Ch: 74 Make it Supreme.

The room was nicely full, not too many, just right for a freewheeling brainstorming storytime. Or so the cheerful fool hoped, as he swanned through the room with a gently tinkling guitar.

“There’s a shop where I come from, they only have a few ingredients that they allow themselves to use… it’s really complicated and weird.” Gary shrugged blandly. “We will talk about your weirdness later, Back to the ‘Taco Bell Paradox’ we were discussing.” He smiled at his bemused audience of friends and elders.

“They have a surprisingly huge menu of very creative items, assembled from those few constituents, using variations on a theme.” He waved to the tables and the plates that were still circulating.

“Nachos are just tacos, in salad cosplay. I will die on that hill.” He announced, clarifying nothing.

“Make a point boy.” Naiomi of Healer snapped. “Or move this to the bath. Some of us are too old to perch on tavern chairs all evening.”

He bowed to the eldest and played a little Marvin Gaye just to entertain himself. “By all means, we are going to be touching on some sensitive topics, let’s all get comfortable.”

#

He paused a moment at the doorway to the garden bath addressing the migratory crowd.

“We have additional guests waiting for us here, ambassadors if you will. They are my friends and guests in this house.”

Ice cold ‘stabbing Gary’ appeared for a brief moment, polluting the room with a sense of general menace, which quickly evaporated.“Let’s meet the others!” He chirped while heading for the bath.

Two small, beautiful women were lounging in the pool, taking their ease. The blossoms in their hair perfumed the garden, while the fruit trees seemed excited, standing nearby.

“May I present, Plumeria, the plumgrove and Solange The magnolia, dryads of the summer court and our ambassadors from the fae.” He bowed cheekily to the two women, who smiled and waved from the steam.

“Also present, a dryad of the maple grove who declines to give her name in my presence… I understand my dear.” He bowed to a large golden yellow stick insect, floating in the water casually.

“You should know, three adult dryads have not been in such close proximity since…” Plumeria turned to Solange. “When did those ridiculous giant lizards die out on the other world?”

“Oh, sweetie. No, shortly after humans learned speech. I would say… when the ice caps retreated over there…” The two women debated for a while, making sense to no one.

“Two hundred and sixteen thousand years… yes, that long since three adult dryads shared the same soil, fascinating.” Solange announced at last.

Gary took a brief stumble for some reason, before submerging himself for a long while. When he emerged he sighed. “Ducky said he fucked around with time…” He mumbled to himself before jumping back into his tale.

“So, back to the ‘Taco Bell Paradox’ we were discussing…” He announced as the audience groaned. “My point is, someone has been playing a trick on all of us. ALL of us. For a long ass time.”

“For starters, Knowledge says one of the few things he remembers clearly before… he got forgotten, is tying this world to another. He did that to stabilize this world, because it was ‘winding down’. That struck me oddly then.” He chuckled.

“When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around…” He half sang the odd phrase. “The god Knowledge didn’t know how or why the gods came to that conclusion. Strange, no? But they did, a long, long, long time ago, that other world is where humans came from originally. My home.”

Murmurs ran through the bath as those in the know sketched the rough outlines for the newly initiated.

“The dryads have a similar story, they were driven to reach out, because they felt that their end was coming. They found humans, and brought us here… for their own reasons.” He shrugged awkwardly. “Don’t get weird, humans have a habit of picking up stray people and doing what they want with them too. Don’t they Leopold?”

The duke did not seem to have an answer for that one, he sat in silence. “Anyway, you guys have the same thing going on, the pressure on human lands, the sense that it is all ending… Bullshit.”

He clapped his hands to his ears as his last word belted out so loud and resonant the garden rang.

“That was awesome! Hey, clergy, focus up! I said, nothing is ending, unless you let it. It’s a trick. It’s bullshit!” He smacked his lips over the odd feeling. “I like this. I wonder if I can make it a superpower…”

“No, foolish boy, the tongue of the rhymer is part of the innate magic of this world, a remnant of the long departed great fae. None can summon it, most never hear it once in their lives.” Plumeria chided softly as she laughed. “The gods are listening, best you not try and lie. The taste is said to be abysmal.”

Gary smiled and shot her a thumbs up. “Another friend, from a nearby world, she said some creeps showed up and tried to start a doomsday cult there. A bunch of super shady assholes called the hollow ones.”

