Arcfire—Chapter 13
by E. E. Bowers
Say there, fine sir…erm, madam… Or whatever gender you so happen to be at the moment. (Rather difficult dealing with a sexually dimorphous species that at times. Nice bit of moustache you have there, by the by!) And you too, sir…largely assuming that your broad shoulders are indicative of either possessing a Y chromosome or you’ve undergone the prerequisite procedure!
Now with that bit out of the way, we have something of a proposal for you and your otherwise-unsated fellow pitchfork-bearers. Interesting how your bit of civilisation hereabouts has inherited the custom of making pitchforks even though razorgrass is too brittle to be dealt with in such a manner.
Well, then! If there is nothing in the way of desiccated, dried, withered or otherwise zombified ground-grown foliage to feed to meat-beasts, why develop pitchforks? Was it some sort of random whim? Did the metaphorical muses descend upon your consciousness (or what little you have of it, given how you are human) and stoke the absolute Promethean fires of desire to create such things? (No, not mixing metaphors! Quite a bit in the way of human mythology running together and also at cross-purposes!) And you shall not say something so asinine as racial memory for humans inherit nothing in the way of knowledge by way of genetics.
Because you have begun learning in the womb. Because you sit in the womb as an atavistic embryo with a tail and gills, and you hear things. Even at the tender age of six months, you begin taking in intel regarding the absolute warzone that you are going to enter within another three months’ time. At the least, understanding the cadence of the language to which you shall be further exposed.
Which means, you do not gain knowledge from your genome. You gain it…by hearing things whilst still in the womb! And hearing even more of it whilst growing into infancy, then toddlerhood, and then adulthood. Born with that bit of knowledge, along with being exposed to certain customs throughout infancy, such gives the illusion that genes pass on customs. And your ruling families continue to believe that they are genetically superior.
Well! One thing is certain. The opposite is true. Humans are born with knowledge whilst cursed genetically with idiocy! The genes which express the phenotype of stupid just may be quite dominant, indeed! Proliferating like all get-out amongst you!
So where does that leave you? Of relatively low intelligence and also of lowly social status, the former quite handily feeds into the latter! Too s-s-s-s-stupid to know that you are being oppressed, such is what comes to pass with most every feudal society. Dumb as the rocks you profess to walk past and exploit. Dump a chamber-pot on a rock, and it complains not! (We would say go ditto on tree stumps, but there are none upon this world. No trees, you see. Hence, no stumps.) Likewise, Lord Morkudum and his ilk can keep on with their asinine antics of doing whatever they please to you and your fellow peasantry.
Serfs, perhaps? Given another hundred generations of idiocy—especially with that ongoing preferential mating with those small of head and large of body—and that level of existence may actually come to pass.
But nay, you say! No, not neigh. You are not a horse. For that matter, those of you on this world you do not know what a horse is—given your passive ignorance of your intergalactic ancestry and your willful ignorance perpetuated by a steady refusal to read at leisure. Nay! As in, you deciding to buck against the oppressors upon your back. This, given how they have saddled you with burdens beyond your own. Saddled enough and addled with customs! Why, ’tis customary to have Lord Somesuch have you carry solitary rocks upon your backs to build…whatever he wants built. Perhaps yet another water closet. Perhaps a water closet with no outlet. This way, you will just keep having to build one after another each and every time the previous in the series has…ahem, filled its purpose. Or given how Lord Whatever-His-Name is lives in a floating castle? Let’s just say that the term floater need not apply to everything.
Oh, but you enjoy being oppressed! Whatever worlds you are born on, you gladly galivant about with a bit in your mouth and that rather comely saddle upon your burden-bowed back! All in service of your lord! And if your physiology could tolerate having metal shoes pounded into your extremities, then you would gladly accept that! And if all of this sounds especially uncomfortable at the least and outright infuriating at worst, then we are with you! Especially since you of this world cannot hear us unless we so choose!
But…that would go against the rules! What fun is this game if we don’t follow the…? Oh, very well then! We will admit to a bit of…bending in regards to the regulations and expectations. But things can be just so very insipid if things simply go as they do. You would have to admit, Aia and Jakk would just go about all sorts of absolute asinine traipsing about without a bit of goading. You humans are just so very much that way.
You want proof? Oh, you always do want more proof…even if the answer is prima facie or even de facto so. We have watched you play your so-called open-world computer games. There are lists of quests and tasks to accomplish, but you are simply content with hopping aboard your virtual steeds to traverse those virtual landscapes to go about looking for…what! Looking for what! Must you peruse each and every digitally souled blade of grass, every single last cranny of every single last tree in the forest which somehow edges the desert? Why not take a virtual magnifying glass to the random grains of sand in said desert? (No, it is not the skill of your virtual-world programmers. They simply left it to artificial intelligence contrivances to craft that much detail. To leave it to human efforts would drive said humans simply mad. Rather, more insane than at current.)
Which is to say, your games are work! You are mentally programmed to work! You enjoy being slaves!
