Sailing Ether Tides
Ch: 20 Walking On The Moon
Gabriella Rex, Pontifex Obscura and reigning empress on the cubic throne of Light made a desperate leap, as a sword whistled over her close shorn, kinky black curls and struck the back wall of her coach.
She rolled over her left shoulder and out the other carriage door, into a handspring that landed her back on her feet. She sprinted for the shrubbery, dodging a flying form, as another assailant came at her from the right.
Her imperial majesty’s ignoble escape into the roadside verdure ended swiftly, as a sword wielding figure appeared from the very bush she was diving for. Her furious cry of inarticulate rage shattered the night, visibly shaking and disorienting the cloaked figure. Already in motion and unable to change course, Gabbie turned her escape attempt into a desperate grappling attack.
They vanished into the shrubs together, with a furious crackle of snapping twigs; until, a moment later Gabbie sprinted into the darkening woods, clutching the attacker’s sword. More pursuers flitted through the shady forest, sprinting after the fleeing monarch, while her six lightly armored and heavily outnumbered bodyguards struggled with at least twenty five assailants.
In a clearing, under the warm afternoon sun, two cloaked figures closed in, one wielding a cudgel and shield, the other bore two shortswords.
Her meadow ended in a steep clay bank that fell off into a rushing stream twenty feet below to the north, and curving slowly east. That and a thicket of hawthorn and thornberries cut off her escape on two sides, as a pair of two legged stalking wolves in human skins hemmed her in, confident that their prey was in hand.
Gabbie took a firm stance and adjusted her grip on her stolen cutlass. The relatively hefty, chopping blade with a primitive, clipped point was a far cry from the elegant and versatile daisho she had been practicing with. Those slender, paired blades were familiar friends after so many years studying her husband’s second great passion.
This brutish chopper would lend itself poorly to her sword arts, it felt like a kitchen cleaver in her hands… but she’d worked hard and learnt that craft for herself, as well.
With a dancer’s effortless grace and small, quick steps, the empress glided across the meadow. Her movements were deceptively fast; seeming to float over the grass in the strange ‘ghost walk’ that was the hallmark of a nearly forgotten, classical imperial sword style.
She cut high twice at the man with two swords, forcing him to step back a few desperate paces, in the face of her smooth, tranquil aggression.
With an unhurried side step and a savage movement of her left hand, the cudgel wielder staggered back from her flank, with a slim dagger in his belly. He fell, gasping stupidly on the grassy soil and struggling against the inevitable.
Swords spent just a moment considering his partner’s fate, only to find himself hard pressed, once more. Lightning swift strokes of her sword battered at his defenses… First, his left shoulder, he barely blocked the force of that stroke. Her carefully controlled, effortless seeming attacks flowed at him driving the young assassin back across the meadow.
She laid out a triple slash pattern, the way a goodwife might unfolded a quilt to welcome a guest into her home; diagonally across the belly, groin and face; she pressed forward relentlessly, forcing the masked and cloaked man to defend and skitter backwards, or risk spilling his vitals to the dirt.
With mercurial suddenness, she flicked her point into a low stop thrust that skewered his thigh, right through the meat above and behind his knee. Her foe neatly hamstrung, the empress turned and fled down the river bank, dashing into the trees.
“Your flight through the woods ends here, empress of my heart.” Jocomo whispered, as he stepped from the shadows and folded her into a warm hug that smelt of old leather, forest herbs and man… her man.
“These training exercises are getting out of hand…” She murmured quietly. “I think I might have hurt that poor girl I stole this awful chopper from.” She dropped the weapon into the loamy forest soil with a sigh.
“Mary had a black eye and a bruise on her hip, nothing more.” He whispered to his wife, while she rooted around in his cloak to get warm. “The healer says she will be right as rain in the morning, and is asleep from healing backlash at the moment.”
“And the other two?” She demanded, still suspicious of her mad northern barbarian brother’s witchcraft, after all these years.
