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I've got a good topic, then. "Revenge of the Blue Ones".
If we make them dark blue then everyone will be happy
God, what was it with the woods in the nighttime?
Oh yes, my next one if I do one will be very misdirectionary.
Oh yes, my next one if I do one will be very misdirectionary.
While fun, I posted a different chapter from essentially the same story, changing only names, and just 2 people found it was me. Imagine if I was throwing in misdirection on top!
Is that a challenge, Avernite?
Are you ready, willing, and able to go as far as I did with For the Emperor in both writing an entry capable of standing on its own merits and with elements hinting at another author, allowing you to argue fairly convincingly to the other readers that that author was to blame because the evidence is there to find for those who look for it?
If so, perhaps the topic for the next round should be "Authorial Misdirection".
EDIT: I just reread DensleyBlair's critique of it, and it still warms my heart, especially his conclusion.
Not sure of able, but ready and willing, yesIs that a challenge, Avernite?
Are you ready, willing, and able to go as far as I did with For the Emperor in both writing an entry capable of standing on its own merits and with elements hinting at another author, allowing you to argue fairly convincingly to the other readers that that author was to blame because the evidence is there to find for those who look for it?
If so, perhaps the topic for the next round should be "Authorial Misdirection".
Bring it on!
EDIT: I just reread DensleyBlair's critique of it, and it still warms my heart, especially his conclusion.
Good times indeed
I apologise for merely doing the easy critique of spotting Butterfly's obvious entry, I was somewhat distracted by other projects. If we can gather the enthusiasm for a second round then I will endeavour to do some proper critcuqing.
All levels of engagement are appreciated, tho obviously the meatier the better from our authors’ point of view. But quite heartening to see a few newer faces / non-GtA regulars around.
I’ll think on a subject and maybe offer a prompt tomorrow? Then pieces should be up to time nicely with the end of the year.
A little bit later than advertised, I offer for your consideration:
“A Christmas Carol”, Christina Rossetti, 1872
Midwinter. The winter solstice. The shortest day. The longest night.
Now the veil between the two worlds is thin. Outside the darkness draws in, and with it come the hopes and fears of a new year. On the horizon lies the promise of rebirth, and we will look forward soon to the coming of spring’s first darling buds. But for now there is only one task at hand: to guard against the mean months ahead. To fortify ourselves we have good wine and good company, yet still the question lingers on every pair of lips: will this be enough?
Here, in this upside down domain where master is slave and day is night, we gather to warm ourselves by the last embers of a dying fire. Soon it will be out, and we shall have nothing but our stories for sustenance through the dark hours ahead. You who pass by, come, sit with us a while and lend us your tales…
Alright then, here we go. After good fun with Festivals last time, I have tried to avoid this being too much of an “x but winter” rerun, and I think it works; more specific than last time, a bit darker, a lot more mischievous.
As ever, entries can be serious, humorous or any mixture thereof, and all possible times and settings are of course firmly on the table. This time around I will be giving bonus points for wilful attempts at deception and trickery (you heard the narrative voice: the veil between the worlds is thin!) Of course, this requires that first of all I come up with some sort of points system, but no matter: in GtA, anything is possible.
In terms of format, once again I’ll leave things open, but I do suggest that pieces be in the region of 2-3,000 words. (One day I think I’ll have a bit more fun with formal constraints, but for now we’re still happily in content land.) All interested parties please drop me a PM and I can gauge how much interest we have. To keep things cute, I’ll give a provisional deadline of December 20th so that I can post pieces on the 21st. Any questions, feel free either to fire away below or get in touch with me privately. Otherwise: to your writing desks!
IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
“A Christmas Carol”, Christina Rossetti, 1872
Midwinter. The winter solstice. The shortest day. The longest night.
Now the veil between the two worlds is thin. Outside the darkness draws in, and with it come the hopes and fears of a new year. On the horizon lies the promise of rebirth, and we will look forward soon to the coming of spring’s first darling buds. But for now there is only one task at hand: to guard against the mean months ahead. To fortify ourselves we have good wine and good company, yet still the question lingers on every pair of lips: will this be enough?
Here, in this upside down domain where master is slave and day is night, we gather to warm ourselves by the last embers of a dying fire. Soon it will be out, and we shall have nothing but our stories for sustenance through the dark hours ahead. You who pass by, come, sit with us a while and lend us your tales…
--
Alright then, here we go. After good fun with Festivals last time, I have tried to avoid this being too much of an “x but winter” rerun, and I think it works; more specific than last time, a bit darker, a lot more mischievous.
As ever, entries can be serious, humorous or any mixture thereof, and all possible times and settings are of course firmly on the table. This time around I will be giving bonus points for wilful attempts at deception and trickery (you heard the narrative voice: the veil between the worlds is thin!) Of course, this requires that first of all I come up with some sort of points system, but no matter: in GtA, anything is possible.
In terms of format, once again I’ll leave things open, but I do suggest that pieces be in the region of 2-3,000 words. (One day I think I’ll have a bit more fun with formal constraints, but for now we’re still happily in content land.) All interested parties please drop me a PM and I can gauge how much interest we have. To keep things cute, I’ll give a provisional deadline of December 20th so that I can post pieces on the 21st. Any questions, feel free either to fire away below or get in touch with me privately. Otherwise: to your writing desks!
Barely quarter of an hour has passed and we’ve already got two interested parties registered. If I demand holds up then I may open the field to more than four writers, but we’ll see. For now, suffice to say that if you want to take up the challenge this time then get in touch ASAP!
Alright then, that’s out lot: we have a full slate of writers. See you all in a month’s time.
Just checking in midway through the writing stage. Already had one completed submission and seen some very promising things from our other authAARs. Hope everyone’s writing is going well and I am really looking forward to reading more soon! As ever I’m always available if anyone has any questions about the round or about their pieces.
To update, seeing as the 21st has almost been and gone (for me, anyway) – I have every piece in except one. Because I know that the last piece exists and is on its way, I'm going to put fairness before cuteness and wait until I have the final draft. Next time I post in thread, all being well, will be to publish the entries for this round.
I will say that we have a very strong line-up of submissions. Looking forward to seeing how people receive them all.
I will say that we have a very strong line-up of submissions. Looking forward to seeing how people receive them all.
Half a day later than advertised, here they are: five submissions on the theme of "In the bleak midwinter". You all know the score: one month or so for comments, constructive criticism and guesses on the authors' identities. As ever, I will provide a list of possible authors below. Be aware, however, that this round we have a good deal of trickery afoot!
Author #1
Six months since the start of the siege. Six months since the campaign bogged down in the snow and the mud and the city walls (for winter had come early and fierce that year, and it lingered stubbornly into what ought to have been the start of spring). The tents that hold the armies outside are tattered, soldiers inside left shivering in a constant struggle against frostbite. The land has been lived off, but no more life can be drawn from it, try though the hunting parties which travel into the surrounding forest might. The rations they traveled with have long since given out, and all the cavalrymen are part of the infantry now. The few cannons they brought have fallen silent, the last remnants of precious gunpowder reserved for a future decisive blow which seems more distant by the day. Some soldiers have died, limbs lost to the frost, lungs choked with blood and bacterial fluids. Some of their bodies mysteriously vanish in the dead of night, the usually-dormant cookfires blazing with meat on the spit once more the next day. At first, the officers cracked down. They gave up sometime around the fifth month.
The besieged are faring little better. They were prepared for the siege (as much as they could be, at any rate) and survived well for the first two months. For a month after that, they survived off of rats, cats and dogs. The speeches that the city fathers gave in the square over the fourth month sustained them in place of food, but one cannot eat courage, duty and brotherhood forever, and the besieged lived off the city fathers for the first two weeks of the fifth month. They, too, have seen mysterious disappearances of the dead and the dying, noted the smell of cooking meat floating up from half the city’s ovens.
All of this is a very longwinded way of saying that it was an eventful time for the aliens to invade. Well, not quite “the aliens”. More than one alien, certainly. They would not even qualify as a gaggle or herd, though, not really. We are dealing with two aliens here, to be precise. “Invasion” is somewhat of a misnomer as well; if you asked them why they’d arrived, they’d say they were there to collect on a bounty. This is what Stelles and Kildra do, what they are known for. They find, for some form of appropriate remuneration, entities or objects that do not want to be found and do to them whatever the relevant authorities want done. They have been doing it for seventy thousand years, an eternity by the standards of a deadly profession. Unsurprisingly, they are generally considered to be pretty good at the whole thing. They are here in this place, at this time, staring at the dead and the doomed on both sides of the walls, because a very important client has requested a handoff at an out-of-the-way location, and it is hard to get more out-of-the-way, more isolated from the galactic community, than right here and right now.
“How much more time?”
“They’re a little late, Stel. Not inexcusable, but late.”
“Ain’t that always the way. They have to show who has the power. When was the last one that actually respected our time?”
“The Maqos of Gremakya, I think.”
“True, but they tried to stiff us on the payment. ‘Unexpected routing problems’, my pseudopod.”
“Good point. I suppose the Almarit Court was alright as a client. Very tough negotiation, of course, but they paid alright and their representative showed up on time.”
“They were alright, sure. How’s the bounty?”
“,,,Shit.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
The chimney was talking. That was new, thought the recently-appointed Subcommandant of the City Guard (the previous one having taken the side of the city fathers in the recent… unpleasantness). It said “Help! Help! I’m a political prisoner!”. That was also new. There was nothing wrong with chimneys getting their act together at long last and expressing opinions should they wish to, he supposed. This was, however, an ill-timed moment for a chimney to show rebellion. Solidarity, he figured, was essential at the moment, and so he resolved to interrogate the chimney’s loyalties. To be fair to the Subcommandant, a man of decency if not intellectual heft, he did consider the possibility that the newly declared advocate for chimneys’ rights was merely a hallucination brought on by starvation. He then got distracted for several minutes by an actual hallucination brought on by starvation. Once he had regained his faculties and bid a cheerful farewell to the metre-tall bipedal singing mice, he took his sabre in hand and strode (feebly hobbled) to his chimney.
“Hello?” said the Subcommandant.
“Unhand me, bounty hunters!” said the chimney.
“Bounty hunters? I don’t… I mean, you’re my chimney. And this really isn’t the time to rebel, you know. We need solidarity in the face of the enemy.”
“…Where am I? Who are you?”
“I… You’re in the same spot where you’ve always been, and I’m the person who you keep safe from smoke inhalation, and lord knows I’m sympathetic to your plight, but-”
“Look here, nincompoop, I am not a ‘chimney’, whatever that is. I am a prince of the Sarcha, and you will treat me with respect! What planet am I on?”
“…Pardon?”
“Well. Pre-interstellar travel. That… alters things. Just my luck they’d do a dropoff at a place like this. It couldn’t be a seedy corner of Portholon? Relta, maybe? Somewhere where an emergency teleporter that triggers on hitting atmosphere could do some real good for an enterprising freedom fighter?”
“…What?”
“Okay, listen to me very carefully. Extract me from this restraining tube immediately.”
“A tube?”
“I am in your ‘chimney’, your tube. I am not a ‘chimney’. Extract me immediately. Dolt.”
“Well, I think that’s a little unfair. None of us are at our bests right now:”
“The last time I was at my best was when I fled from my palace as it was being bombed from orbit seventy standard year cycles ago. And yet here I am, able to string together a coherent sentence, unlike some sentient beings around this place. Or, put another way, release me from this chimney, dolt. Now.”
Faced with this line of thinking, the Subcommandant pondered briefly before replying.
“Well, I could grab the poker from the fireplace and kind of poke you until you’re in a position to fall down, but it’s a little hot at the moment. I could do the same with my sword, but it’s very sharp. Or I could-“
“Look, do you have appendages that grasp things?”
“Er, do hands count? I’ve got them.”
“I don’t know if they count. Only you would know that at the moment, seeing as I’m stuck in your tube. But take your appendages, whatever they may be, extend them into the chimney, grasp me, and pull me downward. Are all the members of your species this dense?”
The Subcommandant had questions as to what exactly a “species” was, but quashed them in the interest of time. His hands went up the flue and touched- well, he’d have more words to describe the sensation if the city was coastal, at any rate.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
“I thought you searched him!”
“I did, Stel. No idea where he could have been hiding that thing.”
“It’s the oldest trick in the book! ‘Hide the teleporter and make a quick getaway when you hit atmosphere. Your captors will be too bloody stupid to search you properly’. And we fell for it! You fell for it.”
“I know, Stel. I’m not sure how it happened. But what’s done is done. Right. We need to find him and get him back before the client gets here, whenever that happens. Ways to do that… He could be anywhere within eyesight. A teleporter small enough for me to miss… he probably couldn’t have traveled farther. But none of the things outside the walls have gotten agitated and left their little temporary houses, so he’s probably not near them. Which means he’s either in the city or in the field of dead organic growth somewhere.”
