Ch: 288 No Parking On The Dance Floor

Gary caught up with the rest of his family at the orphanage and had a lovely and relaxing afternoon of quiet family time… which in their case meant absolute madness. 

“Amy, I’ll have uncle Tallum weld those training wheels on, if you bully Wilf into taking them off again!” He scolded his daughter gently.

“Wilf, just cause she’s older, doesn’t make her the boss. Obedience is a fine thing, but disobedience is a true art.”

 

Shai smiled silently and let her husband prattle and rattle on, enjoying the slow rolling, gentle chaos of life with her mad boy. Stepping inside to a surprise delivery from the empress of Light was a bit much, even for the Wards.

 

“We were instructed to give this box to Gary Ward or Shai Ward, master and mistress of Wheatford’s finest inn.” Scorpion said solemnly, When the little family came home in the early afternoon. 

“No key?” Gary asked, when the heavy steel box landed on a table.

 

“Her radiance provided none. The Left Hand suggested none would be needed.” Isopod mumbled.

 

“Hmph… Pretty rude.” He mumbled happily, with the widest grin anyone had seen on his face in a while, as he produced a set of lockpicks from nowhere. “I’ll just have to see what I can do…” He murmured, already probes deep in the guts of the lock.

 

“The empire’s finest locksmith created that thing…” Scorpion murmured happily as they bowed and departed, despite Shai’s offer of lodgings for the night.

 

“Duty calls us back… and we have far to go.” Isopod called as they headed for the dock and the small, sleek courier ship moored there.

#

 

“Damn this thing!” Gary whispered excitedly, as he snapped yet another probe. “I am going to break that locksmith’s fingers…” He gasped, through a sheen of sweat. “Those beautiful, marvelous fingers…”

 

“Fie! I should take up the smithin of locks, ye never speak so of my poor hands.” She cooed, distracting him from his brass and steel puzzle present. “Should I chisel the hinges off an have done?”

 

“No!” He whined pitifully. “This is the most fun I’ve had in a month… with pants on.” He swiftly amended himself. “Five more minutes, then I’m up to bed, I promise!”

 

“Aye lad, five minutes, then I’ll start wi out thee…” She grumbled gently. The poor girl was still on the stairs when a soft click resounded through the room, followed by a quiet whoop of joy. 

“Fie…” She grumbled as she headed back downstairs in the late evening gloom.

 

“Gabbie is a pretty skilled gift giver…” He mumbled happily, holding up the strange object. It was an irregular mass of some deep red stone, veined with blue and bright red here and there. 

The crystal ended in a bent and shorn mass of golden tubes, almost exactly like a triple scale model of a human heart rendered in stone and metal. Almost too exactly… to the point it seemed like it could start beating at any moment.

 

“Boy, be that..?”

 

“The stony heart of the empire’s hidden demonic ruler? Yup. I love you, so I won’t make any of the obvious jokes, Shai. That’s my gift to you.” He sang happily, while stowing the thing away and resetting the lock.

 

“Boy, Ye dinnae make a key yet!” Shai cried in desperation as it snapped shut.

 

“Oops…” Gary giggled, in naughty glee. “I’ll have to crack it again later, I already gave her my gift days ago...” He said with a cheerful wink. “A touch was all that I needed to finish the job. She’ll wait in limbo for a while, then answer some questions and get juiced through the Devourer.” 

He laughed again, clean, honest laughter. “That’s two in one day… I matched my personal best!”

 

He kissed her with honest, joyous passion and swept her off to bed with a smile on both their faces

#

 

“No, I can’t summon him here. You demanded that he be sealed out… at great personal cost to him and myself, we complied.” Ward answered calmly. “You chose to make an enemy of a very special friend of mine… guess what that makes us.”

 

“He must be brought to heel!” Dana gasped in frustration. “Two more! Two eternal lights winked out in one mortal day!”

 

“Two outsiders who had no business on this world.” Ward mumbled softly. “As they all have been. Invaders, sneaks, assassins and monsters all… Considering how much harm they collectively caused… and would have continued to cause, it seems you should have no complaints.”

 

“He is not one of us! He has no business ki… dest…” She stumbled over the words, in frustration and angst. “...doing that to immortals!”

