Chapter 77: Ch: 69 Noice!

Ch: 69 Noice!

Gary woke up in the back of the cart feeling very warm and comfy, almost energetic. Plumeria was squeezed inside his coat and shirt, pressed up against his skin and holding on for dear life as she was buffeted by the mother of all hangovers.

“Even a tainted spring is preferable to perishing in the desert.” She murmured as her tiny head poked up from his collar. “We approach something, an oddity?”

 

Her nose wrinkled in distaste as they neared a mesa, unusual among the others in the distance, in that it was covered with greenery and plant life. “This is unnatural, the plants are mundane for the most part… yet.”

 

They pulled to a halt near a canyon entrance, tumbled stone indicating something large had broken free recently and headed for Wheatford. A quarter mile away, a similar track aimed for Flintspire town.

“Luna?” Was all Khan asked, she already had her eyepatch lifted, staring carefully at the stone massif, carefully avoiding looking anywhere near Gary.

 

“No active magical effects that I see, a lot of life and animals, maybe some monsters in there.” She shook her head. “Hard to say but it feels pretty empty, like an abandoned nest.”

 

“This is outside duke Belen’s domain, beyond any human lands, Adventure law is in effect.” Khan’s voice was quiet, but carried weight. They all eased their weapons and tools, looking to the desert land all around.

“Luna, scout. Liam, Tallum, to the front. We advance slowly.”

As they approached certain things became obvious. This was not a mesa, it was a stone city, carved from the rock in times so long forgotten even the toolmarks and remnants were washed away. 

Doorways and windows blinked emptily, rounded and erased by time and filled with growing things. No signs of human craft could be seen, beyond the square corners and regular doorways visible inside the entries, where wind and weather had not reached. 

“How long since men dwelt here? And what men?” Liam asked, as he peered through the low doorways, barely high enough to accommodate his height.

 

“Mmm, I know not. Civilizations of men rise and fall like tides, we are eternal and notice little of their doings. We only needed a few men, to rear and teach our druids as men. You spread quickly.” She focused in on him again, losing her abstracted, drifting attitude. “Tell me Liam, almost druid, you are not yet, you nearly are, how does this occur? You are born of man, a human full and true.” She drew in a deep and slow breath from his hair, rankling Tawny immediately.

“Quell your fury woman. I cannot steal his heart, nor do I have any parts to tempt him with. I bask in his glow and take nothing from you. Must you shade his light from all?” She turned to Gary, sobbing pitifully. 

 

“This is why I gave up on humans, we saw druids passing to and fro, bound in concealing garments that hid their light from us. It was torment, we wronged man, stealing them away for our purposes, but must we be punished so?”

“Tell me more about that. What do you mean?” Gary asked gently, pouring her a cup of milk with honey.

 

She sipped and clung to him as they walked. 

“Our druids went into the hands of men and never returned. They would go into the villages and towns to mature, carried there in secret and left by my kind as ever we did. No more did they emerge, when we did see them they wore garments that hid their light and hid them from our sight.”

 

“That sounds familiar, where do the tax collectors come from, Bannock?” Gary demanded, sounding inexplicably cross.

 

“The capital, dispatched to the dukes by the council of clerics and elders. They answer only to the council and are always anonymous in their robes of office. Why? Tax problems?”

 

“Yeah, if you see one, send them my way. I have some accounts to settle with them.” He grumbled.

 

“Commendable, many citizens avoid the tax officers like they were monsters. It gladdens me to see an orphan with such civic duty.” Bannock smiled widely and nodded his way.

 

“Put a pin in that, we will circle back to it later.” He sounded less than dutiful.

 

As they rode among the outbuildings and lower steps of the vast, ruined megalith city, vegetation pressed in close. A verdant jungle of vines and trees clambered everywhere. Rich, loamy soil underfoot and small life scurrying and flying everywhere supported a vibrant living forest in the midst of a desert.

 

“What is that feeling… it’s familiar.” Gary sniffed, listened and felt with everything he had but it remained elusive, some essence of a familiar place, a sense of comfortable ease and peace.

 

“You would recognize it, it taints your soul making it loathsome. Necromancy, the magic of undeath, severing life and burning that life to another cause, it is unclean and vile.”

 

“Wait, how am I doing that?” He demanded of the increasingly agitated spirit.

 

“Just because you are doing it to yourself unwittingly, does not make it any less vile. It may be forgivable, but still… Look, she comes.” 

 

Luna came sliding back down the slope looking agitated.

