LotS/The Story/Music of the Spheres
<tabber>
"Intro"= Extract from Major Daniel Caruthers, A Gentleman's Forays into the Dark Continent (London: Wellsbury Publishing, 1874)
I decided that I'd quite like to shoot a hippopotamus.
This particular quarry recommended itself for several reasons, but two above all others. The first was that I'd never destroyed one of those creatures before, and like a bellicose Noah I rather fancied the idea of being able to declare, upon my return to England, that I had slain two of every animal I encountered. The second was that the creatures are large, powerful beasts, with a reputation for ferocity. Indeed, the natives seemed to fear them above even the large cats and other such predators with whom they shared their uncivilized land. Therefore I believed hunting and dispatching one might impress the pretty missionary woman.
Perhaps some of my readers will be aghast at the impropriety involved in my desire to win the admiration and indeed (I shall make no attempt to deceive) affection of a lady whose husband had but recently perished in the circumstances described in my prior chapter (alas, we never did find the savage responsible for throwing the spear which claimed his life that night). However, please remember that I hadn't lain with a civilised woman for many months. Given that state of affairs, her handsomeness was magnified many times over in my eye and heart, until she might have been Aphrodite herself. I simply had to try my hand and see if I could make her forget that tiresome prig whose wife she had been and widow newly become.
When I explained my intention to Judith Ashdown (by which I mean, of course, that of hunting the hippopotamus, not my amorous designs directed at her person), she expressed disapproval. She said that she and her late husband had chosen to accompany me in the hope of reaching native villages unmolested (naturally William's unfortunate demise left this hope well and truly dashed, though I was tactful enough not to mention this fact), not so she could witness my prowess as a sportsman. I must confess, when she spoke the word 'prowess', in that delightful accent of hers, it sent something of a tingle up and down my spine. Nor was the glint of annoyance in her eyes without its effect on her beauty and my infatuation. Nevertheless, I resolved to make peace. I concocted some laughable deception about how I needed to slaughter a hippopotamus so that I might report certain details of its physiognomy to a professor of biology at Cambridge, a fictitious fellow whom I claimed as an acquaintance. Furthermore, I vowed that after performing this most scientific endeavour I would take her to a village which was in particular need of Jesus and all his works.
Though she had demonstrated such a lack of enthusiasm for my proposed hunt, I didn't expect this demeanour to withstand the sight of me standing atop the animal's carcass with my rifle slung over my shoulder. I knew full well, from experience, what effect such images had on any decent Englishwoman. Who among them, then or now, could be expected to resist the glorious vision of the empire's fine and bold champions triumphing over the beasts of a barbarous continent? Therefore I was quite satisfied with myself when we went out in search of our quarry.
My native retainers assured me that they knew of a place where we'd be likely to find one of the animals. As I had beaten and whipped them all several times, and thus filled each and every one of them with an appropriate respect for the British race in general and my own personage in particular, I knew I could rely upon them to do as they promised.
Those readers whose schoolmasters hammered the tongues of Homer and Virgil into their heads (as mine did, until my rather ignominious departure from my particular seat of learning) will be aware that the word 'hippopotamus' means 'river horse'. Therefore it was with etymological inexactitude but gratification nonetheless that after a few hours' trek we found ourselves gazing at the desired creature near the edge of a rather filthy looking lake.
It was a huge and corpulent being, fleshy and fat. Seeing it lying at such close quarters (for prior to this I had only glimpsed them from a distance), I was filled with no great awe. Compared with the rippling muscles of the lion, it appeared to be quite poor sport indeed. However, as its girth was prodigious and the teeth within its yawning jaws imposing enough, I decided it was still worth killing.
I asked Mrs. Ashdown to ensconce herself at the top of a nearby hill, from which she could witness my deeds without exposing herself to danger. Once she had withdrawn there, I commanded three of the natives to place themselves between the hippopotamus and the lake, to cut off its route of escape. They screamed and protested in their absurd language, demonstrating such cowardice as would bring scorn to any plucky British lip. I struck one in the face with the butt of my rifle, and bloodied his nose. This quelled his insubordination. When I threatened to shoot the next man who disobeyed me, the others came to heel as well. I knew Judith would demand an explanation for the act of violence she must have observed from the hill behind me, but I also knew I could avert her wrath by saying I'd struck him for making lascivious remarks about her.
The three coloured fellows skirted around the lazy, wallowing thing, giving it a wide berth, then stationed themselves where I'd instructed. There they raised their spears, and formed a rather poor line of battle.
The hippopotamus moved with far greater speed than I would have imagined possible given its stature. It was as if the sight of the natives roused it to battle. It charged them as a rhinoceros might have, and caused horrendous carnage. One of them met his death at the creature's jaws. Another was trampled. The third, who had perhaps gained some small measure of bravery through his time in my service and his exposure to English courage, thrust his spear into the animal's eye before he was smashed aside.
I fired my elephant gun at the creature, and scored a tremendous hit. I had no doubt that the wound would prove mortal, but to ensure the beast's destruction I ordered the rest of my retainers to the attack, hastening them into the fray with kicks and cuffs.
The bellowing, raging hippopotamus performed laudably given its injuries. It killed three more before it succumbed to the jabbing spears and a few more shots from my rifle. I clipped a fourth native in the course of my shooting, when the poor fool put himself in my line of fire. Luck was on my side, however. The creature's girth hid his demise from Judith's sight, and after his body was trampled all evidence of my part in his death was hidden.
In all, seven of my servants were slain by the time the hippopotamus flopped onto its side and was duly finished off. An eighth lay wounded, and pleaded with me to take him back to town so that he could be treated. However, as I had no intention of so inconveniencing myself and the good lady, and as his body seemed broken beyond mending, I instead put him out of his misery. It transpired that one of the other coloured fellows was his brother. He waved his spear at me and became quite belligerent, so I was forced to dispatch him as well. Mrs. Ashdown was fortunately descending the further side of the hill, where footing was surer, and didn't witness these deeds.
I had lost nine of my retinue. However, as natives were in plentiful supply, I knew I could replace them easily enough. What was far more vexing was that Judith, when she approached the scene and saw me striking my most heroic pose atop the creature's carcass, gave me no words of praise or encouragement. Nor did she swoon into my arms, as perhaps I'd hoped. Indeed, she seemed more concerned with the loss of life among the servants (though she didn't notice that three of them bore bullet wounds). For some absurd reason she held me responsible for this, as though they wouldn't have met their deaths soon enough, likely as not, in that dark and dangerous part of the world. Women can be such foolish and illogical creatures.
Judith Ashdown's manner was frosty that night in camp. She persisted in reading from her Bible rather than engaging in conversation which I might have used to soften her heart and make her more amenable to a romantic tryst. So I resolved to be rid of her as soon as possible. Being a man of my word, this first meant taking her to those damnable villages so she could spread the Gospel, and seeing that she wasn't thrown into their cooking pots or else sold as a slave -- although in my less charitable moments, as I lay alone in my tent, I rather grinned at the thought of these potential occurrences.
In the morning we embarked for a village where, some months earlier, I'd been treated as an honoured guest. My rifle had helped subjugate a neighbouring settlement, the women of which were claimed as chattel by the victors. In return for this assistance, the chieftain had placed a splendid feast before me, and thrown one of the captives into my lap. Therefore I knew I could rely on him to endure Mrs. Ashdown's preaching, and perhaps even feign enough interest to take the fine edge off her missionary zeal.
I had one of the retainers run ahead of us, to make inquiries at the village and discover whether that chieftain still reigned. Much like our own politicians at home, African tribes often underwent changes of governance, albeit through spears and clubs rather than elections. It wouldn't have done to blunder into the place, only to find a new man in charge and ourselves regarded as foes to be slain rather than guests to be entertained.
The native scout returned to say that Piss-pot (as I rendered his ghastly name) was indeed still in charge of the place. Moreover, he was overjoyed to hear I was approaching, and implored me to come with all haste. I took this to mean he either intended to engage in a spot of pillaging or feared a stronger rival might come and do likewise. In either event, my marksmanship would have proven useful to him and no doubt rewarding to me (though I did wonder what Judith Ashdown might have said if I enjoyed the night in the company of another concubine). However, my assumptions proved unfounded, and the truth far more remarkable.
When we got near to the place, we heard the din of stamping feet and a babble of voices screeching in their click-clack lingo. Smoke was rising up over the village in a big grey pillar.
"What's happening?" Mrs. Ashdown asked.
"It's a ritual," I said. "Nothing to worry about."
She sniffed, with a good Christian woman's outrage for the native religions she'd come to do away with. I held them in no higher regard, of course, and at another time I might have tried to use our mutual disdain to win her good opinion. I was perturbed, however. The first of my statements to her had been veracious, the second a falsehood. Even then, before I knew what it all meant, there seemed to be something wrong. There had been a ritual dance as part of the victory celebrations I'd spoken of earlier. The native priests, Mrs. Ashdown's rivals in the matter of securing the salvation or damnation of souls, had worn their silly tassels and danced around a fire, shouting and chanting as if they were trying to breach the walls of Jericho. The screeching we heard then was something quite different. There was a franticness about it that was troubling enough to make me ready my rifle.
Piss-pot was waiting for us at the edge of the village. We could see the priests dancing behind him, around a big blazing fire. One of them cut a goat's throat and splashed its blood into the conflagration. Judith was horrified at the pagan spectacle, and if it hadn't been for the desperation in the chieftain's eyes I would have taken the opportunity to comfort her in my arms.
"What's going on here?" I asked, using his language.
"Evil spirits!" he said. He pointed at the priests. "You must help!"
I thought the fellow had taken leave of his senses, and expected me to pot those 'evil spirits' of his with my rifle like they were savages or game. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards a hut, his eyes so wild I came near to shooting him out of fear of what he might intend. Then he stopped and pointed at the shabby little dwelling.
"Listen!" he said. "Listen!"
It was damned hard to hear anything over the priests, but I just made it out. A little girl's voice was coming from inside, and it was speaking English.
"You devil!" I exclaimed. "You've taken a white girl prisoner?"
I pulled away from him and pointed my rifle between his eyes. His men and mine all raised their spears, and there were a lot more spear points aimed at me than at him. Piss-pot waved his warriors back, however.
"No! She's my daughter!" he said. "She is possessed! The evil spirit makes her speak the language of the white man!"
This seemed the most absurd and ridiculous falsehood, another of the childish and easily perceived lies I had heard from the Dark Continent's primitive denizens during my time there. Yet the man's face held genuine terror, and I saw no mendacity in his eyes. I went into the hut to ascertain the truth of the matter, keeping my rifle at the ready lest there be tribesmen lying in ambush within. There was only one person inside, however. A young child whose skin was as black as coal lay on a bed of furs, her eyes open but distant and unfocussed. A steam of nonsense came from her thick, dark lips. The meaningless phrases were all jumbled together, but in English that could have passed for a Briton's. I'd seen all forms of charlatanry in Africa, and come to regard their superstitions as a load of old rot. Yet I knew that no one in Piss-pot's village had learned our language, least of all this little slip of a girl.
Piss-pot and Judith came into the hut as well. Mrs. Ashdown's fingers were pale on her Bible, and she held the book out in front of her as if it were a talisman.
"She's speaking in tongues!" Judith said.