Because you are stupid! Humans are stupid! Need we remind you again of just how long it took for humans to develop the art of writing? One-hundred thousand years! That was how long it took before you decided to make marks which represented first ideas, then sounds to be rearranged as so multiple ideas may be communicated. A matter of sanity-saving convenience, that. Must be rather tiresome to have to remind humans of the same thing said time and again. Additionally, it took you some millennia more to craft a circle of hardened materials, place a shaft therein, and realise…we just may be able to more easily move loads with such a thing! Why, we can get to the dung-ball pits much more quickly this way! Dung-ball, the height of human sport! Pity we will have to wait until some millennia more before football proper is invented.
Oh all right. That last bit was tacked on. Otherwise, what we did was just a matter of necessity for keeping this game going at a promising pace. Moving things at a stately cantor is vastly preferable to the ambling and grazing that you seem to prefer.
Speaking of moving? Oh yes, enough of this traipsing. This long with Aia the elf-princesse cavorting about with the mere mortal. No, his name is not important. It never was. What more mattered was what He-of-The-Monosyllabic-Moniker was tasked to accomplish with Aia’s assistance.
And it would have to have been with Aia’s assistance. This world existed on its own—more or less—afar and apart from Aia. Would have been going about its business of simply existing if that little flaxen-haired street urchin had not come along. After all, if not for Aia’s presence, then we would not have had to kill that dwarven genius. He had a rather rancid disposition and is better off not being around here, for that matter. For all matters. Having got rid of him! Remember! Canter versus traipsing!
But bullocks to that! We shall have this lemon-flavoured unfortunate series of events moving along quite speedily and also quite handily! Goodness knows that we have not succeeded in driving away enough of you just yet! If things should somehow go from bad to worse to simply draining your lachrymal glands of all excess, simply remember that we had nothing to do with it. At the least, according to the rules. And the rules are there to be followed!
…
So! Jakk was to set about having his little bit of petty, immature act of reprisal regarding the death of that short-broad dwarf. (Truth be told, if he was to have vengeance against the actual party or parties responsible, he would need trans-dimensional technological capabilities which would not be developed for some millennia yet! Hah!) And per Aia’s suggestion, that starts where?
Where most trouble seems to start, actually. Humans do so very much love acts of neurological self-destruction. Which is to say…? The pub! A place where chronic neurological damage may be purchased one mug at a time.
Jakk the pub first—walking in from the city street and into this less-lit space. Aia followed, lowering her hood out of habit. Her own eyes took in sight of a place that was unknown to her personally but was familiar otherwise. Doesn’t make sense, you say? Of course it does! Like those horrid fast-food restaurants, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen plenty—just as your corporate fascist overlords intend.
Let’s have a look-see, shall we? Over on one side are long high-backed benches flanking square tables—where people may have some privacy in public. Nothing quite like a shady deal handled over alcohol, eh? Especially when such dealings occur between individuals prone to violence. Next to that location would be—of course—a dance-floor. Such is where humans with alcohol-fueled confidence and poorly coordinated can go about gyrating in poor imitations of artistic movement. And over at the right is the drinking bar itself. There are tall stools set before a long counter. (And such means of seating are exactly what you want for people with chemically befuddled means of gross-motor coordination!)
A pub! A place of alcohol consumption! An institution in which people imbibe and therefore begin to lose their verbal inhibitions! And you can be especially sure that inhibitions in other directions are readily and immediately lost as well! Gross motor functions, for example. That, as well as inhibitions to violence. Why else do the keepers purchase furniture that is either flimsy and replaceable or sturdy and well-nigh unbreakable? For both those before-mentioned reasons, of course.
Given the level of fabrication technology of this world, how materials are crafted at the nanoscale level, the furnishings are not so breakable. Human anatomy will break instead! Much like your presumably vaunted skills of artistic movement, your invincibility does not exist. Not with confidence, and not with those alcohol-fueled presumptions! And when some random flaxen-haired petite beauty comes to…! Oh. Oh my.
It’s her. Her… Her? Which her? Are those alcohol-addled wits of yours incapable of rendering a proper noun? The skyfall princesse! No, try again. Aia! From the starting glance to the inevitable arrested stares, it was certainly her. Moreover, those alcohol augmented assessments of beauty have done even more wonders for someone so wonderful. Those who frequent this pub all want to cavort with the skyfall princesse and to have her forever.
In truth, they had as much chance of that happening as would a full-bridled unicorn flying from the barkeep’s left nasal orifice. How could that happen, realistically speaking? Nothing much gets through there.
Not with all that you’ve got going on in there. Keep your heads held high not so much as a show of confidence but as a proud means of displaying your nostril foliage! Showing it off, much like how some animals of your home-planet are known to display their plumage in laughable mating rituals! Whatever the case may be, be it air filtration or mating aide, no such mythical animal is making a lily-white appearance at this pub or any pub whatsoever!
But to have Aia here, here of all places, was something of an act of cruelty. They could never have the skyfall princesse and especially since none of them are nobility. So that leads to the question, Why is Aia here?
We are so very glad you asked, friends! Aia is here to herald the homecoming of the giant race of beetles to this planet. Never mind if they actually lived on the fourth moon of the sixth planet out when they did inhabit this solar system. And never mind that as well—given how we are joking with you yet again.
Humans, just so very gullible. That said, would you care to purchase some rather shiny rocks we had dug up from the ground? This tiny but precious stone? Why, worth all the commissions of all the footballers for Manchester United.
