Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance
A Full House Ch: 51
It was a long morning of cleanup, but the damned dead were everywhere; at least, stray pieces of them were. The children of the family had performed some kind of secret spell or ritual in the dark of the night… When dawn finally broke, the hillock of charred meat that had been standing in a field of widely scattered bones, was simply gone without a trace.
When the dwarf asked about it, they hinted vaguely that playing a four song set of ‘classic rock’ had ‘done the trick’. The tunes that somehow banished the small mountain of corpse remnants had all been desperately familiar… But Gandree Clansward had never heard any of them before; which made knowing all the lyrics and chords by heart, both deeply upsetting and more than a little weird.
Lost in those contemplations, he tipped a wheelbarrow full of loose meat and bones into the swirling waters of the large baths and watched them dissipate as they sank; becoming nothing more than a memory in seconds. Nothing alive could drown in the stuff, but nothing that wasn’t actually alive lingered in the water for more than a few moments. The process worked even more quickly on the zombie remains, it wasn’t violent or energetic in the least. Gandree found watching the noisome stuff fade away was almost tranquil, soothing.
“This is actually one of the things we understand the least, of all the effects our gifts display…” Harry muttered, noticing the way the dwarf was watching the stuff fade away, while tipping his own barrow load into the water as well.
“All of our pools work in a similar fashion; expunging contaminants, whether physical or spiritual, especially anything tainted with undeath. Ours are just less… aggressive about it. Pretty weird, huh?”
Harry grinned, looking just a little crazy. “I think if we really understood the forces at play, we’d be absolutely terrified, like all the time.”
“On that note, you guys go take a bath and rest, we’ll handle it from here.” Larry muttered, sounding exhausted and looking like a zombie himself. “It’s mostly ship repair and salvage left to do now… and that can wait for tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to tell us twice!” Daisybelle chirped, as she slam-dunked a salted and smoked human head into the pool. “These deadies are nasty nasty!”
The little green dynamo slipped an arm through his and hauled him away to their lodgings on the compound. “Hey, I haven’t put my wheelbarrow, pitchfork and shovel away…” He complained, feeling guilty already.
“Nub nub! No more working, bath and bed… Ok, maybe I has a little more work for Gandree boy…” She sang, while ‘dragging’ him along. “Work will still be nasty and unpleasant later. Come along!”
“You seem pretty relaxed over the whole ‘undead army and skeletal dragon’ thing…” Gandree murmured, when they finally collapsed into the baths in the private, walled garden of the little stone inn the weirdos had given them the use of.
Desperate for a way to stop thinking about the night before and its aftermath, he’d grabbed for the first non-zombie clean-up topic that came to mind.
The fetching green damsel was already stripping and headed for the bath when the gate to their little compound closed behind her. “Yeah, last night was a little busy busy…” She murmured happily, ignoring his half hearted protests that he ‘needed to put the tools away’ and that she should shower before jumping in the pool. She decided that bathing twice was a silly dwarf tradition and largely ignored him.
“Go wash up, then. We smell icky!” She commanded, pointing him to the showers, while she just dove into the bath, covered with crud.
“This is your first time; being out in the wider world, Gandree my love…” She sang merrily, when he finally joined her in the pool, after a sensible and completely necessary scrubbing.
“Daisybelle is the warg knight of the goblin king, Gandree… I’ve seen some shit.”
He leaned back against the side of the stone pool, as her pert little green bottom slipped into his lap, as usual. “And you didn’t bat an eye when they confined your dad…” He grumbled and mumbled, when her little hands got grabby beneath the surface.
“Bahh! King papa got all excited and went ‘goblin mode’.” She shrugged her smooth shoulders, rubbing her soft, wet back against his front, ever so slowly in the process. “He’s in deep dookie and can dig himself out,”
“Uh…? Goblin mode?” Was all he could manage to ask between exhaustion and what she was up to under the water.
“Never go ‘full goblin’. That was his first first lesson to all of us…” She grumbled in the direction of the little stone inn, where her dad was imprisoned in a cell, watched over by Becky, hidden in her terrifying robes of office.
