Ch: 284 Whistle Past The Graveyard

In the rocky, blasted crater on the backside of Gary’s soul, inside the high stone ramparts Gary looked down on a battered red robed form, lying inert and cold on his soil… or soul… Either way, the entity’s blood remained a bright red and liquid pool, stubbornly refusing to soak in or dry up.

 

The body lay face up, the red ruin of a… The inside of the hood was a mess. Gary folded the trailing edges of the garment over what was still in there and tried to gather as much of the loose… material as he could. 

“Ok, that is pretty upsetting.” He remarked to the three ravens circling high above, while he worked.

 

“You really are doing this naked?” Ward asked calmly, from where he was suddenly perched on a boulder nearby. “I respect your commitment to the bit.”

 

“It’s a witchcraft thing… naked we come into the world, naked we go… This way nothing of War can stick to me and nothing of me can stick to him.” He smiled crookedly at his brother. “My problem now is disposal… I don’t want him stinking up my ecosystem.”

 

“Kick him off into the void?” Ward offered.

 

“And feed some random eldritch weirdo a dead divine… something or other? Healer would lose her mind as well… I know she’s watching.” He grumbled at the mad, roiling sky above. “The traces of him you brought into the material world were preserved inside your mortal Animus, remaining active. This is empty now, but still troubling.” 

 

He sat down on a blasted, blackened stone and started concentrating. With almost no visible effect at first, the scarred and blasted landscape began to change. “I have a deep well of time to mess with, for a mortal… in this place.” He mumbled quietly, with his eyes closed.

“Here, time is malleable and less… real.” 

Trees and flowers pushed up from the barren stones, slowly climbing for the light, as a spring began gushing water into the crater, gathering in the low points. Thick and verdant forest soon covered the slopes and parts of the crater floor.

 

Within a few minutes, a tall pink marble obelisk stood on an island, surrounded by a clear crystal lake and a forest of flowering trees and plants. War’s immortal doll thing was neatly sealed inside the tall round monument, forming a simple reliquary to keep the divine corpse fresh.

“That should keep things tidy while I think of a solution… maybe it’ll get Healer off my back a little, as well.”

 

“Gary… why is it shaped like a… why is it shaped like that?” Ward demanded gently.

 

“Like what?” Gary was the picture of innocence and sublime humility.

 

“You know what. If I say it, some of the others might see it too.” He whispered.

 

“Is it too obvious? I mean, with the shape of the island?” He asked with a wink.

 

“No… it’s just right, now that I really look at it objectively.” Ward murmured with a radiant smile that made a few local flowers bloom early.

“Most of the pantheon is really steamed at you. Not at me, oddly enough; they see me as one of them now, so I get a pass.” Ward remarked with amusement.

“You have half of them shitting their pants in fear… and the smarter half wondering how they developed butholes and the ability to shit themselves at all.”

 

“Ok, that was all me…” He grumbled. “When I got the bum’s rush out of my own soul… I got a little petty, I maybe gave them all my cooties.” He whispered.

 

“You… you didn’t…” Ward murmured in horror.

 

“No! God’s man… I’m not completely bonkers. I just kinda infected them with a little of me. Not the three douche-migos… fuck those guys. Everybody else is probably pretty confused by now.”

#

 

Three days of easy sailing later, they docked on the pier they’d built in Wicklowe’s cove… Or its descendant. One rickety bamboo and rope pier looked much like another. Gary and Shai thundered down the bamboo decking and started bringing their home over, as quick as you please. They seemed eager to get solid land under everyone’s feet again before afternoon even got started.

 

Gary in particular wanted to get back in the workshop. The workbench aboard Moonrise was directly aimed at shipboard needs and he’d become deeply spoiled by his ability to summon simple tools to hand, while in his own shop.

He left most of the handshaking and socializing involved in joining an existing warcamp to the others. He and the kids vanished downstairs together, scheming.

 

“I’ve transplanted elements of the artifacts to this coat, this should allow you to gradually attune to the components and remnant magic, without having to carry all that stuff around.” He smiled at his burly lad. 

