Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance
Dude (Looks Like A Lady) Ch: 31
Behind thick stone walls, quarried from the volcano long ago and draped in climbing vines and orchids, a humble second hand shop squatted. Just a short distance outside the city walls, beneath the mangroves at the edge of the swamps the faded sign spelled out ‘Used Goods’ above three coconuts painted yellow, dangling from an old chain.
Inside, someone was packing up shop quickly. The shopkeeper carefully worked to secure his most valuable goods in a number of cases, chests and trunks scattered around the shop. His movements were calm and unhurried as he selected fragile goods and stowed them in beds of straw.
The walls and shelves were littered with oddities and curious goods; from a delicate porcelain tea service, to brass ship’s lanterns of strange design, to rolled up carpets and rugs. Bolts of cloth, kitchenwares and small tools peeked out from the orderly jumble of goods all around.
“Shop’s closed.” Gary Ward grumbled, when the bell rang merrily over the front door. “Closed for good. I’m leaving this island today.”
He glared up at the hooded figure, further concealed by the bright daylight streaming in through the still open door.
Several more figures slipped in behind the first, accompanied by the metallic rattle and hiss of weapons being drawn by armored men. “You are leaving this place. With us, creature.” One of the later arrivals hissed from within her face obscuring hood. “Take it alive, if you can.”
The report of the sturdy door slamming closed started the action off with a bang, as three armed and armored men rushed the proprietor, sturdy clubs in hand and four more circled around the densely packed shelves.
“Think about this, guys…” The proprietor growled angrily as he backed toward the rear of the crowded shopfront. “I’m not gonna go with you… and somebody could get hurt.”
On his last grunted word, the big man hurled a small iron ship’s stove at the figure in the lead, bashing him down with a hundred pounds of flying cast iron. The wounded man flailed weakly beneath his new chest ornament, while the others spread out to flank the shopkeeper, cudgels ready.
The one who had spoken, began a whispered chant over by the door, while her minions spread out and encircled their prey.
“Not gonna help your buddy, huh?” The huge, hairy man grumbled at his foes. “He might die without aid…”
A stout club of baobab wood swung for his skull in answer, as the silent aggressors advanced in a group, coordinating their movements and attacks with a serene unity of purpose and an utter lack of fear.
One hairy, calloused hand caught an armored wrist, as the big man swayed gracefully in the oddly quiet fracas; the only sound was the crunch of breaking bones and the clatter of a club falling to the stone floor.
Undeterred, the wounded man attacked with his left hand, jabbing a wide bladed dagger into the shopkeeper’s grabbing shoulder.
Gary stepped to the right, bashing another assailant away, while dodging a club swung for his knees. With a frightful wrenching movement, he hurled broken arm guy over his hip, into three of his friends, while maintaining a firm hold on the man’s broken limb.
The giant shopkeeper gave a savage twist and wrench to his captured foe’s shattered arm, wielding him as a crude weapon against his friends. The maimed and now unarmed man plowed into the club wielder Gary had just unbalanced, sending both men into a messy tangle of limbs, shelving and scattered housewares.
The hairy brute stomped down on Clubby the batboy’s leg, adding another broken bone to the rapidly growing collection in the shop.
Gary delivered a vicious kick to the guts of one of them, he didn’t care which and turned around, just in time to catch a club on his upraised forearm.
He growled as the movement and impact jostled the dagger jammed in his torso, lodged firmly between two ribs and cramping his style.
A fourth attacker lunged from the shadows, stabbing his dagger deep into the big man from behind, aiming low, to miss the vitals and cripple him. Gary’s elbow flashed back in pure instinct and caught the dagger man in the temple with a sharp crack of arm bones and a skull shattering together.
Dagger guy slumped limply to the floor, his right eye popped entirely out of his crumpled skull, while the injured giant turned to the woman by the door, his right arm now broken and pretty thoroughly stabbed. A light of fury glowed in the brute’s eyes, burning like torches from his rough and wind scarred face.
“You fuckers are really gonna regret thi…” The big shopkeeper’s roaring threat ended suddenly, as a flash of un-light and a crackling sheet of dark energy blasted through him and the man still standing, flung from the outstretched hands of the woman at the door.
“How regrettable… The holy father wanted you alive.” The hooded woman sighed and leaned on a counter over the slashed and battered wreck of the heavily muscled savage on the floor. She spared no attention for her fallen comrade, sliced entirely in half at the waist and decapitated by her spell.
The two remaining intact men with uncrushed brains were unsteadily rising to their feet in silence, as she stood over her prey contemplating her next steps.
