Ch: 184 Deep Cuts
“So this be wizardry?” Harlan ‘whispered’ to lady Adele, Tony’s wife and notable Warmage in her own right.
“No, this is some debased form of witchcraft, I spend very little of my time touching noisome bugs and vermin.” She answered with distaste. “He’s not even going to wash his hands… did he just wipe the end of his flute… with that same hand?” She turned away in disgust. “I can’t look, did he put that filthy thing back in his mouth?”
“Aye, an he just tasted the error of his ways, poor lad.” Harlan answered with a grimace of his own.
“Ahhh, that’s it!” Gary sputtered, as the music ended sourly. He licked the lapel of his own coat in a desperate attempt to clean his tongue. A failed attempt.
You have been afflicted with Leechslug Toxin. Leechslug Toxin will drain stamina and reduce mental and physical resistances until cleansed or its natural expiration. Duration: Ten minutes.
Please stop tasting things, it’s getting embarrassing. You have an identification ability, are you trying to hurt my feelings?
“Oday, thorree…” He mumbled to himself through a completely numb mouth, drool running down his chin.
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*Editor’s note: Sorry, Gary is like an infant, if it fits in his mouth… let’s try again.
Ch: 184 Deep Cuts
The mad wizard spent a few minutes playing a simple end-blown wooden flute by the water’s filthy edge and a few more minutes touching things, before retiring to consult his group. After a few long minutes of deep discussion of the matters at hand, he ducked out of sight for a moment, re-emerging in fresh clothing.
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“Nae, silly boy, dinnae kiss me wi yer filthy, tainted lips!” Shai giggled, as her drooling idiot made kissy face at her, through the slack, moist opening above his chin.
It took nearly ten stupid minutes to get his face back in control, so he could say something sensible, so Liam led the discussion. Actual serious business needed settling and fast… “So dinner’s all set, ‘Mom’s Spaghetti’… Gary, you still have drool, snot and… something on your front. Change clothes please, this is important.” Liam took meeting etiquette very seriously, it was the only way to get the critical matters handled.
“Ivy, what’s our garlic knot status?”
“Solid Liam, I had a team baking all morning.” She answered crisply, from atop Tallum’s shoulders. “I see what Amy gets out of this…” Ivy chirped happily, from her lofty perch.
“All right, Gary… Take it away.” Liam said with a sigh, as his mad brother took the stage.
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Dressed in a dark, trailing robe of gauze, he seemed as much a corpse wrapped for burial in a cheap shroud, as a cheap carnival mountebank, striving for a spooky look to fleece the village rubes. Cheap was the overall vibe and look, cheap and cheesy.
Audible groans drifted up from the crowd as he struck a dramatic pose and declaimed in a loud voice:
“This evening, the faint of heart may wish to withdraw… Those with nervous conditions or tremulous natures, should not see what we shall reveal…”
The unhappy rustling of the crowd made the would be spectre wilt a little. “Ok, I get it…. You guys are no fun.” He tore away his cheap gauze cloak and stuffed it in a pocket with a sheepish grin.
“What we have here is a threefold problem. First, there’s a spring here with no decent outlet, making it wet and boggy. Next, a haunt moved in, making it wet, boggy and haunted. Deep in the silt, something preserved that corpse, which preserved that haunt for decades, maybe centuries… maybe more. Hence, the ‘drowning pond’ we have here. Once this place was all spooky and haunted, natural animals smarter than bugs and vermin stayed well away, so it festered for who knows how long. Now comes a monster.” He grinned happily at some evil thought.
“A leechslug. Minor, nasty, toxic and entirely aquatic, it stayed here, feeding on worms and such. Decades went by, and the local leech population kept on breeding and monstering, as the spookiness thinned the veil here over generations. The only thing a leechslug won’t eat is another leechslug, nothing wholesome will eat one of those things… without the proper sauce…”
“First, we are gonna eliminate the leechslugs… you don’t wanna watch that, so head back to camp and enjoy dinner. My beloved comrades seem to have been planning for this outing.” Gary muttered that last part, while fixing his family with a mild glare. “I’m the only one who didn’t know about this?”
“Amy and the boys might know… so yeah.” Becky announced. “Come to think of it, I’m sure they knew… Fats would have told them.”
“You guys told Waller? All he does is haunt my piano and smoke ghostweed all day!” Gary complained.
“Yes, he is a reliable and productive member of the group…” Tawny smirked at him in the most infuriatingly golden way.