“That’s as small as I can make the array needed to spiritually link the artifacts to your Ka at a distance…” He murmured in a little embarrassment, holding up the oilskin duster for his son.

 

“I like it!” Wilf delivered another of those smiles that happened so rarely.

 

“It needs a hat.” Gary said with a beaming smile of his own for the lad. “Let me mull that over for a bit.”

 

Over on an armor form, amber and red striated wooden plates covered the right arm of the dummy, sewn onto a sack cloth backing temporarily. The elements of the incomplete armor glowed and shimmered like autumn leaves in the wind, when viewed out of the corner of one’s eye, it was a little disconcerting. 

 

He took a few moments to carefully secure the club in his vault…

 

This Mortal Coil, enchanted weapon, club/cudgel/bludgeon Incomplete, null/null/null.

“Ware my bite, it is death. Ware my strike, death is a mercy.”

 

The inert club of deepest black wood and oily black iron was lurking there like the dark promise of imminent violence. The snake’s head, however, no longer menaced the prospective wielder. Now it nestled at the butt of the weapon, balancing it nicely. 

The tail had fully coiled around, presenting no deadly iron spike to the world. Rather, the sweet spot offered a dense set of tightly coiled scaly iron rings for bashing goodness. It was definitely not active, or nearly as menacing as it had been… still creepy as hell though.

 

They washed up in the foyer and joined the family for dinner in the garden... Trestle tables of nonsense and moonbeams groaned under a huge quantity of sturgeon. Sturgeon cakes, rolls, dumplings, nuggets and stew… sturgeon almandine and blackened sturgeon over red beans and rice… The meal had a theme and that theme was unloading as much of that monster as they could, while the orphans and Adventurers were still excited about eating something besides rations and whatever they fished and trapped.

 

The ever expanding baths covered a quarter acre now, with plenty of fluffy, warm towels conjured from nowhere. That really reduced the laundry chores… until Shai caught a whiff of the first shift of orphans as they headed from the baths. Freshly bathed kids, but once they got poured back into clothes that had been washed in seawater without soap far too often for comfort or hygiene...

“All ye lads an lasses, bring yer laundry, sorted by troop this evening… me husband will hae the cleaning of it.” Shai declared, creating a small stampede. 

 

“Hey!” Gary whined half heartedly. 

 

“I’ll dragoon a few o the burly lads tae help thee.” She cooed, hugging him over his shoulder from behind, so her hair draped over his face… “Ye will nae hae yer brothers an sisters all scratchy an uncomfortable… would ye?”

 

“Mm… No fair, wife. You know what that does to me…” He murmured happily, lost in her warm embrace and scent.

“We’ll do some laundry and then tomorrow, I want a look at that array.”

 

Down in the basement, Shai finally got a look at his laundry system… He kept it tucked away between the buttcheeks of reality, on the underside of his soul most of the time. Gary didn’t really understand why… but he always felt the need to do laundry in secret.

Now Shai was down among the big stone tubs. Huge mesh bags of enchanted spidersilk netting bobbed in the churning vats of strange not quite water. He stirred and turned the bags from time to time, until he fished them out with long poles of enchanted bamboo tipped with bronze hooks. 

He hauled the sodden bags out of his swirling pools of chaos and willed the liquid away in a cloud of pleasant scented steam… “It’s the folding that kills me. I don’t have a talent or gift for it.” He dumped a half dozen giant teabags into his vats and sat down on a stool while they churned and bubbled.

“Clothing carries the remnant of a person’s Animus and aura for a while… My enchanted laundry bags just enhance that effect, while the diluted bathwater in the vats consumes anything cruddy.” He mumbled happily, while strumming his new shamisen. “This is my private practice time, I’ll only share it with you lover...”

 

“Boy… ye are barking mad.” She sighed, as her violin joined him in a flight of fancy. “I love thee for it, even more.”

 

Shai was as bad at folding laundry as he was… eventually she conjured a brace of huge wicker baskets and dumped each squad’s clothes in one. Together, they donkied the huge panniers upstairs and set them out for the kids to figure out for themselves.