 

“But he’s the only one who can… and he isn’t violating any law of the gods or man… nor do his deities seem concerned…” He remarked casually, with one of those smiles. “Now Dana… I know we work opposite ends of the street, but that’s no reason we can’t get along…”

 

“Birth, life, healing, the cleansing light of kindness…” She murmured softly as he stepped closer in the quiet meadow they were meeting in. “In the end, death is also a healer of wounds… Mortals struggle to keep death in abeyance, even though it is the shadow cast by life’s own light.”

 

“See? We can get along… Why not my brother?” He asked the goddess, whose radiant form stood just a hanspan away.

 

“A mortal without the spark to give life within, is a pitiable creature… yet he revels in springs of healing water and even brings new lives into the world where he walks…” She whispered in tender outrage. 

“When one of Beast’s own handmaidens assisted a mortal birth, within the swirling energies of the divine realm itself… can’t you see?” 

 

“So, he stepped on your divine toes?” Ward asked carefully. “He’s fumbling around in the dark and only glimpsing the light on occasion…” He stammered slightly and looked confused, as he softly began singing a strange snatch of nonsense lyrics.

 

…before someone cruel took the lamp away… 

He looked around, lousy candle’s all he found… 

 

“Steppenwolf… Magic Carpet Ride… nineteen sixty eight…” He mumbled distractedly. 

“Sorry, interference from that damned crater… where were we?” He purred into the divine ear. “Interfaith outreach?”

#

 

“We each have our roles to play in this complex matter… Ward is… busy at the moment discussing our concerns with lady Dana, the Healer.” Thirp assured Becky. “Marduk has his hands full managing Craft’s multitude of Contracts and entanglements. There are a startling number of outsider cults operating as craft guilds, all over!”

 

“That sounds… problematic…” She muttered unhappily. 

 

“Not as much as you might think… Word has spread that two more immortals have vanished from the ether… ritual portals are slamming closed all around the globe as every outsider wonders who will be next… Most have already fled and sealed the way behind them.” She sang smugly. “They don’t really understand geography or travel and the rest of us are happy to let that situation continue. An outsider cult whose patron will not answer, is a non threat.”

 

“Where’s Shai?” Becky asked, as the kids and Kree went zipping by. In this place Kree took the form of a yellow and black wasp waisted, hard shelled girl around Amy’s age, with a silly twinkle in her compound eyes and a gleaming black sword on her hip.

 

“She’s scolding a few of the other deities who should have ‘sacked up’ and taken a stand. Brigid is with her, to keep them polite. I don’t think anyone considered keeping Shai polite…”

#

 

“...An ye nae kin stand fer a friend whae gave thee his hospitality wi out stint nor hesitation…” She sighed in utter disappointment at the gathered fae and deities. “An ye would hae cults again and guide mankind as once ye did, best ye learn tae lead.” 

She stomped around the circle of entities, making uncomfortable eye contact with several. “Ye fear his bite, yet he as nae even shown his teeth tae those who dinnae vex him. Well know that I be vexed… an I hae me own teeth tae bite wi.”

 

“Mistress Shai…” Brigid began, tentatively. “Gary specifically asked that all these beings continue to have access to this place, and the mortal realm beyond.”

 

“Aye? Well, tis my place as much as his… an also Ward’s now, I do suppose…” She turned her glare back on the beings. “Ye pack of meddling children! Breaking what ye dinnae ken; an get stumbling mad, when yer delicate fingies be scorched.” She unleashed her boiling anger and frustration at the gathered divines, waggling her finger at them fiercely. 

“An time comes, ye choose which side ye wish to take an I’ll hae no excuses when ye make yer choice. Wi us, or against… tis decision time.”

 

Shai stomped back into the thorny hedged main house and its expansive grounds, with Brigid following after her feeling unfamiliar emotions inside her armored breast… “I think I’m proud of you, mortal girl! That was a very measured and responsible scolding.”

 

“I should rather have sent a few tae float in the void an twiddle their divine thumbs til doomcrack.” She grumbled. “I am ever generous tae that wretched man of mine.”