“Not seeing any large heat signature in the field. He does emit heat, right?”
“Yes, his species does. So, the city. Pre-interstellar city… seems like trouble. Don’t want them noticing us and getting interested, too much of a distraction.”
“Stealth it is, then. Do we have any appropriate disguises for this species?”
“No, no suits for these bipeds. We’re just going to have to try going in quickly enough that no one notices too much. Or apologize for the escape and take the loss, which frankly is tempting at this point. It’d piss off the client, but-”
“No! They threw a clause into the contract, remember? An escape means a twenty percent payment to the client. We could eat it, but why should we? Plus, we have our reputation to consider. Not one escape in seventy thousand standard years. That means something.”
“…I suppose you’re right. But when we’re done, we should have a talk. I’m getting a bit tired of this work, truth be told. Ridiculous deadlines, ridiculous clients, ridiculous targets... I think it’ll be time for me to pack it in soon.”
“If that’s how you feel. Coming?”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Imagine, if you will, a breadfruit.
Or, better yet, a loofah sponge.
Take that loofah sponge and re-imagine it as the Biggest Loofah to Ever Exist, a loofah the size of a small rhinoceros. Now imagine slowly, painstakingly, carving that loofah of the gods into what is a moderately squiddish shape, a massive clump of tentacles and eyes attached to a rather cylindrical core that can barely be seen underneath the manifold layers of tentacle. Now hollow out each tentacle and the core of your imagined loofah sculpture, stuffing each hole with a mix of assorted pureed seafood. Paint your sculpture in the orangest grey or greyest orange you can muster. You are now some way towards understanding what our friend the Subcommandant pulled out from his chimney that day in the dead of winter. It is a credit either to his fundamental decency or his extraordinarily slow reaction time that a full minute went by before he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“A show of awe and terror at the sight of royal blood is a nice touch on your part, but this is really a little much. The hunters can’t be that far behind, so we don’t have a lot of time to waste here. What I need to do is take possession of a ship. Unfortunately at present there is only one on this forgotten little rock, so this presents both a difficulty and an opportunity. My teleportation device was admittedly not very powerful, so their ship must be fairly close by. That is where you come in.”
“Well… Er... presumably great and powerful spirit of some kind, I would like to of course help you with whatever you’re trying to find. I feel that a ship might be somewhat far away, though, and not nearby like you suppose, seeing as we’re not on any water or anything. The nearest river is something like half a day’s ride away and we’re in a bit of a siege situation at the moment, so I don’t know how we could get there, although I’m sure your powers are vast and nigh inconceivable by ones such as I.”
“Well… that certainly presents issues. I will be pretty conspicuous here to both them and your fellow idiots. Certainly them being overwhelmed by my glorious presence as you were will attract the hunters’ attention. That could be an advantage, actually. Right, here’s what I want you to do.“
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
When Stelles and Kildra originally caught the escapee, it came at the culmination of a standard month-long expedition into the most remote parts of the legendary Desert of Alkadiye. They pushed through the endless cycles of extreme cold and extreme heat, through the tunnels of glass so fragile that the wrong twitch of an antenna could cause the whole cave system to come crashing down, through the fields of trapweed and dreambush that have been the bane of so many adventurers seeking to unravel the mysteries of the desert. The flying stingwraiths proved no match for them, and even the Beasts of Despair, which have feasted since the universe’s beginning on unwary wanderers and will continue to do so until its end, could not stop their arrival at the remote desert palace that the escapee called home. This time, Stelles and Kildra found the escapee on the roof of a small home in the center of the city, his tentacles clinging to the chimney. A few guards were feebly throwing rocks at him.
“Well, I suppose stealth is out of the question. You think we should descend, Kildra?”
“I… honestly have no idea. Maybe?”
“Good enough for me.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Half an hour prior:
“Look, they’re waving a flag!”
“A flag?”
“A flag! They’re finally ready to surrender!”
“A flag…”
The besiegers, as one, had noticed the flag waving from the northeastern portion of the cannon-dented city walls and felt a small seed of hope sprout up, their first in months.
“No, wait, that’s a grey flag, not a white flag!”
And the besiegers, as one, became extremely confused. After approximately a minute of silence (or confused miscellaneous muttering, in the case of some), one sergeant rendered his verdict.
“Well, I guess someone has to go check it out regardless. You there, go!”
The soldier that he pointed to, from here on out known as You There, went.
“You There, you’ve got to listen to me. First of all, this is not a flag of surrender, it’s a flag of parley.”
“I mean, it’s not really a flag of anything, is it? What happened to your white one?”
“I tried to find it. I think it may have been lost in the… unpleasantness. But the flag I cut out of my second-best shirt still got your attention, didn’t it? Look, I know how this sounds, but a spirit appeared to me out of my chimney and said that there were other spirits trying to hunt it down and that they would come from the sky. I was wondering if you perhaps had enough gunpowder and shot left to fire a volley at their… ship of the air… when it approaches. You don’t have to believe me. But if you could just pass the message up and get your artillery ready to fire at anything if it does come from the sky…?”
“I… suppose I can pass that along. But… why do you care? Why should we?”
“These spirits… They seem solid. I touched one. They might need to eat like we do. If they do, their ship might have some food on it.”
“Isn’t the whole point of spirits that they are in fact not solid?”
“I’m really not sure what they are. But please, pass the message along. Get the cannons loaded and ready to fire at the sky.”
“I will pass it on. No need to worry about that.”
You There returned to camp to find a sea of anxious faces staring back at him.
“You There, report!”, said the sergeant who had sent You off in the first place.
“Yessir! The flag was not a surrender, sir! Nor was it an official parley on behalf of the city leaders! It appeared to have been the work of a guard captain of some kind, who said a spirit which appeared out of his chimney and asked for us to prepare to fire our cannon on other spirits pursuing him, who would appear from the sky presently! The captain advised us that said spirits appeared to be solid (which rather undercuts their case for spirithood, I suppose) and theorized that their ships might have comestibles of some kind on board which we could consume, thereby giving us incentive to shoot them down! I suspect he is suffering from extreme starvation-induced delirium, sir! Like what happened three weeks ago with the hunting party and that tree what sort of looked like a deer!”
“We in the officer corps will take this matter under advisement. Thank you, private.”
“Yessir!”
The officers retreated to the (wind-battered remnants of the) command tent. Most of the conversation could not be heard over the ever-howling wind from the outside, but occasional phrases such as “pure insanity”, “an enemy trick of some kind” and “a situation so desperate that even pure insanity must be entertained” made their way out of the tent and into the ears of the soldiers outside. After several minutes, the officers made their way out of the tent as one. The situation was desperate. Pure insanity would be entertained.
Stelles and Kildra’s ship had avoided or neutralized laser beams and railguns. Meteors and asteroids had not troubled its trajectory. These objects, however, move at kilometres per second or faster, hurtling through the void of space at unbelievable speeds. A cannonball, fast though it is, moves in mere metres per second, making it that rarest of things: too quick for a ship or its pilots to dodge, but too slow for it to detect. When the astonished cannoneers fired at the ‘spirits’, they discovered an essential truth of the universe: the slow ball does in fact penetrate the shield. In the process, they discovered a second essential truth: a volley of slow balls blows up a spaceship something awful.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The wreckage of Stelles and Kildra’s ship rained down on the city and the army outside its walls (killing several people who have not featured in the story thus far and are therefore completely unimportant). Buried in the wreckage of the ship, however, were several large crates crammed with strange foodstuffs, falling on both sides of the city walls. They tasted alien but seemed to be filling. In all the confusion, the entity that the Subcommandant would call the Chimney Spirit for the rest of his days slipped out of the city and clambered over the walls. Several hours later, a small ship landed some distance out from the city. A brief struggle followed, and the ship left a little later with a different pilot than the one who had flown it there. And winter turned slowly to spring.
Six months since the start of the siege. Six months since the campaign bogged down in the snow and the mud and the city walls (for winter had come early and fierce that year, and it lingered stubbornly into what ought to have been the start of spring). The tents that hold the armies outside are tattered, soldiers inside left shivering in a constant struggle against frostbite. The land has been lived off, but no more life can be drawn from it, try though the hunting parties which travel into the surrounding forest might. The rations they traveled with have long since given out, and all the cavalrymen are part of the infantry now. The few cannons they brought have fallen silent, the last remnants of precious gunpowder reserved for a future decisive blow which seems more distant by the day. Some soldiers have died, limbs lost to the frost, lungs choked with blood and bacterial fluids. Some of their bodies mysteriously vanish in the dead of night, the usually-dormant cookfires blazing with meat on the spit once more the next day. At first, the officers cracked down. They gave up sometime around the fifth month.
The besieged are faring little better. They were prepared for the siege (as much as they could be, at any rate) and survived well for the first two months. For a month after that, they survived off of rats, cats and dogs. The speeches that the city fathers gave in the square over the fourth month sustained them in place of food, but one cannot eat courage, duty and brotherhood forever, and the besieged lived off the city fathers for the first two weeks of the fifth month. They, too, have seen mysterious disappearances of the dead and the dying, noted the smell of cooking meat floating up from half the city’s ovens.
All of this is a very longwinded way of saying that it was an eventful time for the aliens to invade. Well, not quite “the aliens”. More than one alien, certainly. They would not even qualify as a gaggle or herd, though, not really. We are dealing with two aliens here, to be precise. “Invasion” is somewhat of a misnomer as well; if you asked them why they’d arrived, they’d say they were there to collect on a bounty. This is what Stelles and Kildra do, what they are known for. They find, for some form of appropriate remuneration, entities or objects that do not want to be found and do to them whatever the relevant authorities want done. They have been doing it for seventy thousand years, an eternity by the standards of a deadly profession. Unsurprisingly, they are generally considered to be pretty good at the whole thing. They are here in this place, at this time, staring at the dead and the doomed on both sides of the walls, because a very important client has requested a handoff at an out-of-the-way location, and it is hard to get more out-of-the-way, more isolated from the galactic community, than right here and right now.
“How much more time?”
“They’re a little late, Stel. Not inexcusable, but late.”
“Ain’t that always the way. They have to show who has the power. When was the last one that actually respected our time?”
“The Maqos of Gremakya, I think.”
“True, but they tried to stiff us on the payment. ‘Unexpected routing problems’, my pseudopod.”
“Good point. I suppose the Almarit Court was alright as a client. Very tough negotiation, of course, but they paid alright and their representative showed up on time.”
“They were alright, sure. How’s the bounty?”
“,,,Shit.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
The chimney was talking. That was new, thought the recently-appointed Subcommandant of the City Guard (the previous one having taken the side of the city fathers in the recent… unpleasantness). It said “Help! Help! I’m a political prisoner!”. That was also new. There was nothing wrong with chimneys getting their act together at long last and expressing opinions should they wish to, he supposed. This was, however, an ill-timed moment for a chimney to show rebellion. Solidarity, he figured, was essential at the moment, and so he resolved to interrogate the chimney’s loyalties. To be fair to the Subcommandant, a man of decency if not intellectual heft, he did consider the possibility that the newly declared advocate for chimneys’ rights was merely a hallucination brought on by starvation. He then got distracted for several minutes by an actual hallucination brought on by starvation. Once he had regained his faculties and bid a cheerful farewell to the metre-tall bipedal singing mice, he took his sabre in hand and strode (feebly hobbled) to his chimney.
“Hello?” said the Subcommandant.
“Unhand me, bounty hunters!” said the chimney.
“Bounty hunters? I don’t… I mean, you’re my chimney. And this really isn’t the time to rebel, you know. We need solidarity in the face of the enemy.”
“…Where am I? Who are you?”
“I… You’re in the same spot where you’ve always been, and I’m the person who you keep safe from smoke inhalation, and lord knows I’m sympathetic to your plight, but-”
“Look here, nincompoop, I am not a ‘chimney’, whatever that is. I am a prince of the Sarcha, and you will treat me with respect! What planet am I on?”
“…Pardon?”
“Well. Pre-interstellar travel. That… alters things. Just my luck they’d do a dropoff at a place like this. It couldn’t be a seedy corner of Portholon? Relta, maybe? Somewhere where an emergency teleporter that triggers on hitting atmosphere could do some real good for an enterprising freedom fighter?”
“…What?”
“Okay, listen to me very carefully. Extract me from this restraining tube immediately.”
“A tube?”
“I am in your ‘chimney’, your tube. I am not a ‘chimney’. Extract me immediately. Dolt.”
