Let's see how long I can get this.
The sky was a delirious painting of white and grey mountains, from which fell the occasional bright, shining drop. Thrust up against the sky, silhouetted so they seemed like great black symbols, were huge wooden wheels, mounted on incredibly tall poles. From the spokes of these wheels hung tatters of clothing and ropes, the occasional crow's nest. A gravel trail ran its way through the woods, between these great monuments. It was early spring, and the trees were bare and grey, trunks darkening to black weblike branches as the eye traveled upwards. The dead leaves and matted grasses that stretched from tree to tree were a pale yellow, drained of all life by the winter months. It was the color of old bones. Beneath the dormant canopy of trees were scattered an assortment of wooden posts, wooden scaffolding and large crosses of varying make and composition. Those same faded rags and scraps of rope clung to these structures, joined by large, heavily corroded nails. Ropes also hung from a few tree branches. Occasionally, the whole noose remained. The cool electric air of a nearby storm filled the air, mixing with the rain on all the wood, the smell of something just barely alive.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Writing Journal February 13, 2012
Ok, here's the start of the multi-part story I promised. I hope I can stick with it long enough to give it an end. Baby steps. This story is going to be a little self-indulgent in style and content, to keep me interested. Why do I always seem to get into a weird funk when I try and start a complete story?
She realized that she may have jumped in too unprepared, not for the first time. Etoile's barrier was cruel in a way that defied decency, battering her will and worming through her smaller thoughts even as it tried to scorch her body into nothingness. She couldn't recall her name, not without a terrible feeling of disassociation - any attempt to find herself left her wandering lost in memories that no longer had a place for her. Her every emotion had fled, leaving her with nothing but a will-less expectation, unable to comprehend her imminent destruction, unable to care if she did. The unbearable roaring brightness pierced her eyelids, made her eyes water, the shield she'd hastily thrown up against the bone-scraping heat wavering and deflating like limp saran wrap. It was no use - she simply couldn't focus on anything, could not even focus on herself and remember what separated her from the rest of infinity. She was about to be incinerated and wouldn't even be around to witness it.
The edge of her failing shield touched the back of her arm, instantly blackening a small patch of skin. She felt pain, and from the hole where her ego used to be a lightning bolt of fear erupted. Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilating, she felt a ripple run through her body as her muscles contracted and started moving in unison once more. She took a deep breath for the first time in many seconds, and tried to find her train of thought again. Yes, she'd gotten lost just inches from the far side of the barrier, and it was a mere passing application of will to push herself the rest of the way through.
The Empress Elizabeth Ostergaard appeared in the stolen city of Oldport in a flash of light and heat that scorched the pavement where she landed. She shook her head and straightened up, clearing the cobwebs the barrier had psychically imposed on her and taking inventory of herself. She was a big woman, huge in fact, a word which summed up her body, mind, and spirit. A flat seven feet tall, her curly, cloud-white hair had grown long over the centuries. At her brow was a crown or thick headband made of gold, with the sun disc that served as the seal of the Imperial House proudly displayed. She wore a mirror-bright breastplate engraved with baroque scrollwork over a rich green dress, an open robe of royal purple and gold, and a cloak of red velvet.
Hmm, I'd better cut it off there before my penchant for overwrought imagery reaches critical mass. I said I was going to be self-indulgent with this, right? Still, this isn't terribly well written... But I'm enjoying writing it, which is what I need now. Stay tooned for the next installment, with actual plot next time! Probably!
She realized that she may have jumped in too unprepared, not for the first time. Etoile's barrier was cruel in a way that defied decency, battering her will and worming through her smaller thoughts even as it tried to scorch her body into nothingness. She couldn't recall her name, not without a terrible feeling of disassociation - any attempt to find herself left her wandering lost in memories that no longer had a place for her. Her every emotion had fled, leaving her with nothing but a will-less expectation, unable to comprehend her imminent destruction, unable to care if she did. The unbearable roaring brightness pierced her eyelids, made her eyes water, the shield she'd hastily thrown up against the bone-scraping heat wavering and deflating like limp saran wrap. It was no use - she simply couldn't focus on anything, could not even focus on herself and remember what separated her from the rest of infinity. She was about to be incinerated and wouldn't even be around to witness it.
The edge of her failing shield touched the back of her arm, instantly blackening a small patch of skin. She felt pain, and from the hole where her ego used to be a lightning bolt of fear erupted. Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilating, she felt a ripple run through her body as her muscles contracted and started moving in unison once more. She took a deep breath for the first time in many seconds, and tried to find her train of thought again. Yes, she'd gotten lost just inches from the far side of the barrier, and it was a mere passing application of will to push herself the rest of the way through.
The Empress Elizabeth Ostergaard appeared in the stolen city of Oldport in a flash of light and heat that scorched the pavement where she landed. She shook her head and straightened up, clearing the cobwebs the barrier had psychically imposed on her and taking inventory of herself. She was a big woman, huge in fact, a word which summed up her body, mind, and spirit. A flat seven feet tall, her curly, cloud-white hair had grown long over the centuries. At her brow was a crown or thick headband made of gold, with the sun disc that served as the seal of the Imperial House proudly displayed. She wore a mirror-bright breastplate engraved with baroque scrollwork over a rich green dress, an open robe of royal purple and gold, and a cloak of red velvet.
Hmm, I'd better cut it off there before my penchant for overwrought imagery reaches critical mass. I said I was going to be self-indulgent with this, right? Still, this isn't terribly well written... But I'm enjoying writing it, which is what I need now. Stay tooned for the next installment, with actual plot next time! Probably!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Writing Journal February 9, 2012
"Doublehorn." I need to start writing down good names to use, so I don't have trouble remembering them otherwise.
*****
Well, I didn't get anything written today, but I've got ideas. Maybe tomorrow I'll try tackling a multi-part story.
*****
Well, I didn't get anything written today, but I've got ideas. Maybe tomorrow I'll try tackling a multi-part story.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Writing Journal February 8, 2012
The sky was big, cool, and white, drizzling bits of itself onto the ancient cobblestone streets of the small port city. Private Hendrickson was always nervous of the stately old townhouses and narrow streets in this part of the city, mostly because it meant there were four stories of dark windows practically pressed against the high concrete wall of the fortress he was guarding. How easy would it be for an attacking force to use the cover of those elegant windows and romantic little alleyways to get right on top of him before they launched an attack? He leaned back in his chair, staring blankly through the rain-spattered window of the gatehouse and sticking a pencil under his helmet to scratch a spot over his ear. Well, that was probably wishful thinking. The Empire was always at war with someone, but whatever fighting was going on at that point was nowhere near the base. Come to think of it, that town hadn't been attacked at all throughout recorded history, a rarity among North American coastal cities during the First Imperial Zenith period, less than two generations after the Darkened Years.
"Hoy, Henry," he heard his partner say from just outside the gatehouse, "Come have a look at this." Private Hendrickson grabbed his rifle up and left the gatehouse, jogging down the slick flagstones towards the lone figure stumbling down the street. Her black greatcoat was slick with rain and saltwater, and blood seeped from her clutched arm.
"Are you alright?" he said upon reaching her, "are you hurt?"
"The beach," she said weakly, "an androphagi, or something worse - "
"We'll get you to a medic, come on."
"You have to get ready, it killed the others at the beach, it's heading towards the town, you - "
"We'll send scouts out right away, but we have to get you help." He put a hand on her back and tried leading her towards the base, but she pulled away with an exasperated rasp. Leaning against the old brick wall she pulled something from her coat, something that, like an invasion, Private Hendrickson had been trained to look out for but never thought he'd see - a golden badge bearing the Imperial Sun Disc.
"As an Undercover Assessor bearing the authority of the Great House of Ostergaard," she said with more force than someone who'd lost so much blood should have been able to, "I am ordering you to bring me to the base commander and have your armored division mobilized immediately." Private Hendrickson blinked at her for a second, then turned to his equally dumbstruck partner, who started fumbling for his radio.
Wishful thinking indeed.
Gah, I keep having trouble remembering the history of my own setting. The Darkened Years started after the Walking Devil Incident sometime in the early 2000s, then came the formation of the Solar Empire immediately before Goblin's Gate, after which there was the Ascendant Period comprising the Crown Wars and the official end of the Darkened Years. Simple as that.
"Hoy, Henry," he heard his partner say from just outside the gatehouse, "Come have a look at this." Private Hendrickson grabbed his rifle up and left the gatehouse, jogging down the slick flagstones towards the lone figure stumbling down the street. Her black greatcoat was slick with rain and saltwater, and blood seeped from her clutched arm.
"Are you alright?" he said upon reaching her, "are you hurt?"
"The beach," she said weakly, "an androphagi, or something worse - "
"We'll get you to a medic, come on."
"You have to get ready, it killed the others at the beach, it's heading towards the town, you - "
"We'll send scouts out right away, but we have to get you help." He put a hand on her back and tried leading her towards the base, but she pulled away with an exasperated rasp. Leaning against the old brick wall she pulled something from her coat, something that, like an invasion, Private Hendrickson had been trained to look out for but never thought he'd see - a golden badge bearing the Imperial Sun Disc.
"As an Undercover Assessor bearing the authority of the Great House of Ostergaard," she said with more force than someone who'd lost so much blood should have been able to, "I am ordering you to bring me to the base commander and have your armored division mobilized immediately." Private Hendrickson blinked at her for a second, then turned to his equally dumbstruck partner, who started fumbling for his radio.
Wishful thinking indeed.
Gah, I keep having trouble remembering the history of my own setting. The Darkened Years started after the Walking Devil Incident sometime in the early 2000s, then came the formation of the Solar Empire immediately before Goblin's Gate, after which there was the Ascendant Period comprising the Crown Wars and the official end of the Darkened Years. Simple as that.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Writing Journal February 6, 2012
Augh, ok so it's been nearly a month since I last wrote one of these. I'll shoot for a lofty goal of one a day from now on. Aim for the moon and all that. I'll try and leave the document open all day so I've no excuse when inspiration strikes. Yeah, that'll work.
Our group marched an unsteady line over the ash-grey dunes. Carmichael was behind me, his jacket draped over his head like a shawl, to shield him from the wind at our backs. Ahead of me was Mrs. Greenhead, long pencil-skirt flapping in the wind, strands of her kinky orange hair waving off her normally impenetrable updo, like a few seeds clinging to a dandelion. She and the rest of the procession spread out before me, silhouetted against this place's sun. This place's weird, huge, blurry, pale grey sun, a sight I suppose few humans have ever seen. The little kiddies walked in a big mass in front of Mrs. Greenhead, while us older kids sort of scattered around the perimeter. To protect them, though none of us knew from what. My younger brother was up there, windbreaker tied around his waist, white tee, neat black hair. With him were LaRange, that girl from my history class, and someone I didn't recognize. I figured I should be up there with him, but it was a pointless gesture. Everyone by now was lost in their own world, everyone but me watching the figure at the front of the procession, just in front of Dr. Tongs. Our guide.
His robes and long cape rippled about him with an energy that belied their unadorned, solid blackness. His cane, which looked like iron the one time I saw it up close, somehow supported him over the thin, fine sand as he marched, energetic yet monumental. All of his clothes were black and all encompassing, save for the white leather mask with the two tinted goggles buckled over his head wrap, just below the wide-brimmed hat. The thick clouds kept this place from being as hot as it could have been, yet it was still uncanny how he was able to stand erect and keep such a pace in all of those heavy, black clothes. Something about him wasn't natural, we all knew. Yet somehow, he'd walked right into that one small, long caved-in depression in all of our hearts, the place for a person who knew unequivocally what was going on, whose will was buttressed by obvious experience , and who was possessed of a modest, self-evident benevolence. A person who held the legendary chalice of simple competence and the crown of common responsibility. A person who, most important of all, was someone else, and thus could be followed and blamed with wholehearted fervor. Yes, we'd have followed him through hell, as the old saying goes. I guess, in a sense, that's exactly what happened.
I remember how we met him...
Our group marched an unsteady line over the ash-grey dunes. Carmichael was behind me, his jacket draped over his head like a shawl, to shield him from the wind at our backs. Ahead of me was Mrs. Greenhead, long pencil-skirt flapping in the wind, strands of her kinky orange hair waving off her normally impenetrable updo, like a few seeds clinging to a dandelion. She and the rest of the procession spread out before me, silhouetted against this place's sun. This place's weird, huge, blurry, pale grey sun, a sight I suppose few humans have ever seen. The little kiddies walked in a big mass in front of Mrs. Greenhead, while us older kids sort of scattered around the perimeter. To protect them, though none of us knew from what. My younger brother was up there, windbreaker tied around his waist, white tee, neat black hair. With him were LaRange, that girl from my history class, and someone I didn't recognize. I figured I should be up there with him, but it was a pointless gesture. Everyone by now was lost in their own world, everyone but me watching the figure at the front of the procession, just in front of Dr. Tongs. Our guide.
His robes and long cape rippled about him with an energy that belied their unadorned, solid blackness. His cane, which looked like iron the one time I saw it up close, somehow supported him over the thin, fine sand as he marched, energetic yet monumental. All of his clothes were black and all encompassing, save for the white leather mask with the two tinted goggles buckled over his head wrap, just below the wide-brimmed hat. The thick clouds kept this place from being as hot as it could have been, yet it was still uncanny how he was able to stand erect and keep such a pace in all of those heavy, black clothes. Something about him wasn't natural, we all knew. Yet somehow, he'd walked right into that one small, long caved-in depression in all of our hearts, the place for a person who knew unequivocally what was going on, whose will was buttressed by obvious experience , and who was possessed of a modest, self-evident benevolence. A person who held the legendary chalice of simple competence and the crown of common responsibility. A person who, most important of all, was someone else, and thus could be followed and blamed with wholehearted fervor. Yes, we'd have followed him through hell, as the old saying goes. I guess, in a sense, that's exactly what happened.
I remember how we met him...
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Writing Journal December 21 2011
It was dawn, and the scene was a steaming pile of unidentifiable carrion. A feast for scavengers. The murder of crows flowed about the carrion, gorging themselves, ripping free chunks of fur and skin and drilling their beaks into the putrescent flesh. Their wings were all extended, out and backwards, to allow more of them to fit at the feast, wings which occasionally twitched and flapped as they jostled for position.
Two crows tumbled free of the pile, disparate creatures linked by a string of sinew running from beak to beak. They regained their feet and tugged at the sinew, back and forth, beady black eyes bulging. They reached a sort of symmetry, two pairs of wings outstretched, stiff, mirroring each other, spindly black feet scrabbling backwards in the dirt in unison, two sleek, elegant heads connected by a line of taught, shining white sinew. But none of the other crows took notice. Suddenly the sinew snapped, and as if a shot had gone out the whole murder of crows leaped up, feathers and dust flying, cries of confusion and alarm from a dozen black, bloodstained beaks. We've lost so much, they said, and gained, have we truly gained so little?
~~*
The cart went over a bump, knocking the Lady Elrinade's head against the rail. She woke up, groaning softly and reaching under the wide brim of her hat to rub the tips of her fingers over her face.
"Yeh were mutterin' in yer sleep," the driver said. "Havin' a dream?" Elrinade leaned up into a sitting position, yellow hay flowing off her black traveling cloak and outfit of deep forest greens. The driver looked little more than a straw hat at the fore of the cart, sticking over the mound of hay.
"They say," he said, "that dreams'll come true, but only if yeh tell someone about 'em." Elrinade pulled her pack out of the drift of hay it'd jostled itself under during the course of the trip.
"If that's true, sir," she said with a smile, "then I dreamed you'll have a fine harvest this year."
"We're gettin' to the town, yeh can see it nah."
Elrinade crawled her way to the front of the haycart. Rolling rows of farmland and grazing fields, etched about with dust paths and patches of trees around watering holes, cottages, and the edges of fields. All the roads eventually converged on a town, downhill a mile or so, through which a river ran. A tall stone block of a castle stood next to the town, and tall poplars rose from a garden somewhere in the middle. Far off in the distance, the fields disappeared as the trees grew thicker, before hazy white mountains erupted out of the trackless forest.
"The pastoral ideal, free of the machine." Elrinade said to herself.
"Place called Bravestone." the driver replied. "Good town. Good people."
-----
Conflict between the ruling feudal lord in the castle and the merchant family in the house next to the poplar garden. They've been feuding, and want to marry their youngest children to resolve the dispute. The two children genuinely like each other, but don't want to get married if they're being forced to for political reasons, and the families are probably wrong in assuming tensions will ease because of one marriage. Elrinade resolves the dispute, somehow.
-Elrinade
-Noble Family daughter Guindolyn of Bravestone. Brown hair, black eyes, freckles. Learned and intelligent, but has a pride in her wits that actually gets in the way of them.
-Merchant family son Brevick Smithson. Curly, bright blonde hair, brown eyes, elfin features. Wears a baggy purple and gold hat with a feather in it. Exceptionally romantic and kind of slow, good-hearted.
-Son's older sister Aneirin Smithson. Called Angie. Cool big sis archetype - though vehemently against the Bravestone nobility. One of the Smithson servants, who she is infatuated with, was crippled during the fighting.