The little girl's head turned to her, perhaps drawn by the sound of another speaking the same language. The babble ended, and for a long, long moment the only noises were the chanting, shrieking, and stamping from outside. Then the child spoke a single word, an incomprehensible string of syllables which she intoned as if each were of incalculable importance.
"Cal-ak-see-a."
"Kalaxia!"
"KALAXIA!"
Grandmistress Emera Tresc intoned the name first, cast it forth as a simultaneous utterance of mouth and mind. It returned through the same channels in a chorus, repeated by the others around the table -- those who were present in the flesh, and those whose holographic heads floated disembodied above their chairs. The replies borne of sound reached her ears. The rest slipped into her consciousness without such crude biological intermediaries, tentacles of thought entangling and embracing her own, uniting in an instant of shared piety which a non-psionic could never have fathomed.
But the euphoria was short-lived
"Well?"
The grandmistress winced. That laconic question and accusation came from the projection of an ancient female face, a desiccated visage that was almost skeletal -- as though someone had draped thin, rough cloth over a fleshless skull and pulled it taut. Two cyan gemstones stared at Emera Tresc from lidless sockets, suffused with an inner glow which lent a blue-green tinge to the surrounding whiteness of the old woman's hair.
"Two of our people were killed on-" Emera began.
"I know that! Do you think we grope around in the dark until you see fit to speak to us?"
Emera's glance flicked to the other side of the table, where a solitary place was empty. She cursed herself inwardly in the next moment. Lady Victoria would see the breaking of eye contact (if those multifaceted monstrosities could even be called eyes) as a sign of weakness. Where was he, damn it?
"Who was responsible?"
The cyan gemstones accentuated the question with a searing flash, and the backs of the grandmistress' eyeballs itched as though thousands of miniscule mandibles were nibbling away at them. She thanked the wyrm-mother that her interlocutor was many millions of miles distant. Emera had met her in person only once. The sensation of the woman's old, slithering mind still festered in her memories.
"I..."
Every gaze was on her. Only Lady Victoria's was cold and challenging, but there was disquiet among many of the others. Al-Husam's left hand was under the table, and would be fiddling with his weapon's pommel as it always did when something perturbed him. Bonderbrand's big holographic jowls shook like those of a bulldog ready to chomp and tear. Multheru's inhuman eyes were inscrutable, his mind sealed. But the appendages above his maw twitched and curled in sequence like drumming fingers. Everyone was waiting.
Emera Tresc glanced at the empty place again. He'd said he would...
The hologram's appearance was sudden, an instantaneous manifestation as though she'd willed it into existence by the force of her desperation. She couldn't stop a small gasp escaping her lips. But it didn't matter. No one was watching her now. Bonderbrand, Al-Husam, Multheru, and all the others were staring at the newcomer as the grandmistress was. Emera shot a quick look at Lady Victoria, just long enough for a burst of satisfaction. The impatience and haughtiness were gone from the woman's skeletal face.
Noir's void-colored mask stared back at them, a smooth, featureless visage marred by a narrow peak which ran down its center, by a pair of eye slits that each shone with an azure glow, and by a splash of crimson. The latter was all the reassurance the grandmistress needed. It was fresh, still trickling down the blackness in half a dozen little rivulets.
"I was delayed." The words were soft, well-spoken, shaped by a strange and elegant accent. Yet there was another sound which underlay them. A second voice that was almost a growl. "He did not wish to speak. But in the end he screamed the truth."
"Who?" Emera asked.
She suppressed a shudder when Noir's azure slits turned to her.
"A man of no consequence. A detective who learned of things through chance and carelessness. But he gave the information to Arthur Lupin. The names of two of our initiates."
"Lupin?" Lady Victoria said. "The man's a pilferer. What would he want with our brothers' identities?"
"[Player Name] is his ally."
A murmur rippled around the table.
"You think [Player Name] killed them?" Bonderbrand asked. His jowls quivered and his teeth clacked.
"Yes."
[Player Name]... A series of overlapping images filled Emera Tresc's mind, one spawned by her memories and the others thrown into her thoughts by psionic voices from around the table. The gruesome death of the Sian Emperor, broadcast across human space in all its gore, played before her inner eye.
"Kasan..."
"Then she knows of us," the grandmistress said.
A fresh image appeared now. There was a room, filled with worshippers' corpses. Mistress Ornathe's body lay among them, one of her legs bent at a sickening angle, blood snaking from each of her ears in crusted, dried-up streams. So someone spoke before they died... Said enough for [Player Name] to know who her enemies were...
"We have been careless," Noir said. The azure slits flashed. "After so long as the hunters and searchers, we have forgotten what it is to have a strong adversary. One truly worthy of my attentions."
|-|
"Singer of the Song"= Singer of the Song
Screaming Barracuda's fingers hovered over her guitar's strings. She took a quick glance around the room. The lounge was mostly empty. It wasn't a popular route, and there were few other passengers aboard the ship. In the far corner, a teenage girl in cyber-gothic garb was gnawing away at the neck of a boy whose attire was similar but enthusiasm perceptibly less. Barracuda gave a mental shrug. Her playing might break their amorous mood, but from the looks of things the boy would welcome the reprieve. Some distance away, an orange Sussurra was drifting around inside his suit, making aimless little patterns of swirly gas. No, he wouldn't mind either.
Then the Piscarian musician's gaze met that of the woman who was sitting opposite her, on the other side of the room. She had a sleeping baby cradled in her arms. A small boy sprawled on the seat next to her, his slumbering head resting in her lap. There was a girl on the other side, perhaps a little older, equally somnolent. Their mother regarded Barracuda with a stare that seemed to say, 'If you do what it looks like you're thinking of doing, I'm going to kill you. And if the jury includes any parents, I'll get away with it.'
Barracuda sighed and put the instrument down. She needed to start bringing in more creds, so she could afford her own tour ship.
Since she couldn't pass the time by playing, she pulled out her datapad to see what people on the information networks were saying about her upcoming gig. However, the answer proved to be 'not very much'. She had to get a new publicist -- one who didn't work out of a grotty apartment above a pizza place, and whose other clients didn't largely consist of animals who performed amusing tricks.
Perhaps her fan mail would cheer her up...
She clicked the icon and watched the messages roll in like a series of tumbleweeds across a dusty prairie.
---
From: BarracudaHater78152
To: Screaming Barracuda
Subject: You Suck! Die! Die! Die!
Your music sucks! Stop playing! I hope you OD on something!
---
Barracuda typed out a reply:
---
From: Screaming Barracuda
To: BarracudaHater78152
Subject: Re: You Suck! Die! Die! Die!
Nice profile picture, douchebag. Let me guess... Your dad wanted a boy, your mum wanted an abortion, and they decided to compromise?
Hey, I see you live on Sian. I know people there. Send me another message and I'll have them come round and kick the crap out of you.
Piss off.
Screaming B
---
Clicking the 'send' button and launching the missive through cyberspace perked her up somewhat. She opened the next message.
---
From: Roxxor_Funk
To: Screaming Barracuda
Subject: Date
Hey! Remember me? I was the fan who kissed you on Mars. Then you hit me in the face with your guitar. Listen, I'm sorry, it was all a big misunderstanding. You're the hottest girl I've ever seen (and I've been to Cythera!). I kind of lost control when I saw you in person. I mean, I've touched myself so many times when I'm listening to your music, and every time it's like you're singing just for me.
But I'm really a great guy. I promise. You'll really like me when you get to know me. How about we go out, so I can make it up to you? I know we're meant to be together!
PS. I've attached a picture of my penis.
---
She opened the attachment. Not bad... Definitely better than most of the ones she got sent.
---
From: Screaming Barracuda
To: Roxxor_Funk
Subject: Re: Date
Thanks for the pic, but I'm really busy with my music right now, and don't have time for relationships.
Check out my latest album when it goes on sale next week. I think you'll really like touching yourself to some of those tunes.
Best wishes,
Screaming B
---
She sent the reply, then deleted the image -- remembering the advice her mother had once given her, when Barracuda had first announced her intention of becoming an interstellar rockstar: "If they find you dead in a hotel room, pumped full of chems, make sure you don't have anything lying around that would embarrass the family."
Her filial duty done, she opened the next message.
---
From: A_Friend_491
To: Screaming Barracuda
Subject: Urgent!
Don't delete this!
I know it sounds crazy, but you have to believe me -- you're in danger. Serious danger. I can't tell you more over the net. It's not safe. We need to meet in person.
I live in Destev, and I know you'll be here soon to play a gig. I'll explain everything. And I'll have one of your friends with me, so you'll know I'm not just a nut job.
Please, be careful. I don't know if they know yet, but when they do, they'll be out to get you.
---
She sighed. The sender's account was different this time, but the lunacy wasn't. This was the fourth message she'd had from him or her -- all warning Barracuda that she was in some sort of nebulous danger. And now it was worse. The freak lived in Destev, the very city she was heading towards. Crazy stalkers and other such weirdoes were all well and good over the net, but she had better things to do than get shot or stabbed to death at one of her gigs.
Screaming Barracuda deleted the message, then sent one of her own -- asking the venue's manager to put on extra security. With guns. Lots of guns.
And I'll have one of your friends with me...
Her cranial fin twitched, as the words replayed themselves in her mind. She shook her head. No... Just deranged ramblings. She'd heard it all before. It was just part of being an interstellar rockstar...
Kevin Arctora looked out of the window. The world beyond his sanctum was the same as it had always been. But now it seethed with even greater menace. The gleaming tower blocks were rows of mismatched teeth filling a monstrous maw, their dark masses speckled with squares and rectangles of illumination, scraps of gaudy flesh from the creatures they'd devoured. Soon, they seemed to say, soon they would swallow Kevin up as well.
He hadn't been outside for a long time. Not since... He glanced at the wall, at the papers and pictures and holographic screens mounted there. Research. Evidence. Terror. No, he didn't go outside anymore -- because he knew what kinds of things lurked there.
But now... He felt his intestines tighten. Something bubbled within his digestive tract. Soon he'd be out among them. Oh, God... What had he got himself into?
He flopped into the chair in front of his computer desk. No mail. She hadn't replied. Of course not. She'd think he was crazy. Hell, maybe he was. But when her friend arrived... Kevin shuddered. He'd spent years hiding away, earning his living over the net where a bullet couldn't find his brain or a knife his heart, and trying to spread the word as best he could without endangering himself. And now... Now he'd invited one of the most dangerous women in the galaxy to his apartment.
Some of the news reports called her a genocidal maniac. Others called her a hero. But whatever the label, the oceans of blood were the same. And yet if anyone could help Kevin Arctora, it was her. She knew Screaming Barracuda. The Piscarian would listen to her. Besides, who else but a killer could keep Kevin safe from...
He looked at the wall again.
When the door buzzer sounded, his body jerked so hard that he almost tipped his chair over.
Already? She'd forgotten to call first, like she'd said she would. Maybe she'd read Kevin's nervousness in his latest messages, and decided not to give him a chance to bolt.
Kevin took a deep breath. [Player Name] was here to help him... And it was too late to turn back.
The buzzer rang again. Kevin Arctora got up, and went to answer the door.
Silenced
"Watcher_851."