“We can get a little… primal. Goblin boys is like that all the time, cause they is all cursed to be stupid, hungry and horny all the time.” She shook her head sadly.
“Goblin girls, we are much smarter… Unless we get too excited and worked up, or we’re having our tummy-time… don’t worry, lover, I had my tummy-time charms cast last month.”
She patted her flat belly under the water and wriggled a little closer to him.
“Where was I?”
“Instincts…?” He offered weakly.
“Oh, yeah, smart smart boy! So, goblins like dark and spooky woods and sneaking up on tasty meat; we eat everything that walks, crawles, swims or flies… so to us, most things are just meat.” She licked her lips and smiled hungrily.
“We dream of the stalk and pounce, or slow and careful lying in wait then the rush of the chase… The scent of blood on the wind… The thrill of the hunt!”
Her eyes were a little red rimmed and feral looking when she slowed to a stop.
“Mmm, hungry. Gandree, you ever wrap a dire fly maggot in spicebush leaves and pit roast it real slow…?”
“I’ll make something in a few minutes…” He murmured, as the girl in his arms wriggled happily and sighed. “You feel too good to let go of right now.”
“Ghaah, lazy boy. Daisybelle’s hungry now…” She grumbled softly, as she slipped from his arms. “...Find my own snack…” The little green damsel murmured, before she vanished beneath the surface.
A scant few minutes later, the dwarf was floating bonelessly in the pool, face down in the magical ‘definitely not water’ and completely wrecked.
“Hmph, nub good plan; still hungry and now he’s even lazier…” She murmured to Petunia and Jasmine, who were sleeping on the lawn, poolside.
“You’re in charge, I’m goin’ fishin’” She grumbled, while bouncing out the front door and diving into the lagoon; clutching a fishing spear from the rack of gear by the door and otherwise, completely nude.
#
Ace hung his puppet body from a handy mangrove tree and slipped out of the chest cavity, carefully shutting the hatch behind himself. He wouldn’t want anything crawly or nasty to hide in there… Well anything else, just him.
He plopped into the warm water of the lagoon with a silent, but colorful octopoid sigh of pleasure and squirted for the deep sections, looking for a snack among the water weeds and corals.
After the chaos of the night before and with the noise of the ongoing ship salvage operations, the fish were pretty spooked and well hidden… But the invertebrates were out in force, gobbling up the tiny remnants of the zombie horde the kids’ diligent clean up efforts had missed. Shrimp, crabs and lobsters were the stars of the show… and it was dinner theater.
‘A finger here, a bit of flesh there, nothing a healthy ecosystem couldn’t manage in a day or three.’ He thought to himself a few seconds later, with a giant glass shrimp clutched in his tentacles.
‘Gotta avoid his tract….’ Ace thought to himself as he munched on his prey. The thing had been eating zombie fragments all night and its gut would contain... That would be kinda like indirect cannibalism… and super, ultra gross. Ace dropped his half finished shrimp and decided to swear off bottom feeders for a while.
The larger fishes and crustaceans would reappear soon to restore the balance of nature, once all the hammering, sawing and general noise was done and the ships either sailed away or sank...
‘Life, uhh… Finds a way.’ He reflected idly, when Daisybelle swam in from the middle of the lagoon, completely naked and clenching a weakly struggling barracuda in her teeth.
When Daisybelle dove back in with a predatory grin on her little green angel’s face, Ace joined her hunt for mid-level predators in the deep water; where the bold, hungry and stupid still roamed.
She couldn’t understand his language and of course, she couldn’t speak under the surface, yet they quickly fell into an easy and deadly efficient partnership.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Ace punched ridiculously over his weight class and could one shot anything smaller than a bull walrus with his venom… if he could get close.
Any clever predator that managed to snap him up would not celebrate their primacy at the top of the food chain for long, but that would do him little good. Being horribly toxic was just a little parting gift, a final cheap shot; but one he preferred to save for that very special someone.
In any case, Ace found little challenge in preying on the big dummies of the deep water; barracuda, tarpon, lesser reef sharks and seawolves, a variety of large, swarming cuttlefish that were dangerously delicious and deliciously dangerous were abundant and circling hungrily above the deep reefs.