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“There’s at least thirty of the wretched things in there.” Becky compained. “I’m not wading in to skewer them! Can’t you use your flute… once you clean it, to draw them all up on shore? Then they’d just die.”
“Nope! First, that’s not cool. Second, I can’t force a living being to suicide… the dead, yeah, that I can do… you might as well ask me to drain the life out of them with my evil haunted aura taint…”
He turned and waggled a finger at his little sister. “No! Bad Becky! I’m not becoming a vampire to keep your feet dry.”
Hope died in her eyes, until he carried on. “I have an idea that should work, now that I’m Iron rank, I can fit the Harmonium in and out of my Pockets! so we have some fresh sonic options.
He started pulling things out. Long bamboo poles, planks with holes bored in each end and a pile driver.
“A pier? We are NOT going boating on that puddle of filth!” Becky shouted. “Not on my Seahorse!”
“Serves me right for letting you wenches watch all those pirate movies.” Gary grumbled lamely.
“Geena Davis be a true treasure, boy!” Shai barked, while helping him assemble a short, temporary pier in the mucky pool. “Now what, Seahorse will nae fit in this mire. Tis deep enough, but to what end?”
He grinned, pulled a vaguely familiar canvas packet from his bottom and unfolded it. Once opened he dropped it on the surface of the murky pond, where it rapidly inflated into a stable little canvas boat. Gary tied it off fore and aft, then hopped aboard.
With great care he pulled out the bulky black loudspeaker and settled it face down on the taut canvas floor. He climbed on the pier and dusted off his hands as though the job were all but done.
“Boy…” Shai grumbled softly.
“Water carries vibration really well, especially sound…” He said with a giggle. “The haunts won’t perceive it, cause it’s just gonna be normal sound waves.”
He started passing out long three pronged fishing spears. “I made these for Khan, he has this crazy dream of lancing fish from horseback… the man knows what he likes.” Gary shrugged and dealt the long barbed weapons to his troupe.
Khan kept glancing up to the camp, where Annie was staying, with a hungry look in his eye.
“Don’t spoil the fantasy here Khan, they are leechslugs, this won’t be a fight.” Liam advised, patting the older man on the shoulder.
“Some fantasies need to await the right conditions… thus the ‘filthy carpenter’ becomes ‘ball pit bonanza’.” Liam nodded in agreement with his own hard learnt wisdom. “Wait for the right time or you’ll get sawdust up your… Tawny! Stay back, there could be danger!” He turned to address the golden woman rapidly approaching.
“Yes, danger that you will say something stupid. Fool of a man.” She fumed.
“How do they do that?” Liam asked, when the furious woman stamped off.
“No one understands, boy…” He sighed.
#
It took a few minutes to get the team arrayed, long, barbed spears ready to stab. Gary clipped one of the silver instrument pickups from his first major purchase in this, or any world onto the first instrument he’d ever made in this one.
‘Forest’s Breath’ could boost his Entrainment gift to greater heights, giving him immense control over the actions of simple or stupid creatures. Since leechslugs had almost nothing going on in that area at all… He just couldn’t break that innate urge every living being had to preserve its own life and would be pretty creeped out, if he could.
Getting them to come to the surface for a listening party, when there was fresh, living blood walking around the edge of the pool? No problem.
Gary kept playing ‘Ode To Joy’, which seemed deeply inappropriate for the use he had in mind. As he neared the climax he signaled by stomping his feet on the deck of the rude pier. All the nasties were up and writhing in the shallows, hoping someone would be dumb enough to go swimming.
They would flee once the stabbing started, unless something stopped them.
At his stomp, the gang stuffed wax in their ears and gripped their weapons, as Gary cranked his magic amp to eleven and hit the triumphant big finish.
Thunderously shrill and ear wrecking loud, the final notes curdled the surface of the water and sent every living thing in it, limp and inert in shock. The end of the leechslug infestation was anticlimactic after that. Poke ‘em, toss ‘em on the shore, poke another one.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The foul grayish green nasties bled weird colored ichor and wept thick clear mucus speckled with clots of dark orange poison. Gary collected gallons of the stuff in huge jars, then tucked the dead slugs away as well.
“Gary, what are you doing with those disgusting things?” Becky asked, gaping at him in stark horror.
“Calamari? Maybe treat it like abalone… I don’t know how to cook abalone… Ivy, how should I cook these?” Gary called to his little blonde sister.
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“The conditions in this camp will be abysmal once the sun goes down. Where will all these people sleep? There are a scant twenty beds here!” Duke Holloman griped, backed up by his younger brother.