“I’ll need help hauling the body… You lot are too badly damaged to manage it.” She mused quietly at her zombies, a moment before the doorbell jingled.
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“It’s fascinating, they drained the lake, cut all the forests and leveled the valley floor…” Liam mumbled and grumbled as he gazed out over the funhouse mirror image of his wild and forested domain. His face displayed both anger and a kind of grudging respect for the changes these people had wrought.
“Don’t be too impressed. They did it all with slave labor and brutal disregard for anything and anyone that got in the way.” Dannyl snapped his brass and monster bone spyglass closed and grumbled under his breath. “Bloody light cult…”
“Oh?” Tallum rumbled behind the smaller man. “I’m in the cult of Light!”
“No, buddy… wrong cult. These shitheads are a demon cult, a really vile one too. They’ve been a serious problem for a while out here, or so Ward tells me.” Dannyl grumbled. “They’ve been taking over these fractional worlds for centuries and doing… Well, cult stuff, I guess.”
“Cult stuff?” Ivy demanded sharply. “What’s that?”
“Enslavment, rape and oppression, blood rituals, human sacrifice; all the usual nastiness you’d expect from the kind of people who you’d expect to be interested in joining a demon cult.” Dannyl sighed. “We should dip back out the way we came and find another path.”
“That bad?” Tallum growled, his usually placid face creased with an angry frown that seldom showed itself.
“Worse. Ward says that the gods have no influence or access in these worlds, so assholes like these are the only ones with magic and Contract abilities. They are unable to see or intervene here, since no one out here knows how to let them into these fragments of the world…” Dannyl smiled a little awkwardly at his friends.
“That’s part of my job, as the Death God’s Right Hand.” His smile became embarrassed when he finished his cringey title. “My god is a chunni.”
“So when you plant one of those trees you carry around, the gods can enter these worlds?” Ivy demanded eagerly. “Is that how it works?”
“Sis, it’s more complicated than that and Tallum’s getting pretty upset…” Dannyl whispered very carefully to his smiling sister. “We’ll talk later.”
Ivy’s huge husband had a look on his face that kept getting less friendly by the moment, as the blonde mage gabbled on eagerly about the Death cult her little brother belonged to.
The little blonde turned on her giant, ginger husband and grinned up at him, hands on her hips. “Jealous fool of a man! I already promised I wouldn’t join the cult and you know I couldn’t Contract with Ward if I wanted to! We’re spiritually incompatible, you big dummy!”
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“I just don’t like the way you look at him…” The giant, ginger smith sulked meekly.
“I know, Talums, he’s just so mysterious, sexy and charming…. I can’t help it, Ward’s a snack!” Ivy sighed at her husband. “But you know, I prefer a full meal…” Her whisper was just for him and brought his smile back from hiding.
“Alright you two… Let’s follow Dannyl’s advice and get ready to head back through.” Liam interrupted with a cough.
“Nae yet, ye bunch of nattering billygoats.” Shai called from deeper in the passage. “There be a seal on this void, one way only.” She announced loudly, since she was facing away, examining a stone tablet, carved in the living rock of the cavern wall.
“It be cleverly designed to let most living folk pass in, but none may go out, without a key. We must pick the lock, ‘ere we leave this place.”
“A forbiddance charm? Is it a strong one?” Ivy asked eagerly, her husband immediately forgotten in favor of an occult mystery. “Let me see!”
The blonde beauty turned and scampered over to huddle with her giant, red haired sister; oohing and aahing over a dusty old magical inscription on the cave wall.
Liam and Dannyl sat near the cave entrance, looking out over the wide, orderly farmlands under a bright, midsummer sun. “It looks idyllic…” The count mumbled. “If all one cares for is farmlands and pasturage.”
“Trust me brother, the people down there are paying a high price for the privilege of ‘living under the light’.” Dannyl answered softly. “The cult takes all the orphans, all the infirm and one child of every ten live births for their own. Those children are never seen again. They run slave markets and slaver bands across this and several other worlds, to feed their ever ravenous cult.”
Liam looked up sharply at that and skewered his young ginger friend with the glare of a lord of the land in his prime. “I always suspected that the slave trade was too well organized, too well funded and too slippery…”
“Yup. Ward has been digging around and it seems that they are the driving force behind the slave trade, overall.” Dannyl sighed. “They don’t sell, though. The cult only buys… and they buy any sentient mortal in any condition. They pay a premium for human children and a huge extra bonus for ‘unspoiled virgins’.”
“Sacrifices?” Liam asked grimly.
