Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance
Two Turntables And A Microphone Ch: 28
A plump little clay birdie winged its way to the little hamlet under the crag, and landed on Gary’s shoulder. It began whistling a sharp, spousal rebuke to the unhappy man in the bath; a sweet tune that reminded him that he needed to stop worrying his wife with silly antics and unnatural acts.
“Aw, man… Shai’s pissed.” He sighed weakly.
“What happened?” Rio asked from nearby, under the waterfall.
“I guess that stupid idol got flung out into her house when she summoned it. Spiritual pressure and divine essence can be energetic when mixed carelessly.” He had a sheepish expression plastered on his face, while the clay songbird hopped around, waiting for his reply, chirping merrily.
“I’m starting to regret making these…” He mumbled under his breath.
Rio sighed. plucked the tiny construct creature from his father’s shoulder and began to play a reply on the plump ocarina golem. A few bars of high, piping music later, the bird fluttered off into the morning sky, singing and darting away to the far end of the valley, singing happily as it flew.
“Come on dad. Let’s get your house set up; I know you wanna get to work and Wilf has some taboo objects in his workshop.”
“Oh, yeah, he’s got those three cursed musical instruments… Damn! I want a look at those.” Gary grumbled. “That jadite mace Ivy looted from a goblin is really something…”
“Amy, Wilf and I saw what you saw, dad.” Rio interrupted the soggy musician. “That mace was made with your arts and techniques. I’d swear you made it and you said as much yourself; those three instruments are the same.” He sat down on the curb of the bath with a towel and got to work drying his thick, dense curls.
“You know I didn’t, that I couldn’t… I can’t do that kind of thing anymore.” Gary replied lamely.
“You know what I’m talking about; Ward won’t talk about it, but I’m certain he knows something. There’s more of you out there, maybe a lot more. I think one of them; one of you, created these objects.” Rio fixed him with a cool and steady stare, pinning his father in place with his dark eyed regard.
“Tell me what you suspect, dad.”
“I want to see those instruments first; then we’ll all talk together, Becky and all you kids.” He answered softly. “I’ll put myself in a ritual circle. As long as I stay inside and the doodads stay outside, I should be able to look at them. You kids can hold them up and let me examine them.”
A wide smile brightened Rio’s face. “Nice! Rest here, I’ll get the others together. We haven’t done this in forever!” He dashed off, excitement evident in his long, leaping stride.
Gary sank back into the water and contemplated his current state. Here, in the mysterious, mobile, magical hotsprings he shared with his children and Shai he was relatively comfortable and even able to use his Pockets! gift more easily.
He pulled a mundane recorder from his storage gift and sat at the edge of the pool with his own towel draped over his eternally messy hair.
The flute began its sweet, mellow, cheerful song, rising up through the steamy air with lazy and sensual grace. He played a simple tune, toying with the melody of ‘Norwegian Wood’, with his hips and legs still immersed in the swirling not-exactly-water.
“Be careful, Gary…” Kree whispered from behind his ear, slipping from his shadow with a gentle sigh. “I don’t like stinging you.”
“I understand, sugarbee. Let me have this one, ok? I’ll be really careful.” She weakened when he smiled so happily, after so long.
“Having the kids around really helps.” He sighed slowly, as the flute returned to his lips.
#
A half hour later, the whole family was gathered in the garden, sitting on stools with instruments warmed up and tuned.
“Are we sure we’re staying here for a while? It takes a lot out of me…”
“Shut up and play, fiddle-fingers.” Amy sang sweetly, as she handed him a mundane guitar. “I want something fun.”
“As you wish.” He said with a smile, the one that only Shai, Becky and the kids ever saw. With a faint, shadowy twinkle an ogre bone guitar pick appeared between his fingers and the music began.
It only took a few hard strumming licks for Wilf to join in, grinning around his beloved flute as he picked up the melody.
There's a place up ahead and I'm going,
Just as fast as my feet can fly!
Come away, come away, if you're going!
Leave the sinking ship behind!
