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Sailing Ether Tides
Smuggler’s Blues Ch: 29

Smuggler’s Blues Ch: 29

Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance

Smuggler’s Blues Ch: 29

High above the azure sea, Shai and Otho took the lookout position on the rim of the volcano, scanning the horizon for signs of intelligent life; while the rest of the team explored the shady interior of the cone.

Liam and Audrey led the way; down a narrow trail that coiled and snaked down to the interior, descending seventy yards in a gradual slope to the lightly forested floor. Little light reached so far down; as a result, very few trees grew at the bottom. Instead, moss, ferns and fungus thrived everywhere in the rich, loamy, hidden vale.

Steaming hot springs gushed from the ancient volcano’s floor, boiling, brilliantly colored and definitely not for bathing; at least four significant geothermal pools were bubbling away in the two or three acres of relatively level ground that made up the dimly lit place.

The sulfurous, mineral stench would have been pretty rough, were the team not equipped with StinkRings… or rather Aroma Bands™, as the marketing materials called them.

“Are we sure this thing is really extinct?” Tallum asked, when the steam and warmth rising from below became oppressive.

“The soil here is the product of centuries, brother. It hasn’t erupted in at least a few hundred years; probably longer, judging by the jungle and the rest of the island.” Liam answered calmly, while his eyes remained in constant motion. “Stay alert… there was nothing dangerous on the exterior but this is unexplored.”

Liam’s words of warning proved wise a few minutes later, when a roaring monstrosity the size of a freight wagon came stampeding at them in a desperate, ferocious charge.

It leapt from beneath an overhanging slab of rock, hurling itself at the team faster than such a creature should have been able to move, shaking the walls of the volcano with its mighty roar of challenge.

“Oh… Well then.” Tallum sighed as he ‘dodged’ the gigantic, rampaging, snapping snail by stepping to the right.

By absolutely gigantic snail standards, the thing was absurdly quick. It cruised along at a steady walking pace and could even manage bursts of speed that brought it up to a quick jog… if the jogger were woefully out of shape. The beast slid over the moss with deceptive ease, but really struggled where stones or boulders interfered with its movement. It left a shining slime trail that was super slick and could easily trip and coat an unwary Adventurer.

Getting fully coated with the clinging, almost frictionless goop was one of the few ways a snapping snail could actually kill a warrior. Any unlucky hunter that fell into the mucus and found themselves slathered in the clinging, magically slippery slime was unlikely to escape without assistance.

The horror of being helpless, trapped in a slippery coating of snot, while a gigantic snail slowly consumed the victim alive was the stuff of horror stories, the kind often told to newbie Adventurers around the campfire. It was always ‘a guy from another town that a friend knew…’ who perished in those cautionary tales.

“Shai, we’re going to need your help with this.” Liam spoke crisply into his earcuff and collar button, while he sidestepped the creature as well. He continued his conversation, as though a gigantic monster were not currently bound and determined to smash him flat and devour the handsome warrior count alive.

“Yeah, I guess you heard it. A snapping snail… it’s the biggest I’ve seen, you know how fast they go bad…” He murmured contentedly, as he and the big smith kept the creature busily following them around.

“So tasty…” Ivy mumbled eagerly. “Get it to lay down some more slime while you’re at it, boys. That stuff’s valuable too.”

“Gods…” Dannyl muttered at his avaricious sister, through a cheeky grin. “You work them like rented mules, Ives.”

“Bah!” She scoffed, watching her husband dodge another attack by the creature. “Tallum’s out of shape, it’ll do him good. Shai’ll be here in a half hour, then we’ll kill it… It was always so much easier with Gary along…”

“He didn’t mind butchering gross stuff, either.” Dannyl sighed wistfully. “Good times…”

#

Gary woke with a massive sneeze, rolled over and gazed sleepily up at the starry sky above. Someone had wrapped him in a blanket and covered him with another; most likely the three Ragamuffins currently snuggled close to him on the lawn, asleep under the warm summer sky beneath their own covers.

He gently wriggled free of his three oldest kids and escaped into the moonlit garden for a thinkin’ sesh. Among the arbors and vines, he strolled and thought over the last few weeks of craziness slowly and carefully. Gazing out over the valley below, leaning on the garden wall beside the stable, he sighed long and low into the night.

The goddess’ cursed idol was gone… Shai now had it securely stashed away, where it couldn’t cause any more trouble. Less worrying, but still a concern; the troll foot was also gone. It had vanished from his totally not torture, tickle contraption at some point after he’d banished the house.