“There are people up there, packing up. Looks like a long term operation. Six adults, no children, at least two with arms and armor visible. I was not observed.” She grinned in a way that made the rabbit in her tattoo leap onto her ear.

“This is the only way down, they will be here in an hour. I suggest we prepare a suitable greeting.” 

 

“They did not notice our approach?” Khan asked, concerned by her lackadaisical attitude.

 

“I could have picked their pockets, eaten their lunch and ridden off with their mounts unnoticed. Their sentry was reading a book.” Her disdain went beyond the guard’s inattention.

“The only question is how many to capture and how many to kill.” She had her bow out, with a barbed hunting point glinting unpleasantly on the shaft she clenched casually in the crook of her index finger.

“At a glance blue robe and green dress are the leaders. Leather armor and ringmail look like hired goons, wanted or I’ll eat my hat.”

 

“We take them all alive and we ask some very direct questions. No bloodshed if it can be helped.” Khan settled on Gary and Plumeria. You two… non combatants. Sit still. Gary you haven’t actually killed a human before. Let’s not start here.”

 

Gary waved his strange singing baton before them. “I’m cool, it’s all cool. See, it’s a baton, it makes music, nobody ever got killed with a musical instrument.” He smiled pleasantly everywhere but his eyes.

 

“It turned back into a sword while you were talking. Sit down, shut up and put some pants on that blade… questionable. Deeply questionable.” Khan grunted and pointed to a stone block out of sight of the descending party.

“If things go bad and I call you in, you can wade through their entrails and make flutes from their thighbones for all I care. Otherwise no moving, no tricks. Plumeria, your role is advisory please only act to defend yourself if need be.” Khan slipped away with a glare and vanished.

#

 

“Odd worm behavior. Odder job.” Ringmail grunted for like, the fifth time.

“We don’t get paid to think.” Came the reply from leather armor, steady as a clock. They trooped along in time and had the same four conversations, one after the other, in order. They walked in order, talked in order, even goofed off in order; as though they had been given a script and just acted it out as the scenery rolled by. 

 

Luna slipped out of the greenery five yards behind their trail man and dogged his steps, while pulling amusing faces. Bannock and Herlick emerged on the right while Liam and Tallum sprouted from the left like mushrooms in springtime. Khan and Annie stepped around the corner with a lance casually swaying in the breeze.

“Adventure guild, identify yourselves, badges or travel papers now.”

 

The two armored dolts bustled for their arms far too late to have done any good and clattered to a stop half way there. They paused mid reach, presenting a ridiculous aspect.

“All our papers are in order and everything is as you would expect.” 

The figure in blue robes spoke calmly and confidently, his voice rang with authority and sensible do-rightlyness. “Stand aside, our passing is unremarkable, not even worth reporting.”

 

“Compulsion magic!” Liam barked, as Becky’s harp began a discordant song in f minor, a sudden key change sent the armored men wild.

Ringmail lashed out with a boot and kicked leather armor behind the knee. That man tumbled down the incline to fetch up under Annie’s hooves in a spinning, timeless moment. With a dancer’s grace, he hurled his spear at blue robe, displaying terrible strength. 

As blue robe folded up around the spear embedded in his midsection, green dress shrieked mindlessly. She regained the power of speech after a moment.

“Master, why?” She asked, shortly before a thrown dagger blossomed in her throat. 

Two porters in workman’s garb simply tumbled to the ground in a heap amidst their packs, as ringmail leapt for the rocky wall of the monolith.

#

Gary, Plumeria and Dannyl, who was nursing a broken wrist, newly mended and still fragile, sat around the corner with their collective thumbs up. The others confronted the baddies infuriatingly close by. When Liam’s warning and Becky’s harp sang out they perked up.

 

While the ear shattering wail was still echoing, a figure in light armor came tear ass-ing around the corner, into Gary’s staff. He folded over and just kept folding, split right in half by the dull gray rod. 

Trousers ran straight ahead, even picking up speed, right into a boulder. If there were genitals in that crotch, they were in for a rough time.   

 

Torso hopped up on its hands, sprouted tentaclemillipede legs from the ragged lower end and glared at him with unholy fury.

“There it is.” It said, sounding for all the world like a rattlesnake in a garbage disposal. It started scuttling at speed for the nearest dark crevice. 

While Dannyl cornered the wayward pants, Gary chased the half with the mouth. His spear became a shepherd’s crook, if Mary had a little lamb from the abyss. It was a barbed and hooked catchpole in bronze, offering a number of unpleasant ways to entangle and distress. 