In actuality, Aia was here to herald in a revolution against the most tyrannically tyrannical tyrant of all the lands. And since there is only actually one inhabited land of this planet, that by elimination means a call to bring down one Lord Morkudum in particular. But since these pub-crawlers are all especially soused and none of them telepathic, Aia would have to pass on word with the same sort of orifice that humans use to consume brain damage in liquid form. Opening her mouth…
…
And Lord Morkudum was doing the same right about this time of day. But what came out of his mouth was not usual rousing speech made by the usual synthetic-bodied elf-princesse, a speech all full of promises of blood and fire and carnage and all of those good times. (Good times for us, rather. Do continue your mutually destructive bloodshed. We have a goodly supply of cheese-covered chips and intend to eat them all whilst watching you all eat death.) You have no doubt heard your heart-felt share of elf-princesse speeches before—all full of unjust evil darkening the land and raise your sword-arms to destroy the evil and stop a thousand years of darkness from cursing your descendants and so on. And so on. And so on some more. What is your obsession with darkness? Something on the order of racism by allegory?
In any event, we shall not be there for Aia’s attempt at oral antics. Be it a human brain in a human corpus or a human brain in a synthetic one, you seem just so very lacking in originality. And even if you claim to not have heard such a speech, we have.
Which leaves us to go off and look in on Lord Feces’ doings at the moment. Yes, we can go about calling him even more things still—just as we can make your entire species forget that it is part of an intergalactic albeit absentee empire…
See that? Your minds are clear of that status already. You’ll spend half of tomorrow denying the existence of extraterrestrial visitations, instead having more a belief in black-helmeted cyborg generals armed with telekinesis and laser-sabers acting in defense of a government spanning multiple star systems. Not that it will matter, for said empire will have been put to an end by the doings of a rather irksome lad with an oddly shaped chin. Perhaps it helps him breathe the air of whatever far-flung planet he so happens to visit—planets which look a great deal too much like venues out of California.
Forgotten already. Meanwhile, not forgotten will be what Lord Digestive Product fully intends to do with the rest of the day. Well, other than climbing out of bed, of course. Or make that, disentangling himself from bed—for his nightly cushioning included the usual share of comely young bodies and the limbs attached. Go about denying that power is an aphrodisiac. In the meanwhile, those half your age and with twice your sexual drive will go about disagreeing with you by way of their carnal actions.
Such activity has its way of putting a coating on things, such things all over Lord Byproduct’s body. Human material. For all of his lording over the land, he did not like his fellow humans overly much. He liked to do things to them, instead.
Ambling into one of his royal bathing rooms, he stood on a drain in the floor whilst a pair of bathing-maids stood atop stools and held hot pots of scented waters. A gesture from the lord, and they poured away. Of course, it would be all the more convenient to have a contrivance to jet water upon him. But like the wealthy and inbred lunatics of your world, exploiting humans is not only fun but part of their psychic addictions to exploitation.
“Good morning, your brutal lordship!” went one of the bathing-room maidens. “Have you killed anyone yet this fine day?”
“Oh, certainly not yet. But thank you for the reminder,” went Lord Morkudum, kicking the stool out from beneath the feet of the other bathing maiden.
Such a kick resulted in her slipping and falling at an angle. The young lass was holding a now-emptied water-pot over her head. With her hands occupied, the young lady instead caught herself on her head upon impact. A broken neck, just like that. Now if you would have gone about and had an extra pair of arms, such would not have been likely to happen.
“Have her cooked and fed to the visitors of an almshouse,” said Lord Muck-Master, not even skipping a beat.
Of course there are no really poor people in the land. No, not when growkilns produce most everything that people would want to need. But some people simply choose to pretend to be poor, and those people are born rich. Upper-classed guilt and all that.
Unless one is an absolute psychopath, that is. Then, people are just so much fodder to the thrown at any problem at all. Want to add an extra bit of castle to what is already an extra bit of castle? Have a few thousand serfs go at it for a century or so.
Don’t be too harsh on such an ideal. Your favourite robe-clad ancient philosophers and desert pyramid-builders all had a great deal of nothing to say about slavery. If you hate the institution so much, then why do you admire and worship slave-holding societies? Dreaming about being fed peeled grapes whilst you lie about on a lounge-chair. You dream of wearing an accursedly stupid piece of circular metal upon your head. So when Lord Morkudum plans on getting ready to have some peasants killed by using sword-bearing slaves, you should therefore have not a single ethical, moral, or even legal leg to stand upon.
Eh, what? Something about needing peasantry killed? Why, ‘tis because there’s something on the order of an uprising stirring about. Cannot go about having the lowly land-dwellers spouting off at the mouth in regards to what they really think of the emperor. And are you still protesting this state of affairs? Yet again, you go about swinging your massive gut full of hypocrisy again, for you call for societal free-speech bans on anyone who does not agree with your flavour of ice cream! (And since when is triple-fudge marmalade-and-pickles ever to be considered anything to be even mentioned in public?) No doubt, you’d have half the populace deprived of heads for not consuming that very substance every day.