“Well, I think that’s a little unfair. None of us are at our bests right now:”
“The last time I was at my best was when I fled from my palace as it was being bombed from orbit seventy standard year cycles ago. And yet here I am, able to string together a coherent sentence, unlike some sentient beings around this place. Or, put another way, release me from this chimney, dolt. Now.”
Faced with this line of thinking, the Subcommandant pondered briefly before replying.
“Well, I could grab the poker from the fireplace and kind of poke you until you’re in a position to fall down, but it’s a little hot at the moment. I could do the same with my sword, but it’s very sharp. Or I could-“
“Look, do you have appendages that grasp things?”
“Er, do hands count? I’ve got them.”
“I don’t know if they count. Only you would know that at the moment, seeing as I’m stuck in your tube. But take your appendages, whatever they may be, extend them into the chimney, grasp me, and pull me downward. Are all the members of your species this dense?”
The Subcommandant had questions as to what exactly a “species” was, but quashed them in the interest of time. His hands went up the flue and touched- well, he’d have more words to describe the sensation if the city was coastal, at any rate.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
“I thought you searched him!”
“I did, Stel. No idea where he could have been hiding that thing.”
“It’s the oldest trick in the book! ‘Hide the teleporter and make a quick getaway when you hit atmosphere. Your captors will be too bloody stupid to search you properly’. And we fell for it! You fell for it.”
“I know, Stel. I’m not sure how it happened. But what’s done is done. Right. We need to find him and get him back before the client gets here, whenever that happens. Ways to do that… He could be anywhere within eyesight. A teleporter small enough for me to miss… he probably couldn’t have traveled farther. But none of the things outside the walls have gotten agitated and left their little temporary houses, so he’s probably not near them. Which means he’s either in the city or in the field of dead organic growth somewhere.”
“Not seeing any large heat signature in the field. He does emit heat, right?”
“Yes, his species does. So, the city. Pre-interstellar city… seems like trouble. Don’t want them noticing us and getting interested, too much of a distraction.”
“Stealth it is, then. Do we have any appropriate disguises for this species?”
“No, no suits for these bipeds. We’re just going to have to try going in quickly enough that no one notices too much. Or apologize for the escape and take the loss, which frankly is tempting at this point. It’d piss off the client, but-”
“No! They threw a clause into the contract, remember? An escape means a twenty percent payment to the client. We could eat it, but why should we? Plus, we have our reputation to consider. Not one escape in seventy thousand standard years. That means something.”
“…I suppose you’re right. But when we’re done, we should have a talk. I’m getting a bit tired of this work, truth be told. Ridiculous deadlines, ridiculous clients, ridiculous targets... I think it’ll be time for me to pack it in soon.”
“If that’s how you feel. Coming?”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Imagine, if you will, a breadfruit.
Or, better yet, a loofah sponge.
Take that loofah sponge and re-imagine it as the Biggest Loofah to Ever Exist, a loofah the size of a small rhinoceros. Now imagine slowly, painstakingly, carving that loofah of the gods into what is a moderately squiddish shape, a massive clump of tentacles and eyes attached to a rather cylindrical core that can barely be seen underneath the manifold layers of tentacle. Now hollow out each tentacle and the core of your imagined loofah sculpture, stuffing each hole with a mix of assorted pureed seafood. Paint your sculpture in the orangest grey or greyest orange you can muster. You are now some way towards understanding what our friend the Subcommandant pulled out from his chimney that day in the dead of winter. It is a credit either to his fundamental decency or his extraordinarily slow reaction time that a full minute went by before he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“A show of awe and terror at the sight of royal blood is a nice touch on your part, but this is really a little much. The hunters can’t be that far behind, so we don’t have a lot of time to waste here. What I need to do is take possession of a ship. Unfortunately at present there is only one on this forgotten little rock, so this presents both a difficulty and an opportunity. My teleportation device was admittedly not very powerful, so their ship must be fairly close by. That is where you come in.”
“Well… Er... presumably great and powerful spirit of some kind, I would like to of course help you with whatever you’re trying to find. I feel that a ship might be somewhat far away, though, and not nearby like you suppose, seeing as we’re not on any water or anything. The nearest river is something like half a day’s ride away and we’re in a bit of a siege situation at the moment, so I don’t know how we could get there, although I’m sure your powers are vast and nigh inconceivable by ones such as I.”
“Well… that certainly presents issues. I will be pretty conspicuous here to both them and your fellow idiots. Certainly them being overwhelmed by my glorious presence as you were will attract the hunters’ attention. That could be an advantage, actually. Right, here’s what I want you to do.“
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
When Stelles and Kildra originally caught the escapee, it came at the culmination of a standard month-long expedition into the most remote parts of the legendary Desert of Alkadiye. They pushed through the endless cycles of extreme cold and extreme heat, through the tunnels of glass so fragile that the wrong twitch of an antenna could cause the whole cave system to come crashing down, through the fields of trapweed and dreambush that have been the bane of so many adventurers seeking to unravel the mysteries of the desert. The flying stingwraiths proved no match for them, and even the Beasts of Despair, which have feasted since the universe’s beginning on unwary wanderers and will continue to do so until its end, could not stop their arrival at the remote desert palace that the escapee called home. This time, Stelles and Kildra found the escapee on the roof of a small home in the center of the city, his tentacles clinging to the chimney. A few guards were feebly throwing rocks at him.
“Well, I suppose stealth is out of the question. You think we should descend, Kildra?”
“I… honestly have no idea. Maybe?”
“Good enough for me.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Half an hour prior:
“Look, they’re waving a flag!”
“A flag?”
“A flag! They’re finally ready to surrender!”
“A flag…”
The besiegers, as one, had noticed the flag waving from the northeastern portion of the cannon-dented city walls and felt a small seed of hope sprout up, their first in months.
“No, wait, that’s a grey flag, not a white flag!”
And the besiegers, as one, became extremely confused. After approximately a minute of silence (or confused miscellaneous muttering, in the case of some), one sergeant rendered his verdict.
“Well, I guess someone has to go check it out regardless. You there, go!”
The soldier that he pointed to, from here on out known as You There, went.
“You There, you’ve got to listen to me. First of all, this is not a flag of surrender, it’s a flag of parley.”
“I mean, it’s not really a flag of anything, is it? What happened to your white one?”
“I tried to find it. I think it may have been lost in the… unpleasantness. But the flag I cut out of my second-best shirt still got your attention, didn’t it? Look, I know how this sounds, but a spirit appeared to me out of my chimney and said that there were other spirits trying to hunt it down and that they would come from the sky. I was wondering if you perhaps had enough gunpowder and shot left to fire a volley at their… ship of the air… when it approaches. You don’t have to believe me. But if you could just pass the message up and get your artillery ready to fire at anything if it does come from the sky…?”
“I… suppose I can pass that along. But… why do you care? Why should we?”
“These spirits… They seem solid. I touched one. They might need to eat like we do. If they do, their ship might have some food on it.”
“Isn’t the whole point of spirits that they are in fact not solid?”
“I’m really not sure what they are. But please, pass the message along. Get the cannons loaded and ready to fire at the sky.”
“I will pass it on. No need to worry about that.”
You There returned to camp to find a sea of anxious faces staring back at him.
“You There, report!”, said the sergeant who had sent You off in the first place.
“Yessir! The flag was not a surrender, sir! Nor was it an official parley on behalf of the city leaders! It appeared to have been the work of a guard captain of some kind, who said a spirit which appeared out of his chimney and asked for us to prepare to fire our cannon on other spirits pursuing him, who would appear from the sky presently! The captain advised us that said spirits appeared to be solid (which rather undercuts their case for spirithood, I suppose) and theorized that their ships might have comestibles of some kind on board which we could consume, thereby giving us incentive to shoot them down! I suspect he is suffering from extreme starvation-induced delirium, sir! Like what happened three weeks ago with the hunting party and that tree what sort of looked like a deer!”
“We in the officer corps will take this matter under advisement. Thank you, private.”
“Yessir!”
The officers retreated to the (wind-battered remnants of the) command tent. Most of the conversation could not be heard over the ever-howling wind from the outside, but occasional phrases such as “pure insanity”, “an enemy trick of some kind” and “a situation so desperate that even pure insanity must be entertained” made their way out of the tent and into the ears of the soldiers outside. After several minutes, the officers made their way out of the tent as one. The situation was desperate. Pure insanity would be entertained.
Stelles and Kildra’s ship had avoided or neutralized laser beams and railguns. Meteors and asteroids had not troubled its trajectory. These objects, however, move at kilometres per second or faster, hurtling through the void of space at unbelievable speeds. A cannonball, fast though it is, moves in mere metres per second, making it that rarest of things: too quick for a ship or its pilots to dodge, but too slow for it to detect. When the astonished cannoneers fired at the ‘spirits’, they discovered an essential truth of the universe: the slow ball does in fact penetrate the shield. In the process, they discovered a second essential truth: a volley of slow balls blows up a spaceship something awful.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The wreckage of Stelles and Kildra’s ship rained down on the city and the army outside its walls (killing several people who have not featured in the story thus far and are therefore completely unimportant). Buried in the wreckage of the ship, however, were several large crates crammed with strange foodstuffs, falling on both sides of the city walls. They tasted alien but seemed to be filling. In all the confusion, the entity that the Subcommandant would call the Chimney Spirit for the rest of his days slipped out of the city and clambered over the walls. Several hours later, a small ship landed some distance out from the city. A brief struggle followed, and the ship left a little later with a different pilot than the one who had flown it there. And winter turned slowly to spring.
Author #2
(The author emphasises the deliberate misuse of character names. Any character named here is the sole interpretation of the author. It probably has nothing to do with the original creator’s intent)
Or: something about sincere flattery
The sunset all but invaded the cave we, Erin and Konge, were standing in, darkness coming in a single flash on this darkest night. I looked at the shadow that hid the familiar alien’s face, the impersonator that stood where Todd should have been, and though I knew he could see just fine, it seemed his eyes were elsewhere.
“What is it, Konge?” I asked, blowing on my hands to keep the freezing cold out.
“sst. Erin.” He whispered, “Do you not see? Down the cave?”
He moved what was probably his arm vaguely towards the right, and now I, too, saw an eerie shadow. A gray flash, a ghostly tendril of mist, slowly crept out of the darkness into my view, as outside the last hints of twilight faded to naught.
“So this is the place? What we’ve been searching for, since Alisa died? The place only visible in the heart of darkness?”
I glanced back out of the cave one last time, just in case it was my last ever, and nodded.
“A misty cave with an eerie inner light, Tan said before he died. Let’s go, Konge, and find whatever destiny this ‘Throne’”, I all but sneered the word, “is worth.”
We snuck into the darkness, slowly creeping on in the vague shine of the greyish mist. Konge seemed little affected by it all and took measured paces, but I kept stumbling on dead, brittle wood.
After what seemed like half an hour, finally the vague grey tendril began to coalesce into a high seat in the distance.
“You figure that’s the throne, Konge?” I blurted out.
“I said quiet,” he somehow snapped his whisper, before continuing more softly, “Do you think the Blue Ones won’t come after us? As they snatched Bran?”
As if to emphasise his point, it seemed a glow rose at the entrance of the cave behind us, and through the ground I felt a rhythmic shake.
“Sorry,” I whispered back, “Do you think there is anywhere to hide?”
He moved his head in vague assent and said:
“Yes, Erin. We have passed dozens of caves in the dark. But, they’ll just wait at the throne for our return. And the next opportunity will only be in a year.”
With that he set off again, picking up his pace. Duly chastised, and worried beside, I followed, wincing every time another branch snapped under my foot.
It took perhaps another hour to reach the Throne.
“It seems time itself is warped around this throne.” Konge stammered as we finally reached its base.
“Time, warped? How?” I retorted lamely.
“Oh child. Mass. Energy. Power, for lack of a better term. How else could a throne no taller than your head be clearly visible an hour off?” At that Konge nodded, as if he had learned a good deal, and circled around the back of the seat.
“Look closer! Do you see the stars shining out? This Silver Throne seems to be a throne of the very Heavens!”
I could but agree. Yes, this seemed like the stars themselves shone out, dimly, but I felt attracted to march towards it, pulled as if to the ground itself. As Konge made a second loop around I stepped forward, trying to climb up to sit on this rising Throne. The steps leading to the dais were solid enough, but as my hand touched the armrest I felt only a vague resistance, and with my next step I managed to step into the edge of the throne itself.
“Konge, look!” I whispered, startled.
He looked up, and for all I knew, this was the first time he had been truly surprised. Even shadows out of time and space could be. Then all his eyes turned to awe and he barely still whispered:
“But how? The very world seems to warp around this thing. As if it is not, truly.”