Most orphans had a distinctive mark or extra button sewn in their clothes for such occasions. Shai’d always had a tight coil of steel wire wound through an unobtrusive hem or cuff to mark her clothes in the orphanage. That had become her trade token when she began taking on her own works.

She mused on the past and considered the future, while she watched the kids gleefully sort out their things, as evening fell over the little makeshift village by the seaside.

 

Becky wrangled the little ones into her bed to give the newlyweds a little more time alone… and because she still hated sleeping alone. “Come on… I’ll read you an extra chapter of ‘Tom Sawyer’ while we settle in.” She cooed, dragging Rio under the covers, as he struggled and squealed in giggling ‘terror’. ‘Becky Monster’ was always a favorite game, even when they weren’t quite sleepy yet.

#

 

Dawn came rushing through the mangroves, as the night birds hurtled through the trees, snapping up the last morsels of insect flesh on the wing, before full daylight changed the game. Colorful batlizards took over, flitting around and gobbling up the skeeters lingering on the camp’s perimeter. 

Gary, Shai, Ivy, Becky, Dannyl and Liam took Seahorse into the marsh, with Larksong as their guide as the sun rose.

 

“Amicus’ reports said there’s a vast necropolis illusion all around it…” Gary asked the smiling young woman with carved bone and bright turquoise beads strung in her hair.

 

“Not an illusion… It tastes of long forgotten graves and the silent slumber of ages…” She said softly. “Very troubling…”

 

It was troubling, the aura of quietus and solemn silence began a half mile before the first signs of actual trouble appeared. The occasional shadow or wandering husk fell to Larksong’s bow as the little boat slowly motored up stream in the quiet mangrove swamp. The farther up the winding channel they went the more of the shambling, drifting figures they encountered. 

 

On a wide and semi solid patch of soil, The boat nosed in for a moment at Gary’s urging, while he jumped out and slogged through the mud to face a small cluster of cruddy, moist humanoid corpse things. They turned and immediately began staggering towards him, once he hit shore.

 

As they approached the madman waved at his mate and comrades on the boat to remain still. “Hold on… I wanna get a better idea of what we’re working with.” He called, as the first stumbling body stepped on his shadow and vanished with a soft ‘pop!’ and a sprinkle of wet dirt.

“Oh.” He mumbled in embarrassment. “These are totally just dreams…” 

The remaining husks stumbled inexorably forward, reaching out in a way that was totally creepy and threatening… unless you looked beyond the grasping, taloned fingers and crumbling flesh.

“They hunger for life essence but are little more than dirty soap bubbles, magically. The zeds we fought on the beach were real corpses animated and guided by something sentient… these are just drifting figments.”

 

As he spoke, a small swarm of big, black wasp creatures rose from his shadow, flitting around the meadow. One of the buzzing shadow bugs zipped over and plunged its stinger into a shambler, resulting in another ‘pop!’ of damp earth and crud. “Nice…” He mumbled cheerfully, as the insects spread out and began detonating the slow moving things.

 

“Gary, is that your doing? The weird bees?” Becky asked with interest.

 

“Yeah, Kree’s with the kids, but I can call on her hive and manifest her workers’ shadows. They usually can’t affect real things, but these aren’t real; our buddies are mostly just dreams and undirected Will.”

 

“Gross.” Liam opined, from one of the nice dry benches on Seahorse. “Clean up before you come back aboard… Becky keeps a clean boat.”

 

“Hmph…” Gary complained wordlessly, as his soggy and muddy clothes disappeared in a cloud of misdirection and shadow, replaced by clean pants and sandals in a twinkle of occult weirdness. 

“Pirated in broad daylight.” He mumbled, once Becky let him back aboard.

 

The rest of their short journey became a contest between Gary and Larksong to see who could disrupt the wanderers they encountered first. 

Her arrows of twinkling magic flew fast and true, but his insects darted in and among the trees, stinging shades and crud monsters still protected by the foliage.

 

A half hour and a few dozen slow moving haunts later, the odd formation came into view. A wide soggy meadow with a pattern of paths and trails cut through the grasses, reeds and scrub brush, seeming random at ground level… Gary sent his swarm up into the treetops as he closed his eyes to share their senses. 

