Ch: 158 King Of The Road
Morning snuck in quietly, in the little house behind the shop, by the river. Gary woke, bundled up with all the kids, Becky, Shai and Nara, in a mad tangle of bedding. He slipped downstairs to lay out in what he projected would be, the sunniest spot in the garden.
“Ahhh, nailed it…” He sighed, as the first rays of dawn hit his bare backside.
Curse: Penitent Chain has ended with the dawn. All afflictions have been cleansed.
Well, that was good news. Gary hadn’t spent much time in his skill tree and Interface lately. Since contemplating too deeply on his gifts tended to make him an idiot, he tried to avoid dumbing himself down. Today he dipped into his gifts, gently sifting the details out rather than plunging in and digging…
Gary Ward: Demihuman Monster
Class:Undead druid, aberration
Age:18
Rank:Iron
He carefully reached out and grabbed the most troublesome of them.
Gift: Fractured Soul, Resilience, Animus, Will. Divine Contract gift, Secret. Subject’s soul has been significantly damaged. To compensate, Will and Animus have infused Subject’s aura with animal hunger and survival instinct. Subject will experience sudden mutations and evolutions when under stress.
Current Evolution paths available:
The Sun:
Nature Boy, effect: Animals and beasts will be attracted to Subject, for good or ill. Interactions with the natural world receive bonus to effect and use Eg: Harvesting Wild Foods. Forty Percent
The Moon:
Child of Night, effect: Enhanced Abilities: stealth, shadow manipulation, aura control, night vision, hearing, tactile senses and smell. Sensitivity to undead and outsider auras and energies. Thirty Percent
The Hierophant:
Prophet Provocateur, effect: Charismatic cult leader, Fanatical devotion. Five Percent
The Hanged Man:
Enemy Of The State, effect, Resistance to tracking, Detection, Location and Scrying. Ten Percent
The Endless Dance of Death:
Undying Hunger, effect:
Shadow Manipulation: Unknown.
Shadow Vampirism. Subject may sustain itself on the life force and mana of nearby living beings. Use of this ability on unwilling victims will infuse Subject’s aura with unnatural energies, this may result in sun sensitivity and true undeath. Five Percent
The Fool:
Rock Lobster, effect, increased Might, Resilience, Agility and Animus. Enhanced martial skills, magical tool, armor, and weapon useage receive bonus to: effect, damage, durability, use. Aura of Whimsey and Distraction, subject is unmemorable and unthreatening to enemies, rivals and opponents. Thirty Percent.
It went on and on, but each one resisted any attempt to dig deeper and get more info. With every paragraph he felt less and less present and awake, as a dull haze clouded his mind.
Somehow, Secret’s gift was allowing him to unconsciously develop and grow the strange tarot boons attached to his gifts.
This looked like a job for a little directed cultivation, since he had no desire to become a ‘shadow vampire’ by accident.
Slowly, carefully, he began manipulating his nascent vampire curse into the mold of his Entrainment gift, binding it with the same ironclad ethos.
Since arriving here and discovering his ability, consent had been his guiding rule. Only willing, or actively hostile entities could fall under his Entrainment gift, letting passive entities simply pass through, booties unmoved. Now he bound the troubling thing up, letting his Will enwrap it and bind the pernicious creeping temptation.
The Endless Dance of Death:
Undying Hunger, effect:
Shadow Manipulation: Unknown.
Shadow Vampirism. Soft locked, Subject may sustain itself on the life force and mana of nearby living beings. Use of this ability on willing, knowing subjects will alter this evolution path.
Bound: Use of this ability on unwilling victims will infuse Subject’s aura with unnatural energies, this may result in sun sensitivity and true undeath. Bound: This ability is proactively locked. Use of this ability on unwilling victims by Subject’s conscious choice will accelerate transformation significantly. Five Percent.
While he was sprawled naked in the morning sun, over by the private bath, a long thin shadow fell over him and a soft, monotone voice asked:
“Master, have you fallen down?”
