Chapter 76: Ch: 68 Wasted On The Way

Ch: 68 Wasted On The Way

The usual pattern was as Vera described it, the foot would run up beside the slow moving beast and jam something sharp and or pointy in. If possible, they would stick around to do a bunch of unpleasantness and then scamper before the behemoth could respond.

In this case, the single minded brute would simply twitch and roll the wounded segment up out of the sand and pebbles. As long as they sayed clear of the thrashing tail tip, turbulent wake and gnawing mouth it was safe. As safe as running alongside a moving mountain of furry meat, bent on devouring everything in its path could be.

The cavalry withdrew, rejoining them afoot, since horses were at too great a risk of slipping under in the behemoth’s churning furrow.

 

The Bathers trotted forward fifty yards, planted whatever sharpness they had in hand into the thing and stopped, letting the hideous wounds unwind from their blades and hooks.

Dannyl was deeply upset that the creature would not succumb to his whip, instead the poor lad nearly drowned in wretched blood and mud when his whip entangled in the wounded flesh and dragged him under. 

He was sidelined with a sprained ankle and broken wrist, among a legion of bruises and scrapes from the stony soil.

 

“That hideous tool will be useful going forward young mortal, do not fret so.” Plumeria said softly while he watched the battle below from the garden.

 

“My whip isn’t hideous!” Danyl grumbled. 

 

“It is, as well, but I was referring to the thing that created it. Watch below, it attacks again, tell me what you see.” She curled up against him to watch in comfort. 

 

“Gary still uses his spear like a manure fork, big improvement in footwork and movement though. I should spar with him more. He needs improvement in his blade handling and… ohh… Gross.” Dannyl yurked just a little, as Gary nearly went under in a wash of blood and less pleasant liquids. His spear left horrid, weeping rents in the massive worm’s flesh where it passed.

Gary dug in grimly, dragging his spear in fluid waves to slash and gouge more fur and flesh.

 

“His weapon is deeply antagonistic to such creatures by its nature, being rooted in the soul of an abomination against nature and gods.” She smiled in satisfaction a moment later. 

“Look again, young Liam has found his stride as well, he is much more wholesome and clean.”

 

Liam attempted the same maneuver as Gary, with a far different result. His point slipped in with no resistance, and the vast wall of flesh began to part cleanly. 

He slashed wild arabesques in the moving wall of meat, dropping slabs and plugs of its body to the earth. Hide came away in rolls, as meat flopped down onto the ground around him. Blood splashed and sprayed in horrible gushing fountains that always passed him by. 

Fatty clods of flesh rained down around him as the worm turned and twisted, trying to escape its tormentor, while staying on its mindless course. All that wet splatting mess somehow missed the handsome young warrior in the feline armor. The haft of his spear seemed to drink in the blood and viscera that slipped beyond that cruel point, glowing redly in the morning sun.

 

The troops fell into a rhythm, surging forward in small groups to wreak havoc, while another trotted past to harry the beast as it moved. 

Becky, too small to risk joining the chaos, limbered up her harp and began to unwind Gary’s gift around the warriors. She envied the ease with which Shai could manipulate his magic. 

The young priestess had to pull it out strand by strand. He helped, but he was unpracticed at using his own gifts without a musical instrument in hand.

 

Finally, Gary caught on and slipped out of the battle to bring his useful abilities into play. He grimaced at the sticky, loathsome prints his bloody fingers left behind on his flute as he put the warriors under his rejuvenating spell.

He handed the music and magic off to Becky with an exhausted smile. “I’m running dry kiddo, don’t get fancy with it or I might pass out.” He ducked back into the mess, his spear beginning its festering wounds again, moments later.

 

Sundown brought an end to the battle. The exhausted warriors took shifts bathing in the hotspring as the wounded beast continued its mindless crawl toward their home, shining in the distance.

“Tomorrow we finish it.” Khan groaned. “Ahead is a barren stone canyon on its path, we bring it down there. Gary you look like shit, special duty, you say in the bath and soak your head. We need you for the cleanup.”

 

Gary giggled a mad, tired laugh. “No chance, I can’t do another so soon, and I’m still ragged from sending Lilith home. I am still processing ridiculous amounts of…” He grumbled at the silent warrior in the corner of the garden. “Don’t look at me that way. If you don’t like how my gifts work you can sleep under the stars, Vera.”