His shoulders drooped as the realization hit him.

“That’s why I had eldritch diarrhea on the ride here… It really did feel like I was crapping out a gut full of knucklebones.” He whispered to the silent moon he’d once called home every night while he slept. “No wonder my butthole is still sore.”

“Thanks for that, dad.” Barry’s voice drifted down from the open hayloft door above him. “Lindsey and I really needed an update on the current state of your turd-cutter.”

“Barry… I told you to be quiet!” A sharp, feminine voice rose from the same doorway; scolding his son fiercely, as was proper. “Everyone stargazes in their own way; if he enjoys contemplating his anus beneath the moon, let him.”

“Thank’s Lindsey…” Gary muttered, nonplussed at her ‘defense’ of his supposed ass-tronomy hobby. “I didn’t know you were there.” He hopped up on the garden wall, his back to the valley, looking up at the two young faces peering at him from the loft door. “Sorry to intrude; I was just thinking.”

“Master Ward, er… Gary…” Lindsey faltered for a moment when he met her eyes.

The light of madness in his gaze was undeniable, but so too was a strange, gentle sadness that suddenly seemed far less frightening. She swallowed her nervousness and spoke with a firm voice.

“Gary, high priestess Becky told us a bunch of… things while you were… sleeping. Do you really have the power to slay immortal beings?”

He gazed up at them soberly for a few long seconds before he answered her question.

“Do I look like the kind of person who could do something like that?”

He smiled weakly and shook his head. “I can’t wield any more magic than a mundane child could, nor can I raise my hand in violence to any sentient being. I can’t even hunt normal beasts for food.” He shrugged and held his hands out helplessly.

“I’m exactly what you see, a crippled clown. I can still do a few silly tricks, but only a few… and only the silly ones.”

“But you did, once…?” She whispered softly, while Barry tried to shush her.

“It’s ok, son.” The older man’s words stilled Barry quickly, as he turned back to her. “I’m not allowed to answer that question, miss Lindsey… I hope you can understand my predicament.”

He smiled up at her face and his son’s with a deeply conflicted expression that was easy to see, but hard to read.

“On the night of the Madman’s moon, a little over fifteen years ago; I died violently and explosively. I made my last show of defiance and did something truly and undeniably horrible, while surrounded by my tormentors and their servants.” He shrugged helplessly in the moonlight.

“A few of those numberless pieces of me fell to this world that night… and another precious one, a year later. The dryads brought them to Shai, when they landed… My darling wife cared for our sons alone, while I was away. She still does, really, since I’m pretty messed up most of the time.”

“Barry said that he and his brothers were… different…” She mumbled, lost in a new kind of awkwardness that no one could be prepared to face.

“They are different, but not in any really important ways, honey.” He soothed the girl, while his son shifted on their bed of hay and blushed so hot he was almost glowing in the darkness of the loft.

“But there were way more than four pieces of me flung into the void, Lindsey. Some of them may have landed on these incomplete and damaged worlds all around us, all alone.”

“So you have more sons out there, somewhere?” She asked carefully.

“There may be some weirdness, above and beyond the current situation, as we understand it.” He weaseled his words carefully and uncomfortably, seeming deeply upset by the topic. “That’s why we need to run some experiments and gain more insight into… stuff.”

“I still don’t understand what’s so important about the gigantic stone wedding tackle…” She found the courage to ask at last. “Why is it so important?”

“This valley, love… My family came here to uproot an evil demon of undeath and shadows, about fifteen years ago. It was just a job, that was what we did then and we were good at it. The best ever, really.” He sighed happily and looked up at the little green moon, high above.

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“Back then, there were no dungeon maws here, not even one; I would have felt it then for sure. Now there are so many fissures in reality here, hundreds, everywhere within the range of my occult senses. I can feel them, while that thing is inside my borders. There are literally hundreds of passages, fractures in reality all around us.”

“Really? Barry gasped. “Do Becky, Wilf and Harry know?”

“I’m sure they suspect. Most of the fissures are too small to allow anything through, not even insects… A few are high in the sky and pose little threat, while many more are deep in the solid stone of the mountains, or far beneath our feet.”