Daisybelle would dive down with her spear, making all kinds of noise, driving the prey down to scatter into the deep coral rifts; where Ace waited, camouflaged.
He picked the big guys off by stealthily stinging them as they shot past his hiding spot.
Daisy would swim down and spear the dead or paralyzed prey and haul it to shore, while Ace moved to a new hiding spot to wait for her return.
He squirted out and stung a huge tarpon right inside its gill tissue, sending it to fish heaven in a hurry. Just as quickly, Daisybelle had her barbed spear in it, dragging eight and a half feet of monster fish to shore behind her. They had a good haul on the beach, but he wanted a little something special…
While she was working on bringing in that last big fish, Ace slipped over to a deep crevasse in the sea floor, where the cuttlefish liked to lurk. He dangled one tentacle over the lip of the crack in the sea bed and twitched it spastically, while shifting its colors and textures wildly. Before long, a huge, tentacled horror swooped up over the ledge and engulfed him in a predatory hug.
Three seconds later, the cuttlefish was patiently waiting for Daisybelle to collect it; while Ace was back on the ledge, fishing for nightmares from the deep.
#
Gandree staggered out of the bath and found Ace and Daisybelle in the kitchen, just absolutely mauling a huge quantity of seafood with their inexpert knife skills. “Oh, no! For the sake of sweet lady Joy, please stop!”
Too late, a gout of thick black goop deluged Ace and his cutting board, from the ruptured ink sack of a squid creature three feet long.
The dwarf pulled a mountain of towels from his shadow, while the pair of fish mutilators were busy trying to decide what to hack into next.
Gandree bustled both of them away and wrapped the whole black and awful mess in half of the hoard of towels he’d pilfered from Dwarfhold on his way out.
He spared a moment, wondering idly after so long, how the clan was doing under that dismal stone sky. Poorly, he hoped; uncomfortably, he was certain.
He’d taken pains to steal all of life’s little comforts from the clan leaders as he left... All the luxury foods and precious spices from the pantry and stores were just the start. He’d taken most of the cookware from the kitchens. Then Gandree had pilfered away a broad assortment of the best tools from every workshop he’d been forced to work in over his years of servitude.
He felt most proud of how thorough he’d been when he cleaned them out… Nothing essential or basic fell into his shadow, only the finer things and pleasures that the wretched old bearded goobers and their demanding sullen families loved so much, landed in his bottomless storage gift.
All the way down to the soft and fluffy, imported towels and bedding from the clanlord’s own laundry… which Gandree had been washing for the salty and privileged old turd, since he was old enough to reach the washtub without drowning.
Watching as the mess of ruptured cephalopod guts and ink soaked the towels that the lord had imported from afar, at great expense gave him so much pleasure that he felt not even a little guilty for the waste of it. He hurled the mess into the pool and headed back inside to do some damage control.
#
“He’s good at that…” Ace muttered to Daisybelle, from the other side of the counter, where there were no knives in reach. The lad’s big, hard hands danced over the cutting board, effortlessly skinning, fileting and cleaning a mountain of fish, to the tune played on the goblin’s drum and a guitar Ace plucked from the wall. “It’s impressive how he handles that blade, considering how he fights.”
“No, you two just suck that bad at fish cutting… and I fight just fine!” He grumbled at the snarky puppet man.
“No, Gandree, you fight like Ace guts fish. Clumsily and without skill.” Daisybelle sang happily from behind her ogre skull drum. “I stink at fishy cutting too! Obsidian knives are no good for that job.”
“I have steel knives, Daze.” Gandree mumbled, while he skinned a fair sized reef shark.
“I always wondered… what’s up with the stone and bone aesthetic?” Ace asked the goblin girl, while he strummed along in the blues, wandering around the key of D.
“No metal crafts for gobbs. We got stuck in the stone age.” She shrugged. “Akashic record says nub advanced enough for metal tools. Says we need more evolution points, only goblin girls create those, so it’s super slow going.” She grinned a little wickedly at the two men.