Fortunately for this society as a whole and medieval-era societies overall, but rather unfortunate for women, human birth rates are somewhat comparable to those of herbivores and rodents. Which is to say, if you have a uterus, all your fantasies of galloping about on white steeds and cavorting about with broad-chested males will only last for a matter of years—those years preceding child-bearing maturity. And then, the rest of your years will be spent popping out one fat-headed human-spawn after another. Unless you die in childbirthing, of course. And all of this…because the only effective birth control in medieval fantasy-land is that of avoiding the acts which result in births! Which is why life becomes so very cheap in scenarios such as these.
What scenario? What peasant uprising? Lord Morkudum wasn’t supposed to have been apprised yet of Aia’s antics at that pub—nor in regards to multiple pubs throughout the city. Everything that happens down there and far away should not be overly concerning for those high up and far away. Because that’s how medieval fantasy-lands keep their sanity in the face of overbearing, tyrannical, asinine, and not-a-little-inbred overlords who have the nasty habit of amputating disagreeable heads. Who needs a dislike icon-button when the headsman’s axe will silence that opposition forever?
Not so very much forever. Not even the day after tomorrow…generationally speaking. Shenanigans compounded with malarkey on the parts of generations of Lord Morkudums, such things take their toll. If not this next generation, then the next generation over. And to spark things off rather quickly, all it takes is a haphazard moonsilk-haired elf-princesse. Yes! Bring even a hint of ignition to that socio-economic tinder box! Let’s get this bloodbath started right proper, eh?
But first, it takes the lugubrious wits (or lack thereof) of Lord Morkudum to warm to the task. And prior to that, he must be informed. And in order to be informed, he would have to actually believe it when one of his underlings brings him warning.
“Lord Morkudum! Lord Morkudum! The peasants speak ill of you! They wish to storm the castle!” declared one such soon-to-be-dead idiot korth rider.
Lord Morkudum adjusted his robe. Speaking of clothing… “I think…you would look more stylish without your head.”
“What an astounding notion, m’lord!” declared the korth-rider. Said korth-rider promptly exited to the corridor.
Whereupon he found an encrusted alcove built into the wall—one with a rotatable shelf. As in, rotates downward to be rid of its load whenever necessary. This korth rider is the load, but not for overly long.
He placed himself bodily upon the shelf and edged himself along until his head was in a hole. There was a click. Then a chop. Then the shelf rotated as the resulting headless corpse began making a physical fuss.
A chop-o-matic! Oh, how delightfully dreadful! Every castle should have one, for no castle is complete without one! Imagine all the wear and tear saved on the headsman’s shoulder-joints due to such a contrivance!
We do not make these things up. You do! We simply sit back and enjoy our chips and bits of fried haddock, watching your self-perpetuating idiocy. Such is inevitable, for it is rather difficult to demonstrate anything in the way of intellectual superiority when a human is suddenly bereft of a brain—or even the part of the body to hold it in, for that matter.
Well then! With that spot of business resolved and two parts of a scoundrel on their way to the planet’s surface at terminal velocity, we move back to Lord Morkudum and his warming up to the day. It was quite a ways into the afternoon. More than one moon had already wheeled its way into the sky. Time to get on with the business of the day…even if most of the day was already said and done without him!
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“Lord Morkudum!” squealed a rather weasel-like sort. Not that there are weasels upon this planet. (So, so sorry. We know how much you so very love licking their furry little bodies. No weasel-licking on this foray!) “The peasants speak of rebellion…and insults! They speak ill of your manly portion!”
Lord Morkudum’s face locked in place. You could almost hear the sounds sucked out of the room. Deadly silence. And such would be all in your emotional imagination, for it is only the emotional reaction to Lord Morkudum’s perceived mood.
“What…did they say of my manly portion?” he asked, enunciating each and every last syllable. An impressive feat for someone whose tongue was otherwise still suffering the aftermath of a night-long swim in products of fermentation.
Meanwhile, the multiple humans without manly portions who had shared this bed, they were all sitting up and paying rapt attention. Not that they were afraid. Oh, no. They were all quite keen on seeing what would happen next. As in, and more particularly speaking, wondering what kind of keen blade would be employed.
“They said that it is not visible without the aid of a close-sight crystal,” said the weasel-like underling.
“Oh, we’ve seen it without such an aide,” went a sultry female voice, followed by a playful hit, followed by a giggle and a snort.
Lord Morkudum was still lock-faced in regarding this weasel-like human. “And did they say…anything else worthy of mention?”
The weaselly underling nodded enthusiastically, just so very glad to serve his lord. That enthusiasm was completely effective in effacing any sort of fear for his immediate future. Which is to say, his lifespan may very well be measured in moments rather than years. But we are speaking of Lord Morkudum’s dumb minions. They have neither much in the way of a lifespan nor much in the way of concern for their personal safety regardless. Which is why he went straight on and sealed his fate ahead of its otherwise health-based schedule.
You have no doubt guessed what would happen next, and you are quite correct! There was a blast of sound and rock when the west-side wall exploded! And there stood Master Fromm clutching a crystal-powered war-hammer! He’d also found some sort of crystal-thingy to punch his way through both the trans-dimensional barrier as well as the east-side wall of this royal chamber! (Freudian connotations, that. Just so very naughty, but no more naughty than the antics of the previous night.) But before Master Fromm could exact revenge for his temporary death, another portal opened above Lord Morkudum’s head—and a rookery of hyper-intelligent evolved penguins arrived to seize Lord Morkudum’s left toe! It was presumably the most intelligent part of the man, more so than the unused and chemically abused glop between his ears. Then they all vanished—penguins, toe, and all! And all of this is just so much balderdash because none of this actually happened!