“Credence, dad? Really?” Amy complained between verses, while taking the lead guitar part from him with a quick, sparkling solo that left no doubt as to who was leading the ensemble.
The smiling musician fell back into a steady blues lick behind the hard rocking track his daughter was laying down. He felt steady and careful tugs at his Animus, as his kids began spinning his volatile and unstable gifts out in their spell song, using their Mana to unfurl the spells and make his dreams take physical form in reality.
He fell into the music, following Amy into a local number called Nurban’s Reel. The melody was a simple, swaying thing, versatile and easy to learn. In the Ward family’s hands it became a wild, hectic tune; as it hopped and skipped around the central melody in a constantly shifting, sweet cascade of sound.
Each player in turn took a solo and spun the music off in a new direction, changing the key, shifting rhythms or embellishing it with showy ornaments.
The jam sesh wandered on until after snacktime, which in the Ward household meant about an hour after breakfast.
With long practice and familiarity, the family played, seated in a circle, facing each other; allowing the magic to take place unobserved.
“Can we take these blindfolds off now?” Lindsey demanded, as the last song faded. She and her familiar were waiting with silk cloths wound over their eyes, impatiently wondering why she had linked herself with this pack of weirdos.
“Oh, yeah, sorry…” Barry mumbled, as he stashed his violin away. “We get a little carried away.”
“Well, the music was nice, if strange…” The lanky girl mumbled to her beau. As she worked to unblindfold her horse, Lindsey took a slow look around at the changes to the wide, alpine meadow. “What’s that, Barry?” She asked idly.
“Is there a fountain over there?”
Gary and Shai’s tall, incongruous, red roofed home towered over the more modest structures scattered around, while the vast gardens engulfed the kids’ territory and spread out beyond.
She’d expected that, as unbelievable as it seemed… but the geyser of strange light showering from the mountainside at the edge of the expanded garden was unsettling.
#
Gandree and Daisybelle dismounted in a wide alpine meadow as evening began to close in, high up on the side of the valley… under a strangely familiar, triangular peak, among the pines.
“Daze… Am I seeing things, or is this that same damn place we just left this morning?”
“No, this is a different place; same meadow, same mountain, though.” She answered with a yawn. “Put up our house, Gandree my lover love. I’m tired.”
Rather than taking her verbal bait, he just smiled and pulled his flute from hiding. His fingers ran over the long bronze and brass instrument; it always felt warm and alive in his hands, eager for his breath.
Within the first few notes of ‘Edmund’s Reel’ he found that same resonance ringing out from this same, entirely different meadow, under a mirror image of that triangular crag. His spell unrolled like a prayer rug, simply spilling out onto the world with almost frightening ease.
“Daze… this place feels just like the other one.” He mumbled, as he lowered his flute and looked around.
“Of course, silly. It’s the same place, just someplace else.” She answered with a grin. Come come, we will be up early… as day dwellers see it.” She murmured, pulling at his hand to drag him inside.
“What’s that light over there?” He asked, over her efforts to get dinner started.
“What light, boy? Come inside, the doggies are hungry.” She hauled at him mightily but he remained in place, staring at a section of hillside at the edge of the garden.
“There’s something… and now it’s gone…” He finally let her haul him inside the house, into the cozy and welcoming common room.
#
The team spread out and slowly advanced in a loose semicircle, with Kermal and Becky leading a few steps ahead and twenty feet apart. There was no visible sign of trouble that mortal eyes could see, but everyone sensed a potent and constant… something doing… something on the nearby hillside.
While no one else could see, the familiars and their bonded companions could. Light hurled from a hidden source behind a giant gray boulder that seemed out of place to normal sight.
It was partially rounded, as if split from a larger structure by some titanic force and hurled here at some point in the past. The mysterious boulder sat, partially buried in a low crater, covered with grass, weeds and ferns as if it had been there for years, rather than centuries.
To the familiars’ supernatural eyes, the stone itself seemed ordinary… but Gary kept looking at it with deepening concern writ across his face.
