkled with tiny pinpoints of aquamarine and white. Dunshire water could be many things, but it never glowed, so this event - word of which spread through the village at that amazing speed which only rumor is capable of - was taken to be clear evidence of supernatural activity. The thing was, nobody could agree on who or what was behind it. It didn't seem nearly dangerous enough to be proof of a Keeper's presence, but causing a spring to pop up in a nowheresville town on the edge of a mediocre marsh didn't really seem like the style of Light Gods, either. Unless the water was somehow divinely pure and fresh, but no one was quite willing to test that possibility, what with the glowing and all.
The members of Dunshire's town council spent most of the remaining daylight and a good portion of the evening arguing what to do about their unexpected brush with the mystical. Over two-thirds of them wanted to send a messenger off to ask His Lordship for guidance, although these were evenly split between praising the "miracle" and denouncing it as a Keeper's handiwork. The remaining councillors thought it would be best to ignore the event as much as possible, maybe build a well to contain it, and otherwise get on with their lives. They adjourned near midnight without having reached an argument, and planned to resume the debate the following day.
One of Dunshire's early-rising farmhands found chips of ice floating in the spring the next morning. As it was nearing high summer, he felt this was a cause for concern. The council agreed, and a messenger was found, mounted up, and sent off before noon.
They had a Keeper.
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(Posted Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:43)
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