Saying again, everything in that previous paragraph ending with an exclamation point was a lie. You would believe in anything, even in cyborg generals armed with laser-sabers, mind-powers, etcetera, etcetera…
“I believe that the waste chute is in sudden need of inspection, and you so happen to be the very bit of man to do it,” declared Master Fromm.
A sad, disappointed shaking of heads. Our heads—mimicking the human gesture. We know full well what will happen next, hoping for a bit of wisdom, but are nevertheless disappointed when it never manifests. Even when you have seen a favourite film a great many times, certain moments still elicit the same sort of reaction—faded from familiarity as it may be.
“Right-oh, yer lordship!” declared the weaselly sort. His head swiveled about on its scrawny neck until eyes could lock onto the very mentioned fixture in the wall. Or rather, the square metal flap covering the dangerous hole. His eye-focus never left that thing even right up until he ran up to it, opened the flap, then threw himself head-first inside. Why, how else was he going to be able to inspect the waste-chute?
Which really didn’t need inspecting. That waste-chute vaporises any and all waste. The underling is a bit of waste himself.
What, did you actually believe that the technologically advanced and vastly more intelligent beings…would trust their descendants—their neo-feudalist, neo-primitive, decadent descendants to inspecting anything? Any civilisation hell-bent on resurrecting the environmentalists’ fantasy-movie ideals of a pre-industrial society cannot be trusted with anything technical.
Because the skyborne people would not trust them, such is why they created infrastructure (grow-kilns, hyper-crystals, and the like) to keep their asinine idiot descendants from dying off. That also means having a floating castle which does not need human maintenance.
Think about it—as difficult as thinking would be for your species. Would you trust anyone who believed in dragons and sorcery? If you do, there are some rather polite ladies and gentlemen who will gently escort you to a room with soft walls for you to bounce around in. We can very easily imagine you shouting over and over swords and sorcery whilst absolutely running amok.
So should the next time a neo-feudalist overlord wearing raw furs of any kind request that you inspect some arcane-seeming bit of machinery, you should not do it. Or, do comply if you are of low intellectual bent.
That said, there was perhaps something to be said regarding what those impromptu messengers had sent by word. (Spoken-word messengers in lieu of letters, because neo-feudal lords and ladies are as much inclined to literacy as their pre-industrial predecessors.) Multiple messages saying the same. Something was afoot despite other bits of anatomy being removed from messengers. There was a disturbance in the distribution of force.
And a Morkudum never shares his political force, never his power. Hasn’t for some generations. Generations unto centuries. The first Lord Morkudum wanted to play nice and was willing to have some kind of council. But beyond that, they stopped sharing. No, there are no kindergarten matrons to socialise the human spawn correctly. Even so, should a kindergarten caregiver attempt to correct a young Lord Morkudum, such would result in her ears served at snack-time. Only two ears on a human, limited serving size.
He stood up and walked into a walk-in closet—where a quartet of slaves awaited with Lord Morkudum’s war-footing raiment. A walk-in closet? Why, it was large enough to house a family from east of the Thames. As things stood, this is where the armour-bearing slaves actually live. If…you can call this living.
They held and moved the appropriate parts in place as Lord Morkudum stepped into them. Sabotons and greaves. Breastplates and faulds, his manly pants broadly fastened as if the parts accommodated were just so big. We shan’t go overly into details. Suffice to say that inbreeding does wonders for reducing proportions of certain anatomy! Hah! A wonder that the bedroom company could find the thing in the dark. Or even the light.
But with everything in place and his manly mane framing his face, he was ready and off to do some damage to some-ones. And the place right-proper for giving out orders of death would be the royal court. Peasants. Killing of peasants. The korth-riders are a different, much dumber matter altogether.
…
And so, Lord Morkudum strode along that old familiar red carpet of the royal court. Red-velvet cushioning, a ridiculously high backing, yes-yes, you’ve seen thrones before. Nothing spectacularly new or different here. This throne plays the same game as all the others. That, and those who design such things have such broad imaginations. Inbreeding does wonders regarding proportions of one’s imagination, does it not?
And the very government that produced inbred idiocy to ride the sole seat of power, also lacking in imagination. Again, we stress the point. Feudalism will stomp your technological progress with all the aplomb of hyper-superstitious monks shouting sorcery, sorcery!
Kill someone. No, kill some-ones. As Lord Morkudum’s vaguely malicious thoughts were a-swirl with visions of red, red blood spilled spurting by the hogshead as various amputations a-plenty were performed on a troublesome populace. In particular, head amputations. Just one stroke, and the troublesome underling is silenced for good and for-ever. Rather bothersome, waiting for the works to stop involuntary movement. Humph. Perhaps a good crystal-smith could jerry something up to speed things along by keeping head-bereft bodies from being blithely bothersome.