“That’s why king papa let the human town stay, after he smooshed the light cult. King papa calls his grand plan ‘bootstrapping for great justice’...” She said with a sad, deeply patient smile.
“He’s a little stirred up in his thinkin’ stuff, like all goblin boys.”
“He’s also awake…” Ghnash grumbled from the landing above the common room. “I also has Goblin hearing.”
“Yes and I also have gobb ears. I said nothing I didn’t intend you to hear; be double double sure of that papa.” She grumbled at the bedraggled and sleepy looking sovereign.
“Listen now, to your warg knight.”
The tiny green girl fixed her much larger papa with a withering glare and spoke coldly. “King Ghnash, you went full goblin mode and shamed yourself and our clan. You violated their hospitality and broke your own word…”
Crushed by her witherin tone and glare, the king deflated onto a stool with a strange new flute of wood and bone, joining the improvisational jam sesh, while the dwarf worked in the kitchen, whistling and humming along. “Yeah, I fucked up real good. That priestess is coming around though.” The handsome goblin muttered, before stuffing the end of his recorder in his mouth.
“A few of them are heading out to carry messages home, I suppose they’ll be back soon.” Ace remarked over his guitar. “I understand our host is still unconscious after your little prank this morning, so the rest are staying here for another day, at least…”
“Trying to get rid of us, Ace?” Ghnash asked with a wink.
“Yes! I plan on scouring the land of all humanoid life, especially the fucking mongoats… I hate those things.” He answered just as glibly.
“My blood sucking swarm of mutated super mosquitoes cost me almost everything in my winged vermin pool, but it’s gonna be awesome to watch! From safely below the waves… or in this nifty wooden body, if I can steal it from the guy you buried alive.”
“Super mosquitoes?” Ghnash asked nervously. “Like, monster skeeters?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re just awful! I’ve been perfecting them on this island for almost two hundred years! If these houses weren’t so heavily protected by vermin repellent spells, you’d know all about them.” Ace muttered happily. “Any unprotected human on this island won’t last long, those things are absolute nightmares…”
#
The endless buzzing and humming was driving them mad… Not Bernard, he’d gotten the skeeter fever and dashed out into the jungle delirious with sickness and vanished.
‘Might have been the smart choice.’ Padilla thought grimly, as he considered the problem. They had some dried food, but no water… and no way to get any that wouldn’t involve being devoured by hundreds of flying blood suckers. Some of the beasts had sedative venom in their venom, potent enough to make a healthy man woozy with a single stealthy bite.
Any poor soul put to sleep by those moth winged terrors would be emptied as quickly as a wineskin passed around the campfire. So, they remained, huddled under the overturned boats, hoping for a miracle.
Their miracle arrived late in the afternoon of that day, as the endless buzzing and humming subsided at last, then stopped entirely. Padilla snuck a peek, drawing back the tarpaulin they’d staked down to keep the monster skeeters from wriggling under the fabric.
Outside, all was still and quiet, the swarm seemed to have departed for a while at least. “Grab anything that will hold water, we’ll hit that stream and fill everything up… Don’t waste time or make any noise. Get back under cover when the first one appears…”
“Yes, humans… The skeeters are gone. But they will be back.” A high, piping female voice called out, not the horrible wasp girl from the battle with the shadow swordsmen; another winged girl-child was perched on a mangrove bough, peering at the men under the overturned boat.
This one had slowly fluttering moth wings of smoke and flames behind her, fanning the air gently while she smiled down at the pitiful sailors, down in the mud.
“Surrender… and I will guide you to safety, food, drink and shelter, while holding the flying blood suckers away.” She giggled at the men from her perch.
“Refuse… and I will leave, allowing the skeeters to return. I won’t return and you will all perish here, under this little shelter, or in the jungle, when thirst and hunger drive you out among the trees.” She smiled sweetly at them from high up in the tree.
“Go on, decide. I’ll wait here for, let’s say… until the sun touches the top of that tree, do you think that’s five minutes?” She sang them gripping the hem of her skirt of autumn leaves in obviously false dismay.