Gary rolled over and peered up at Victor, dressed in baggy workman’s clothes and a wide sun hat. “No, I’m fine, and I’m not your ‘master’... I’m your sponsor, in the occult exchange program. Enjoying your visit?”
“Yes, Master, I have learnt much. Lady Maple has taught me to gar-den and mai-ntain an orchard.” He stood there, looking down at the naked boy on the lawn.
“You feel it, what you are missing. The touch of the sun on your skin, tactile sensations, the pleasures of a natural, physical body.” He sighed, scratching his backside with a sublime smile.
“Those were stolen from you, but you can get them back. The price is pain, fear, sorrow and mortality. For every joy there is sorrow, hunger and satiety, loneliness and the joys of family, pets and friends… it’s all out there waiting for you.” He smiled sadly at the tall, blue figure.
“Just not in this world.”
“I… understand? This realm rejects my essence, I am alien and only welcomed to what extent I am, due to this… body of craft and dead trees.” He said slowly, digesting the new concepts with some difficulty.
“That’s mortality, pressing in on your false Animus. When I release you… you will join the eternal dance of life and rebirth. Only the Devourer knows where you will wind up, but you will be a natural living being there. After that, it’s up to you.” He sighed long and slow. “I tried to chat with it, but the Devourer is too alien and vast.”
“The pressure is building… I wish to see, with my own eyes and touch a world where I belong.” The entity said carefully.
“Yeah. I get that… now I do anyway.” Gary stood and stretched, feeling for the wound to his back and finding nothing, simply bare skin and a line of new pink flesh. “Come on into the shop, we’ll unbind you.”
Down in the workshop, with the sun streaming through the open shutters, Gary clipped dangling ropes to small rings set in the lanky blue form’s armor. He carefully unstrapped the creature’s helmet and removed the protective wooden dome. The ornate mask slid free, and the body went limp, dangling from its ropes like a human sized puppet.
“Ok, I am a little creepy.” He muttered to the mask, as he extracted the black iron dummy head from the quiescent form.
#
Half an hour later, a black origami butterfly flitted from his fingertip, up into the sky.
“That felt good, it felt right.” He sighed happily to Shai.
“Glad I am tae nae have that being around. Come, tis breakfast. Air out this place an wash up as well. It do smell like ye hae been forging iron turds…”
Gary slipped the iron bar into his cabinet of awful things with an embarrassed grin.
Immortal Iron Ingot, crafting material, unclean. This sample of mortal iron has been exposed to alien energies and an implacable, ancient will. Highly magical. Highly ethically suspect. This sample can accept enchantments up to: null, unknown. Handle with care.
“Oh, that’s nasty…” He whispered, too soft for any but Xyll to hear. She ruffled her intangible wings at him and squeaked in an inaudible frequency.
“Vampire bat guano? Really… that’s gross and useful. I’ll watch out for some…” He paused and shot a sharp glance at the shadowy corner she lurked in. “Wait… I’m not becoming a turd mage am I?”
He shook his head and grinned at his nearly invisible friend.“That’s a little hurtful… I’m trying. Becoming a vegan undead is tough, they all seem so vibrant and filled with… No, I’m not going all ‘Cannibal The Musical’...” He chuckled after a moment.
He finished clearing away his tools and set the now vacant mask on the forge to be consumed to ash. “What? I Know, some species are ok with cannibalism and the undying… mine isn’t.”
He stopped on the stairs and turned to goggle at the darkened corner. “That’s just a story, when did you even see ‘Sweeney Todd’? We’ll talk about this later, kid.”
#
Gary and Shai strolled out into the town, unescorted. “I still say, telling them we would escort each other was a capitulation. I might want to roam the streets at night looking for loose women…” Gary argued cheerfully.
“Shush boy, or I’ll sew thee in a bag every night, as we do wi fractious infants.” Shai giggled, making her… bells, do exciting things.
“Fie, ye hae cut this bodice almost scandalously low, ye letcher. I’m like tae pop out!”
“Enchanted garment… gotta protect my goods, but I want the other guys to have a hint at what they’re missing out on.” He mumbled, around the stem of a pipe so long even the passing orphans stopped to giggle and point.