“Ok, gang… look around and see if you spot another stone like this one… or a long, girthy pillar of the same rock.” He said carefully. “Don’t approach or touch them if you find them…”
The team carefully turned in place, gazing all around seeking a dark gray stone or a geyser of light that was certainly not violet, but something far stranger. Nothing met their searching eyes, save the rounded, split boulder before them.
Stolen novel; please report.
“What is it, dad?” Wilf asked softly. “Something from outside our world?”
“Yeah… and no. This shouldn’t be able to exist here… But who knows what ‘reality’ is anyway, I suppose.” He mumbled, as he ambled toward the rock he’d told everyone to keep away from.
“Gary, stop right there!” Becky snapped at the wayward mooncalf. “Shai put you on double secret spooky shit and eldritch nonsense restriction, before we left.”
“Yeah, and this is both of those things…” He shouted, as he ran his hand over the stone surface without actually touching it. “I just wonder where the rest of it is.”
“Stop talking crazy, Gary!” The high priestess barked in her most commanding tone. “Kree, sting the shit out of him if he tries anything!”
“Aye aye, sergeant Becky!” The tiny wasp cheered from her post on his collar, with Mariah riding along beside her. “This isn’t dangerous to him though… this is something he made.”
“Nobody touches this thing… don’t even get close to it. While it’s inside the home borders, it’s pretty unstable.” He called out from between his own knees, since he was bent over examining the fractured surface. “It’s unmistakable… but how?”
“Do I need to send for help, brother?” Kermal asked gently, dropping his hand on Gary’s shoulder. “Come, step away from this thing.” The younger man pulled his silly friend away from the strange boulder with little resistance.
Sir Kermal listened quietly, as the huge man mumbled nonsense words to himself all the while as they walked back to the group, at the edge of the formal garden.
“Tombescent temple of tackle? Dickmemberance? Cockffin? Memento Manmeat? So many portmanteaus, so little time…”
“Kree… did you sting him already?” The small knight asked the little creature perched high up on his friend’s collar.
“Nopeedope. He’s just thinking really hard about something stupid.” She flicked Gary’s ear as she sassed both her mount and the knight at the same time. “As usual.”
“Hey, don’t be mean, honeybee. These little jokes are what get me through the day.” He grumbled.
“I refuse to take my life in a magical fantasy world entirely seriously. Especially the really weird shit.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the stone, off on the hillside at the far edge of the compound’s expanded border.
#
On the tropical island beyond the gateway, count Liam and the team found that exploring the deserted, jungle draped town was a lot of work and completely unrewarding. No monsters, savage beasts, ghouls or spirits rose to confront the team, just wet, clinging vines and small animals that darted for the underbrush at the first sign of intruders and a truly oppressive swarm of blood drinkers that Audrey gorged herself on joyously.
“At least she can’t get fat…” Liam sighed, when the flower dragon was too busy to overhear.
The mine workings were also deeply uninteresting, beyond a rich seam of nickel-iron that the long gone miners had been digging. The open pit was more a narrow quarry than a true mine, since the molten metal had belched up though the earth in a wide column, through a fissure in the volcano’s cone. Other seams of the same iron rich material left red stains down the volcano’s sides here and there, traces of an eruption long ago.
“Rich metal, but how to get it home…” Shai grumbled sourly, after collecting a few samples of the stuff with a hammer.
“That’s probably why the miners left.” Dannyl sighed. “No tools or machinery were left laying around, even most of the window glass and roof tiles were taken away. My guess is that this place is long forgotten and our giant bugs just wandered through the gate and monstered up on the way through the void.” He grinned and shrugged. “That’s usually how these giant monster things happen.”
“So what about ancient cities and crypts filled with traps and treasure?” Ivy asked, as they walked back to the house on the scree field.
“Those exist, but they are usually out on the fringes of reality…” The ginger Adventurer waved his hands to encompass the island and wide, blue sea.
“Many void maws lead to places just like that. Pocket worlds ruled by mad wizards, forgotten cities of the undead and weird, almost endless labyrinths filled with monsters, traps and yes… treasure.”
