Arcfire—Chapter 12
by E.E. Bowers
So how it goes with humans, especially with those not having undergone some sort of immortality process. As in, those of you who are still rather mortal. Being mortal means not having lived long enough to realise the absolute pointlessness of weeping and whingeing over those have definitely proven that death is a possibility. If humans were highly emotional and abysmally anti-intellectual animals before—pests of the galaxy, more like—then they are all the worse when it comes to moments such as this.
Which just left Aia in something of a bind. Master Fromm was long-gone now. Definitely long. As in, distance. Not chronologically. He was dead not even for a day, but he is far and away from ever coming back to this world. (Otherwise, his state of being will last for the duration of this universe.) Such a state of affairs has left Jakk the Weeper here and all full of tears and rage and carrying on as he does now every single time that Master Fromm dies.
Oh, wait. This is the first time that Master Fromm has died. And given the hatred you have for technologies that go against ethics or some-such, neither you nor the local populace would want to go about performing any process to bring him back. Dead means dead when it comes to you anti-science, anti-technology humans. And since most all of you hate science and technology, plenty of dying to be had! So! Not only are you technologically incapable of bringing back beings from unlife, you are also just so very dedicated to killing off members of your own species! Belief in the wrong gods, worship of the wrong football team, doesn’t matter. Most anything is any excuse for you to go about having yourselves a merry little soiree of mutual slaughter.
Oh, and then there’s not paying tribute to whatever arsehole sits upon a throne. There’s that, too. Can’t forget the excuse of not worshipping the correct human. Meanwhile, so many of you would want to be worshipped yourselves. Making a silly little round thing made from melted rocks you or your slaves dug out of the ground, then put that thing upon your head. Perhaps add some shiny rocks for extra flavour. Then you go about sitting on the high seat of power because only you are the main hero and only you have the wisdom to rule the world! By Jove, if everyone just put you in charge and everyone did what you say, then the environment could be saved! Everyone would smash all their high technology and learn to ride horses and start believing in magic again! Living in peace and love with nature and other humans! You will just leave out those bits about ninety percent of the population becoming sustenance farmers and the low-tech lifespan being somewhere around the mid-thirties.
You included in that calculation of lifespan, especially since everyone else of your ilk wants that silly little bauble atop your head with its shiny pretty rocks set in it. Not only will they take that thing round your head, they may as well take your head along with it! Nothing says feudalism quite like amputating a monarch’s noggin! Bad infected hand, take it off. Leg gone bad, take that off too. (No such thing as penicillin in societies of low technology, you see.) Bad head? You can figure that one out—especially since we just gave you the answer!
Which were some of the sorts of things that Aia was thinking about. It may have been so much grand fun where her life was before, this sort of galivanting fantasy adventure-land. Dreaming of riding horses and going on quests to rid the world of evildoers and dragons and what-not. Great big castles and even greater battles for wars fought so long that everyone has forgotten their original purpose! (Likely something or other about a farming husband having spit upon the wrong parcel of land. Or perhaps cheering the wrong side at the football pitch.) All of that sword-swinging and magic-flinging, all of that just seems like so much story-telling fun. Never mind if a great many mooks are dead in the process. That’s all part of the game, a game involving thrones!
But what happens when this is one’s real life? This is her life now. This is her existence. This is not just some distant tale told by cinematic exposition, some grand theatrical production by the likes of Borehamwood or…goodness help you…Hollywood. Not a movie. Not even the sort of thing you’d watch on your smartphone. Otherwise, Aia lives in an era in which three-dimensional virtual-reality storytelling can happen by way of simple light-goggles. And perhaps—something for the young men—even tactile suits by which everything may be felt. All the sights, sounds, even sensations of a not-real place may be experienced.
But that is nothing. Nothing compared to here and now. These are real people, and they have real problems. More so because they were born human. And ending up living among other humans. It was not a philosopher of yours but a playwright who wrote, L’enfer, c’est les autres. In other human words, Hell is other people.
This is Hell for Jakk too. Jakk is still alive, but this is Hell on Earth… Erm, on whatever this planet so happens to have been named. Certainly, if they did get around to calling this world by a proper noun, they could do better than naming it after word for dirt.
By the way, how does it feel, living on Planet Dirt? Certainly befitting its inhabitants, hah! Your planet, most of its members of homo sapiens-sapiens not having died peaceably under lustrous and gentle circumstances, but instead dying due to the most asinine ways possible. Indeed, it seems that a great many of you humans have cheated Death…by killing yourselves ahead of schedule! Which is to also say, with ancestors on planet dirt, the human inhabitants of this world carried on that very custom of premature cessation of life. Don’t think so? Flying lessons, anyone? Anyone at all?
No? Well, then. Let’s get back to it. If this were one of those tales written in the pages of something your mums like to read, then something else would happen. Such tales, such books, easily identified by a cover-picture of a bare-chested beefcake astride a horse whilst seeking the presence of a maiden not much more dressed in the least. Your mum boo-hoos most all the things you enjoy, brow-beating the likes of your virtual games and such, whilst her literature seems to contain a great deal of rather explicit descriptions of human reproductive acts. He did…what? Hrmm… The maiden did what with her what to speed things along? Mmm-hmm… And then they took things slow, riding the…ah, waves of nightly pleasure.
And rest assured, there is much less in the way of metaphor and more in the way of zygotes practising mitosis! Or they would, if such tales were in the least realistic. In what parallel universe would a European male of the eighteenth century shave his chest-hair? The same to be said for human female leg-hair and most-everywhere-else hair. Just think! Your favourite European female monarchs went about with enough fur on their lower limbs to spark not the fires of passion but actual real-life incendiary incidents.
Fortunately for Aia, this synthetic body of hers did not project unnecessary growths save that which sprung from scalp, eyelids, and immediately in-between. (Would be interesting if something or other were to happen to her eyebrows. Unable to tell if the girl would be happy or angry.) And we insist upon saying fortunate because there is a startling lack of fire-extinguishers on this world. Need we say more?