#

Gary’s warning and suggestion landed poorly with most of the notables left in town, Anglin, Helene and a few nobles a simple smith had access to seemed unimpressed by dream warnings. Only Otho, Harlan and Amicus set something in motion behind the scenes. 

The mages and clergy had their own ways and means, occult to mere mortals and orphans so they did their own thing.

 

Shai and the Orphans roamed the town and its environs in ever widening arcs, slowly spiraling out from the center of town. Thom and Flora accompanied her, while orphans with familiars or burgeoning sensory gifts went in other directions.

Not long after third bell on the second day, Braan came scrambling up the road, where Shai and Flora were taking a leisurely cart ride with Thom.

“Out by the quarry, someone built a shed over a stone pit. One groundworm inside, someone’s been feeding it regularly. Molly and her cat found it, no one has seen them. They are watching.” Shai cocked an eyebrow at the gasping lad.

“Mikkel and a crew are on the way. All orphans.” He said between breaths. 

 

Shai grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him onto her lap. “Go Thom to the quarry, quickly wise!” She barked, her Adventure gear shimmering into place around her as they rode. “Tis a day for gardening… “ She snarled, as a shovel landed in her hand.

 

She was disappointed. When the wagon rumbled up to the back end of a disused quarry pit, Mikkel had a muscular young man bound and sitting quietly with a bloody face.

He sat outside a small shed of familiar design. Unpainted clapboard and rusty nail streaked lumber stood over a small round pit carved in the stone. In the bottom a sinuous brown form circled endlessly, its teeth grinding against the smooth granite.

A pail of kitchen waste and scraps lay nearby, no doubt dropped mid errand.

 

“Tis no crime ti keep me own trashworm. No crime ti live in an empty quarry. Mind yers seein I mind mine!” He grumbled in the accent of shallow sea fishers.

 

“You can explain it in town, we have a smith coming with a steel barrel to carry your pet… here she is.” Mikkel held up a placating hand at the red haired fury, trying to slow her down.

 

“Ohh. we did find the missing fisher and smith frae Evard village after all, apprentice smith Joel Makey.” Her brittle smile felt like a cold blade against naked skin. 

“Ye hae questions tae answer an I think tis nae matter how much of ye remains whole tae answer them.” 

 

Shai had to walk back to town, her aura made gentle Flora, too nervous. Alongside the monster in a steel barrel and the sullen prisoner, she was too much for the poor donkey to bear.

#

 

“This is a matter for Order, he should be questioned in my temple, not some inn!” Farngahagn complained, his breathy and officious tone, carrying far and wide thanks to his enchanted helm of office.

 

“He be a runaway apprentice, caught by a journeyman an held before a master o the guild, tis smith guild law.” Harlan announced. “I be her master, former wise, she be journeyman, officially, and hae caught a runaway fair an true. This craft hall suits my need.” He smiled at the lord in the uniform of Order’s knights.

“Ye mae hae him when we be finished. An we let thee abserve fer only the kindness and honor of yer lordships good self.” Harlan hammed and yokeled it up, until the lord surrendered to the nonsense. Gary’s lingering presence made the lord less rigid.

 

“So be it, he is mine in one hour, that creature in the barrel too.” He declared, displeasure tinging his lisp with a sour note.

 

“Aye ye shall have what be left after Amicus hae finished.” Shai said calmly. “He does skin it an drill one of its teeth tae work his art.”

 

Amicus slipped up from the workshop stairs, holding a bloody thong of shaved wormhide. From it depended a worm tooth, holed and strung so that it dangled freely. 

The pendulum constantly twitched and swayed to the north and the uplands where the battle raged on.

“It is as she said, this worm has a very large part of itself some miles north of us. Now I wonder why.” Amicus said smoothly. 

 

The prisoner sat in silence, becoming absolutely still after a while. He ignored the rapid fire questions from the men and women around him. ‘Who, why, when, and what’, were ignored as entirely as the clerics and guild leaders themselves were.

