Ch: 256 Sweet Surrender
In a small, hidden courtyard with no actual entrance, Gary was seated on the lawn in front of a crystal skull draped in an embroidered lace veil. “I’m confiscating your trinkets until I’m certain what they do.” He grumbled at the object. “You’ll make do with this for now.”
“I can’t see, mortal!” It huffed in a breathy whisper. “My voice is a travesty! Do better, human!” It squawked.
“Shove it, outsider. You aren’t the boss anymore, now you are in my power and are little more than a paperweight without my aid.” He snapped. “Best case, when I’m done with you; I banish you back to the outside. If you piss me off, I can make your existence so much worse.”
“Fool, I am immortal, eternal! I will await my return to this plane… to stalk your children’s childre…” He cut her off by the simple advent of removing the veil. He knuckled her eyeholes with a tired sigh and tucked her back in his bowling ball bag of bullshit.
“Any suggestions, Willow, Plumeria?” He asked the shrubberies nearby. Two small, beautiful women stepped from the verdure as though the plants parted for them. “Let us talk to her for a few minutes…” Plumeria said softly. “We too are eternal. Perhaps she will come to understand.”
“Go visit Maple, up in the hills… she has some interesting developments. Bring young Liam along as well.” Willow said quietly. “A trusted confidante will be needed for this.”
Gary shrugged in exhaustion. “Whatever, be sure and stuff her back in the bag when you’re done. She’s completely without mortal senses when you take away her magic hankie.” He handed the dryad sisters the satchel and embroidered cloth and waved as if to wish them good luck. “If I can’t get any information out of her, I’ll just end her outright at this point.” He grumbled softly to himself as he left the sunny little walled secret garden. “Make me your divine murder hobo… Gonna have words with Morrigan!”
Gary slipped from his hidden courtyard with a weary sigh. He found Liam and Dannyl noodling together in the common room. “Hey bro.” Dannyl chirped happily. “Willow said we should go visit Liam and Maple’s forest of nightmares. “I’m packing my real whip, in case the experimental foliage gets any ideas.”
#
Three young men mounted on strange wheeled contraptions rolled out onto the River Road and quietly flew east up a side road heading uphill into the half wild forest above town.
“Now that we are alone, we can have some girltalk…” Willow cooed happily to the cloth draped skull. “A little gossip can be very enlightening.”
“Bahh. I have no dealings with Beast, nor his handmaidens. Those who bask in the light are no peers of mine.” She sneered.
“So you haven’t kept up with the local news and gossip… It has been widely remarked upon… among those who dwell outside.” Plumeria murmured happily “Skrigg… and a few less notable beings have vanished from the ether. Vanished without a trace, much as a mortal does, when slain in a material world.”
“Impossible! Skrigg, like you creatures, exists in a multitude of realms simultaneously!” She scoffed.
“Yes.” Willow answered with a smile. “He did. Now he exists in only one… and for a terribly brief time. He is mortal now, imprisoned in a crystal.”
She scoffed again, sneering at the two beings. “Impossible. He could no more be bound in flesh and made mortal than I! You act as though I could not simply abandon this vessel and seek a new entry into this realm, elsewhere!”
“Go ahead. Slip free and escape into the void, that is your one slim hope. Perhaps he hasn’t yet given you his terrible gift…” Plumeria sighed pleasantly. “I do so enjoy visiting his garden.”
“It is lovely…” Willow replied a moment later. “But it is too late for our guest to escape that way… The boy has already given her that which she so richly deserves, it grows in her even now.”
“Well, that would mean her only hope is to throw herself on that mortal boy’s mercy…” Plumeria opined sagely, as the two dryads blithely ignored the hoarse whispers and demands emanating from the skull under the lacy cloth shroud.
#
A mixed flock of starlings and finches followed their progress up into the hills, singing their wild and sweet melodies along with Gary’s sharp and clear whistles, clicks and trills.
“Tawny mentioned it… was it only last night? But we’ve all noticed…” Liam began, as they pedaled up the smooth, if hilly road into the forest on the valley’s north facing slopes.
“Noticed what?” He mumbled, amidst the birdsong and soft noise of their machines.