 The entity tried to squizzle its way into a crack in the stone and got twirled up into a loose and noodley assortment of tentacles on the tines and barbs of his hook.

“Got the other half Dannyl?” He called as the creature writhed and tied itself in knots.

 

“Looks dead, smells dead.” He poked it with a stick. “Rotting and dead. How’s yours?”

 

“Unpleasantly lively.” Tangled and shredded bits of ringmail showed here and there as it wriggled around in the ever more complex and tangled tines of Gary’s hellfork of damned sheepshit.

Gary wiggled his butt and made a bag of salt fall out. “Grab that, make me an unbroken circle, concentrace on the unbroken circleness of it as you draw, make it perfect and whole. Can you feel the circle-y goodness? Ok, step back.” He plunged the knotted spiraling whisk of devilworm mousse his shepherd's crook had become, into the salt ring. Leaving a wriggling, mass of wormy tendrils with glaring fish eyes. 

Ivy, Becky, Khan and Liam came over and around the outcropping from the ambush site, and skidded to a halt.

“We caught… something, half of it is still alive and disgusting. How’s the other side?” He asked, squatting down to glare back at his squirming prisoner, trapped behind unseen barriers.

 

“One fatality, another likely to perish, one will survive and two have been dead for a week at least.” Khan snarled. “This thing tried to make a clean sweep and escape.”

 

Plumeria stepped out of the leafy shadows and smiled warmly at the thing inside the salt. “Oh a skrigg, how unpleasant. Not much left of it is there.”

It recoiled and tried to find a place to hide, but its bonds held fast, Dannyl knew his circles.

 

“They are colonies, barely sentient as individuals, they can slip through the veil in ways true outsiders cannot. Once established, they slowly bring more through to infest a world for their ends.” She sighed a windy and leafy breeze. 

“It’s difficult to learn their goals. Though they are weak minded cowards, they tend to be largely destroyed in capture, rendering them terribly stupid. This one is probably as smart as a badger now, long past questioning.”

 

“I only need one.” Gary said quietly, as he pinched one squirming tendril in a pair of brass tongs and dropped it into a brass box. He snapped it closed with a grin.

 He grabbed his bag of salt and sprinkled it liberally over the remaining wretches, until they crisped and crumbled to ashy dust. He produced a whisk and dustpan, scooped up the small pile and poured it into a box as well.

“Waste not want not, let’s go see what's going on over there.” Gary and the rest trotted the ten yards or so, around the corner.

 

Khan and Liam had hot footed it back as soon as they saw the creature was done, Tawny had the scene in her grasp regardless.

A woman in a red splashed green dress looked nearly dead, but her glazed, half open eyes said half alive at least. Tawny had a figure in blue robes laid out and was fishing in his abdomen in some very familiar ways, Gary checked out of that one and looked down on a small man in leather. 

 

He had one leg twisted to an unlikely angle and a  shoulder position that said he would not be doing much without his collar bones getting an overhaul. He lay at the bottom of a rift, twenty feet down, wedged between a few boulders and a lovely creek.

 

Gary started climbing down with Becky and Liam. Clambering from stone to stone carefully, while his compatriots lept and slid skillfully. “Showoffs.”

 

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Becky pulled a small pouch from her pocket, while Liam opened a pack on his hip Liam tore open the man’s armor and slapped a white linen patch on his abdomen.

Becky chanted a short phrase and touched each of his eyes, ears and lips in rapid order. 

He fell still as a dead man in an instant. “Temporary stasis, he’ll revive the hard way in five minutes, or the easy way when we get him up to Tawny.” Becky said crisply. 

 

“Tallum, rope!” Liam passed the silk cord around the man’s still body and knotted it securely. 

“Gary, you climb up with him on your back, Tallum will take his weight and most of yours, just let your inner spider out and get him up safe.”

 

The musician grumbled, but put Liam’s shoulder loops on and hoisted his burden. “Not bad, Tallum can just…” With a brief scream of terror, Gary lurched upward. 

Flying past the rocky walls of the cevasse he swatted and kicked at oncoming stones in an attempt to keep himself from smashing into them. He kicked off the last rounded boulder that came hurtling at his crotch and slapped face first, onto the loamy earth of the trail.

“Impressive. You work well as a team.” Khan said calmly, as he felt the man all over and searched him for weapons. 