Finally, Shai had enough. “I dinnae hae the craft nor art of breaking spells. I do hae a magic pool of undoing things.” She growled. Grabbing her prisoner by the collar, the smith dragged him bodily out into the garden and tossed him into the pool, over the objections of the more conservative elders. 

 

She dove in immediately after, her clothing vanishing mid leap. She grabbed the man forcing him up onto the curb. His hostile expression melted into confused disarray, then nausea as he retched and spasmed in her unbreakable grip. 

“Hold fast apprentice! Yer journey fellow hae ye.” she bellowed, as she levered him up onto the side. With a stuttering coughing explosion, clear goo hurled across the garden. Tremendous gouts of viscous snot fountained from the rapidly deflating man. It splatted and dripped, slithering together, finally congealing into a trembling pile of goo. 

Shai scooped the gooey semisolid into a bucket with a shout of triumph, clapping a lid down hard.

“Ye may take yer prisoner now milord, he hae given evidence in this case.” She said flatly, while handing the bucket to Amicus she summoned a robe around herself while grinning madly at the gathered clergy and knights.

#

 

 A number of the most muscular warriors clambered over the entrance to a stone walled arroyo. They drove steel wedges into cracks and fissures at the instruction of a few stonemasons with Adventure experience. 

With a shattering crack, a rumbling, tumbling mass of stone closed the last remaining exit.

Deeper in the maze of riven stone and cracked earth the beast thrashed and flailed in fury. 

“Did it just lose direction?” Tallum shouted from the ridge, where he was rolling boulders down onto the squirming beast.

 

“Yup, they must have found whatever was drawing it… cut!” Ivy shouted from a sledge of pointed logs loaded with tumbled boulders and stones.

Crude runners, lubed with the creature’s own fat, slid down the granite slope, gathering terrible momentum and driving into the beast’s flank with inexorable violence. 

From every side of the arroyo stones and pointed sleds hammered and pulped the grievously injured worm.

Three hours later, as the sun set, the warriors slowly carved into the massive corpse, hauling what they could away to smoke, dry and salt.

“No Liam, no more worm meat, I don’t care!” Becky was standing in the doorway with arms crossed. 

 

“Let’s not be wasteful, with so much lying around we should…” Becky shook her head and pointed to the garden gate and the massive barbecue happening in the war camp. 

“Otho can’t eat any more Liam, Tallum is in the pool groaning and praying for death… Khan and Luna are going vegetarian for the rest of the trip and I can’t eat another worm nugget without losing my mind.” 

She gasped in a breath and shook her head again. “Take that stuff for a walk and bury it. Feed the coyotes and vultures… I don’t care.”

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#

 

Liam found Gary on the granite overlook, watching the last few warriors harvest what they could or would.

“So now what? If you leave this thing here it’s gonna draw something nasty.” He asked a grizzled trio of old timers.

 

“Now we let nature take its course, with a little help and guidance.” Penryn said, his cheerful, singsong speech at odds with his hard bitten appearance.

He cracked open the big basket on his hip and revealed a small collection of steel canisters. All tightly sealed and numbered one through four.

“Groundworms. Four fresh patches. We three camp here and manage them while they clean up our mess, when they finish…” He shrugged at his wife and brother in law. “We will be back in town in a week, just in time for spring feast.” He cracked his knuckles and passed sealed canisters to his kin.

“We run these to the four corners, turn them loose, when they meet in the meaty middle, they will chew the issue over among themselves, we will gift the winner their prize.” He nodded to the raucous feast happening down the way.

“A few friends will come over from Stuckley and Herndon.” He pointed to the southwest and the southeast as he mentioned the nearby hill villages. “They enjoy a cookout too.”

 

He looked out over the barren granite valley and smiled. “Gonna be a nice plot of bottom land in a few years. My grandson will be looking for a place about then…”

 

“Sounds like our work is done here… we ride out in the morning Liam.” Gary said softly. “I’m off to sleep, our job is just starting.”

#

 

Over by the cookfire, Plumeria was holding forth, entertaining the warriors with tales of the distant past. Gary’s first successful barrels of beer dwindled rapidly under their onslaught.

“...so the firbolg king Timmenz wrestled with Sequoia, never realizing hers was the very strength of the earth itself. She hurled him from the ring, where he skidded on his bottom, laughing all the while.” She took a long draught from Gary’s clay jug and grinned.