Vaguely malicious and why, you ask? Only vaguely and not severely because—as you should have come to know by now—Lord Morkudum does not care overly much for the well being of the overall populace. Things went along rather smoothly so long as they kept being peasants. Plying him with gifts and crafted treasures…and basically avoided whingeing each and every time a few dozen of them were executed for whatever reason. That reason could be any reason he so chose, for he is lord. He is the law.
And are you still in love with the idea of monarchy? Of course, you are! That said, you may as well go on and be sure that the nape of your neck is well-shaved. Oh, and perhaps a coiffe bereft of hair back there at all. Don’t want to fowl the headsman’s blade when you are executed for whatever reason your lord so chooses! Perhaps for wearing hose of the wrong colour for the day of the week. Or perhaps simply because Lord Morkudum and his underlings were in a head-lopping sort of mood.
If this all sounds so very familiar, then you must be American. Your employers simply love to fire people for the most astoundingly asinine of barely-there reasons. Drinking the so-called wrong brand of beer? Classic. Simply classic. And perhaps not being a blood relative of the so-called leadership. There goes another reason. Such idiocy keeps on for generations unto centuries and unto millennia. And eventually, the likes of the Morkudums are born.
“Crystalsmiths! A longsight crystal! No, six longsight crystals!” declared Lord Morkudum from his seat of ultimate power. “I wish to look upon the troublesome mobs with mine own eyes.”
“Yes, your lordship!” cried one of the royal crystal-smiths right before his head popped and dropped from his body. Oh, look! Just so very much thick red stuff on the royal floor.
Lord Morkudum looked at the korth rider responsible for this latest offense against neck-vertebrae integrity. “Was there a reason for that, Tretslas?”
Knowing the name of your employees, even the lowliest among them, such is a good sign of leadership. Too bad ’tis wasted on so much to the contrary otherwise. But worry not. If a few more generations of inbreeding were possible, then even that will be bred out of them.
The one who was probably named Trestlas stood there for a goodly moment. You would think that he was the one bereft of thinking organ. But finally… “None in particular, your lordship?”
Lord Morkudum met the stare of Trestlas. A glance to the still-standing victim, but there were no eyes to be found upstairs over there…. That’s the trouble with headless corpses. Never able to make proper eye-contact. Wonderful conversationalists, however! They never disagree with you regardless of your stated-out-loud opinion. Then again true, no one would do that with regards to Lord Morkudum unless they…
Oh look! The corpse has finally decided to do something about its headless state of being! It juddered left. It did the same to the right but not so gracefully. Arms swaying from as much reflex as stimuli from an exposed spinal cord whilst legs were doing their best to keep the works upright. There was a sort of rhythm to it, you see. Almost as if…
A few more korth riders stepped in line with the corpse’s movement. They began to even try synchronising their activity with that of the judder-swaying and staggering steps. A merry bit of melodious courtroom movement, this! So have at it!
You must think this a horrid business. What, with the headless lunatic over there (not that he used that thing anyway) staggering up a merry jig, his neck-blood fountaining hither and thither, his comrades-in-arms joining in on the fun. But, try as they may, they could not quite match the absolutely rapid refinement of the headless movement. It’s all in the reflexes, you see. This is not literary ignorance of science, the expression to mean more about reaction. Reflexes are all about the spinal cord, and such was all that remained of his central nervous system. Well! Go with what you have! And he was having quite a skilled way of things! What, with all the guffaws and chortling and uproarious sounds of comedy.
“M’lord! Methinks he does the jig better without his bonce than with!” cheered one of the nearest korth riders.
“Do you now!” cheered Lord Morkudum—grinning from ear to ear. Now, when he smiles like that, whenever there is anything set to bring about the most of his amusement. Dear goodness. Do you see what’s going to happen next? We were already present when this lunatic had decided that two of his followers were better off without…
Swish-h-h…! Thump-bump! Too late! There he goes! Or rather, there it goes! It. Definitely an it. Once separated from its corpus, a head no longer has a gender. A head is an it. No genitals, you see. Unable to reproduce—especially in its current state. There shall be no more bedroom boondoggling for the likes of him! Whilst a great many species are quite capable of mating when deprived of their central thought-processing apparati, humans seem not to be amongst them…for the most part. Never mind if the most brainless of your lot are permitted to bear children with wild aplomb! You humans require an effort to mate…as otherwise brainless as such an act would be. Yes. Even the simplest of your tasks require a great deal of your mind-power.
That said, a recent human victim of head amputation is nevertheless capable of vaguely coordinated movement and rather artistically so. We have two rather lively examples right here. More or less alive. Their hearts are still pumping, and isn’t that what your superstitious, dogmatic, medical cults declare? If the heart quits, even with a perfectly viable and otherwise thoroughly edible brain still attached, you just go about calling it quits.
Not those two! Oh, no! Head or none, they are going to live their lives to the fullest. This, while their blood supplies are anything but. A headless human dies not from being deprived of its otherwise ill-used thinking member but from blood loss. In the meanwhile, the giant beetles have gone around such nonsense by having more of their central nervous system doing the thinking instead of that which resides in the head. Which, by the by, also makes them worthy successors to inhabitants of your planet. We’re still with them all the way in that regard.