I pondered that a moment and then suddenly had an idea:
“Konge. Imagine: what if this is connected to you world? A portal, so you can go back?”
He seemed to wonder for a moment, as if layers of doubt, certainty he would never see his ‘darling’ again, slowly fell away. After maybe 10 seconds, he looked almost twice taller, let out a strange warble, and jumped right past me into the back of the throne.
Only to tumble out the other side in a loud crash. I rushed over to him.
“You alright? Why were you so sure?” I asked as I helped him up.
“Oh I win again.” He shook his head and corrected, “Lose, Erin. Lose.” Something seemed not right, but after a few moments he seemed to flex and tried again.
“I lose again. Sorry. I have seen this grey glow before, on the planet Yith far away. It is what brought me here, to your world.” With that he seemed spent, and all but collapsed on himself, and me.
Just when I more or les stumbled out of the heap of me-and-Konge, the blue glows rose anew, and the area was lit up.
Two figures, blue flames stretching behind them like wings.
“Well well Bist, cher ami, what have we here, precious?” the one said.
“Alesso, you speak in riddles. And I am Alvaro. Bistami is gone for a thousand years.” The other retorted.
“Pah, did not the Throne offer eternity? Also it’s Amzad.” Alesso, or was it Amzad, said again.
I was, by this point, thoroughly confused. Konge seemed to have regained some sense of himself, peering out from the heap his collapsed form still was. Still, these madmen, the legendary Blue Ones?
“Names are irrelevant.” Intoned one of the two.
“So it is. The Throne is breached.” Replied the other.
“Wait!” I shouted. “The prophecy promised me this Throne. Do not stop me!”
Konge seemed to have gotten himself together, somewhat, and stood up to stand next to me, carefully staying away from the Throne itself. Support felt useful, and I gave him a thankful nod.
“We would not, we would not.” One of them replied.
“The Pain. The horror.” Said the second.
“Gommog. Gommog!” grunted both, as if pronouncing a throat ache.
The blue lights flared up, and suddenly I saw jade-coloured statues lining the wall. Behind me, two reddish statues seemed to take on a life of their own, as if moving to intercede.
“Say it not!” One of the blue ones whispered.
“Agreed. No more!” The other said, returning to more normal volume. The flames slowly died behind them.
“Are you mad? This is my throne!” I told the two, hoping I could steer the conversation.
“Yours?” One asked, wondering.
“Yours?” The other said, in a dubious tone.
“Yes, mine. And I will win. The prophets have foreseen it” I emphasized.
“Yours.” Confirmed one, now.
“The sisterhood has been wrong before, from time to time.” Retorted the other.
“Sisterhood? It was a man who foretold it. And I will take what is mine!” I exclaimed.
“Yours.” One confirmed, again. Was it the same one?
“Take it how? You have not the fire. Would you take it by blood?” The second said.
Fire? I thought? Blood? Nothing of the sort? Madmen they were, indeed.
“I am Erin daughter of Mara, and I say this throne is mine. Thrice said and done!”
“Yours.” Intoned one solemnly.
“Yours.” Droned the other.
With that they stepped forward, grabbed my arms, and then suddenly, one stabbed me with a knife.
I felt myself drifting away. Drifting out. I saw Konge try to push the Blue Ones aside. To get to me.
I was dragged up, onto the platform, while Konge was pushed down, fell off the steps.
Suddenly, the pressure on my arm lifted. I was free. Or was I?
I felt myself being pulled, pulled towards the throne. As if with a snap, I crashed down.
“Hail she who sits the Throne of Heaven.” Drawled one of the brothers.
“And good riddance.” The other said.
Suddenly the blue flames vanished, and both brothers fell over. Dead? Their flesh seemed to be turning slowly to ashes. But then I saw… one of them had fallen over another corpse. A woman. Wait.
That was me! I tried to scream, but no sounds came out, just a long, eerie wind blowing away the ashes of the two Blue Ones, leaving just bones. Konge, laying on his side, maybe bleeding out. And myself. My body. Dead!
Looking down, I saw myself, too. Sitting on this silver, ghostly throne. Then a rattling, ahead.
Suddenly the two Blue Ones stood up again, skeletal remains inside a ghostly mist.
Konge, too. Dead, then. Never to return to his darling Tania. Never to bring Todd back home.
And others. From the cave came more skeletons, some with wounded bones giving lie to my idea that I had cracked dead branches on the way in.
And from the statues, the sounds of creaking joints as they, too, awoke by an ancient command.
Konge stepped towards me and said:
“Lady of the Silver Throne of Heaven, Queen of the Twilight world. What is your command?”
The Blue Ones stepped forth and said:
“Lady of the Silver Throne of Heaven, can we at last march on the Iron Throne of Heaven, where our proud brother dwells among automatons? He is quite mad, he is.” And if to emphasise the point, one of them gave that a ghostly cackle.
And so on, skeleton after skeleton hailing me as Lady, and as Queen for some, asking or supporting until legions stood as one.
And I. I felt nothing. Dreamed nothing. Wanted nothing, but to take back my foolish words. The ghostly, silvery throne beneath me. Cold. Hard. Dead.
Or was it? This legion. Could it do my bidding? Save Ruth from her misery. Bring Alisa back from the dead. Bring an end to suffering.
And what more power lay hidden in this throne? Under my right hand I felt patterns, and suddenly I knew what they could do. I could send a blast from here through the Elder Gates, to slay that pompous Priest. I could summon a group of Lemurs and kill the greedy Duke. And the Imass, who could move as a cloud of dust and reassemble to destroy Lewisholm and all its treacherous thieves.
Yes. I knew now. Power was mine.
But then, in the void. A blinking light. A red shine. And a fiery roar went through my legion.
“Who seeks to command the Silver Throne? Who would deny Gothmog, its true master?”
Skeletons clattered to the ground, stunned or destroyed, and a great demon walked towards my throne. Even the statues seem to shiver, though for now they stood.
“I am Erin, Lady of the Silver Throne. Queen of the armies, of the lemurs, of the dead men. And your age is long past.”
“My age is yet to come, child.” Roared the demon again. Konge and the blue ones shattered, and I was alone. “I was, I am, and I will be.”
With that the demon pressed forward, and I anxiously gripped the throne, apparently hitting some other pattern. From behind me, tendrils of mist suddenly drifted forward, took shape. And I knew. They whipped out, and trapped the demon before me. One closed its mouth, others held its arms and legs.
And suddenly, I was free. I stood up, and circled the demon.
“For one whose time is to come, you seem surprisingly weak. My name is Erin. Daughter of Mara. I am the right hand of vengeance. I am Death Incarnate.”
I gazed out of the cave with a sense of, perhaps, sadness, and said:
“I have seen warships on fire off the cape of Orionde. I saw the Sea Legion shattered in the dark for Tan Howler’s hate. All those moments will remain with me, like insects in amber. Now. Time to die.”
And with that, the two red statues jumped forward, and hewed the demon to pieces, its essence absorbed into the mist.
Defence successful, I set about reassembling the tattered remnants around me. Konge, my friend. The Blue-ish brothers, mad as they had been in life. And so many more. I summoned Lemurs. I sent out Imass scouts.
We marched out. Silent. Dead. Deadly.
Before us, a world at our feet. We would end want. We would end hunger. We would end pain, and misery. We would break the wheel.
And as we stepped out of the cave, midnight at midwinter, the trees around us shivered. Cracked, fell. Died.
The squirrels. Died, and reassembled by ghostly vines. For brief moments mushrooms sprouted, but they too blackened died.
A howl rose, a tornado of energy, and in came the life and misery and pain of this world.
In death, all are equal. And I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.
The Silver Throne and the Blue Ones circle the Stars
(The author emphasises the deliberate misuse of character names. Any character named here is the sole interpretation of the author. It probably has nothing to do with the original creator’s intent)
Or: something about sincere flattery
The sunset all but invaded the cave we, Erin and Konge, were standing in, darkness coming in a single flash on this darkest night. I looked at the shadow that hid the familiar alien’s face, the impersonator that stood where Todd should have been, and though I knew he could see just fine, it seemed his eyes were elsewhere.
“What is it, Konge?” I asked, blowing on my hands to keep the freezing cold out.
“sst. Erin.” He whispered, “Do you not see? Down the cave?”
He moved what was probably his arm vaguely towards the right, and now I, too, saw an eerie shadow. A gray flash, a ghostly tendril of mist, slowly crept out of the darkness into my view, as outside the last hints of twilight faded to naught.
“So this is the place? What we’ve been searching for, since Alisa died? The place only visible in the heart of darkness?”
I glanced back out of the cave one last time, just in case it was my last ever, and nodded.
“A misty cave with an eerie inner light, Tan said before he died. Let’s go, Konge, and find whatever destiny this ‘Throne’”, I all but sneered the word, “is worth.”
We snuck into the darkness, slowly creeping on in the vague shine of the greyish mist. Konge seemed little affected by it all and took measured paces, but I kept stumbling on dead, brittle wood.
After what seemed like half an hour, finally the vague grey tendril began to coalesce into a high seat in the distance.
“You figure that’s the throne, Konge?” I blurted out.
“I said quiet,” he somehow snapped his whisper, before continuing more softly, “Do you think the Blue Ones won’t come after us? As they snatched Bran?”
As if to emphasise his point, it seemed a glow rose at the entrance of the cave behind us, and through the ground I felt a rhythmic shake.
“Sorry,” I whispered back, “Do you think there is anywhere to hide?”
He moved his head in vague assent and said:
“Yes, Erin. We have passed dozens of caves in the dark. But, they’ll just wait at the throne for our return. And the next opportunity will only be in a year.”
With that he set off again, picking up his pace. Duly chastised, and worried beside, I followed, wincing every time another branch snapped under my foot.
It took perhaps another hour to reach the Throne.
“It seems time itself is warped around this throne.” Konge stammered as we finally reached its base.
“Time, warped? How?” I retorted lamely.
“Oh child. Mass. Energy. Power, for lack of a better term. How else could a throne no taller than your head be clearly visible an hour off?” At that Konge nodded, as if he had learned a good deal, and circled around the back of the seat.
“Look closer! Do you see the stars shining out? This Silver Throne seems to be a throne of the very Heavens!”
I could but agree. Yes, this seemed like the stars themselves shone out, dimly, but I felt attracted to march towards it, pulled as if to the ground itself. As Konge made a second loop around I stepped forward, trying to climb up to sit on this rising Throne. The steps leading to the dais were solid enough, but as my hand touched the armrest I felt only a vague resistance, and with my next step I managed to step into the edge of the throne itself.
“Konge, look!” I whispered, startled.
He looked up, and for all I knew, this was the first time he had been truly surprised. Even shadows out of time and space could be. Then all his eyes turned to awe and he barely still whispered:
“But how? The very world seems to warp around this thing. As if it is not, truly.”
I pondered that a moment and then suddenly had an idea:
“Konge. Imagine: what if this is connected to you world? A portal, so you can go back?”
He seemed to wonder for a moment, as if layers of doubt, certainty he would never see his ‘darling’ again, slowly fell away. After maybe 10 seconds, he looked almost twice taller, let out a strange warble, and jumped right past me into the back of the throne.
Only to tumble out the other side in a loud crash. I rushed over to him.
“You alright? Why were you so sure?” I asked as I helped him up.
“Oh I win again.” He shook his head and corrected, “Lose, Erin. Lose.” Something seemed not right, but after a few moments he seemed to flex and tried again.
“I lose again. Sorry. I have seen this grey glow before, on the planet Yith far away. It is what brought me here, to your world.” With that he seemed spent, and all but collapsed on himself, and me.
Just when I more or les stumbled out of the heap of me-and-Konge, the blue glows rose anew, and the area was lit up.
Two figures, blue flames stretching behind them like wings.
“Well well Bist, cher ami, what have we here, precious?” the one said.
“Alesso, you speak in riddles. And I am Alvaro. Bistami is gone for a thousand years.” The other retorted.
“Pah, did not the Throne offer eternity? Also it’s Amzad.” Alesso, or was it Amzad, said again.
I was, by this point, thoroughly confused. Konge seemed to have regained some sense of himself, peering out from the heap his collapsed form still was. Still, these madmen, the legendary Blue Ones?
“Names are irrelevant.” Intoned one of the two.
“So it is. The Throne is breached.” Replied the other.
“Wait!” I shouted. “The prophecy promised me this Throne. Do not stop me!”
Konge seemed to have gotten himself together, somewhat, and stood up to stand next to me, carefully staying away from the Throne itself. Support felt useful, and I gave him a thankful nod.
“We would not, we would not.” One of them replied.
“The Pain. The horror.” Said the second.
“Gommog. Gommog!” grunted both, as if pronouncing a throat ache.