A pattern of distinct and very complex ritual glyphs and runes were visible from above, trodden into the wet earth by countless undead feet and drifting wights. He traced the paths and meandering symbols around, following the trail of occult footprints back to a low, rocky mound in the center of the array. 

It seemed incongruous, rising from the muddy field where no other boulders or stones had been visible for miles of wet, low lying swamp. 

Equally odd were the five glass knobs rising from the mossy, muddy earth at each intersection of a six pointed star inside a circle of trampled earth. A muddy clay bank showed where one of the buried corpse bottles had been washed away by the stream Seahorse bobbed jauntily in, nearby.

“I knew Wicklowe was part of a set…” Gary grumbled, while the others remained quiet in the oppressive silence.

“Let’s get to work.”

 

His weird shadow wasps continued to patrol the clearing as they moored the boat nearby and began setting up in a sunny patch of nearly dry soil. The small team set out an assortment of folding tables and erected an awning, in case of rain over the cluster of furniture. While they worked, the young people kept their eyes away from the rocky mound and the vista spreading beyond it. Instead of more wet, marshy swamp, a vast, dusty plain stretched in the distance, covered with untended graves, crypts and mausoleums, as far as the eye could see.

 

“Your instincts are right… don’t look at it.” Gary mumbled softly. “That’s no illusion. It’s a gateway into another reality.”

 

“What?” Several people asked at once.

 

“Yeah… someone opened a very narrow crack in reality and called someone over to peek through the gap.” The musician shook his head sadly. “The being is incompatible with this world, so it can’t enter, even if the aperture were large enough… which it’s not.”

 

“So what is it? Can we kill it?”” Larksong asked with a deep shudder of revulsion.

 

“Kill it? Nope. it’s not alive as we understand it. This is a gestalt mind, composed of an entire planet’s sentient dead. A god of the dead, as it were… but not in a creepy way.” He murmured. “I‘m gonna try and have a chat with it.”

 

“What?!” They chorused again.

 

“It doesn’t want to be here… the gap between our realities is drawing its attention like a moth to a flame, with a similar result.” He wandered closer to the edge of the array, peering  at the stony mound in the center. 

“It’s almost like…” He fell silent, as a lurching, stumbling ersatz cadaver pulled itself from the soil at the edge of the stony outcrop. “Ok, it’s exactly like…” He grumbled.

 

“Like what, lad? Speak plain.” Shai complained sourly, watching from a distance. “I mislike this thing.”

 

“It’s an eye, lover. That’s the eye of something terribly vast and ancient, peering into our realm… I get the feeling it would rather not, but has been pinned here. These are dreams, slipping into our world… and also, the tears of a death god in distress.”

 

“What?!” The familiar refrain rang out from the crew, disturbing the quiet morning.

 

“Yup. That’s why this thing is so creepy and potent… and why it took the ritual sacrifice and imprisonment of at least six mortal souls to drag in here against its will. Now the door is trying to close, but it’s stuck in the entryway.” He grumbled, while fishing around and gathering objects from his storage gift.

 

“Unwilling?” Liam asked carefully. “Are you sure, and if you do something, will it be safe?”

 

“Totally unwilling… and the process of releasing it from our world will be super unsafe.” Gary muttered. “First I have to re-open the door and let it ease its way out, then we can close the portal.” His mad smile was not reassuring. 

“Right now, the souls forming the array are stretched to the limits, I just need to loosen the aperture and give him a push.”

 

“Are you sure about this?” Larksong asked nervously as the fool began putting together a sack of strange things.

 

“Nope, experimental ritual magic is super weird and this shit’s all crazy to begin with… Should be a hell of a show at least.” He said with a level of cheerfulness that should have been impossible under the pall of unlife hanging down over the area. “Let’s get to work.”