And at this point, all of you mums out there are leaning forward and drooling in anticipation with what Aia does to Jakk to console him. But, this is not a tale written in the pages of something between lurid covers. This tale is not to be entitled some-such folderol as Throes of Silken Desire or Lush Midnight Fires or even Fires of Lush Midnight. There will be no acts of attempted human procreation at this time! No heaving bosoms in silken gowns! No thinly veiled (so to speak) metaphors for naughty bedroom tomfoolery! We shall sing you a song, and all of the lyrics are of one word, and that word is no!
Oh, but things are still rather heated otherwise. Jakk was envisioning the very worst of things that could happen to an inhabitant seated upon a certain throne of a certain castle. And for whatever reasons—and absolutely none of them being us planting errant thoughts into his tiny, tiny human intellect—Jakk was envisioning Lord Morkudum meeting a premature end to existence in a great many blazing ways. And if you don’t think there are overly many ways for a lunatic monarch (or totalitarian fascist of inherited political power) to die screaming in a fire, then your imagination is overly stupid. Just look at all the ways that you humans can use fire to cook the flesh of various dead animals? Meat and fire! How absolutely atavistic! Why can you not do the more civilised thing and eat it raw?
And then, Jakk would eat Lord Morkudum raw and alive. Such would be rather difficult to have done if his imagination had already called for the king to cook. Or perhaps, just burn all the parts necessary to keep a totalitarian fascist ruler (monarch) alive, thereby ending his life, and then leaving raw meat to savage apart with teeth prior to consumption?
And then, for whatever reasons there would be as belonging to a product of your world, Aia stated something stupid. Are you ready for it? Put on your crash helmets, ladies and gents! If her next bit of wording is going to make you smash your neck-ender against a bit of solid-vertical brickwork, you may as well have some protection.
“Should we call the police?” asked Aia, speaking with caution and care. And there you have it! Temporarily but also completely forgetting her socio-politico-geographico-metaphysical circumstances!
“What is a pool ice?” asked Jakk a bit too calmly, doing his damnedest to use another set of those skyborne words borne of other worlds.
Yet again, it’s an other one of those things that will not translate no matter how hard you try. Some things just do not exist in some cultures, so some cultures do not get around to making up sound-groupings for them. Meanwhile? You seem to have a great deal of fun in making up words for things that not only do not exist in your world but never will! Yet again, citing the word magic.
We did say, temporarily forgetting. Aia had to re-realise that there are no general-purpose gendarmes in this world. There may be guardsmen cavorting about the city and what have you. But out here on the plains, it’s cowboy land. Without the cowboys, yes. Without cows for that matter, again yes. But law and order are by those with the will and weapons to have it done. The right-makes-right rule of idiocy applies.
Or should we say, brute idiocy. Lord Morkudum is the most brutish and most idiotic of them all, and so it is befitting that he resides in office as emperor. Why, ’tis no different from having footballers or mutton-head actors becoming prominent members of parliament, actually.
Now Aia is going to make some vague attempt at saying something reasonably intelligent. (Intelligent? Her brain is human, so you can nix that notion straightaway.) So, considering her circumstances, and Jakk’s circumstances in regards to Master Fromm’s permanent circumstances (such being his remains inhabiting an urn), Aia said something like…
“At the least, he took down those who would kill him,” said the elf-girl of synthetic corpus. Such a pretty corpus includes an unusually long neck, metaphorically explaining her feelings on the matter. A long neck means that her head is far from her heart—as artificial as it was.
But never mind that. Hearts are actually just pumps for blood and have nothing to do with emotion other than speeding up at asinine times. But you will just continue with the metaphors in that regard until the race of giant beetles take up residence in your world before or after your species is extinct. Not your world anymore after that, then.
Before…or after your species is extinct. Oh, did we leave that phrasing to be rather vague? Just think! Won’t it be quite fun for your future generations to find out which interpretation becomes truth? Great fun for us, as the least. We do so very much love futile attempts at survival by woefully inept beings such as yourselves!
“And when will they stop killing?” asked Jakk, soundly spoiling the mood. There he goes, absolutely spoiling the moment. Quite the stick in the mud, that one.
Which then leaves Aia unable to pull that stick out of the mud, attach a party banner thereupon, and get things started yet again. Again, speaking metaphorically. With no actual stick to pull—with no sticks in this world at all due to a lack of trees—Aia was therefore unable to salvage things. This is the sort of moment in which you would take a prolonged, mug-sized sip of something mind-altering and not a little neurologically destructive. Ah, beer! Fills your tankard but empties your wits!
Beer…! Beer! What a splendid notion. Why, to wipe away all notions of Master Fromm, of course! (Again, only temporarily.) Just go to the pub, throw down some dosh, and have the barkeep keep ’em coming.
No, there will not be any drinking of yeast-urine of any sort. Jakk has mentally and temporarily sworn off any derivative thereof. He has instead mentally sworn upon some sort of imaginary sword or some-such to avenge his fallen apprentice-master. And doing that sorts of thing will light a fire in one’s heart. (Again, figuratively speaking. With your bodies being biological and such, an actual conflagration in the vicinity of your blood-pump would likely be deadly.)
That done, Jakk stood up straighter. He has been going about with a slumped-and-slinked posture of subservience for most all this time. Little wonder that now he suddenly seemed inches taller. This look of stern confidence also added an extra bit of imaginary height to his frame. A tall angry man always seems much bigger than a tall timid one, wouldn’t you say? And you will say because we say so.
Looking at Aia, “I only asked that question rhetorically. Sky-borne princesse, you have only been among us for a little while of your eternal existence. And yet, you have seen our ways. Those of this land who dominate the kingdom also dominate the people. They like killing. They will not stop unless they are stopped.”
Which leaves Aia looking on in expectation. You know what’s coming next. So does Aia. Both you and Aia are of quite similar worlds and have therefore been given much the same educationally speaking. Then there is all the formulaic tale-telling going on. Most everything that you have heard, read, or seen in tales spun by way of movies or spoken-word always seem to have the same set of events following another. What happens when a young man—all full of grief and (metaphorical-emotional) fire declares a want for something better in life? When the very barriers to happiness and prosperity are absolutely blocked by way of dominant idiocy? When such idiocy is in the form of a corrupt and oftentimes senseless monarchy?
