Ch: 275 Back In Black
“I haunted that town so long, drifting around trying to find help…” Ward whispered in Willow’s arms. “I gave up when the houses started collapsing… I moped around the cave for… I dunno…”
“Shedding your mortality in such a way…” She sighed quietly, like willow fronds dipping into a stream. “When Gary opens back up, we’ll have you spend some time with lady Thirp… She has a certain expertise with mortal and generational trauma. Yours is very much both, as well as the need to accustom you to life as one of us.”
“What am I now? I feel… big, but like I’m growing?” He murmured. “I feel…”
“Constrained.” Willow sighed. “You are still stuck in your seed husk… your poor, ossified human heart. Take it from within the torso of your doll and cast it into the opening at the top of your tree… if you would truly become one of the undying, one of Beast’s handmai…” She stopped and smiled winsomely at the man towering over her.
“We’ll have to find a new name… you’re no maiden… and now, for the first time neither am I.”
He returned, joining her under the fig tree a moment later, holding his silk wrapped canopic packet. He gently struggled with the wrappings, an elaborately folded and sewn casing of extremely tough and slippery silk.
“You need not open it. Indeed, you probably cannot with your hands.” She whispered fondly.
“Your brother enchanted this bag to keep you safe, not realizing it was simply another wall around your prison.”
“My brother…” He sighed. “We’re so different, he’s got it all figured out… he’s powerful in ways I don’t even understand…”
Willow’s gasping spasms of laughter tickled him into laughing too, breaking his funk and banishing his gloom.
“Gary’s currently half crippled, with most of his magic locked away, the poor boy.” She cooed at him.
“But you… with a little time, you will eclipse him as the moon does the sun… as you grow into the fullness of your power. You will live to see him pass from this world, no matter how many centuries he may dwell here.”
“Really? What does that mean?” He insisted, still toying with his packet.
“If you choose to remain as you are… you can walk the world for a mortal lifespan in one of his remarkable doll bodies… perhaps longer. Eventually your essence will grow and slip free of that husk and you will rejoin the swirling dance of mortal incarnation… as a new and distinct soul.”
She whispered. “Others may wish to shove you back inside him… that is impossible and the attempt will cause terrible harm to you both.”
“Cast off the last of my humanity…?” He asked softly, a hint of fear in his voice.
“Gary is no more or less human than you are. He, like you, is a human soul, broken and twisted into another’s design. The shame of this crime is not yours to bear… Yours is the surviving of it, in whatever manner you choose.” She murmured.
“If you take the path we offer, you may become something else… but you will remain yourself. Just as you inhabited your human body, then that skull and now, this figment of moonlight glamour and magic.”
“And if I don’t?” He asked softly.
“Then I pray you will accept me as your mate, until you pass beyond the veil. I will mourn you all too soon, my sweet.” She sighed. “Mortal life has its joys and sorrows, we dryads must suffer and savor both, through our ties to the living realm.”
“I still don’t understand…” He sank back into her arms, resting against her warm body.
“Gary told you that you could trust me… I chose an easy route to intimacy and succumbed to the temptation of this uniquely delicious thing you are.” She sighed and spoke to a nearby bush. “Now I still have to do this the hard way?”
A chorus of crickets and night birds answered her.
“Fair enough, Beast.”
She turned him around to face her, displaying a terrible strength. When he was seated to her liking she smiled warmly. “I’m going to show you what I really look like in the mortal world. Don’t freak out.”
“Saying don’t freak out is probably the worst way to avoid…” He fell silent, as she vanished in a windblown shower of willow leaves, leaving a single stick behind. “Willow?” He whispered softly, looking around.
“Right here…” She waved her brown, stick insect forelimb at him and pitty patted her many feet on the mossy lawn, in what he interpreted as shy, nervous laughter. Her shiny brown carapace rustled as she turned in place, taking a little twirl, like an insect ballerina… She was pretty adorable. “In all my glory.” She sighed.
In a blink, beautiful, brown haired brown eyed, brown skinned Willow was back, smiling hopefully.
“You are also in a body made of magic and moonlight… my love. It is your radiant light we crave. Like your brother, you exude a raging inferno… but untainted. We cannot resist your call, any more than a moth can resist the summons of the fire.”