-Daughter's cousin, some sort of knight squire thing - one prominent curl over his forehead, which is obviously styled that way and looks kind of silly. His name is Garalt - not Sir Garalt, as he isn't really a knight yet, but he tries to get people to call him that. Feels the fighting with the Smithsons could be a way to prove himself, and so he hates the merchant family, but only in an abstract. He actually really likes Brevick, who looks up to him.
-Patriarch of noble family - The Lord Baron of Bravestone. Only referred to as that, though when she's annoyed with him his wife will call him "Pookie" in front of guests. Black hair, black eyes, sharp goatee - a would-be machievellian schemer who is depressed that there is nothing in backwater Bravestone to scheme against, except the Smithsons, who he underestimates.
-Patriarch of merchant family - Hyperion Smithson. An overblown man with an absolutely apocalyptic grey beard, Hyperion is everything the nobles hate about upstart merchants - he's gaudy, arrogant, puts on airs well above his station, and is shrewd enough that he probably deserves all of it.
"Elrinade was surprised by how young the two were - they couldn't have more than thirty years between them. But I suppose that's how it works nowadays."
Two crows tumbled free of the pile, disparate creatures linked by a string of sinew running from beak to beak. They regained their feet and tugged at the sinew, back and forth, beady black eyes bulging. They reached a sort of symmetry, two pairs of wings outstretched, stiff, mirroring each other, spindly black feet scrabbling backwards in the dirt in unison, two sleek, elegant heads connected by a line of taught, shining white sinew. But none of the other crows took notice. Suddenly the sinew snapped, and as if a shot had gone out the whole murder of crows leaped up, feathers and dust flying, cries of confusion and alarm from a dozen black, bloodstained beaks. We've lost so much, they said, and gained, have we truly gained so little?
~~*
The cart went over a bump, knocking the Lady Elrinade's head against the rail. She woke up, groaning softly and reaching under the wide brim of her hat to rub the tips of her fingers over her face.
"Yeh were mutterin' in yer sleep," the driver said. "Havin' a dream?" Elrinade leaned up into a sitting position, yellow hay flowing off her black traveling cloak and outfit of deep forest greens. The driver looked little more than a straw hat at the fore of the cart, sticking over the mound of hay.
"They say," he said, "that dreams'll come true, but only if yeh tell someone about 'em." Elrinade pulled her pack out of the drift of hay it'd jostled itself under during the course of the trip.
"If that's true, sir," she said with a smile, "then I dreamed you'll have a fine harvest this year."
"We're gettin' to the town, yeh can see it nah."
Elrinade crawled her way to the front of the haycart. Rolling rows of farmland and grazing fields, etched about with dust paths and patches of trees around watering holes, cottages, and the edges of fields. All the roads eventually converged on a town, downhill a mile or so, through which a river ran. A tall stone block of a castle stood next to the town, and tall poplars rose from a garden somewhere in the middle. Far off in the distance, the fields disappeared as the trees grew thicker, before hazy white mountains erupted out of the trackless forest.
"The pastoral ideal, free of the machine." Elrinade said to herself.
"Place called Bravestone." the driver replied. "Good town. Good people."
-----
Conflict between the ruling feudal lord in the castle and the merchant family in the house next to the poplar garden. They've been feuding, and want to marry their youngest children to resolve the dispute. The two children genuinely like each other, but don't want to get married if they're being forced to for political reasons, and the families are probably wrong in assuming tensions will ease because of one marriage. Elrinade resolves the dispute, somehow.
-Elrinade
-Noble Family daughter Guindolyn of Bravestone. Brown hair, black eyes, freckles. Learned and intelligent, but has a pride in her wits that actually gets in the way of them.
-Merchant family son Brevick Smithson. Curly, bright blonde hair, brown eyes, elfin features. Wears a baggy purple and gold hat with a feather in it. Exceptionally romantic and kind of slow, good-hearted.
-Son's older sister Aneirin Smithson. Called Angie. Cool big sis archetype - though vehemently against the Bravestone nobility. One of the Smithson servants, who she is infatuated with, was crippled during the fighting.
-Daughter's cousin, some sort of knight squire thing - one prominent curl over his forehead, which is obviously styled that way and looks kind of silly. His name is Garalt - not Sir Garalt, as he isn't really a knight yet, but he tries to get people to call him that. Feels the fighting with the Smithsons could be a way to prove himself, and so he hates the merchant family, but only in an abstract. He actually really likes Brevick, who looks up to him.
-Patriarch of noble family - The Lord Baron of Bravestone. Only referred to as that, though when she's annoyed with him his wife will call him "Pookie" in front of guests. Black hair, black eyes, sharp goatee - a would-be machievellian schemer who is depressed that there is nothing in backwater Bravestone to scheme against, except the Smithsons, who he underestimates.
-Patriarch of merchant family - Hyperion Smithson. An overblown man with an absolutely apocalyptic grey beard, Hyperion is everything the nobles hate about upstart merchants - he's gaudy, arrogant, puts on airs well above his station, and is shrewd enough that he probably deserves all of it.
"Elrinade was surprised by how young the two were - they couldn't have more than thirty years between them. But I suppose that's how it works nowadays."
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
What the Apprentice Said
AKA Moonlight Rendezvous 3. Didn't think I'd go back to this.
The gentle pulse of nighttime traffic swirled about the stones of the ruin the park was built around. There was a clatter as three figures swung themselves over the low chainlink fence beside the playground. A fourth figure leaned over the fence at them, speaking in an almost-whisper.
"Oh my God you fucking faggots," he said, enunciating every other syllable, "quit pussying around and go already."
"You realize you're talking to girls, right?" one figure said, "Using 'pussy' as a pejorative doesn't make much sense."
"Your daddy's gonna get mad at you for talking like that, Carmichael," a second girl said, "Once he gets out of prison for selling meth."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Guys, guys, calm down," the third girl said, "this is stupid, let's just go already."
Carmichael was a high school sophomore, a year older than the three girls in the playground. He didn't really look it - he was slight and pale, with light hair and sunken eyes. Nobody said what his father was in prison for, but everybody knew. The girls started towards the ruins.
"This is stupid you guys," Sue said. She had short brown hair which stuck out of a beanie she wore even though she'd long ago given up on impressing the skaterboys. Her father, who is looking for a new buddy now that Carmichael's dad was in the slammer, named her after a Johnny Cash song. He thought it was funny as hell. "What are we doing this for, so he'll let us hang out with his dumbass painthuffer friends?"
"We're doing this because I've been wanting to do this for ages," Henrietta said. She had long, straight black hair set in what she insisted be called a "hime cut." Her family has been living comfortably since the 18th century, and she had an original Monet in her bedroom, next to a vintage Daicon IV poster. "Carmichael's dare just reminded me of it."
"And why are the two of us here, then?" Rebecca asked, grinning. Her kinky hair was pulled back by a lime green hairband. She is the fourth of nine children. Her father is the city's mayor, and he's trying to get a reality show set up around that fact.
"Because it needs three people," Henrietta said, "and because you are my loyal minions."
Sue stood in the sandy playground as the others continued onward, excited despite themselves, hopping down the concrete divider at the end of the playground and running across the grass expanse that separated the rest of the park from the ruins. She watched them slowly shrink as they neared the handful of crumbling masonry columns, few much taller than the girls themselves, and go under the arched doorway, an artfully shaped arc which was all that suggested the scattered stones were anything besides the remains of a burnt-down factory. The sounds of their passing soon faded to the chorus of crickets, the rustle of trees, and the distant, omnipresent suburban traffic. Sue walked slowly, past the solitary stone that sat an arm's length from the playground. It was far from the rest of the ruins, but clearly belonged with them. How big had this structure been? What was it, anyways? Lawnmower marks circled around the stone, breaking the even rows of the rest of the field like ripples in water. The full moon hung big and low in the sky. Incredibly big. Sue stretched her hand out, fingers spread, and found she couldn't quite cover all of it. They say that atmospheric distortions abounded about the ruins. No one had ever bothered studying it. She could see her friends waiting by the arch, dwarfed by the scattered stones. Strange, it was always curiously hard to count them. Her arm fell.
"This is kid shit." she said to the sky.
"Hurry up!" she heard Rebecca shout. She broke into a run.
The three girls gathered around the patch of remaining flagstones roughly in the center of the ruins. This was a popular picnic spot - save for among the unusually superstitious. Henrietta dug around in the old leather handbag she'd brought, pulling out a lighter, a shrink-wrapped package of pillar candles she'd bought at a home goods store, and several sticks of incense she'd bought at the only shop in town that sells vinyl records.
"What's all that for?" Sue asked, "We're just supposed to join hands and say-"
"Shh, don't say it yet." Henrietta said as she stuck incense sticks in the ground and arranged the candles in a rough circle on the flagstones. "This is for effect, that's the most important part!"
Sue sat on the ground next to Rebecca as Henrietta buzzed about lighting things, chuckling through her teeth like she did whenever she bought a new video game. Rebecca shrugged at Sue.
"At least she's having fun."
"Alright, now quiet your minds." Henrietta said as she sat down opposite them. Sue didn't know quite what this meant, but the others were sitting with their eyes closed and making a very serious attempt at looking like they were meditating. She tried to do the same.
Silence pulsed in her ears, an unaccustomed widening of details. She could hear a tiny, pattern-less clamor - music, she realized. Was someone having a party a few blocks away? She ran her nails over the grooves of her threadbare blue jeans. She heard Rebecca shift around a bit. Henrietta's absolute stillness left a weird heavy spot in her mind. The incense sticks seemed to have gone out. A few of the candles similarly gutted. They don't make 'em like they used to, apparently. A slight breeze swept over the field. It rattled a charm on Henrietta's handbag, but slid noiselessly over the recently cut grass. It smelled like...like someone had neglected to clean up after their dog. Sue opened one eye and glanced sideways into the wind. A badly cracked and warped patch of sidewalk was illuminated by a solitary streetlight. Everything was terribly ordinary.
"We ready?" Henrietta asked. Sue shifted back to reality, reluctantly. She wasn't ready. Was that a bit of nervousness in Ettie's voice? She can't be that excited, Sue thought. Say a specific phrase in a specific spot under the full moon and Lucifer, the ghost of Elizabeth Bathory, and a crying clown will show up to grant your wish, show you who you'll marry, and or drag you to hell. This was the sort of thing kids believed in - the sort of things high schoolers only resorted to when supremely bored. They joined hands, only able to pinch each others fingertips, really. The patch of cobblestone they were sitting around was just a bit too big.
"Klaatu...Barada...Nikto" they said in clumsy almost-unison. There was a brief, stale silence. Headlights from a car backing out swept over the park, briefly casting big, dark shadows from the three girls and the ruins. Sue let go first.
"Well, that was fun." Rebecca said. Henrietta laughed.
"It was kind of lame as urban legends go," she said. "I think the incantation was actually some sort of meme. I tried to spice it up with the candles, but..."
"Nah, it was fun." Sue said, standing up and brushing herself off. "Looks like Carmichael's run off or something. Let's go back to your place and watch a movie."
The three girls turned to leave. The world turned in the opposite direction, grinding around them like the tumbler of a lock. It clicked in to place with a dull bell chime that played off the skin of their brains, and the ruined arch they'd expected to be facing was now filled with an ivy-covered portcullis, through which golden sunlight streamed.
The three girls turned from the portcullis and walked further in the regenerated ruins. The circular chamber where they'd conducted their ceremony, where Henrietta's handbag held down the plastic wrap the candles came in, opened onto a long bridge. It was of marble, with an abstract pattern of brown and black running down the center, and two rows of marble columns holding up a tile roof. They walked down the bridge, automatically, like they were only remembering walking down it, or dreaming it, or being compelled to by some evil force. Between the columns they saw that the landscape was hilly and heavily wooded, the bridge running along at just higher than the canopy, such that they seemed to be in a rolling sea of leaves. Golden sunlight streamed through golden clouds, flocks of things that were not quite birds flowing about them, the atmosphere heavy with dust, pollen, and heat haze. The sun was low and huge, bigger than an outstretched hand. In the distance, they saw mountains, dotted with trees, hovering in the air, slowly drifting about, each with several waterfalls dropping endlessly towards solid ground.
Sue wanted to say they were no longer in Kansas or some other cliche, hoping that hearing a voice would free them from whatever sleepy, muggy force seemed to be controlling their movement, but it was impossible. It would be like talking in church during a sermon, or making light at the scene of a grisly murder. You just couldn't do it, something about words just seemed childish.
The three reached the end of the bridge, where it joined with the flat top of a stone tower that disappeared into the trees below. The roof was ringed by wooden archways, those things people had outdoor weddings in front of, up which climbed trails of ivy. In the center of the roof was a door, unsupported. It opened for them, and suddenly they were in a room with no doors. It was circular, and way up the walls were windows filled with beautiful wrought iron bars instead of glass. Concentric circles of stone benches ringed the room, in which sat people in robes of green cotton and bones. In the center, which they slowly approached, was a golden bench, in which sat a man Sue was sure she'd dreamed about, once, when she was nine or ten. He was King Middlejack, she didn't wonder why she knew that. His face was beautiful. In front of the king stood a woman. She'd been speaking to him, but turned and looked, perplexed, at the three visitors, as they stepped forward and bowed, and someone in the back announced their names. The king, his court, and all of his realm were muted, blurry shades of green and yellow and brown, the air of a sun-weathered dirt road, whereas she was clear and cool. She had the figure of a superheroine and wore robes of royal purple and ultramarine, trimmed with gold. In her right hand was a tall steel staff, at her left hip a jeweled longsword. Her hair was long and curly, an incandescent white.
The king put on a crown of antlers and bounded over to them, taking Sue by the shoulder and grandly introducing her to the court. With a voice like bells he spoke of her, of how clever she was and how important she'd be in the future. She looked at the floor, smiling and blushing fiercely, hands folded over her lower stomach, like when she'd won a spelling bee in elementary school. She kept smiling as he stabbed her in the chest, a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth. He left the dagger in, drawing two more for her friends, the rest of the court, in their tattered robes of dun brown, sprang to their feet, to attack or retreat or to dance. The clear-looking woman drew her sword, everything slowed down, Sue opened her mouth to scream or yawn and then all was as nothing.
-----
Did you know that this county didn't exist fifty years ago? I don't mean it was recently redistricted, I mean the space itself, the geology, literally did not exist. People just woke up one morning to find thirty or so extra miles between Keybridge County and Waiula Lake. Well, there was a housing crisis going on at the time, so people didn't question it as much as they should have. Trees were cleared and roads were paved, but the strange thing is, for such a new land Apple Valley County sure had a lot of ruins. They're kind of weird - the masonry is very different from colonial construction, and certainly unlike anything the Native Americans ever built. They tried to quietly demolish them, but ran into troubles - any explosives set off at the ruins inexplicably fizzled, picks and hammers had their heads slide off on the backswing, tractors and bulldozers had ruinous engine troubles as they were chained to the stones, and any of the demolitions crew who pressed the matter too much had a heart attack. The ruins seemed adamant that the only thing that could destroy them would be time. It was an inexplicable sort of thing, so they didn't bother to try and explicate it - the duplexes and strip malls were built around rather over the ruins, and life went on with only a few wild rumors. Now, Apple Valley County (which is mostly flat and has no apple orchards) is a peaceful and proud place, full of fancy downtown shopping centers, quaint little towns with bars that try to look older than they really are, and mile upon mile of roomy suburbs. For the past fifty years, the town council has quietly voted down any motions to study the ruins, or use them as tourist attractions.
-----
Sue moved her hands about in the darkness, groping at the loose, wrinkled pile of sheets. There was a stiff mattress and a thin Spongebob pillow that felt like it came from a hospital. Her hand met cool drywall. She was home again.
She pulled herself into a sitting position and rubbed her pounding head. Her clothes from last night were still on, but that was normal. She was trying to remember the dream she'd had last night, that terribly familiar dream. Was it the one where she fucked Orlando Bloom?
"Good morning!" a chipper voice said. Sue blinked incredulously. At the foot of her bed sat a little girl, with long, curly white hair and a powder blue dress. The girl smiled brightly. "Glad you finally woke up!
The gentle pulse of nighttime traffic swirled about the stones of the ruin the park was built around. There was a clatter as three figures swung themselves over the low chainlink fence beside the playground. A fourth figure leaned over the fence at them, speaking in an almost-whisper.
"Oh my God you fucking faggots," he said, enunciating every other syllable, "quit pussying around and go already."
"You realize you're talking to girls, right?" one figure said, "Using 'pussy' as a pejorative doesn't make much sense."
"Your daddy's gonna get mad at you for talking like that, Carmichael," a second girl said, "Once he gets out of prison for selling meth."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Guys, guys, calm down," the third girl said, "this is stupid, let's just go already."
Carmichael was a high school sophomore, a year older than the three girls in the playground. He didn't really look it - he was slight and pale, with light hair and sunken eyes. Nobody said what his father was in prison for, but everybody knew. The girls started towards the ruins.