The blue lights flared up, and suddenly I saw jade-coloured statues lining the wall. Behind me, two reddish statues seemed to take on a life of their own, as if moving to intercede.
“Say it not!” One of the blue ones whispered.
“Agreed. No more!” The other said, returning to more normal volume. The flames slowly died behind them.
“Are you mad? This is my throne!” I told the two, hoping I could steer the conversation.
“Yours?” One asked, wondering.
“Yours?” The other said, in a dubious tone.
“Yes, mine. And I will win. The prophets have foreseen it” I emphasized.
“Yours.” Confirmed one, now.
“The sisterhood has been wrong before, from time to time.” Retorted the other.
“Sisterhood? It was a man who foretold it. And I will take what is mine!” I exclaimed.
“Yours.” One confirmed, again. Was it the same one?
“Take it how? You have not the fire. Would you take it by blood?” The second said.
Fire? I thought? Blood? Nothing of the sort? Madmen they were, indeed.
“I am Erin daughter of Mara, and I say this throne is mine. Thrice said and done!”
“Yours.” Intoned one solemnly.
“Yours.” Droned the other.
With that they stepped forward, grabbed my arms, and then suddenly, one stabbed me with a knife.
I felt myself drifting away. Drifting out. I saw Konge try to push the Blue Ones aside. To get to me.
I was dragged up, onto the platform, while Konge was pushed down, fell off the steps.
Suddenly, the pressure on my arm lifted. I was free. Or was I?
I felt myself being pulled, pulled towards the throne. As if with a snap, I crashed down.
“Hail she who sits the Throne of Heaven.” Drawled one of the brothers.
“And good riddance.” The other said.
Suddenly the blue flames vanished, and both brothers fell over. Dead? Their flesh seemed to be turning slowly to ashes. But then I saw… one of them had fallen over another corpse. A woman. Wait.
That was me! I tried to scream, but no sounds came out, just a long, eerie wind blowing away the ashes of the two Blue Ones, leaving just bones. Konge, laying on his side, maybe bleeding out. And myself. My body. Dead!
Looking down, I saw myself, too. Sitting on this silver, ghostly throne. Then a rattling, ahead.
Suddenly the two Blue Ones stood up again, skeletal remains inside a ghostly mist.
Konge, too. Dead, then. Never to return to his darling Tania. Never to bring Todd back home.
And others. From the cave came more skeletons, some with wounded bones giving lie to my idea that I had cracked dead branches on the way in.
And from the statues, the sounds of creaking joints as they, too, awoke by an ancient command.
Konge stepped towards me and said:
“Lady of the Silver Throne of Heaven, Queen of the Twilight world. What is your command?”
The Blue Ones stepped forth and said:
“Lady of the Silver Throne of Heaven, can we at last march on the Iron Throne of Heaven, where our proud brother dwells among automatons? He is quite mad, he is.” And if to emphasise the point, one of them gave that a ghostly cackle.
And so on, skeleton after skeleton hailing me as Lady, and as Queen for some, asking or supporting until legions stood as one.
And I. I felt nothing. Dreamed nothing. Wanted nothing, but to take back my foolish words. The ghostly, silvery throne beneath me. Cold. Hard. Dead.
Or was it? This legion. Could it do my bidding? Save Ruth from her misery. Bring Alisa back from the dead. Bring an end to suffering.
And what more power lay hidden in this throne? Under my right hand I felt patterns, and suddenly I knew what they could do. I could send a blast from here through the Elder Gates, to slay that pompous Priest. I could summon a group of Lemurs and kill the greedy Duke. And the Imass, who could move as a cloud of dust and reassemble to destroy Lewisholm and all its treacherous thieves.
Yes. I knew now. Power was mine.
But then, in the void. A blinking light. A red shine. And a fiery roar went through my legion.
“Who seeks to command the Silver Throne? Who would deny Gothmog, its true master?”
Skeletons clattered to the ground, stunned or destroyed, and a great demon walked towards my throne. Even the statues seem to shiver, though for now they stood.
“I am Erin, Lady of the Silver Throne. Queen of the armies, of the lemurs, of the dead men. And your age is long past.”
“My age is yet to come, child.” Roared the demon again. Konge and the blue ones shattered, and I was alone. “I was, I am, and I will be.”
With that the demon pressed forward, and I anxiously gripped the throne, apparently hitting some other pattern. From behind me, tendrils of mist suddenly drifted forward, took shape. And I knew. They whipped out, and trapped the demon before me. One closed its mouth, others held its arms and legs.
And suddenly, I was free. I stood up, and circled the demon.
“For one whose time is to come, you seem surprisingly weak. My name is Erin. Daughter of Mara. I am the right hand of vengeance. I am Death Incarnate.”
I gazed out of the cave with a sense of, perhaps, sadness, and said:
“I have seen warships on fire off the cape of Orionde. I saw the Sea Legion shattered in the dark for Tan Howler’s hate. All those moments will remain with me, like insects in amber. Now. Time to die.”
And with that, the two red statues jumped forward, and hewed the demon to pieces, its essence absorbed into the mist.
Defence successful, I set about reassembling the tattered remnants around me. Konge, my friend. The Blue-ish brothers, mad as they had been in life. And so many more. I summoned Lemurs. I sent out Imass scouts.
We marched out. Silent. Dead. Deadly.
Before us, a world at our feet. We would end want. We would end hunger. We would end pain, and misery. We would break the wheel.
And as we stepped out of the cave, midnight at midwinter, the trees around us shivered. Cracked, fell. Died.
The squirrels. Died, and reassembled by ghostly vines. For brief moments mushrooms sprouted, but they too blackened died.
A howl rose, a tornado of energy, and in came the life and misery and pain of this world.
In death, all are equal. And I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.
Author #3
The moon had hidden her face, as was expected. Midsummer was the shortest day and the longest night. Despite that, darkness didn’t reign then. Intellectually, Than knew that. Emotionally, he was very, very afraid.
Thankade decided that he would go to the festival at the capital. He was far luckier than most people - he was a member of the royal family, after all. Still, even he feared the longest of nights. No sane person didn’t. This day felt like the most dangerous of days, although he only had the barest inkling as to why.
Thankade was young, and this was the first day he had ever been allowed outside during Midsummer. He had fought in wars, but even doing so little as going to Midsummer Festival was forbidden to all men and women under the age of 25. Nobody was told why outside of the Midsummer Festival, and sharing any information about that was strictly forbidden.
Thankade couldn’t see what the big deal was. Many of his race (for he was not so naive as to think they were alone in the universe - ancient history was quite clear on that) killed before they knew the secrets of Midsummer. In addition, those secrets were limited to a select few clans - no other clan was invited to the Festival. He couldn’t understand why, though - surely whatever secrets the shortest day held could be told to the general populace?
There were some of his friends who believed it was a way to keep power in the clans that could attend, but he doubted that. History proved otherwise.
Still, Thankade was anxious to know what the big deal was. He knew that his race had a primal fear of darkness, but that didn’t explain the extreme secrecy and safety that surrounded Midsummer. It was a primal fear, but it was a foolish one.
Regardless, he would gain his answers tonight. He had been raised knowing about what was required for the Midsummer Festival. He needed a weapon and fur to wear. In theory, that was all. However, his mother, Thaqager, helped run the Festival. She had never given him advice for his first 24 cycles of life in spite of that. Still, she had advised him to bring multiple weapons this year.
When he had asked why, she had responded that it might be necessary. Any attempts to get further information got him the simple reply, “The Midsummer Festival is secret, and it must remain secret”. Occasionally, though, that would be followed by mutterings. The only two phrases he could ever figure out from amongst these mutterings were “they’re getting stronger” and “Midsummer is the longest night”. The way she murmured the latter phrase made the words sound like a proper name - an evil name.
Ultimately, he decided to bring two weapons - his sword and his bow - to the Festival. He was ready for it by the time when the sun had reached the top of its arc in the sky - around high noon. After that, he practiced with his sword to pass the time. Midsummer was the shortest day, but it was still a day.
Even despite this distraction, the hours dragged on at an excruciatingly slow pace. Curiosity made Midsummer seem like it lasted for days.
Finally, the sun dipped below the horizon. Thankade finally heard his mother’s call, and he readied his horse. It was as they were riding towards the Festival’s location that he finally learned something about it. He learned its location. It apparently occurred near his home - the capital, Thapolis. Specifically, it occurred where the Gjarian River crossed into the Jungle of the Aziraphiles.
Thankade and Thaqager rode in silence after this revelation. Thankade had no clue where in the Jungle of the Aziraphiles he was supposed to go, but he figured it couldn’t be too far in. That jungle was practically abandoned, and, for some reason, it had not been inhabited by civilized peoples for eons - in fact, the last time it was under the control of a centralized authority of any kind was during the legendary Age of the Aziraunos.
They arrived only a little after the sun had left the sky. However, something about the area he was in felt off to Thankade. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why he felt off, but he was most definitely uncomfortable. That was why he was all too happy to oblige when his mother told him to stay put.
When his mother returned and told him that this was where their clan was staying until the Midsummer Festival officially began, his unease didn’t abide. He felt unwelcome here. As the night wore on, his unease caused him to hear voices. “Usurper,” they whispered. “Thief. Weakling. Upstart.”
His mother seemed to have been hearing the same voices, as she simply told him, “Wait. The voices will stop in due time, and they only have the power to harm your mind. Ignore them, and they can never damage you.”
“Why are we camping here, then?” he asked. “If there is mind magic here, wouldn't it be safer to camp elsewhere? In a place where magic cannot corrupt us?”
“No such place exists,” Thaqager replied. “This is the first trial for our clan - each clan has a series of trials at Midsummer. That is the reason - the only reason - why only a select group of clans participate in the Festival. It has not to put those clans over the rest of our race, although it often achieves that.”
“If we must go through a series of trials,” he began. “What is the Midsummer Festival itself? Why is it called a festival? Merely as a cover?”
“No,” his mother responded. “You will see the true reason soon enough. The Festival hasn’t begun yet. To enter, each clan must face these trials. Three trials, always: a Trial of Mind, a Trial of Body, and a Trial of Truth. Passing all three is what marks you as a true member of your clan.”
That made sense to Thankade. He had always felt that those of his immediate family who experienced their first Midsummer Festival seemed older somehow, more dignified. He had believed that he was merely imagining things. If the Festival doubled as a Coming of Age ritual, though, that made sense.
For a few hours, they sat there, listening. They ignored the weird voices, and those eventually petered out. He had expected to feel relief, but he felt nothing.
“Come,” his mother whispered to him. “We have passed the Trial of Mind, but our bodies have not yet been anointed.”
Anointed, he thought. Anointed in - or by - what? Curious, he followed.
The jungle opened up into a clearing, and his mother stopped. Why? He didn’t have much time to think on that, though. His question was swiftly answered.
A striped creature lunged at him, and he drew his sword and defended against it. It backed up quickly before it lunged at him again. This time, he couldn’t block. The creature’s claws raked over his face, and he hissed in pain.
He needed to end this battle quickly. His face already stinged, and he would drop due to pure exhaustion soon. He needed to kill the creature, and he needed to do it quickly. He couldn’t be prey. He refused to be eaten by an animal!
Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to beat this animal with raw strength. All his instincts had been screaming at him to run, so, perhaps, he should listen to them.
As he looked around at his surroundings, though, he quickly realized that there was nowhere he could hide. It was as if reality had changed to accommodate the creature’s needs. He was no longer in a clearing in the middle of the jungle. To his back, there was a river. To his left, there was an enormous wall of brick. The animal - was it even an animal? And if it wasn’t, what was it? - was in front of him. To his right, trees formed a wall of their own. There was no escape.
Thankade sighed. He couldn’t win this through a contest of brute strength. Perhaps, though, he could win it by cunning? If he failed, he was an animal’s dinner, but he was going to be that anyway. This was his only hope of escape.
In truth, he wasn’t that worried about Thaqager. She probably had experience in this sort of thing. And truthfully, heaven help him, he valued his own life more than he did his mother’s.
Wait, he thought.Wasn’t this supposed to be a Trial of Body? Why did he have to survive a Trial of Body by cunning - a trait of the mind?
As he thought that, the animal lunged again. Thankade managed to dodge, but only barely. Think, he berated himself. How do you kill a creature of this kind? Should I hit its pelt? Will it back off then?
It was worth a try. When the creature lunged again, he drove his sword into its pelt, but his blade bounced off the pelt. He was so shocked that he barely had time to dodge the creature’s claws - or, rather, his face barely had time to dodge its claws. They still hit him.
The right side of his body erupted in pain. That didn’t… ow, ow!... work, he thought. It seems that I am injured any time it… ow, ow!... gets close. Ow. How can I attack… ow, ow!... it before it gets close?