An illusory cloud of gas formed in the steam, with several hideous human and humanoid masks appearing and disappearing in its form, all bearing expressions of torment and horror. In a wink it evaporated away.

“They use undead constructs of their victim’s limbs to entrap souls in transit between worlds and enslave them. Collections of grabbing and grasping arms and hands in many cases.” He said calmly, eyeing the nobles and clergy coldly.

“Each one of those limbs is a soul in torment, being forced, against its will, to imprison its brothers and sisters in a shameful cycle of abusive fuckery. That’s just how they pay the rent though.” He grumbled quietly.

“All that torture and malice is just to maintain their stable connection to our worlds, and the doomsday cults they have been starting here for…” A glance at Plumeria and Solange received only shrugs. “Forever.”

Glibly, he shifted gears, sounding bright and chipper again. “Magic is like music, it comes in all the tones and timbres, or like color, cause it's an endless rainbow, eternally refracting into ever finer gradients of hue.” He smiled and waved in the steam.

“My pool is all of that, raw magic, gushing into this world from the ether. But every living thing… and the gods too, we each thrive in just a few narrow bands of that rainbow, even though it stretches on forever.” He grinned at the gathered clergy.

“Especially gods, they can only utilize the energies of worshipers or believers. And those believers, they influence the gods in turn, subtly altering them constantly.”

“That was their in, all they had to do was trick the gods of the fae, the forgotten, weakened gods of a race that fled this world, thinking it lost. Come to think of it, maybe they played themselves there too.” He shrugged madly. “Food for thought. I will get answers from the bastards when I catch one.”

“Anyway, I tortured a worm demon, in the house my soul keeps just outside reality, he sang a strange song. He said that these hollow ones…” His cold and icy smile came back.

“I prefer maskholes, they have been summoning outsiders here regularly, to destroy human towns on the fringe. They have been at it for so long, even a semi immortal worm demon had trouble expressing the time involved. No matter how much I salted his tail.” His glacial chuckle made Shai and Tawny wince.

“You got answers from a skrigg? How ever did you do it?” Solage asked excitedly. “Filthy worms have been slithering around for eons!”

“Skrigg are just people, weird, shitty people who drove a hard bargain for what they’ve got. They work for the maskholes, to help with the in world summonings that human cultists can’t be trusted with.” His voice was still cold and brittle, as he strolled in the pool.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“They are fragmentary souls, part of a larger whole, they know nothing individually, but once you get one outside the world’s magical ecosystem and into the open ether… torture one worm, you torture a species.”

He snapped his fingers crisply at Tawny. “No, I don’t feel guilty. Now when they see someone like me coming, they will duck out of this world so fast their ectoplasm will shimmy. Fuck those guys, enough about the skrigg.”

“While I was paddling a ghost cultist a few days ago, he spilled a few things. Things he didn’t know he knew, cause he was an idiot.” He ran a cold gaze over his audience.

“You have a cult here, a death cult, they worship an outsider god, the boss of the maskholes and skrigg. They have their own funeral rites and rites of ritual human sacrifice that bypass the god of secrets and the natural transition of souls in this world. That means that the poor souls they sacrifice get enslaved to the maskholes.”

“My ghost ‘buddy’ learned the hard way that there are other forces in the ether… and some do not enjoy the idea of enslaving souls. He is currently being reincarnated… unpleasantly for the rest of time. No, I don’t feel guilty.”

Talk of outsiders, demons and torture was wearing the audience a little thin. He dove under and popped back up a moment later, smiling warmly again.

“I see I am losing some of you, let me wrap things up neat and tidy. An unknown, outside god is tapping this world for the unique magic that sentients give off, when they experience the feeling of dread that their species will go extinct.”

“We are dealing with a god of extinction, whose actual worshipers all went extinct. They are taking their show on the road in order to prevent their own extinction… irony.” He was met with blank stares all around.

“Gang, the fae forgot about their gods when they developed immortality, that left their gods weak, spongey, malleable. The new guy slipped in and started a cult probably for that reason, convincing other immortals that their world was ending.” The musician shook his shaggy head in wonder.

“It must have been cold water in the desert for that guy. They got a taste and wanted more, so they started fucking around with the remaining sentients of this world and mine for gravy.” Some of the folks were nodding now.