“I’ll not sleep three to a cot… unless they are young and comely.” Baron Holloman’s smug grin wavered when the giant smith’s wife shot him a blood curdling glare, over the heads of her tiny Wards.
A small army of teenaged orphans served a meal such as the gathered folk had never seen. Nothing was outlandish or strange, it just came from a different angle.
‘Mom’s Spaghetti’, was noodles in a mild red sauce, topped with cheese. ‘Eightmile Garlic Knots’ had enough hot garlic butter drizzled over the little twists of baked dough to shock the senses and ‘Death Row Tiramisu’ closed the meal with finality. Cold and sweet as a song of impossible love; with the bitter tang of strong coffee and some potent liquor, it made the guests sigh and think fondly about the past.
“Oh yes!” Julius enthused. “That was a fine meal, now we must look to the evening and coming hours of darkness. There are always trials and tribulations when traveling with these people. They ride fast and sleep wherever they land. Adventurers to the bone, they care little for the mortal comforts of soft folk…”
He palavered on and on, while shouldering his baggage and leading his young squire down the hill, to where the crazy kids were gathering on shore. “Wise folk will make themselves comfortable as may be, up there…” He shouted to the folk still up in the camp. With that, the two young men vanished, along with the smith’s wife, all three youngsters, the wedding party, all the Belens and a number of others.
The guests were still half dazed by the whirlwind outing, seeming both ill prepared and immaculately presented. It took some doing to get them up and moving, pressed along by the horses, who would really prefer a quiet hilltop.
“The charms will keep most bugs away, please gather over by the trailhead.” Liam directed traffic while the band set up a perimeter for whatever he had planned. They were restless as evening began gathering its dusky skirts at the edges of the sky.
Gary sat on his harmonium with a silver button glinting at his collar. “You guys haven’t seen anything much, yet. This is where the evening takes a darker turn. We are about to contest wills with a force from beyond the grave.” Now he was getting a genuinely spooky vibe, as his voice reverbed off the low hills
“We, as living mortals, have the true power here. It’s only by shunning such places, that they become stagnant and foster unlife. Sweep your basements, dust your attics, tend your graveyards. Good civic hygiene is important when you don’t have an active death cult. I can’t do everything.” He huffed loudly with disdain.
“The gods and spirits are supposed to be working on getting a few more psychopomps, cause I’m tired.”
“What does all that mean, boy?” Amicus yelled with slightly slurred amusement, the old lush.
“I’m going to tell a few secrets, the secrets of the dead. Listen close, you warriors too, these are things men once knew… the dead cannot see the living without the living seeing them. If you stare into the abyss, the abyss can stare back into you.” He interrupted his sing-song chant and clapped his hands, shattering the quiet. “But you can blink. Break eye contact, clap your hands and feel alive. Poof! They cannot see or touch you.”
He grinned, wild and strange as shadows began to gather. “This is the scary part, ghosts can’t hurt you, unless you strike at them. A natural Animus is a closed bubble, attacking another entity opens that bubble for a brief time. A moment of spiritual vulnerability. Remain calm and passive and no shade can touch you.”
“What about the walking dead?” Duke Rummel asked from his comfy seat at the front, on a willow stump.
“The same rules apply… though we are talking about the natural undead. If an animating force with agency directs them, the game changes. That’s not really what we have here. Let’s not speculate until we know more… first we have to make ourselves at home here, cause it’s still a wedding.” The boy had a banjo out, gently picking sweet, twangy notes into the deepening shadows.
“Shush everyone, this is my favorite part!” Julius sang from somewhere in the crowd. “He’s going to do the thing!”
Excited and confused murmurs spread, rippling through the loose crowd of nobles, clerics, notables and warriors.
“Sorry Jules, I’m not doing the thing…” Miffed and discontented sounds rustled angrily through the mob. Partially ‘cause he wasn’t ‘doing the thing’, mostly because he was being so familiar with the young duke of Port Clement.
“I’m going to have you guys do the thing, cause I’m tired and you all have so much energy… The mages among you came to see this part, so we are gonna do it a little differently.”
He was still plucking and strumming his instrument, laying down a simple beat that got a few people in the crowd swaying and humming.
“There’s only one rule, if you don’t wanna join the spell, don’t join the music… If the booty is in motion, you've jumped in the deep ocean…
My three kids wanna make their play,
Bedtimes coming, it’s been a long day.