“These ‘ghost whompers’ stubbornly refuse to cause injury to the living…” He murmured happily. “Beyond that stunning effect, on a mortal strike… Yet they do horrible things to the undead, even the incorporeal wretches. We test them rigorously before they come near you, my empress, each and every time.”
His earnest sincerity in the face of her own, self admitted silliness shamed her into a naughty little giggle, just for him.
“That’s a point for you, Joco… How ever will poor Gabbie come back from this deficit? It seems hopeless!”
She cooed and giggled again, telling him that this week, she had decided that in their very friendly and very secret competition, he had already won the title.
“Well then, as you have acknowledged my skills, I’ll begin my reign early… as Monarch of the Bedroom!”
He delivered a crisp and ringing swat to the imperial seat, followed by a gentle tushie squeeze that made her squawk of alarm become a warm sensual purr.
“I thought we were competing for Master of the Menu this week!” Her shameful and bald faced lie was certain to earn poor Gabbie a sexy forfeit or a pleasant penalty, the poor dear. Jocomo stilled his wide, happy grin; forcing himself back into character as the dour, dangerous Left Hand of the empress.
“Whisper candidates, form up.” He snapped quietly, confident that his trainees would hear him, wherever they might be.
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Twenty nine cloaked figures slipped from the shadows and bowed… just a simple bow, rather than the elaborate ritual of abasement and surrender, her courtiers had performed for generations uncounted. It still soured her stomach, when one of the old guard insisted on the traditional ways… It reminded her of so many rituals at the feet of so many deceived and doomed child empresses, stretching back into history long forgotten.
For untold generations, each empress was an infant girl, delivered to the triumvirate of clerics: War, Order and Craft, immediately after the prior empress’ passing. She would rule unchallenged, guided by her triumvirate of clerics, until her twentieth feast of war, just before her legal majority on the feast of Secrets…
At that point, for some reason, one that no one ever bothered to consider or examine, let alone investigate; the empress and her entire household would perish in a very hush, hush ‘tragedy’... Which was quickly forgotten in the joyous tumult of the coronation of their convenient new infant monarch.
Gabbie had broken that bitter cycle, escaped through some bold, piratical derring do and returned triumphant; to rip the literal heart out of a demonic cult that had ruled her empire from the shadows for literal centuries. Then she had begun the hard labor of reforging her empire, her husband and herself in the image she saw in her mad brother’s dreams.
Now Gabriella Rex, empress of Light was a woman fully grown, with good and loyal retainers to see her will carried out. She surveyed her latest crop of Whisper candidates and smiled.
“You all did very well… Dame Spider will inform those who have been chosen for this month’s class.” She spoke softly and earnestly, but still some of the young warriors flinched away from her gaze and visibly resisted the urge to hurl themselves to the dust.
One young woman found the wherewithal to actually raise her hand awkwardly.
“Yes, first cadet Lillian?” Jocomo asked gently, taking a subtle cue from his empress.
She stepped forward, a hesitant half pace and halted. “Cadet Mary, the fourth seat…?” She asked in a desperate whisper. “We know only that she did not fall into formation.”
“Mary is in the healer’s tent, sleeping off a minor battering and a few bruises, first cadet. I will be making a note in your permanent record.” He murmured as he jotted in his notebook.
“Rely on the chain of command to inform you of what you need to know.” He finished tartly, as he closed his book with a crisp, self satisfied little pat. He watched behind hooded eyelids and a smug half smirk for a moment, wondering if she was made of the material he was looking for.
“Yes sir.” She answered, without wilting by a hair under his gaze.
“You and Mary, eh?” He asked with an uncouth wink, just outside of the empress’ earshot.
“No sir.” She replied, still cooly tranquil… on the surface.
“Fourth seat and seventh seat, are a couple sir… But she’s my sister, sir… as is the seventeenth seat, Elvira and twenty fifth seat, Jamie… The rest are my brothers, sir.”
“Yes, I will be making a note in your file, cadet. Fall back into formation.” His terrible notebook reappeared for a few long moments, before he tucked it back away with a satisfied smile. “As always, these trials are state secrets. Say nothing to anyone of what has transpired here today, without prior imperial authorization. Cadets, dismissed.”