"This is stupid you guys," Sue said. She had short brown hair which stuck out of a beanie she wore even though she'd long ago given up on impressing the skaterboys. Her father, who is looking for a new buddy now that Carmichael's dad was in the slammer, named her after a Johnny Cash song. He thought it was funny as hell. "What are we doing this for, so he'll let us hang out with his dumbass painthuffer friends?"
"We're doing this because I've been wanting to do this for ages," Henrietta said. She had long, straight black hair set in what she insisted be called a "hime cut." Her family has been living comfortably since the 18th century, and she had an original Monet in her bedroom, next to a vintage Daicon IV poster. "Carmichael's dare just reminded me of it."
"And why are the two of us here, then?" Rebecca asked, grinning. Her kinky hair was pulled back by a lime green hairband. She is the fourth of nine children. Her father is the city's mayor, and he's trying to get a reality show set up around that fact.
"Because it needs three people," Henrietta said, "and because you are my loyal minions."
Sue stood in the sandy playground as the others continued onward, excited despite themselves, hopping down the concrete divider at the end of the playground and running across the grass expanse that separated the rest of the park from the ruins. She watched them slowly shrink as they neared the handful of crumbling masonry columns, few much taller than the girls themselves, and go under the arched doorway, an artfully shaped arc which was all that suggested the scattered stones were anything besides the remains of a burnt-down factory. The sounds of their passing soon faded to the chorus of crickets, the rustle of trees, and the distant, omnipresent suburban traffic. Sue walked slowly, past the solitary stone that sat an arm's length from the playground. It was far from the rest of the ruins, but clearly belonged with them. How big had this structure been? What was it, anyways? Lawnmower marks circled around the stone, breaking the even rows of the rest of the field like ripples in water. The full moon hung big and low in the sky. Incredibly big. Sue stretched her hand out, fingers spread, and found she couldn't quite cover all of it. They say that atmospheric distortions abounded about the ruins. No one had ever bothered studying it. She could see her friends waiting by the arch, dwarfed by the scattered stones. Strange, it was always curiously hard to count them. Her arm fell.
"This is kid shit." she said to the sky.
"Hurry up!" she heard Rebecca shout. She broke into a run.
The three girls gathered around the patch of remaining flagstones roughly in the center of the ruins. This was a popular picnic spot - save for among the unusually superstitious. Henrietta dug around in the old leather handbag she'd brought, pulling out a lighter, a shrink-wrapped package of pillar candles she'd bought at a home goods store, and several sticks of incense she'd bought at the only shop in town that sells vinyl records.
"What's all that for?" Sue asked, "We're just supposed to join hands and say-"
"Shh, don't say it yet." Henrietta said as she stuck incense sticks in the ground and arranged the candles in a rough circle on the flagstones. "This is for effect, that's the most important part!"
Sue sat on the ground next to Rebecca as Henrietta buzzed about lighting things, chuckling through her teeth like she did whenever she bought a new video game. Rebecca shrugged at Sue.
"At least she's having fun."
"Alright, now quiet your minds." Henrietta said as she sat down opposite them. Sue didn't know quite what this meant, but the others were sitting with their eyes closed and making a very serious attempt at looking like they were meditating. She tried to do the same.
Silence pulsed in her ears, an unaccustomed widening of details. She could hear a tiny, pattern-less clamor - music, she realized. Was someone having a party a few blocks away? She ran her nails over the grooves of her threadbare blue jeans. She heard Rebecca shift around a bit. Henrietta's absolute stillness left a weird heavy spot in her mind. The incense sticks seemed to have gone out. A few of the candles similarly gutted. They don't make 'em like they used to, apparently. A slight breeze swept over the field. It rattled a charm on Henrietta's handbag, but slid noiselessly over the recently cut grass. It smelled like...like someone had neglected to clean up after their dog. Sue opened one eye and glanced sideways into the wind. A badly cracked and warped patch of sidewalk was illuminated by a solitary streetlight. Everything was terribly ordinary.
"We ready?" Henrietta asked. Sue shifted back to reality, reluctantly. She wasn't ready. Was that a bit of nervousness in Ettie's voice? She can't be that excited, Sue thought. Say a specific phrase in a specific spot under the full moon and Lucifer, the ghost of Elizabeth Bathory, and a crying clown will show up to grant your wish, show you who you'll marry, and or drag you to hell. This was the sort of thing kids believed in - the sort of things high schoolers only resorted to when supremely bored. They joined hands, only able to pinch each others fingertips, really. The patch of cobblestone they were sitting around was just a bit too big.
"Klaatu...Barada...Nikto" they said in clumsy almost-unison. There was a brief, stale silence. Headlights from a car backing out swept over the park, briefly casting big, dark shadows from the three girls and the ruins. Sue let go first.
"Well, that was fun." Rebecca said. Henrietta laughed.
"It was kind of lame as urban legends go," she said. "I think the incantation was actually some sort of meme. I tried to spice it up with the candles, but..."
"Nah, it was fun." Sue said, standing up and brushing herself off. "Looks like Carmichael's run off or something. Let's go back to your place and watch a movie."
The three girls turned to leave. The world turned in the opposite direction, grinding around them like the tumbler of a lock. It clicked in to place with a dull bell chime that played off the skin of their brains, and the ruined arch they'd expected to be facing was now filled with an ivy-covered portcullis, through which golden sunlight streamed.
The three girls turned from the portcullis and walked further in the regenerated ruins. The circular chamber where they'd conducted their ceremony, where Henrietta's handbag held down the plastic wrap the candles came in, opened onto a long bridge. It was of marble, with an abstract pattern of brown and black running down the center, and two rows of marble columns holding up a tile roof. They walked down the bridge, automatically, like they were only remembering walking down it, or dreaming it, or being compelled to by some evil force. Between the columns they saw that the landscape was hilly and heavily wooded, the bridge running along at just higher than the canopy, such that they seemed to be in a rolling sea of leaves. Golden sunlight streamed through golden clouds, flocks of things that were not quite birds flowing about them, the atmosphere heavy with dust, pollen, and heat haze. The sun was low and huge, bigger than an outstretched hand. In the distance, they saw mountains, dotted with trees, hovering in the air, slowly drifting about, each with several waterfalls dropping endlessly towards solid ground.
Sue wanted to say they were no longer in Kansas or some other cliche, hoping that hearing a voice would free them from whatever sleepy, muggy force seemed to be controlling their movement, but it was impossible. It would be like talking in church during a sermon, or making light at the scene of a grisly murder. You just couldn't do it, something about words just seemed childish.
The three reached the end of the bridge, where it joined with the flat top of a stone tower that disappeared into the trees below. The roof was ringed by wooden archways, those things people had outdoor weddings in front of, up which climbed trails of ivy. In the center of the roof was a door, unsupported. It opened for them, and suddenly they were in a room with no doors. It was circular, and way up the walls were windows filled with beautiful wrought iron bars instead of glass. Concentric circles of stone benches ringed the room, in which sat people in robes of green cotton and bones. In the center, which they slowly approached, was a golden bench, in which sat a man Sue was sure she'd dreamed about, once, when she was nine or ten. He was King Middlejack, she didn't wonder why she knew that. His face was beautiful. In front of the king stood a woman. She'd been speaking to him, but turned and looked, perplexed, at the three visitors, as they stepped forward and bowed, and someone in the back announced their names. The king, his court, and all of his realm were muted, blurry shades of green and yellow and brown, the air of a sun-weathered dirt road, whereas she was clear and cool. She had the figure of a superheroine and wore robes of royal purple and ultramarine, trimmed with gold. In her right hand was a tall steel staff, at her left hip a jeweled longsword. Her hair was long and curly, an incandescent white.
The king put on a crown of antlers and bounded over to them, taking Sue by the shoulder and grandly introducing her to the court. With a voice like bells he spoke of her, of how clever she was and how important she'd be in the future. She looked at the floor, smiling and blushing fiercely, hands folded over her lower stomach, like when she'd won a spelling bee in elementary school. She kept smiling as he stabbed her in the chest, a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth. He left the dagger in, drawing two more for her friends, the rest of the court, in their tattered robes of dun brown, sprang to their feet, to attack or retreat or to dance. The clear-looking woman drew her sword, everything slowed down, Sue opened her mouth to scream or yawn and then all was as nothing.
-----
Did you know that this county didn't exist fifty years ago? I don't mean it was recently redistricted, I mean the space itself, the geology, literally did not exist. People just woke up one morning to find thirty or so extra miles between Keybridge County and Waiula Lake. Well, there was a housing crisis going on at the time, so people didn't question it as much as they should have. Trees were cleared and roads were paved, but the strange thing is, for such a new land Apple Valley County sure had a lot of ruins. They're kind of weird - the masonry is very different from colonial construction, and certainly unlike anything the Native Americans ever built. They tried to quietly demolish them, but ran into troubles - any explosives set off at the ruins inexplicably fizzled, picks and hammers had their heads slide off on the backswing, tractors and bulldozers had ruinous engine troubles as they were chained to the stones, and any of the demolitions crew who pressed the matter too much had a heart attack. The ruins seemed adamant that the only thing that could destroy them would be time. It was an inexplicable sort of thing, so they didn't bother to try and explicate it - the duplexes and strip malls were built around rather over the ruins, and life went on with only a few wild rumors. Now, Apple Valley County (which is mostly flat and has no apple orchards) is a peaceful and proud place, full of fancy downtown shopping centers, quaint little towns with bars that try to look older than they really are, and mile upon mile of roomy suburbs. For the past fifty years, the town council has quietly voted down any motions to study the ruins, or use them as tourist attractions.
-----
Sue moved her hands about in the darkness, groping at the loose, wrinkled pile of sheets. There was a stiff mattress and a thin Spongebob pillow that felt like it came from a hospital. Her hand met cool drywall. She was home again.
She pulled herself into a sitting position and rubbed her pounding head. Her clothes from last night were still on, but that was normal. She was trying to remember the dream she'd had last night, that terribly familiar dream. Was it the one where she fucked Orlando Bloom?
"Good morning!" a chipper voice said. Sue blinked incredulously. At the foot of her bed sat a little girl, with long, curly white hair and a powder blue dress. The girl smiled brightly. "Glad you finally woke up!
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Book of A More Fantastic World
Hello, reader. I guess this is like a "setting bible" for my favored original setting. I've been meaning to write this for a long time. It'll definitely be a work in progress, but the timeline is the most important part so I'll start with that.
Somewhere by the west coast, there exists a wooded hill, a big slope really, whose thick tree coverage is broken in places by patches of rocky cliff. The air beneath the towering old-growth canopy has a vital energy to it, cool, moist, quietly alive.The breeze sets the branches swaying and the leaves shuddering and flickering, sunlight streaming through to create an atmosphere of shimmering green, an emperor of emeralds. Something small and furry darts through the web of twigs - an acorn drops off and breaks on the gables of a one-story wooden house. It has carved shutters, a porch with an eave but no screens, and no fence. A few trees were cut down to make and make room for this house, and the pool of light surrounding it has filled with ferns.
In the attic, a desk has been placed in front of a circular window, with a blank book on it. In front of the desk sits a woman wearing a blue dress and a sweater. She has long hair, curly and an unnatural cloud white. She loves jewelry, and proclaims her love of ostentatious wealth with bravado, but right now her earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and hairpins are all of steel and river stones. The forest outside is not reflecting properly in her grey eyes. There is a long moment as another acorn explodes off the roof, then she takes up a quill pen from beside the book. A longsword is leaning against the chair - she draws it out a few inches and sharpens the quill on the blade. It clicks loudly going back in. She dips the pen in an inkwell, taps it a few times, and begins to write.
I am Empress Elizabeth Ostergaard, sovereign of the Empire of the Sun and holder of more titles than I care to list here. I woke up yesterday to find that my youngest son, Maxwell, with some help from the servants, had constructed an elaborate masterpiece of cardboard, crayon, and glued macaroni as a birthday present for me. Little round-faced figures representing me, him, and my other children Gerald and Whitney stood in a garden with towering colorful presents, a sky he got bored and stopped coloring halfway, and a red blob he informed me was a rocket ship, added after the original composition was finished and he was waiting for me to wake up.
I really can't properly express how adorable it was.
Later that day, after the traditional speech and the traditional media bonanza and the traditional but much more comfortable private celebration I put Maxwell's masterpiece in a portfolio I keep around for just such a purpose, and put it up on a bookshelf I keep for holding just such portfolios. As I stood on the tips of my toes trying to fit the folio on the only remaining spot on the shelf, I felt a terrible symbolism creeping over me.
You see, yesterday was my one thousandth, four hundred and thirteenth birthday. Yes, despite the persistent rumors that I have been dead for centuries and replaced by a succession of doppelgangers controlled by some sinister cabal, the simple, and official, stance is the correct one - I've been functionally immortal since I was in my forties, as a side effect of the sort of power you'd need to run a globe-spanning empire. In that time, I have given birth to, adopted, or constructed through arcane or technological means one hundred and seventy children. All of them I raised as best I knew how, though my knowledge has changed considerably over the past millennial and a half. Some of them grew up to be great heroes in their own right, others, perhaps more miraculously, grew into decent human beings. Others failed, devoting their lives to frivolities and their own insecurities, though I like to think they at least lived happily. A few rejected me, due to legitimate objections to my rule or an adolescent rebellious impulse, I'll probably never know. Twenty have tried to overthrow me. Of these, seven have died trying, three by my own hand. Some found a measure of longevity similar to mine. Most did not. And every single one I loved with all of my being.
And every single one I remember, just as I remember things that happened four hundred years in the past as easy as things four years ago. All of these treasured memories I've managed to hold on to, and through this all my children still have a place in my heart, my joy in them undiminished by having been experienced countless times before. I try not to question how my memory seems to defy neurological limits. But, as I teetered on the edge of a footstool, trying to squeeze a portfolio of crayon drawings and fingerpaints onto the highest shelf, well. I decided I should start writing things down.
So here I am, in a private retreat in the hills of Los Angeles, trying to decide what parts of my life I can't live without. I'll add to this document over time, and probably make it publicly available when it's somewhat complete. At least, once I've thought of a name.
History
I suppose I should start with a brief overview of my life. I'm sure you will find all of this information in grade school history texts, but some people are picky about primary sources and all that. Probably the same people who always insist on exact dates. Anyways, my official birth date is October the 21st, 1985. This isn't entirely accurate - that was the day I was taken in by the orphanage, though the doctors report insists I was only a few days old at the time. In my early years I thought much about who my parents could be, making up truly incredible people in the process (it was obvious my parents were martian royalty who spent their time fighting pirates, after all, who else could have spawned me? Or perhaps my parents were fairies, who sent me to the human world in trade for a human child? It sounded quite silly, in those days). Eventually I realized all of these fantasies ended with my imaginary parents showing up to rescue me from whatever misunderstanding the cruel world was inflicting on my adolescent soul, and made peace with the fact that I'd never know for sure.
But I digress. I was discovered in a basket on the doorstep of Marble Gate Orphanage one October morning. Cliche, but given that the Gate was a converted Victorian-era mansion run by nuns, cliche was the name of the game. It was in the hills not far from Los Angeles, around the area I'm writing this actually, though the forest has been built over and regrown several times since then. The head nun was called Mother Mayi, which we tormented her endlessly about. She had skin that looked more and more like gnarled wood with every passing year, and smoked cigarettes from a long holder. She did it around all us kids, too, which probably screwed some of our lungs up awful. I later learned she'd had the orphanage taken from her after an embezzlement investigation. Still, whenever I think of her I call her "Mother," just as I did back then. It's strange how your opinion of someone can be colored by having cried into their lap as a toddler.
Anyways, my early life was...well, it was everything to me, but this is the sort of subject that forming an objective account of can be difficult. I once got lost in the same stretch of woods three times in a row. I thought my elementary school math teacher was a vampire, and one day hung a cross on the door of the classroom to keep her out (again, it seemed ridiculous in those days). There exists a picture of me with pigtails and a bright pink pair of overalls with a flower on the chest, which I can only hope has been obliterated by time. I got a bad cold once, and spent an entire weekend playing a game on my Playstation non-stop, while delirious with fever (I don't remember what it was called). People made fun of my hair, which started light blonde and got lighter instead of darker as I got older, which led to one of the lap-crying incidents. In middle school I was a nerd, in high school I was a goth, and after graduation I spent awhile as a thuggish vagrant before I decided I'd rather be a pretentious art school student. I changed my major from writing to theatre to painting to music and finally to "graphic design," which I assumed was the same thing as visual arts but paid better. Angeleno, angelican, adorable angel...it all seems like another lifetime, and yet so intimately familiar. I should have been a poet instead.
It was in 2004, when I was 19, that things changed.
Timeline
Bla bla bla
Somewhere by the west coast, there exists a wooded hill, a big slope really, whose thick tree coverage is broken in places by patches of rocky cliff. The air beneath the towering old-growth canopy has a vital energy to it, cool, moist, quietly alive.The breeze sets the branches swaying and the leaves shuddering and flickering, sunlight streaming through to create an atmosphere of shimmering green, an emperor of emeralds. Something small and furry darts through the web of twigs - an acorn drops off and breaks on the gables of a one-story wooden house. It has carved shutters, a porch with an eave but no screens, and no fence. A few trees were cut down to make and make room for this house, and the pool of light surrounding it has filled with ferns.