“The music, Gary. You haven’t gone on one of your wild flights of fancy since… well, since Shaheen got ‘pumpkined’ on your doorstep.” Liam finished awkwardly.
“Let’s walk a while and talk, brother.” Dannyl said softly, as a look of wrath and discomfort crawled over Gary’s face, becoming a stranger’s glaring fury, briefly.
They dismounted, walking their machines in silence, save for the birds and forest life, still singing their songs. It was a mile or more with just the voices of the woodlands holding up the conversation, as the three young men walked together.
“Fargnahagn and Ali…” He finally spat. “Shaheen and their troop of schmucks from War, if they’d gotten my kids away and into the orphanage system… they could have had one of those brown robed vermin waiting for them!” His feral snarl was disturbing enough… even without the crawling, grasping, dark things his shadow started doing.
“Gary…” Liam said slowly, staring intently at the stranger’s face glaring out at the world in cold, passionless rage. The kind of glacial anger that could allow a man to commit any act. “You are Gary, right?”
Dannyl looked up sharply when Liam spoke and stepped back from his big brother in alarm. “Is he possessed again?”
“No, I’m not possessed.” He hissed. “You just got used to dealing with the Fool…”
“So you aren’t the Fool…” Dannyl asked softly. “Are you Gray, his other… whatever?”
“No!” Their friend’s body scoffed angrily. “Confusing me with that putz?!” He grumbled. “The Fool thinks he got rid of the Devil, but he has more darkness buried in him than just that idiot undertaker. Gray is gone, shawshanking his way through the devourer... Well, he’s only on time out. It’s all on me now, I have to get things settled before something else vile boils up from down below…”
“So who are you?” Liam stepped closer, sensing no threat from this angry, cold stranger.
“I’m the Hanged Man. I’m the one who died and keeps dying to keep him alive.” He kept walking, boiling with icy cold rage all the while.
“The Fool will be back soon, I can only come out when he can’t deal with how furious he’s become.” He stopped walking when he realized they had backed away from him, creating a bit of distance.
“I’m not a monster, or some wanna be lord of the undead…” He complained sourly, while glaring at them, without being angry with them… It was pretty disconcerting and wildly different from the usual Gary that they knew.
“We’re the same person, just a little more fractured than you guys are. Stop looking at me like that, the Fool’s just asleep.” He snapped.
“So you’re really him… Just, what? In a cranky mood?” Dannyl asked gently, stepping closer and placing a hand on his arm.
“I’m him, or rather, he’s me… but from a different angle. He has to let me handle things when his… compassion and morals.. or whatever else gets in the way.” He smiled, coldly furious and calm. “I can do what needs doing.”
“And what is it you think needs doing?” Liam asked very gently.
“I don’t really know how to deal with these feelings.” He complained mildly, while looking pissed off enough to chew rocks.
“I had to let Fargnahagn, Ali and that Miriam twat get away with their bullshit, ‘cause they’re rich noble pricks and they get away with that shit everywhere… Shai even gave their goonsquad a pass…” He sneered.
“Squidward was a self righteous jerk. The cult that dragged him here got smashed into goo by their own victims…”
He kept griping about their dearth of violent, bloodspattered outcomes in their Adventure careers. He pissed and moaned about the general lack of bloodletting in detail and at length, all the way up the mountain road. “...what kind of Adventurer keeps befriending monsters? The kind that takes a bath with a vampire and plays revenants off into the sunrise on a freaking flute! It’s embarrassing!”
“I like that about him…” Liam grumbled right back. “...about you. Stabbing is easy, any idiot can start poking things with a sharp stick.”
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“Yeah, but sometimes you need an idiot with a pointy stick, that’s me, lately. I’m all pointy sticks all the time.” He grumbled. “I’m really struggling with the part of me that really enjoys hurting people I don’t like…”
“I think that’s why the dryads sent us away. They are a sensitive and wise people…” Liam said firmly.
#
“...Sho he apologizeded after ‘killing’ me with his little blades… Then I whupped him a few different ways…” Willow slurred drunkenly. “In the morning… He was so cute, I decided to keep him…”
“Now Willow…” Plumeria swayed a few times, but maintained her seat on the barstool. “You can’t keep humans as pets. Besides, even the cultivators only live three or four centuries. Is there more of that cherry brandy?”