“I feel something from you… like a wash of cool, welcoming… shade.” He sighed. “Was moonlight always this warm?”
“That is your brother’s work… He strives to change this world, with all that he is. You may aid him in his work, or not, whatever path you take… I dearly hope you will join us… join me.” She murmured.
“How do I unwrap this?” He asked, holding up the pitifully small package containing his soul.
“Push against that constricting sensation in your breast, my love. Beast tells me it’s not unlike ‘taking a giant shit’, whatever that means.”
He concentrated on the silk bundle in his palm for a moment, until the wrappings frayed and unraveled into a pile of loose threads.
He held the tiny reddish black pebble in his hand for a moment, then rose and dropped it into the strange cavity at the tree’s second branching bough. With a soft cracking sound, the little depression became a bark fanged maw and chomped the tiny lump down in a single gulp.
“That little tree is a direct door into your brother’s halfway realm between the worlds. You will be transported there and able to act as you see fit. Only you have the ability to look after your brother and his children, right now.” She whispered.
“You will meet an ally of ours there, she will offer you power… That choice is yours alone.”
“That’s it?” He asked, rubbing his chest and smiling. Slowly he faded into immaterial mist and soaked into the soil beneath the spreading limbs of the little tree.
#
Once again, Ward opened his eyes on a new scene…a bright, starry night sky with drifting clouds of transparent, shimmering bubbles and vaporous ribbons of light forming a wide dome under the heavens. “Where am I…?” He gasped, laying flat on his back, on the softest sand he’d ever felt, or imagined.
“Well, now we’re getting somewhere!” The words came from the mouth of a hippopotamus… Sure, she had high cheekbones, long artfully curled lashes, pearly white tusks and earrings of gold silver and lapis dangling from her hippo ears… that wasn’t the point.
Her many stranded ornaments of braided silver and turquoise draped down and covered her large, plump breasts, but otherwise her smooth limbed and graceful human body was nude… Fetchingly, beautifully nude.
“You will do nicely, Ward…” She murmured happily.
They stood on a riverbank, with sandy desert and date palms behind them and tall reeds and slow moving, green water lapping at the shore. He wore a gauzy robe that was probably straight out of a fantasy novel, but at least it was cool.
“Where am I?” He asked again. “Who are you, where’s Willow?”
“Willow is nearby… She and I cannot interact… we are too different.” She smiled a wide tusk filled grin of pleasure. “I am Ipet… Soon to be one of your brother’s patron goddesses… If you will assist me.”
“If you’re a goddess, how could I help you? And why would I? I don’t know you…” He demanded.
“You don’t know me… though you have been calling out to me so desperately for so long. I am Ipet, watcher of nurseries, guardian of mothers and children… I am Ipet, justice and vengeance come back at last. Will you be my scourge?” She whispered. “Be my bloody lash, to fall on the backs of those who should fear justice but do not.”
“Is this a trick?” He demanded. “Where’s Gary?”
“We are inside Gary, in his realm beyond the world…” She sighed. With a wave at the sky, the bubbles and ribbons parted, revealing a tiny blue green dot, floating above them in the cosmic vastness. “He has been forcibly ejected from this place and another of his sacred Contracts has been severed, by decree of the pantheon. So weakened, they do not fear to accept his advocate’s invitation to parley.”
Her smile got even wider… and she was already rocking a hippo grin.
“We have a lot of ground to cover… fortunately, this place is largely outside time and space. How do you feel about professional wrestling?”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
#
Below Gary’s ramparts, in the blasted crater of Morrigan’s temple, the three avatars of War, Craft and Order stood silent at the very edge and shook their veiled and cowled heads in unified denial. “It must be removed. All of it, including this entire blighted fissure in the etheric veil.” Craft insisted, waving his arms to encompass the realm around them.
“It is an abomination, a breach in the law and proper order of things.” The gray hooded figure agreed.
“It must be excised… But perhaps it can be used for a time, then discarded. It does remain mortal, thus is only temporary…” War mumbled hungrily.
“He is mortal, yes, as such is only answerable to his Contracted deities…” Marduk snapped. “As his advocate, I insist you acknowledge this fact!”
“Marduk speaks true…” Joy whispered in delight and pleasure. “He is mine… do you contest my claim?”