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“Dame Spider is going to like her new squire… You mean, wicked man.” Gabbie sighed, as her six guardian Whispers slipped out of the shadows. “Letting those poor children dangle on your strings all night long.”
“They were all excellent… The only question is the girl you trampled flat and disarmed… She hesitated.” He murmured, as isopod draped a cloak over the empress, to ward off the coming chill and mist.
Scorpion passed over her swords with a deeper bow than Gabbie preferred; but she could overlook that in the moment… ‘Stubborn woman.’ She thought, with just a little fierce pride for her intractable, dangerous and loyal guardians. “We should really send over a feast and some chocolate for them to celebrate…” Gabbie trailed off, listening to a faint song on the breeze. “Is that ‘Mister Postman’ I hear?” She asked, already beginning to bounce on her toes and smile.
“Joco, you drop those horrid needles this instant! You know what that song is, you naughty scamp.”
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“They’re called senbon…” He grumbled sourly at his wife. Watching the little clay abomination in the form of a cute, pudgy, little white bird dip down from the sky, to perch on the empress’ shoulder. Watching the awful thing whisper in her ear sent chills down his spine every time.
He’d nailed the filthy little buggers with a thrown senbon, a few times over the years; but the seven inch long, needle darts of forged steel never managed to bring one down.
Jocomo had learnt to accept many things over the last few years…
The witchcraft though… it still turned his bowels to water and sent his hands reaching for steel, whenever he felt that unclean aura, or its echoes in the witch’s crafts.
‘Yes,’ He reflected silently. ‘So many new things…’
It was true, from Beastfolk walking the streets free and even owning property, to orphans standing tall, well fed and clothed, rather than cringing in rags, hoping and praying for the dubious blessing of fosterage with some lord, cleric, or merchant of highly variable morals and outlook.
So many of his brothers and sisters… mostly sisters… had vanished into the upper quarters and noble villas over the years. Countless young children, plucked from the grinding labor, hunger, poverty and endless training of the orphanages and invariably, never seen again.
Romantics liked to imagine fanciful tales of common children, elevated to great heights by good hearted, childless adoptive parents, or perhaps generous patrons…
Jocomo had been the empress’ left hand since he was fifteen and had a solid understanding of just how vanishingly rare such an outcome truly was. He had spent a fair portion of the last fifteen years visiting silent justice on those who were beyond the justiciars’ reach; justice long delayed, but still welcome… Delivered to a list of well monied filth, whose appetites and entertainments were whispered of in the darkest corners of noble society.
No few common rogues, bandits, assassins and criminals had fallen to his blades in his duties; they faded from his mind shortly after he washed up and filed his reports… typically. Some memories are too important to forget; he remembered clearly, each of the ‘special cases’ his empress had granted him the privilege of handling… and also, the only prey to ever elude his grasp.
That brought Jocomo’s mind back to the witch, Gary Ward and his despicable bird creation. It was currently perched on the point of Isopod’s antenna, whistling and chirping as it hopped about, pretending to be a real and wholesome bird of flesh and feathers…
“Wretched thing…” He grumbled, when it darted to Tarantula’s outstretched finger with a merry chirp of joy.
He sulked nearby and occasionally shot the thing with venomous glares that would have knocked it from its perch, were he a witch with the evil eye and uncanny magics, like the creature his wife was corresponding with… by cute little magical birdie.
He was still scowling at the tubby little thing as it whistled another measure of sweet, cheery music and flew away home, passing directly over Jocomo’s head. Something landed on the surly warrior’s head, as it passed over… Furious, he reached up and wiped away a moist, fresh deposit.
It was a small clot of clay, again. Another artfully sculpted bird poop in three noisome colors of enspelled earth, perfect in every detail besmirched his hair and hand… It was even still warm.