He roamed the market square, finally landing under a small tree, on a bit of freshly mowed lawn, playing his guitar idly, while Shai shopped in the weaver’s guild for something or other. Gary was in no mood to be inside today and he had a full stock of textiles for his needs.
#
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’d see the eighth yard remnants, if ye please…” Shai said softly, to the apprentice lad behind the long counter. Her face flushed red as she spoke, while her eyes darted about furtively.
The lad looked her in the eye and smiled warmly. “We’ve been waiting for you, journeyman Shai… She promised you would come soon.”
He led her up, into the attic of the guild hall, into a raftered open space filled with small looms, hoops, spinning wheels and other tools of the weaver’s art. Apprentices sat here and there, practicing their crafts under the guidance of older apprentices and… “Jennah?” Shai asked, in concern and confusion.
“Shai… finally, welcome to our little cult of the spider goddess… wait until you see the designs we have been working on! Lady Thirp has shown us such things…” She whispered reverently.
Tawny’s elder sister was small, golden and dimpled, with golden ringlets falling in waves and green gold eyes that flashed with mirth and passion in turns. Otherwise, the two sisters could not have been more different.
Jennah had embraced the commons in her exile, becoming one of the Craft ward’s prominent citizens. Her position was hard won, through skilled and diligent labor and a furious refusal to bend to anyone’s expectations.
Her colorful clothing was an advertisement of her arts and craft, worn with pride and joy. She blazed with color and embellishments every day, whether elaborate and intricate or simple and elegant. If Jennah wore it today, it was in style tomorrow.
She took Shai by the hand with a radiant smile, blasting her full force with those Belen dimples, leading her into a room closed off with spider web curtains, tatted in elaborate white lace.
A single braided pull cord with a bronze stylized spider at the end, parted the curtains at a gentle tug from Jennah. “Welcome to our shrine to She Who Spins In The Void, what do you think?”
A simple table covered with an intricate lace altar cloth held the strangest idol the young smith had ever seen. A plush, cloth bodied spider doll, with six legs, sprouted a human female torso… very female.
The textile sculptor had no doubt placed weights in the backside of the doll; otherwise those boobs would certainly topple poor Thirp onto her embroidered face, eight shiny buffalo horn button eyes and all. The figure’s face was exquisite, as was the rest of the work, save those enormous bosoms. Though the intricate and delicate work of the filmy lace camisole that draped those voluptuous curves was also remarkably…
Shai’s gaze wandered the attic room, lingering on a platoon of dress forms, clad in things that were very clearly… “Gary…” Shai whispered in a splendid blend of frustration, annoyance, concern, interest, excitement, arousal and love.
“Hold still, just there…” Dannyl said quietly, from his chair in the corner. His sketchbook hid the evil boy’s grin, as he drew furiously.
“I’m not a member of Thirp’s cult, I’m just an enthusiastic admirer of this new sexy underwear.” The lad remarked idly, while he sketched his sister, who was still gaping like a fish out of water at the silken naughties scattered around the room.
“Jennah is making me something called a ‘banana hammock’... I can’t wait to try it on.”
#
Gary was over at the cartwright’s shop, chatting with journeyman Chan, whose stocky and muscular form refused to be dwarfed by Gary’s greater height, making up for his stature with sheer mass.
“Yeah, that would work… in theory, but you can’t make it reliable or robust enough to handle the rigors of travel. Better off asking a shipwright…”
“That’s it… Gary mused softly, picking the ‘Theme From Rawhide’ on his guitar. “Canvas and wooden stretchers… like in ‘Oregon Trail’… except, nobody dies of dysentery on my watch.”
Chen looked puzzled, then remembered who he was talking to. The journeyman was willing to entertain Shai’s fool, as long as he kept playing his instrument and affecting the apprentices like that.
Shai jingled up, flushed, excited and bouncy, as she spun to the music. Her swaying hips and softly ringing chimes mingled and lifted the music around the square, setting everyone in gentle, rhythmic motion as they worked and shopped.