“So what happened here?” Tallum asked, even though he was obviously pleased with the outcome of their ‘delve’ so far.
Dannyl walked on for a few minutes, contemplating in silence. “Most passages through the void lead to places like this; lonely, forgotten corners of wilderness and mostly empty of people. They seem to be reflections of our world, but different in ways that are unpredictable and strange.”
“I don’t feel a difference… Audrey and Otho are behaving normally, as did Shai’s casting.” Ivy pressed the ginger explorer fiercely. “Quit hinting around!”
Dannyl scratched his head for a moment, before continuing trying to explain the truly weird phenomenon to the team. “Each passage and destination is unique and different in its own way… Some are vast swamps of poisonous, carnivorous plants; others are endless, nearly empty deserts or oceans, inhabited by folk such as no one has seen elsewhere. Serpent men, squid people, all manner of beings exist in the endless reaches of the void. If you can imagine a being, there is, or once was a race of them out there, somewhere.”
He smiled and shrugged. “The people and cultures of civilized places vary wildly, as does the magical essence of these fragmentary worlds. I mentioned ritual magic… The weird ritual things that Gary does seem to work normally everywhere I’ve been, as do our gifts and enchanted items… But in some of these realms, you may encounter people and creatures able to hurl elemental forces, or invoke strange spells.”
“How is that different from more advanced practitioners of magic back home?” Liam asked from astride Audrey, his eyes alert and constantly in motion, as they headed for the house.
“Have you ever seen a person spray fire from their hands in a searing swathe? Out in these realms, we might meet enemies that can hurl balls of light that explode, or send spikes of stone flying from the ground beneath their foe. Many gates have been sealed after hostile and strange forces appeared on the other side.” Dannyl chuckled wryly at some thought.
“Though, any people we encounter may not be hostile; it’s always a huge gamble with unexplored places.”
“So there’s just a tunnel into the mountain that leads to this island and an abandoned iron mine?” Disappointment and relief filled the young count’s voice, mingled into a complex emotional soup.
“Oh, no way! This is something special. Some of these passages lead to literal nowhere. Often it’s a barren chunk of rock, drifting in the void or just a few square miles of an isolated mountain vale… Those tiny, fractional worlds always feature a journey through the void that can be very rough; the more extreme the differences between worlds, the longer and stranger the trip becomes.”
“Our trip here was almost ordinary, as far as true weirdness goes…” Ivy asked while her little brother gathered his thoughts. “What does that mean, in this case?”
“An easy, quick passage generally means that the magic and physical world are very similar to our starting point. Weird realms or kooky dungeons are always at the other end of a rough passage through the never. Only a precious few lead to worlds of their own, with oceans, continents and the lot. Even fewer lead to distant points on our own world…” Dannyl let his words drift off, behind a smile that was super obnoxious.
Ivy unleashed a grin of her own, directed at the count. “Like, say a tropical island that would be a fine seaport for a domain that is otherwise landlocked.” She murmured excitedly.
“We really might still be on our world, just incredibly far away, transported through the void.” Dannyl grinned at the suddenly very interested count.
“Those few gateways that lead to dungeons and other realms are always intensely valuable. For now, we just don’t know. If we sailed off, we might find a whole new continent, or find that we are on the crystal sea, a few weeks travel from home. It could be anything really, it’s just that we don’t know yet… and we don’t have a boat.”
“Let’s have lunch, then explore the rest of the mountain… We’ll keep a lookout posted on the peak to watch for any passing sails.” Liam decided. “This might be a great opportunity.”
#
Gary and Becky spent a good while with their heads together, deep in a conversation that was not open to the others. They chewed on whatever topic they were discussing until the rest started getting antsy and nervous.
“...is there anything else…? Besides your lame puns and jokes that I should touch on?” The diminutive priestess asked her huge brother.
“You’re really gonna follow my script?” He asked sheepishly. “Promise?”
“Script?” Becky scoffed at the foolish man. “It’s a list of dick jokes and stupid weiner puns. I’ll use a few, if it seems like fun. No promises.”
