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You've updated so infrequently that Kurt had to make a spinoff in order to get his fix...
You've updated so infrequently that Kurt had to make a spinoff in order to get his fix...
I plan on uploading before Sunday turns to Monday at the latest and I'll plan to make this one a bit longer than usual to make up for the delay !
At this rate, if he updates before the sun turns into a red giant I'd be surprised.
(Because I'm in such a position to talk about that sort of thing.)
(Because I'm in such a position to talk about that sort of thing.)
At this rate, if he updates before the sun turns into a red giant I'd be surprised.
(Because I'm in such a position to talk about that sort of thing.)
Mmmh... are you a red giant, then?
If you update before 2009 tuns to 2010 we'll be happy
At this rate, if he updates before the sun turns into a red giant I'd be surprised.
(Because I'm in such a position to talk about that sort of thing.)
No, he's just Main Sequence.
Haha well this next chapter will delve some more into the mysteries of this season. It'll be a little extra long since I'll reveal something in this next one XD.
Given your "surprise" in the last chapter, this sounds ominous. For God's sake, please don't have Trey drop his towel. XD
ROFL that's top secret
Looking to pick up some tricks of the trade, Kurt?
Haha , I should include one soon again it's been a while XD
ROFL I won't . I'll get him clothed asap .
Haha you guys and your obsessions over the showerscene . XD
Just a status report: a few hours behind schedule XD As with me being such a social butterfly nowadays it wasn't drinking , just helping out some friends who just came back from Chicago and Honduras but I have all day to pump out a great and extra long update so I hope you guys are looking to that
You have until the Annunciation. That's when I'll properly start pestering you.
Don't worry , update's about done XD
Chapter CXXXIII: Chase
30 March 1643
One of the advantages of having been in the service of the Room as its instrument on the British Isles was the intimate knowledge of certain areas of interest: one being the Tower of London. Being a warden there in the Tower, Giles knew well the little hidden doors, lockpicks, and tunnels that made the Tower's secret bowels a maze of escape and opportunity. In his tenure there in London, he had never felt the need to disable the various exits and entrances. Knowledge of them was sufficient and advantageous. This way, if anyone did escape from one of the chambers, not only would they be caught since he knew the terminating end to each exit, but they would also be discovered as someone who has had knowledge of the Tower (unless, of course, they were one of those “fortunate” few who discovered the inner workings by accident).
It also made practical sense for whenever he would enter into the prisons with other prisoners under the guise of a fellow dissident or agent. His advance knowledge of the tricks of each room gave him the advantage of “escaping” with his counterpart without having to kill any of his own men in the process. Infiltrating the enemy camp, therefore, would be easy. He had entertained the idea before that perhaps, if the government of his home island somehow changed, he might someday use his knowledge of the tower to slip in and out, but never did he think that he might be so glad he entertained such far fetched thoughts until now.
The shelling of the city of London had already begun and the Tower fortress was feeling the imminent shock of the attack. He knew, therefore, that his time had come. The dust willowed downward like an arid snowfall as he reached along the wall behind him. Depressing an inconspicuous rock revealed a groove just large enough to house a metal peg. Pressing part of his fetters against the peg, his expert maneuvers enabled him to pick his locks in a matter of seconds.
As quickly as those chains fell from his wrists, he lunged towards the other end of the chamber careful not to arouse any suspicion from the guards patrolling the hallway outside. The corner of the room where hay was kept as a makeshift bed was quickly shoved aside and his hands scraped desperately against the dirty floor. Finding the groove where some of the rocks were parting, he immediately undid his trousers and began to urinate into the gap. A moment passed and only the sound of liquid splashing against stone haunted the chamber. “Come on...” he whispered unconsciously to himself, “dont' make me bleed into you too...”
The liquid slipped through the crack on the floor and disappeared underneath before a soft click tickled his bare feet with its vibration. Running now to the other side of the cell, he pressed lightly against the wall until it gave way. Slipping in through the small opening, he shut the secret doorway behind him softly. Giles secured his belt back around his waist once more as he ran down the secret tunnel not caring that the jagged rocks on either side of the narrow hallway cut against his shirt.