Giving you forewarning, all of you democracy-hating fanatics cheering for fantasy monarchies are not going to like what happens next. But as implied, this has to take place by way of formulae—spun-fiction and historical fact. Whilst not every bit of precedent leads to the same flow of results, the courses of (human) history have the self-same tendencies. What was it that an American once said? Something about violent change being necessary when peaceful are not present.
Then there is your asinine joke about democracies not being viable in times of fantasy-war because dragons keep eating the ballot box! More of your idiocy! In times of war, wars of democracy versus something else, which side wins the most? And if you say monarchies or fascism, then you seem to have conveniently forgotten the past five hundred years or so of your own world’s history!
Which means, you continue to disagree with reality. If the people want change, they will have it. By blood jetting from severed-neck stumps if necessary. And if you love monarchies so very much, you can join your favourite monarchs up there on the execution platform when the pro-democracy revolution happens!
Not with you, of course. You—being a fan of totalitarianism—are too preoccupied with being a cheerleader for imprisoning people that don’t agree with your lunacy. Meanwhile, with you being on the side of monarchy, it will be rather hard for you to cheer for anything after the fact.
Oh, now about baskets! Baskets are made with razorgrass hereabouts. And instead of picking the stuff, the people of this land will sometimes go about using grow-kilns to grow strips of the plant. Otherwise, they would have to go through the bothersome chores of leaving their homes and riding out onto the plains—perhaps dodging a razor-glass field or two. Then there are the dragons… Or not! Did we not just come from saying that such creatures only exist within your imagination? We did. So stop that.
Which leaves you wondering, why this talk of baskets? Why, to put some aristocrats’ heads in, of course! You can’t just go about putting them in urns because then they would send up such a stench when the face-flesh and the brain behind begin to decompose. Then you can have the fun of either smashing the works or trying to remove the icky mess from a perfectly good urn. No, baskets are especially disposable—as disposable as the inbred buffoonery to whom the heads once belonged.
Certainly, Jakk had the notion of removing some heads. In particular, one such object being at the end of a royal neck. (Head amputations on royalty! Do you see? Thousands of years and tens of thousands of light-years removed from Earth, and that custom still remains! Human habits seem not to die easy deaths—even if you humans are just so delicate otherwise.) He would like to do that. But as with the way things tend to go in an entire universe that seems sometimes dead-set against one’s will, there are obstacles. A great many things stand between Jakk’s blade and the still-intact neck vertebrae of Lord Morkudum.
There are the plains, to start. Oh, but such things are easily traversed. On two human feet or on the six feet of a certain ride-beast, you can have it done. No poisonous creatures on this planet. The colonisers had technology enough to determine what animals would live here, and none of them would be able to poison the human animals. All of them edible in case the human-animals grew weary of whatever they could concoct with grow-kilns. Traversing the plains is quite simple, then. And therefore easy. They are called plains not for their dangerous cliff-faces or deadly dangers but because… Well? They are quite plain!
Yet there are other things on the plains. Such things are two-legged sword-and-crossbow bearing things riding atop six-legged things. They may have intellect enough to hold simple conversation and may accept straightforward instruction from their lord—the one lord, the one muscular ring to rule them all!
What else is a muscular ring? Ask an anatomist, but preferably before the first meal of day. We therefore quite mean that phrasing.
Speaking of etymology, consider the following if you can. When we said colonisers, describing those who have rendered humans here, do take a glimpse at the very spelling of the word. Coloniser, It includes the word colon. The colonisers had ejected humans unto this land. Which is to say otherwise, those bearing a title with the word colon have… Oh, you can quite catch the rather scatological metaphor from there. Colon products, one and all!
Yes! And there are others who hold sway over some-such of those products. Those things riding atop six-legged things. If humans are of such quality as to be compared to post-digestive product, there are also those who can be said to be worse. And they are exactly those whom we have most recently mentioned. To say that they are Lord Morkudum’s finest is surely a statement absolutely rich with sarcasm and bevvied with many fierce strata of irony!
Yes, the are the worst of the worst. They are the absolute scum of…well, whatever this world so happens to be. They are the lowest of the low. Scrape the bottom of a boot after traversing a sewer, and the quality of the scrapings thereof are directly comparable to them.
Yet they have something going quite well for them as a collective. Individually, certain among them are quite doomed to the oblivion of death. A great many of them can die. And yet, there are still a great many of them still ready to pick up wherever their fallen brethren left off. Even if many of them fall, there seem to be many more. (Why is it that the least intelligent amongst you seem so damnably intent on making up for lacking in wits by being more reproductively prolific?) As a bit of totalitarian scum among you once declared, Quantity has a quality of its own. People may deny that the totalitarian said it, but they will also deny that he spent a great deal of time killing people for having the wrong ancestry.
Because killing is what totalitarians are apt to do. Because they are the law. Because being the law gives one absolute control over life and death of citizenry. Because once a colon-product rests his muscular ring upon a throne, his qualities in that regard are therefore amplified. Your psychologists have noted that money and alcohol are not necessarily means of converting humans to anuses. Instead, they are just amplifiers of traits already there. Power does the very same.
Speaking of power, one would suppose it would take exactly that to keep something afloat. As in, keeping it from giving in to the force of gravity—that which induces matter to seek out a higher concentration of matter. You may hate it at times, gravity. Then again true, you humans are in the habit of hating yourselves. So goes because gravity is exactly what keeps your miserable planet going ‘round your solar system’s star. Gravity is what allows your planet to retain a breathable atmosphere. Such is why your moon can’t hold its own, so to speak. Not enough gravitas.
Holding an atmosphere, trying to explain this to you whilst you attempt to hold your liquor. Gravity is also what allows your planet to simply exist! That whole bit about matter being attracted to other matter? Your planet is made of matter, and no number of pints will change that fact. Hence, the need for that force.
Gravity, power, being attracted to planets… As such, power can be applied at the subatomic and wave-tau level to keep something’s underside from descending. And with enough power, something so grand (or grandly crass) as a castle may be kept aloft. And in case such hints are still as lost as you are in your cups, such all refers to a floating castle.