#

 

Gary woke feeling pretty good… aside from the sense of being cut off from… himselves, or something. Esoteric afflictions needed eldritch solutions, so he popped open Interface and started rooting around.

In a subsection of Fractured Soul, he found a clue.

 

*Warning!* 

There is a fissure in your soul/Mind interface, seek divine, eldritch or occult advice.

Foreign matter of an exotic nature is present in the fissure, seek corrective aid. 

*Warning!*

 

“Ohhhh, that prick I stowed in a marble prick is still fucking me in my soul hole…” He mumbled quietly, as Shai stirred beside him. Her sleeping hand became an actively creeping handspider, crawling across his tummy in skittering dashes. When she pounced on her favored prey and giggled, it was too much. 

“Come here you wretched girl! I’ll catch you! And when I do…!” He pursued her across their stupidly huge, pillowy bed in clumsy, oafish grabs and lurching attempts to tackle his fast moving wife.

 

“Sorry… really…” Ward mumbled from the corner. “I have shitty timing… or maybe it’s that I have an easier time slipping into the physical world while you two are…”

 

“Ward! GET OUT!” Two voices sang in harmony, shaking the whole room.

 

“Sorry!” He gasped as the door closed behind him.

 

Dannyl was waiting on the stairs for the demigod who was, in some disturbing and abstract ways, also his brother. “I’ve been thinking. Yes, I’ll Contract you… but please, don’t make it weird… He’s my brother and he married my sister…”

 

Ward sighed. “He really went all in on the banjo, didn’t he?”

 

“I don’t understand that… at all. You two are so alike!” Danyl whispered in amazement. “You smell different, you’re way more handsome and… taller?”

 

“I’m still changing… But I want to stay me… and that means also being a lot like him… he loves you. And we vibe.” Ward let loose a small smile, nothing volatile. 

“You feel it too, you like living on the edge slipping through dark places where a moment stands between success and ruin.”

 

“I do enjoy a thrill…” He murmured happily.

 

“Yes, I thought as much.” Ward said with a strange look in his eye. “Let’s talk wardrobe… I see where he was going, wildland survival in almost any environment…” He sighed a little and shook his perfectly styled hair… so unlike Gary.

“He left style on the table… if it’s not an armored beastie armor, a frilly thing for the ladies or loungewear… He’s not interested.” 

 

“What do you mean?” Dannyl asked eyeing his armor on its stand. It was all in dark, muted colors of heavy and durable spidersilk, knitted with Gary’s ‘secret herbs and spices’ into a tough suit of cloth armor that could rival any chain mail. 

He’d further enhanced it with plates of sculpted and enchanted ‘plywood’ in the vital areas. His wide brimmed fur lined ranger’s hat was the best part. The black ribbon hatband was decorated with carved animals, plants and abstract things in bone, stone and metal, each one unique and odd.

“I like it.” He mumbled. “Saved my life a few times already.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure it’s excellent, he’s the crafty one. I’m the smart one, trust me. You’re a speedy and sly warrior with a living chainsaw whip… But you dress like ranger Smith from Jellystone Park. I have three words for you, three words… Strap and Buckle!” He gasped, as though revealing some deep secret. “Huh? Whadaya think?”

 

“Uhh… straps that buckle to what?” He asked suspiciously. “I’ve met Fig…”

 

“Dear gods…” He sighed. “I’m the Golden Fig! She’s like my… grandmother? Who’s super sexy and has hips that…” Ward shook his head to clear the confusion. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to… come here. I just want to Contract you with a handshake… or maybe… a hug? I could use a hug… the platonic kind.”

Dannyl slapped a hug around the deity and leaned in, enjoying the warm, earthy, summertime smell of his new god, and friend. He savored a wash of new sensations and a trickle of power, while Ward was still nattering on, much like their goofy brother always did.

 

“Tell Gary to give your outfit the Mad Max treatment, Thunderdome, please. He’ll understand.” Ward whispered as he departed out the front door. “I have errands to run and things to do, but I’ll be around.” He took a single long step into the dim, early morning shade of a cherry tree and emerged as an enormous black shadow bat, who flitted lightly off into the sky, headed for dawn.

 

“Ok, that was pretty cool.” Dannyl admitted.