Willow nodded sagely as she passed the small bottle over. “I just love them, not like Fig, of course!”
“Oh, needless to say…” Plumeria muttered over her cup. “Now that I’ve spent more time among them, I can say it… She’s a weirdo.”
“Now, Now…” Solange muttered sadly, as she finished off the peach cordial. “Sister Fig has been among them from the start… we should value her wisdom, when dealing with mortals, humans especially!”
“Wait… Is that who they are going to see up in the hills?” Willow demanded, nearly falling off her barstool.
“Maple will be there.” Sol answered, blushing a rosy pink.
#
“How far exactly?” Duke Julius Rummel asked calmly.
“Some sixty miles and more… it’s still slowly retreating.” Captain Bradlee answered carefully. “We can’t give a more precise estimate, my lord…” He shrugged helplessly.
“Do any of you have any further input on this matter?” He asked the gathered nobles, elders and leaders of his domain.
“Suggestions as to how I should proceed with an indenture sale despite the council’s ruling, which I sponsored?” He demanded hotly.
“The next one of you who suggests that selling a scant few dozen teenagers into bondage will solve all our problems…”
Baronet Morton, at the head of the Mercenary’s League Adventure Consortium coughed and stood. “Your grace… I have never suggested that proceeding as we always have will solve these troubles…”
The duke’s pleasant features darkened as the lord pressed his case. “The civic and economic unrest this ill considered disruption will have on long established public private partnerships…”
“You’re worried you won’t be able to squeeze a little extra coin from my outlying districts… for the service the duchy has been contracting your members for?” He asked coldly.
“Your grace… that would be a crime!” He sputtered, indignant, in a dignified way. “We would never engage in extortion! Certain expenses and travel costs must be ameliorated through local contribu…”
“Yes, it would be a crime... I’ve been doing some snooping, in common clothing!” He almost chirped, breaking into a sudden smile. “People will tell Jules, the wandering Adventurer and his apprentice Kermal, things that they would never dare tell the duke or his squire…”
“Your grace… thirdhand, anecdotal complaints from nameless peasant gossips…” He spluttered.
“Regardless, all indentured Adventurers are recalled to War’s Legion, under Warleader Jagdeep Singh as of dawn tomorrow. Notices have been sent out and should be arriving as we speak.” He nodded to Phillip, seated at his right hand and smiling like he’d just been handed a gift. “First Minister Phillip will see to your compensation… at the standard council rate.”
“Your grace…” Morton wheezed, feeling the outrage of his peers even before the full gravity of the situation landed. “...Council rate… your grace…? Not the ducal emergency rate?”
“No… this is a council matter. Overall command will be handled by Belen.” The duke replied. “He has some hotshot team of experts assembled to coordinate the whole thing.” Julius leaned forward, happily gossiping with the poor fellow, while his fortune dwindled away.
“He’s assembled an elite team, I hear. Culled from a few duchies, even a mercenary with a mysterious past… or so my reports say…”
#
Angie poured the tea, while the duchess struggled to find a comfy spot, with her greatly expanded belly seeming to be everywhere at once. “Hmph… See if I ever again let that hamfisted duke anywhere near my poor, abused…”
“I thought you had several children, Celeste?” Kelli remarked with childlike curiosity. She handled the snacks with far greater confidence now; smiling and having a grand time, she balanced her small tray of dainty cookies, cakes and tarts with hardly a wobble!
“Don’t listen to my mother…” Patricia Belen sighed. “She says that every time. In an hour she’ll be trying to lure papa into some private corner. “
“My own eldest daughter!” Celeste fumed at the Order priestess seated across from her. “To say such things… I should go find your father and tell him exactly what you just said to me!” She waved a much aggrieved finger at the blonde woman soberly smiling at her. “Right after this lovely luncheon!”
The duchess smiled warmly at her daughter and found a comfy seat at last, resting her teacup on her tummy with a satisfied little grunt. “Yes, Right after lunch! We’ll see what your father has to say…” She purred excitedly.