He looked forward, and, to his utter shock, it looked like the creature wasn’t lunging. It seemed as if it was giving him time to think. It couldn’t be doing that… could it?
He reminded himself that he had a weapon other than a sword. Could that work? Could he simply shoot the creature?
It was worth a try, anyway. He drew his bow and waited. The creature’s pelt was impenetrable, but, maybe, just maybe, its mouth wasn’t. Why would the creature open its mouth? The only reason that he could think of was to eat. He couldn’t be the target, though, so what should he offer it?
Slowly, he began to form a plan. He would offer the creature his right hand and hope he took the bait.
He used his sword to cut off the hand, and he was suddenly very relieved that he was left-handed. He threw the hand at the creature, and the creature opened its mouth. He fired an arrow from his bow. He couldn’t fail this shot. The alternative was death. Back then, he hadn’t believed that there were fates worse than death.
The shot hit the mouth. The creature died, and it died, it howled. It howled a wolfish growl. As it died, reality also shifted, and he was back in the clearing.
“That is not good,” his mother said. “If they have multiple Trials of Body, that means that things are getting very, very bad.”
She looked at him. “Trial by Sentience?” he heard her murmur. “The Nemean Wolf? This is very bad.”
Then, louder, she directed him to follow her.
They marched through long stretches before they mysteriously stopped. “Why are we stopping?” he asked. “I see nothing.”
“Don’t look,” his mother replied. “Listen. We must answer truthfully, and we must remember - that - this - is the Trial of Truth.”
“What truths will I learn?” he asked.
“Many,” his mother replied. “And none of them are good… our clan must acknowledge - and remember - our sins. Most of all, though, we must repent.”
Finally, he heard a question. “Who deposed the azuriunos,” the wind asked. “Who deposed the protectors out of their own pride alone?”
“We did,” Thaqager replied. “The Tha Clan did. That was our foremost sin.”
“And what did that decision lead to?” the wind asked. “What consequences were there? And was it worth the cost? Was power or even freedom worth the cost?”
“That released the imprisoned,” Thaqager replied. “That destroyed the protections. That made our world a nightmare. It wasn’t worth it. Even freedom would never be worth it.”
“And you?” The voice on the wind asked him directly. “Do you acknowledge your clan’s sins? Will you repent of them? Will you keep the nightmare away?”
“Yes,” he responded, and, with a start, he realized that he meant it.
“Then pass,” the voice said. “Live. Enjoy the festival itself.”
Both mother and son walked down the path. Finally, they came upon a vast clearing.
“Go on,” Thaqager told him. “Celebrate. Eat, drink, and be merry, for your life will likely be short. Play, for this might be your last chance. Our world is a nightmare. Gods help us all.”
The moon had hidden her face, as was expected. Midsummer was the shortest day and the longest night. Despite that, darkness didn’t reign then. Intellectually, Than knew that. Emotionally, he was very, very afraid.
Thankade decided that he would go to the festival at the capital. He was far luckier than most people - he was a member of the royal family, after all. Still, even he feared the longest of nights. No sane person didn’t. This day felt like the most dangerous of days, although he only had the barest inkling as to why.
Thankade was young, and this was the first day he had ever been allowed outside during Midsummer. He had fought in wars, but even doing so little as going to Midsummer Festival was forbidden to all men and women under the age of 25. Nobody was told why outside of the Midsummer Festival, and sharing any information about that was strictly forbidden.
Thankade couldn’t see what the big deal was. Many of his race (for he was not so naive as to think they were alone in the universe - ancient history was quite clear on that) killed before they knew the secrets of Midsummer. In addition, those secrets were limited to a select few clans - no other clan was invited to the Festival. He couldn’t understand why, though - surely whatever secrets the shortest day held could be told to the general populace?
There were some of his friends who believed it was a way to keep power in the clans that could attend, but he doubted that. History proved otherwise.
Still, Thankade was anxious to know what the big deal was. He knew that his race had a primal fear of darkness, but that didn’t explain the extreme secrecy and safety that surrounded Midsummer. It was a primal fear, but it was a foolish one.
Regardless, he would gain his answers tonight. He had been raised knowing about what was required for the Midsummer Festival. He needed a weapon and fur to wear. In theory, that was all. However, his mother, Thaqager, helped run the Festival. She had never given him advice for his first 24 cycles of life in spite of that. Still, she had advised him to bring multiple weapons this year.
When he had asked why, she had responded that it might be necessary. Any attempts to get further information got him the simple reply, “The Midsummer Festival is secret, and it must remain secret”. Occasionally, though, that would be followed by mutterings. The only two phrases he could ever figure out from amongst these mutterings were “they’re getting stronger” and “Midsummer is the longest night”. The way she murmured the latter phrase made the words sound like a proper name - an evil name.
Ultimately, he decided to bring two weapons - his sword and his bow - to the Festival. He was ready for it by the time when the sun had reached the top of its arc in the sky - around high noon. After that, he practiced with his sword to pass the time. Midsummer was the shortest day, but it was still a day.
Even despite this distraction, the hours dragged on at an excruciatingly slow pace. Curiosity made Midsummer seem like it lasted for days.
Finally, the sun dipped below the horizon. Thankade finally heard his mother’s call, and he readied his horse. It was as they were riding towards the Festival’s location that he finally learned something about it. He learned its location. It apparently occurred near his home - the capital, Thapolis. Specifically, it occurred where the Gjarian River crossed into the Jungle of the Aziraphiles.
Thankade and Thaqager rode in silence after this revelation. Thankade had no clue where in the Jungle of the Aziraphiles he was supposed to go, but he figured it couldn’t be too far in. That jungle was practically abandoned, and, for some reason, it had not been inhabited by civilized peoples for eons - in fact, the last time it was under the control of a centralized authority of any kind was during the legendary Age of the Aziraunos.
They arrived only a little after the sun had left the sky. However, something about the area he was in felt off to Thankade. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why he felt off, but he was most definitely uncomfortable. That was why he was all too happy to oblige when his mother told him to stay put.
When his mother returned and told him that this was where their clan was staying until the Midsummer Festival officially began, his unease didn’t abide. He felt unwelcome here. As the night wore on, his unease caused him to hear voices. “Usurper,” they whispered. “Thief. Weakling. Upstart.”
His mother seemed to have been hearing the same voices, as she simply told him, “Wait. The voices will stop in due time, and they only have the power to harm your mind. Ignore them, and they can never damage you.”
“Why are we camping here, then?” he asked. “If there is mind magic here, wouldn't it be safer to camp elsewhere? In a place where magic cannot corrupt us?”
“No such place exists,” Thaqager replied. “This is the first trial for our clan - each clan has a series of trials at Midsummer. That is the reason - the only reason - why only a select group of clans participate in the Festival. It has not to put those clans over the rest of our race, although it often achieves that.”
“If we must go through a series of trials,” he began. “What is the Midsummer Festival itself? Why is it called a festival? Merely as a cover?”
“No,” his mother responded. “You will see the true reason soon enough. The Festival hasn’t begun yet. To enter, each clan must face these trials. Three trials, always: a Trial of Mind, a Trial of Body, and a Trial of Truth. Passing all three is what marks you as a true member of your clan.”
That made sense to Thankade. He had always felt that those of his immediate family who experienced their first Midsummer Festival seemed older somehow, more dignified. He had believed that he was merely imagining things. If the Festival doubled as a Coming of Age ritual, though, that made sense.
For a few hours, they sat there, listening. They ignored the weird voices, and those eventually petered out. He had expected to feel relief, but he felt nothing.
“Come,” his mother whispered to him. “We have passed the Trial of Mind, but our bodies have not yet been anointed.”
Anointed, he thought. Anointed in - or by - what? Curious, he followed.
The jungle opened up into a clearing, and his mother stopped. Why? He didn’t have much time to think on that, though. His question was swiftly answered.
A striped creature lunged at him, and he drew his sword and defended against it. It backed up quickly before it lunged at him again. This time, he couldn’t block. The creature’s claws raked over his face, and he hissed in pain.
He needed to end this battle quickly. His face already stinged, and he would drop due to pure exhaustion soon. He needed to kill the creature, and he needed to do it quickly. He couldn’t be prey. He refused to be eaten by an animal!
Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to beat this animal with raw strength. All his instincts had been screaming at him to run, so, perhaps, he should listen to them.
As he looked around at his surroundings, though, he quickly realized that there was nowhere he could hide. It was as if reality had changed to accommodate the creature’s needs. He was no longer in a clearing in the middle of the jungle. To his back, there was a river. To his left, there was an enormous wall of brick. The animal - was it even an animal? And if it wasn’t, what was it? - was in front of him. To his right, trees formed a wall of their own. There was no escape.
Thankade sighed. He couldn’t win this through a contest of brute strength. Perhaps, though, he could win it by cunning? If he failed, he was an animal’s dinner, but he was going to be that anyway. This was his only hope of escape.
In truth, he wasn’t that worried about Thaqager. She probably had experience in this sort of thing. And truthfully, heaven help him, he valued his own life more than he did his mother’s.
Wait, he thought.Wasn’t this supposed to be a Trial of Body? Why did he have to survive a Trial of Body by cunning - a trait of the mind?
As he thought that, the animal lunged again. Thankade managed to dodge, but only barely. Think, he berated himself. How do you kill a creature of this kind? Should I hit its pelt? Will it back off then?
It was worth a try. When the creature lunged again, he drove his sword into its pelt, but his blade bounced off the pelt. He was so shocked that he barely had time to dodge the creature’s claws - or, rather, his face barely had time to dodge its claws. They still hit him.
The right side of his body erupted in pain. That didn’t… ow, ow!... work, he thought. It seems that I am injured any time it… ow, ow!... gets close. Ow. How can I attack… ow, ow!... it before it gets close?
He looked forward, and, to his utter shock, it looked like the creature wasn’t lunging. It seemed as if it was giving him time to think. It couldn’t be doing that… could it?
He reminded himself that he had a weapon other than a sword. Could that work? Could he simply shoot the creature?
It was worth a try, anyway. He drew his bow and waited. The creature’s pelt was impenetrable, but, maybe, just maybe, its mouth wasn’t. Why would the creature open its mouth? The only reason that he could think of was to eat. He couldn’t be the target, though, so what should he offer it?
Slowly, he began to form a plan. He would offer the creature his right hand and hope he took the bait.
He used his sword to cut off the hand, and he was suddenly very relieved that he was left-handed. He threw the hand at the creature, and the creature opened its mouth. He fired an arrow from his bow. He couldn’t fail this shot. The alternative was death. Back then, he hadn’t believed that there were fates worse than death.
The shot hit the mouth. The creature died, and it died, it howled. It howled a wolfish growl. As it died, reality also shifted, and he was back in the clearing.
“That is not good,” his mother said. “If they have multiple Trials of Body, that means that things are getting very, very bad.”
She looked at him. “Trial by Sentience?” he heard her murmur. “The Nemean Wolf? This is very bad.”
Then, louder, she directed him to follow her.
They marched through long stretches before they mysteriously stopped. “Why are we stopping?” he asked. “I see nothing.”
“Don’t look,” his mother replied. “Listen. We must answer truthfully, and we must remember - that - this - is the Trial of Truth.”
“What truths will I learn?” he asked.
“Many,” his mother replied. “And none of them are good… our clan must acknowledge - and remember - our sins. Most of all, though, we must repent.”
Finally, he heard a question. “Who deposed the azuriunos,” the wind asked. “Who deposed the protectors out of their own pride alone?”
“We did,” Thaqager replied. “The Tha Clan did. That was our foremost sin.”
“And what did that decision lead to?” the wind asked. “What consequences were there? And was it worth the cost? Was power or even freedom worth the cost?”
“That released the imprisoned,” Thaqager replied. “That destroyed the protections. That made our world a nightmare. It wasn’t worth it. Even freedom would never be worth it.”
“And you?” The voice on the wind asked him directly. “Do you acknowledge your clan’s sins? Will you repent of them? Will you keep the nightmare away?”
“Yes,” he responded, and, with a start, he realized that he meant it.
“Then pass,” the voice said. “Live. Enjoy the festival itself.”
Both mother and son walked down the path. Finally, they came upon a vast clearing.
“Go on,” Thaqager told him. “Celebrate. Eat, drink, and be merry, for your life will likely be short. Play, for this might be your last chance. Our world is a nightmare. Gods help us all.”
Author #4
Long is the day and long is the night, and long is the waiting of Arawn
Madmen and sinners, the walkers by night;
To live speak my name, and spare you I must,
Initial secret, its fear well-founded!
- Midwinter comes fast and now all is dust.