You say the name, pronouncing the underscore. Your helmet trills in recognition and makes the call via its built-in communicator -- leaving your hands free to guide the Dragon Cycle past some of the worst drivers you've ever had the misfortune to encounter. One of them makes an obscene gesture as you pass him by, which you return. He tries to sideswipe you by way of a counter-riposte, but you've already zipped past. The side of his car strikes against the barrier instead, with a shower of sparks and a screech of outraged metal.
The helmet bleeps for perhaps thirty seconds before you terminate the attempt. This is the second time you've tried calling him since you landed at the spaceport. Once, and he may have just been in the bathroom or something. But twice? With a recluse who never leaves his apartment? That's not good...
You twist the throttle and accelerate, speeding down the highway. The lights blur into long streams on either side, vehicles whoosh past as you zip between their metal masses. A sharp turn takes you onto a narrower road. Behind you a startled driver honks a horn that sounds like an angry duck.
A few minutes' riding and a few more turns, all punctuated by blaring horns and screamed profanities, bring you within sight of the location which flashes in the corner of your helmet's display. There are people gathered on the street ahead, babbling, pointing, and in some cases photographing and recording. You've seen enough of the galaxy to know what that kind of thing means.
You stop your bike, jump off, and approach the gawkers.
They're pressed up against a glowing yellow strip that extends across the sidewalk at chest height, between a pair of slender blue pillars. Police energy tape. In the space beyond it, detectives and forensics people are milling around a man's body. It lies in a pool of blood, limbs broken and twisted, amidst a scattering of broken grass which glints and sparkles like fine crystal. An upward glance reveals a broken window in the apartment building above.
You have no idea what Watcher_851 looks like. You don't even know his real name. But unless there's an absurd coincidence...
"They haven't sealed off the building," you say, gesturing at the door to the block. It lies outside the energy tape's cordon. There isn't even a cop standing guard there.
"He didn't have police insurance," replies a tall black guy with dreadlocks down to his waist. "The bastards don't care about people who don't pay."
One of the cops looks over and taps his visor -- presumably scanning the dreadlocked gentleman and confirming that he isn't a paying customer -- before sticking his middle finger up.
"If he died up there," he continues, "they wouldn't even have shown up. Privatized cops! What a fuc-"
He's still talking behind you as you slip away, and make for the unguarded doorway.
My earnest desire was to leave the village as swiftly as possible.
I have since been informed by learned men that there are rational explanations for a person suffering from certain mental derangements being able to speak in tongues which they have never been known to study. However, no such rationality or knowledge occupied my mind at the time of the exploits described. In the wilds of Africa, with the young girl's eyes swimming before my vision and pagan chants ringing within my ears, I admit that I wasn't entirely immune from the superstitious dread which had grasped hold of Piss-pot and the other villagers. Furthermore, I feared what the natives might do under the circumstances. The glaring, bloodshot gazes of his priests were filled with the terrible sort of fanaticism which may incite savages to any manner of atrocity. My association with the chieftain might not have been sufficient to restrain them from opening our throats over their fire, in the hope of satisfying whatever dark and monstrous gods were the objects of their entreaties.
Judith Ashdown was adamant, however. The very same circumstances which to me seemed to urge our departure were, to her, irresistible reasons to remain. She spoke of her unwillingness to desert a child in the midst of such plight, though I rather suspected she was also keen to proselytise through deed as it were. Triumphing over the supposed evil spirit with a Bible in her hands and a sanctimonious look on her face, and winning an innings for Christendom after the priests' own gods had retired from the wicket with a duck's egg, was the sort of thing missionaries lived for. Damn their priggish, pious hides, I thought! The lady told me that I was at liberty to do as I sought fit, but that she would stay in the village to call upon Jesus and whatnot.
This placed me in a rather unwelcome position. William Ashdown's demise had been unfortunate, but surely no one could have expected me to play nursemaid to a milksop of a man. With a woman, on the other hand, things were of course entirely different. Neither my conscience nor my reputation would have gone uninjured had I left her to be sacrificed by native priests or else gobbled up by discerning cannibals. Therefore I was forced to stay in Piss-pot's village and continue in my role as her guardian and protector.
Judith demanded that they put an end to their ritual, so that she might employ her own rather less boisterous faith without warring against their cacophony. Piss-pot proved surprisingly amenable to this. I suppose piety is all well and good after a victory, but less welcome when it seems to be doing no good. He may also have decided that an affliction which compelled his daughter to speak English might best be entrusted to an equally English solution. Whatever the reason, he went outside and shouted like Stentor himself. The chanting and dancing stopped, thank God (literally as well as figuratively, one supposes), and there followed a babble of chattering, malcontented voices.
I went to the hut's doorway to observe. The tasselled priests were gibbering, and all but jumping up and down in their excitement. Piss-pot was bellowing at them in return, and their voices got in such a tangle that even my knowledge of their lingo wasn't equal to the task of deciphering the conversation (if it could even be dignified as such). It rather reminded me of a parliamentary debate. Whilst it was going on, my eyes alighted on a tall savage who stood on the other side of the fire. He was an unpleasant enough wretch to look upon, with an ugly, scarred face and a thickset body that carried both the muscle of war and the fat of excess. Smoke half obscured him as it shifted and billowed, making his aspect positively infernal and leaving his hideous face floating amidst the rising tendrils so that it seemed like the countenance of a terrible phantom. He was silent, leaving the babbling to Piss-pot and the others.
When he finally spoke, in a deep, growling voice that reminded me of a lion, the rest of them shut up like schoolchildren whose master had just walked in holding his birch. Then he jumped clean over the fire, like a bloody racehorse, through the smoke and flames. The others gaped at him. It was a damned good jump, mad fool thing as it was, but I would later learn that they were taken aback for quite another reason. If a vicar stood up in his church and treated the altar as a hurdle, we would likely think he'd taken leave of his senses or been at the communion wine. Among the natives, however, leaping over the sacred fire was as significant an act as nailing theses to the door of a cathedral.
Even without knowing such things, the scene in front of me made me hold my breath and reach for the revolver at my belt. The scarred savage stood before Piss-pot, glaring at him as though he were about to eat him. Without the smoke between us, I could now see that his tassels were more elaborate than those the other priests wore, and between loincloth and neck his dark skin was smeared with white and yellow paint that seemed to echo and magnify the scars of his face. I took him to be the pontifex maximus of the tribe, as it were.
"You insult the gods!" the fellow said. "Only they can save your daughter, not the white god!"
"Silence, Walnut!" Piss-pot said. ('Walnut' was what the name sounded like, anyway.) "Your dancing and chanting have done nothing! The evil spirit still has her!"
They went back and forth, each of them shouting; Piss-pot about his rights as chief, Walnut about plagues and blasphemy and all sorts of other religious claptrap. Had the situation been less perturbing, I might have grinned at this primitive demonstration of the age-old struggle between statesmen and clergy. In the end, as so often occurs, the powers of this world overcame those of the next. Piss-pot waved one of his warriors over, snatched the spear from the man's hand, and brandished it over his head. That settled the matter quickly enough. Plagues and omens may sound impressive when they fly from a fanatic's tongue amidst his frothing spittle, but they're rather inadequate in the face of a sharp weapon. Walnut stomped away, the other priests scurrying behind him. He looked back over his shoulder as he went, and his eyes met mine. The expression with which he favoured me was positively murderous, which I thought was rather uncharitable under the circumstances. It was hardly my fault Mrs. Ashdown's do-gooding had interfered with his savage religion. Nevertheless, I knew I would have to remain vigilant and regard him as an enemy.
Defenestrators
You take the stairs three at a time. There are so many flights of steps that it's like climbing a mountain. But as soon as you arrive at the right landing, and ease the door open, you know you made the right decision.
There's a woman in the hallway, wearing a green hooded sweatshirt and clutching a blaster. Her eyes and weapon are trained on the elevator doors -- it takes a second for the former to turn to the stairwell entrance. You're on her before the latter can follow suit. In an instant you have her pressed up against the wall, the gun torn from her grasp.
"Kalaxia," you say.
She stops struggling.
"Why'd they send you?" she asks. "We're almost done."
The top of your helmeted head crashes against her jaw. She crumples without a sound. You had to make sure she was an enemy, not a concerned neighbor.
Further up the corridor, one of the apartment doors is ajar. Number 903. Watcher_851's place. You drift towards it, keeping your footsteps silent, and glance at the hinges. They look like they'd creak. In that case...
You kick the door open.
There's a living room beyond the entrance, a smashed window directly opposite the door. Its lingering shards gleam with accusations of murder. The two men inside -- both dressed in unremarkable civilian clothing like the girl in the passage -- freeze like naughty children caught in the middle of a misdeed. One's standing in front of a computer, his fingers paused in mid keystroke as he turns to you. The other's holding a small recording device, filming what's on the wall.
The amateur filmmaker drops his camera and throws his body into a roll. His partner snatches a gun from the desk. You slip aside as crimson beams lance through the doorway, and brace yourself against the wall.
No psionic attacks, you muse. They're just thugs. Basic military training, perhaps.
Another pair of beams zap past you, and scar the wall opposite. After two heartbeats, they fire again. This time it doesn't go unanswered.
You twist round and throw yourself down across the doorway, lying on your right-hand side. Two pulls of the trigger. Two brains pierced by searing blasts.
It transpired that Piss-pot and Walnut need not have argued, for no more than ten minutes later it began to rain with such intensity that the priests' fire was extinguished, and dancing around the smoking ashes would have been a surer path to pneumonia than divine favour. The villagers fled to their homes, and though my intention had been to station myself outside the hut in which the girl lay and Judith ministered, so that I could best observe Walnut or any other potential foe should they approach, I had no wish to be drenched. However, I knew full well that withdrawing to the hut's interior and carrying out my duties beyond the reach of intemperate nature would leave us vulnerable. If my military experience had taught me anything, beyond a healthy disdain for official ineptitude and how to proposition a woman in Hindi, it was that seeing one's enemies from a distance was infinitely preferable to having them arrive on one's doorstep unannounced. Therefore I sought out my retainers, intending that they should relieve me at sentry duty.
I found the lazy buggers lounging beneath a canopy, and my lip curled at this demonstration of native sloth and indolence. Small wonder that we industrious Britons had built ourselves a splendid empire, whilst they wore grass skirts and danced around fires! (Let this be a lesson to those politicians and do-gooders who forever harp on about the plight of factory workers and miners. The reforms they call for would surely imbue our lower classes with the same wretched lethargy!) I commanded them to remove themselves to the space before the hut, so that they might keep watch and inform me of any signs of trouble. They moaned and exclaimed, of course, but a few hefty kicks put an end to their slacking.
With my servants standing guard outside, I joined Mrs. Ashdown and the girl (whose name sounded very much like 'Daffodil'). Judith was sat beside the child, on a small trunk she'd had the natives bring in, clutching her Bible in one hand and a cross in the other, leaning her head towards Daffodil and causing the lantern light to surround her face like a halo. My God, I thought, it's like an illustration from one of those bloody pamphlets missionary organizations press upon you back home, urging you to give your pounds and shillings so they can provide natives with trousers and Testaments (neither of which they especially desire, in my experience).