“Sacrifices… and other obscenities.” The explorer answered and fell silent, looking out on the pastoral scene and the beautiful, gleaming town on the far valley side. The golden sun disk pennants atop the towers were just visible, even from so far away.
“The worst crimes are always hidden behind blind faith and glorious flags.” He muttered sourly. “I’m going to plant my trees on that slope down there, keep an eye out for a few minutes.”
Liam watched as the wily young man slipped through the woodland game trails like a forest creature himself. He passed unnoticed by a group of deer, snoozing the day away under an aspen grove, leapt over a cranky badger’s den and reappeared a quarter mile down slope, digging in a sunny clearing.
A half hour later he clambered back up the steep slope and sank back onto a stone by the cave entrance beside the count, sweaty and dusty.
“What do the mages say?” He asked, around a jug of icy cold water from Liam’s storage gift. “How long ‘til they can crack it?”
“At least another day, they want to make certain the seal remains intact after we’re gone... and then however long their ritual is going to take.” The count answered serenely. “It’s nice working with dependable people.”
“You’re thinking about all the paperwork waiting for you on your desk back home, aren’t you?” The exhausted ranger grinned at the count and laughed out loud at the right red, embarrassed blush that rose to his leader’s cheeks at his accusation.
“That’s really it?” Dannyl gasped, sputtering around his jug of water. “Oh, man… you have got to get out more, brother.”
“Right now, I need to make preparations for tonight.” Liam slapped his knees in the age-old signal that he was getting up and going about his business; leaving the chuckling explorer on guard at the cave mouth. “Did you spot a place to camp, while you were making mud pies down there? Audrey wants to root in the soil for the night.”
“There’s a sheltered meadow just down slope. The soil looked a little funny, though.” Dannyl mumbled, while scanning the distant treeline with his spyglass.
“It looked like Shai or the kids had already camped there not long ago… You know, dark black, weirdly fertile soil in a perfect circle, surrounded by mundane dirt.”
“Weird…” Liam muttered. “I’ll go check it out and set up camp if it’s safe.” The count and his flower dragon vanished over the ledge in silence and were engulfed in the scattered trees in a moment.
“Never should have mentioned the dirt… Bloody druids.” Dannyl complained to the empty sky.
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Daisybelle and Gandree left the wargs under a shady tree not far from the shop she led them to, lurking on the outskirts of the edges of the town. Here the wind blew fresh off the sea, rather than the filthy harbor and its reeking, sludgy inlets. The shop backed up to a mangrove swamp and had its own pier with a single masted boat bobbing on the calm waters.
With two big saddle bags over his shoulders, the dwarf followed Daisybelle’s bouncy bottom through the door; accompanied by a merry, tinkling bell.
He’d barely come inside, when the goblin lass dropped her own burden and drew her obsidian knife with a snarl of rage.
“I smell murder…” She growled at a tall, hooded figure surrounded by a group of battered and bloody, armed and armored men.
“Children?” The hooded woman asked mildly. “No, just the demon lord’s vermin. Kill them.” She answered her own question and issued her order within a few heartbeats; emitting a sense of smug satisfaction that filled the room, much as the stench of blood and spilled entrails did.
“D-D… demon lord?” The dwarf lad gasped, as the ragged warriors began to close in on the pair. “I don’t know anything about…”
“Forget it, Gandree… They are demon cultists pretending at virtue. Those warriors are dead and walk by necromancy. She is human, though… I smell her and her demon magic.” The diminutive warrior gave a cackling warcry and shouted into the shop. “We’re here, Uncle! Hold on, if you still live!” At that point there was little time or breath left for talking.
Daisybelle launched herself at the closest warrior, He was staggering on a broken leg that seemed to only hold him up thanks to his heavily damaged armor. Her small mass was enough to topple him into his comrades in a noisy clatter, followed by a wildly laughing goblin girl, vaulting over the armored goon’s backs, right into the messy fracas at the feet of the robed figure.
All four men started for the goblin as one being, sorting their tangle out by kicking and hurling their maimed ally away without mercy, rushing to their master’s defense.
Ignored entirely as a non threat, Gandree made his presence known; when the standing warrior nearest him fell over backwards with a loud and unmusical twanging noise. The burly dwarf kicked the fallen man in the head to free his weapon and wrenched his short, heavy, shovel ukulele from the dead man’s split helmet.
With a quick and brutally economical blow, the dwarf sheared into the knee of his nearest standing foe and yanked the zombie down to the ground with a savage twist and tug on the brutally unconventional weapon.