“It is Mine!” War bellowed furiously. “Orphans are mine! All of them!”
“No.” Beast whispered gently. “They are mine, as are all living mortals. Deny Our claim as well, while you are throwing a tantrum.”
Dark chuckles rose from the legion of Garies watching from the walls they’d erected around no man’s land for this very special meeting.
“I have a claim as well…” Eponna whinnied in frustrated equine. “He is precious to the herd, I second Beast’s demand.”
“As a neutral observer…” Aclintherios began slowly and carefully, his vast, ethereal form abandoned for a smaller avatar of gleaming white and gold.
“Neutral…” Order scoffed. “One of yours was nesting in him… sneaking into our realm like a thief!”
“No!” Beast, Joy, Marduk and a number of others all sang in chorus.
Joy took the lead, when the divine ruckus died down. “Lady Thirp is now a native of our realm and a member of the pantheon. Further denials and insults will risk censure, Order.”
“Now that issue is settled… again.” Marduk sighed in agitation at his fellow deities. “Can we please move on to the actual discussion? My client denies any claim by any deity, not Contracted to his soul directly. This is well within tradition and law.” The tiny god snapped crisply at his comrades.
“No mortal can be compelled to worship or venerate a deity or spirit not bonded to their soul, this is the law.”
“Bridgid, Joy and Beast must bring him to heel in that case!” Craft demanded. “I should have had first claim regardless!”
“YOU?!” War bellowed at Craft, shaking the ground with his outrage.
“Neither and none of you.” Joy answered firmly. “His first was with Secret, who is no more. His second was with a creation of mortal artifice. My claim remains strongest and I will not release him.” She turned to Beast with her eternal, smiling mask of immaculate ivory. “What say you?”
“Mine.” Growled a tiny antlered bunny, who thumped his hind feet in irritation. Beast the jackalope preened his rears in agitation and glared with beady, bunny eyes at the gathered deities. “The other one is mine too. Mine!”
“I am satisfied with how things are turning out.” Brigid said with a warm smile. “I really only wanted his mate, as long as Shai is happy…” She sighed dreamily into the sky above; where Morrigan circled, outside the edge of his domain. “Frustrating sister Morrigan is at least as rewarding as his Contract.” She cooed.
Joy turned to Beast with a gasp of delight. “Ohh, so cute… you should always appear as such…” She murmured happily at her brother. “Where are your handmaidens…? They have a vested interest in this.” She sat down on the barren soil, in a patch of verdant lawn that appeared for just themselves.
“So many of your daughters have been active and involved with him… Odd that they are not present.” Her smiling mask of gleaming white ivory peered out of the rich green folds of her all concealing robes, as she scanned the crowd of Garies on the ramparts.
“My dryads are their own creatures…” Beast grumbled, while nibbling a particularly succulent cowslip leaf. “They have their own agendas and needs.”
“Beast… beastie… are you up to something?” She whispered in his big, velvety ear.
“Yes. Now scritch me behind my antlers and watch the show.” He huffed at her fondly. “Even I have no idea what’s coming.”
“None of this is getting us anywhere!” War grumbled at the two deities on the grassy patch.
“We did not demand this extraordinary meeting.” Brigid answered coldly, for a being who looked so warm. She rattled her brazen armor in irritation at the trio of deities and sniffed. “I remain satisfied with the progress he is making.”
“Progresss?!” Order almost shrieked. “The social order is dangling by a thread… A thread your pet monkey is gleefully hacking at!”
“Hear Hear!” War yelled. “My orphans are being Contracted without consulting me!”
“The disposition and acceptance of Contracts is between the entities involved. That is the law.” Healer spoke softly, to Order, rather than the red robed being standing beside the figure in gray.
Her golden robes and veil of white were barely visible, as she lingered behind Brigid, Marduk, Thirp, Eponna, her cousin, the muscular, rainbow llama god and several others.
War leaned and peered into the crowd, trying desperately for a glimpse of her, but she was always out of his view, behind her celestial posse.
“Even when my own are taken by others… Even when the suffering of my lost children rakes at my essence…” She whispered, in the ears of every being but one. “Long ago we agreed that mortals must make these choices for themselves.”