It suddenly moved, twitched and rolled itself into a ball on his palm, of its own volition; it quickly formed itself into a bright white egg, speckled with tiny dots of red, and perhaps some small markings, if he held it to the fading afternoon sun, just so...
He stood there for a while, looking ever deeper into the compelling, fascinating… Something so simple should have been unable to reveal the depth of craft involved, but it drew his eye closer, revealing a tangled mess of miniscule etchings, hidden among the crimson speckles on the shell.
While he peered so closely at it, the exterior cracked and flaked away revealing a tiny, red crested, snowy white imperial crane, with her wings outstretched. The tiny thing was sculpted in perfect detail, with a complex bent steel pin of cunning craft on the back of the strange ornament.
He stared in wonder at the mad, magical, inscrutable trinket, barely an inch and a half tall and shaped of clay, it felt as tough and hard as carved monster bone.
“I told you he likes you… He gave you a magic birdie of your own!” Gabriella cooed happily, directly in Jocomo’s ear. “Best yet… we’re going visiting!”
His eyebrows clashed together over the bridge of his nose at the thought of ‘visiting’ a mad wizard, possessed of unclean arts. “Perhaps your red haired, barbarian smith will do me the mercy of taking my head, this time…” He grumbled dramatically. “She was stingy only with her steel.”
“Joco, you be nice! As much trouble as you caused last time you had best be on your best behavior. No more demanding that they take your head.” Gabbie henpecked and scolded him mercilessly as they walked back to the carriage.
“I only met him briefly, but he seemed nice.” Scorpion agreed; eagerly joining forces with his wife, to ensure he, and all men in general, had a bad time… as women always have and always will.
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Becky followed Maple across the bridge and away from the haunted inn on the bluff, overlooking the sea. She sighed in relief, entering the garden took all her considerable willpower and she could never linger long. Just the thought of entering the house made her spine shake.
At first, she had tried pruning the hedges and pulling weeds from her fallen brother’s home between the worlds, but her efforts were literally useless. Any weed or stray limb she removed, evaporated and reappeared in its original location between eye blinks.
They left that lurking, empty home behind as maple drew her to the hazy, foggy realms outside her little bubble of clarity.
“Stay close, my love… there are many gods and spirits about. Their celebrations stir up potent energies… the ether is turbulent this evening.” Maple whispered, in the sound of falling autumn leaves, audible only to Becky’s ears. “I learnt this trick from Amy… She learnt it from a vampire of all creatures…” Becky smiled and remained silent, lest she draw an awkward and potent divine gaze.
Maple gently guided her away from the golden, radiant figure of the goddess Dana, where she stood on the lawn, conversing with an assortment of radiant entities. Robed in shimmer golden cloth, bereft of any embellishments. A veil of black lace hid her luminous visage, signifying her continued mourning for War, Craft and Order.
“Yes, sweet Becky, all men knew that War was in desperate love with Dana, the Healer and that she could not abide his touch or presence.” Maple whispered silently though her vocal arts, while they passed another group of strolling divines and immortals, heading towards The golden goddess’ coterie.
“Fewer know that she did deeply love him in return, and was tortured by the gulf that cruel fate put betwixt them. She is sorely tried by the loss of Order and Craft as well, but it’s War for whom she truly grieves. For the lady of Light and Healing to be angry is already an aberration that is concerning many of us.” The venerable dryad shook her head sadly. “To be angry with a mortal is incompatible with her essence… And yet she hates your poor brother with such a furious passion.”
“Ohh, yeah, best we steer clear of her.” She muttered once they were a good distance away from the goddess and her divine hangers on. “That’s a meeting I’d rather put off as long as possible.”
Becky’s mind drifted back to those chaotic, frenetic days and nights. Cults, secrets and Secrets, demons, outsiders, occult Contacts and long forgotten magics had come together in the shape of a man, one summer morning. A large, goofy, half mad musician and craftsman who’d turned her world and the rest of the world on its head, with a smile and a few silly songs.
That single fraught, terrific and terrible year had culminated in her new brother’s death at the hands of three major gods of the pantheon. War, Order and Craft had conspired with a great lady of the fae for their own dark purposes.