#

 

Gabriella Rex, ruler of the Empire of Light didn’t supervise the removal of that loathsome crystal thing from beneath the cubic throne… She did pass through the narrow, winding passages to the hidden chamber where it had been, just to be certain. Back in the throne room, she paused and smiled at Jocomo, her beloved left hand. “This is where we find out how much is madness…” She whispered, as the imperial bottom landed back on the hateful golden block after so long away from its icy cold discomfort…

 

“Oh…!” Gabbie gasped with a smile of pure delight. “He was right…” She whispered. “I can feel them all… all of my Whispers, roaming about on their duties…”

Her gaze shot back to her faithful assassin. “Even you… My beloved. The way you are looking at your empress! Scandalous!”

 

Throughout the capital of her empire, Bastion, she could feel them, faithfully discharging their duties. Further afield, there were only a few, on ships or riding for nearby cities to carry the empress’ will in person. A few more led platoons from Order, to ‘secure’ certain persons… that they might await the empress’ pleasure.

 

Gabbie became slightly lost in the strange sensation of being loosely familiar with the current activities and disposition of two hundred people. It was a lot to deal with, so she jumped a little in surprise when Jocomo spoke in her ear. 

“Gabbie, do you need a cushion? That looks uncomfortable…”

 

“Oh, no it feels… like it always should have felt this way. I feel all of you… Like pieces of me that had been stolen and hidden away, finally returned.” She sighed,  a few stray tears trickling down her dark, shining cheeks. 

“Be extra certain that hideous rock gets shipped to Gary right away; under maximum security.”

 

“It shall be done…” He murmured while blotting her cheek with the back of his scarred swordsman’s hand. “I’ll send Scorpion and Isopod to escort it; they could use the time off, my empress.”

#

 

“It’s coming in from a dead world, one truly extinct after a long and productive run. Their sun is going out and things have wound down to a stable and peaceful end, as things should.” Gary sighed softly, sitting on a camp chair in the sunshine.

“The peaceful entropic processes would have brought this other universe to a close without any difficulty, at some point. All this trouble is coming from our side.”

 

“So, some idiot tried to drag something here from a world that’s ending?” Becky asked, looking a little queasy.

 

“Kinda… as a person dies, their soul might linger briefly, or even for centuries before moving on, but on the time scale of the universe…” He snapped his fingers crisply. 

“Worlds, realms, even entire universes are born, live and of course, end as time marches relentlessly on. Just the same way we do…” His mad smile was a little ragged and angry. 

“This is the ghost of a dead planet, summoned here by force and it’s pretty cranky about the whole mess.”

 

“So what’s the solution?” Liam asked carefully.

 

“Their eyeball is caught in the door, I’ll open it and let them slip free as I break down the array, then we take care of our bottled souls.” He grumbled. 

“After that, we find whoever is hiding in this swamp, under this fog of unlife and we’ll be putting them down. A lich, I think.”

“What?!” They all sang again.

 

“Once this mess is gone, they won’t have anywhere to hide.” Gary growled and glared about the clearing, as if expecting to find the entity he sought, wandering by picking toadstools…

#

 

The three littlest Wards and their new insect playmate were having a fine time showing some of the off duty orphan teens of the warcamp their favorite game. 

“So If I slip off my horsie, off I go under the rose arbor for a penalty nap?” Lucas asked.

 

“Uhh huh… Three naps and it’s snacktime. That means you lose.” Amy explained patiently.

 

“And the last rider still mounted wins?” Heather demanded. How does that work?”

 

“The winner gets a nap under the rose arbor… and then a snack…” Rio explained patiently. “I don’t understand what’s so difficult.”

 

“So we’re just playing around with the horsies… Until naptime?” Heather insisted.

 

“Uhh… yeah! The scorin’ system is just to confuse the grownups, so they won’t inn’errupt.” Amy sighed softly. “Really, can’t believe I have’ta ‘splain it…”

 

“Otherwise, Gary’d have us out picking toadstools or Shai’d have us dancing… They’re both exhausting.” Rio complained gently. As he spoke, he perked up, tilting an ear to the south east and listening intently.

“Gary’s working, we should go inside. Might rain.”

 

The dozen or so teens and their familiars looked up to the clear blue sky, cloudless to the far horizons. 

“Rain.” Wilf agreed with a sense of utter conviction.

#