In the attic, a desk has been placed in front of a circular window, with a blank book on it. In front of the desk sits a woman wearing a blue dress and a sweater. She has long hair, curly and an unnatural cloud white. She loves jewelry, and proclaims her love of ostentatious wealth with bravado, but right now her earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and hairpins are all of steel and river stones. The forest outside is not reflecting properly in her grey eyes. There is a long moment as another acorn explodes off the roof, then she takes up a quill pen from beside the book. A longsword is leaning against the chair - she draws it out a few inches and sharpens the quill on the blade. It clicks loudly going back in. She dips the pen in an inkwell, taps it a few times, and begins to write.
I am Empress Elizabeth Ostergaard, sovereign of the Empire of the Sun and holder of more titles than I care to list here. I woke up yesterday to find that my youngest son, Maxwell, with some help from the servants, had constructed an elaborate masterpiece of cardboard, crayon, and glued macaroni as a birthday present for me. Little round-faced figures representing me, him, and my other children Gerald and Whitney stood in a garden with towering colorful presents, a sky he got bored and stopped coloring halfway, and a red blob he informed me was a rocket ship, added after the original composition was finished and he was waiting for me to wake up.
I really can't properly express how adorable it was.
Later that day, after the traditional speech and the traditional media bonanza and the traditional but much more comfortable private celebration I put Maxwell's masterpiece in a portfolio I keep around for just such a purpose, and put it up on a bookshelf I keep for holding just such portfolios. As I stood on the tips of my toes trying to fit the folio on the only remaining spot on the shelf, I felt a terrible symbolism creeping over me.
You see, yesterday was my one thousandth, four hundred and thirteenth birthday. Yes, despite the persistent rumors that I have been dead for centuries and replaced by a succession of doppelgangers controlled by some sinister cabal, the simple, and official, stance is the correct one - I've been functionally immortal since I was in my forties, as a side effect of the sort of power you'd need to run a globe-spanning empire. In that time, I have given birth to, adopted, or constructed through arcane or technological means one hundred and seventy children. All of them I raised as best I knew how, though my knowledge has changed considerably over the past millennial and a half. Some of them grew up to be great heroes in their own right, others, perhaps more miraculously, grew into decent human beings. Others failed, devoting their lives to frivolities and their own insecurities, though I like to think they at least lived happily. A few rejected me, due to legitimate objections to my rule or an adolescent rebellious impulse, I'll probably never know. Twenty have tried to overthrow me. Of these, seven have died trying, three by my own hand. Some found a measure of longevity similar to mine. Most did not. And every single one I loved with all of my being.
And every single one I remember, just as I remember things that happened four hundred years in the past as easy as things four years ago. All of these treasured memories I've managed to hold on to, and through this all my children still have a place in my heart, my joy in them undiminished by having been experienced countless times before. I try not to question how my memory seems to defy neurological limits. But, as I teetered on the edge of a footstool, trying to squeeze a portfolio of crayon drawings and fingerpaints onto the highest shelf, well. I decided I should start writing things down.
So here I am, in a private retreat in the hills of Los Angeles, trying to decide what parts of my life I can't live without. I'll add to this document over time, and probably make it publicly available when it's somewhat complete. At least, once I've thought of a name.
History
I suppose I should start with a brief overview of my life. I'm sure you will find all of this information in grade school history texts, but some people are picky about primary sources and all that. Probably the same people who always insist on exact dates. Anyways, my official birth date is October the 21st, 1985. This isn't entirely accurate - that was the day I was taken in by the orphanage, though the doctors report insists I was only a few days old at the time. In my early years I thought much about who my parents could be, making up truly incredible people in the process (it was obvious my parents were martian royalty who spent their time fighting pirates, after all, who else could have spawned me? Or perhaps my parents were fairies, who sent me to the human world in trade for a human child? It sounded quite silly, in those days). Eventually I realized all of these fantasies ended with my imaginary parents showing up to rescue me from whatever misunderstanding the cruel world was inflicting on my adolescent soul, and made peace with the fact that I'd never know for sure.
But I digress. I was discovered in a basket on the doorstep of Marble Gate Orphanage one October morning. Cliche, but given that the Gate was a converted Victorian-era mansion run by nuns, cliche was the name of the game. It was in the hills not far from Los Angeles, around the area I'm writing this actually, though the forest has been built over and regrown several times since then. The head nun was called Mother Mayi, which we tormented her endlessly about. She had skin that looked more and more like gnarled wood with every passing year, and smoked cigarettes from a long holder. She did it around all us kids, too, which probably screwed some of our lungs up awful. I later learned she'd had the orphanage taken from her after an embezzlement investigation. Still, whenever I think of her I call her "Mother," just as I did back then. It's strange how your opinion of someone can be colored by having cried into their lap as a toddler.
Anyways, my early life was...well, it was everything to me, but this is the sort of subject that forming an objective account of can be difficult. I once got lost in the same stretch of woods three times in a row. I thought my elementary school math teacher was a vampire, and one day hung a cross on the door of the classroom to keep her out (again, it seemed ridiculous in those days). There exists a picture of me with pigtails and a bright pink pair of overalls with a flower on the chest, which I can only hope has been obliterated by time. I got a bad cold once, and spent an entire weekend playing a game on my Playstation non-stop, while delirious with fever (I don't remember what it was called). People made fun of my hair, which started light blonde and got lighter instead of darker as I got older, which led to one of the lap-crying incidents. In middle school I was a nerd, in high school I was a goth, and after graduation I spent awhile as a thuggish vagrant before I decided I'd rather be a pretentious art school student. I changed my major from writing to theatre to painting to music and finally to "graphic design," which I assumed was the same thing as visual arts but paid better. Angeleno, angelican, adorable angel...it all seems like another lifetime, and yet so intimately familiar. I should have been a poet instead.
It was in 2004, when I was 19, that things changed.
Timeline
Bla bla bla
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Fish Folk
Figured I'd do some more world building.
Tridentites, colloquially known as Fish People, are a species of True Chimera*. They are sentient amphibious bipeds widely spread throughout the oceans and lakes of the world, and their exact origins are unknown. They were likely created or introduced to Earth's oceans during the Darkened Years.
Tridentite anatomy is highly similar to humans, as they were clearly based off of humans when they were created. For the most part height, weight, proportions, and other superficial details synch closely with human parameters - the only exception being that Tridentites have longer legs on average. Skin tends to be pale grey-blue or green and of a smooth, hairless composition, condensing into pebbly, scale-like patches in several places: along the spine and shoulderblades, shoulders, forearms, hips, lower legs and feet, and occasionally on the cheeks. The colors of these scales were once thought to divide the Fish Folk into distinct races, but it has since become apparent that the scales change color to provide camoflage depending on the water temperature and qualities, as triggered by the protean gland (see below). For instance, the scales of a Tridentite in an inland lake will turn algae-green.
The Tridentite's hair and eye color and texture fall within human averages (and are the only way outsiders can generally distinguish the various Tridentite ethnic groups). Their eyes are large, with large irises, and their lenses can change both shape and position, making them unique anatomical mashups of aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates. This gives them excellent underwater vision. The protean gland can change the average level of contraction of the iris and several other factors to adapt to many different light levels and the cloudiness of water, as explained below. Tridentite noses tend to be small and flat, incisors are more pointed than in a human, and the outer ear is larger and of a more finlike structure. Similar fins and cartilaginous spines line the outer edge of their forearms, calves, elbows, and just below the ribcage, where their gill covers are. They have long, webbed toes, but not hands.
Internally, Tridenties have three major differences from humans. Fatty tissue in one of the fish people is filled with small gas-filled sacs whose exact purpose isn't clear, though because they expand and contract in the presence of the hormones emitted by the protean gland it is theorized they serve as dive bladders to help the Tridentite maintain buoyancy at different depths. The respiratory structure of the fish people is truly unique - they have no diaphragm, as the walls of the lungs are muscular and work to pump water from the mouth, through the lungs, and out the gill openings just below the ribs. The lungs (called such only because no one has come up with a proper name to describe this organ) are filled with oval structures that can serve as either alveoli or gill filaments. If the Tridentite finds herself above water, the protean gland causes her gill openings (operculum) to seal shut, the internal structure of her lungs to warp to better accommodate air, her lungs to expand and contract differently, and in a few seconds she is breathing in and out similar to how humans do so. The level of versatility Tridentites enjoy due to this as amphibians is incredible - there are very few places on the planet where they cannot breathe with relative ease.
(Before you inevitably ask, yes, they have breasts above the gills - Tridentites are mammals, even though many of their tissues and metabolic processes are closer to ocean fish, and they reproduce just like humans.)
The protean gland, as you may have guessed, is the most miraculous part of a Tridentite. Literally, in fact, as it has a subtle, naturally-occurring magical enchantment to bolster its effects. The protean gland releases a wide range of hormones in response to external stimuli that rapidly alter the Tridentite's body. Bones get harder or softer, skin changes how liquids and gasses permeate through it, pigment glands under the skin activate, heart rate changes, blood composition changes, all with the net effect of swiftly adapting the Tridentite's system to a huge range of environments, from freshwater lakes to rivers and oceans from the arctics to the tropics. They can even survive on land in environments dry enough to easily kill their smaller amphibian brethren (though like humans living at high altitudes, this isn't very comfortable and opens them up to a number of medical risks they wouldn't have to worry about otherwise.)
As mentioned, Tridentite population is widespread throughout the world's oceans, though the total population is probably less than a billion. They are a mostly stone-age people technologically (it is rather hard to discover fire, blacksmithing, irrigation and the like when you live underwater). The majority of them are hunter-gatherers, with a few semi-nomadic herders. There are about five Tridentite settlements worldwide that would qualify as cities, and the governments of these city-states are the most complex level of organization the Fish People have exhibited. Researchers have identified at least twelve distinct language groups, and at least one of the city-states has created a pictographic writing system. Tridentites dress in clothing made from sharkskin or fish hides backed by cloth woven from kelp. Nudity taboos vary between individual groups of Fish People, but they always leave their stomachs uncovered to give their gills room. One group that lived in deep ocean trenches was observed to collect bioluminescent fish and train them as living light sources, or to crush them and mix them with minerals collected from the ocean bed to create a brightly glowing body paint. Tridentites who live near settled shores frequently trade deep ocean fish and cloth with humans in exchange for metal goods and wood. Curiously, though some isolated settlements have had such contact with the fish people for decades, the world at large did not become aware of their existence until relatively recently. Some see a conspiracy in this, but it is more likely the fish people simply avoided the water pollution around main human settlements and shipping lanes and thus never had widespread contact. It should be pointed out that the majority of Tridentites still live deep enough in the ocean and far enough from shore that they have only a vague understanding of the concept of land, and may not know of humans at all.
Incidentally, the name "Tridentite" was coined during one of mankind's first major encounters with the fish people, when a repair crew sent to check on a malfunctioning underwater communications cable off the coast of India found that some Tridentites had stripped bits of metal from the cable's infrastructure and fashioned it in to tridents for hunting small fish.
*True Chimera, as opposed to Piecemeal Chimera, have their own genetic code and are capable of reproduction. Hmm, I should start a blog post collecting all the details of my original setting like that. Could be fun.
Tridentites, colloquially known as Fish People, are a species of True Chimera*. They are sentient amphibious bipeds widely spread throughout the oceans and lakes of the world, and their exact origins are unknown. They were likely created or introduced to Earth's oceans during the Darkened Years.
Tridentite anatomy is highly similar to humans, as they were clearly based off of humans when they were created. For the most part height, weight, proportions, and other superficial details synch closely with human parameters - the only exception being that Tridentites have longer legs on average. Skin tends to be pale grey-blue or green and of a smooth, hairless composition, condensing into pebbly, scale-like patches in several places: along the spine and shoulderblades, shoulders, forearms, hips, lower legs and feet, and occasionally on the cheeks. The colors of these scales were once thought to divide the Fish Folk into distinct races, but it has since become apparent that the scales change color to provide camoflage depending on the water temperature and qualities, as triggered by the protean gland (see below). For instance, the scales of a Tridentite in an inland lake will turn algae-green.
The Tridentite's hair and eye color and texture fall within human averages (and are the only way outsiders can generally distinguish the various Tridentite ethnic groups). Their eyes are large, with large irises, and their lenses can change both shape and position, making them unique anatomical mashups of aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates. This gives them excellent underwater vision. The protean gland can change the average level of contraction of the iris and several other factors to adapt to many different light levels and the cloudiness of water, as explained below. Tridentite noses tend to be small and flat, incisors are more pointed than in a human, and the outer ear is larger and of a more finlike structure. Similar fins and cartilaginous spines line the outer edge of their forearms, calves, elbows, and just below the ribcage, where their gill covers are. They have long, webbed toes, but not hands.
Internally, Tridenties have three major differences from humans. Fatty tissue in one of the fish people is filled with small gas-filled sacs whose exact purpose isn't clear, though because they expand and contract in the presence of the hormones emitted by the protean gland it is theorized they serve as dive bladders to help the Tridentite maintain buoyancy at different depths. The respiratory structure of the fish people is truly unique - they have no diaphragm, as the walls of the lungs are muscular and work to pump water from the mouth, through the lungs, and out the gill openings just below the ribs. The lungs (called such only because no one has come up with a proper name to describe this organ) are filled with oval structures that can serve as either alveoli or gill filaments. If the Tridentite finds herself above water, the protean gland causes her gill openings (operculum) to seal shut, the internal structure of her lungs to warp to better accommodate air, her lungs to expand and contract differently, and in a few seconds she is breathing in and out similar to how humans do so. The level of versatility Tridentites enjoy due to this as amphibians is incredible - there are very few places on the planet where they cannot breathe with relative ease.
(Before you inevitably ask, yes, they have breasts above the gills - Tridentites are mammals, even though many of their tissues and metabolic processes are closer to ocean fish, and they reproduce just like humans.)
The protean gland, as you may have guessed, is the most miraculous part of a Tridentite. Literally, in fact, as it has a subtle, naturally-occurring magical enchantment to bolster its effects. The protean gland releases a wide range of hormones in response to external stimuli that rapidly alter the Tridentite's body. Bones get harder or softer, skin changes how liquids and gasses permeate through it, pigment glands under the skin activate, heart rate changes, blood composition changes, all with the net effect of swiftly adapting the Tridentite's system to a huge range of environments, from freshwater lakes to rivers and oceans from the arctics to the tropics. They can even survive on land in environments dry enough to easily kill their smaller amphibian brethren (though like humans living at high altitudes, this isn't very comfortable and opens them up to a number of medical risks they wouldn't have to worry about otherwise.)
As mentioned, Tridentite population is widespread throughout the world's oceans, though the total population is probably less than a billion. They are a mostly stone-age people technologically (it is rather hard to discover fire, blacksmithing, irrigation and the like when you live underwater). The majority of them are hunter-gatherers, with a few semi-nomadic herders. There are about five Tridentite settlements worldwide that would qualify as cities, and the governments of these city-states are the most complex level of organization the Fish People have exhibited. Researchers have identified at least twelve distinct language groups, and at least one of the city-states has created a pictographic writing system. Tridentites dress in clothing made from sharkskin or fish hides backed by cloth woven from kelp. Nudity taboos vary between individual groups of Fish People, but they always leave their stomachs uncovered to give their gills room. One group that lived in deep ocean trenches was observed to collect bioluminescent fish and train them as living light sources, or to crush them and mix them with minerals collected from the ocean bed to create a brightly glowing body paint. Tridentites who live near settled shores frequently trade deep ocean fish and cloth with humans in exchange for metal goods and wood. Curiously, though some isolated settlements have had such contact with the fish people for decades, the world at large did not become aware of their existence until relatively recently. Some see a conspiracy in this, but it is more likely the fish people simply avoided the water pollution around main human settlements and shipping lanes and thus never had widespread contact. It should be pointed out that the majority of Tridentites still live deep enough in the ocean and far enough from shore that they have only a vague understanding of the concept of land, and may not know of humans at all.
Incidentally, the name "Tridentite" was coined during one of mankind's first major encounters with the fish people, when a repair crew sent to check on a malfunctioning underwater communications cable off the coast of India found that some Tridentites had stripped bits of metal from the cable's infrastructure and fashioned it in to tridents for hunting small fish.
*True Chimera, as opposed to Piecemeal Chimera, have their own genetic code and are capable of reproduction. Hmm, I should start a blog post collecting all the details of my original setting like that. Could be fun.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Mystic Armor
Figured for today's entry I'd expand on an idea I've been toying around with a lot for my favored original setting. Basically, suits of entirely magic-based powered armor. I'll confess I only finalized the idea after reading about WH40k's Space Marines :P
In hidden vaults deep beneath the fortress of Karak Vida, Sir Brevick the Staunch, Knight of the Fourth Circle and Captain of the Order of the Blue Oak, walked with his son, Frederick. In silence they walked down the dark corridor, at the end of which a single light illuminated an oaken door. This door was covered in elaborate metal trimmings, depicting a great silver oak tree surrounded by mountains, with a sun disc of gold directly above. The echo of the lock clicking open raced down the stone corridor.