Judith was silent, for the moment seemingly content to listen to the girl's words, which were so soft now as to be almost drowned out by the patter of the rain. I crouched down on the other side of Daffodil, curious as to what she was saying. As before, she was speaking English as fluently as any Briton, though her accent was one I couldn't place, and lent her speech a strange, unearthly air. Her voice trembled between a near whisper and louder, more insistent tones, as she uttered nonsense about dragons and ogres, castles and crystal caverns, orange and cyan eyes, and other fantastical things (enveloped in sentences that were grammatically exact, in spite of the absurdities they contained). I have said that she was speaking our language, as indeed she was. However, she also included words which, as far as I could discern, were fabricated, belonging neither to the civilised tongue of Shakespeare and Pope nor to her own primitive lingo. These didn't pour from her lips as random babble, but were part of otherwise intelligible statements. Furthermore, the same meaningless words were each repeated throughout her discourse, demonstrating them to be embedded quite firmly in the Daffodil's mind rather than spoken on a deranged whim.
It's intriguing how one's memory works. For although I've forgotten most of the ridiculous things she said in English, some of those fabricated words have lingered in my mind to this very day:
Tore-gill
Croo-na
Kus-ahn
Ca-lak-see-a
It was the lattermost of these, the very same thing she had voiced when we first entered the hut, that she articulated the most often, and which finally spurred Judith Ashdown to action. While Daffodil's ramblings were articulate, if befuddling, the missionary merely listened and observed. Then, late in the evening, after the rain had stopped, a terrible shudder racked the child's body. I once saw a poor bugger in the grip of an epileptic fit, and the feeble thrashing of her limbs, the rolling of her eyes, were just the same. It was an unpleasant sight to behold, as though the little girl were in her death throes, and it filled me with concern for Mrs. Ashdown and myself. If Piss-pot's daughter died while Judith and I were alone with her (for he, whether through fatherly anguish or for some superstitious reason, had retired to a different hut), would the chieftain hold us responsible? Would we be forced to fight for our lives, and shoot our way out of the village, braving rains of hurled spears and charging savages? These thoughts rumbled in my mind while Daffodil convulsed, but thankfully the fit lasted no more than a few seconds (though it seemed far, far longer, as terrible situations so often do). When it came to an end, and her small body subsided into calm, there was no trace of her former bewildering eloquence. Instead she chanted that single word of four syllables in a dull voice, over and over again.
"Ca-lak-see-a! Ca-lak-see-a! Ca-lak-see-a!"
In that moment, as the girl's condition appeared to worsen, Judith's eyes hardened like those of a proud soldier who's seen enemies lay their hands on his Regimental Colours. She set her cross down on her lap, opened her Bible, and steeled herself for battle.
The Woman on the Wall
"Barracuda?" you murmur.
It's the first thing you see when you enter the room, after glancing at the bodies to make sure your shooting was lethal. A long noticeboard dominates the right-hand wall -- the one your late assailant was filming. It's covered in a haphazard assortment of papers, images, and electronic screens. Some of the pictures are maps of systems, or diagrams of planets. Another shows a woman wearing a familiar mask, but the rest of her attire and the quality of the photography seem archaic... Victorian, like the costumes some of the guests were wearing aboard the Mysterious Murder.
But none of these arrest your attention so much as the bright illustration in the very middle of the board. It's a publicity shot of Screaming Barracuda.
Watcher_851's cryptic messages said he wanted to be introduced to an acquaintance of yours.
Watcher_851...
You step over to the computer. The information is right there in front of your face. Your other enemy did the work for you.
Kevin Arctora. That was his name.
You sigh. If you'd got here a little earlier, then maybe...
That thought drifts away when you glance at the neighboring monitor. It's a paused video clip, showing a crowded sports stadium. The stands are packed with fans, their faces frozen in mid cheer, their banners in mid flutter. Two rows of armored athletes stand on the grass, lined up like soldiers awaiting inspection. One team wears the emerald uniforms of the Sian Dragons.
There's Talia... Her helmet's on, but you'd know her anywhere. It's the match between the Dragons and the Megas, the one the gunslinger told you about in her message. You'd been meaning to watch that. Why would Arctora...
You press the play button.
The Sian anthem bursts into life, partway through the first verse. That's Screaming Barracuda's voice, and-
Your mind swims. Colors swirl at the edges of your vision.
"Kasan..."
You blink it away, forcing your mind to steel itself, and click the pause button.
Her singing... It felt like... Yes... It was almost like being back in Sun Xi's house on Diogenes, when she entered your thoughts and whisked you off through surreal, fantastic tapestries of sight and sound.
You've always suspected Screaming Barracuda has some kind of latent psionic power, but nothing like...
Wait... Wasn't there...
Pinned on the notice board, among the various papers, is a flyer that looks like it was printed from Screaming Barracuda's website. It announces a gig. A gig that's taking place right now, here in Destev.
You pick up the goon's camera. The words 'Connection Terminated' blink at you from the little screen. He was uploading his footage somewhere...
The woman in the green hoody is groaning and stirring in the hallway when you head back to the stairwell. A single shot to the head puts a stop to that. There isn't time to interrogate her, or take prisoners. Unless you miss your guess, Barracuda's in trouble.
Noir's azure slits stared at Emera Tresc's image on the cockpit's communications screen.
"I am two hours from the planet," he said.
"The rest of Bonderbrand's men are already in Destev," she replied. "They're on their way as we speak."
"Order them to take the Piscarian. But if [Player Name] is there... She is mine."
Daffodil continued to repeat the mysterious word, whilst Mrs. Ashdown paged through her Bible. The missionary woman's eyes blazed with zealotry when she found what she sought, and she thrust her finger at a passage with such strength that it made me think of Jael hammering the tent peg into Sisera's skull. I half expected Judith's digit to pierce pages and leather cover alike. When she spoke, returning fire with scripture, her voice was no less impressive.
"And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you."
As I've said, the workings of human mind and memory can be damned strange. Even in the dark depths of Africa, faced with supernatural dread at which I would once have scoffed, seeing a missionary woman wield the Bible as a weapon of spiritual warfare, my thoughts found their way back to my schoolboy days. I remembered old Hardwick, our headmaster, and as pious and priggish a chap as you could ever have the misfortune to encounter, standing at his lectern and speaking those very same verses during one of his tiresome Sunday sermons (which proved to be nothing compared with the sermon he delivered for my sole benefit on the night I was expelled for the defenestration of a prefect during a school mutiny).
Daffodil stared up at the hut's roof, though I suspect that in her delirium she was seeing nothing quite so mundane, and kept uttering the word which seemed to now encompass the entirety of her suffering and delusions.
"Cal-ak-see-a! Cal-ak-see-a! Cal-ak-see-a!"
Her voice increased in loudness and intensity, until those four syllables became ammunition in an unending fusillade. Judith continued to respond, the pages of her Bible turning first in one direction and then the other, as she scoured through it with a proficiency that would have made a vicar gape in awe. Each time her finger would transfix a certain verse, which her lips would then intone.
"Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked."
Mrs. Ashdown's voice became louder and stronger too, as though emboldened and invigorated by every recitation. Soon the lady's words and the girl's were battering against one another, clashing like lines of infantry wielding sabres and bayonets, wreaking carnage and giving no quarter. Such was the ferocity of the combat that I was torn between leaving the hut to escape it and remaining to see whose formations would break first. In the end I found myself rooted to the spot, the lone observer of a terrible battle. I looked from black face to white, child's to woman's, savage's to Briton's, and saw the same determined zeal in both their eyes.
Beads of sweat grew on the missionary's brow as the verses continued to fire from her lips, and her breathing was laboured. Her body began to shudder as Daffodil's had when in the midst of her fit, the Bible trembling in her grasp. Judith seemed on the very brink of collapse, her mind and body strained to their utmost. I called out for her to cease, and took hold of her arm to draw her from the hut and away from that dreadful conflict. She refused to yield, however, and shook my hand away before unleashing another salvo of scripture.
"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death."
Judith shrieked that final word, and then fainted. I caught her in my arms as she toppled, before she could fall from the trunk onto the stamped-down dirt floor. She recovered her senses almost immediately, and her eyes opened to reveal a triumphant gleam. There was silence in the hut, save for the soft sound of Daffodil's snoring. The girl had drifted off to sleep.
I urged Mrs. Ashdown to rest, as the woman was exhausted. She refused, however, and said she wished to pray over the girl as she slept, for she feared that although the worst had passed, the evil spirit hadn't yet been exorcised. It was then that I became aware of my own tremendous fatigue. The day's exploits had taken their toll on me, and no religious zeal urged my continued wakefulness as it did hers. Therefore I decided to rest on a pile of animal hides, and consigned myself to the arms of Morpheus.
Encore
"Ticket scans," the security guard said. He waved his device. "Biometric or card?"
"Lasers," one of the men replied.
"Huh?"
He drew his weapon and fired. The guard collapsed, clutching his wounded chest. Two more bouncers in black t-shirts came out of the doorway on the left, their weapons blazing. One of the gatecrashers went down. The others raked the pair with gunfire.
"Who's got stunners?" the leader yelled, as they stormed down the wide passage.
Two of the others shouted that they did.
"The rest of you, keep the crowd off them. Kill as many as you need to. But don't shoot the fish-bitch! Got it?"
There was another chorus of affirmation. Then they barged their way through the black double doors, opening the soundproof barrier, and their leader's words were washed away on a tide of ear-rupturing song.
"...so she shot him in the face!
Just shot him in the fa-a-a-a-ace!
Yeah, she shot him in the face!
Oh, oh, oh, in the fa-a-a-a-ace!"
Screaming Barracuda leaned her head back and screeched her chorus at the heavens -- up into the starry night that hung overhead, beyond the huge lattice of windows that made up the club's ceiling. Her fingers worked Wailing Doom's strings, lending its shriek to her own, exploding from all the speakers and amplifiers in a glorious bombardment of sound.
"In the fa-a-a-a-a-a-ce!"
Something red flashed in the corner of her vision.
Bloody wankers, she thought. They were supposed to start the lasers going in the next verse. Then there was a blue flash, on the other side.
Barracuda tilted her head back down, and her eyes widened.
It was pandemonium: Bodies on the floor. People screaming, running in all directions. Security guards zapping away, locked in a firefight with a band of gunmen who were fanning out through the fleeing crowds.
"Oh, hell!" she screamed.
Her head darted this way and that, looking for a safe escape route through the raging battle. Instead, she found herself staring down the barrel of a weapon. The man above it grinned, parting his goatee. Then he pulled the trigger.
I'm not given to vivid or memorable dreams, save on occasions when I've eaten too much cheese before retiring. However, on that night my slumbering mind was a tempest of absurdities.
First I was back at school, in the great hall with its dark oak-panelled walls, where generations of boys had stood in their neat rows and columns as though in martial order, ready to answer the roll. My boyhood chums and adversaries were lined up beside and behind me, all awaiting the calling of our names. However, instead of a master standing on the platform before us, there was a tall savage with a scarred face, clad in a loincloth, wearing brightly coloured tassels around his strong yet flabby limbs.
"I say," remarked Fraser, one of the boys in my form, "it's awfully thick, having a coloured chap for a master."
Some of the others whispered for him to be quiet, before one of the prefects gave him six. However, Fraser had never been the chap to quail before authority.
"I should write to my governor," he said, "and ask him to send me somewhere else. I bet there are no savages at Eton!"
"Now you've done it," whispered Bradman.