#

 

“You’re sure he didn’t say ‘Fury Road’...? He’s kinda a chuni.” Gary asked as though any of that made sense.

 

“No he said ‘Thunderdome’ and ‘Strap and Buckle’... It feels like he might be on to something… if my armor was more fitted here and here, sleeker here…”

 

“Uhh huh… Strap and Buckle… Steampunk would make no sense, but something menacing and… arrogant.” He said with a grin. “Ivy showed me her brachiation and acrobatics enchantment… it’s pretty wild stuff, when combined with a little native talent and magic from the veil…”

Gary pushed a bunch of projects off his workbench and started pulling out rolls of leather and scaly hides. “I always have time for you, little brother.”

#

 

“I think Craft is up to something… I caught one of the local artists sketching and taking rubbings of your magic circle around Ali’s wife.” Becky grumbled, when she came back from checking on that problem. 

“We need to solve that festering annoyance; she keeps demanding a solution to her problem. She sucks and she makes me a worse person, every time I have to go up there.” 

 

“Pull the circle out. Leave her a gibbering idiot with violent tendencies and no bowel or bladder control for a day or two.” He snapped angrily. “Or forever. We owe them nothing, nothing but a clenched fist. I’d go do it myself, but their guards would start something…”

 

“Gary, I sent Becky to check on Miriam of Craft today, because my goddess asked me to. She is entertaining an idea proposed by Thirp and Marduk, which may improve her condition, or hopefully, remedy her affliction.” Tawny said from the bar, where she was hiding behind a big cup of tea.

 

“I find myself… unmotivated to help Craft, his cult in general and Miriam in particular. Deeply unmotivated, and unlikely to find a fresh well of it within myself, for any of them.”

 

“And for me, Gary?” Tawny asked quietly in a room suddenly gone very still. 

 

“For you, anything. For your cult and goddess… I find my motivation flagging once more. Healer has been notably hostile to me for some time and ambivalent otherwise.” He grumbled. “Ali is one step away from finding out how my garden grows.”

 

“Gary, you must not murder anyone… I can’t stress that enough!” Tawny scolded him.

 

“I’m the Fool, just a silly boy with no good sense…” He growled the lie angrily, with something dark shining in his eyes. “But you know… every single one of us has the devil inside…” He stomped away in a quiet rage.

 

“He’s still pretty angry and unstable, Tawny… I’ll talk to him.” Becky said with a sigh.

#

 

“Tawny and I will do all the work… you just need to meditate inside a simple ritual circle nearby for a few minutes. Your aura is all we need for the procedure.”

Becky murmured gently as they walked together, a few yards behind Tawny and three Healer cultists he didn’t know.

“We are going to repair the damaged area of her soul and body interface, where the affliction was rooted.”

 

“Where her demonic cult Contract was rooted, you mean. The one she accepted willingly?” He asked sweetly, with salt and venom behind the words.

 

In the uplands quarter, they walked through a familiar gate and into an estate Gary had visited once before. The gate guard glared at him in open hostility and rubbed his right shoulder unhappily. 

“I’m still unpopular here…” He sulked dramatically, under the guard’s eyes. “I think that’s the one whose shoulder I shattered… nice work Tawny.”

 

“One of the Patel’s aided him… I was busy trying to keep Ali’s bodyguard alive at the time. You nearly stove in his ribcage entirely.” She grumbled.

 

“They tried to steal my kids.” He answered coldly. “Shai kept me from doing something much, much darker in this house.”

 

“Chill, gary, we need you to just be calm for a little while, then you can go home and forget all about this.” Becky urged him. 

 

“Healer agreed to reconsider, if you can show her you’ve changed…” Tawny offered, and then regretted it.

 

“I’m less and less interested in her good graces, since they seem to all be conditional on me doing shit for her.” He grumbled, while Becky shot warning glances at the golden healer.

 

Gary set his circle up in the garden of the estate, near a small ‘cottage’ surrounded by one of his ‘Circle Of Fifths’ constructs. Once he was in position, Becky and Tawny began drawing a line of complex glyphs and sigils between the two ritual spaces.

The musician watched with interest as they worked, observing their skilled spellcraft with pride. “Nice Becks… really nice. You’re using my Animus as a template to guide the reconstruction of her aura… clever. That’s a smart use of my… condition.”