Within was a torch-lit circular room, its space mostly taken up by three thick columns. In alcoves set in to the columns, and completely ringing the room, were dozens of suits of armor. Frederick walked past his father, slowly circling the room, mouth slightly open. Each suit was different – different styles of plate, different colors and trimmings, some with incredibly ostentatious helmets, shoulderpads, and chestplates, others simple suits with complex patterns etched into the seams. Here was one painted matte black, with sinister eyeholes in a featureless helmet. Here was one with ox horns set into the helmet, and a gold-plated falcon covering the chest. Each, however, was solely of metal plates, with tight, articulated joints, and each was terribly large. He turned to his father.
“These are the mystic armors of our order,” his father told him, “given to us by the Empress herself, over a thousand years ago. I brought you here so you could...get acquainted with them.”
“I already have…armor…” Frederick said, aware of how absurd it sounded. The subtle arcane energies that flooded the room were dulling his senses, he thought. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the suit before him, its ruby-stained plates and golden etching, though he couldn’t imagine ever being big enough to fit in it.
“The suit of adamant chains you have now is fine for a Knight Apparent, son, but it does not compare to these artifacts. Some day, I am sure, one will find you worthy.” Frederick wasn’t quite listening, though. Sir Brevick spotted a slight flickering of light in the jewel in the center of the breastplate, which slowly spread outwards through tiny channels covering the armor, like rainwater filling desert riverbeds. He smiled.
------
Though enchanting armor to enhance its protective qualities is no rare idea, the legendary suits called mystic armor are in a class of their own. Each is alive and self-aware (though they can rarely actually talk), and each chooses its wearer. The first requirement, of course, is that the wearer have at least a modicum of magical ability, as the complex, powerful layers of enchantment that suffuse the armor cannot be powered simply by ambient mana: the wearer must provide direction and mystic force. Beyond that, every suit is different, naturally*, and chooses its wearer based on unique criteria. Many, especially newer suits, are actually rather mercenary, believing they belong to whoever can claim them. Others accept only the strongest warriors, or those possessing some particular virtue. A few actually prefer weak and flawed individuals, the underdogs and the doomed, viewing such people as being more needing of them. The suit’s personalities are inconsistent – a few are made with carefully tailored personas, but most start as blank slates and base themselves off the quirks of their various wearers.
So, say you are lucky enough discover a suit of mystic armor and are chosen to wear it. The first of the suit’s powers you will notice are a unique telekinetic sensitivity - each plate is able to move through the air under its own force (as supplied by the mana of the wearer). The primary purpose of this is to enhance the wearer’s strength – the suit moves in unison with the wearer, adding its magical force to the wearer’s strikes and movements. There are many other possibilities, however – the suit’s owner can don it in a matter of seconds, for instance, by having the plates simply fly in to place. The suit itself can levitate in thin air, without any sort of leverage, though whether this pans out as slowed falls and a light step or outright flight depends on the suit and the power of the wearer. At least one eccentric user took to launching her gauntlets at distant foes while shouting “Rocket Fist Attack!” And of course, the suits are able to assemble and walk around under their own power, provided they have some powerful source of magic to draw from. This usually renders the armor not much stronger than a normal human, but they’re occasionally pressed into service as decoys. There are tales of suits worn by exceptionally powerful users which retained enough residual mana after the wearer was slain to seek revenge on their former master’s killers.
The second notable power the suits have is that despite being spiritually charged with sturdiness and unyielding force, they are surprisingly mutable. Almost all suits of mystic armor follow the same basic pattern. They are full suits of plate armor, but while even the heaviest mundane armor relies on loose chains and plates to cover complicated joints like the shoulders and groin, mystic armor is always nearly-seamless, with ingenious articulated hinges that allow a full range of movement. Furthermore, the plates are rarely less than an inch thick, much heavier than normal metal armor. This would make them incredibly cumbersome if not for the suit's telekinetic power, but with this boon wearers of mystic armor can be downright nimble. Beyond this basic style, however, suits vary tremendously, as they are able to slowly alter their own forms to match their wearers, like they base their personalities on them. There’s the practical application – over the first few hours of donning a suit the wearer will notice it fits better every second, as the plates warp and mould themselves to his body and movements. Moreover, the suits are able to radically change their appearance in accordance with the master’s wishes – the armor’s style changes to match that of the wearer’s home country, crests and symbols related to the wearer’s allegiance or beliefs slowly form, and so on. Ancient suits tend to be incredibly ornate and rather mismatched due to having accumulated several lifetimes worth of passions.
Of course, all this would mean little if the suits were not able to protect their wearers. Fortunately, they more than excel at this. Almost all suits of mystic armor are made out of adamant, if not of some genuinely miraculous substance, and all are further reinforced by an active enchantment that increases the strength of molecular bonds in the plates, making the armor significantly stronger than should be possible. They also have a version of a common spell called the magician's mantle folded into their steel when they are forged. This creates a sensitive field of loosely manifested mana around the suit, which reflexively condenses and manifests as a counter-force against anything dangerous that enters it. Thus incoming bullets are bounced off an invisible field, heat is generated in areas of extreme cold, and electrical discharges are diverted by magnetic fields. The mantle can even ward off poisonous gas and seal itself against radical pressure differences. Because the suit's physical form already provides exceptional physical protection, many users have their mantles ignore physical damage altogether, using the mantle solely as a sort of environment suit. Because the mantle must constantly have more mana flowing in to it to replace that which manifests when "under pressure," having this happen while the wearer is, say, in a vacuum would be disastrous. Like with the regular magician's mantle, the field will occasionally create visual distortions and displays of "waste light" when they activate. Most suits are designed to minimize this effect, but a few exaggerate and tailor it, creating brilliant thematic auras when struck.
Finally, the interior portions of the suits have an enchantment that lets them synch up with the wearer's body. The suit monitors the wearer's body and can intervene, doing things like stabilizing critical wounds, accelerating healing, detecting and counteracting poison and disease, filling their bloodstream with oxygen if they can't breathe, and so forth. This can be one of the suit's more sinister abilities, as while they also have the ability to regulate hormones and chemicals to enhance strength, focus, and general combat abilities, this can be used to directly manipulate the wearer's emotions. Few suits are actually willful enough to resort to such matters, but many users are very wary of this ability. The suits of armor are usually designed so that they can only communicate with their wearers on an empathetic level - making them audibly talk is difficult, and letting them psychically communicate would, combined with their hormone control, allow them to completely dominate their wearers. There are rumors of immortal tyrants and warlords who were actually suits of mystic armor, jumping from wearer to wearer and dragging their hosts around like fleshy mana batteries. But those are just legends, right?
*Concept: it is impossible to make enchanted items based on a standard template, as the item and the enchantment must be in synch, and it is very difficult to cast spells with factory-level precision.
Hmm, didn't really go in to much about their origins. I didn't really have one in mind, though, I was just working on the concept. Worldbuilding is quite fun, I like being able to play with ideas without worrying about the narrative and how it fits in and whatnot. I may do the same tomorrow.
In hidden vaults deep beneath the fortress of Karak Vida, Sir Brevick the Staunch, Knight of the Fourth Circle and Captain of the Order of the Blue Oak, walked with his son, Frederick. In silence they walked down the dark corridor, at the end of which a single light illuminated an oaken door. This door was covered in elaborate metal trimmings, depicting a great silver oak tree surrounded by mountains, with a sun disc of gold directly above. The echo of the lock clicking open raced down the stone corridor.
Within was a torch-lit circular room, its space mostly taken up by three thick columns. In alcoves set in to the columns, and completely ringing the room, were dozens of suits of armor. Frederick walked past his father, slowly circling the room, mouth slightly open. Each suit was different – different styles of plate, different colors and trimmings, some with incredibly ostentatious helmets, shoulderpads, and chestplates, others simple suits with complex patterns etched into the seams. Here was one painted matte black, with sinister eyeholes in a featureless helmet. Here was one with ox horns set into the helmet, and a gold-plated falcon covering the chest. Each, however, was solely of metal plates, with tight, articulated joints, and each was terribly large. He turned to his father.
“These are the mystic armors of our order,” his father told him, “given to us by the Empress herself, over a thousand years ago. I brought you here so you could...get acquainted with them.”
“I already have…armor…” Frederick said, aware of how absurd it sounded. The subtle arcane energies that flooded the room were dulling his senses, he thought. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the suit before him, its ruby-stained plates and golden etching, though he couldn’t imagine ever being big enough to fit in it.
“The suit of adamant chains you have now is fine for a Knight Apparent, son, but it does not compare to these artifacts. Some day, I am sure, one will find you worthy.” Frederick wasn’t quite listening, though. Sir Brevick spotted a slight flickering of light in the jewel in the center of the breastplate, which slowly spread outwards through tiny channels covering the armor, like rainwater filling desert riverbeds. He smiled.
------
Though enchanting armor to enhance its protective qualities is no rare idea, the legendary suits called mystic armor are in a class of their own. Each is alive and self-aware (though they can rarely actually talk), and each chooses its wearer. The first requirement, of course, is that the wearer have at least a modicum of magical ability, as the complex, powerful layers of enchantment that suffuse the armor cannot be powered simply by ambient mana: the wearer must provide direction and mystic force. Beyond that, every suit is different, naturally*, and chooses its wearer based on unique criteria. Many, especially newer suits, are actually rather mercenary, believing they belong to whoever can claim them. Others accept only the strongest warriors, or those possessing some particular virtue. A few actually prefer weak and flawed individuals, the underdogs and the doomed, viewing such people as being more needing of them. The suit’s personalities are inconsistent – a few are made with carefully tailored personas, but most start as blank slates and base themselves off the quirks of their various wearers.
So, say you are lucky enough discover a suit of mystic armor and are chosen to wear it. The first of the suit’s powers you will notice are a unique telekinetic sensitivity - each plate is able to move through the air under its own force (as supplied by the mana of the wearer). The primary purpose of this is to enhance the wearer’s strength – the suit moves in unison with the wearer, adding its magical force to the wearer’s strikes and movements. There are many other possibilities, however – the suit’s owner can don it in a matter of seconds, for instance, by having the plates simply fly in to place. The suit itself can levitate in thin air, without any sort of leverage, though whether this pans out as slowed falls and a light step or outright flight depends on the suit and the power of the wearer. At least one eccentric user took to launching her gauntlets at distant foes while shouting “Rocket Fist Attack!” And of course, the suits are able to assemble and walk around under their own power, provided they have some powerful source of magic to draw from. This usually renders the armor not much stronger than a normal human, but they’re occasionally pressed into service as decoys. There are tales of suits worn by exceptionally powerful users which retained enough residual mana after the wearer was slain to seek revenge on their former master’s killers.
The second notable power the suits have is that despite being spiritually charged with sturdiness and unyielding force, they are surprisingly mutable. Almost all suits of mystic armor follow the same basic pattern. They are full suits of plate armor, but while even the heaviest mundane armor relies on loose chains and plates to cover complicated joints like the shoulders and groin, mystic armor is always nearly-seamless, with ingenious articulated hinges that allow a full range of movement. Furthermore, the plates are rarely less than an inch thick, much heavier than normal metal armor. This would make them incredibly cumbersome if not for the suit's telekinetic power, but with this boon wearers of mystic armor can be downright nimble. Beyond this basic style, however, suits vary tremendously, as they are able to slowly alter their own forms to match their wearers, like they base their personalities on them. There’s the practical application – over the first few hours of donning a suit the wearer will notice it fits better every second, as the plates warp and mould themselves to his body and movements. Moreover, the suits are able to radically change their appearance in accordance with the master’s wishes – the armor’s style changes to match that of the wearer’s home country, crests and symbols related to the wearer’s allegiance or beliefs slowly form, and so on. Ancient suits tend to be incredibly ornate and rather mismatched due to having accumulated several lifetimes worth of passions.
Of course, all this would mean little if the suits were not able to protect their wearers. Fortunately, they more than excel at this. Almost all suits of mystic armor are made out of adamant, if not of some genuinely miraculous substance, and all are further reinforced by an active enchantment that increases the strength of molecular bonds in the plates, making the armor significantly stronger than should be possible. They also have a version of a common spell called the magician's mantle folded into their steel when they are forged. This creates a sensitive field of loosely manifested mana around the suit, which reflexively condenses and manifests as a counter-force against anything dangerous that enters it. Thus incoming bullets are bounced off an invisible field, heat is generated in areas of extreme cold, and electrical discharges are diverted by magnetic fields. The mantle can even ward off poisonous gas and seal itself against radical pressure differences. Because the suit's physical form already provides exceptional physical protection, many users have their mantles ignore physical damage altogether, using the mantle solely as a sort of environment suit. Because the mantle must constantly have more mana flowing in to it to replace that which manifests when "under pressure," having this happen while the wearer is, say, in a vacuum would be disastrous. Like with the regular magician's mantle, the field will occasionally create visual distortions and displays of "waste light" when they activate. Most suits are designed to minimize this effect, but a few exaggerate and tailor it, creating brilliant thematic auras when struck.
Finally, the interior portions of the suits have an enchantment that lets them synch up with the wearer's body. The suit monitors the wearer's body and can intervene, doing things like stabilizing critical wounds, accelerating healing, detecting and counteracting poison and disease, filling their bloodstream with oxygen if they can't breathe, and so forth. This can be one of the suit's more sinister abilities, as while they also have the ability to regulate hormones and chemicals to enhance strength, focus, and general combat abilities, this can be used to directly manipulate the wearer's emotions. Few suits are actually willful enough to resort to such matters, but many users are very wary of this ability. The suits of armor are usually designed so that they can only communicate with their wearers on an empathetic level - making them audibly talk is difficult, and letting them psychically communicate would, combined with their hormone control, allow them to completely dominate their wearers. There are rumors of immortal tyrants and warlords who were actually suits of mystic armor, jumping from wearer to wearer and dragging their hosts around like fleshy mana batteries. But those are just legends, right?
*Concept: it is impossible to make enchanted items based on a standard template, as the item and the enchantment must be in synch, and it is very difficult to cast spells with factory-level precision.
Hmm, didn't really go in to much about their origins. I didn't really have one in mind, though, I was just working on the concept. Worldbuilding is quite fun, I like being able to play with ideas without worrying about the narrative and how it fits in and whatnot. I may do the same tomorrow.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Moonlight Rendezvous 2
In a rather good mood today. Figured I'd write more of this, and edit what I wrote.
The gentle pulse of nighttime traffic swirled about the stones of the ruin the park was built around. There was a clatter as three figures swung themselves over the low chainlink fence beside the playground. A fourth figure leaned over the fence at them, speaking in an almost-whisper.
"Oh my God you fucking faggots," he said, enunciating every other syllable, "quit pussying around and go already."
"You realize you're talking to girls, right?" one figure said, "Using 'pussy' as a pejorative doesn't make much sense."
"Your daddy's gonna get mad at you for talking like that, Carmichael," a second girl said, "Once he gets out of prison for selling meth."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Guys, guys, calm down," the third girl said, "this is stupid, let's just go already."
Carmichael was a high school sophomore, a year older than the three girls in the playground. He didn't really look it - he was slight and pale, with light hair and sunken eyes. Nobody said what his father was in prison for, but everybody knew. The girls started towards the ruins.
"This is stupid you guys," Sue said. She had short brown hair which stuck out of a beanie she wore even though she'd long ago given up on impressing the skaterboys. Her father, who is looking for a new buddy now that Carmichael's dad was in the slammer, named her after a Johnny Cash song. He thought it was funny as hell. "What are we doing this for, so he'll let us hang out with his dumbass painthuffer friends?"
"We're doing this because I've been wanting to do this for ages," Henrietta said. She had long, straight black hair set in what she insisted be called a "Hime cut." Her family has been living comfortably since the 18th century, and she had an original Monet in her bedroom, next to a vintage Daicon IV poster. "Carmichael's dare just reminded me of it."
"And why are the two of us here, then?" Rebecca asked, grinning. Her kinky hair was pulled back by a lime green hairband. She is the fourth of nine children. Her father is the city's mayor, and he's trying to get a reality show set up around that fact.
"Because it needs three people," Henrietta said, "and because you are my loyal minions."
Sue stood in the sandy playground as the others continued onward, excited despite themselves, hopping down the concrete divider at the end of the playground and running across the grass expanse that separated the rest of the park from the ruins. She watched them slowly shrink as they neared the handful of crumbling masonry columns, few much taller than the girls themselves, and go under the arched doorway, an artfully shaped arc which was all that suggested the scattered stones were anything besides the remains of a burnt-down factory. The sounds of their passing soon faded to the chorus of crickets, the rustle of trees, and the distant, omnipresent suburban traffic. Sue walked slowly, past the one stone that was an arm's length from the playground. It was far from the rest of the ruins, but clearly belonged with them. How big had this structure been? What was it, anyways? Lawnmower marks circled around the stone, breaking the even rows of the rest of the field like ripples in water. The full moon hung big and low in the sky. Incredibly big. Sue stretched her hand out, fingers spread, and found she couldn't quite cover all of it. They say that atmospheric distortions abounded about the ruins. No one had ever bothered studying it. She could see her friends waiting by the arch, dwarfed by the scattered stones. Strange, it was always curiously hard to count them. Her arm fell.