He smiled at the pair of kids, with their heads hanging over the edge of the hayloft, looking down on him. “That busted nut out there is the cause of all of these entrances into the void. That’s not real marble, it’s dreamstuff and divine essence, mixed in with whatever War made his avatar from… some kind of star stuff, I think…” Gary paused to mull that over for a while.. “Anyway, that testicle crashed to the ground here and fractured reality in some super weird ways. When a few tons of stone dreamstuff hammered down from the moon, reality itself fractured and sent echoes, fragments and energy thundering through the veil. Wherever the rest of it landed, the same thing is happening.”

“I still don’t really understand…” Lindsey mumbled softly.

“Lindsey, the little green moon up there isn’t real. It’s a figment of my imagination that I forced into reality, high above the world.” He whispered to the pale girl hiding above.

“The gods, spirits and fae play there now, but once it was just me, an enormous army of me lived there, then. A long time ago I was captured as a naked soul, traveling blindly through the void to my next birth.” His mad smile returned, as he continued on.

“They captured me and used me in unclean experiments that broke my soul and mind apart… I was fractured and splintered into endless, recursive me, to be a reusable sacrificial victim and experimental subject for demon summonings on this world.”

He smiled wanly at her and shrugged.

“The immortals that did it to me, did the same thing to so many other captured souls… We’ll never know for sure, but the Morrigan said that of the legions of souls they captured and shredded, only I was able to remain stable and sane after being torn apart into endless pieces.” He giggled a little at that and sighed again.

“They need the sanity of a mortal, you see. That’s the secret to everything, the sentient and conscious Will of a mortal soul is a potent thing. It can work wonders.”

“That’s enough, dad. Let’s go to bed now.” Amy called from the garden. “Leave Lindsey alone. We don’t want her running off into the night, screaming.” While his daughter was busy scolding him, Amy’s little white kitten pounced into his lap, purring and making biscuits viciously to distract the rambling lunatic.

“Ow! Watch the claws, Shiro! Bad spirit kitty!” He yelped, entirely dismissing the ominous mood. His mission accomplished, Shiro leapt into the hayloft from Gary’s lap; raking the poor fool’s legs with sharp hind claws in the process.

“Hey! I’m taking away your catnip stash!” He complained at the vanished feline.

#

Under a bright morning sun, Gandree rapped on the dark gray boulder out behind his home. It was the same stone, a chunk of pink marble that had been exposed to terrific heat and hurled down from the sky; to embed itself a few feet into the granite mountainside forever.

The dwarf lad knew stone… it was unavoidable in Dwarfhold, mining was their whole deal. Marble was not a stone that should be found among these granite hills, certainly not something like this.

Stranger yet, the stone had been worked and shaped by skilled hands and with no tool he recognized. Even stranger, it seemed to be part of a statue… The thing had subtle creases, wrinkles and veins wrought on the rounded surface, bringing to mind a patch of distinctly rumpled skin.

“How large of a statue, that this is an elbow?” He sighed in wonder. “And it’s the same stone, in every detail…”

“Yes boy. The world is broken… like a shiny gem. Broken, but all the pieces are still here, floating around, reflecting what is real in their facets, often a bit distorted, but a true reflection in most cases.” Daisybelle sighed. “You will see many things that are similar, even people, at times. Be wary, watch for trouble, not minor details of which rock is where.” She grumbled cheerfully, as she led him to the same passage, behind the stone.

“This will be a spooky spooky one, Gandree. Focus your mind and remember to stay with us, no matter what. And that’s no elbow, my sweet boy. Not an elbow at all.”

With that, she swung onto Petunia and led the way through the dark crevice in the hillside and into a maddening nonplace of lurking eyes and strange, hallucinatory colors.

He buried his face in Nightshade’s warm ruff, when that red, fearsome nebula once more focused its gaze on him.

The sensation held no hostility, malice or hunger, only a vast and unguessable curiosity. After a few… minutes? He peered out of his hairy hideout. That red vaporous entity was still there, watching and waiting, until they once more were engulfed by stygian darkness.

A terrifying and uncertain time later, they burst out of the dark and endless night and into bright morning sunshine on a high, conical mountaintop. All around, a bright cerulean sea stretched to the horizon, sunlight skipping over the waves.

A forested and cultivated seashore spread out below them, with a deep harbor filled with ships and boats beside a city of coarse, gray volcanic stone. Creeping giant orchids and vines covered the city walls of the thriving city, shading the outer wards beneath leaves and flowers so large, they were visible from atop the mountain.