Scions of winter, war-host of Annwn;
Armor of faith or self-righteous intent,
Nothing will ever their dread fury tame!
- Two short their victims to hide in convent.
Dense snowy mist-gate, to underworld opens;
Tether your life to the world without fail,
History of old belongs to the fey!
- Triplets of secrets will not save the frail.
Eagle-eyed hunter, the grey-maned Arawn;
Evade the bites of the hounds infernal,
Nine leagues survive, before daylight, try!
- Fail me and join the wild hunt eternal.
Long is the day and long is the night, and long is the waiting of Arawn
Madmen and sinners, the walkers by night;
To this you must pay, your full attention!
Whence your vim essence, regretting nothing?This truth is final: all else illusion.
Daylight is fading, the horn is sounded:To live speak my name, and spare you I must,
Initial secret, its fear well-founded!
- Midwinter comes fast and now all is dust.
Scions of winter, war-host of Annwn;
Torn out of dreaming, rising in vengeance!
Nightfall yields ever sensations extreme,Yearly the shortest, day is receding.
Longest the night is, now hunt in my name:Armor of faith or self-righteous intent,
Nothing will ever their dread fury tame!
- Two short their victims to hide in convent.
Dense snowy mist-gate, to underworld opens;
Sleep not or tarry, embracing your doom!
Y'blood will flow free, y'heart fall silent,Airting the Hell-bound, soul the Cŵn Annwn.
Wrought by their master, souls of their man-prey:Tether your life to the world without fail,
History of old belongs to the fey!
- Triplets of secrets will not save the frail.
Eagle-eyed hunter, the grey-maned Arawn;
Bleak is the night of your vindication!
Bold are your red-eyed alaunts enchanted,Eager and baying, their prey is running.
Stalked by swift slayers, for justice is nigh:Evade the bites of the hounds infernal,
Nine leagues survive, before daylight, try!
- Fail me and join the wild hunt eternal.
Author #5
I was four years old when my father died, quite suddenly, in the middle of the night.
It was, by the coroner’s account, quite the terrible thing. His heart had seized and collapsed in his chest. His position and condition indicated he had endured agony of the senses for some time before oblivion reached him and pulled him into the arms of Death. It was not an uncommon occurrence, the medical man had said, but he could be damned if he could find any cause for him being in such a state. A hale man of thirty, who had that week been passed by his own physician, was the unlikeliest victim of organ failure.
However, as is the way of things, interest of the living waned swiftly, till by the time of his obituary and burial, few were much concerned with the nature of his passing, rather than that he had passed at all.
I myself never discovered this particular aspect of my father’s death, but till just a week ago, perhaps non-coincidentally, at the burial of my mother. Her maiden aunt, an almighty woman of ninety-three years of age, accosted me minutes into the ceremony and did not let up in her chatter until late that evening, when the feeling of the occasion finally it seemed entered her soul.
It was a great shame, she said, that which befell our family. And yet she could not deny that they had been warned, and warned extensively, on the dangers of their occupation. My curiosity, slow to rouse after hours of slumber, begged her explain her curious indictment upon her dearly departed. Oh, she said to never mind her. As is the way of things, as soon as the old bat had said something of interest, was the moment she clammed up. After some time entreating her, with liberal amounts of illicit liquor and faux-kindness, she continued.
“I suppose you know nothing about it. Young types never do. No, but then! I suppose we were younger when we started. More fool us. More…fool…us. No. I will speak no more about it. It’s heathen practice. Savage practice. And then when the damnable thing takes me and all, it will be done with. And that, my boy, is for the best. More fool us, indeed.”
The old dear was insensible. She alternated between rhapsody and melancholy, and seemed inches from her own departure, and from leaping and dancing in ecstasy. Such was the state of her that several friends and relations saved her and I from further discussion, and I found later on that she had indeed fallen ill, though was expected to recover presently.
Still, I was chilled by the encounter, the event, the snow that beat down the path I trod towards my late mother’s dwelling. Never before had my mind been so repulsed and enthralled by so little, and even now, it seemed that furtive and shadowy thoughts flickered and dashed in the corners of my vision. Indeed! Several times I recall turning in the road, heart in throat, convinced I was pursued by the demented fates of which my ancient aunt spoke. The road was empty of course, it was a frosty night, and by the time I reached the front door I felt foolish indeed by my fancy. The day, I supposed, had worn on me, and my humour was out of balance with my reason.
What had a man such as I to fear from even those that prowl the streets at night?
I went about lighting the lamps and the fires within the house, now absent an owner till the reading of the will. Still, there was a pull to my childhood residence I was unwilling to countenance. It had been many moons since I had last spent an hour in the place, let alone a night. My mother was practically a recluse in what were to be her final years, though she had, at least, kept up with domestic maintenance. I am unsure why I expected the hall to be awash with unfiled letters and spindled cobwebs, but it was not so. For a dead woman’s home, it was disarmingly pleasant to my eyes.
The garden however, was a disaster of weed and burnt ash. Heaven knows what had been going on back behind the house, but a not-insignificant fire had clearly roared not long prior. And all the trees were now dead, and in various stages of dismantlement in the heathen fashion. More curious still, and quite at odds with the cleanliness of the abode, was the dead dog staked to the ground by two great white wooden shards. It was a pitiful sight. The creature had been alive when the deed was done, judging by the foaming mouth and the gnashes of earth upturned by his paws. And such paws! Larger than my hand across. The beast was singularly massive, which made it all the more impressive that it had been so successfully pinned by unknown forces.
Had my mother done that? What on earth could have possessed her?
Turning my back on the scene, I strode back into the house and prayed I would not be the one to clean that affair up. The banality of the quiet, tidy rooms struck me rather queer, after the image of death and destruction just outside. I was no longer sure which was indicative of the previous owner’s true nature. Sudden death tended to pollute a place, so people said.
Her bedroom was unlocked and untouched. The sheets on which she died still lay on the bed. I wondered whether that taint was tangible. Did they reek? Could a layperson tell, if given the fabric to touch? I hesitated, and then stroked a small area, where the head may have laid. Once.
She was gone, then.
I sighed and made for the office. It was very black now, and the shadows coated the walls like thick paint. Locked. Locked? The only room to have been barred thus far. Perhaps that was not unreasonable, given the papers that might lie beyond. Most of my mother’s affairs would be behind that door, and presumably further solidly locked boxes and cupboards. Idly, I wondered how much the dog must have cost.
The door opened, almost by its own accord, as I put the barest pressure on the wood itself as I turned to walk back the way I came. Curious. It was the only door in the house that made a sound at all, the rest having been superbly well-oiled by clever hands and fingers. My mother had it seemed made the employ of some youth since last I visited. I did not find much patience for children, especially those of such exotic blood. Still, they were some good for work, if they did not take to thievery or idleness as was their wont.
The clearly malfunctioning lock gave me little hope for honesty. Dirty little beast!
The chamber was a little colder than the rest of the house. It had its own hearth, unlit. Mist already caked the bottom of the windows, and I repressed a shiver in the dark room. A light was not to be found. There was no lamp nor candle, to my mild surprise, anywhere within the room. Yet the desk had clearly been in constant usage. The absent flowing piles of papers and chaotic mess I found lacking in the rest of the house had apparently all congregated here upon the table. And it was stacked without rhyme or reason, as I spied recipe from stores along the waterfront flung next to loosened scrawling on pre-Civil War river boating.
There were books as well, not just from fine authors of repute but those curious journals and editorials from distant lands. I saw French, Spanish, German and several other languages I could not ascertain, all haphazardly flung about the place as if the reader had in the midst of reading suddenly ejaculated a great passion of feeling and could read no more. It is a rare book to cause such a reaction, and to see several treated in such a way by my retiring old mother was disarming, to say the least.
It was, I thought then, entirely possible that my mother had gone slightly deranged in her dotage.
But it was truly too dark to see properly, with what little light from the hallway flickering eerily across every surface. I brought back a candle, and resolved to at least make some semblance of order here before retiring to bed. I certainly could not sleep with such disorder in the house.
When next I came to my senses, the light had long since fluttered out of life. I and the office both were blanketed by the oily dark of night. It was now freezing, the hint of chill turned most severe by the worsening weather outside and the lack of provision within for holding it back. It ached to move, and yet I did so as swiftly as I could, having little wish to spend any further time in that room. It was an unnerving place, so coated in knowledge that the paper seems to speak its secrets aloud, in the softest of whispers.
The door had shut and had, through disuse, sealed itself again to my entreaties of entry. The lock within was an old and shameful thing. Looking at it with frustration, I reeled back from the whole thing with surprise. Unlike the hall-side, this door panel was repleted with carvings, of many shapes and sizes. So many the carver, whomever they were, had began to run out of room and begun carving the scrawl upon the lock and handle also.
The effect was bizarre on first glance, and then that unusual fear began to enter along my spine. It was a curious sensation, but my body reacted with great anticipation towards the sight of such a door with such things cast upon it. And, I raised the hand that had touched it – yes, a residue of some kind of oil or grease coated the lot, giving the object a peculiar glimmer, a foul odour and a wet feel. Not blood. Nor any other bodily fluid. I knew those well enough. Still, it was an organic substance of some kind.
I was anxious to release myself from the confines of the room. Eager enough to brave the door once more. I rapped and I banged and I worked but the door would not inch. Perhaps in forcing the lock one time too many, as I had when I entered, I had broken the damnable thing entirely. Forced entry was never my strong suite. The hinges were on this side of the frame however so I and my knife made quick work of them.
The door stood, unsupported in the frame.
Now thoroughly vexed, I kicked the door once, twice, to no avail. I had not left this house via window in many a year, but it seemed increasingly likely that it was necessary. As I stepped over however, the view from outside halted me before I left the shadows.
It seemed I had been followed after all.
Three men (I assumed, from their manner) in winter wear battered hard by the elements, lounged and smoked quietly in the street. One of them was always looking at the front door, and another could not stop glancing up at my window, the office window, that had until some time ago been lit from within. They were presumably not thieves, nor cut-throats, since they had not approached me in the street nor made into the house when I had obviously slept.
I sighed, again. The thing to be done, the obvious thing, would be to wait until morning, and enlist aid from a passer-by. Unfortunately, the weather had not let up and it seemed likely I would have been snowed in regardless, but these three fellows added a further complication. The snub of the candle was relit, and joined by a fresh one. It seemed fate would have it that I finished my accounting of my mother’s mad collection. If nothing else, I reflected, looking ruefully at the door, I wasn’t going anywhere yet.
The clock chime made me pause in my labours. I had nearly completed the task as it sounded the hour. The fourth day since my mother’s passing had just begun.
The door remained upright, maddeningly so. The beings outside had been reduced to faint outlines smudged against the blizzard. And the desk was now clear of all but a single pile, mostly comprised of newspaper clippings. They did not seem partially relevant or parallel to each other, either. One on a fire in some bunkhouse up past the Metz. Another of a train crash near Chicago. Another of an advertisement, quarter-page full, thanking some or some such for anonymous donation and renumerations. The only piece of much interest to me was an older record of the end of the war, in which I recognised two names from a unit I had crossed paths with. And here, another on certain persons accommodated with valour and bravery at the Capital. My own account. For some reason, an article on a black preacher in Arizona. It was a surprise, both for that, and that it was not reporting his sudden disappearance but success in rebuilding a congregation back from the brink of barbarism.
I put down the clippings, somewhat disgusted and disappointed in my mother. For a great mind to be reduced to random mutilation of dailies was a tragic thing. The desk was now clear, which was now why I could see a smaller but no less detailed carving much as on the door, placed in the centre of the table. Using her lens, I could make out slightly more recognisable notation there, the odd Greek symbol and Latin incantation, though the broader meaning escaped me.
The wind, that had lulled dangerously for a few minutes as I sat, returned with a vengeance, whipping the house. I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable and weary, when several loud pops and creaks sounded from outside, followed by an almighty crashing and shattering. The night chill penetrated the house more keenly, and the wind became that much more unbearably loud. I supposed, in shock, that one of the ancient trees newly weakened by dismemberment had been uprooted by the storm and flung through the wall of the kitchen.
The place must look a sorry state, and would look all the worse in the morning. I imagine horrified onlookers taking in the charred yard, dead hound, ruined wall with interior packed with fresh snow. Hopefully there would not be a frozen corpse in the upstairs office but it was looking increasingly likely that there might. My worry made me move again, this time my body aching against the bitter cold, to try to light the hearth once more.
I froze as the howling began.
Was it the wind, possessed by the spirit of vengeance and ungodly practice? Was it the effect of the blizzard working its way through my ruined home, tearing up all it touched? Was it the ghast of the mutt, returned, restored, now the opportunity to enact some retribution had fallen, quite literally, beside its chilled remains?