Indeed, that castle will be a problem. For Jakk, not for Lord Make-Dumb. Jakk cannot enter the castle. Not easily, at the least.
There are reasons why castles exist, such reasons including the likes of angry peasantry, and there are even more profound reasons as to why they would be made to be those of the floating sort. You cannot simply approach a castle, knock three times on door or battlement, and expect to be given free access thereof. (And for the love of all things good, cease your belief in assuming that dragons can be housed therein.) The difficulties of access in regards to being a visitor of the unexpected—and also rather unwelcome sort—are ultimately compounded if the castle is quite a ways above the marching surface.
Go on! Raise your pitiful voices. Hold your swords aloft and make threats. (Little more than sharpened sticks, those things. Sticks made from melted rocks dug up out of the ground. Do you really believe that you could possibly halt an invasion by a master race of giant beetles with your little pointy-sharpy things?) Your antics have no significance other than to raise the ire of the castles’ inhabitants and perhaps them having dropped some armed buffoonery to keep you company. Drop them on you, more likely. No need for a sword-swinging duel of Freudian implications when that gravity thing puts an end to your fighting days—and those of the armour-clad buffoonery that had suddenly…and quite temporarily…met your company!
And none of this was lost on Aia—the skyfall princesse! Does not take overly much in the way of wits to understand that there are a lot of things between Jakk of the Sworn Oath (a Sworn Oaf, har-har) and his gruelingly cruel flaming burning desire for fiery inflamed vengeance. And if anything else is inflamed, ’twould be best to apply an ice pack or nano-filament infusers.
Sounds impossible. Sounds quite impossible. One Jakk against an endless series of waves of (vaguely) professional armed men. And those from families of high birth-rates at that. (Quantity versus quality! Quantity making for quality.) But since her declared quest is that of putting an end to Lord Morkudum, getting this done is her sole ticket back to that low-tech un-paradise of yours in which every single last sub-moron has fingers attached to a smartphone and much to the detriment of their professional and personal navigation. We are talking of humans. Therefore, we speak of many sub-morons. And thus and therefore, a great many smartphones.
To hold her smartphone again. To hold any smartphone. If not for her corpus being synthetic, the sudden spate of withdrawal symptoms would have put her down to the ground and groping upward. Even so, psychosomatics are giving her pause. Smartphone… Smartphone…
“Marred-flown? Is that a means of flight by the skyborne?” asked Jakk, trying to interpret Aia’s mutterings about smartphone…smartphone…smartphone…. Unlike us, Jakk does not have mind-reading capabilities. (Hell man, he can barely read his own mind at times.) And if he did not read Aia’s mind, he must have heard her wistfully muttering for that certain device which has no translated name in this world’s language. Again, if it does not exist, and people do not know it exists, it does not get a word.
Come on now, girl. Be the hero. (We would say heroine, but your sophomoric minds would interpret that as asking her to become a highly addictive substance. Or at least, something other than what is infused in smartphone plastics.) You were sent to this world for reasons. And by the by, none of them are for the sake of weeping over powdered dwarf!
Powdered dwarf! What a wonderous product! Makes kitchen life just so much easier than making it from scratch! Just add water…and perhaps a dash of lemon for bitterness (for obvious reasons…and stir! You will have that dwarf of yours in no time! Serves as many as you please…
And we are joking yet again! What, did you actually believe we would do such a thing as induce a means of bringing a cremated, short-tempered (so to speak) engineer back from beyond? We would have to make him forget everything he has seen there, if that were the case. No use spoiling the surprise. In fact, we do that quite often…relatively speaking. Infinite worlds. Infinite games to play—and with you mere mortals being the play-pieces. But this play-piece is knocked over and removed from the board for good. At the least, in this universe.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Now there’s a right-splendid idea! A parallel universe! One in which that bearded being whose horizontal dimensions match his vertical dimensions is still alive and well! What? Do you protest? Feel free to significantly do so when your species has developed trans-dimensional travel!
…
Now, where were we? Or where are we? Oh yes. Did we not just tell you? Same world, different universe. You would argue that it is therefore another world, but phrasing it that way would be too much for your pitiful human intellects. Parallel universes, too difficult a concept. Why else do almost none of your movies talk about parallel universes?
Answer, because those who make money from that sort of cinematic stupidity know their audience, and they know that their audience lacks wits enough to understand such a thing!
About universes, there are an infinite-infinite number of universes. In fact, they become ever-more infinite all the time—so much so that different forms of time can come to exist. Imagine all the fun to be had in universes in which time occasionally dips back before going forth again? (More fun still when the entities therein have minds capable of understanding the phenomena.) That said, it is perfectly within the realms of possibility that some universes would run parallel…in sorts of ways.
In any event, in any series of metaphysical events, we have your dear Master Fromm doing what he quite likes doing--whenever he is not flummoxing about with crystals. There he is, resting in his six-armed chair. A vast book before him, a warm cuppa filled with hot and sweet (to match his actual disposition), and a massive bowl of wriggling blort-worms in lieu of scones or croissants. Scones, horrid creations.
Meanwhile, blort-worms are just so very delicious especially when they yet live! Why, you should try eating more live food. Not only does that remove the need for refrigeration, but just imagine the retained nutritional value! Add to that the live entertainment to be had at the dining table as parts of your meal attempt to flee for their little lives! Livens things up, you know. Or at least until their miserable little heads are bitten off, ending their pathetic little whingeing for good and for-ever…!
Ahem! And you wonder about the six-arm chair. So goes because Master Fromm has six arms, of course! How else do you expect him to enjoy a good book, a hot-sweet cuppa, and then that loving serving of blort-worms? Makes quite a bit of sense, having six limbs for manipulation. Korth have six legs themselves, as do most proper animals of this rather proper world…in this universe. Not your universe, so stop your fretting.
A blue glow from a door crystal. Master Fromm stared, and the tele-sight crystal nearest showed who was at the door. Why, wonder of wonders! ‘Twas his good friend and hero to all the land, Lord Morkdum!