One of the prefects stepped out from the sixth form's ranks and approached us. He too was a coloured tribesman, wearing a loincloth and tassels, with a spear under his arm in place of the customary ashplant. Fraser began to utter another impertinence (he was always one to cheek the prefects, no matter how many times they made him bend over), but was silenced when the brute pulled him out of the line, spun him around with an iron grip on his collar, readied the spear, and stabbed the poor chap in the buttocks.
"Ow! Stop! Help! Geroff, you beast! Fire! Murder! Yarooooo!"
"Oh, show a bit of pluck," said Bradman.
"Stiff upper lip, what?" said Fauntleby.
Fraser continued to scream, however, until the prefect had finished administering his six, at which point the collar was released and he fell to the floor, where he lay sobbing. The savage went back to stand with the rest of the sixth form. I must say, had my old school administered discipline thus, with the spear instead of the cane, I might never have transgressed.
With the miscreant suitably chastised, Dr. Walnut (as my dreaming mind dubbed him) began to call the names.
"Adams," said the savage, in the perfect simulacrum of Hardwick's voice.
"Calakseea!"
"Alderdice."
"Calakseea!"
I looked around, bewildered, as boy after boy answered their name with "Calakseea!" instead of "Adsum!".
"Caruthers!"
Dr. Walnut glared down at me.
"Adsum!" I said.
Laughter rippled through the hall, the whole school mocking me save for the prefects, who instead growled and waved their spears.
"Caruthers!" he repeated. Now Dr. Walnut too was brandishing a spear.
"Calakseea!" I cried.
"Calakseea! Calakseea! Calakseea!" Everyone was chanting: Dr. Walnut, the prefects, Bradman, Fraser as he lay bleeding on the floor, and all of the other boys. The hall was filled with a maddening din that thudded like the beating of a monstrous heart.
"Calakseea! Calakseea! Calakseea!"
I turned this way and that, wondering if anyone else was immune from this derangement that had taken the entire school. To my right the great men of the sixth were chanting. On my left the little fags of the second and third forms were doing the same. From the palatine to the plebs, as it were, all had been overcome. Then my eyes alighted on Morgan of my own form, the fifth (which happened to be the form in which I ended my academic career through defenestration and expulsion, the latter inflicted on me and the former thankfully inflicted by me). Whilst the men before him and behind him, and on either of his flanks, were intoning that nonsensical word, his lips were sealed.
"They've all gone mad!" I cried out to him. "We have to do something, old chap!"
Morgan nodded, and opened his mouth. Instead of the expected reply, perhaps words of alarm, or the expounding of some stratagem which we might have used to quell, or escape from, that bedlam, he began to sing.
"Hark! I hear the foe advancing,
Barbed steeds are proudly prancing,
Helmets, in the sunbeam glancing,
Glitter through the trees,
Men of Harlech! Lie ye dreaming?
See you not their falchions gleaming,
While their pennons, gaily streaming,
Flutter to the breeze?"
It was the same blasted song he used to sing during football matches, God alone knows why, and whenever he was three sheets in the wind (which was bloody often, as I know full well, since I was usually drinking with him and in no better state). I'd never cared for the damn thing before, but in that moment I felt like shaking him by the hand. The boys around him joined in, singing the Welsh battle hymn instead of chanting that nonsense word, then those around them, and so on. It became a great wave washing through the hall, until every voice was added to the song. Even Dr. Walnut was singing.
The world around me changed, as it so often does in dreams, becoming a battlefield filled with screaming men, billowing smoke, and booming artillery. My school chums were around me, the entire fifth form, still in their neat ranks but now clutching rifles and dressed in martial uniform, transported from the school hall to a place no less familiar and no more welcome. I knew it immediately, for some things are seared into one's memories and can never be displaced. We were in northern India, thrust into the midst of one of those terrible engagements we fought against that most dreadful of foes. There they were ahead of us, advancing through the smoke in fine order, each man marching in perfect lock-step with his fellows. Swarthy faces with long, thick beards glared from turbaned heads, above uniforms of European cut.
Morgan and the others were still singing, the song continuing unbroken even as the rifles banged, the cannons roared, and the Khalsa came towards us.
"From the rocks rebounding,
Let the war-cry sounding,
Summon all at Cambria's call,
The haughty foe surrounding."
Then we were charging, our bayonets pointed towards our enemies. The Sikhs were charging as well, brandishing their swords, their beards billowing like the smoke, eyes glowering with the promise of death.
"Men of Harlech! On to glory,
See your banner, famed in story,
Waves these burning words before ye,
'Britain scorns to yield!'"
My bayonet was a bare inch from a man's chest, and his slashing sword no further from my face, when my eyes opened. The Indian battlefield vanished, and I blinked in astonishment as the inside of the hut usurped its place in my consciousness. Remembrance flooded in to remind me of my situation, and assure me that I had awoken, yet I was sure I must still be dreaming, for the song continued. Utter confusion gripped me as Morgan's military march rang in my waking ears at it had in my dreaming ones. Daffodil was singing it, as if she had somehow reached into my slumbering mind and drawn the music forth (though of course my next thought landed on truth rather than superstition, and understood that it was quite the opposite; her singing must have shaped that portion of my dreams). Some seconds passed before I realized that I was both correct and mistaken. The tune was the same as it had been in the school hall, and then on the battlefield, but the words were unfamiliar.
The bewilderment I experienced then, and the passing of years between that time and the present, have robbed me of any clear recollection of her song's words, save for a single triplet which has lingered.
"Men of Croona, with blood splattered,
Leaving corpses dead and battered,
Have all wretched foemen scattered."
These three rhyming lines are those which sounded as I gazed upon the young native girl, who lay on her bed singing, while the missionary sat beside her, reading from the Bible. They continued as the flap that served as the hut's door was pushed aside, revealing a muscular savage with tasselled limbs and painted flesh. It was Walnut; his eyes blazed orange in the lantern's light, as did the blade of his spear.
Screaming Barracuda
A blast of blue energy fizzed and crackled over Barracuda's green flesh, along the ridge of the fin that ran across the top of her skull. Her body began to slump. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
"I got her!" the goon yelled. "I-"
He gawped. She was still standing -- her eyes closed, face serene. Still standing, after a shock that would have put down a man twice her weight.
"Fire again!" someone screamed at his shoulder. "Give the bitch another!"
He aimed the weapon.
Barracuda's hand slashed across the strings.
He screamed.
It's like a tidal wave. The club's disgorging its denizens, spewing forth an immense flood of humans and aliens, filling the street beyond with shrieks and chaos. It's a good thing you left your bike in an alleyway. The street would have been impassable on it.
Even on foot, pressing through the mass, forcing your way into the gaps, it's hard enough. You wince as your elbows clip faces here and there. There'll be a few black eyes tomorrow. But it's either that or be swept along with them.
At last you reach the tail end of the exodus, and your way is unimpeded as you enter the club, sprint down the passage, push the doors open... And nearly get blasted back out again.
Sound. Horrendous, agonizing sound, batters you -- mocking your aural implant's attempts to balance and counteract it.
Screaming Barracuda's on the stage, her eyes closed. She's playing her guitar, weaving her cacophonous song as though the room were still packed instead of strewn with corpses. The survivors are rolling on the floor, their hands pressed against their ears.
"Barra!" you shout. But it's like spitting into a tsunami.
Your ears are hammering at your brain, demanding, begging, pleading, to be taken away from here -- for you to turn around and run as fast and as far as you can.
Instead you go forward, into the musical maelstrom.
The world's spinning, a whirling vortex of tempestuous sound and blending, blurring colors. And she's at the nexus, her eyes still closed, her face as calm as if she were basking in a hot tub.
"Barra!"
But it's still no use. Even here, so close that you can almost feel your ears bleeding and the flesh flaying from your bones beneath lashing sonic whips, she can't hear you.
So you stagger forward, groaning at the onslaught, and punch her in the stomach.
Breath rushes out of her lungs in an explosive gasp. Her eyes open. And, glory of glories, all praises be to God and heaven, the guitar falls from her hands.
"You... you... goddamn bitch! You..." She groans, then looks around. Her eyes bulge at the carnage. "What the hell? What happened? Who the-"
You tap the side of your helmet, making your visor retract.
"[Player Name]? What's going on?"
"I'll explain." You grab her guitar and press it into her arms. "But first we should get out of here."
Judith turned, saw him, and screamed at the glint of murder in his glare. Daffodil continued to sing, her delirium unaffected even by the spectre of violent death.
My revolver belt and rifles were a few feet away, but they may as well have been in London or Delhi, for as Walnut lunged into the hut I knew that I could never seize, ready, and aim a weapon before the savage's spear struck. Therefore I rose and sprang in the same instant, not for my gear but at the high priest. Walnut's spear was plunging towards his victim when my body flew at his. It was only in that instant that I saw he wasn't aiming for Mrs. Ashdown. The deadly spear was thrusting at Daffodil.
I slammed into him, and bore his muscular body backwards, sending the two of us through the hide flap, into the darkness beyond, where we tumbled to the mud outside the hut. There we lay struggling, he clawing and gouging at my face like an animal (for the spear had fallen from his hands; either he had been disarmed during our collision, or he had dropped the weapon, knowing it was useless without the space to bring its point to bear), and I driving my fists into his face.
"She must die!" howled Walnut. "She must die!"
I made no reply save with my right fist, which stuck the hardest punch I have ever inflicted either for sport or in earnest, a tremendous blow that crashed against his jaw and left his great white eyes rolling in his head. His limbs fell away from my face and throat, and flopped powerless at his sides. Other natives were emerging from their huts then, raising a great hue and cry. Several babbling voices demanded to know what was going on. My blood was up, however, and I paid the villagers no heed as I snatched up Walnut's spear and drove it into his chest again and again, sending the savage to reap the harvest of his false religion.
The other priests appeared, shrieking and chattering, waving their weapons, but Piss-pot was there too, and he ordered them aside. The chieftain listened to me rattle out my explanation of what had happened, and was so incensed upon learning the truth that he took the spear from my hands, turned to Walnut's minions, and threatened death to any of them who'd known about the high priest's intentions. The priests quailed and grovelled, and promised Piss-pot that none of them had had any suspicion of their master's deeds that night. Their pleas seemed sincere enough to me, and they must have done to the chieftain also, for he ordered them back to their huts rather than to their executions.
It was only then that I began to wonder where my retainers had gone. The bastards were supposed to have been keeping watch outside the hut, as you may recall. I asked if the villagers had seen anything of them, and learned that they had fled from the settlement, taking my baggage with them. The damned rascals! Clearly I hadn't thrashed them enough, and their cowardice had overcome their duty. I vowed I'd teach them a lesson, though of course there was little I could do that night, so I returned to the hut, where little Daffodil had slipped back into slumber. Judith Ashdown was praying beside her, though she raised an inquisitive face to mine when I came in, and I nodded my reassurance.
We both remained awake through the night, I with my revolver in my hand and my rifle in my lap, she praying in a soft voice so as not to wake the girl. Nor did she wake, until morning had dawned, when she opened her eyes and spoke.
"Who are you?" she asked. The words were in her own language.