“Turtle island and Port City. Here any person can walk in the open and trade by day, even a goblin girl.” Daisybelle sighed cheerfully. “Many of these are pirate ships below us, others are smugglers, drug runners and mercenaries, all manner of folk come here, many are wicked and evil.” She said with a grin.

“Only slave trading and necromancy are forbidden in this place, though they do exist here as well, in the shadows and by night, when even pirates hesitate to leave the safety of locked doors and stout walls.”

“So that’s why we’re traveling by day.” He mumbled, more than slightly put off by her news.

“Yes… and because the cult of light has many shadow demons in its ranks. Even Daisybelle can’t ride at night unseen by shadows. Those dumb dumbs are useless by day, just as their bandit knights are helpless in the forest.”

“You’re very knowledgeable, miss Daze.” The dwarf murmured with frank amazement and admiration.

The sweet green girl smiled and nodded eagerly.

“King papa says ‘know your enemy and know yourself; then kick them in the ballsack’.” She intoned, as though this were an ancient proverb or wisdom from a centuries old tome of forgotten, warrior lore.

“Come, we must enter town and arrange lodgings. Keep your secrets and gifts close, Gandree.” She whispered. “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

#

Shai hit the volcano floor in ten minutes, riding her bike down the steep mining trail at a breakneck pace, when she wasn’t taking mad leaps to skip entire sections of switchbacked road. At the sound of her bike bell and her whooping, excited cry of Joy, Liam sidestepped the charging snail once more, leaping to one of the last sections of unslimed moss in the area. He pivoted on his toe in the instant after his boot touched ground and sprang back at his gastropod foe.

His brightly enameled, ornate and bejeweled spear flashed and sparkled in the dim space, the yard long, leaf shaped blade shearing through tough invertebrate hide and into the beast’s simple nervous system. With a quick twist and tug, the thing fell limp, neatly skewered through its tiny excuse for a brain.

“The god of Beasts rejoices in our hunt, while grieving for our prey… until we meet again.” Liam intoned reverently, as the thing’s eyestalks drooped down limply.

Tallum Shai and Dannyl fell to disassembling the creature and packing it away in Shai’s storage gift. The massive creature’s valuable parts took a long time to slowly load into her shadow, since she had no intention of resummoning her home down in the steamy grotto.

Shai had little affinity for the strange interdimensional spookiness that powered the gift she shared with her husband. As a result, the shell, edible parts and useful organs had to be cut into manageable pieces. Nothing larger than a travel trunk could fit into her storage gift, or she could stow smaller objects equalling her own mass…

Anything she wished to stow long term, or any additional mass beyond her storage capacity would slowly slip deeper into her shadow, eventually ending up in her basement storage rooms, where its freshness would be maintained until she retrieved it.

After a solid two hours of work, they had the beast stashed away and the unwanted parts scattered around the grotto floor, for nature to reclaim.

They chatted as they worked, dismantling the behemoth with well practiced teamwork. Liam stood watch with Otho, since his mistress was busily scraping snail slime off the rocks, ferns and moss with a wide shovel. Ivy had several buckets of the stuff stacked on a tarp near where the others were plying axes and saws on the stone hard shell of the monster snail.

“Otho smelled cookfires on the tradewinds, so some kind of civilization is within a few miles.” The short blonde mage enthused, without pausing her diligent mucus collecting activities. “If we had Moonrise…”

“If we had Moonrise, it would be foolish to sail off without local knowledge… in a shallow drafted river trader.” Dannyl answered firmly. “That’s how whole teams get swallowed up in these places…” He paused to think about what he’d just claimed and smiled at his friends.

“Ok, it’s not usually a sailing off in a river boat that fits in someone’s pocket, problem.” He sniffed at his comrades and frowned with exaggerated drama.

“Point well taken, Dannyl. I do have little experience with bluewater sailing, meself. I should rather have better preparation, ‘ere we just toddle off intae the sunset.” Shai murmured thoughtfully. “There be nae danger, Gary and the bairns could come here with nae worries…”

“Now that has possibilities” Count Kinnis said with a wide smile. “This is officially an exploration, not a delve.” He announced, when the team was finishing up. “We’ll head back and look into further expeditions immediately.”

“Sweet, I just finished up. I planted a strangler fig down here and a few golden figs on the southern shore.” Dannyl dusted his gloves free of clinging volcanic loam and smiled. “Once they root, Ward will be able to come here and fly around a little. He loves any excuse to spend a few days just flying around…”

#

Ward sneezed violently and sputtered in pain, as his sinuses took a battering from the inside. “Ghah…!” He moaned, holding his hand cupped over his nose. “Dat sucks!”