"This is kid shit." she said to the sky.
"Hurry up!" she heard Rebecca shout. She broke into a run.
The three girls gathered around the patch of remaining flagstones roughly in the center of the ruins. This was a popular picnic spot - save for among the unusually superstitious. Henrietta dug around in the old leather handbag she'd brought, pulling out a lighter, a shrink-wrapped package of pillar candles she'd bought at a home goods store, and several sticks of incense she'd bought at the only shop in town that sells vinyl records.
"What's all that for?" Sue asked, "We're just supposed to join hands and say-"
"Shh, don't say it yet." Henrietta said as she stuck incense sticks in the ground and arranged the candles in a rough circle on the flagstones. "This is for effect, that's the most important part!"
Sue sat on the ground next to Rebecca as Henrietta buzzed about lighting things, chuckling through her teeth like she did whenever she bought a new video game. Rebecca shrugged at Sue.
"At least she's having fun."
"Alright, now quiet your minds." Henrietta said as she sat down opposite them. Sue didn't know quite what this meant, but the others were sitting with their eyes closed and making a very serious attempt at looking like they were meditating. She tried to do the same.
Silence pulsed in her ears, an unaccustomed widening of details. She could hear a tiny, pattern-less clamor - music, she realized. Was someone having a party a few blocks away? She ran her nails over the grooves of her threadbare blue jeans. She heard Rebecca shift around a bit. Henrietta's absolute stillness left a weird heavy spot in her mind. The incense sticks seemed to have gone out. A few of the candles similarly gutted. They don't make 'em like they used to, apparently. A slight breeze swept over the field. It rattled a charm on Henrietta's handbag, but slid easily over the recently cut grass. It smelled like...like someone had neglected to clean up after their dog. Sue opened one eye and glanced sideways into the wind. A badly cracked and warped patch of sidewalk was illuminated by a solitary streetlight. Everything was terribly ordinary.
"We ready?" Henrietta asked. Sue shifted back to reality, reluctantly. She wasn't ready. Was that a bit of nervousness in Ettie's voice? She can't be that excited, Sue thought. Say a specific phrase in a specific spot under the full moon and Lucifer, the ghost of Elizabeth Bathory, and a crying clown will show up to grant your wish, show you who you'll marry, and or drag you to hell. This was the sort of thing kids believed in - the sort of things high schoolers only resorted to when supremely bored. They joined hands, only able to pinch each others fingertips, really. The patch of cobblestone they were sitting around was just a bit too big.
"Klaatu...Barada...Nikto" they said in clumsy almost-unison. There was a brief, stale silence. Headlights from a car backing out swept over the park, briefly casting big, dark shadows from the three girls and the ruins. Sue let go first.
"Well, that was fun." Rebecca said. Henrietta laughed.
"It was kind of lame as urban legends go," she said. "I think the incantation was actually some sort of meme. I tried to spice it up with the candles, but..."
"Nah, it was fun." Sue said, standing up and brushing herself off. "Looks like Carmichael's run off or something. Let's go back to your place and watch a movie."
The three girls turned to leave. The world turned in the opposite direction, grinding around them like the tumbler of a lock. It clicked in to place with a dull bell chime that played off the skin of their brains, and the ruined arch they'd expected to be facing was now filled with an ivy-covered portcullis, through which golden sunlight streamed...
Damnit, I need to change the name. It's awful. I thought it was clever at the time. Oh well, I'm actually liking how this is turning out.
The gentle pulse of nighttime traffic swirled about the stones of the ruin the park was built around. There was a clatter as three figures swung themselves over the low chainlink fence beside the playground. A fourth figure leaned over the fence at them, speaking in an almost-whisper.
"Oh my God you fucking faggots," he said, enunciating every other syllable, "quit pussying around and go already."
"You realize you're talking to girls, right?" one figure said, "Using 'pussy' as a pejorative doesn't make much sense."
"Your daddy's gonna get mad at you for talking like that, Carmichael," a second girl said, "Once he gets out of prison for selling meth."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Guys, guys, calm down," the third girl said, "this is stupid, let's just go already."
Carmichael was a high school sophomore, a year older than the three girls in the playground. He didn't really look it - he was slight and pale, with light hair and sunken eyes. Nobody said what his father was in prison for, but everybody knew. The girls started towards the ruins.
"This is stupid you guys," Sue said. She had short brown hair which stuck out of a beanie she wore even though she'd long ago given up on impressing the skaterboys. Her father, who is looking for a new buddy now that Carmichael's dad was in the slammer, named her after a Johnny Cash song. He thought it was funny as hell. "What are we doing this for, so he'll let us hang out with his dumbass painthuffer friends?"
"We're doing this because I've been wanting to do this for ages," Henrietta said. She had long, straight black hair set in what she insisted be called a "Hime cut." Her family has been living comfortably since the 18th century, and she had an original Monet in her bedroom, next to a vintage Daicon IV poster. "Carmichael's dare just reminded me of it."
"And why are the two of us here, then?" Rebecca asked, grinning. Her kinky hair was pulled back by a lime green hairband. She is the fourth of nine children. Her father is the city's mayor, and he's trying to get a reality show set up around that fact.
"Because it needs three people," Henrietta said, "and because you are my loyal minions."
Sue stood in the sandy playground as the others continued onward, excited despite themselves, hopping down the concrete divider at the end of the playground and running across the grass expanse that separated the rest of the park from the ruins. She watched them slowly shrink as they neared the handful of crumbling masonry columns, few much taller than the girls themselves, and go under the arched doorway, an artfully shaped arc which was all that suggested the scattered stones were anything besides the remains of a burnt-down factory. The sounds of their passing soon faded to the chorus of crickets, the rustle of trees, and the distant, omnipresent suburban traffic. Sue walked slowly, past the one stone that was an arm's length from the playground. It was far from the rest of the ruins, but clearly belonged with them. How big had this structure been? What was it, anyways? Lawnmower marks circled around the stone, breaking the even rows of the rest of the field like ripples in water. The full moon hung big and low in the sky. Incredibly big. Sue stretched her hand out, fingers spread, and found she couldn't quite cover all of it. They say that atmospheric distortions abounded about the ruins. No one had ever bothered studying it. She could see her friends waiting by the arch, dwarfed by the scattered stones. Strange, it was always curiously hard to count them. Her arm fell.
"This is kid shit." she said to the sky.
"Hurry up!" she heard Rebecca shout. She broke into a run.
The three girls gathered around the patch of remaining flagstones roughly in the center of the ruins. This was a popular picnic spot - save for among the unusually superstitious. Henrietta dug around in the old leather handbag she'd brought, pulling out a lighter, a shrink-wrapped package of pillar candles she'd bought at a home goods store, and several sticks of incense she'd bought at the only shop in town that sells vinyl records.
"What's all that for?" Sue asked, "We're just supposed to join hands and say-"
"Shh, don't say it yet." Henrietta said as she stuck incense sticks in the ground and arranged the candles in a rough circle on the flagstones. "This is for effect, that's the most important part!"
Sue sat on the ground next to Rebecca as Henrietta buzzed about lighting things, chuckling through her teeth like she did whenever she bought a new video game. Rebecca shrugged at Sue.
"At least she's having fun."
"Alright, now quiet your minds." Henrietta said as she sat down opposite them. Sue didn't know quite what this meant, but the others were sitting with their eyes closed and making a very serious attempt at looking like they were meditating. She tried to do the same.
Silence pulsed in her ears, an unaccustomed widening of details. She could hear a tiny, pattern-less clamor - music, she realized. Was someone having a party a few blocks away? She ran her nails over the grooves of her threadbare blue jeans. She heard Rebecca shift around a bit. Henrietta's absolute stillness left a weird heavy spot in her mind. The incense sticks seemed to have gone out. A few of the candles similarly gutted. They don't make 'em like they used to, apparently. A slight breeze swept over the field. It rattled a charm on Henrietta's handbag, but slid easily over the recently cut grass. It smelled like...like someone had neglected to clean up after their dog. Sue opened one eye and glanced sideways into the wind. A badly cracked and warped patch of sidewalk was illuminated by a solitary streetlight. Everything was terribly ordinary.
"We ready?" Henrietta asked. Sue shifted back to reality, reluctantly. She wasn't ready. Was that a bit of nervousness in Ettie's voice? She can't be that excited, Sue thought. Say a specific phrase in a specific spot under the full moon and Lucifer, the ghost of Elizabeth Bathory, and a crying clown will show up to grant your wish, show you who you'll marry, and or drag you to hell. This was the sort of thing kids believed in - the sort of things high schoolers only resorted to when supremely bored. They joined hands, only able to pinch each others fingertips, really. The patch of cobblestone they were sitting around was just a bit too big.
"Klaatu...Barada...Nikto" they said in clumsy almost-unison. There was a brief, stale silence. Headlights from a car backing out swept over the park, briefly casting big, dark shadows from the three girls and the ruins. Sue let go first.
"Well, that was fun." Rebecca said. Henrietta laughed.
"It was kind of lame as urban legends go," she said. "I think the incantation was actually some sort of meme. I tried to spice it up with the candles, but..."
"Nah, it was fun." Sue said, standing up and brushing herself off. "Looks like Carmichael's run off or something. Let's go back to your place and watch a movie."
The three girls turned to leave. The world turned in the opposite direction, grinding around them like the tumbler of a lock. It clicked in to place with a dull bell chime that played off the skin of their brains, and the ruined arch they'd expected to be facing was now filled with an ivy-covered portcullis, through which golden sunlight streamed...
Damnit, I need to change the name. It's awful. I thought it was clever at the time. Oh well, I'm actually liking how this is turning out.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Writing July 27
Again I find myself not sure what to write about. Let's check up on the Rosenkreuz family.
The tomb of Hecktor Rosenkreuz sits on the very edge of a cliff, in a great cavern buried in the bedrock beneath Seaview Estate. Water trickles down from a sinkhole to the east and flows in a tiny creek westward until it is sucked up by the gravelly ground. Over the aeons, this creek has widened a crack in the stone, leaving a huge underground valley a hundred feet wide and immensely tall and long. A ledge, sometimes natural sometimes carved, rings much of the cavern - by tradition, the scions and servants of the Rosenkreuz Family are entombed along the south side, in a cemetery lit by lanterns and torches of a cool blue. Headstones and mausoleums, cobblestone paths and wrought iron fences sprawl about in a manner that displays artistic brilliance but little overall logic, a trait that practically defines the family. The baroque lines of Hecktor's tomb are thought to be the most beautiful, and in the courtyard before it, centered by a dry fountain shaped like a skeletal angel, Mortimer Rosenkreuz kicks a ball around while his sister watches. The boy wears a fine outfit of purple velvet and green silk, in which he barely feels the cave's chill, and the stunted black tophat Nana says looks adorable on him.
Hmm...what am I writing? I'm not sure, though I like the imagery. I'm trying to figure out how to start writing whenever, so I think I'll stop here rather than go on. Hopefully I'll write more tomorrow.
The tomb of Hecktor Rosenkreuz sits on the very edge of a cliff, in a great cavern buried in the bedrock beneath Seaview Estate. Water trickles down from a sinkhole to the east and flows in a tiny creek westward until it is sucked up by the gravelly ground. Over the aeons, this creek has widened a crack in the stone, leaving a huge underground valley a hundred feet wide and immensely tall and long. A ledge, sometimes natural sometimes carved, rings much of the cavern - by tradition, the scions and servants of the Rosenkreuz Family are entombed along the south side, in a cemetery lit by lanterns and torches of a cool blue. Headstones and mausoleums, cobblestone paths and wrought iron fences sprawl about in a manner that displays artistic brilliance but little overall logic, a trait that practically defines the family. The baroque lines of Hecktor's tomb are thought to be the most beautiful, and in the courtyard before it, centered by a dry fountain shaped like a skeletal angel, Mortimer Rosenkreuz kicks a ball around while his sister watches. The boy wears a fine outfit of purple velvet and green silk, in which he barely feels the cave's chill, and the stunted black tophat Nana says looks adorable on him.
Hmm...what am I writing? I'm not sure, though I like the imagery. I'm trying to figure out how to start writing whenever, so I think I'll stop here rather than go on. Hopefully I'll write more tomorrow.
Monday, July 25, 2011
More writings
In the basement of an abandoned tenant, just across the street from the decaying factory district...
No, I'm not feeling that. Time for some worldbuilding? Here's an idea I've been meaning to play with.
The Rosenkreuz Family.
A wealthy and supremely eccentric family based in New England, the Rosenkreuzes claim descent from Christian Rosenkreuz, a fabled yet influential German mystic and philosopher who lived some time during the 1400s. His heir, they claim, helped form the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and formed a great clan of magicians and eccentrics that has graced (some would say plagued) the new world ever since. The Rosenkreuzes have always been influential in the occult underworld, but the real infamy, that leaves them controversial even in such a fringe society, is their infamous feud with the Rosicrucian Order, a mystic society who claim to be inheritors of Rosenkreuz's teachings. The Rosenkreuzes claim the Rosicrucians gained power by imitating their founder after he left for America, Rosicrucian rites and philosophy looks nothing like the highly eclectic rites practiced by the Rosenkreuzes, and Rosicrucians hold to Lutheran dogma whereas the Rosenkreuzes are staunchly Roman Catholic (heavily flavored by Gnosticism and Voodoo). The rivalry was inevitable and bitter. Eventually, however, the Rosicrucian Order was all but absorbed by the Freemasons, which the Rosenkreuzes consider a win.
Nowadays, the Rosenkreuzes are numerous and powerful enough that they might rightly be called a clan. Traditionally, the oldest member of the branch of the family that lives in the sprawling Seaview Estate* in upstate New York is the head of the clan, having the final say in determining how the family's resources can be spent and serving as arbiter during any disagreements. As one would expect, the deed to said estate has been used as a playing piece in countless power games over the years. The other branches of the family usually live in fine townhouses around New York, Boston, and Salem.
*Visitors to Seaview Estate often comment that the mansion is hundreds of miles inland and has no view of the sea at all. Family members will exasperatedly explain that the name refers to the astral sea, not the physical sea, and continue on without expanding.
I'll try expanding this more tomorrow, maybe write a story from the perspective of a young scion of the Rosenkreuzes. They're basically the Addams Family but more overtly mystical, should be very fun to write about.
No, I'm not feeling that. Time for some worldbuilding? Here's an idea I've been meaning to play with.
The Rosenkreuz Family.
A wealthy and supremely eccentric family based in New England, the Rosenkreuzes claim descent from Christian Rosenkreuz, a fabled yet influential German mystic and philosopher who lived some time during the 1400s. His heir, they claim, helped form the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and formed a great clan of magicians and eccentrics that has graced (some would say plagued) the new world ever since. The Rosenkreuzes have always been influential in the occult underworld, but the real infamy, that leaves them controversial even in such a fringe society, is their infamous feud with the Rosicrucian Order, a mystic society who claim to be inheritors of Rosenkreuz's teachings. The Rosenkreuzes claim the Rosicrucians gained power by imitating their founder after he left for America, Rosicrucian rites and philosophy looks nothing like the highly eclectic rites practiced by the Rosenkreuzes, and Rosicrucians hold to Lutheran dogma whereas the Rosenkreuzes are staunchly Roman Catholic (heavily flavored by Gnosticism and Voodoo). The rivalry was inevitable and bitter. Eventually, however, the Rosicrucian Order was all but absorbed by the Freemasons, which the Rosenkreuzes consider a win.
Nowadays, the Rosenkreuzes are numerous and powerful enough that they might rightly be called a clan. Traditionally, the oldest member of the branch of the family that lives in the sprawling Seaview Estate* in upstate New York is the head of the clan, having the final say in determining how the family's resources can be spent and serving as arbiter during any disagreements. As one would expect, the deed to said estate has been used as a playing piece in countless power games over the years. The other branches of the family usually live in fine townhouses around New York, Boston, and Salem.
*Visitors to Seaview Estate often comment that the mansion is hundreds of miles inland and has no view of the sea at all. Family members will exasperatedly explain that the name refers to the astral sea, not the physical sea, and continue on without expanding.
I'll try expanding this more tomorrow, maybe write a story from the perspective of a young scion of the Rosenkreuzes. They're basically the Addams Family but more overtly mystical, should be very fun to write about.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
More writing
Not sure what to title this. It's basically an idea I had that came from a conglomeration of several other ideas. We'll see where it goes.
Moonlight Rendezvous
The gentle pulse of nighttime traffic swirled about the off blue stones of the ruin the park was built around. There was a clatter as three figures swung themselves over the low chainlink fence by the playground. A third figure leaned over at them, speaking in a loud whisper.
"Oh my God you fucking faggots," he said, enunciating every other syllable, "quit pussying around and go already."
"You realize you're talking to girls, right?" one figure said, "Using 'pussy' as a pejorative doesn't make much sense."
"Your daddy's gonna get mad at you for talking like that, Carmichael," a second girl said, "Once he gets out of prison for selling meth."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Guys, guys, calm down," the third girl said, "this is stupid, let's just go already."