“She’s so strict…” Gary moaned to Kermal; who only smiled and shrugged, since the young knight was not a very great fool.
Becky ignored her husband and brother’s idiocy, as she called the group together.
“I will be telling you all what’s going on, as best I’m able. Gary is unable to reveal what he knows or speak of these matters, due to a number of divine curses and strictures, so I will be explaining what I can.” She turned her dark, smiling eyes on the lanky girl beside Barry and Amy.
“Lindsey, buckle up, it’s about to get weird.”
“Oh, gods… it gets weirder?” She sighed, clinging to Barry’s arm like he was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship.
Becky smiled at the unfortunate girl and nodded. “Super, extra double weird, with a side order of literal lunacy… A good portion of today’s story takes place on the moon.”
“It feels like my ears are bleeding…” She whispered to Barry.
“Shh… These are things we’ve been asking about for our whole lives, Lin. I need to hear this.” The big fellow whispered back, with a hug and squeeze for his warm armfull.
Becky took her time, explaining for Lindsey, Maya and Frank and Benny, when things got ‘in the weeds’.
“Wait… that weird Ward guy killed War…?! The god War, the Bloodwashed one? Killed him on the moon, by punching his head ‘inside out’?” Maya demanded. “Awesome!”
“No, not awesome! It was foolish and dangerous. But also probably unavoidable…” Becky sighed. “No mortal was there to see, but I have it on divine authority that it was a ‘spectacle of unmitigated folly and a display of true idiocy’. Though, I suppose that’s on brand for my biggest little brother.”
“Hey! I was nowhere near there! All those guys just look like me, sound like me…”
…Dress like me, walk, talk and act like me,
And just might be the next best thing, but not quite me…
Gary gave a sudden jolt, clutched at his neck for a moment and slowly began to sink down onto the lawn from the garden bench he was formerly seated on.
“...please stand up please stand up…” He chanted softly, with a stupid, glazed smile on his face, as he slipped into unconsciousness.
“That might have been more than needed, but he was doing that ‘Slim Shady’ thing again… That’s weird.” Kree complained from the sleeping man’s collar.
#
Marduk, Eponna, Thirp and a few other divines were watching the show through Gary’s eyes, projected safely on a screen in the living room; since joining with his senses was so distressingly ‘uncomfortable’. A general moan of dissatisfaction arose when the lights went out and the show ended prematurely.
“Sorry, we can only work with what we have, however fallible it may be.” The tiny, golden god sighed. “He’d been doing so well lately, too.”
Eponna took the small divine’s hand in hers with a loud, sputtering, equine laugh that made his heart flutter like her perfect, pink lips. “Don’t be sad, my sweet Ducky… Let’s go point and laugh at Dana again; that always cheers you up.”
#
“Anyway…” Becky continued, once the musician was managed. “So, Ward impersonated Gary during a big, super secret pantheon meeting on the Madman’s moon, where they were deciding Gary’s fate… whether he would be summarily destroyed, or banished from our world, for murdering a bunch of immortal dickheads.”
Becky turned back to Lindsey and smiled gently at the confused and distraught girl. “Just accept that as fact and we’ll move on, darling.” Becky gave the kids some time to gnaw on that bit of philosophical gristle, before she went on.
“Anyway, Ward shows up to the pantheon’s party in a crazy costume and convinced them he was actually Gary… for some reason. Ward did some weird, spooky stuff to scare them all into wetting their robes, cause he’s just as bad as my poor, silly brother.”
Becky paused to draw a deep breath and sighed. “Once the gods were all freaked out and panicked, when he had them all terrified that he might use Gary’s unexplainable gifts and unclean arts to end them all, things got stupid…”
“Stupider. Things got stupider.” Dannyl mumbled from his seat under a rose arbor. “Idiotic is just the start point, we’re headed for uncharted realms of dumb.”