“Did you change clothes?” Gary asked quietly as they danced together by the fountain, separated only by his instrument.
She adjusted her more conservative top and smiled. “Aye, These be my treasures, they be nae fer the eyes of just any… A lad must earn a look at sweet Shai’s tits.”
She smiled wide, clasped her hands over her head and spun around him, shimmying her sweet tummy and those marvelous hips at him until he got weak in the knees.
Errands done, the duo skipped home to the sound of jingling bells and birdsong.
When they got home, Becky and Liam had all three little ones in their armor and practicing their martial arts in the garden.
Wilford wore his green turtle armor, wielding a shield and cudgel against Liam, who defended with a split bamboo practice sword.
“Footwork is even more critical with blunt weapons Wilf, because balance and motion equal force, applied where you want it.”
His weapon flicked out, nudging Wilford’s ankle and sending him for a stumble.
Becky had Rio and Amy facing each other with leather covered bamboo rapiers, coaching their wild, acrobatic duel across the garden.
Rio wore his simple, close fitting leathers, of enchanted wallow bear hide and python skin. For some reason Amy wore a black silk mask and unrelieved black leathers with high cuffed boots.
Gary began giggling and smiling happily as they played and fought, trading jibes that made no sense to Shai. They took it in turns, to dance and leap at each other, crossing blades and parting with animal grace.
“...I find that Thibault cancels Capo Ferro, don't you?” Amy asked glibly, with a leaping flourish of her fast clattering, wooden blade.
“Unless the enemy has’a studied his Agrippa… which I have!” Rio answered, batting her blade to the side and replying with aggression.
They carried on, smiling, giggling and swarming through the garden obstacles as though choreographed by a master swordsman. When each in turn professed to not be left handed, they swapped their weapon hands and the battle became even more furious…
“Next time, I get to be the dread pirate.” Rio gasped as they sprawled on the lawn together, all three holding hands and smiling.
“As you wish…” Amy replied, with the same fondly mocking tone Gary always used with that line.
“Boy…” Shai grumbled, as he smiled even more widely and scooped up Wilford. “I still suspect ye have some sneaky secrets hidden away… I’ll find yer ‘dread pirate’ nonsense some day, even wi nae help frae yer obstinate bratlings.”
She gathered Amy and Rio by the hand and led them to the baths after her fool, scolding him gently for keeping secrets… while Liam and Becky laughed and laughed.
“Liam… why are you laughing? You haven’t even been to his other house, there’s no way you saw ‘The Princess Bride’...” Becky asked quietly.
“I saw this battle in a dream, a masked man, elegant and graceful, facing a skilled opponent, in a duel of honor… among the tumbled stones of a shattered castle. I have been seeing things in my dreams… strange scenes, dances and music.” Liam muttered wistfully as they cleared away the training weapons and joined the bath.
“Are you still sleeping under that tiny tree? That cutting you took of Solange?” She asked with a wicked smile.
“Yes, her perfume helps us sleep… wait… have I been infected with Gary’s weirdness?” Liam wondered aloud.
Becky giggled and ran into the bath. “You really need to put on that ring, brother. Maple and the dryads have been tittering and rustling their leaves over you and Tawny for weeks now… They have something planned.”
She sighed and floated into the steam, searching for her little brothers and sister.
#
Midday found Gary and Shai in the workshop with Tallum, Liam and master Yost.
“So the camp supplies and gear lockers ride below, between the wheels. These beams slot through the wheels and form the base of the tent configuration…” Yost murmured appreciatively. “Not good for cargo… but I wouldn’t mind having a trailer-butty built along these lines.”
“Aye, t’would be a fine snug camp… an swiftly at that.” Shai agreed. “Save fer thee and me… I should like this much on the road.”
“There’s a song about that…” Gary said with a smile, as his kids tuned up behind him.
Trailers for sale or rent,
Rooms to let fer fifty cents
No phone, no pool, no pets…
His swaying steady beat chugged along in a catchy and exciting way. Another ‘Hobo Song’, dredged up from Gary’s vast repertoire of complete lunacy.