Carmichael was a high school sophomore, a year older than the three girls in the playground. He didn't really look it - he was slight and pale, with light hair and sunken eyes. Nobody said what his father was in prison for, but everybody knew. The girls started towards the ruins.
"This is stupid you guys," Sue said. She had short brown hair which stuck out of a beanie she wore even though she'd long ago given up on impressing the skaterboys. Her father, who is looking for a new buddy now that Carmichael's dad is in the slammer, named her after a Johnny Cash song. He thought it was funny as hell. "Why are we doing this for him, so we can hang out with his dumbass painthuffer friends?"
"We're doing this because I've been wanting to do this for ages," Henrietta said. She had long, straight black hair set in what she insisted be called a "Hime cut." Her family has been living comfortably since the 18th century, and she had an original Monet in her bedroom, next to a vintage Daicon IV poster. "Carmichael's little dare just reminded me of it."
"And why are the two of us here, then?" Rebecca asked, grinning. Her kinky hair was pulled back by a lime green hairband. She is the fourth of nine children. Her father is the city's mayor, and he's trying to get a reality show set up around that fact.
"Because it needs three people," Henrietta said, "and because you are my loyal minions."
Sue stood in the sandy playground as the others continued forward, excited despite themselves, hopping down the concrete ledge at the end of the playground and running across the grass expanse that separated the rest of the park from the ruins. She watched them slowly shrink as they neared the handful of crumbling masonry columns, few much taller than the girls themselves, and go under the arched doorway, an artfully shaped arc that was all that suggested the scattered stones were anything other than the remains of a burnt-down factory. Sue walked slowly, past the one stone that was an arm's length from the playground. It was far from the rest of the ruins, but clearly belonged with them. How big had this structure been? What was it, anyways? Lawnmower marks circled around the stone, breaking the even rows of the rest of the field like ripples in water. The full moon hung big and low in the sky. Incredibly big. Sue stretched her hand out, fingers spread, and found she couldn't quite cover all of it. They said atmospheric distortions abounded about the ruins. No one had ever bothered studying it. She could see her friends waiting by the arch, dwarfed by the scattered stones. Strange, it was always curiously hard to count them. Her arm fell.
"This is kid shit." she said to the sky.
"Hurry up!" she heard Rebecca shout. She broke into a run.
Uff, the tenses are all mixed up. Teacher said I shouldn't worry about that too much. We will write more tomorrow.
Moonlight Rendezvous
The gentle pulse of nighttime traffic swirled about the off blue stones of the ruin the park was built around. There was a clatter as three figures swung themselves over the low chainlink fence by the playground. A third figure leaned over at them, speaking in a loud whisper.
"Oh my God you fucking faggots," he said, enunciating every other syllable, "quit pussying around and go already."
"You realize you're talking to girls, right?" one figure said, "Using 'pussy' as a pejorative doesn't make much sense."
"Your daddy's gonna get mad at you for talking like that, Carmichael," a second girl said, "Once he gets out of prison for selling meth."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Guys, guys, calm down," the third girl said, "this is stupid, let's just go already."
Carmichael was a high school sophomore, a year older than the three girls in the playground. He didn't really look it - he was slight and pale, with light hair and sunken eyes. Nobody said what his father was in prison for, but everybody knew. The girls started towards the ruins.
"This is stupid you guys," Sue said. She had short brown hair which stuck out of a beanie she wore even though she'd long ago given up on impressing the skaterboys. Her father, who is looking for a new buddy now that Carmichael's dad is in the slammer, named her after a Johnny Cash song. He thought it was funny as hell. "Why are we doing this for him, so we can hang out with his dumbass painthuffer friends?"
"We're doing this because I've been wanting to do this for ages," Henrietta said. She had long, straight black hair set in what she insisted be called a "Hime cut." Her family has been living comfortably since the 18th century, and she had an original Monet in her bedroom, next to a vintage Daicon IV poster. "Carmichael's little dare just reminded me of it."
"And why are the two of us here, then?" Rebecca asked, grinning. Her kinky hair was pulled back by a lime green hairband. She is the fourth of nine children. Her father is the city's mayor, and he's trying to get a reality show set up around that fact.
"Because it needs three people," Henrietta said, "and because you are my loyal minions."
Sue stood in the sandy playground as the others continued forward, excited despite themselves, hopping down the concrete ledge at the end of the playground and running across the grass expanse that separated the rest of the park from the ruins. She watched them slowly shrink as they neared the handful of crumbling masonry columns, few much taller than the girls themselves, and go under the arched doorway, an artfully shaped arc that was all that suggested the scattered stones were anything other than the remains of a burnt-down factory. Sue walked slowly, past the one stone that was an arm's length from the playground. It was far from the rest of the ruins, but clearly belonged with them. How big had this structure been? What was it, anyways? Lawnmower marks circled around the stone, breaking the even rows of the rest of the field like ripples in water. The full moon hung big and low in the sky. Incredibly big. Sue stretched her hand out, fingers spread, and found she couldn't quite cover all of it. They said atmospheric distortions abounded about the ruins. No one had ever bothered studying it. She could see her friends waiting by the arch, dwarfed by the scattered stones. Strange, it was always curiously hard to count them. Her arm fell.
"This is kid shit." she said to the sky.
"Hurry up!" she heard Rebecca shout. She broke into a run.
Uff, the tenses are all mixed up. Teacher said I shouldn't worry about that too much. We will write more tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Black White's Expedition Log, Part 4
10:30pm July 18, AIF 103. Sorry I missed yesterday, but nothing really happened. I wandered around town, thinking about going to one of the theaters or art galleries or souvenir shops or whatnot, but nothing really caught my eye. I eventually just had a wrap in a crowded cafe and went back to the hotel to do some bookkeeping. This morning I realized what I was looking for was something more low-key, so I went to this little nameless antique shop that's directly across the street from my hotel. The wooden sign in front simply reads "antiques" in flaking gold paint, and the smoky window in front displays a collection of brass silverware and scattered curios laid out on a white cloth that looks like it could have been a funerary draping. The place has a sort of mysterious ominousness about it, you know?
...no, I'm not feeling this at all. I need to switch gears with this story. Let me think.
The sun beats down on the stones and they, unthinking, pass it back in rippling waves. Indeed, it is cool here by comparison. A stonemason stands atop the bridge, his bridge, the bridge he carved out of a mountain, to connect two others. Black bearded, brown aproned, he holds a long iron pole, a grey minister's staff, whose head is flared into a chisel. He jabs this down the side of the bridge, cutting free the crusty lip on the inside of the top of the arch, between the supports, where the stonecarvers got lazy. He would insist that form follows function, but does not think of this as an effort towards aesthetics. He is just smoothing his work out, that's all.
Each chip forces him to lean over the edge of the bridge - if his back gave out, he would pitch forward, and tumble in to the wooded valley, a hundred feet below. He knows it won't. The last bit of spongy white mortar disappears into the trees. He straightens and turns, intending to check the other side. The wind picks up, wincing or gasping, anticipating what will happen. By accident, he looks beyond the bridge, beyond the wooded valley, past the long slope at the bottom of which the trees thin out, where the river running down the valley, between the supports of his own bridge, runs out into the sea. It fans out, fertile marshlands along the coast, where a city has been built. Beyond that, the sun is setting. The half disc, incredibly big, incredibly red, surrounded by a yellow corona, a frozen chaos of golden light, clouds, and atmosphere. Its heat hits him for the first time, passing through his bones like the rumbling footsteps of giants. It glimmers in his eyes. The celestial fire. Unblinking, he breathes in the air, hot, heavy, humid, weighed down with its own power, the ghost of glowing coals. His chest puffs out, he takes his chisel up and jabs it down, on another crust of mortar.
His swing is a few inches off, and far too hard. The stone splits in half, and falls through heavy air to the green canopy, dust mixing with haze. He plants the chisel at his side, gripping with one hand but not leaning on it - a minister's staff again. After a moment, he decides to follow the bridge to its beginning, where a tunnel in the mountainside flickers with soft yellow torchlight. It'd be cooler in there. Yes, he'd been working too much in the heat. Some water would do him good.
...no, I'm not feeling this at all. I need to switch gears with this story. Let me think.
The sun beats down on the stones and they, unthinking, pass it back in rippling waves. Indeed, it is cool here by comparison. A stonemason stands atop the bridge, his bridge, the bridge he carved out of a mountain, to connect two others. Black bearded, brown aproned, he holds a long iron pole, a grey minister's staff, whose head is flared into a chisel. He jabs this down the side of the bridge, cutting free the crusty lip on the inside of the top of the arch, between the supports, where the stonecarvers got lazy. He would insist that form follows function, but does not think of this as an effort towards aesthetics. He is just smoothing his work out, that's all.
Each chip forces him to lean over the edge of the bridge - if his back gave out, he would pitch forward, and tumble in to the wooded valley, a hundred feet below. He knows it won't. The last bit of spongy white mortar disappears into the trees. He straightens and turns, intending to check the other side. The wind picks up, wincing or gasping, anticipating what will happen. By accident, he looks beyond the bridge, beyond the wooded valley, past the long slope at the bottom of which the trees thin out, where the river running down the valley, between the supports of his own bridge, runs out into the sea. It fans out, fertile marshlands along the coast, where a city has been built. Beyond that, the sun is setting. The half disc, incredibly big, incredibly red, surrounded by a yellow corona, a frozen chaos of golden light, clouds, and atmosphere. Its heat hits him for the first time, passing through his bones like the rumbling footsteps of giants. It glimmers in his eyes. The celestial fire. Unblinking, he breathes in the air, hot, heavy, humid, weighed down with its own power, the ghost of glowing coals. His chest puffs out, he takes his chisel up and jabs it down, on another crust of mortar.
His swing is a few inches off, and far too hard. The stone splits in half, and falls through heavy air to the green canopy, dust mixing with haze. He plants the chisel at his side, gripping with one hand but not leaning on it - a minister's staff again. After a moment, he decides to follow the bridge to its beginning, where a tunnel in the mountainside flickers with soft yellow torchlight. It'd be cooler in there. Yes, he'd been working too much in the heat. Some water would do him good.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Black White's Expedition Log, Part 3
7:08pm July 16, AIF 103. There is something indescribable about the atmosphere of a place that has just experienced a great storm. It shatters the spirit of the place, like an atmospheric emotional breakdown, or an apocalypse in miniature, leaving all things fresh and empty.
Ah, but I shouldn't absorb myself in amateur poetic imagery. I can't help it - with nothing to do for several days, and I know it will be several days now, Lord Darklove just called and said he and the others will be held for a bit longer - and this terribly charming city to explore I get in a distinctly unfocused mood.
I found today after once again climbing who knows how many tight, zigzagging stairs that the park is still closed due to damage to the trail. I took a walk around town instead, enjoying the fresh, clean air and the way the wetness of the walls and street bring out the colors of the quaint architecture of Godhook. I think I've got a feel for this place now. There's a lot of hotels - I probably could have found a nicer one if I'd spent more time looking - and a whole lot of malls and entertainment-type places. I guess the economy here is tourism based - I found out the east side of the island is almost completely taken up by a resort called Cerises (or something like that). Now that I know I'm going to be here until at least the 20th I'll have a bit of fun here. If my superiors complain I'll just say I'm doing my part to bolster the Upper Region's lazy economy.
-Black White
Ah, but I shouldn't absorb myself in amateur poetic imagery. I can't help it - with nothing to do for several days, and I know it will be several days now, Lord Darklove just called and said he and the others will be held for a bit longer - and this terribly charming city to explore I get in a distinctly unfocused mood.
I found today after once again climbing who knows how many tight, zigzagging stairs that the park is still closed due to damage to the trail. I took a walk around town instead, enjoying the fresh, clean air and the way the wetness of the walls and street bring out the colors of the quaint architecture of Godhook. I think I've got a feel for this place now. There's a lot of hotels - I probably could have found a nicer one if I'd spent more time looking - and a whole lot of malls and entertainment-type places. I guess the economy here is tourism based - I found out the east side of the island is almost completely taken up by a resort called Cerises (or something like that). Now that I know I'm going to be here until at least the 20th I'll have a bit of fun here. If my superiors complain I'll just say I'm doing my part to bolster the Upper Region's lazy economy.
-Black White
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Black White's Expedition Log, Part 2
11:07pm July 15, AIF 103. This may be a short entry - I'm still getting the feel of the town. Wow, but it rained today! I had no idea it could rain this high up, when we're above a lot of the cloud layers. Is this an effect of the complicated supernal space distortion that keeps these island afloat? Either way, it's a good thing I brought my oilskin cloak and galoshes. Or, as they call them here in sorta-England, rubbers.
The town was so lovely in the rain...almost deserted, with those elegant lamp posts whose light played off the pouring rain and glistening cobblestones, it reminded me of a Monet piece. The clouds got so thick and close that I could look off into the distance and assume the rolling grey banks were mountains blurred by the storm, and that I was back groundside again. Then an airship would pass through the cloud, multicolored running lights casting off visible beams through the rain, and the whole illusion became quite surreal. I made my way to the top of the island and found that it was taken up not by a farm of some sort but by a public park, or perhaps you'd call it a nature reserve, as it was very heavily wooded. I guess the city must import all its food from the neighboring islands? I wanted to go in and have a look around but the big wrought-iron gates were closed with a sign that said the park was shut down due to severe weather. It looked so muddy as to be almost a swamp, and the wind was picking up... so I went back to the hotel and had a bowl of beef stroganoff to warm up.
Oh, and none of the others have arrived yet. Black White, signing off.
The town was so lovely in the rain...almost deserted, with those elegant lamp posts whose light played off the pouring rain and glistening cobblestones, it reminded me of a Monet piece. The clouds got so thick and close that I could look off into the distance and assume the rolling grey banks were mountains blurred by the storm, and that I was back groundside again. Then an airship would pass through the cloud, multicolored running lights casting off visible beams through the rain, and the whole illusion became quite surreal. I made my way to the top of the island and found that it was taken up not by a farm of some sort but by a public park, or perhaps you'd call it a nature reserve, as it was very heavily wooded. I guess the city must import all its food from the neighboring islands? I wanted to go in and have a look around but the big wrought-iron gates were closed with a sign that said the park was shut down due to severe weather. It looked so muddy as to be almost a swamp, and the wind was picking up... so I went back to the hotel and had a bowl of beef stroganoff to warm up.
Oh, and none of the others have arrived yet. Black White, signing off.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Black White's Expedition Log, Part 1
6:30pm July 14, AIF 103. That's AD 2130 in old reckoning. I arrived in the city of Godhook this morning aboard the airship Anna Carousa, all on my lonesome, and checked in at the least shady-looking hotel by the docks. I am to stay here until the others arrive, which should be a few days, before we proceed groundside and begin our task.
Not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be writing here. I was told to keep this log as a way of recording our results for my superiors, but I'm also supposed to use it to strengthen my cover identity as a tourist? I suppose I shall just use it as a personal journal until someone objects.
It's been a while since I traveled to one of the Upper Regions. I was actually a bit giddy as I looked out the window of my cabin in the Carousa, at the chunk of floating earth Godhook is situated upon. We burst through a cloud bank and suddenly it was there, with the morning sun playing off the white plaster walls and shining through the trees. It was almost like a movie.
The town is rather nice, I wouldn't mind staying here a bit. Inhabitants of the Upper Regions are stereotyped as being incredibly cavalier about how high up they are, and Godhook reflects this - there's very little construction on the relatively stable top of the island. The top is heavily wooded - I suspect they've devoted the small amount of flat ground available to them for food production? Almost everything, the cobblestone streets and rows of densely packed buildings are situated in staggered tiers hanging off the vertical sides of the island. In a few places they actually double back, resulting in warehouses and playhouses and such built on hanging platforms suspended from the bottom of the island, connected by catwalks wide and sturdy enough to support cars and carriages and streetlamps and such. It's really quite amazing. As I look out the little picturesque window of my humble little room, I can peer over the flowerbox and look straight down to the surface, who knows how far below. We're high enough in the sky that groundside becomes blue and hazy with the distance. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what land that is down there. I know these islands are technically under British jurisdiction, but parts of the archipelago cross the channel to hover over France and Belgium. That's actually why we chose Godhook as a staging ground, in fact. Ah, but I probably shouldn't talk about that.
I'll look around the town more tomorrow, so as to have something to talk about if the others don't show up yet. This is Black White, signing off (ah, but it sounds so corny!)
Not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be writing here. I was told to keep this log as a way of recording our results for my superiors, but I'm also supposed to use it to strengthen my cover identity as a tourist? I suppose I shall just use it as a personal journal until someone objects.
It's been a while since I traveled to one of the Upper Regions. I was actually a bit giddy as I looked out the window of my cabin in the Carousa, at the chunk of floating earth Godhook is situated upon. We burst through a cloud bank and suddenly it was there, with the morning sun playing off the white plaster walls and shining through the trees. It was almost like a movie.