“Oh! Do come in! Do come in!” cheered Master Fromm, wriggling a bit in his six-arm chair—and the arm-chair wriggling a bit back to accommodate the dwarf sitting therein. Six-arm chairs are made of semi-intelligent sludge capable of photosynthesis. No need for charging or plugging them in.
And there goes the great man himself—the wonderful and loving Lord Morkudum! Clad in a great-coat of arm-beast furs over his absolutely gleaming golden chest-plate armour. With his trousers properly fluffed and boots gleaming, he was the very image of the great hero who keeps all the land safe from the doings of such evils as Jakk the Malicious or those much-accursed sky-borne invaders.
But it would be of great boredom and even greater prolonged danger if Lord Morkudum had to go about questing all of the time. At the least, Jakk the Malicious had learned his lessons for now and was therefore not attempting to take over the world.
Yes! Taking over the world! As in, having everyone do as he says and when he says it! You are no different, thinking that your planet would be a better place if only people listened, followed, and obeyed your demands. Most of you not yet even having completed compulsory schooling, yet think you know more about your world than all of your world’s scientists and political philosophers combined. An astounding feat, that. An astounding swell of ego! You could float an entire castle with that arrogance of yours, so powerful it is.
“’Tis not about taxes, is it?” went Master Fromm of the Six Arms, all smiles. And if we said that his arms had the ability to smile too, we would not be lying. Not your universe. Not your rules.
But this is Lord Morkudum’s world, his planet, and he sets the rules. And there is still quite nothing that you can do about it. And upon this planet, he decides taxation. But because he is so very wealthy, he must have even more in the way of revenue.
Or not. Lord Morkudum also a-smile. And with his arms covered, you can’t see the grins on those limbs. “You begin to sound more like parliament every day. They are paid well enough but would like even more. Clearly also forgetting that taxation would mean they are less likely to be chosen for office. In which case, you never quite gave me a reason as to why you never bothered to choose a seat for an attempt at governorship. You certainly have the wits and wisdom for arguing proper laws. We need parliamentarians. I wouldn’t dare attempt to second-guess the will of the people.”
A…parliament? In a fascist, totalitarian, fantasy-land regime? But only two of those three descriptors apply, you see. Having actual elected officials always in peril of losing their place in government is a sure-fire way of keeping a fire lit under their seats. Metaphorically speaking on the latter, and quite literal on the former. Which is to also say, this is more or less a representative democracy. Which is to also say, this is not a place for you to consider your madcap fantasies of total and complete rule by total and complete dunderheads. Yes, the sort that have their think-meat ever-always juddered by endless galloping rides coupled with consumption of entire tankards of ale!
Well! Better to lose their seats in government by elected contest than to lose their heads when the people are dissatisfied with the way things go. And if ballot-box foisting is not available, then the executioner’s axe hefted by the cheers of revolutionaries will do in a pinch. And in the long meanwhile, it has been a great many centuries since the executioner’s axe has tasted a politician’s neck-blood—which is to also say that…democracy actually works!
Just as it does here. Unlike the fantasy-land buffoonery of your desires, Lord Morkudum is a monarch that likes to share. That includes sharing power in government. Don’t you want to share with your class-mates? No? Then perhaps we should discuss this matter on the story-time carpet because you have obviously not learned the virtue of not being selfish in kindergarten.
Now about Master Fromm not being a member of elected government? “Why, I thought I recall telling you why, your Lordship,” went Master Fromm. “All of that wheedling about and so much in the way of contentious frippery. By the Three Moons, ’tis a wonder the institution functions at all.”
Nodding and grinning, the Good Lord agreed. But still… “You did indeed give me reasons, master crystal-smith. Yet such are not quite good reasons. I nevertheless continue to accept your answer in that regard. But as for the other order of business, there is still that of the wedding.”
“The wedding! Oh, yes!” declared Master Fromm. “It’s been aeons since I had an opportunity to wear my favourite dress! The sequins will match the tone of my beard.”
“That, it does,” said Lord Morkudum. “You have yet a day and a night to prepare. So much so, given how the princesse harries the whole lot of the castle staff so very much.”
“Which bears more importance? The wedding or the marriage? A taste of the next decades to come! Hah!” declared Master Fromm. And with that, you can see and hear that he’s got that sense of humour in common with his counter-part in that other universe. Speaking of which…
…
We did say that there are infinite-infinite universes and more so upon more than forever. But when we said Master Fromm’s counterpart and that bit about that other universe, that means there are infinite-infinite universes to choose from. That said, if you were to…oh, say…end up in the company of trans-dimensional entities capable of traveling between worlds, and said entities were to leave you somewhere… To say that you would be quite lost would not even begin to cover it! You could be granted immortality and a bauble by which you could do your own inter-dimensional travel but never be able to return to your home-universe. So goes because you would not be able to select the correct one.
Now, about getting back to the correct universe… There’s a rather annoying notion. The correct universe. Who is to say which universe is correct? Most every other hyper-intelligent species out there is likely to shake their multiple heads at that idea. There you go, with that lonely little blot of thinkmeat locked away in bone, believing yourselves to be the absolute height of intellectual evolution. And for every last one of you arriving in a parallel universe and somehow surviving because the laws of physics and chemistry are just right, you are all too ready to ogle and spread loathing at every new species you encounter.
Was it a left turn…here? Oh, wait! That universe does not even have combustion! Without our metaphysical protection, your metabolism wouldn’t last a femtosecond in that universe.
What about…this one? No, no, too chaotic. So chaotic that even matter cannot even exist outside of laboratory conditions. But all the energy entities thereabouts have great fun imagining genocide. As in, all the ways they could obliterate a planet inhabited by beings made of matter! That they are intelligent enough to hypothetically assume the existence of matter—even in a universe not containing any—should be pause for concern in your regard. Perhaps we should turn right-around and give them the trans-dimensional direction to your universe, your galaxy, and your planet? What a wondrous show it would be!