“I must have them! The war must go on!” He gasped in rage and desperation at the hidden figure in golden robes. “Can’t you see? They are my flesh and blood! The very bones of my essence! Look at me Dana! Look at me for pity’s sake!”
“This is getting us nowhere…” Craft complained. “Bring one of his ‘Garies’ out, so that we can dissect it and learn what he really is… That one will do.” He gestured, pointing at Dj and beconning with an imperious demand for obedience crackling in his voice. “Present yourself and submit, mortal fragment.”
#
Shai lay back in bed among her children and sighed. It was always hard to sleep when her boy was away… in frustration, she slipped out of bed, dressed and went down into the workshop to tinker and think.
Down in the shop, his scent was everywhere, or at least the things he always smelt of. Wood shavings, rubbed copper, wax, leather and the forest of herbs drying in the rafters made it feel as if he was all around her.
“Ach… Lad… Tis less’n a day an I miss thee…” She sighed, leaning on his workbench. Her own soul was in an uproar, cut off from the source of so much she had come to depend on.
Gary was a constant wellspring of Mana, further enhancing the steady stream her own link with the void now provided. She’d begun tapping his Mana accidentally at first, dipping into his deep, shockingly cold pools when hers ran empty… until now she had fed on his excess constantly. That was a minor inconvenience and nuisance compared to the real loss she’d suffered the last few days.
It was the empty place in her heart, where their connection between the worlds lay, cold and dormant. She grieved for that empty place, where so much life and emotion once overflowed into her soul. With a sigh, she turned to go back to bed and nearly tripped over Wilf, standing right beside her silently.
“Papa’s Ok, Mama Shai. He’s healing… Ipet says so.” He murmured, sounding very young indeed.
“Wilford, me love… Yer Papa be tougher than most know. Tis only worry that wakes me.” She sighed, scooping him up in a hug.
Amy giggled softly as she sank into one of the sofas her foolish Papa always kept down here for them.
“These are grownup worries, my beloved ones… ye should go back tae sleep…” Shai sighed while sinking down on the couch among them, despite her words.
“Ipet says grownups worry about the wrong things too much… Are you worried about the right things, Shai?” Amy asked softly.
“I be concerned… worried that yer new ‘uncle’ will join the household an be… disruptive. I didnae consider that there might be two of him in truth…” She murmured in embarrassment. Tis a selfish thought, but I’d nae share him… save with thee…” She blushed and fell silent, as Amy nodded sagely.
“Your scared that Ward’s gonna be with him all’a time… even bedtime an when you guys go fishin’...” She nodded and smiled with understanding that should have been beyond her.
“Uncle Ward is gone…” Rio whispered as he sat beside Amy. “He’s with the dryads in the forest now. Ipet says we can’t visit him, cause he’s ‘busy’… but he’s gonna be ok too.”
“Wi the dryads?” Shai asked in absolute puzzlement.
“He’s one of them now.” Wilf said firmly. “He’s a tree now.”
“A tree? How?” She asked, completely and utterly lost.
“Mama… ‘We live in a freakin’ world of magical wonders!’...” Rio declared, in a near perfect impression of Gary. “...and don’t you forget it.”
#
“…damn…” Ward muttered angrily. “That was a lot. So this prince of pricks from some dead world wants to go on tour and we get front row seats. The government is run by undead weirdos who want to shove their fists up my ass and the regular human lords want to sell my buddy Liam, Gary and his kids as slaves…”
Ipet ran down her papyrus scroll for a moment and cleared her throat. “Also, three of the major gods are being major assholes.” She said with a smile. “Craft, War and Order have been remarkably relaxed about these revelations and seem to only wish to carry on as we have been.”
“So right now, there’s a conference going on… and they want to… what? Take his powers?” He asked.
“No, they want him expelled from this world and passed through the devourer… essentially resetting him to a blank mortal soul. He would no longer be himself, when reborn, any more than you are him…”
“And me?”
“Oh yes, they want you just as badly. His woman and children as well.” She grumbled. “Hence, my special attention I’ve been away for a while and things have gone to shit. Join me, become my instrument in the mortal world… if you would slake the fury I sense within you.”
“But the dryad lady said…” He began, shifting around nervously.
“Willow has her plans… I have mine. You can do more than one thing at once, can’t you? Willow offers you a life unknown to mortal senses…” She giggled with earthy, naughty glee.