The chieftain's joy, and that of the other villagers, can be imagined. Mrs. Ashdown had delivered the child from her affliction, and the natives were all but ready to build a church and cry out for Jesus. However, the bizarre experience had left Judith weary in mind and body. Furthermore, although one might have expected such spiritual victory to have sharpened her missionary zeal, it had instead quenched it. The lady asked me to take her to the coast immediately, where she could arrange her passage back to England. Piss-pot was disappointed to learn that we wouldn't stay for the great celebration he had planned, as was I; the chieftain would have given us a tremendous feast, and, more than likely, the pick of his concubines. However, Judith insisted, and I had to do the chivalrous thing.
At Piss-pot's command, the entire village turned out to see us off, brandishing crosses fashioned from branches and calling out such words of Christian theology as they knew. Judith was silent, however, even when one of the savages beheaded a chicken and splashed its blood about whilst crying, "Yeesus! Yeesus!" Perhaps this was mere fancy, but I almost thought I detected the faintest of smiles on her lips.
Even the priests were present, cheering and clamouring along with the rest, until Judith and I came abreast of them. Then the nearest tasselled savage stared at Mrs. Ashdown with a maddened look on his face, shouted something that was lost in the din, and lunged at her with a knife in his hand. I was watchful, however, for I'd remained suspicious of the late, unlamented Walnut's flock. My revolver was up in an instant, and I put a bullet in his skull. Piss-pot had his warriors seize the other priests, for all their fates had been sealed by that attempt on the missionary's life. I asked him to refrain from butchering them until I'd taken Mrs. Ashdown away, and though he seemed dismayed that she wouldn't witness their punishment, he agreed to my request.
The journey to the coast, in the company of some of Piss-pot's warriors, whom he dispatched to serve as our retainers, and bear such of our possession as hadn't been taken by those damnable thieves, was uneventful. I didn't even catch sight of any quarry worth potting. Though even if I had done, Judith's desire was to make all possible haste, and her face was still grim from her experiences in the village, and the attempt on her life. It was quite plain that the lady was in dire need of the safety and comfort of England's shores. Fortune was on our side, for we were able to arrange her passage on the very same day we arrived at the port, with the aid of a naval chap to whom I sometimes traded ivory and other such treasures from the continent's interior.
Her impending departure from that savage land must have been of immense comfort to Judith. For when I last saw her, before she boarded the vessel, she favoured me with a most dazzling smile, which seemed to illuminate her eyes. I remember being surprised at the time, for I must confess that I've never been one to dwell upon a woman's eyes like a love-struck poet, and so hadn't noticed the curious hue of Mrs. Ashdown's irises until then. They were a delightful blue-green shade, which I've never seen matched before or since.
Noir strode through the chamber, his footsteps slow and measured. His ebon mask was tilted upwards, towards the lattice of big windows and the star-studded vault of night. His azure eyes were dull, as though only half open. He sniffed at the air.
Yes... One sensation above all the others, faint but still discernible, its flavor distinct and unquestionable. [Player Name] had been here.
His eyes flashed brighter, and a low growl escaped his lips. He was too late.
"Hey! You can't be in here!"
Noir turned. A man stood there, dressed in a bright blue police uniform. One hand was on the pistol holstered at his waist.
"Who let you past the cordon?" the cop demanded. "I-"
Noir lunged. Blood splattered across his void-dark mask.
[Player Name] ... His quarry had escaped for now. But she couldn't elude Noir forever. They would meet soon enough... |-|
"Play It Again, Barracuda"= Play It Again, Barracuda
"...and the best info I found was on conspiracy theory sites," you say. "That's how I met Watcher... Kevin Arctora."
Screaming Barracuda takes a sip of her coffee, and gazes at the stars. They twinkle beyond the big rectangular window like distant gemstones.
The ride to the Silver Shadow -- Barracuda behind you on the bike, her guitar strapped to her back and her arms wrapped round your waist, traffic flashing by on either side -- didn't give you the opportunity to talk. And when you arrived at the spaceport you deflected her questions. Taking off and slipping away from the planet came first. You had no idea what the authorities in Destev would have made of things, but their questions may have proven awkward. So you directed Barra to the mess room, and promised to explain everything later. That gave you a little time to work out what you were going to say. However, in the end it didn't make the tale of cults and conspiracy theorists sound any less insane.
"So these Kalaxia wankers..."
"Yeah?"
"They want to kill you, right? Because of all that crazy dragon stuff in your head?"
"I think they want to scoop the 'crazy dragon stuff' out first. But yes."
"Okay. That makes sense. Kind of. Lots of people want to kill you, so what's a few more?"
"I-"
"But what've they got against me?"
"It's your music..."
She glares. And if looks could kill, the cult would have to scrape your brains off the bulkheads.
"If you're taking the piss..."
"No, not because your music sucks, it's-"
"My music doesn't suck!"
"...it's because it's... It has... It's a kind of magic?"
That wipes the anger from her face, as you thought it would, and replaces it with quizzical amusement.
"Back in the club," you continue, "what do you remember? During the attack, I mean."
"One of the tossers zapped me with something. Then this bitch thumped me..."
"You don't remember playing like a lunatic?"
Her eyes begin to narrow once more.
"I mean..." You sigh. "Look, back at Arctora's place he had a recording of you playing the Sian anthem at Talia's thugby match. I listened to it. And it... It did something. It was like a psionic experience. It brought back all the 'crazy dragon stuff', just for a second."
"You've heard me play before."
"Unfortu... Yeah."
"Anything happen those other times?"
"No. But whatever those cultists did to me, it opened something up. I remember things. Know things."
"What was it like?"
"They went into my head, and-"
"No, not that. When you heard me sing the anthem."
"All these colors were spinning, like the world was getting fast and blurry at the edges. And... Yes... I think there were these orange-"
"Eyes?" The Piscarian's mouth widens slightly. Her cranial fin twitches.
"Yes! How-"
"I've seen them. Once. And those spinning colors. But I thought it was just the chems..."
"Tell me."
"When I was a student on Novocastria, I dated this guy from Earth for a little bit. He came from Ghana, and he was a... what do you call them? The ones who think all intelligent life started in Africa?"
"Afro-galacto-centrists?"
"Yeah... Anyway, one night he was coming round to watch a movie. And it was my turn to pick. So I went to the vid site and asked their AI to give me a movie with lots of African stuff in it. When he showed up, I put it on. But soon as he saw what it was, the tosser started shouting. He said I was racist. Then he stormed out."
"What was the movie?"
"Zulu."
"Oh... I think I saw that one."
"Anyway, I was pissed off. I popped a handful of chems, then just sat there watching it on my own and messing with my guitar. It was a pretty good movie. But there was one bit, at the end, where the soldiers were all singing and fighting. That's when it happened. The song was in my head, and everything was going blurry. Like I said, I thought it was the stuff I'd taken. I started playing along to it. But when I sang, the words came out different. New lyrics just popped into my mind."
"Do you remember them?"
"Yeah. I never forget a song."
"Will you sing it for me?"
"Sure..."
Barracuda puts her mug down, goes over to the counter where she left Wailing Doom, and turns around with the instrument braced in her hands. She clears her throat. Then her fingers play against the strings and she starts to sing.
"Men of Kruna, stop your drinking..."
Eons ago, on a lost world...
The elven bard's fingers whispered across the harp's strings, sending forth a soothing melody that mingled with the gentle breeze and soft, warm sunlight. It caressed the glade, stroking across each blade of grass and every leaf upon the ancient trees.
She closed her eyes and drifted with the music, letting her senses join the dance. The rushing waters of the nearby river, the trilling of birds, the delicate beating of butterflies' wings... All these things slipped into her tune and wove a blissful tapestry.
A smile crossed her lips, lending its glory to her loveliness. Warmth swelled in her breast. It worked its way up her throat, tingling against her vocal cords, and tickled the tip of her tongue. It flowed along her slender arms, and spilled into each of her fingers.
Her voice joined the harp, teasing the music like a coquette at a ball, before falling into its embrace and gliding through the steps of the dance. She let them twirl and pirouette where they pleased, following instead of leading, allowing it all to flow and touch and encompass.
The bard wasn't given to sentimentality. Her long-lived kind couldn't afford to be, or else they'd have spent each century mourning for all that the last century had whisked away. But on this day she allowed herself to swim in the past, on melodious currents. It was an anniversary of sorts, and she chose to use it each year to remember past friends and comrades, and the hero at whose side she'd once fought. Their shared lives had included many occasions worthy of being so marked. The great victories perhaps, including the greatest of them all -- that final battle when they had triumphed over their foes and brought the war to its close. Yet it was this day among all the others on which she sought a quiet place and allowed both music and introspection to carry her away. The anniversary of her first meeting with the hero.
"Idiot! Why didn't you get here a few minutes sooner? They've taken the artifact!"
Her smile broadened as those words came back to her. She'd flayed her with her tongue. And it hadn't been the last time. Oh, far from it. But the bard couldn't blame herself for this. Dear friend and brave hero, yes... But she had been so very annoying sometimes...
The song twisted and turned as it flew, shaping itself into new forms, shifting from quick to slow, tender to vibrant. And then...
Then she heard it.
Another song, coming as though from far, far away, yet from no direction her keen ears could perceive. It was a tune she knew, though she hadn't heard it for a long time... Not since the war, when it had been a favorite of the human warriors she'd battled alongside.
The bard found her fingers matching it. Then her voice.
"Men of Kruna, stop your drinking,
What the bloody hell're you thinking?
Can't you hear the foemen slinking,
On the battlements?
Men of Kruna, grab a bludgeon,
Lest you earn the nobles' dudgeon,
And get thrown in the dungeon,
You bloody drunken sods!
Get up there and start attacking!
All their skulls need a-cracking!
Spill their guts and crush their nuts,
Let not your violence be lacking!
Men of Kruna, with blood splattered,
Leaving corpses dead and battered,
Have all wretched foemen scattered,
Now let's have a drink!"
"Don't stop!" you say. "Keep playing!"
But it's unnecessary. Screaming Barracuda's eyes are closed, her face as serene as it was back in the club, and she goes on playing and singing -- letting the last verse give way to the first once more, continuing the song in an unbroken cycle.
The universe is swimming around you, but this time you're prepared, and there's no alarm. Her music's tugging at you, yearning to pull you into the past just like Sun Xi once did.
You surrender to it.
To So Few
This time it's different. Things don't whoosh by in a kaleidoscopic blur, too rapid and jumbled for anything but the occasional glimpse to meet your eye and lodge itself in your brain. Instead a scene opens before you, beckoning, widening until its solidity consumes your senses.
Squadrons of archaic fighter planes soar over a patchwork of green fields, painting the heavens with their condensation trails. It's to one of those aircraft that your mind is drawn, your consciousness pulled through a glass and metal canopy, into a small, cramped cockpit that's impossibly loud -- filled with the roar of the engine and the rattle of the propeller. The hellish din and the gleefully murderous tug of gravity, enticing you towards destruction down below, might drive a spacecraft pilot insane.
The man at the controls continues undaunted, unaware of the second presence sharing his tiny space. Your eyes roam over him, searching for some sign of importance, some reason why he among all the others should have merited your attention. His build is slim, but his torso's bulked out by a thick sheepskin jacket with fur at its collar and cuffs. There's something yellow draped over his shoulders, lending the brown garment a strange splash of color. Half of his thickly moustached face is obscured behind huge goggles. What you can make out of it is unfamiliar. But then you look into his eyes...