The hallway declined downward before running upward again. As he ascended, he could hear the increasing shudder of shells bearing down upon the city. Despite the darkness of the tunnel, he ran forward having memorized the direction and distance of each step in the path. Finally, his palms rested against the exit and he pressed his ear against the earthen barrier to see if there were murmurs of life on the other side.
Giles did not want to make the same mistake that he made in Brighton. When his executioners had come for his head, he knew it was time for his plan of escape to be carried out. He had disabled the two guards as they tried to awkwardly and impatiently skewer him with their swords while he was still chained. Having acquired the keys after wrestling it from their bodies with his teeth (he was already tired from having to use both of his legs to snap their necks), he was able to make a mad dash out of the Brighton prison in the confusion of the oncoming Spanish grenadiers.
He had decided to flee northwards with the general population hoping to confuse the English who would be expecting him to make a straight line to his Spanish friends. Even if he had just continued to head towards London, Giles had confidence that he would be able to disappear in that metropolis' large underground until he could slip out to meet up with the relief army.
Unfortunately, he had been spotted and chased down by an army lieutenant: a certain Bevan Woodhouse that had apparently just led the successful skirmish against the Spanish northern flank which allowed the greater bulk of the English army to escape northward. How Woodhouse had recognized Giles was a curiosity to the spy as it obviously meant Woodhouse was keener in his sight or his perception than most of the officers around him. It was a mistake Giles was not planning on repeating.
If this Woodhouse indeed was someone who recognized him as the spy, then it might also be possible that this man knew about the secrets of the Tower. The young lieutenant might be more than he was pretending to be. One thing Giles knew for sure: Bevan Woodhouse was not an ordinary name. A man implicated in the Gunpowder plot at the turn of the century bore that name.
What was more confusing was that he had heard of a Woodhouse working for the Room. Whether or not they were related Giles would not know: the Room tended to introduce spies to each other only when necessary. It made it a lot easier to say nothing about the entire network if ever captured when one truly does not know who else is working for the Silence. Even if both the warden and the jailed might be on the same side, they might not know until the Room sends them word...
Giles, detecting nothing on the other side, swiftly swung the portal open. Immediately, the smell of gunpowder and fire attacked his nostrils as he slipped through the side of a stone building and into the fray of the bombardment.
---
Íñigo woke up with his shirt still sticking to his sweat drenched torso. It was the third time he had the dream over the past week and it was also the third time that he woke up his charge with a start. Eyes shot in his direction and Íñigo looked at Lope with a deflated stare, the wind still mustering through his lungs.
“Another dream?” Lope asked from the other bed with some concern. Íñigo managed a nod before laying himself back on his pillow exhausted. He looked towards the doorway as well and noticed the still shadows of the boots of the night watch stopping in front of his door before continuing to patrol the hallway. The three men (The Swiss Belmont, Diego, and Lope) would take overlapping watches throughout the nights whenever they were in strange territory and this evening was no different.
Chasing after the three purple clad figures had been an undertaking which had already brought them to the fringe of the Spanish territories in the Balkans and around the Adriatic. After leaving Cadiz, they had sailed first to follow the trail to Sardinia and then to Messina before finally curving around to land in Venice. From there, the trail had gotten cold until a hefty bribe was able to ascertain the movements of three “monk-like” figures dressed in purple from a “discrete” stablemaster who had been paid a handsome sum to sell six of his horses to the three.
Íñigo laid back on his bed disturbed. He turned his head towards his ward who had reluctantly fallen back asleep and the broad back of Lope rose in the room like a solid wall. Íñigo wanted to say something, but Lope's tired snores lulled Íñigo back to silence. The young man's eyes traced the dim traces of candlelight maintained at the corner of the room upward to where it diffused dully on the wooden ceiling.
“Another unfamiliar ceiling,” he whispered to himself before turning to his side. He tried once more to close his eyes, but the whispers of those dreamy figures still seemed to dominate his hearing. Within the darkness behind his lids, Íñigo could see a vague outline of the building he had seen just a few moments earlier. The old school brought back a familiar chilly nostalgia to it. Never before had he seen it in the kind of dark tones that had dominated his nightmare. Some of the windows to the old orphanage glimmered in some hazy moonlight in the darkness of his mind's eye.