“Never more did the firbolg seek to cut wood in a druid’s grove… Oh, here is something like a druid now.” She threw her arms wide at the young Adventurer and called out drunkenly. 

“Liam, when will you let me embrace you… tell your golden woman to share!” She hiccuped and swayed in her seat, while chewing heartily on a worm kebab.

“You are not, yet you are becoming something like… Becky… Help me explain this…” The dryad swayed dangerously and dropped her flatbread sandwich, the jug she held onto with both hands.

 

Becky was away, in her bed fast asleep, having an argument with her god.

“No, I’m not going to help. Joy needs to make her own arguments and convince him. You know how he gets and he has a strong point. Until we find out who is behind this, he needs a clear head.” She smiled at her tiny, pale god and shook her head. 

“Why don’t you help me and ask her to back off? He’s not looking so good.”

 

Gary was on the couch with Shai and the kids, looking a bit saggy and worn, even here. 

“No, I’m not bringing any more worm home… found a very nice assortment of cacti though a magical aloe and a prickly pear with some kind of healing and recovery attributes… Liam is excited.”

 

“Joy cannot ‘back off’, she permeates the entire world, all the gods do. His affinity and compatibility with Joy is driving him to the edge, while his sentient will denies that natural and wholesome urge. That is what is breaking his already fragile essence.” Marduk scowled and crossed his arms petulantly.

“Certainly her lingering presence at his periphery does not help matters, but we are creatures of instinct. He calls her more loudly than any other could, she must answer.”

 

“What happens if he Contracts her?” Becky asked quietly, watching her family from across the room.

 

“Unknown, he is a byproduct of the intersection of two worlds, their incompatibility and resonance are at once shattering him and holding what remains together. He could firm up and become more whole… Or perhaps he will become something more. Thirp has a few theories.”

 

“What would you do? You live here and know the gods better than any human could.” She frowned as Gary yawned and fell asleep, snoring on the couch. “He should disappear if he’s sleeping, this is like when he was all cut up.”

 

“Yes, things are going poorly at the moment. Joy would certainly help stuff him back together… Though I think… Perhaps I am being selfish, but brother Beast is the best choice. He has certain… primal blessings that can help with…”

 

“I think I see where you are going… will he wind up like Esperanza?” Becky whispered. 

“Becky, you are my high priestess… I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, even when I am standing right in front of you. Can Joy? She Contracted you as well.”

He tapped his golden sandal impatiently. “Don’t shame the gods or sweet Esperanza, She had a problem similar to Gary’s, though without his prudish cultural underpinnings. She has done very well for herself considering her situation, as have you my darling.”

Marduk pointed her at the group snoozing on the sofa and gave her a swat. “Join them, tell him to talk with Beast, Ivy can help. And tell him to send Dannyl here with that ring, the boy needs guidance.”

 

“Which boy needs guidance?” Becky asked as she faded.

 

“Either, both. Send him here, it will be good for them both.” The godling said, with a wave to his departing faithful.

“Mortals… can’t live with them, can’t exist without them…”

#

 

Wheatford’s troops marched for home at dawn, laden with meat preserved in the Bather’s kitchen and smoked over open fires. The Adventurers, their minders and spirit guide carried on, following the worm’s distinctive trail up into the hills.

Gary looked rough at dawn, unshaven and gray. He perked up with sunrise, but he was shabby at best.

“Talk to Ivy, Ducky says Beast might be able to help…” Becky was riding double with Plumeria, she smiled wide at the novelty and cuddled with Becky like it was her full time job.

 

“Beast is second only to Joy in the pantheon, His hold on you is as strong as hers. Were you bound fully to both… perhaps even I might be tempted to… Ow! The temerity! Becky!”

Becky had Plumeria’s ear in a three knuckle grip, applying the kind of direct influence the situation called for. She kept up the pressure as Annie moved away from the dog cart where Gary rode.

“Keep your pollen in your blossoms. Shai has murdershovel that you will not enjoy.” Becky released the spirit’s ear and sat her up straight again. “I’m keeping that jug till this journey is over.”