“Broken right collar bone, sprung or broken ribs, collapsed right lung, broken left leg and arm. Short term stasis, two and a half minutes remaining.” He barked out. “Very impressive recovery.”

The others climbed up while Gary was still trying to get his heart rate under control. Liam immediately rushed to Tawny’s side, plunging in with her as she worked on the blue robed man. 

“Pinch here, hold here and don’t let go, back in a moment!” Tawny dashed the short distance, her hands bloody to the elbow. She drew her wand and flicked blood across the immobile man as she chanted and tapped his forehead, heart and mouth.

She was already back at her other patient when the small man in shredded leather screamed awake for an instant, then passed out into slumber. 

“Don’t worry about him. I only healed the collarbone and ruptured lung, he isn’t going anywhere. Keep an eye on the woman, don’t poke any holes in her, she’s nearly empty of blood already. Becky, bring me a fresh sewing kit!”

 

Gary waved Dannyl over to where he was guarding the two prisoners. He pressed a small silver ring into his left hand.  

“Put that on, an open handed slap will jolt the living shit out of your target without killing them, watch these assholes while I make the beds and fluff the pillows.”

 

Herlick, Bannock and  Vera were standing over two piles of baggage and clothing, the smell was not encouraging. “Don’t bother, these two are long dead, reanimated to carry the bags, poor sods were probably just honest porters.” Helick announced as he approached. 

 

“Throats cut thrice. Ritual signs, sacrificed and reanimated. Sacrificed to summon something through  no doubt.” Bannock said quietly.

 

“Already on it.” Luna had her patch off, scanning the area. “Gods damn your hide Gary, stop moving about. Fool boy will strike me blind.”

 

“Nobody ever yells at the others that way…” He sulked as he began summoning the house around the corner on a wide stone shelf.

 

“They’re just people with lots of magic, not…” She waved her hands vaguely at him without looking his way. “...all this.”

 

Tallum and Liam carried the two semi conscious people into the house and secured them in a bedroom, neatly bound. Tawny continued her work on the blue robed man as evening shadows lengthened, finally declaring him fit to move just before sundown.

They gently carried him inside and stuck him in a corner under Liam’s supervision, while Tawny bathed and rested. The veterans, including Anglin, had the stranger’s baggage and effects scattered all over the floor of the main room.

“Nothing unusual beyond the books. Hardly any provisions, plenty of coin though.” Luna murmured. “What’s in ringmail’s pack?”

 

“Literally nothing.” Khan replied. “Stuffed with leaves and such to make it look like a full pack. Nothing useful or interesting.”

 

“Blue boy had a big sack of coin, a bag of gems and a scroll bearing the seal of the duke of Fort Quince. A blank scroll.”

 

Gary was nosing around in the three slim volumes found in the group’s baggage. ‘Fairy folkways, a guide’ was short on specifics and long on unsupported superstition. Not a valuable document at all. 

 

‘Ritual magic circles for novices’ looked innocuous on the surface, but the notes in the margin were highly unpleasant. Someone had strewn recipes for summoning outsiders throughout the pages, mostly involving terrible ingredients, or fueled by acts that filled him with rage. They made Gary feel like doing some ritual torture and throat cutting of his own. 

The last book was a simple, trashy novel with a typical cover. A muscular shepherd lad facing down a wolf to protect a damsel whose clothing was nearly torn away. ‘Red Riding Hood and the Shepherd’s Virtue’, did not offer much intellectual stimulation, lots of naughty block prints though.

 

“Tomorrow we examine their former camp site and see what we find, while they recover under the supervision of two guards at all times.” Khan announced. “Tawny, Liam and Becky take medical shifts, we rotate guard shifts with them. This is going to be a long trip.”

 

A quiet cough from Tawny’s vicinity drew their attention. “The man in blue has passed on, with whatever secrets he held.” Tawny said from the far side of the room. “We should consider disposal options. I do not fancy carrying him back to wheatford.”

 

“Let us consider a while, before we tip him off some convenient edge.” Vera said quietly. “Just not so long that it draws flies.”

 

Gary peeked up out of the shepherd book with a strange look in his eye. “He died? Becky, get your harp.”

 

She produced the instrument from her cloak and ran a quick scale to check her tuning. “Is this some funeral rite or something? We don’t know his faith or cults.”

 

“Nope, a seance. We are going to manifest his lingering shade and ask some questions while the asking is good. I don’t have any gifts in that area, but your new harp is just the thing.” He had his guitar out, slowly picking and strumming. “Join in, listen for the changes, it’s a little complex.”