It's like staring into a mirror.
Through whatever web of genetics and fate, you know -- with absolute, unshakable certainty -- that the Kasan blood burns in him as it does in you. And like you, he loves to fly.
The craft is primitive, unsafe... A rattling, shuddering, spluttering deathtrap compared with the elegant fighters you've piloted. The controls are clumsy, jerky, unresponsive. But if you could tell him this, you're sure he would laugh or maybe even punch you in the face. Because to him flying it is the most wonderful thing he's ever done in his life.
His eyes gleam. You turn around, your viewpoint rotating and shifting until you're looking over his shoulder. Iron grey forms are approaching through the skies. They grow larger, a swarm of voracious insects becoming a flight of predatory birds. A word crosses your thoughts, one dredged up from your military history lessons at the academy: Luftwaffe.
It's insanity. There's no way this clunky piece of junk can survive a dogfight. The man's doomed. He's...
The plane dances at his command, swooping and soaring with archaic elegance, writing destiny and defiance in its contrails. No... Not dances. Hunts. His eyes are scanning the aerial battlefield, as yours are. And you sense that like you he appreciates the ebb and flow, knows what it is to see an enemy aircraft and understand how and where it will strike or evade.
One of them is there in front of him like a big grey moth. He fires. Bullets rip across its wings, piercing metal, biting deep into their victim. There are plumes of smoke as the grey plane spirals down to its doom, locked in gravity's inescapable clutches. You laugh and cheer, but not the moustached pilot. He simply acknowledges the victory with a grim smile, before banking to avoid a stream of lead from another of his German enemies.
Your trained mind follows the rest of the battle, but it takes second place to your awe. The man's magnificent. Two more grey planes fall before his sharp, cunning, fearless eyes and his deadly guns before the battle is over. Then he and his companions are left masters of the sky, victorious defenders of the nation below and all its denizens.
Something pulls at you, trying to draw you away, a gentle but insistent tug.
You lean towards the pilot and kiss his cheek with your nonexistent lips. A look of surprise crosses his face, then resolves itself into a smile.
Then it's all gone. The pilot, the cockpit, the primitive but wonderful aircraft, the sky with its crisscrossing white trails.
In The Shadows of London
"He was murdered!"
The voice comes to you before the scene appears. It belongs to a woman, and carries a haughty accent which you first take for Novocastrian -- before you realize where and when you are.
As vision joins sound, your eyes come to rest on a face just as cold and aloof as you'd expected. She's sitting on the edge of her chair, encased from neck to ankle in a dress that reminds you of a sarcophagus. Her eyes flick from one of the people opposite her to the other. And from the slight curl of her lip, she finds neither of them to be entirely satisfactory.
"The newspapers said he took his own life, Miss Caruthers."
The speaker is a tall man with skin the color of milk chocolate and a long, neat black beard. He's dressed in prim European style -- with polished boots, immaculate jacket, and pressed trousers -- save for two things: the dark blue turban on his head and the curved sword sheathed at his side in an ornate scabbard. He stands by the fireplace, his back straight and his bearing so erect that it bespeaks years of military service, hours spent at attention on the parade ground.
In spite of his impressive deportment, Miss Caruthers looks at him as though he were some form of reprobate.
"If you'll forgive me... sir..." She utters the word in such a way that it sounds more like a slur than an expression of courtesy. "...I came here to speak with Miss Bloodwyn, not her manservant."
The Sikh's outward demeanor remains unaltered, but there's an almost imperceptible flaring of his nostrils.
The room's third occupant, who's sitting in an armchair opposite that occupied by her guest, glances at the Indian gentleman. Then she turns to Miss Caruthers.
"Mr. Singh is my associate, madam, not my manservant."
Miss Caruthers sniffs.
"Ah, I fear you may be coming down with a cold," she says. Her eyes are twinkling, and there's a half-smirk on her face that you can't help liking. "Perhaps we could offer you a hot toddy? But Manjeet is quite correct. Your brother's death was reported as a suicide. I believe he even left a note..."
"Yes! But-"
"...in which he confessed to the murder of a missionary, one William Ashdown, whilst in Africa. He said, unless my memory is faulty, which I may assure you it seldom is, that the impending publication of his memoirs had invoked shame and left him with no other choice but to do the honorable thing. His publisher, a Mr. Leonard Wellsbury, withdrew the book once he discovered these circumstances, on the very day it was due to be sold to the public, and had every copy destroyed. Is this not all correct, Miss Caruthers?"
"It's all a lie! Well... My brother was a scoundrel. He may... may have strayed in Africa..."
"I don't consider coldblooded murder to be a matter of 'straying', madam. It is, at the very least, inappropriate. And damned impolite."
Miss Caruthers' eyes flashed.
"This is no laughing matter!"
"I dare say not. But you have yet to persuade me that it's a matter of murder either."
"I was the one who found Daniel, lying on the floor of his study. He was still alive."
At this, Bloodwyn leans forward in her chair, and her eyes take on a new keenness.
"Did he say anything?"
"One word. If... if it is a word. I don't know what it means. He said, 'Calakseea'."
Bloodwyn and Manjeet Singh look at one another.
You blink, and things have changed. Miss Caruthers has gone. Manjeet is sitting where she was, while Bloodwyn paces back and forth in front of the fire.
"Calakseea! Again!" she says. Singh nods in reply. "We have to look into this..."
"I've got him, Manjeet!" Bloodwyn cries.
You're standing in a cobbled alleyway. It's night now, the gloom lit by gas lamps at the top of slender wrought iron poles. Bloodwyn has her back to you, her right arm extended. A revolver gleams in the gaslight.
The man he's holding at gunpoint is an effeminate fop, dressed in a debonair scarlet-trimmed black outfit, with fine blond hair flowing past his collar. Between his top hat and his red, almost girlish lips, is a mask you'd recognize anywhere.
"Kalaxia!" the fop says.
He tugs at his cane. A slim swordstick blade slips free of its sheath.
Bloodwyn pulls the trigger. Her revolver's hammer clicks.
"Oh, damnation!"
She backs away, tossing the empty gun aside. The fop grins and advances. His blade swishes through the air in lazy, sinister arcs.
"Manjeet!"
The Sikh's head and broad shoulders are sticking out from a window above, on the second floor of a large mansion.
"Here!" Manjeet shouts.
He thrusts his hand through the window. It's clutching his kirpan. He tosses the curved sword, and it spins end over end as it falls towards the alley below. Right into Bloodwyn's waiting hand.
"Kalaxia!" the fop repeats.
He thrusts. Bloodwyn slips aside and strikes blade against blade. There's a snap and a clang, as the powerful Indian sword breaks the slender swordstick. The fop stares at what's left of his weapon, the few inches of steel which remain attached to the hilt. Then he snarls, and lunges.
Bloodwyn's cut is swift.
Blood splashes on the cobbles.
And then it all disappears.
Pirate Treasure
Once again sound precedes sight. A hellish crash greets your emergence into a new time and place, an immense shattering of wood counterpointed by the shrieks of wounded men. Then comes the smell, the stink of unwashed flesh and spilled guts mingling with the briny air.
When the universe comes into focus, it only broadens the chaos.
You're on a ship, a creaking wooden vessel undulating upon the swell of the ocean. An absurd seasickness grips you, coming not from the rocking of wood and wave but from the fact that your own viewpoint is stable whilst the rest of creation moves, filling you with a disorientating sense of wrongness. The screaming and shouting do little to soothe your senses or lessen the pandemonium. Men in various haphazard states of dress, from ragged shorts and bare chests to elegant shirts and jackets, are running across the deck in both directions. Some are readying weapons -- brandishing cutlasses, priming muskets, and shoving braces of flintlock pistols into their belts. Others are making for the cannons.
Across the water lies the cause of their flurried activity, and of the bloody remains splattered across a swath of the deck where the cannonball struck. An enemy vessel is cutting through the sea alongside them, some distance away but apparently not beyond cannon range. You know little about boats, let alone these historical vessels. But from the looks of things their foe is a large and sturdy beauty, its prow and masts built for speed and the cannon ports along its side made for devastation. A black flag flies above its sails, and it takes no great nautical or historical expertise to know what that means.
This thought causes you to look up, to learn what ensign the ship you're aboard is sailing under. It's white, with a blue... duck? Yes, a blue duck emblazoned upon it. Quaint. But the quirky flag is displaced from your attention by the other sight you see up there.
A lithe figure is working its way down the rigging in a series of a deft, agile leaps and snatches. It belongs to a woman with flesh that looks bronzed from both heritage and sun, whose dark tresses billow like the sails around her. There's a cutlass at her belt, its sheathed length swaying beside her black breeches. Two pistol butts rest against the whiteness of her frilled shirt, held against her abdomen by an azure sash -- the same shade as the duck above her. She drops to the deck and sweeps the hair from her face, rearranging an equally blue bandana to recapture the stray locks. The woman's beautiful. But it's a vicious, sharp, dangerous beauty.
When she strides across the planks, yelling commands in a Hispanic accent, the sailors scurry to obey. A female captain, this far back in human history? The notion seems ridiculous. And yet there she stands...
One of the cannons roars, launching its ball amid a great puff of smoke. The heavy missile flies through the air and splashes down in the water, throwing up a column of spray. The gun's crew moves to reload, but the woman cries out.
"No! Grape! Load grape and hold! All of you!"
"Captain, we..." one of the sailors begins.
He's a brawny, bald-headed man in a striped jersey, who looks like he could break her in two with his bare hands. But when she glares at him, he looks away and falls silent. The men do as bidden, and load their cannons with grapeshot.
The enemy vessel lets loose. Smoke rises and cannons boom across its flank. Three of the balls fall short and are drowned in the depths. The others strike wood, cracking and splintering. On your left a man's torso lies two feet away from his lower body, the two connected by a bloody tangle of intestines.
"Captain!" someone screams.
"Hold!" she says. "Hold, damn you!"
She's staring at the enemy vessel. You match her gaze, and understand. The ships' paths over the water... They're converging.
A horde of pirates are visible on deck opposite now, weapons in their hands, ready to board or repel boarders. It's a large force, far greater than that around you. But the woman wears a hard, predatory smile.
Closer... Closer... Creaking timber and shouting voices... Splashing water... The first cracks of small arms discharging, and the accompanying wisps of powder smoke...
"Now!" she says. "Fire!"
The cannons open their maws and bark death.
There's a veil of smoke, as though the universe wishes to shield your eyes from the terrible sight. But it isn't enough to obscure the sheer bloody carnage wrought by man's ingenuity and the captain's resolve. The enemy deck is strewn with... No. Not corpses... Pieces, amidst a crimson tide.
"Blue Drake!" the captain shouts.
"Blue Drake!" her men echo.
There are shouts and screams from the enemy deck as well. A one-eyed man in a black jacket and a tricorn hat is yelling commands to his minions, marshaling the survivors and mustering them for battle.
And still the ships are converging...
Hull crashes and grinds against hull. It sounds for all the world as though both vessels are groaning and protesting at such ill-use.
"No quarter! No survivors!" the woman screams. "If your blade isn't red, you'll swim home!"
Then she leaps across to the other ship, a pistol in her left hand and a cutlass in her right, her men alongside her.