Oh bother. But never mind that at least for now. We’ll get around to destroying your galaxy some other time. In any event, you’ll be wanting a return to the land of Princesse Aia. All this time in her vicinity, and yet you still take to try looking at all of her at the same time. Absolutely loving it every time the girl takes a stride and the deep slits in her garment flutter like so. Or wanting her to sit down with legs well-crossed. And when the day comes in which synthetic body-replacement technology reaches your planet—the day that you actually allow artificial intelligence to perform surgical procedures your pitiful human hands cannot perform—a great many of you will want to become her. And are you really smearing peanut butter on biscuits? A gastrointestinal crime against nature if nature actually cared.
And so, we now pluck a perfectly serviceable Master Fromm from one of those parallel universes, add him to our party, and are on our way there. Just like…so.
…
Just joking! Master Fromm is quite dead from Jakk’s perspective. Couldn’t be any more deader if that annoying little snot of an apprentice loaded him into a crystal-powered primitive launch-vessel, set the coordinates, and sent those powdered remains into the nearest celestial source of fusion power. Then he could hypothetically think of Master Fromm smiling upon him every single time the sun rose. That, because Master Fromm almost never smiled upon him in life.
But that was about to change. Jakk had poured most all the entirety of the urn’s contents into a roundish silvery…thing. (It’s not a bowl. Don’t say that. A bowl is for containing edible contents. For goodness’ sakes, powdered dwarf is not edible!) This bowlish sort of thing was set upon a table with all sorts of crystal-powered shenanigans. And whilst it may seem that some of that must have been for impressing the likes of you instead of actually serving some sort of purpose, then rest assured! All of it is designed to bedazzle your ignorant little minds.
Aia leaned over the bowl…-ish. “Is this actually to work?” asked the elf-princesse of the synthetic corpus.
“It should, according to the directions on the tin!” said Jakk brightly, smiling away with all the delight of the actual idiot that he was.
Smiling but actually not so brightly. What he should have said was…No, of course this won’t work. I just thought it’d be gobs of fun to play with the remains of the dearly departed. I certainly put one over on you, didn’t I? And this peanut butter is just so greatly deprived of flavour.
For lack of anything in particular for this particular purpose, Jakk had poured hot water into the teapot from a largeish cistern. It being a teapot, it heated the water to perfect tea temperature—not enough to scald, and certainly not lukish enough to make for insipid tea. See that? Vibrating atoms and molecules in this universe make for heat. That, and most all the other rules seem to apply. This, including the rule about adding water to ashes to make them a dwarf again. Just be sure that you don’t have anything…ahem, missing. Just even the slightest dusting of forgotten and un-added ash can be problematic. Need we go into details?
For the most part, most everything had been poured in successfully because it was exactly that kind of urn. Glossy insides and antistatic at that as so nothing sticks, collates, or adheres by van-der-Waals forces or otherwise. Additionally, be glad that the physics of this universe are such that everything automatically snaps back to where it was upon being properly rehydrated.
Which is to say, he has been rehydrated and also therefore brought back to existence. Everything about him. Even his clothes. And even his eyelids—which he used to blink. And we know this because there was… No, there is now a perfectly-formed Fromm-shaped dwarf sitting atop a chemist’s table. He was also wondering why the Hell he was here—even if the inhabitants of this world have no concept of Hell. Perhaps their idiocy is sufferance enough.
Which still left Master Fromm sputtering and vaguely confused. In fact, confused enough to exclaim something or other about an afterlife where particularly bad people go when they die. According to various versions of religion on your lone planet, it seems that certain kinds of bad lead to that after-credits conclusion.
He was supposed to have been dead. Why, because he particularly made it so. Now he is…feeling a slight bit woogish, actually. Even as he suspected that the steamy feeling in his head would clear, even whilst a brain itself is not supposed to have anything in the way of biological sensory paraphernalia to experience feeling, he nevertheless had to go about getting himself killed all over again. May as well beat those accursed korth imbeciles to the task.
But first, he had to resolve a particularly hargelsome issue. And you wonder what hargelsome is supposed to mean. And you will just have to keep wondering. Or at least, until you go back time travel-wise to kindergarten and ask the matron what context clues are supposed to do. Meanwhile, Master Fromm had to begin with a perfectly direct inquiry.
Standing in the doorway leading from chemistry lab to crystal-lab, Master Fromm turned to look at a begobbed pair of youngsters. There was a female youngster that looked exactly what a skyfall princesse was supposed to look like. And then some, of course. Imagination cannot begin to fully contain such assumptions of sharp-striking delicate beauty. Now as for the other one? It was a matter of number.
“Apprentice Jakk!” went Master Fromm, now sounding like his properly annoyed self. “Where, when, and how did you go about grafting an extra two pair of arms to your torso? Do you look to impress the princesse with an extra few pair of biceps?”
“I plead borkton, Master Fromm,” went Jakk, crossing two arms and holding out the hands of the other four.
And no, we won’t bother to translate borkton into any of your silly little human tongues. Do some translating yourselves. You do it all of the time, even whilst dealing with those who presumably speak your own language or make efforts at doing so.
Which left Master Fromm and his quick wits to understand what borkton could possibly mean. At this point and for the time being, he could not care what it actually means. So long as it did not involve being mortally wounded (again) by sub-morons riding animals only slightly more or less intelligent than themselves, all is well. If borkton additionally involves otherwise something about blood-soaked human sacrifice, then so be it. He’s a dwarf, after all.
“Cautiously accepting your borkton, then,” went Master Fromm, hands on hips. A seemingly innocent gesture, it allows for a quick-draw movement of his crystal-rings.
Why this? If this multi-armed version of Jakk were to try anything untoward, it would be quite easy to perform a mathematical operation upon his anatomy. Subtraction, in particular. For goodness’ sakes, we don’t need addition or multiplication, and especially not regarding those limbs of his. Why-ever not? Most all humanoids of Master Fromm’s past acquaintance did quite well enough for themselves with just two limbs attached to their upper bodies. Never mind if some of them behaved as if they had feet where hands are supposed to be.
Which brings to mind, why did your primate ancestry give up having grasping prehensile toes—therefore having four hands instead of two? Whilst at it, why did you then also give up on breathing oxygen from liquid water? If anything is certain, you have also given up on expanding your cranial capacity. All of your mating habits tending toward meaty bodies and small heads. Keep that up, and your descendants millennia on will be in even worse stead when that race of exoskeletal invertebrates show up on your trans-dimensional doorstep!