“Yeah, then they struck it rich, the dryads tapped my no magic world, letting this god have access to its cycles of extinction and finally, humans.” He grimaced unpleasantly.

“We have been fighting and dying over imaginary scarcity and end of the world bullshit forever. Now it seems like forever was just a moment in this jerk’s long game.”

There were still too many blank stares and not nearly enough furious ones. He got back into it.

“That means… the monsters that have been pushing humanity to the brink forever, are being summoned in. Summoned at the command of an entity that had significant influence in how your culture developed over literally eons. This asshole is farming us for xp, we are being used as cattle.”

Now things were heating up a little. Side convos started going among the clergy, as Healer and Joy started getting antsy. Tony and Harlan sat stunned, while Anglin of War nearly boiled in fury.

“Summoned, boy?” He growled. “All these years, summoned creatures, just to put us under pressure? All those lives? All that blood?” He nearly choked in his rage.

“Yup, and probably, most of the monsters were just trying to figure out how they came to an alien world. Most outsiders are just regular people living regular lives on other worlds.” He sighed sadly. “They just tend to be very different from us. These dicks snatch them up and drop them here to make trouble.”

“Lilith, the creature that destroyed Evard Village, she was an infant. Her species is born as a kind of jellyfish and pupates into a sentient anemone. Her world is a vast tropical ocean with her parent reef spanning a quarter of their globe.”

“You communicate with these things?” Adele asked from beside Tony.

“If we share a language…” He winked at Shai and Becky. “Lucky me, I speak jellyfish!”

“How does an orphan from the hinterlands come to ‘speak jellyfish’ or possess such odd gifts as you claim?” The duke asked calmly. “You are making some wild claims there boy, I see no evidence to support these allegations.”

“Ask your clergy. They should be getting some interesting notes from their patrons. The no clergy holding government office rule, that’s an outside idea as well. The one pulling the strings behind the scenes is in charge of your government and has been harvesting your sociopaths, psychotics and amoral shitbags for his own uses for millenia.”

“They really wanted to search out kids that are like me, magically different. Getting an army of crazies and outcasts to make into a cult was probably just a bonus. I bet your capital is a real shitshow. Has anybody ever been there?” He scanned the increasingly uncomfortable group.

“Nobody? That tracks, don’t feel bad, someone has been screwing with your minds and culture since Solange was a seedling.” The two dryads looked furious, while the stick insect looked… well, anyway.

“You say we were also deceived? How druid? How were we deceived?” She fumed, angry at everyone and everything.

“Don’t you remember? So long ago? The ents and dryads ruled this place, a spreading world forest of infinite variety? Axio told me, he was waiting there so long for a dryad to come. It’s not the druids that make dryads bloom, it’s the ents, we just wake you both up when we pass. A floral booty call. That text in the night that gets you guys to pollinate.”

Solange looked thoughtful, while Plumeria blushed aggressively and a few more sprays of buds bloomed in her hair.

“Cheeky abomination…” The plum dryad whispered fondly as she pecked him on the cheek.

“So now the ball is in your court. You and your deities know as much as I am willing to reveal publicly. If you want to know any more, you can negotiate for it.” He said with a jolly wink.

“Keep in mind, your whole orphanage, indenture and contract system seems to have been designed to produce this very result. While helping our mutual enemy find people like me. I’m off to sow some more chaos in a secret lodge in the woods tonight, don’t wait up.” He kissed his woman and hopped from the bath, abandoning the swirling soup of questions as he slipped away.

“Toodles gang, toodles.”

“I thought I knew what to expect after the last two times…” Tony was shaken, as his wife helped him to the edge of the pool. “this was a new high, or low.”

“I agree.” Otho muttered grimly from the curb nearby. “This is going to be a tough adjustment, at least there wasn’t a musical number...”

Shai’s violin and a guitar sprang to life nearby, as a slow compulsion to dance settled over the bathing notables.

“We hae a reputation tae uphold gentlefolk, me boy hae errands tae run in the forest, but ye do still owe him his due…”

#

His instruments, in the hands of his new brothers, sisters and his mate, put wings on his feet. Accompanied by a tiny hand drum, he ran through the forest, up a game trail by the river side.