I'm a man of means… by no means…
King of the road!
I know ev-ery engineer on ev-ery train!
All of their child-ren, and all of-their names…
Ev-ery han-dout in ev-ery town
Every-lock that ain't-locked-when no one's around!
Liam was singing lead, eyes closed, lost in Joy, while Gary just strummed and grinned. The boy had a fine voice, clear and ringing on the highs, warm and just a hint of roughness on the lows.
Gary tied his gifts around Liam’s neck, set his friend on a conjured stool with the kids around him and grabbed a long ash beam. “Prototyping is half the fun… Right, Shai?” Gary asked, under the music.
She answered with a shake of her backside and a smile.
Yost slunk away to the taproom when the big one started singing about ‘Big Rock Candy Mountains’… The little blonde was getting scary.
#
Gary, Becky and Shai gathered the kids for naptime, enjoying the warm afternoon sprawled across the silly bed together.
“Shai… I’m a terrible boyfriend. Who’s your sixth contract with? I feel Brigid in you, so warm…” He nuzzled her from behind, whispering into her ear.
“Tis Thirp, she kin teach me arts that be nae unlike thine… She says I’ll work potent crafts, wi out stripmining me very soul fer magic.” She whispered back. “An mayhap a bit fer the naughty undies…”
#
It could be charitably described as unfinished, held together with wooden pegs and cords into the shape of a high wheeled, narrow bodied merchant wagon. The wheels were unbound and had no bearings nor hubs… And there were only three of them, but it was a wagon in progress. Wicker baskets stood in for the camp stove, seats and equipment and supply lockers. Sticks of green bamboo stretched the canvas top, rather than the bent ash wood that would do the actual job.
“That’s pretty good for an afternoon… What are our guests up to?” Gary asked while working on dinner with Dannyl.
“The ladies are engaged at the palace, they will dine there and return tonight. They felt a little out of place joining us, we are a little bit extra.” Tawny replied with a smile.
Gary was elbows deep in a burrowing rockroach, a monstrous insect with a taste for tree roots and a hard shell of smooth, polished stone. Inside the shell was a delicious mess that was better tasted than contemplated.
Most folks cracked the shell with a hammer and just lived with the occasional stone chip.
Gary had designs on the thing’s shell and wanted it whole, he was also hungry…
A good spread of the bug’s insides, in a long crusty loaf of bread started things off right. Lightly pickled carrots and radishes made a cozy nest for a wallowbear sausage topped with fried onions. Salad from the garden and a vegetable stew from Luna’s homeland sent the family off to a quiet, peaceful evening in the steamy baths.
#
Deep in the steamy swamp, the Sparrowhawks paused to take stock. “The dead are getting thicker… no tougher though.” Rooted bear whispered. “Something is near… I feel it.”
Out in the deep marshes, the difference between the lands of man and the true wilds became a little fluid. Few people traveled this deep, those who did were more likely to avoid trouble than confront it.
The sheer number of minor monsters they had stumbled onto was pretty impressive. Fortunately, they were all very minor monsters. Nothing that couldn’t be stomped or clomped with a blow or two.
Larksong rooted out the last remnants of a trapjaw ant, making certain it was dead all the way through, while the others rested in the small clearing they had found the thing in.
“We should camp here, then head back in the morning. Evard and I can scout ahead and we can be back in camp by tomorrow noon if we hustle.”
She stowed her shovel and grinned happily, her hair festooned in rare orchids from the deep marsh.
“So we can assume that is when journeyman Gannet is due to return from Port Clement with our resupply?” Evard asked sweetly, earning a shot in the arse with one of her harmless, tingly arrows.
A short time later, the two scouts stopped at the edge of a wet, wide clearing. Incongruously, in the mire and mud, a bare hemisphere of rough, pebbled stone rose. Lanes had been cut in the spongey, reeking turf by the shambling dead, many of whom were aimlessly standing or wandering the foul meadow.
Larksong pointed straight up, indicating her intent to climb for a vantagepoint. Evard slipped into the shadow of a huge bog cypress as Larksong vanished up into its canopy for a better look.