Which also leaves Master Fromm being suddenly, firmly, and quite quickly aware of all the other things that could possibly go wrong….for him. Just going wrong for him. Those two youngsters over there and with twelve limbs between there, they were doing quite well for themselves. Able to breathe the air. Their biochemistry is likely fully compatible with the various orders of physics in this universe. (Don’t say laws for the time being. Laws can be broken quite often, and the Americans among you know that all too well!) They know all the customs and all the quirks of this world’s dialect as existing in this universe. And this is all saying that…of course Master Fromm fully understands that he is in a parallel plane of existence.
“You seem to be acting quite curiously, Master Fromm,” went Jakk. “Did any of your brain-bits go astray?”
“I have wits enough to realise that idiocy is a fated condition for humans!” snapped Master Fromm. Then squinting. “You do call yourself a human, don’t ye?”
“I do, Master Fromm,” went Jakk, promptly spreading all six arms. He then flexed his scaly barbed tail for emphasis… Joking on the tail bit. Still did that thing with the arms, though.
“I…was human,” went Aia, frowning a bit. Yes-yes, the skyborne princesse was standing here all the while. Seeing a pretty, pretty elf-girl face frown still means that it is still a pretty face—especially with those huge eyes of hers. Then straightening that longish neck of hers and opening her eyes even wider. “But I am not any longer!” Holding fingertips to the hems of her slitted apprentice garment. “I do so very much prefer to be an elf-princesse than human. For all of their number, they seem to just have so very little in the way of mental capacity. It must be all of that breeding we…they do with those of smaller head sizes. No, I shall stay upon this world and stay away from my home-world for-ever. Smartphones be damned!”
…
Which leaves us now going back to the so-called proper universe after all. One in which the evolutionary forebearers humans never got around to walking around on two limbs instead of four. Thus, unable to pick up tools or go about developing advanced technology. Or any technology. Thus and therefore, rendering them quite vulnerable to all the sharp-mouthed lovelies with stomach-acids enough to eat even rotting flesh.
What? Not to your liking? Oh bother. Then we really do have to get back to the story at hand. This, whilst Master Fromm is going to be out of Jakk’s picture forever. And Aia’s picture. No photographs, in fact. That’s because, again, no smartphones. Nothing in the way of proper cameras also. Who would want photographic evidence of being at any moment amongst humans?
You would, of course. This goes because you are humans yourselves. We see you partaking of lunacy, idiocy, and stupidity of all kinds—and not necessarily in that hierarchical order. Just…how many times will your kind die from taking photographs of yourselves in astoundingly stupid situations? Falling off buildings for that perfect selfie. Swimming in shark-filled pools and therefore joining the food chain ahead of schedule! Or, most asinine and also most leonine of all, spending eleven years surrounded and living in-home with carnivorous wild animals just to make a movie! Never mind if said animals have gravely wounded your friends and family over seventy times! Damn it, you just keep at it! And we will keep at these rants until you at least take to engaging those forebrains of yours even ever so slightly!
And this rant applies because we have a thoroughly committed young man whose next set of ideas would have him committed to a psychiatric institution if he was in your world… Or rather, in any of a quarter of your world’s countries. The other three-fourths contain nationalities that would hail him as a prophet. The more blazing the lunatic, the holier he is considered! Some human cultures work that way. Or, just all of your cultures!
Just…what kind of idea, exactly. Why, we should have already shown you when he came up with this madcap scheme. Storming a castle? How about…storming a floating castle? Sounds astoundingly, surprisingly superior an idea, doesn’t it? (And do let us know when you put those emphasised words into an acronym. Would give you a clue as to where said ideas came from, as well as what we think about its source.)
But Aia is all for it. Ever since touching down on this deranged, madcap, neo-feudalist planet, Aia wanted to get off of it. Having access to ultra-powerful meta-crystals crafted by ultra-intelligent beings cannot make up for not having a smartphone anywhere or ever! If this was some kind of future-world colonised by humans, then what in blazes happened to smartphone technology!
Yes, really and truly! The sky-borne people, they can fly between the stars and have even cured themselves of the cure-all known as death. (Thank goodness Lord Moron and his ilk do not have access to that last one. They could make meat craters all the live-long day if so and never run out of lives.) There is vasi that can cure the sick of most anything otherwise. Even if everything but death was cured in this world, even if they had access to unlimited foodstuffs and material goods that literally grew out of the ground of all things, none of that makes up for the alluring sensuous seduction of a smartphone’s plastic…
“Are you quite all right, skyfall princesse?” asked Jakk. “Something seems to be irritating your hands. You keep to rubbing them and groping for something not there.”
“Was I?” went Aia, still at it. Then, looking down. Still at it, her hands. Her body was completely replaced and therefore with all the weak stupid human flesh gone.
But alas, her brain was not replaced. And with that, her brain retained all of its silly addictions. That includes an addiction to those amazing, succulent, smartphones… (Fun with acronyms, again. We’ll stop when you do! One thing is for certain. Aia, still seduced by amazing smartphone selections.)
With Jakk getting up and crossing round the tea table. Putting his hands on hers. “I do not know the ways of your health, as you are not human. But certainly, vasi can do something for what ails you.”
“Let’s just get on with plotting to rip out Lord Morkudum’s accursed vertebrae or changing his physical state to vapour!” snapped Aia. Well, damn it. Those smartphone withdrawal symptoms really are doing quite a number on her behaviour.
With Jakk letting that just go. As astoundingly seductive as Aia seems significantly, there is at least one thing that will make a young man forget love. And there goes the opposite of love. Love, hate, both of those human emotions can burn reason to the quick.
Just letting it go? Aia was thinking of an expression—and an especially American one at that. It begins with the word Hell and ends with the word no. There was someone that has fallen in battle. More importantly, Aia has gone for this long without a slim plastic device to slip into her favourite pocket… (Oh goodness, that was rather Freudian wasn’t it? Oh bother. There you go again. Moving on!) And there would be no slipping of plastic electric devices in and out of favourite pockets until this matter was resolved! For-good and for-ever! The old joke goes something like how having a healthy lifestyle does not actually mean living longer. It just feels that way.