“And I suspect certain advantages to being the only male… among a limitless variety of lovely damsels… all of whom are as confused, hormonal and god’s blessedly horny as you are… my young spearman.”
Ward looked down and… of course, he was pitching a tent through his diaphanous robes. “Aww… man. This is going to be an ongoing thing, isn’t it?”
She nodded her elegant hippo head and smiled warmly. “Dryads are life and growth, the vital essence and the essence of nature. From what I have observed of the dryads… Well, you will discover that for yourself.”
“Riiight… not even a little suspicious.” He mumbled.
“Ward, no one can lie, in this place, within your brother’s very soul. Ask me what you will.”
“No one can lie?” He demanded. “If that’s true, I couldn’t say…” He gaped and flapped his mouth silently a few times. “Ohh… weird.” He spent a few more seconds struggling valiantly to formulate a lie…
“The check is in the mail?” He offered weakly.
“I cannot hold you to a Contract if you wish to release it, any more than you could hold me… it’s an embrace, not a shackle.” She held her arms wide, inviting an embrace. “Come, accept my Contract and become… if only for a time, my vengeance made flesh.”
Kissing a hippo lady was way hotter than he expected… The tongue was a surprise too.
“Mmm…” He murmured, his face buried between her breasts, getting bead impressions on his cheeks.
She grasped him by the shoulders and gently extracted him from the valley of queens with a soft chuckle. “You will do well among your new kin, my son. Now, your first task awaits, you are summoned.”
She led him to a reed boat that had not been moored there a moment before. When he stepped aboard, she shoved him off into the current with a motherly kiss and a wave.
He drifted just a few yards away, turned a bend and the boat beached itself outside a tall castle gate. As he stepped ashore, Xyll, his bat friend swooped down and wrapped her wings around him in a warm, smothering hug. When his eyes cleared, he was swathed in dark leather armor, a hooded, batwinged cloak and a mask bearing Xyll’s fearsome fanged face.
“Ohh, nice! Yeah, I watched Cyrano.” He mumbled happily as her high chirping greetings sang in his ears. “Uhh huh… No!” He laughed for a while and smiled, as his familiar explained the gag.
“I guess we wait.”
He’d only just finished speaking, when a shrill, angry voice drifted through the doors, as they silently opened.
“Bring one of his ‘Garies’ out, so that we can dissect it and learn what he really is… That one will do. Present yourself and submit, mortal fragment.”
There was a brief moment of silence, while Ward contemplated that ‘dissection’ line… Then someone started the opening chords to an AC/DC classic.
#
“Did he just say dissect?” Thirp asked in the stillness.
From the walls, a strident guitar line started spanking down into the crater, as a large number of instruments joined the fracas.
Back in black, I hit the sack!
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back!
Yes, I'm let loose
From the noose…
That's kept me hanging about!
“Ohh yeahhh! That’s Cheeesy!” He roared as he strolled through the gate, cape flapping like an asshole. He started a spirited and aggressive air guitar performance, drawing more from the host of his… brothers? Cousins? Shit’s complicated.
He forgot that for now, and dipped into a deep well of bad movie badguys, old time wrestling heels and shitty anime villains to reach for the utter bottom. Pure and absolute self indulgence.
“You fuckers called?” He demanded, when the music died.
“Oh dear…” Healer gasped in alarm, from somewhere in the crowd.
“Gary Ward, you were barred entrance to this place by divine decree!” Order shouted, when he strolled in, waving his hands high to his adoring crowd.
“Dee what?” He asked innocently.
“Dec…-” Order began to repeat himself, huffing with exasperation.
“Deez Nutz!” The creature in black shouted over him, while brandishing his codpiece at the mortified deity.
“Gary! How did you get back in here! Stop this instant, these are delicate works!” Marduk shouted at the fool.
“Can’t keep me out Ducky, I’m the devil, now… just how you wanted… can’t keep me out… you can’t get out.” On his last word, the massive gate slammed closed behind him, trapping a small horde of deities with a dangerous, contagious mortal.
For the next few danger fraught minutes, the menacing figure in black would speak only to his prey. All other entities only heard, in a horridly guttural voice:
“I’m Batman!”
#