Something in the timbre of her voice and smile suggested that her daughter’s scandalous words would be forgotten, once those two were alone.
It was a lovely luncheon and a productive afternoon for the planning and resource allocation and logistics team; once the very pregnant and very distracted duchess ambled off to corner her husband. They held a moment of silence for his grace, before getting back to work.
Kelli and Elli devoured invoices, briefings, requests, filings, and status of force reports, digested them into cogent data and almost hurled the information at Angie, whose expertise and talents refined and directed that raw data into actionable plans and recommendations. That daunting pile of work landed in the waiting arms of Patricia of Order… Who found herself in the enviable position of having a staff far more competent than she.
She took her thick sheaves of requisitions, orders and disposition directives, tucked them under her arm and strolled off to execute her underlings’ orders.
#
Gabbie sat with the children for their lessons, enjoying the simple pleasure of their cheerful company… And writing Amy a fresh ‘Letter of Marque’ since she had misplaced the last one while they were playing pirates on Seahorse the day before.
“We really should find that other one; I wonder where it wound up…” She mused, later in the kitchen, while brewing tea for the small armada of pregnant ladies in the bath.
#
The road ended in a steep walled quarry, currently idle and quiet, the three boys took a wide, well marked trail up into the higher hills and into a small vale of mixed hardwood forest. Maples predominated, with small copses, groves and orchards of other trees here and there.
Many signs of cultivation and horticultural activity were present: trails and paths cut among the growths, actively managed plantings and a few garden beds could be seen. The only structure of note was a brightly colored and fanciful shed… or perhaps it was a child’s playhouse.
Over the entire small valley, an almost palpable aura of gloom floated. Like an invisible fog bank, it lingered among the trees, feeling clammy and faintly odd.
Dannyl shuddered slightly, looking down at the tiny golden fig tree, clinging to a rocky hillock near the center of the valley.
“It still feels weird. How can such a little tree fill this whole place up with that…” He shook himself, unable to describe the sensation.
“Many spirits have wandered in, that little tree is doing splendid work. She is part of why I asked for you to visit.” Maple said softly, as she slipped from among the trees. “The golden fig shows great promise… but first, follow me.”
Maple led them down a side trail, down into a secluded little dell nestled among the steep hillsides of their narrow, jagged valley. Inside a hedge walled garden of tangled blackthorns, parted by a pair of maple trees standing sentry at a narrow opening, something strange was growing.
“She is showing her first stirrings of sentience… since you were instrumental in cultivating her, it seems appropriate that you be the first mortals she meets.”
In a clearing, bounded by sheer rock walls on three sides and a fearsome bramble on the fourth, a circle of dark, bare, churned soil marked the furthest reach of a strange plant. Thorned vines slowly crawled and writhed across the soil, seeking anything edible. No other plant grew in it’s reach, nor was there any sign of insects or other life within its slow squirming tendrils’ grasp.
In the center, a tall, sturdy trunk reached up about six feet branching out in a tuft of deep green leaves at the very top. The limbs below the canopy bore few leaves and several deep bellied pitcher flowers in a startling, iridescent rainbow of sparkling hues. It was a pretty thing, in a strange and ominous way.
“This is the Rendroot Bush creature you brought me some weeks ago… She has entwined herself with and become part of this world fully. Now we must see what she will become; a beast, or a person?”
Maple stepped into the circle of bare soil and within a few moments, several of the thorny root tendrils were curling around her ankles, like spiny kittens at play beneath a trusted person’s feet.
“She is neither truly animal or vegetable, drawing equally from both.” Maple said softly. “She is no longer simply insensate hunger, and she has been searching for you two, who brought her into this world together.”
“What?” Liam and Gary asked in harmony, while Dannyl giggled and got out a sketch pad…
“Together you decided to spare this being. Together you must help her become something more, if she can.” The dryad whispered. “Come closer, she will not attack you.” She called softly, from beside the trunk, among the flowers.
Gary pulled up the message his last contact with the creature had given him and the two young men read over it again, as they stepped into the cleared patch.
Rendroot Bush, unique monster. Beast, insect, plant, cephalopod hybrid, highly magical. Threat level extreme. Toxic, venomous, undying, tainted by undeath, rooted in the void, carnivorous, semi-sentient.