There was a sound that accompanied the image like the faint murmurs of water dripping onto rock. Íñigo could hear it plainly thumping quietly through the walls of the building like the steady beat of a metallic heart. His mind raced through the stone walls of the building and entered into his old home. Inside the environs of the building, the familiar hallways, and the cozy rooms filled his mind with some comfort. The soft noise had grown more clearly and solidly and moved him forward down the hallways of the orphanage.
Íñigo remembered that this group of friars that took care of the orphans had been lucky enough to have a local patron who had given them a large clock: one of the newest models that ticked audibly. The friars, being poor enough to understand that nothing should go to waste, had generously reserved time to give lessons about the clock itself: its mechanism and how, perhaps, one day the young men in the orphanage might become clock makers themselves. Íñigo remembered his young hands rising up enthusiastically to embrace the idea.
“Do you want to be a watchmaker, Íñigo?” he remembered one of the friars asking him with a smile.
“Yes, padre, one day I'd like to be able to control time,” Íñigo recalled his smug response.
The old friar's face seemed to crack in half with the smile inexorably broken into two disjointed parts. “Why would you want to do something like that, Íñigo?” the young man remembered the question.
“If I could control time,” Íñigo had replied, “then maybe I can save mommy and daddy--”
The friar interrupted the young boy while exerting himself as much as possible to maintain the smile. “What's happened in the past has happened for a reason, Íñigo, even if we cannot see it plainly now,” the friar had explained. “God has a plan for all of us, and to say that we want to go back and fix it is to say that God was wrong.” Already, Íñigo could remember the way the faltering voice wafted to him weakly as if padre was trying to explain this piece of reality while balancing himself on a rope.
“But you taught us before, padre,” Íñigo could remember himself saying, “that it's our sins that make bad things happen and God allows them to happen because he doesn't want us to be dolls.” Íñigo could definitely remember the way his talking was eroding his friar teacher's smile. “Doesn't that mean if we go back and do something good, that we would be fulfilling God's will?”
“Well, Íñigo...” the friar had answered, “if God allows us to go back, it would still be His plan, yes, but it may not be his will. You shouldn't worry about this, however, since changing time is an impossibility... there is no way for us to go back.”
“I will make a way,” Íñigo remembered himself saying with boisterous and childlike energy. “I'll do it after I become a clockmaker,” he remembered himself saying proudly.
“No clocks can turn back time, Íñigo,” the friar had laughed nervously.
“I will make one that will,” Íñigo had replied quickly, “I will make one that I can hold and take me back to whenever I want...” and here, Íñigo recalled that he paused in his explanation, “and forward too, I suppose!” the younger version of Íñigo had pronounced happily. “It will be my timepiece, my way of changing the world for the better.”
The friar had looked at Íñigo as the blood evacuated his face. “Time is not something a young boy should play with,” the friar attempted to say.
“Don't worry, padre,” Íñigo had continued oblivious to his teacher's uneasiness. “I'll make sure to go back and fix the important things. Or even wait until something terrible happens and then fix that. You'll see, padre! Something horrible might happen that you will wish you could go back and change!
---
Special Guest Author Calipah Provides the Next Fourteen Paragraphs
Special Guest Author Calipah Provides the Next Fourteen Paragraphs
30 May 1643
He stroked the startled mare’s neck gently. Leaning over to its ear, he uttered comforting nothingness, hushing its stirred fears with the warmth of his voice. Its breathing subsided, and the graceful movement of its legs grew less agitated. He patted its head once more, and looked apprehensively towards the bloodied horizon. Towers of smoke spiraled from afar, muffled cries and screams mingled with the booming volley of bombadiers and muskets. A dreamlike mosaic of death and destruction – How else could one describe it?
He loosened the reigns of his horse, and with a kick, galloped to the top of a hill. The cannons atop the knell abridged the earth like behemoths waiting to utter some unfathomable wisdom, ever anxious to share from eternity their misgivings on the madness of men. Taking out his binoculars he surveyed the vast battlefield below. The Persian host, their fluttering flags and pitched tents, surrounded the beleaguered city like a swarm of locusts, sprawling its lofty Aurelian walls by the dozen.