“Don’t be such a baby, uncle.” Amy grumbled, as she passed him a hankie from up her sleeve. “Now sit still; papa can’t concentrate with you fidgeting around.”

She finished scolding the household god and went back to helping Harry set up the musical barriers and magical isolation circles around their dad.

“Oh, that’s snug…” He mumbled happily, as the complex magical rituals closed around him one by one, cutting a few square yards of the garden off from the rest of the world in ways both obvious and occult. “That feels nice…” He burbled merrily, taking a good stretch and jogging in place for a moment.

“Yeah, well we can only keep it up for maybe a half hour.” Becky whispered quietly. “Your magical radiation will start eroding our spells right away, so let’s get to work. Wilf, where are those awful instruments?”

“Bring me that little stone mace too, I want to compare some things that are troubling me.” Gary called out, from inside his interlinked and interlocking magical circles.

“Time, it’s all weird around us…” He whispered softly.

#

“So what exactly is going on down there?”

Lindsey and Barry were watching the experiment from a good distance away, along with the rest of team Clown-Shoes, including Harry, who had been banished to the far end of the garden as well, once the preparations were finished. They’d all been shooed away to the periphery, since the boys’ auras interacted too freely with their father’s, since they were so similar in so many ways. That would introduce a layer of chaos no one wanted in magical experiments.

Down the slope, closer to the house the boys’ father was surrounded in layer after layer of magical inscriptions and circles. They were spun out in gypsum, salt, chalk, clay, wire constructs, string, talismans and carved totem poles, all directed at sealing and bottling up the man inside.

“He can just walk over them, right?” She asked softly, even though they were far from the action. “He’s not trapped.”

“Oh yeah, he is!” Harry interrupted eagerly, his eyes bright with scholarly enthusiasm. “Until those musical instruments are secured, he can’t exit those circles without getting cursed. This is pretty dangerous… to him, anyway. He’s unable to even go to funerals or active graveyards without getting all messed up inside.”

“The gods really didn’t want him doing any necromancy.” Barry whispered in her ear, while Harry went on.

“The real problem is the void in reality he’s bound to. It’s always spewing energy into the world. If it stays stuffed in there with him, the spiritual pressure inside the circle could spike pretty high.” The young lad shrugged. “I’m sure they accounted for that.”

“Why is your dad staggering around like that?” Lindsey asked, interrupting Harry again.

#

Gary sat in the garden, with the objects displayed on racks around his perimeter. One of the kids would turn or manipulate the things for him, as he noted the details of their construction and whatever it was that only he could see, hidden in the inlay work, inset jewels and miniscule inscriptions. Each of the awful things was a work of skilled craft, but not a labor of love.

Rage, anger and hate permeated every piece of the instruments, just as the enchantments wrought by the artisan were designed to torment the formerly immortal demon souls trapped within. Here and there he found deliberate failure points built in, places where time, tension, wear or warping would eventually free the creatures trapped inside.

“Nasty and cruel…” He muttered over the flute, as he gazed into its eternally screaming zombie face. “And yes, very newly made… This little mace though; it’s not new at all. Not at all.” He peered more closely at the egg-shaped nodule of green stone someone had bored a hole through the center of and mounted to a shaft of blackthorn.

“This is primitive, elegantly primitive. Goblin made and I’d say it was made by me… if I was raised by goblins?”

He was starting to look woozy and a little flushed in there, as the magical pressure built up inside their enchanted glyphs and circles. “Chill dad, we’re stashing the doodads, we’ll get you out quick.” Rio called out, while Wilf and Amy bustled the instrument abominations away.

“Good, cause I don’t wanna know what it feels like when your spells burn out with me inside…” Gary mumbled dizzily. “Too much magic in the circles… Maybe we shoulda put the toys inside and left me outside?”

“Fair point, dad.” Rio agreed, while watching one magical construct after another break and fizzle out. “Get those things stashed, guys! He’s gonna…”

A sudden cracking sound that was only audible in the bones of the listeners, sounded through the still mountain afternoon. Every living thing within several miles stopped what it was doing and fled away from the sound that wasn’t, as the last magical circle around the weird cursed man fizzled and popped with sparks of blue and white light.

#