From above, a huge six pointed star filled the clearing, with the rocky dome at its center. The physical dead were roaming seemingly at random, but from above the pattern became clear. Their well trodden paths formed a ritual magic circle, cleared and maintained by their passage. Incorporeal forms lingered in every shadow, their hooded faces directed inward at the strange mound.
From her vantage Larksong could see a vast field of graves, beyond that, a shadowed necropolis of leaning crypts and sepulchers. The churned and muddy earth stretched into the distance, lost among the trees and brush beyond the strange clearing.
More immediately arresting, were the five glass knobs jutting from the earth at each point of the star, save one. There, a fast flowing stream had cut into the meadow at some point and eroded a section of the enormous glyph… perhaps carrying a formerly buried jar downstream.
As she watched, the dome shifted slightly and a shade drifted into being above it, barely visible in the gathering shadows of evening under the trees. The ghost flitted to the well trodden paths and began following the trail of magical markings that roamed and circled the stoney abomination, joined by its shadowy kin, as darkness gathered.
Satisfied, she slid down the trunk and rejoined Evard, who was just finishing a pack of four wandering ghouls with his shortsword.
“Those Fist guys mentioned a big glass jar with a lid… I think we just found five more. Think the kids will want to collect the set?” Larksong asked as her arrow took an undead crow out of the branches above them. “Let’s get back to the team. Maybe we will run all night with this news.”
#
With Becky and the kids tucked in and the door as secure as they could hope for, Shai shoved Gary back on the bed with a grin.
“I hae oft felt… conflicted when ye hae stitched fancies an sweet nothings tae drape me, boy. Sweet Thirp do say tis nae simply yer lecherous nature an shifty morals, but tis yer people’s way tae tell me I be sexy an desired… I hae doubts…” She slipped behind a screen summoned for whatever purpose she had in mind.
“Huh…” He remarked, exhausting much of his current vocabulary, as his woman’s garments lazily draped over the screen, one by one.
Bodice and skirts, blouse and shift, then her sensible bloomers joined the gathering of abandoned garments. “In any case, I hae been lax in doing me laundry fer some days.”
She stepped from behind the screen and stood before him, in a silk teddy, sewn by his own trebling, horny hands. Slick satin silk slid sensually, smooth and shiny over her body.
Thin strips of flat woven silk ribbon suspended the supple garment from her pale shoulders, where it clung, as though caught in the midst of falling to the floor.
Clinging here, suggesting a crease, dimple or nipple, or swaying loose and free there, accentuating secrets barely concealed by cloth that was barely opaque. The brief confection ended less than a finger’s width below the lower curves of her breasts, allowing glimpses of underboob as she danced in place… if one were so crass as to stare.
He was just so crass, fevered eyes roaming over that expanse of flat, pale tummy, with her cute little belly button winking at him as she swayed in her eternal dance.
The high cut, loose bottoms shifted and moved, low on her hips, holding on by the slimmest margins. The hem fluttered around her long, pale thighs, stirred by her own heartbeat and breath… and those dancer’s legs, eternally in motion, even when mostly still, like now.
He gaped and grinned as she showed a rare, shy and self conscious smile. “I hae been for so long seen as naught but ‘that giant girl’ among these wee folk…” She murmured softly.
“I be secure in me crafts, an few can withstand me at arms, but as a woman… I still dinnae…” She sighed and stamped her foot in sweet frustration setting fireworks off in the poor boy’s primitive brain. “In any case, I mayhap fancy this art of thine… I’ll hae to consider patronizing yer craft. Let’s see how she sleeps, this naughty thing of thine.”
The pale, green silken dream slipped beneath the covers with him, coiling around his body like a swamp python. “Hey… I’m fer sleeping, ye wicked rake… tis nae the ‘naughty thing of thine’ I’d planned tae try the feel of!”
She giggled and squirmed in her slippery almost garments, teasing as she fended off his wicked attentions until She tired of the game and took matters in hand, very firmly in hand…
#