Daisybelle stifled her shout of encouragement for her boy, when the robed woman suddenly vanished behind the counter she was standing behind, with a short cry of alarm. An instant later, the remaining zombies fell still and slumped to the ground, cleanly dead at last.
“Careful, lad… There might be some trick here.” She called out to her boy. “Uncle Ace, is that you?”
Only a low groan answered her, coming from behind the counter. Slowly, a massive figure rose from behind the sturdy desk, horribly torn and savaged all over, by weapon and spell.
The monster glared around the room with one red, blazing eye, finally settling on Daisybelle; the other orb was missing, along with half of its face, torn away by some violent act. It reached down with its one remaining arm and gently placed the robed necromancer’s still form on the counter, before tearing her hood away with a slash of its massive hand.
“Glarbla-blargh…” It groaned incoherently through a torn and ragged throat.
“We should step outside, perhaps…” Gandree muttered to his green damsel, who was watching the creature warily.
“No, we stay… He is vulnerable until he finishes eating her brain.” She whispered softly. “She will be uncle Ace, for a while.”
The awful spectre leaned down over the rigid, still very much alive and horrified woman’s face, as if for a tender kiss from what was left of his lips. The woman’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, though her body remained immobile.
Instead, the wight turned its remaining ear to its captive’s face, as a slimy, slippery, yellow and blue spotted creature wriggled out of the corpse’s auditory canal and dropped down beside the terrified woman’s ear. The tiny yellow, blue ringed octopus snaked a few tentacles into the paralyzed woman’s ear and began laboriously hauling itself inside her skull.
The dwarf looked away as her expression slowly changed from fear and rage to absolute horror, as the tiny monster squirmed deeper into her braincase.
A few long minutes of wet and squishy sounds later, the woman opened her eyes again and sat up, as if nothing interesting was going on at all.
“Daisybelle… I’d love to make proper introductions, but I’m out of here, before her friends show up.” The woman said with a wry smile and a wink.
“You two should come with me, since I doubt you’ll make it back through town, now that you’ve come here. The cult has agents scattered all through the place. We’re sailing for it.” She sighed. “I wish the cult of light much luck in trying to rule this pest hole.”
Over the next few minutes, the chests and trunks that were packed, made their way to the small boat out on the pier. The wargs and the dwarf got herded aboard over their protests and firmly instructed to sit still by the goblin girl.
“Daze… this thing keeps rocking and swaying… Is it going to tip over?” Gandree asked nervously, once he was seated on a locker near the rear of the little ship, surrounded by unhappy wargs. “This feels really unstable!”
“Not if you sit still, silly boy of mine. We will be away soon.” She landed a lingering kiss on his lips as she darted away, fiddling with the ropes, while ‘uncle Ace’ returned to the shop.
When she emerged a moment later, the strange woman closed and locked the shop up, after tossing a burning lantern filled with oil into the crowded, tinder dry interior. The woman leapt aboard the slowly drifting boat and took the helm, while Daisybelle settled down on Gandree’s lap with a satisfied grunt.
“Daze, take the helm, please. I need to get myself sorted out. Head northwest, darling.”
The woman had a smooth, sultry voice when she spoke, warm and inviting. The torn hood revealed short cropped, white-blonde hair and deep bright green eyes in a pale, fine featured face.
She was a startlingly beautiful woman in her early twenties, with rich sensuous curves barely concealed by her torn and tattered robe.
“I hate taking a new body on the run, but what can we do?” She sighed sweetly. “This bitch’s memories are going to give me indigestion and nightmares for a week…” She complained to no one in particular.
The odd woman stripped bare with casual ease, right there on the deck, before dipping a pail on a rope over the side and dousing herself with sparkling seawater, fresh from the ocean all around. Water showered over her lithe, milk pale body, sheeting over her full, pink nippled breasts and hairless pubic mound, running off the deck at her feet, back into the sea.
Crystalline droplets glistening in the late morning sun, the wind riffling in her short hair while the little ship turned to chase the breeze toward the northwest.
She took a bar of soap from the locker her water pail came from and began lathering her body all over, scrubbing herself with a sponge from the same stores. Her smile of sensual delight and pleasure was a radiant beacon of sexiness, nearly blinding the stunned dwarf lad.
A towel and robe emerged from the same locker, easing Gandree’s anxiety, once she was covered.
“Ahh, much better.” She announced with pleasure, the towel still draped over her hair in effortless, casual elegance.
“We haven’t been properly introduced yet, they call me the ‘Demon Lord’ of this realm, even though I refuse to rule it.” She winked again, and clicked her tongue at him while shooting him dead with double finger guns. “I’m Gary Ward… And I think, so are you.. brother.”
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