This entity has come in contact with remnant energies from the void, unstable mutation underway. Undying plants will regrow or reroot unless completely destroyed.
Special Effect: Marked by Beast.
#
Down in the workshop, Ivy and Tallum were mulling over the artifacts on Gary’s bench. A pair of golden scythes, a tattered set of robes in Oddsmen’s blue, a list of names and a small vial of black jet sand. It was the list that kept drawing the big man’s attention, particularly Ivy’s name, right there in clear script.
“Nobody’s taking you away from me…” He rumbled sourly. “Nobody.”
“No, Nobody is taking me away from you… there’s a subtle difference.” She shot back, with a wink. “Your damsel won’t be huddled at your feet, like in those books Shai loves so much… though if you wanna strike a heroic pose now and then…”
“Ivy… The murderer is listening, you’re embarrassing me!” Tallum grumbled, shooting an awkward glance at the man in the cell, over by the far wall.
“What’s he still doing here anyway?” Ivy demanded. “Gabbie said her auntie Ess would be taking him off our hands.”
#
Jocomo stiffened with impotent fury, as the barbarian girl used her divine radiances’ name, profaning her immaculate glory with those brutish, savage… coral pink and kissable lips.
“He gets really cranky when you say her name…” The giant mumbled.
“Whose?” Ivy demanded with a vicious smile. “Gabbie’s name? My new buddy Gabbie? I had a bath with Gabbs earlier, she washed my back for me…” She just kept saying it, driving him to distraction.
“We’re going shopping later… in the common market, me an ol’ Gabberino… the Gabbs…”
“Please stop Ives… I think you might break him.” The soft spoken colossus turned to Jocomo and smiled weakly.
“I’ll ask… her highness?” Jocomo gave the feeblest of nods.
Addressing her radiance as though she were some debased barbarian royal was the best he was going to get from these primitives. He sat back on his bunk, contemplating how he might finish his tasks… once her imperial majesty instructed him to recommence his duties. Her most recent command to: ‘not hurt anyone’, left him with few viable courses of action. He couldn’t see any non murder based solutions to this.
“When all you have is a hammer…” He muttered softly, when he was alone.
#
Shai and the kids finally came home around fifth bell, with Becky and the empress hugging each other and giggling at the back of the little mob. Tallum caught them at the door with a sheepish look on his face.
“Your… uh… majesty, we still have that guy down below, locked up…” He mumbled embarrassed and upset by the whole thing. “I guess he got forgotten…”
“Oh No!” Gabbie cried, in outrage. “Spider! I mean Auntie Ess!” She called into the house.
“She has gone home, radiance…” George said calmly, from a booth by the door. “She understands that this disobedience demands her life. She will return to gift you her head when her duty is done. Just as I will be pleased to surrender my own, when you are done with it.”
“George!” She stammered angrily. “Where has she gone? Tell me this instant!”
“Why, to collect your radiances’ Whispers, of course.” He replied calmly. “I imagine she is stealing a much larger boat, this time.”
#
“Are you certain?” Leopold Belen asked softly, as his face slowly reddened. “Absolutely certain?”
“Absolutely, your grace.” She answered with a hint of pride. “Adam and his team were successful. They raided their target three nights ago, liberating fifteen children and twelve adults. All prisoners were handed off to the Coyote clan, as you instructed.” She unrolled a tiny scroll, plucked from a pigeon’s leg just an hour ago and read the contents she had already committed to memory, once more with pleasure.
“Their records have been secured. We have sale records for several of the unfortunates; they have been blackmailing Erasmus for at least a few years. Hundreds of children have fallen into the hands of those slavers, many directly from his orphanage.” Patricia Belen, priestess of Order answered coldly.
“The sales were disguised as deaths in training accidents, or children fostered and lost, or runaways. My team found several glaring inconsistencies in the record that are… difficult to ignore.”
“My duke… If I may, I would like to be present, if you plan to confront duke Erasmus on this… matter. My lady has taken a personal interest in this matter and would hear him speak, through me.” Otho said softly, seeming very small and old, suddenly.
#