The fighting was grievous and gory with the Spanish defenders showing tenacity and bravery throughout. Yet they were no match for Persian arms in this battle for supremacy. There was to be no escape. Death was judgment passed. He smirked at the sight – only once in every millennium or so could one behold such a sight, such travesty, such evil, such retribution. And it was sweet to savor.
"Mein Qayd. The men have broken through the Maxim Gate. Your orders?" The Qayd wistfully played with his flowing white beard, his eyes closing into the warmth of foreboding meditation. Suspended silence pervaded his little bubble. The passing moments lasted forever "Sarrad. Do you take it that our Lord is both merciful and just?"
Breathlessly and without thought, the aide replied listlessly "His mercy precedes His justice."
The Qayd stared starkly into the burning skyline, and let out a long sigh “I wonder sometimes.” He paused, assessing the situation “Tell Uzbek and Ardashar to push the attack into the confines of the Capitoline. Send word to Zardasht to concentrate the artillery barrage on the inner garrison. Go with the Prophet’s blessings” he tightened the reins on his horse, and with a resounding “Hyia!” forced it down the winding path.
He guided it wistfully back to main camp, making way to the main pavilion. He jumped off the mare’s back, landing solidly on the ground. Immediately he was encircled by a cadre of servants and aides, hovering around him with the requests, dispatches, and questions of the various lower tier Qayds and Emirs. Dispensing orders and inquiries quickly, he took pace to the grand table near the main tent sprawled as it were with an amalgam of papers and maps depicting the beleaguered peninsula.
The soldier figurines covered almost the entirety of it. Already his forces had captured Napoli and were sinisterly threatening the approaches of Urbino and Apulia, brushing up the last of the Spanish resistance there. The Spaniards did not expect this move, not one bit, and that was the genius of it all, to land in Italy itself, the heart of Christendom! If his calculations were correct, Qayd Yusuf Al-Bajarbi would have already crossed the Marmara and enforced the cordon on Qustantiniyyah, whilst the sieges on Spain’s Eastern cities would have passed well into their second week by now. A full martial encirclement on enemy positions in one full sweep! Even he couldn’t have anticipated this turn of good fortune, and he, being the formidable general he was, would exploit it to the extreme.
The blast of cannons began its thundering orchestra once more in the background. A sign of proverbial progress as it were. “Mein Qayd, the faithful Ardashar has captured the ‘Veranda’”
The old man winced, “and Uzbek?” Silence yet again, how he despised it, when a man’s death is left unuttered “Dispatch Jahan’s men to consolidate.” He reflected for a moment “By any chance, are the Naffatun ready?”
“Yes mein Qayd” the answer came.
The wizened General smirked “You know what to do then.” The aide bowed and hurried away, leaving him to his maps. From afar amidst the cries and shouts of dying men, he could hear the faint ringing of bells of St. Boutrous. Dread enveloped this city, and fear they should of his scimitar.
A messenger, drenched in the smell of gunpowder and the scuffle of skirmish, appeared “Our men are in the city Mein Qayd!”
He smiled faintly “Sack it then, but leave anyone who flees to the church of St. Boutrous be. Allow them this sanctuary and desecrate not the churches.”
“But Mein Qayd, that is where the heathens hoard most of their gold--”
“We will have enough gold for the men and more if they continue to follow me on this campaign. But we will not repeat the mistake of the Isphani when they desecrated Makkah. No, we must keep them under the illusion that they have not been offended.”
“Mein Qayd,” another aide quickly rushed near the table and offered his usual signs of obedience, “there is excellent news! We have captured Urban with his court at his palace!”
The elation of the young lieutenant crashed against the cold metallic stiffness that now dominated Jafar's expressions. “This is terrible news you deliver to me,” the Iraqi looked past his aides and onto the city.
“Terrible, Mein Qayd?” the young officer questioned with a twist of his eyebrow.