 

“I’ve baffled the process through several layers of our own auras…” She nodded to the robed cultists working nearby on a ritual bowl and a table of implements. 

“They will be doing the physical surgery needed, under Tawny’s direction, while we just chill out here, brother.” She murmured softly, as her harp appeared and began to respond to her delicate and nimble fingers.

#

 

An hour later the pair walked back together, still playing sweet and gentle melodies, Becky with her harp, Gary on his beloved mandolin.

“I guess that was fine…” He grumbled. “I’m gonna regret doing this, Becky… Just remember that I love you and I went in knowing that this would bite me in the ass.”

 

“Stop being melodramatic. She’s not the villainess from a story, just a stupid, wicked woman who will be atoning for her mistakes for a while.” The young priestess complained. “She will have to answer for her crimes.”

 

“Yeah… rich people tend to find ways around details like that. Kinda like how Healer bullied me into doing her bidding, again. Using my family as leverage is a move that she has used too many times.” He grumbled. “That’s going to bite her in the ass if she’s not careful.”

 

“Gary, she’s the goddess of Healing. You can’t take reprisals on a goddess…” Becky closed her mouth firmly on that thought.

 

“She gets on the right side, or gets left on the wrong side.” The madman growled. “I’m not playing anymore, even if I have to flip the game board and burn the rulebook.”

#

 

“A full recovery seems likely, but we won’t know until tonight, when we will take her out under the moon’s light and see what happens.” Tawny said softly, over the sleeping woman’s bed. “I will return then to monitor her progress.”

She left the two physician priests from Port Clement with their patient in the garden shed, after her brief consultation with lord Ali, formerly of Healer’s cult, now sworn to Order’s service, on her prognosis. 

The gray robed lord nodded grimly and said nothing as the golden young woman left.

 

“I’m concerned, Liam.” She murmured as he slipped from the shadows and joined her for the walk to the palace.

 

“Lord Ali seems even less stable than before.” He muttered grimly. “We gotta tighten security on the kids.”

 

“My thoughts exactly. I’ll speak to Rolf and Adam.” She murmured. “I wish Papa and mother would return…”

#

 

Ward was lounging in the pool with Sequoia and Dionysus, who was having trouble keeping his eyes where they belonged. He was ogling them both pretty openly and equally though. 

“My vine maidens agree, as do the herbs. Cannabis assures me that there is no ‘capital city of mankind’ on this world… Only city states, small empires and isolated kingdoms here and there.” He said confidently.

 

“We couldn’t find it either, nor could Beast. So unless there is a city unknown to any animal or plant, somewhere out there…” Sequoia murmured.

 

“Uhh, huh.” Ward nodded in agreement. “Oak found something interesting out in the wilderness… a huge field of hands and arms. Just lying there, miles from anything, thousands of them in piles. With enchanted robes over the heaps, like they were wearing them and walking around.”

 

“Taxmen…” Sequoia grumbled angrily. “Ask your mortal friends about them… They hide from our sight behind those robes.”

 

“Taxmen, huh? Just big piles of grabby hands in robes? That tracks!” Ward mumbled happily. He climbed Sequoia and gave her a long, passionate kiss, before spreading his wings and flying off.

 

“The kid’s got style…” The lord of wine murmured happily, as Barbera and Merlot joined him in the bath, their grape leaf bikinis floating away on the hot, bubbling water.

#

 

“It’s nice to be back in town…” Theophus Dale murmured happily, with his feet up on lady Helene’s favorite tea table of imperial lacquerware.

 

“Well, your guidance in this matter is invaluable…” She murmured, while stewing with outrage inside. Healer’s cult had absolutely refused to do anything about the big, glossy black eye she still sported, days after being assaulted by that common strumpet, Vera Anglin. Now being forced to offer hospitality and courtesy to this… common Craft priest was the most galling and bitter pill of all.

 

“It will be a pleasure, there are so few opportunities to work this art.” He sighed happily, while brushing cake crumbs onto the exquisitely woven hilltribe rug beneath his feet. “This will be my son, Jakob’s first Severance ritual!”

#