But in actuality, Aia was going to be healthy as long as nothing drastically severe happened to her. Otherwise? Else, with her being a de-facto immortal—synthetic corpus and all that—it was going to be a long, long life. And also a very long, long time by extension… (Extension! Yes! Freud strikes again! Have all the base pleasures you so desire!)
Not this time! Aia was not going to be here for a long time! Time to get this accursed quest of hers on its red, red way to its hopefully blood-covered conclusion! Staggering mortally wounded morons chopped down like the carrion they deserve to be! (And never mind the lack of carrion birds!) Yes! Slain enemies by the baker’s dozen! Dismembered corpses and severed noggins! For that matter, not a single fully intact corpse for a hundred kilometers ’round! So much carnage that the very ground itself is lost from sight! That one could walk those hundred kilometers in any direction and not touch foot upon this nameless planet’s surface!
Rather uneven walking, that. Especially with humans coming in various shapes, sizes, and various levels of decomposition. But Aia would gladly, gladly take that victorious marathon walk if it means caressing her long lost love yet again! So, on with it!
Aia pounded her fists on the table, making the crockery give a shake-and-shiver. Well now! Thank goodness Master Fromm was quite the engineer. Else the artificial strength of a synthetic-bodied human would have cracked the thing. Quite the engineer? Now he’s quite the bit of powder! Har-har!
“So what of it, Jakk!” cheered Aia perhaps a bit too merrily to seem sane. “When do we go about destroying the likes of Lord Morkudum? How do we get up to the floating castle as so we can send his head off spinning into the abyss?”
“You…do not seem to be quite alright,” went Jakk. Yes, the boy wanted revenge. But such a thing does not exactly mean an astoundingly deep thirst for blood.
Wanting revenge. Wanting carnage. There is a difference, a matter of degrees. Why, you could have had a school chum put an amphibian in the dark depths of your desk. Crouching there. Waiting for some human—or you in particular—to open up as so it may leap with full enthusiasm toward the nearest source of moisture. Which, by the way, happens to be your mouth! And for such an act, you are not going to do something so drastic as…
Eh-hem. That seems quite drastic, indeed. Quite uncalled for. Do you know how long human intestines actually are? And the smell, at that! Those things are not there for generating a pleasant aroma but to serve a biochemical purpose! No, no, and no! If you are to go about removing various portions from within your friends’ thoracic cavities, please do so beyond our presence. Beyond that? Have at it! You humans are ugly enough, even with your insides still inside!
But Aia? Oh, yes. That young lass wants to have at it. “We should organise a war counsel,” began Aia, that gleam in her orbs of sight dancing quite a bit now. “Gather up most all the townspeople, and whomever else dwells the plains… Weapons, weapons, and more weapons still… All of them deliberately dull to prolong the pleasure of removing bits and pieces from Lord Morkudum and his ilk.”
Now this is quite a surprise. With your infinite youthful optimism, you are of the idea that surprises are most always of the pleasant kind. In that regard, substitute youthful with stupid… Ah, there’s a love. Surprises are unexpected turns of events. In which case, one cannot be prepared for them. And in this case, hearing of Aia saying things which should not come from such a pretty mouth was problematic. The sort of talk one would expect from someone twice her size and covered with four times’ over the muscle. And tattoos. Cannot forget those omni-present tattoos. Paint your dermis with cancerous inks in an era in which you have not yet cured that category of ailments! Why-ever not? You also love to suck down nicotine as well as neurologically damaging fluids.
Aia was grinning now—show of teeth. “We shall-l-l-l…! Find this world’s equivalent of something ever-so-slightly meat-eating. Something with a taste for human flesh and unbathed flesh at that Not creatures that are overly voracious, mind you. And even so, perhaps have them in their infancy.”
Listening to the skyfall princesse. More exactly, listening to her lose her sanity—one shredded cloth of coherence at a time. Saying such things and in such a manner.
And what the blooming Hell else was Jakk supposed to do here? Why, go about sitting, of course. Would you prefer that he partake of some other verb? Very well, then. He is also breathing. And he also retains his pulse. There you have it. Two other activities at the least, things beyond just sitting and listening… Oh look! There’s a third!
“First, stake out Lord Morkudum’s people upon the hard ground. Why bother with ropes? Just…nail through their extremities!”
“I worry about you,” said Jakk. “This whole business of being ripped from your previous existence to live amongst those of us dirt-dwellers… It must be an awkward and thoroughly cumbersome experience.”
“To pound some good nails between the tiny fingerbones of the palm,” continued Aia. “A good sharp nail is what we need to get through the gristle. More problematic whilst the flesh still lives. Perhaps…then we should resort to tying them down? To cut off circulation to said extremities, of course. No-no, it simply won’t do to simply wait until hands and feet are simply cold…then blue…then green… We shall wait until hands and feet are quite properly blackened and nearly falling off! Then the nails shall sound rather crisp as they bite through the dried, dead flesh.”
By now, you must be thinking something horrid. The thoughts must be absolutely pounding through your tiny, tiny intellects. From the very moment that Aia broke into that second round of rather gruesome soliloquy, you were thinking the worst. And for once, we somewhat share your considerations. Above all else, you are thinking, Does this planet’s language really have such a vocabulary, and is it accurately reflected in translation?
Of course, you dunder-wits! We are the ones doing the translation. Furthermore, we should add, we do not just go about the sloppy business of interpreting the words coming from those preliminary digestive holes which double for sound-based communication. We also dip into your rather simple neurological processes to understand not only what you say but also what you mean by what you say.
So when Aia says something along the lines of… “Their howls of pain and suffering will be the very height of delight for the day! Oh, and well into the night. We shall light literal bonfires in their bellies! If we choose to disembowel them before placing the combustibles therein, it’s quite easily our choice. What, does one expect them to have a say in the matter?”
Yes, quite like that. Princesse Aia quite simply means all of that and a bit more. This, as if you’re above such declarations and demands for vengeance in bright tones of blood and fire. Really deep-down primitive tooth-and-claw, all of this. You’re not. Most all of you are cheering for the same.