“Urban is an old man,” Jafar began, “and perhaps in that old age he has gotten wise: or has gotten wise enough to have keen men around him. I would have rather he fled north and disgrace his office with cowardice. I would have rather he fled to the protection of the Spanish in their territory and hold his court outside of this city like his corrupt predecessors... That way our ally princes in the north, the Brotestanti, would be encouraged...” Jafar ground his teeth slightly, “if he stays, he will become a guest of the Emperor and untouchable. His office is secure and any abuse to him will incite the ardour of his would-be rescuers. What's worse is that in his old age, he may expire at any moment and this entire continent will blame us for his death. I wish he had been a 'wise' man and fled the city in one of those tunnels they use so often and then expired outside of these walls... but no he will be a martyr on his own holy ground and those tunnels will ensure that any news of his demise will be communicated to the cities of this continent: No, this is terrible news indeed.”
Jafar looked to his subordinates who suddenly acquired despairing gazes back at him. Immediately, he stepped forward and passed between them. Pointing outward towards the massive guns along the hills that were continuing to rain shells at the last portions of resistance in the city, he called out to his subordinates. “Just one look at what our technology and military might have gotten us and it is plain to see that despite this setback, we have still grasped the Golden Apple.”
The subordinates began to regain their original composure and one came up to the side of Jafar, “what shall I send back as a message to Isfahan, Mein Qayd?” the man grinned.
Smiling as his own encouragement began to flow into his spirit, Jafar replied: “This was a triumph.”
The aide's own smile could not be held back and he proposed with some alacrity: “I'm making a note here: huge success.”
Jafar nodded slowly as he watched his men roar with joy as they entered the city. “It's hard to overstate my satisfaction,” Jafar added. “Our Persian science: we do what we must because we can”
“For the good of all of us,” the aide replied enthusiastically.
Jafar smiled comfortably as he watched his men move into the breach. Except the ones who are dead wandered through his mind for a moment as his eyes caught the sight of the thousands dead from the desperate Isphani swords. “But there's no sense crying over every mistake,” he concluded to himself in a whisper.
Interlude
“You just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake,” the physicist was beginning to explain as he pointed towards the stock of yellowcake being put through the various lab stations. Agent Andriessen followed behind the enthusiastic middle aged researcher with her usual stoic expression hidden behind plastic goggles. “And the science gets done,” the man pointed towards the processing station in the massive lab where the uranium enrichment process was taking place, “and you make a neat gun,” he said while his hand wandered to the final stations where the depleted uranium byproduct was being placed by one of the assistants next to a massive firearm, “for the people who are still alive,” the researcher finally winked with a laugh as he pointed with his thumb to the radioactive warning stickers on the right of the separators between the two and the main processing center within.
“Not funny, Doctor,” Andriessen replied dryly before sidestepping her guide and placing herself at the glass partition where the depleted slugs were being showcased on a white tabletop. “And you can have these ready by tomorrow?”
“Yes,” the bubbly scientist replied while adjusting his glasses, “But I don't understand, Agent Andriessen, usually we only get special requests from some of the top brass here at the base and not any enforcement... You're not going off to shoot at tanks are you?” the man mused with a chuckle.
“Maybe,” Andriessen replied flatly before walking out of the room. “I'll come by in the morning to get them. Thank you, Doctor.”
“You're welcome...” the scientist replied a bit bewildered. He turned back to his assistants behind the partition, “You heard the lady,” he smiled, regaining his joviality, “she wants a little bit of nuclear warfare in her life: let's pack it up for her!”
Chapter CXXXIV: Warfare (coming soon)
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AARGH! Now Calipah is also starting with the way too obvious song quotations
..Or is it just canonized again, trying to frame Calipah?
..Or is it just canonized again, trying to frame Calipah?
I wish my urine would unlock doors.
Oh, oh and I wish I could send in an order for my nuclear weapons. I hear they make a great christmas present for the kids and I want to get them before the rush!
Oh, oh and I wish I could send in an order for my nuclear weapons. I hear they make a great christmas present for the kids and I want to get them before the rush!
AARGH! Now Calipah is also starting with the way too obvious song quotations
..Or is it just canonized again, trying to frame Calipah?
Haha , you just forgot to read , silly ! He only did the fourteen paragraphs . After that I took over again XD
I wish my urine would unlock doors.
Oh, oh and I wish I could send in an order for my nuclear weapons. I hear they make a great christmas present for the kids and I want to get them before the rush!
Haha , clever way to get out isn't it ? XD And the uranium slugs aren't exactly nuclear weapons , just depleted uranium and all this XD The good doctor was just making a little joke XD