Flintlock weapons reap their slaughter first, adding even more smoke and screams to the tableau, putting round balls through flesh and spilling blood to join the rivers already on the deck. Amidst it all you see the female captain sidestep a firing musket, evading its shot at near pointblank range. Then she aims her pistol at the buccaneer's head. The ball goes through his eye and sends a splash of brains out from the back of his skull.
Reloading is an impossibility. With these firearms, in the middle of crimson pandemonium, one shot is all a weapon yields. So the flash of blades and the clang of steel upon steel soon fill the deck. Skulls are split, breasts pierced, and arms hewn from torsos -- as they have been throughout the length and breadth of human history.
You follow the woman, drawn by curiosity both personal and professional, eager to see her blade-work. Here too she's a vicious thing. She strides through the battle, cutting at front and back without a qualm. When a swordsman faces her, she either strikes first and splits his flesh or else parries and ripostes with swift and sure flicks of her wrist, destroying her stronger foes with speed, finesse, and brutality. If one has his back turned, distracted by another adversary's cleaving blade, she delivers death unseen.
The barbaric beauty makes for the opposing captain, the man in the tricorn hat and eye-patch -- who's pulling his sword free from a collapsing seaman's body.
"Courtland!" she shouts.
He stares at her and growls.
"You!" he says. "I'll cut your arms off and send you back to the brothel!"
Their bloody blades meet, clinking and clashing.
She strikes low. He parries. She spits.
The blob of saliva splats against his eye. He flinches, and makes a wide instinctive parry, sweeping his sword across his body to fend off the inevitable follow-up attack. But it's a clumsy maneuver, and her cutlass slashes in its wake. A crimson smile opens in his neck, and vomits forth a scarlet waterfall.
Blood sprays across the woman's tanned face, reddens her white shirt. She laughs. Then she slips her left hand into his jacket, lifts something from within, and strides past before he's even fallen to his knees. She heads through a doorway, leaving the remains of the slaughter behind.
A pirate tries to hold the steps against her. He loses his hand and his life for it. Then she's down in the bowels of the ship, walking with a purpose that bespeaks familiarity.
Two buccaneers are guarding a door. Both fire muskets. Neither ball hits the woman, who moves like a panther. She pulls a pistol from her sash and shoots one in the heart. The other tries to bargain, until her cutlass splits his face.
You're close behind her when she passes into the dark chamber and weaves her way among the crates and sacks, at her shoulder as she stops in front of a large, ornate wooden chest -- its dark body carved in the images of writhing, thrashing sea monsters. She draws a small silver key from her sash, and pushes it into a hole that serves as a kraken's eye. It turns and clicks.
She lifts the chest's lid and throws it back. You both lean forward, to feast your eyes on the object which lies within. It's a sword, its sharp steel edge somehow contriving to gleam even in the gloom. The shape, the design... You've seen this weapon before.
There's a man, silver in hair and wise in eye, but still strong and hearty. Two swords, one silver the other orange, dance in his hands.
The woman reaches for it.
The Mountains Look On Marathon
You're standing on a sunny plain, an expanse of sand, and grass, and... Rank upon rank of warriors. It's the middle of a battlefield.
The sea shimmers on your right, as though keen to renew your recent acquaintance. Ships, far older and more archaic than the cannon-armed vessels you were aboard but a moment ago, are drawn up on the beach -- having delivered and disgorged the invading warriors who're lined up before them. Some are armed with bows, others spears and shields. All are dressed in exotic garb, patterned tunics and trousers, lamellar cuirasses.
On your left are their foes, rows of warriors bearing big round shields that are emblazoned with an assortment of different crests, from swords to gorgons' heads. Your eye falls on one of these, belonging to a soldier stationed at the far end of the army. It looks like a blue pitchfork...
You blink, and find yourself in front of him, staring at a bearded face almost entirely hidden by a bronze helmet. His eyes glare and his mouth growls from its shadows. The device on his shield isn't a pitchfork... It's an azure trident.
The man is well equipped. Most of the hoplites around him are wearing corselets of leather or stiff linen, and many have nothing girding their tanned limbs. But the bearer of the azure trident is clad in a bronze cuirass beaten into the shape of a muscular torso -- with bulging pectorals and abdominals. That ancient martial metal encases his shins and forearms too. But the long head on his spear is iron, as is the savage hacking sword slung at his side.
He steps forward, as though to challenge you and demand an explanation for your presence. But instead he walks right through you. And those behind him do the same. The army is advancing, stamping their way across the plain.
Opposite them, the Persians are readying their arrows.
When the two forces are close, the Greeks just beyond the reach of their enemies' archery, a great cry goes up from the Hellenic ranks.
"Eleleu! Eleleu!"
The ululation spreads across their entire battle line, and spurs them into a sudden burst of speed. Men charge. Arrows fly.
Shafts rain down among the Greeks. Some clatter impotent against bronze. Others find their mark and leave victims tumbling in the dust. But the hoplites are running despite the weight and encumbrance of their battle gear, devouring the distance. And in moments the two armies collide.
It's like watching an immense wrestling match. The warriors are pressed together, shield against shield, Greek driving against Persian and Persian against Greek, spears jabbing in savage overhand thrusts.
The man with the blue trident plunges his into an enemy's throat. And when the dying foe falls, to be trampled beneath the surging lines, the victorious red weapon takes the next one in the chest. Three more enemies are punctured and slain by the spear before it breaks. Then he draws his sword and hacks away, all the while pressing forward with his muscular might.
Here the Greek ranks are deep, a heavy mass of men and shields. The lighter armed Persians are buckling before the onslaught, dying beneath sword and spear, only delaying the inevitable moment when... Their formation breaks, and the struggle becomes a rout.
You expect the triumphant hoplites to follow the instincts of battle, to pursue the fleeing enemies and slaughter them. But instead they're wheeling around, turning towards the middle of the battle -- where their brethren are arrayed in thinner ranks, and are being hard-pressed by the Persians.
"Eleleu! Eleleu!"
There's a fresh ululation, as the warriors on the wing rush to aid their comrades. All except for one... The man with the blue trident shield is breaking away from his phalanx. He's sprinting after the Persians, as though driven beyond reason by bloodlust.
The rearmost Mede, a man in bright blue and gold costume, looks over his shoulder and cries out. Then he stumbles, trips, and lands in the dust. He rolls onto his back just in time to have his throat cut.
His slayer sets down shield and sword, and tears the embroidered tunic open. The ripping is loud and heavy, as though he were rending flesh instead of fabric. Beneath the parted garment, resting on the dead man's pale skin, is an amulet. It's in the shape of a dragon's head. A pair of cyan gemstones twinkle in its eye sockets.
Symphony of Two Worlds
Your consciousness soars, high above the hoplite clutching his prize. The scrimmaging warriors become indistinct, their formations reduced to blocks of indecipherable motion before vanishing altogether. Now you can see the shape of the country for which they fight, the bulging mainland and scattered islands that the Hellenes claim as their own -- and will keep, thanks to the ferocious courage of men such as the hoplite with the blue trident on his shield.
Far to the west lie the seas upon which a strange and savage captain will sail and fight. Closer at hand is the island kingdom where Kalaxia's cult will find both a home and relentless enemies, whose skies will later witness the deeds of a magnificent pilot and his heroic comrades.
All these places fall away beneath you, as you make the trip through untold millennia and millions of miles. This time your destination is no surprise. The planet's name tingles on your tongue.
"Tor'gyyl."
Its exotic sound pleases you.
So this is what Screaming Barracuda is capable of... Did Kevin Arctora understand the power she possessed? He must have had some inkling, if he suspected she might be in danger from the Kalaxians. Perhaps his perceptions were sharper than yours, his connection to the blood even stronger. How else did he sense what you only discerned after your awakening at the cultists' hands? So much potential, and he was murdered before he could realize it.
You hope the cult's destruction will make him rest easy, wherever he is.
The planet grows larger. Something's drawing you onward yet again, towards the landmass whose name now arrives on your tongue in turn.
"West Kruna."
Men of Kruna, stop your drinking...
"What the bloody hell're you thinking?
Can't you hear the foemen slinking,
On the battlements?"
For the first time since your temporal journey began, Barra's music is audible. Faint, but growing louder by the second. You turn, and there she is, aboard the Silver Shadow and yet beside you here at the same time -- glimpsed as if through a window. Her eyes are still closed, tranquil satisfaction painted on her green features.
"Men of Kruna, grab a bludgeon,
Lest you earn the nobles' dudgeon,
And get thrown in the dungeon,
You bloody drunken sods!"
Screaming Barracuda's voice and guitar strings shape the song. But there's something else as well... A second female voice, a different instrument -- singing the same lyrics, playing the same tune.
And it's growing louder, just as Barracuda's did. Because whoever the maestro is, her music's ushering you and your Piscarian companion towards her.
Medea's eyebrow rises, and her harp's chords flutter. So this is the bard who initiated the impromptu duet? Curious. A mermaid, dressed in a form and fashion of leather armor the elf has never seen before. As for that instrument... It reminds her of a lute, though its style and voice are just as alien.
But for all her strangeness, the mermaid revels in music, weaves and wields it, as Medea does. The elf reads this in their shared harmonies. Thus she smiles upon her.
Ah... There's someone else. The mermaid has a companion. She's indistinct, for she's a mere listener of the song. And yet there's something about her which draws the elven bard's gaze and thoughts, an inscrutable familiarity.
Her eyes widen.
The Dragon-Rider... And... Oh! Not just the Dragon-Rider. Dragon and rider. So this is what happened when they met in the snow.
The visitor is trying to speak, but Medea can't hear her -- because she doesn't belong here. Perhaps that's for the best, she thinks. Who knows what might transpire? She had to deal with such perturbing possibilities once before, when past and present and prophecy became so dangerously intertwined.
Yet she senses that the visitor's need is great. There's a powerful enemy set against her, one bound to the elf's world as well as hers. This troubles the bard. No... Whatever Medea's part in the battle, it was played long ago. Let the next war be waged by those for whom fate intended it.
But maybe she can send her something to illuminate her heritage...
Medea's fingers dance across the strings of her harp, and weave a message into her music.
"...Now let's have a drink!"
Your eyes open. A sweeping void stretches before you, sprinkled with shining stars. Then the rest of the mess room comes into focus.
"That's how it went," she says. "Want to hear it again?"
"No... That's... That's okay."
"I'm starving... Got anything to eat on this thing?"
You point at one of the storage units. The Piscarian songstress puts Wailing Doom back on the counter, and commences rummaging through your supplies.
Scenes replay themselves across your mind -- visions of dogfights and gas-lit streets, of naval battles and crashing shields. But one looms larger than all the others. The harpist sent it to you, passed it into your consciousness as one might slip a note.
Medea... That was her name. You saw her once before, within your kindred spirit's memories.
You close your eyes, and concentrate on it.
There's a woman standing in the snow, gazing into a mighty azure visage. Two orange eyes stare back at her, taking her measure. Then blood flows. The woman drinks. And destiny takes shape. The very same destiny which has reached eons into the future, where the unending enmity of ancient foes lives on.
Perhaps this information will aid you in the coming struggle. Or maybe it only serves to elucidate your lineage and grant you understanding. You'll know soon enough. Because Kalaxia's cultists have made you their enemy, and you're going to destroy them. </tabber>