 

I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go

Walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder

 

I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go

Walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder

 

Waiting for an invitation to arrive

Goin' to a party where no one's still alive…

 

He nudged Becky into a harp solo, ‘Dead Man’s Party’ had a lot of room to play around in. Becky got busy spinning a web of minor chords with some very distressing harmonics

.

Gary dragged Liam and Tallum into the performance, sending waves of strangely ecstatic and unnerving music into the garden. Dannyl had to make do with a maraca, since his wrist was still dodgy. Ivy never slept at the drums, she lived for a nice ruckus.

They kept it going, circling the instrumentals for a bit with no result. “Give it some oomph Becky, spend a little juice on it.” The musician chanted. 

 

She gave a grim nod and struck her strings with fierce determination, breaking into a new, more aggressive style. She struck and stopped her strings with furious abandon, shaking the leaves on the fruit trees. She followed Gary into a very strange sonic space, as he began to give guttural, animal wail.

 

I put a spell on you

Because you're mine…

 

You better stop the things you do

 

I tell you, I ain't lying

I ain't lying…

 

Down by the pool, something was stirring, a vague shape in the mist, pulsing and shifting in time with the music.

Slow and aimless, the gray figure drifted and wandered above the water, as though searching for something.

 

“You killed me… that was very rude.” A soft voice whispered in the leaves. “I don’t want to talk to you…” The figure circled and fluttered about, barely visible as a shadow in the steam.

 

“We didn’t kill you, your buddy did.” Becky said gently. “You should tell us what you were doing.”

 

“No! He killed me because you showed up, I’m not saying anything!” The form crossed something like arms and sulked at Becky; glaring at her as she stood by the pool, still strumming idly.

 

“Look here, ghost!” She snapped, playing harder in her agitation and sending the spirit floating madly in its steam cloud. “I am getting fed up with you…”

 

“You can’t threaten a ghost, little bitch. How long can you hold me? Not long I wager, I see the passage to the ether just beyond.”

 

“Let me try Becks.” Gary slid over as Becky stepped back. He jangled his guitar at the spirit, gaining its attention very quickly. “Listen up bub, Becky won’t mess you up, because she is nice. I struggle there sometimes.”

 

A few aggressive chords did not seem to impress him.

“I am a spirit now, you can fuck right off, you can’t hurt me.” 

He was much more visible while near Gary, a semi solid apparition in gray mist, looking very much as he had in life. Balding and middle aged, but still vigorous, clad in draped and folded robes, he was not unusually tall, or remarkable.

 

“Are you sure about that pal… look closer at me. Really close, do you see?” He whispered, leaning out over the water to approach the spirit. “Yeah, I’m poison to you, I’m dissolving your animus as we stand here, leaving you vulnerable. Liable to just… fly away.” 

As he spoke, a tiny clot of steam broke loose and drifted out into the garden and vanished. “I’m sure that was nothing important…” Gary whispered, his breath blowing a little more of the being’s essence away.

 

“What are you? Abomination!” The spirit howled in sudden mortal dread, backing away as best it could in its steamy prison.

 

“I get that a lot… I’m starting to take it personally. Here, let me just…” Gary reached out into the steam and took the entity’s robe in his hand, knotting the intangible cloth in his fist. “Ok, let’s talk buddy, you and me, in private.” He dragged the entity out of the bath and through the garden gate into the darkness beyond.

#

 

“It turns out, being the only cultist of Secret scares the shit out of ghosts. It also turns out I’m just undead enough to slap ghosts around.” Gary lounged on the sofa by the fire, looking haggard. 

“He apologized for his rudeness before I sent him off. The Devourer of Souls likes me, so Ahmed Rajesh, late of Fort Quince, is going on a ride to the center of everything.”

 

“You destroyed his soul?” Dannyl whispered in horror.

 

“No way, that can’t be done. I handed him to a friend, who will spend the next few… forever, making sure that guy gets reincarnated in places where he can’t cause trouble.” Gary grinned evilly. “He is going to be reborn in thirp’s world.”

 

“Your spider alter ego? What’s wrong with that?” Liam asked innocently, while Becky looked ill.

 

“It’s about lifestyle, Liam and gender roles. Ask Dannyl tomorrow morning, he’s meeting Thirp tonight.” The musician tossed a slim silver band to Dannyl. “Put that on and come over for a visit, Ducky wants to meet you in person.”

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