He smelled and he felt, but he couldn’t see. He was spread over something hard and rough, cobblestone, most likely. The voices of Samari and Kalon reached him, distant and distorted in a way almost familiar. He tried opening his eyes, but couldn’t.
“I…ess…wo…eeks,” he heard Samari say.
What she actually said, there, crouching next to the just materialized puppy, was “I guess two weeks.”
“Guh,” Kalon answered, Hands still laid over the freshly concocted dog. “I wanted to make it older.
“It takes a lot of work for the spirit to reconstruct flesh, sinew, fatty tissue, connective tissue, bone, nerves, and all else that makes a puppy, Kalon.” Samari said, encouragingly.
They had stopped about a kilometer away from Honeytown, both to rest and so Kalon could concentrate on recovering his initial weapon. There, Kalon had keeled and laid his burning hands upon an empty spot. He felt energy coming out his fingers like worms creeping out of putrescence to stretch in sunlight and bark at the mailman. This energy, threads of pure white, condensed into a thatch of confused streams, following the blueprint of Jagger’s body that had been engraved on Kalon’s soul the day he picked him as a weapon. The thread’s snuggled closer together, and their frayed borders coalesced into atoms first, and those atoms arranged into molecules, and said molecules into organelles, then cells. Cells into tissues, tissues into organs, organs into systems, fuck up, back to the start, we made some kinda extra cancer accidentally boss, sorry. After the third attempt, a puppy and two mounds of whistling meat ridden with tumors and suffering constant, unavoidable pain had taken form.
The puppy suffered from tramadol withdrawal: The addiction had pervaded down to his very soul. Or maybe it was the side effects of being rebuilt from the spirit of an idiot. Little cravings, a bit of nausea, a smidge of pain, a tittle of insomnia, perhaps. The whole Mambo N°5 of symptoms, really.
After a while, Jagger opened his eyes, the world assailing his brand new retinas. He raised his head and noticed the weakness of his neck. The integrity of it, too. The floor was too close, and everything was bigger than he remembered. “Did you lilliputize me?”
Kalon shook his head, and Samari said something he couldn’t hear well.
Jagger took in a deep breath and held it until he felt his ear canals pop open. “Better. I assume I was reincarnated as a puppy.” He closed his eyes and jiggled his butt a bit. “The balls are still there. Good. We can talk now.” Then realization hit Jagger like a a tax return made of antimatter. “I have to undergo puberty again. I need a word stronger than Fuck! To express my frustration!”
“Kilofuck?” Samari suggested, always helpful.
“Terafuck me!”
“That’s a bit excessive.”
Kalon finally succumbed to tiredness and fell asleep on his side, snoring loudly, the Rottweiler scarf serving as pillow and bib simultaneously.
Jagger described a whole circle, taking in his environment.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“So, how long were I dead?”
“Three days,” Samari informed flatly. “Considering how Kalon managed to screw up the previous attempts, I wouldn’t assume a long life expectancy for you, though.”
Jagger blinked slowly. “You know, after Kalon gets his revenge on Cutbastra, I’ll probably randomly explode, and that will be my glorious and absurd death.” Jagger lied, because dogs don’t randomly explode. Except when they randomly step on a landmine. “That said, how did Kalon convince you to come with us?”
“I thought the chance of acquiring chocolate was worth risking a gruesome death in the wilderness,” Samari said, being completely honest. Yes, she was a brilliant child. A child nonetheless, nonethemore, below the sassy retorts and complex traps.
“You two seem unscathed.”
“Ruth, my wolf friend, escorted us the first stretch of the way. Then she had a disagreement with Brunhilda. This got Brunhilda grumpy.”
“And no one wants to mess with a grumpy Brun Brun. Got it.”
Jagger stood in his little hindlegs, a tiny deformed kangaroo swiveling his head from side to side. “I had forgot how much it sucks to be a puppy. I crave milk.”
She patted Jaggers head. “We may get some on Honeytown. I am sure I can annoy people enough to get some freebies if we have to beg!”
“Milk from a bitch, not a cow.”
“Makes sense. Do you think Brunhilda can help drag Kalon back to civilization?”
Jagger lowered his head in a lamenting gesture. “Kalon is uncivilizable.”
“To town, Jagger! If you convince Brunhilda to help me do so, I will carry you, stubby legs.”
The newmanifested puppy went up to the Narc Terror and seized her up. “You look older from down here, Brun.”
“Grrr.”
“Bierk,” Jagger answered. He then reconsidered not ever barking again, as his new-old voice was pathetic.
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At the same time, in heaven, inside an office where all furniture was composed of thunderclouds and the floor of straight lines of light, The God of Tribulations giggled evilly as he looked at the paperwork in front of him. He had finally done it! He had found a loophole! Any moment now the God of Genealogy would arrive through his icy door, to see what the hell this annoying motherfucker wanted.
Dressed in robes woven from threads of leather extracted from every animal species that cows descended from —down to Ediacaran fauna— the god of Genealogy entered without knocking.
“Review this,” the God of Tribulation handed the stack of hastily filled papers to the God of genealogy, and then sank in his chair, a shit-eating grin taking residency on his face.
“Three out of five, shoddy work. Proper grammar, though.” He eyed his peer only to see his smile hadn’t gone anywhere. “Fine, fine, let’s see…”
As he read, his face reflected the increasing horror: his frown creased, his eyes opened wide, and his upper lip raised like it was a set of blinds being rolled in. He then exhaled, a sigh of relief. “You committed a minor mistake. It’s article five, not seven.”
“Oh, but I wrote a five: my fives look like a seven to some.”
“That’s absurd! This is clearly a…” he paused and followed the gesturing finger of his peer. It pointed to a degree, framed and hung onto the wall. “Right, you are a medical doctor, what has that to… Us, it is a five! You did it! Being a living being built from vital energy, he is not related to her anymore…”
The God of Tribulations extended both fists high into the air. “Yes! At long last!”
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It woke up from it’s long slumber and saw red. Then it stopped seeing, remembering that lightning bolts are blind. Electrons pacified long ago stirred, began flowing through the bolt again. Its shine increased, as the new orders from the God of Tribulations arrived and permeated the bolt’s very essence. From the aerial space of Valelike Vale it shot forth, not noticing that the inhabitants, used to their frozen bolt of lightning, waved sadly as it flew away.
It accelerated as the dirt turned to sand and the sand to an homogeneous, fleeing mass of yellow. Untouched by the scorching sun of the desert, the bolt flew over Yggdrashell, a mere glimpse in its flight. And began descending like a heat seeking missile closing in upon its target. It passed over Honeytown in a second and approached the ground even more, mere meters away from his target: Jagger. He would feel the wrath of the goods in the following instant, and no natural force in heaven or earth would stop it!