Rio, Wilf, My little Amy…
I’m just a jukebox, go on and play me…
The three sleepy brats sat bolt upright in the arms of whoever was stuck holding them at the moment, wriggled like eels and ran to the front, clutching their instruments. They joined his strumming beat and took him for a ride, winding and tangling… whatever Gary did through the crowd without a thought.
Becky and Shai could wield his gifts, they always did so with delicate threads, spinning a web of his magic and aura between their fingers with care. Amy just threw herself, the boys and Gary at the crowd and let things get messy.
Only her crystalline voice and the instruments cut through the gloom hanging over the clearing
Look for the bare necessities,
The simple bare necessities!
Forget about your worries and your strife!
Amy and the boys took control, popping, kicking and strutting in the open space. Amy grappled with the big, unruly audience, using a big, unruly song. She dug deep, throwing herself at the joyful classic with zero inhibitions.
The watching mob of confused grownups just made it all the sweeter. She was going to make this one mrmurble… mremurble… mr.. memorable!
I mean the bare necessities,
Old mother nature's recipes
That bring the bare necessities of life
Wherever I wander, oh wherever I roam
I couldn't be fonder of my big ‘ol home!
The bees are buzzin' in the tree,
To make some honey just for me!
The little ones were getting sleepy, once they had run around the third verse twice and taken an extra lap on the outro to ‘The Bare Necessities’. It was time to wind the tiny terrors down and drop the tempo. An extended banjo solo slipped them into ‘Rainbow Connection’, the nobles didn’t get the ‘Kermit Voice’, but it wasn’t for them anyway.
Dannyl Tallum and Ivy kept the music bumping gently along, as Becky, Shai and Gary took the little ones upstairs in the tall creepy high gabled house. It stood on a low rise, beside a long, low, mid century modern motel. A very familiar house and motel were standing in their own landscaped grounds, on the far side of the clearing.
A glowing green sign made of flickering paper lanterns read: Shai’s Moonlight Inn
“The Bates Motel?” Gary whispered over Rio’s sleepy head. “Who’s letting the kids watch scary movies?” Nobody fessed up, but Becky looked pretty shifty.
“Let’s just get all the guests checked in… Gods I wish we’d gotten the minibar system ready…” Gary grumbled.
“An ye think I didnae plan fer this in all? I hae been coaching the kids fer three days, just in case ye did summat mad.” Shai gloated as they tucked in their little ones.
“We be outside Wheatford’s civil law, an we dinnae violate ducal law, we kin trade and sell here at will. These well monied lambs are ready fer their first shearing.”
Gary shot her a mildly disapproving look, which she deflected, by holding up his sad, deflated money sack. Once, it had been plump and too heavy to easily hold up in one hand, even for Shai… now it dangled limp and forlorn, like a sack lunch that had been sat on and forgotten.
“Aww, love, you know I don’t really…” She jingled the sad contents at him and glared.
“All right, I’ll gouge some people…” He muttered, but she just shook the bag harder, making a pitiful noise. “Ok, I’ll really stick it to them…”
“Oh, will ye now?” She asked with a raised eyebrow. “If ye are a good boy an mind yer store well… it may be the big spoon fer thee…”
“Oooo!” Gary’s eyes lit up with eagerness and a naughty twinkle… the poor boy thought he was so clever.
“Spread the word, once everybody is settled and the kids are asleep, the after dark show begins… we’re gonna put the romance back into necromancy! He summoned that guitar from whatever dimensional weirdness only madmen can ever touch.
Bold, strident music sprang from the pianoforte in the ‘Moonlight Lounge’, carrying easily across the pleasant covered patio.
Have you heard about the boom on Mizar Five?
People got to shout to stay alive.
They don't even have policeman one…
Doesn't matter where you been or what you've done
The strange lad began to dance as move through the crowd, who seemed by and large, happily wrapped up in the strange sensations tugging their emotions gently wherever the music led.
“He’s doing ‘Steely Dan’ again…” Dannyl whispered as the magic drew him nearer to Liam.
“It’s fine… he earned this one. Cut him off if he switches to ‘Kid Charlamagne’.” Liam nodded to Becky, who winked at Ivy and Tallum… Shai was already lost, spinning among the crowd of nobles with him.
You zombie!
Be born again my friend,
Won't you sign in stranger?
He pranced through the lounge, into the kitchen, where Colette and her crew were trying to crack the code on leechslug cuisine. He hip bumped the tall, slim girl until she smiled and waved her knife at the dancing, singing fool.
Or maybe you would like to see the show?
You'll enjoy the Cafe D'Escargot!