Oh, about those two? They’re quite dead by now. The last spurts of their life-carrying juice had long since exited the corpus in the most obvious manner. Which is to also say, they were now taking a more-or-less permanent rest from their balladeering by lying on the floor. Still a bit of artistry in them, for they were still moving about the arms and legs.
But the fun was still to be had! Even when they were gone in life, their comrades-in-arms were not gone from memory. Is that what you consider immortality of sorts? Being remembered? A pathetic sort, for human memory fades as well. Yes-yes! Such is exactly how it also goes with the brainwave activity fading from those disembodied, clunky round bits lying on the floor.
Now about that blood, it happens quite often. There used to be crystal-powered golems for that sort of thing even while such contrivances were banned for the rest of the kingdom. Now there was just a cluster of royal servants with scrub-cloth and buckets to get the slick wet red up off this floor before anyone slips in it. Don’t want any injuries now, do we?
Oh, but someone does. Just go about causing bodily harm just for the sake of the lord. This lord. Lord Morkudum is just as casually murderous when in a rather calm sort of mood…
But wait! ’Tis not murder if he is the monarch. Absolute ruler supreme, murders are illegal. Executions are not. And when a person is the law? Well, you can count on heads rolling all for the sake of court merriment. After all, court jesters were rendered extinct in this world. People must do something.
Something… Something… Ah, and what form of government is this? A monarchy! But beside that! What form of governance takes place—between kingdoms? Not that there is more than one kingdom, mind you. We nevertheless have some other flavour of governance happening hereabouts. A form of government based upon war just to settle the most petty of differences. You have said what of my wife’s moustache? Dear sir, consider your fiefdom lost to slaughter! And then there is, Your gods are less masculine than mine! Convert or die! (To think, you believe that your immortal and omnipotent deities would need mere mortals to have their will done on earth. Not so omnipotent if they need brainless twats such as yourselves to get things done. Which is to also say, your polytheism is in strong need of reconsideration.) Oh, and do take a glimpse into your planet’s so-called War of The Bucket. Great buckets of fun, that. Yes-yes, we did have to get that out of our system.
Which all means that we are dealing with…feudalism! A form of governance based upon warfare ad infinitum. Permanently living in garrisons and fearing the sword of your lord. Pestilence and famines and fears of dark places all because the inbreds serving as rulers have no respect for such silly, silly things as rational thought or empiricism. They’d think the latter something to do with building and expanding empires—and doing so through more warfare…which brings about even more pestilence and famine and cowering populi with no hope for the future beyond being slightly less muddy and disease-ridden tomorrow. Whilst this planet may have such worthy contemporary conveniences as…oh, say…vasi healing goops and a habit of bathing daily (for the most part), this land is still feudal. There is indeed one empire, for all other empires have been wiped from the face of the…whatever this planet’s name so happens to be.
What was that? Begins with an f. Yes, there’s the word! Feudal! In the event of disagreements, war happens. Rather difficult to declare war when all the land is supposedly under the loyalty-demanding auspices of one lovely royal seat of power. But wars can happen nevertheless. Where there is a will, there is a way! And from the sounds of things, Lord Morkudum is going to have himself a merry little act of suicidal self-destruction regarding his kingdom and empire soon enough.
“Now! For the reason of this gathering!” declared Lord Morkudum aloud. He gave a certain look to one of his vassals, and that korth-rider lopped off the head of the one nearest. While the headless body staggered gushingly about, Lord Morkudum then said, “We could go about removing heads with great abandon for the sake of high amusement, but such a thing becomes more or less pointless. Decapitations add flavour to the day, much like spices in baked hand-beast. But too much in the way of spice is a bad way to go about things, even if some are of the idea that the spice must flow.
“No, friends! This is a war gathering, and war has gathered upon our doorstep! Or rather, my doorstep…”
“But m’lord! This is a floating castle! It has no doorstep!” insisted one of those random korth riders. And would you believe he was able to keep his head after saying that?
Too bad, very sad, your belief is wrong. His head was next to bounce visibly. Just once, for hair is quite a shock-absorber. Adds a measure of protection against head injuries.
Of course, this is said regarding the obvious value of the brains within. Human brains. (Har-har!) Enough said on the matter for now. And for evidence of the before-mentioned considerations, we have the following proceedings.
“A group of rabble have decided to contest my rightful place as emperor of all the land! Would you believe it? Peasants! Low-born simpletons! Sub-morons!” He made eye-contact with another one of his korth riders with a bottle of…probably-not-water in hand. No irony considered in that regard, especially given how his lordship is of a similar intellectual bent. “They would think themselves worthy of my throne! Nay, they think themselves deserving of contesting my place as sovereign ruler over all the land!”
At concepts such as sovereign and sub-moron, the korth riders’ eyes had long since glazed over. Even the original words in the language of this world would be multi-syllabic nightmares for the attention-span deprived. Happens most all the time to high-ranking humans, regardless of planet, galaxy, universe, or timeline. Have you ever wondered why it takes three years to make a one-hour movie? Or why it takes any of your governments two months to process a single page of documentation? Now, you know! The korth riders have that sort of place in this society. They are intellectually beholden to no one. Not even Lord Muckity-Muck, for his lordship has always been bottom-tier, academically speaking.