In a fiery and radiant display of spiritual pyrotechnics, fragments of her shattered brother had rained down on the world from the haunted moon that was among his oddest aspects.
From those sparkling shards, her nephews had appeared, fractions of her foolish friend, incarnated in their own lives, living as their own people… More alike than any twins could be, Barry, Larry, Perry and Harry were all his very image in look, voice and manner. Yet they were as distinctly different as any four brothers could be.
Without explanation, War, Order and Craft, along with one of the great ladies of the fae and an entire race of hideous aberrations known only as ‘Hollow Ones’ had vanished from the immortal realm where they dwelt that night. They were presumed dead, somehow.
Some incomprehensible force had manifested in that affable, deeply strange musician. The occult alchemy of a mortal soul, worked and reforged by many divine hands, often working at cross purposes had sparked something unheard of… A mortal whose touch was deadly to the undying. Those gods, spirits and entities winked simply from the ether in a single instant, along with a small host of lesser entities who had abetted the plotters in their mysterious goals.
Nearly two score immortals and every Hollow One in the wide multiverse disappeared and were presumably… slain… By her dying brother in his last paroxysm of rage.
Now her brother walked the world again; diminished and broken, but once more alive, through the intercession of other divines. Beast and his handmaidens, the dryads had worked their own plot, to return her poor brother to his family; which only increased Healer’s already incompatible rage and fury.
That would make interaction with the goddess of healing really awkward, socially.
“Your uncle has become adept at avoiding her, in his ongoing efforts to draw her closer to the mortal world. This place and its entertainments are a potent lure.” The dryad sighed happily, as they walked past the waterslides, scattered hotspring pools, warm, sandy dunes and lush gardens.
Eponna’s wildly colored and decorated herd of tiny ponies frisked and frolicked around the plains, meadows and open forests, or flew through the skies, if they were possessed of wings. Brilliantly chromatic, jeweled butterflies, dragonflies, moths and hummingbirds flew among the shining gem bees in golden amber or black obsidian that were everywhere; all busily tending the blossoms all around, engaging much as real insects would.
Spiders of every description dangled, leapt, lurked in their shimmering, dew spangled webs or drifted in the sky on gossamer ‘chutes of spun light. Unlike the other insects, these had every appearance of living beings, no matter how exotic or fanciful their shapes and coloration.
Many of the spiders waved cheerily at her as she strolled with Maple, through a busy, but not crowded festival of immortals.
“So this is a divine birthday party?” Becky asked quietly, when they finally slipped into the shade of the dryads’ forest. Under the boughs; one of every tree of the ancient dryad clan was present in the vast, well maintained woodland park.
It covered half of the spinning semi-real orb of the Madman’s moon, draped in moss, cool shadows and well manicured vegetation. Perhaps even greater than the variety of trees, were the herbs, bushes, vines, mosses and fungi growing in the well spaced and elegant forest of childhood fancy.
Songbirds sang from the boughs, as Eponna’s ponies and a number of less urbane entities lounged, chatted or bathed in crystal pools and rushing streams.
Dryads in their highly varied insectile forms perched all around, speaking in excited tones of whispering leaves and insect song of their new sister. Mariah had just emerged today and was already planted on many worlds, her tender clones watched over by zealous guardian beasts and sentient fragments of the multifarious beings at the party.
“Ladies…” Marduk spoke cooly and with a self-deprecating lilt of urbane delight in his voice, as he strolled over; arm in arm with Eponna herself, in human form. He reached up, as she bent down, that the god of man’s gathered Knowledge might kiss his much taller lover.
She folded him into a brief, smothering embrace, before darting off to rejoin the festivities with her herd.
The goddess of equines, swiftness in motion and the rushing joy of running cantered off, in the form of a tall, beautiful roan horse… whose mane and tail were drifting clouds of star spangled night sky and shining nebulae.