Becky shot the ginger lad a loving glare and sighed, before continuing her absurd tale. “Ward wound up beating the stuffing out of three of the gathered divines, while the others looked on in horror.” Becky shook her head sadly. “They had no way to prepare themselves for the violence and aggression uncle Ward unleashed on them. No divine had ever felt the fear of mortality before; they had no basis for understanding the situation. That was only the beginning of the chaos.”
“Gods don’t get in fistfights and nobody had ever punched a god before me…” Ward complained sourly, as he stepped from the shadows under a willow tree. “War never took a humanoid body before either, he made his skull all thin and brittle. Totally not my fault.” The strange man grumbled and whined while pulling himself into reality.
“I didn’t really kill War. I just broke the toy he was playing with and left it lying on Gary’s lawn.”
Ward, the god of Death and Vengeance smiled down on his unconscious double. “Even gods need to learn that if you fuck around, eventually… you’ll find out. That’s the real source of his power, what really makes him tick. Rage, fury and a desire to repay his debts to the ones who hurt us for so long. A few accounts have been closed, but there are still debts owing, out there in the void…”
Becky spoke over the handsome, angry deity, taking the floor back by force. “That divine cadaver was a big part of the problem. The corpse of a god is a dangerous thing and breaks all kinds of fundamental laws. Leaving it there was a serious issue and could have attracted some dangerous eldritch scavengers.”
“The corpse of a god…” Lindsey mumbled, looking pale.
“Oh yeah! I messed his whole dome piece up!” Ward enthused, drawing a glare from the high priestess.
“To contain the divine essence and prevent a more serious problem, Gary entombed the corpse in…” She sighed and checked her notes.
“A massive, pink marble man-ument… A heroic cock and balls sculpted with due care for the dignity of the fallen divine.”
“A giant stone wiener and ballsack reliquary!” Ward agreed merrily, adding another glare to his collection.
“Yes. This stone is half of that ridiculous…” She checked her note once more, scanning it for the right choice. “Sarcock-phagus.” She said, with a straight face.
“I said I would use a few of his stupid jokes… Too bad he’s asleep.” Becky sighed over her fallen, snoring brother.
“Anyway…” Ward picked up the fallen thread of the narrative and carried on blithely.
“Some stuff happened; the gods got super pissy, several made some bad choices and a few really bad gambles. Blah, blah, blah… yadda yadda… and then Gary murdered a whole bunch of gods and immortals, tore a hole in the divine realm and launched the remains of poor War into the ether, along with several hundred former immortals and at least three actual gods… You kids can try to guess which three.”
“Did you just ‘yadda yadda’ over ‘Gary murdered a bunch of gods’?” Maya demanded of the glib death god. “As in, the upheaval in the pantheon, the disappearance of Craft, Order and War… all that, was this guy?” She jabbed her thumb at the passed out goofball snoring, face down on the grass with his bottom in the air.
“Yup, I can’t talk about it. I shouldn’t be telling you this much, but here in his house, even the gods can’t see or hear; unless he allows it, or one of their clerics listens in.” Ward declared firmly.
“I don’t even know what exactly happened, only he returned from that wildly destructive event… and he’s prohibited from telling anyone anything about it, by divine law.”
“Only Gary knows…” Lindsey asked softly, since the supposed ‘godslayer’ was mumbling in his sleep and drooling on the lawn.
“Papa killed a shit ton of immortals, when he was…” Rio shrugged and smiled at his younger brother’s paramour. “He said a few deities tried to turn him into an eldritch abomination... He doesn’t really talk about it.”
The gray eyed girl found little reassurance there, as she hugged herself closer to Amy and Barry, her face pale and drawn. “Abomination…” She whispered.
“He only murdered demons, wicked spirits and shitty immortals… I promise.” Amy insisted, hugging closer to her half of Lindsey.
“Whatever…” Becky grumbled at Ward. “That rock out there is part of that rel-dick-iquary, the one Gary entombed War’s slain avatar in. We’ve discovered one of the balls, the other nut and the dong are not here. It looks like we’ve got a good old fashioned fetchquest on our hands…”
“And so, the Quest for the Wargod’s Marble Dong begins!” Kree sang from her perch on the back of Gary’s head.
#