Folks are in a line around the block,
Just to see her do the can-can-Jacques!
Mystified nobles and clerics followed the prancing fool’s antics through the group, as he danced with his woman. The young couple danced with, through, at and against, every soul who dared tap a toe or shift a hip, almost before the hip had dipped in many cases.
They were an assault on the senses, seeming to be everywhere as the chaotic music unwound from their fingers and backsides. Strange music and strange magic tried to sweep the staid, conservative clerics and nobility away on a tide of whimsey… they held out for a while.
With the dukes Mubarak, Belen, Rummel and duchess Sheng twirling madly among the crowd, lesser powers felt the urge growing stronger. When ancient and venerable Naiomi, high priestess of Dana the Healer started doing a very undignified bottom waving dance at Otho, Beloved of Joy and honored elder, things became more intense…
“Ohh baby! Shake it, don’t break it!” Beloved Otho whooped, while dancing a very respectable shingaling.
Harlan and Adelia were sagging on each other when the music wound down, while Julius and Kermal had a bevy of noble ladies lined up to dance with them, and a long line of other noblemen waiting to catch any loose hands or hips that came their way.
More than one moan of dismay raised when the music wound down.
“Now that the kids are really asleep, we can start on the ghost laying part of the evening. Most undead are pretty cooperative, once they get pointed in the right direction. If they get feisty, we have tools for that too.” He murmured happily while ambling toward the pond. His voice spoke from his instrument. Slung on his back and from the other instruments scattered in the group.
His little canvas boat still floated there, without the magic amplifier aboard. He marched onto his rickety pier and turned to face the curious onlookers with a solemn smile. “I’m a japing monkey, a distraction and oddity to most of you, but this is the part I take seriously, the souls trapped here didn’t get to choose who would come for them. This is a funeral now.”
The musician settled cross legged on the planks and produced a pair of small conjoined drums.
Rattle-tap, unique drum, enchanted, quality; uncommon. When played in proximity of a source of etheric magic, spirits and incorporeal entities may manifest.
The mad boy’s hands began wandering over the skins, churning a small storm of percussive rumbling out from his lap.
“They hear the call of the other side, whispering from my shadow… anyone that is just lost or confused should just…” As he spoke, shadowy figures rose from the murky depths, emerging without causing a ripple or drip. His shadow was a faint thing, cast onto the pale boards of his crappy deck by a dim quarter moon.
The living couldn’t see by the light of the other, currently much brighter moon in the sky, only those sensitive to the energies of magic and the undying. The four ghosts that rose and stepped in a single file line to sink into its darkness could certainly see its light… A few minutes later, three more drifted up, and floated over to sink eerily into the deck before the seated musician.
“Lucky number seven, but eight is my magic number… The last one is going to be a little more… moist and organic. Sensitive folks should really consider leaving before things get going.”
With a sassy wink he stuck that freshly washed flute in his mouth and started to pipe a high mournful dirge. A flock of nightjars and ravens joined him, landing in the willows all around the pond. Frogs, firefly bats, predatory owlmoths and most distressing, giant craneflys came flitting in. they were all native and natural creatures, if more or less magical. The craneflies though… they looked like giant skeeters, but gone giant twice more. They hovered and swooped in the air with distressing agility for a creature as big as a flamingo. Their appetite for their smaller cousins was impressive, as was their ability to sneak up on the horrid things.
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Mortis felt more himself after these few nights sneaking up on these horrid things. The living grated on his essence, agitating his hunger for their sweet mortal life force… a hunger denied by strictures as strong as iron chains, for all that the connection was stretched thinner than any spider’s thread.
He couldn’t escape the feeling that there was a watcher, watching the stealthy watcher. He let his feathered stooge wander and feed, ducking into the shadow of a cart and hiding beneath a horse. The mortals were blathering, as usual.
“Diane says we picked up a tag-along, she’s trying to track it down.” He shrugged. “Only odd thing I’ve seen is the number of Jerkbirds running around us, I hate those things.”
“My cousin got killed by one…” Rufus whispered.
“No… how?” Beni demanded.
“Rynnel was stalking the little shit up an arroyo, somehow it got above him and dislodged some rocks…” Rufus whispered his shameful family secret.
“No way… I didn’t think they were smart!” Beni muttered darkly.
“They aren’t. The rocks dislodged an old abandoned mining cart… That collapsed an abandoned smelter, which tumbled into a long forgotten smithy, sending an anvil right down on his head. We don’t like to talk about it.”
They both fell into a contemplative silence.
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