A small, pale human boy stood there in his robes of gold banded white, nervously playing with his divine ringlets of gleaming golden blonde hair and glancing at Becky from behind his ridiculous eyelashes…
“Come on Duckie, bring it in.” The high priestess whispered to her deity and friend, her arms held wide for an embrace.
“Oh, it’s been so long!” He gasped, lost in the arms of his mortal friend. “Th… Thirp is busy wrangling her divine aspects…” Marduk gasped and stuttered, his face lost between her modest bosoms while he worked through some emotions that immortals don’t usually have to deal with.
“Her cult is so widely varied and new that she is having a little trouble keeping it together, with so many divines here at once.” He took a few deep, calming breaths, relishing the familiar scent of his cult’s pontiff. She was so warm and animal, under the perfume of spring flowers and honeyed strawberry toast. She and her kin always carried that aroma on their flesh, whatever else they might smell of.
Duckie sighed at last, mastering his wayward feels and getting a grip on himself. He gently extracted himself from her embrace and took her hand to stroll and talk, as old friends will.
“The rest of the pantheon have been proper snobs these last few years…” He complained softly. “There’s a rumor that somehow, immortals are still dying, down there, even though our boy is… well, you know.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard…” She whispered urgently. “Has he been sneaking out and…? No, impossible!” She answered herself sharply, as if to scold a pupil for asking a dumb question.
“Magically speaking, he can’t do more than craft minor trinkets, and even that exhausts him for days afterward. His body is in good condition but…” She shook her head sadly. “No chance.”
Marduk shrugged and smiled in a way that suggested he knew far more than she suspected. “For the former god of Secrets, you have a shitty poker face, Ducks.” She sighed fondly at the smirking divine, while Maple giggled to herself, perched on a mossy boulder.
“Not even you can know this secret yet, my dear… But perhaps soon, all will be revealed.” His naughty smirk drifted away like fog, burning off under a bright morning sun.
“What we really need to talk about is the upcoming midsummer feast. They manifested as two year old children, while they spun new bodies for themselves from magic and soul stuff. Fifteen years old is a major milestone for the younger Wards… For all of them. Have they considered their possible Contracts, or discussed the matter with you?” He asked, just a little greedily.
“No dice, buddy. You can negotiate with them for yourself… But only Harry seems the studious type.” She smiled sadly at her god and shook her head.
“None of them is really him… They can’t be substitutes for Gary, right, pal? We’ve talked about this several times…”
“I know… I want Him back!” Marduk hissed, almost furious with restrained frustration and angst. “The way Beast slipped him back into the world was pretty sneaky and weird. Beast operates across multiple realities, dimensions and…” Ducky fell silent for a moment, trying to find a mortal angle on an immortal issue.
“He’s a lot, and thus can get away with ignoring some local laws. Gary’s new body is turning fifteen on Midsummer… He can Contract again that day.” He snapped, just a little peevishly.
“I want him back!” The god of Knowledge grumbled sourly, while his priestess stared in open mouthed confusion.
“That’s it, he’s just under ranked and too young to Contract?” She asked gently. “Did Beast’s weird resurrection reset his birthdate?”
“It was a reincarnation, not a resurrection, but a strange one; despite appearances, he has been desperately struggling, growing and developing over the last few years. That stress is the source of his sudden bouts of weakness and illnesses; as his new body strains to accommodate his more competent and mature soul and mind. Only now is he becoming eligible to form Contracts, now we can fill in his missing gifts. Please explain this to Shai very carefully, Becky… Technically, she has been married to a child for some time.”
“So, he was technically a newborn baby… and is only now approaching adulthood?” A tiny light of wicked glee sparked in the priestess’ dark eyes, as she considered this information.
“Becky… Some things will only be hilarious many years down the line…” Maple interrupted the smiling duo, gently. “This cultivar will be long in blossoming and longer to bear fruit… But what a sweet wine it will ferment into!” She locked her many faceted eyes on the immortal and mortal clowns she was watching over. “But only in its proper time.”
“Good point, Sugarleaf.” Becky sighed at last. “I think I’m going to let Shai figure that part out for herself…”
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