I chanced a look through the window. It was difficult, fogged on both sides by cold, but the visage below was no comfort. The oily blackness of the night was disturbed only by the constant snowfall, and in-between the snow and the ground seemed to me to be hundred, thousands, of shapes and sizes of figures, waiting in the street. I could see no details. I rubbed my eyes and strained to look, hard as it was. No, there was nothing. And yet they were there. And they were watching.
The wind had managed to blow open another door downstairs. Or one smashed wide, anyhow. From the feel of things, the storm had managed to reach the stairs. The noise was getting louder. The stench of the corpse, so much more potent in the icy midst, clung in my mouth and my nose. It baffled my senses all the more, till through that and the cold I could barely reason let alone see. And yet the spectres outside grew in number, unmoving though they were.
And still the howling drew closer. Now at the door.
Hot breath, the last vestiges of life, blew in my face as I lay on the floor.
Bleak Mid-Winter
I was four years old when my father died, quite suddenly, in the middle of the night.
It was, by the coroner’s account, quite the terrible thing. His heart had seized and collapsed in his chest. His position and condition indicated he had endured agony of the senses for some time before oblivion reached him and pulled him into the arms of Death. It was not an uncommon occurrence, the medical man had said, but he could be damned if he could find any cause for him being in such a state. A hale man of thirty, who had that week been passed by his own physician, was the unlikeliest victim of organ failure.
However, as is the way of things, interest of the living waned swiftly, till by the time of his obituary and burial, few were much concerned with the nature of his passing, rather than that he had passed at all.
I myself never discovered this particular aspect of my father’s death, but till just a week ago, perhaps non-coincidentally, at the burial of my mother. Her maiden aunt, an almighty woman of ninety-three years of age, accosted me minutes into the ceremony and did not let up in her chatter until late that evening, when the feeling of the occasion finally it seemed entered her soul.
It was a great shame, she said, that which befell our family. And yet she could not deny that they had been warned, and warned extensively, on the dangers of their occupation. My curiosity, slow to rouse after hours of slumber, begged her explain her curious indictment upon her dearly departed. Oh, she said to never mind her. As is the way of things, as soon as the old bat had said something of interest, was the moment she clammed up. After some time entreating her, with liberal amounts of illicit liquor and faux-kindness, she continued.
“I suppose you know nothing about it. Young types never do. No, but then! I suppose we were younger when we started. More fool us. More…fool…us. No. I will speak no more about it. It’s heathen practice. Savage practice. And then when the damnable thing takes me and all, it will be done with. And that, my boy, is for the best. More fool us, indeed.”
The old dear was insensible. She alternated between rhapsody and melancholy, and seemed inches from her own departure, and from leaping and dancing in ecstasy. Such was the state of her that several friends and relations saved her and I from further discussion, and I found later on that she had indeed fallen ill, though was expected to recover presently.
Still, I was chilled by the encounter, the event, the snow that beat down the path I trod towards my late mother’s dwelling. Never before had my mind been so repulsed and enthralled by so little, and even now, it seemed that furtive and shadowy thoughts flickered and dashed in the corners of my vision. Indeed! Several times I recall turning in the road, heart in throat, convinced I was pursued by the demented fates of which my ancient aunt spoke. The road was empty of course, it was a frosty night, and by the time I reached the front door I felt foolish indeed by my fancy. The day, I supposed, had worn on me, and my humour was out of balance with my reason.
What had a man such as I to fear from even those that prowl the streets at night?
I went about lighting the lamps and the fires within the house, now absent an owner till the reading of the will. Still, there was a pull to my childhood residence I was unwilling to countenance. It had been many moons since I had last spent an hour in the place, let alone a night. My mother was practically a recluse in what were to be her final years, though she had, at least, kept up with domestic maintenance. I am unsure why I expected the hall to be awash with unfiled letters and spindled cobwebs, but it was not so. For a dead woman’s home, it was disarmingly pleasant to my eyes.
The garden however, was a disaster of weed and burnt ash. Heaven knows what had been going on back behind the house, but a not-insignificant fire had clearly roared not long prior. And all the trees were now dead, and in various stages of dismantlement in the heathen fashion. More curious still, and quite at odds with the cleanliness of the abode, was the dead dog staked to the ground by two great white wooden shards. It was a pitiful sight. The creature had been alive when the deed was done, judging by the foaming mouth and the gnashes of earth upturned by his paws. And such paws! Larger than my hand across. The beast was singularly massive, which made it all the more impressive that it had been so successfully pinned by unknown forces.
Had my mother done that? What on earth could have possessed her?
Turning my back on the scene, I strode back into the house and prayed I would not be the one to clean that affair up. The banality of the quiet, tidy rooms struck me rather queer, after the image of death and destruction just outside. I was no longer sure which was indicative of the previous owner’s true nature. Sudden death tended to pollute a place, so people said.
Her bedroom was unlocked and untouched. The sheets on which she died still lay on the bed. I wondered whether that taint was tangible. Did they reek? Could a layperson tell, if given the fabric to touch? I hesitated, and then stroked a small area, where the head may have laid. Once.
She was gone, then.
I sighed and made for the office. It was very black now, and the shadows coated the walls like thick paint. Locked. Locked? The only room to have been barred thus far. Perhaps that was not unreasonable, given the papers that might lie beyond. Most of my mother’s affairs would be behind that door, and presumably further solidly locked boxes and cupboards. Idly, I wondered how much the dog must have cost.
The door opened, almost by its own accord, as I put the barest pressure on the wood itself as I turned to walk back the way I came. Curious. It was the only door in the house that made a sound at all, the rest having been superbly well-oiled by clever hands and fingers. My mother had it seemed made the employ of some youth since last I visited. I did not find much patience for children, especially those of such exotic blood. Still, they were some good for work, if they did not take to thievery or idleness as was their wont.
The clearly malfunctioning lock gave me little hope for honesty. Dirty little beast!
The chamber was a little colder than the rest of the house. It had its own hearth, unlit. Mist already caked the bottom of the windows, and I repressed a shiver in the dark room. A light was not to be found. There was no lamp nor candle, to my mild surprise, anywhere within the room. Yet the desk had clearly been in constant usage. The absent flowing piles of papers and chaotic mess I found lacking in the rest of the house had apparently all congregated here upon the table. And it was stacked without rhyme or reason, as I spied recipe from stores along the waterfront flung next to loosened scrawling on pre-Civil War river boating.
There were books as well, not just from fine authors of repute but those curious journals and editorials from distant lands. I saw French, Spanish, German and several other languages I could not ascertain, all haphazardly flung about the place as if the reader had in the midst of reading suddenly ejaculated a great passion of feeling and could read no more. It is a rare book to cause such a reaction, and to see several treated in such a way by my retiring old mother was disarming, to say the least.
It was, I thought then, entirely possible that my mother had gone slightly deranged in her dotage.
But it was truly too dark to see properly, with what little light from the hallway flickering eerily across every surface. I brought back a candle, and resolved to at least make some semblance of order here before retiring to bed. I certainly could not sleep with such disorder in the house.
…
When next I came to my senses, the light had long since fluttered out of life. I and the office both were blanketed by the oily dark of night. It was now freezing, the hint of chill turned most severe by the worsening weather outside and the lack of provision within for holding it back. It ached to move, and yet I did so as swiftly as I could, having little wish to spend any further time in that room. It was an unnerving place, so coated in knowledge that the paper seems to speak its secrets aloud, in the softest of whispers.
The door had shut and had, through disuse, sealed itself again to my entreaties of entry. The lock within was an old and shameful thing. Looking at it with frustration, I reeled back from the whole thing with surprise. Unlike the hall-side, this door panel was repleted with carvings, of many shapes and sizes. So many the carver, whomever they were, had began to run out of room and begun carving the scrawl upon the lock and handle also.
The effect was bizarre on first glance, and then that unusual fear began to enter along my spine. It was a curious sensation, but my body reacted with great anticipation towards the sight of such a door with such things cast upon it. And, I raised the hand that had touched it – yes, a residue of some kind of oil or grease coated the lot, giving the object a peculiar glimmer, a foul odour and a wet feel. Not blood. Nor any other bodily fluid. I knew those well enough. Still, it was an organic substance of some kind.
I was anxious to release myself from the confines of the room. Eager enough to brave the door once more. I rapped and I banged and I worked but the door would not inch. Perhaps in forcing the lock one time too many, as I had when I entered, I had broken the damnable thing entirely. Forced entry was never my strong suite. The hinges were on this side of the frame however so I and my knife made quick work of them.
The door stood, unsupported in the frame.
Now thoroughly vexed, I kicked the door once, twice, to no avail. I had not left this house via window in many a year, but it seemed increasingly likely that it was necessary. As I stepped over however, the view from outside halted me before I left the shadows.
It seemed I had been followed after all.
Three men (I assumed, from their manner) in winter wear battered hard by the elements, lounged and smoked quietly in the street. One of them was always looking at the front door, and another could not stop glancing up at my window, the office window, that had until some time ago been lit from within. They were presumably not thieves, nor cut-throats, since they had not approached me in the street nor made into the house when I had obviously slept.
I sighed, again. The thing to be done, the obvious thing, would be to wait until morning, and enlist aid from a passer-by. Unfortunately, the weather had not let up and it seemed likely I would have been snowed in regardless, but these three fellows added a further complication. The snub of the candle was relit, and joined by a fresh one. It seemed fate would have it that I finished my accounting of my mother’s mad collection. If nothing else, I reflected, looking ruefully at the door, I wasn’t going anywhere yet.
…
The clock chime made me pause in my labours. I had nearly completed the task as it sounded the hour. The fourth day since my mother’s passing had just begun.
The door remained upright, maddeningly so. The beings outside had been reduced to faint outlines smudged against the blizzard. And the desk was now clear of all but a single pile, mostly comprised of newspaper clippings. They did not seem partially relevant or parallel to each other, either. One on a fire in some bunkhouse up past the Metz. Another of a train crash near Chicago. Another of an advertisement, quarter-page full, thanking some or some such for anonymous donation and renumerations. The only piece of much interest to me was an older record of the end of the war, in which I recognised two names from a unit I had crossed paths with. And here, another on certain persons accommodated with valour and bravery at the Capital. My own account. For some reason, an article on a black preacher in Arizona. It was a surprise, both for that, and that it was not reporting his sudden disappearance but success in rebuilding a congregation back from the brink of barbarism.
I put down the clippings, somewhat disgusted and disappointed in my mother. For a great mind to be reduced to random mutilation of dailies was a tragic thing. The desk was now clear, which was now why I could see a smaller but no less detailed carving much as on the door, placed in the centre of the table. Using her lens, I could make out slightly more recognisable notation there, the odd Greek symbol and Latin incantation, though the broader meaning escaped me.
The wind, that had lulled dangerously for a few minutes as I sat, returned with a vengeance, whipping the house. I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable and weary, when several loud pops and creaks sounded from outside, followed by an almighty crashing and shattering. The night chill penetrated the house more keenly, and the wind became that much more unbearably loud. I supposed, in shock, that one of the ancient trees newly weakened by dismemberment had been uprooted by the storm and flung through the wall of the kitchen.
The place must look a sorry state, and would look all the worse in the morning. I imagine horrified onlookers taking in the charred yard, dead hound, ruined wall with interior packed with fresh snow. Hopefully there would not be a frozen corpse in the upstairs office but it was looking increasingly likely that there might. My worry made me move again, this time my body aching against the bitter cold, to try to light the hearth once more.
I froze as the howling began.
Was it the wind, possessed by the spirit of vengeance and ungodly practice? Was it the effect of the blizzard working its way through my ruined home, tearing up all it touched? Was it the ghast of the mutt, returned, restored, now the opportunity to enact some retribution had fallen, quite literally, beside its chilled remains?
I chanced a look through the window. It was difficult, fogged on both sides by cold, but the visage below was no comfort. The oily blackness of the night was disturbed only by the constant snowfall, and in-between the snow and the ground seemed to me to be hundred, thousands, of shapes and sizes of figures, waiting in the street. I could see no details. I rubbed my eyes and strained to look, hard as it was. No, there was nothing. And yet they were there. And they were watching.
The wind had managed to blow open another door downstairs. Or one smashed wide, anyhow. From the feel of things, the storm had managed to reach the stairs. The noise was getting louder. The stench of the corpse, so much more potent in the icy midst, clung in my mouth and my nose. It baffled my senses all the more, till through that and the cold I could barely reason let alone see. And yet the spectres outside grew in number, unmoving though they were.
And still the howling drew closer. Now at the door.
Hot breath, the last vestiges of life, blew in my face as I lay on the floor.