“I always have such trouble with concepts like time, tell you what… If I get bored and wander away, that means that your time is already up.”
#
“Messengers…” Amy complained, as they slipped through the passage at the back of the volcanic cave. “Why are we stuck carrying the mail?”
“I dunno, maybe ‘cause we’re the fastest things on land?” Rio offered, as they walked through endless miles of madness inducing hallucinatory phenomenon in a few short minutes of strolling.
“We’ll push hard. Be back home quick.” Wilf opined solemnly. “I’m still worried about pops.”
“Focus up team.” Dannyl ordered from the rear of the group. “For most people this is the hardest part of realm travel…”
“I was going to ask about that… where’s the stone tunnel we walked through to get here?” Amy demanded, waving her hand dismissively at the un-guessable swirling morass of fractal, psychedelic swirls, colors and hallucinations that appeared and vanished as they ‘walked’ across an empty black void. “This is bullshit!”
“Yes, it is.” The young explorer answered happily. “It’s all complete bullshit. The cave we walked through was also bullshit, but that came from your dad. His mind created that tunnel in this place, because he’s terrified of the space between worlds… even though he should be safer than any of us, here.”
Amy shot her uncle Dannyl a sharp look, demanding more info; but the handsome older man just kept blabbing on.
“Between the worlds, having a stable form is highly unusual, we will attract the attention of the natives of this place, but they cannot interact with us here, only these figments reveal their presence to us.” He grinned at the gathered kids, walking close together in the weird place.
“That’s why the journey can be energetic or more disturbing at times. These things you see, smell and hear are figments and fragments of dreams and particles of mortal souls, drifting through the endless gulfs of… well, whatever. The gaze of our mortal eyes give them a brief semblance of form and shape, if not substance as we pass by.”
“What about that creepy red nebula over there?” Frankie asked nervously, watching the distant phenomenon with suspicion. “That thing hasn’t changed or drifted away like the others…”
“You can see that?” Dannyl asked quietly. “Try to avoid looking that way… you will be better off not knowing.”
The team traveled on in silence, surrounded by a pool of light that had no source and illuminated nothing but each other, following them until they were once more in a cave.
“Yup, this is the right place.” Dannyl said with a sigh, when a stone tablet covered with arcane markings appeared, carved directly into the native granite of the mountain.
The images and runes were crisp and sharp, freshly re-pointed by a skilled stone carver, standing silent guard over the entrance to the void. “That’s Ivy and Tallum’s work. Those two make a nice warding glyph and seal.”
The ginger explorer took the lead, once they passed through the subtle curtain of disorienting and weird sensations the stone tablet emitted without light or any other manifestation that could be perceived with mortal senses.
“You kids never received the usual intro to realm travel that most delvers get.” He murmured as they walked through the rift in the granite mountain’s heart.
“Most of the real problems that lurk among and between the worlds are incapable of crossing the veil unaided… Your typical demons, evil spirits, liches and other self willed undead are unable to cross the boundaries between worlds.” He chucked and nodded at the various cave life around the team as they neared the entrance to the surface.
“These kinds of wardings strengthen those restrictions, keeping out most non-senients too, like bugs and such. Critters that pass the veil usually just crawl on, unaware that they are in a new world, but often they go monster on the journey, mutating and changing once they arrive in a physical realm. Otherwise we’d have a lot more of those monster bug type problems.”
He patted the stone tablet as they passed into the real world and grinned at the kids following behind him.
“Countess Tawny must be freaking out, let’s put her mind at ease.”
Outside, in the gray, rainy rift in the mountains, the team stood in the cave entrance, donning rain gear over their light travelling leathers. Attired in loose pants and hooded jackets of gray and brown worsted wool treated with an alchemical water repellent substance. The team began the long and exhausting climb and hike down to the road, one narrow and windswept ridge away, as the rain slowly became a drizzling mist. They spent a wet, muddy and pretty miserable hour climbing, hiking and scrambling over the well marked but largely unimproved trail in the wet and cold.
“Are you kids ready to lay down some miles and get back home before we miss anything fun?”
#