He ducked and twisted his way past bare branches, snow, slick mud and ice as he ran. Long evening shadows slowly became full dark before he slowed, across the river from the road, in a wild tangle of no man’s land and muddy brambles.

His breath came in plumes as he stooped low to wriggle into a small hollow under a log.

“Hi Streeka! Beast told me where your secret hideout was, I won’t blab. Who are your friends?” He emerged from the burrow entrance with a mud streaked grin. He climbed up to his knees and produced a small rug from nowhere. He sat down on it, conjured a towel and began cleaning the mud off his naked form.

“No clothes or weapons in the lodge, Beast told me the rules. You folks need to get the same speech I just gave the humans… He smiled at Coyote and Wolf. “Beast told me you guys said no to ‘using’ me, thanks for that, I won’t forget it. I’m doing this though, for my own reasons and with my eyes wide open.”

He began pulling rugs, snacks and small comforts from nowhere. “You folks have been spying on me for a little while now, learn anything fun?” He sprawled on the rug and began snacking on a nacho.

“Oh yes! We have!” Squirrel said happily, dangling from the ceiling of the lodge with Bat. “You are one of the dryad’s long lost druids, a font of natural energy. Fascinating. Are those oatmeal cookies?”

Beaver’s sane and sensible lodge went to cheerful foolishness.

“So they just kept playing the same hustle, but with the gods themselves duped… nobody from here could tumble their game, it needed outside eyes.” He grinned and nodded at them, as they stumbled along to his mad conclusions.

“This is much easier if you are soaking in my bath… sorry about that. Next time you will meet the whole gang in my lodge. Wolf, Coyote, standing invitation. Streeka… respect. I’m a walking trolly problem, you were absolutely right. I would have pointed me at the nearest problem as well.”

He slipped into a deeper well of madness, with a wider, whiter smile. “Your problems make me stronger. Your monsters become my friends. Interestingly, my friends are becoming monsters… it’s all very complicated. We have a lot going on and would value your wisdom whenever you can dispense it.”

He stretched and limbered up as he spoke. “I have a long run back, keep the rugs and cushions. Small comforts make life worth living.”

He slipped out the muddy tunnel and vanished, leaving tacos, nachos and confusion in his wake.

“The hanged man and the fool you say…” Badger rumbled in grumpy registers.

“Oh, no. He’s the devil for sure.” Streeka chittered happily. “Mayhap our devil. Be cautious where you may point him.”

#

“I really need to learn how to ride a horse properly, this tireless endurance trick is exhausting on a bunch of levels…” He yawned as he climbed into bed, well after midnight.

“Ye could hae stayed in the wild, or summoned that house o mine fer yerself. Streeka would surely hae sheltered thee.” Shai scolded as she snuggled closer.

“This works for me, totally worth it. I slept alone enough.” He wrapped himself around her and worked for as much skin contact as possible. “I did miss tucking in the little ones.”

Shai grabbed him tight and rolled him over. “Ye kin tuck me in boy.” She growled with a smile. “Make it up tae the wee ones at breakfast, ye kin make it up tae me now...”

#

When Shai awoke, Gary was gone again. She could feel him ‘down in the lab’ working on something. When she pulled on a robe and stumbled down, Becky and Tallum were there too.

“What be all this then?” She demanded in confusion.

Becky had a drawknife in hand and was peeling long, thin strips from a beam twenty feet long. Tallum was forging huge bronze nails and dropping them into a small bin at his feet. Gary was cutting a lap joint in one end of another long, gently curving beam nearby.

“We’re building a boat!” Becky cheered. “Gary got designs from Dante and Marc, he has some ideas of his own too.”

“Whae dae ye need a boat fer boy? An how will ye get it tae the water?” She demanded while laughing.

Gary joined her laugh, while drawing his new teleblaster from his butt with a grin. He started spanking the strings in a simple, muted shuffle beat. After a few bars, he began half singing half chanting in time.

I'd get it one piece at a time

And it wouldn't cost me a dime

You'll know it's me when I come through your town

I'm gonna ride around in style

I'm gonna drive everybody wild

'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.

He wrapped up ‘One Piece At A Time’, leaving his family laughing and completely lost. The madman went right back to work, still whistling the melody.

“That made no sense at all. You really are moon touched.” Becky sighed, she didn’t stop working though.