 

“Foolish girl, dryads do not congress with mortals in that way. The very thought… He, and soon, you… radiate the chaotic energies needed for my kind to blossom and fruit new dryads. In two millennia there have been no births among us.” 

She sighed and settled back against Becky. “Yourself, Amy, Wilford, young Liam… even that terrible ironmonger woman. Soon you will be quickening those lucky few of us in your path.” 

She sighed, slow and long, like snow slipping from the branches in spring’s first thaw. “If only he were not dead… so much magic is going to waste. A bountiful spring, tainted with poison.”

 

“What do you mean ‘quickening’?” Becky whispered. 

 

“Where a druid walks and dwells, dryads and ents flourish, forests and gardens grow and the fae arise from their long slumber to dance in the moonlight.” She winked sassily. 

“A clay jug helps too, we have not tasted that in even longer. There are some few of us that have never seen it.” She took a languid stretch and sprawled all over Annie and Becky as they rode up the trail.

 

“Ents? What are those?” She asked, pulling a notepad from her sleeve.

 

“Dryads are eternal, mostly… we are the essence of a variety or species of tree. Entirely female, we cannot bud new dryads without a source of vital essence, a druid.” She nodded significantly at Becky. 

“Ents are mortal, the essence and character of a specific forest or biome. They emerge in the presence of a druid and physically reflect that entity’s character as well as the environment.”

 

“So I am ‘quickening’ you right now? Gross.” Becky shifted awkwardly.

 

“No darling, you are not yet ripe. He is, but there is something rotten at the core. The ironmonger is ripe, but so thick with iron she is a dim candle beside his roiling garbage fire.” She shuddered. “To think that garden springs from him…”

 

Becky poured a tiny measure from Gary’s jug, using her cloak’s pocket enchantment to juggle her notes and liquor.

 

“As we dryads reached for immortality and the secrets beyond, the ents remained mortal, slowly dwindling away. It was in our search for something to revive them that we found your primate ancestors.” She smiled fondly. 

“Fig tells the story best… You lurked around the trees eating of our fruit, for our roots extend wherever our trees touch earth. We gifted you with sugar and then wine, brought agriculture and nurtured what little spark of magic lingered. We spread, covering your world with our shade as you carried us whenever you traveled.”

 

The others rode closer, listening to the hungover and half potted spirit as she rambled.

“We were as surprised as any when the first druid appeared here. She popped through, slimy and newborn, we had no clue. It was Beast who guided that one, forming a bond in her tiny soul. Joy joined him in raising the creature as she sprouted up in a few short seasons.” 

She drunkenly stood on Annie’s back and stepped over onto Pickle, riding with Liam. “Male or female druids, it matters not, I just prefer males… so warm.”

Tawny Gently peeled the spirit off and settled her onto Annie again. She continued rambling throughout the ordeal.

“Others began to appear, too many. We gathered in treemoot and spoke at length, the gods decided that we should use our arts, and bring humans here. They could help guide and raise our crop of druids as they birthed from the void and returned to it. Much as cuckoos raise the chicks of lesser birds.”

 

Silence fell for a while as they rode up the trail, climbing and lowering in elevation but always straight on, deviating only for immovable or impassable objects. 

When they forded a rocky stream and greenery began to appear Plumeria resumed her tale.

“At some point the druids stopped appearing, slowly, they died out. No more human towns gave forth their bounty of druids. They continued to appear in our forests, but when we passed them into human hands they no longer returned to us.”

 

She swept her eyes across the gathered company.

“Many felt this was some vengeance of man, to repay us for luring here, those who slept beneath our boughs. Winter and Summer met and we no more bring men to this place.”

“Thus our schism, Winter from Summer, as ever it was, shifting from one to the next, as seasons pass. But then the seelie, keen on man and excited by their new things and the unseelie, embittered and wishing man gone, that we might live out our ends in peace.” She hung her head sadly. “I was one such, sickened by the loss and grief for the buds I would ever see. Now hope is rising like sap in spring, shuch hash not been sheen since time unrecconeded…”

Becky caught the venerable tree spirit as she toppled over and eased her into the folds of her cloak to sleep.

 

“Wait til Amicus goes drinking with her… that guy can get anybody to tell him anything.” She paused on that random thought for a moment. “Kinda like Gary that way, that explains a lot…”

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