Not that it matters to the likes of you. Your wealthiest and most powerful families forever speak of no one needing an education to be successful. They are correct…in a rather odd way. No one needs much in the way of knowledge or tutoring to be born into wealth and inherit great fortune.
Just look at what an education—or a lack thereof—has done for Lord Morkudum, after all! Here he is, lord and master over an entire single inhabitable landmass. An entire planet, practically speaking. And he accomplished it all without much in the way of literary or mathematical instruction! Again, just a rather lucky swim into his mother’s gametes, and victory was his.
Just as he could be practically assured that victory would be won in the following set of events. “Everyone assembled! I want and command! Go down to the cities and all the settlements! Sniff out everyone who so much as breathes the word insurrection! I want all of their heads mounted on pikes! This, as so they may look upon the results of their idiocy for all time until their orbs of sight rot from their very skulls! Go forth and do my bidding!”
This resulted in a mighty cheer from all the korth riders. All of those men—massive and diminutive, all sorts of furs and scabbarded swords and various other in-close means of cleaving human flesh.
…
All of them filed out of the royal court and off down into the depths of this floating castle to fetch enough pikes to mounts something in the way of enough bonces. None of them had much training in the use of pikes otherwise. In fact, none of them had anything in the way of experience in using them in combat.
After combat, rather. In which case, using them for convenient head-mounts. What a bother it is to carry around a severed head-sized bit of human in a pouch. Some would go about tying the hair to their belts and have at it that way. But far too many of them do not tie proper knots (again, not much in the way of formal learning, not even kindergarten) or do not use enough hair to secure the works. The result is combined with the fierce pounding of korth hooves setting off all manner of jouncing about to loosen the head from where it would be tied ’round. Korth riders lose more heads that way…
No matter! Grinning and chortling in the manner of employees who love their work a touch bit too much, the largest amongst them were all about getting shoulders-full of long, long kiln-wood weapons with barbed metal-pointy bits at the end. The barbs keep those bonces firmly in place, for no one really plans of removing them from the pikes once removed from their original owners’ bodies.
And so, they were equipped. And so, they mounted their six-legged and shell-necked steeds… (What, did you forget that aspect of their anatomy already?) All a-snarl and chuffing more than the beasts they were with, the korth stood and occasionally stomped in place as they awaited their turn down the way. Given their involvement with this particular band of humans, there was only one way, and that is down.
Most beasts more of legs than of wings would have taken issue with leaping off of a drawbridge seemingly to nowhere nearby. Nothing up here but plenty of air. That includes considerations of what fills the vacuous space between the korth-riders’ ears. Actually, that helps quite a bit. The korth would vastly prefer to leap full into the air than to bear their idiotic burdens any more than they were required. And at each and every disembarking leap, the six-legged ride-beasts wished that the gravity-manipulation fielding would fail. This, as so the may meet the ground and perhaps pass slightly into it and quickly. Better to have one’s next profession as a meat-filled crater than have this go on for too much longer.
At the least, you can hear that some are having a time of things. There they go. And, here we go. Joining these absolute asinine cretins down…and falling at a controlled speed upon their steeds. As a collective, you already know they have a great deal of experience in leaping from the floating castle. The individuals failed to survive, of course. But overall, such suicidal antics as taking a flying leap off the highest architecture in all the land is what they love doing. This, along with other deadly acts. That thin line between bravery and stupidity? No one bothered to tell them of its existence.
Not quite a line but more of a stampede. More than a few dozen of these mounted morons were cascading from on-high up there and coming down to the solid ground itself. Down to…something firma. (Not terra, this is not a planet named after dirt.) More than a few had hooves battering their heads in the landing scuffles and what-not, but such happens all the time. More than a few of them had depressions at the sides and fronts of their heads to attest to that.
But eventually, most all the korth-riders were down here and moving at a full gallop. Not sure of which way, not that not being sure of anything ever stopped them before, they simply followed the lead of wherever they were going. They, those at the front. In other words, directional antics ahoy! If they were going to go in the wrong way, then they were all going to go in the wrong way. Korth riders are never ones to do anything by half-measures, despite being the half-wits they are. As such, they failed to realise that the battle was that way instead.
How could they? You and your love of living multi-legged transportation instead of wheels or gravity-affectors proper, korth do not come equipped with rear-view accoutrements! The only things they have facing backward are muscles and the exit orifice.
Only when they came to a freshly grown razorglass field, along with a great deal of razorgrass patches, did they come to possibly understand something. Could the city be in the…other direction? Makes little to no sense in having the city in the middle of geographical features which would slice a man right up.
But don’t phrase it that way. First, they’d ask, slice a man right up to where? If that doesn’t elicit guffaws enough to drown out the next line of inquiry, along with many of them not understanding the quip, they just might try to perform a head amputation on you for using words with too many syllables!
A great many people on your planet would perform a head amputation for offending their sensibilities regarding divinities. Korth riders? They have little in the way of sensibilities at all. But they make up for this by using those sharpened metal sticks of theirs to get the same done and done too often.
And anyway, now they were riding out to meet the assembled rabble roused by Aia. With the skyfall princesse having a great deal of charisma, a great many rabble has been roused, indeed. Perhaps more than enough to meet the korth riders.