The town is rather nice, I wouldn't mind staying here a bit. Inhabitants of the Upper Regions are stereotyped as being incredibly cavalier about how high up they are, and Godhook reflects this - there's very little construction on the relatively stable top of the island. The top is heavily wooded - I suspect they've devoted the small amount of flat ground available to them for food production? Almost everything, the cobblestone streets and rows of densely packed buildings are situated in staggered tiers hanging off the vertical sides of the island. In a few places they actually double back, resulting in warehouses and playhouses and such built on hanging platforms suspended from the bottom of the island, connected by catwalks wide and sturdy enough to support cars and carriages and streetlamps and such. It's really quite amazing. As I look out the little picturesque window of my humble little room, I can peer over the flowerbox and look straight down to the surface, who knows how far below. We're high enough in the sky that groundside becomes blue and hazy with the distance. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what land that is down there. I know these islands are technically under British jurisdiction, but parts of the archipelago cross the channel to hover over France and Belgium. That's actually why we chose Godhook as a staging ground, in fact. Ah, but I probably shouldn't talk about that.
I'll look around the town more tomorrow, so as to have something to talk about if the others don't show up yet. This is Black White, signing off (ah, but it sounds so corny!)
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Goldie Black 1
This is the first part of a story I've been planning but...it's awful. I'd need to completely scrap and rewrite it before I'd call it readable. Well, maybe I'll do that eventually.
-----
Jenkins, New Mexico. A tiny strip of wooden structures which would barely qualify as a hamlet if there were anything else in the surrounding scrublands to compare it too, Jenkins was a town that really only existed so the trains would have somewhere to stop and refuel. On one side of the clump of buildings ran a dust road that barely got out of town before splitting, squidlike, into horse paths that wound their way to the handful of nearby ranches. On the other side the railway stretched on and on and on through the dull green shrubs, such that even a person bored enough to try and scan it all the way to the horizon would quickly loose interest. Every day ranchers would ride in, argue with the shopkeep, and ride out. A bit later migrant cowboys would walk in, argue with the barkeep, and stagger out. Train engineers would stretch their legs on the sparse wooden platform and then go steaming off without a glance back. Occasionally you could hear a dog barking. This particular morning, during the heyday of what Mark Twain had dubbed the Gilded Age, looked like it would be no different - a haze of heat, grit, and laziness.
Then a crowd of men rode in and threw bundles of dynamite into the sheriff's office.
-----
Deputy Greene staggered in to a disused shed and collapsed against a stack of boards, blood seeping out of a tear in his vest. All around him he could hear more noise than Jenkins had ever made in his life, a constant crackle of gunfire and the occasional explosion. He couldn't hear the screams over the pounding of blood in his ears. He'd been heading out the back door of the jail just as the building blew up. The sheriff, his brother-in-law, had been talking to him not seconds before - it was sick, insane to think he'd just been shattered along with the rest of the building. The shockwave had thrown him off his feet, felt like it cracked every bone in his body, and something, a bullet or a bit of shrapnel, went right through his side. He was gutshot, he realized, and he was going to die slowly and horribly, just like Mrs. Blocker had died after her husband "mistook her for a coyote" during Jenkins' only murder case in living memory.
The deputy wiped his forehead, leaving a red smear across his receding hairline. He'd rarely even bothered carrying a gun, not that it would have mattered. The men never dismounted, never bothered going in to buildings - it sounded like they were just riddling every structure in town, hoping to kill all the occupants before... before what? What in the world could this many well-armed men be after in Jenkins of all places?
Deputy Greene heard a rolling thump rise above the gunshots, saw the men riding towards his hiding place through a gap in the boards. They wore dun riding clothes and nothing in the way of ornamentation, as if they wanted their bullets to be all that spoke for them. None of them had a mask. They either didn't care if they were identified later, or intended to kill anyone who could do so. This thought gave the deputy a sudden surge of desperate strength. He plowed his way through the weathered boards in the back of the shed and sprinted for the bushes. The men heard him. They rode around the shed and opened fire, chunks of sand and gritty soil spitting up around the deputy. He wasn't sure how far he got, somewhere among the tall bushes where hopefully the horses couldn't follow. A black shape suddenly appeared and pushed him over. He felt a boot on his chest, six rapid muzzle flashes and a single continuous bang that rang in his ears. He blinked the dust out of his eyes.
It was a dark figure indeed, but some corner of the sheriff's pain and fear-addled mind felt it very important that this darkness was rimmed with gold. The smoking revolver the figure slowly twirled was coated in it. In the corner of his blurred vision he saw a horse gallop by, a red-dripping body hanging out of the saddle at an awkward angle. The gunshots were distant again. He tried to ask the figure something, but nothing came out but a pained groan.
"Are you wounded?" the figure asked. The voice was low and rough, but...was that a woman's voice? The deputy's head flopped down into the sand. Now he knew he was hallucinating. The figure bent down and pulled the torn vest open a bit - it stung, but Greene was too tired to object.
"You got winged - looks worse than it is. Bleeding already stopped. You'll be in trouble if you don't have a doctor see it eventually, but for now you can just play dead." The deputy murmured a quiet but deliriously congenial "Thank you." The figure's shadow washed over the deputy, and then she was gone. Deputy Greene felt curiously numb, and was tired of thinking. There was nothing for him to look at in this position but the clear blue sky, so he closed his eyes.
Little brass shells plunked into the dirt at the figure's feet as she reloaded her gun, stealthily approaching the back of the general store. It was the only two-story building in town - the shopkeep had insisted on building it that way, even though he didn't need half the space. The figure slid her revolver into its clever quick-draw holster and pulled a much stranger weapon out from somewhere in her coat. It was an oversized chunk of machinery with a steel cylinder running under the barrel and a U-shaped grip like the handle of an umbrella. The figure fired at the edge of the roof, a sharp pneumatic pop masked by the unrelenting gunfire from the front of the building. A barbed spike bit into the wood, a thin steel cable spiraling behind it. The line grew taught as the figure yanked it a few times. She pressed a little catch next to the trigger and held on tight, walking her way up the wall as the device reeled itself back up with a series of grating clicks. As she ascended the wall she could feel thumps at her feet as the raider's bullets passed through the ruined shop front windows to strike the far wall - the figure wondered if anyone in the building was even still alive, but realized there was simply no time to worry about them.
She pulled herself up on to the roof, crawling on her stomach and drawing two revolvers from her left hip. These were her workhorse guns, swing-out models with a jet black finish, bigger, clumsier, and deadlier than her golden quick-draw gun. She peered over the front edge of the roof, which was torn up with repeated bullet strikes, almost as if a giant had chewed on it. The shooting had slowed down a bit, and a handful of the men were trotting up to the doors of the houses. Finally ready to clear out any survivors, the figure thought. Well, now seems as good a time as any.
"Scoundrels! Miscreants! Violent, heartless mongrels!" The men jerked their heads up, leveling rifles by reflex, bewilderment the only thing that stopped them from immediately shooting. The figure stood impetuously atop the roof of the general store, a gun held casually in each hand, the smoke from the raider's fire wafting up to her like a wreath of clouds. Everything she wore was either black or gold. A honey blonde braid stuck out of a black hat, black leather vest with gold buttons and trimming over a shirt made of cloth-of-gold. She wore black chaps over black denim jeans, black riding boots with gold stitching and spurs. Her gunbelt and bandoliers were black with gold buckles, and the long black coat she wore over everything had gilded steel plates sewn to it. The raiders looked at each other, dumbfounded. The figure grinned. As uncomfortably hot as this outfit was, it certainly had an effect.
"I'm giving you one warning only! If you've any logic in your addled heads, you'll throw down your weapons now, or face justice at the hands of fuck!" the woman threw herself on to her back and scrambled away as a bullet tore through the brim of her hat, a hail of rounds throwing up chips from the rooftop where she'd just been monolouging. She pushed her hat down firmer and cocked her guns, muttering to herself. "No sense of honor, no sense of drama at all, honestly."
She rolled to the side, several paces, sticking an arm and an eye over the lip. She fired two shots, scrambling back without waiting to see what they hit. Pulling herself to her feet, the woman dashed for the edge of the rooftop, leaping for the wooden awning of the train platform next door, a full story down. She twisted in the air, squeezing off two shots just before she landed - they weren't even remotely aimed, but when her target was a mass of disorganized men on horseback finesse wasn't really necessary. She glimpsed two men falling from their saddles, a puff of reddish sand leaping up behind one as the bullet went straight through his chest, just before she crashed down behind the waist-high "Miller & Darling Railroad Company" sign. It provided her some protection from the bandit's bullets as she hobbled, crouching, down the awning, further from the shop, sneaking a shot in now and then. They were still massed in a rough firing line in front of the shop - fairly good shots, but they obviously weren't used to coordinating fire, and their horses weren't conditioned to gunshots, which didn't help matters. She spotted three of them breaking away from the main group. Trying to flank me, eh? Well, I've survived one stupid stunt today. Second time's the charm? A bullet ripped through the sign inches from her face, spraying splinters snidely voicing their lack of confidence in her.
She reached the end of the awning and gripped the edge of the sign, listening to the hooves thundering past the front of the structure. She took a sharp breath and swung herself out around the sign, her boot catching one raider right in the collarbone. He was knocked out of the saddle and she landed right in it, half-prone and backwards. Her legs flailed awkwardly as the horse predictably bolted, but she somehow managed to put a slug in both of the kicked guy's buddies and emptied both her guns into the mass of the raiders as her uniquely purloined ride fled as fast as it could. The horse's bucking knocked her out of the saddle, tumbling her behind the ruined stone wall of an empty lot.
Oh yes, that is a cracked rib if I ever felt one. She thought as she pulled herself back to her feet and made sure she was crouched completely behind the wall. Well, I bet they're hurting quite a bit more than I am right now. She swung out her gun's cylinders and shook the empty casings loose. I can hear them riding up. Sound like they're pissed. She stuck the guns under her belt and jammed fresh bullets in, two at a time in each hand. Well too bad for them. Bunch of violent maniacs who can't shoot straight, can't ride - she pulled her guns free and snapped the cylinders shut with a flick of the wrists - can't even come up with a tactic beyond "waste lots of bullets." Come right on over then, you bastards, so we can end this. She peeked out behind the wall, smiling grimly. The bundle of dynamite made an oddly metallic thump as it bounced off her hat and landed right in her lap. In other circumstances, she'd have found the look on her face quite funny.
She leaped out from behind the wall, her screamed oath cut off by the explosion. A wall of men charged at her, guns blazing. She charged at them, likewise. A rifle round clipped her hat, tearing some leather free and bouncing off the compact helmet concealed under it. Men and horses dropped before her, as if the clot of bandits was a breaking wave. Another bullet hit one of the metal plates in the arm of her coat, scraping a patch of gold off to reveal the dull steel beneath. The impact threw her last shot off - in the corner of her eye she thought she could see little glittering golden motes trailing the dented bullet that had nearly ruined her arm. She dropped the big revolvers and snatched up her quick-draw gun. It was emptied in a flash too, but she couldn't stop running. She leapt over the bucking hooves of a dying horse - something gave in her when she landed. She'd been hit somewhere she hadn't noticed - or maybe she was just running out of steam. There was only one guy still standing. His horse had been shot out from under him, and he was staggered, holding his rifle at a weird angle. He tried to level it at her. She grabbed it and got inside, past the end of the barrel. Powder burned her hand as he fired wildly - but she had the momentum, so she didn't let him hold it for long. The stock slammed into the center of his chest. He was on the ground, so she dropped it. Breathing hurt, and her heart was pounding so hard she thought her head might explode.
"As I was trying to tell you," she said, a second before a swift stomp dadadadada, "The name is Goldie Black."
-----
"Goldie Black?" Sheriff Greene asked, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, who would honestly call themselves that?" The newly deputized Mr. Dawkins could only shrug.
"That's what Mrs. Reed says she heard. Well..." the deputy suddenly had trouble meeting Greene's gaze. "I guess we should start calling her the widow Reed now." Sheriff Greene felt something bilious rising in him. He looked down the bluff the two were sitting on, down at the town. It looked tiny from here. He saw a thin column of smoke still rising from the bombed-out jail, and if he squinted through the morning light he could see the nooses hanging from the bullet-riddled general store, from which they'd hung the raiders who'd survived their wounds. Nothing else was moving in the town, which made sense, as more than half of the population was now buried in the makeshift cemetery atop the bluff. The sheriff looked at the uneven rows of wooden crosses and thought of the bodies they'd just dropped, coffin-less, into shallow, sandy graves. Normally, if someone died in Jenkins their bodies would be sent up the tracks, to Empire or one of the other towns big enough to have its own undertaker. But now...
The sheriff threw his shovel aside and wandered off into the bushes, spitting at the unmarked mound they'd buried the raiders in. Now, of course, on top of everything else, it turns out they'd bombed the rail too. The sheriff kicked at a root. They still had no idea what the men were after. No way it was money - if they'd grabbed every last bill in town it wouldn't cover the expense of all the bullets and dynamite they'd used. Were they maniacs? Some anarchist group? And what would the goal be even then? Dawkins had said they should have at least spent more time questioning the raiders before hanging them, but he'd overruled him. He wasn't sure why. Maybe he thought it'd make him feel better. The sheriff kicked another root, much harder this time.
He found himself in a spot among the bushes, where the sandy soil had been whirled around, like a dust devil had touched down. He'd unconsciously wandered over to the place where he'd passed out. Under the bandages, a spot in his side ached. That woman - if anything, she'd made things worse. Showing up out of nowhere, killing or disabling the whole horde of raiders (she must have had help, were there sharpshooters on the bluff?) and vanishing right afterwards. A loud and violent end to a loud and violent beginning - sure they'd managed to survive thanks to her, but what had they gained? Nothing but a distinct feeling that forces they couldn't understand were bowling over their lives without even noticing. It was the uncertainty that was driving him mad. He vaguely remembered she'd told him to play dead. Well, what in the hell else was a man supposed to do in this situation?
A shrill whistle startled him out of his reverie (rework). A train whistle?
"Aww, hell." The sheriff broke into a run, towards the train tracks (rework). Whose job was it to report that the tracks were damaged? Whoever it was, he supposed they'd be dead by now. It'd completely slipped his mind, and now it looks like there'd be another disaster because of it. He scrambled up the gravel embankment the train was set in and waved his arms frantically at the approaching engine. To his luck, it wasn't necessary - the locomotive, an ornate black beast with brass fittings much fancier than what usually came through Jenkins, was coming in slow, and ground itself to a halt just a few yards away. He saw the blue and white stripes of an engineer's cap sticking out of the cab and heard someone shouting at him, but it was rendered indistinct by the churning of the train. He was too busy doubling over and trying to catch his breath to answer, anyways. By the time he could stand up straight again, a man in a fine three-piece suit had hopped out of the train.
"Tracks...are out...past the town..." he said, his voice hoarse.
"Ah yes, we'd heard." the gentleman said. "We're actually here to do maintenance on them. But by God, man! You look like you're about to keel over! Come in and have some tea, we'll take you the rest of the way into town."
The sheriff couldn't quite think to refuse - it'd been quite a while since he slept, and that run seemed to have taken what little spirit he had left. The big man helped him get on the train, waving a signal to the engineers as he did.
Sheriff Greene found himself in a traincar whose state startled him. The car was decked out like some sort of parlor, or the office of some big-city banker. A creamy floral-patterned wallpaper edged with fine wood paneling ringed the car, studded with low bookshelves. There was a great mahogany desk in front of the one big window, and a smaller table with a checkerboard top and several chairs.
"This a pay car?" the sheriff asked. His host chuckled.
"Of a sort. But I haven't introduced myself, I am Laurence Darling, co-head of the Miller & Darling Railroad Company."
"Er, Howard Greene. Sheriff Howard Greene, sir. It's a pleasure to meet you." The sheriff shook the man's hand, feeling a little self-conscious over how dirty it was. This man didn't look much like an important businessman - the way his rapidly thinning straw-colored hair tended to whisp about whenever he moved robbed him of any air of authority he might have had. The sheriff sat down at the smaller table, then immediately regretted it.
"Sorry, Mr. Darling, I think I may have just got dirt all over your chair."
"Oh, not at all," he said, falling into a chair himself, "I imagine you've been rather too busy to wash, what with..." Mr. Darling trailed off as a dark look came over Sheriff Greene's face. They looked at each other for a moment, then looked away. The door at the other end of the car swung open, and in walked a young woman carrying a tray.
"Tea's done! Oh, do we have a guest?" she said chipperly, curiously unintimidated by the dirty, haggard man sitting with Mr. Darling. The sheriff reflexively reached up to take off his hat, only to discover he'd left it back at the graveyard. He chuckled inwardly at how out of sorts he'd gotten. The woman bent over to put the tray in front of the two men. The sheriff was having trouble placing her - she had an almost childlike face, and her salmon dress was bedecked with frills and ribbons like those the young daughters of the local ranchers were always trying to get the shopkeep to order, but she was awful tall and...wide...to be that young. She had straw blonde hair a lot like Mr. Darling - his daughter?
"Ah, yes, this is Mr. Greene, the local sheriff. Mr. Greene, this is Henrietta Miller, the other head of the company." Miss Miller blushed theatrically.
"Well, in name at least. I inherited the railway from my late father, but Mr. Darling is the guiding force behind our business."
"You sell yourself short, dear. It was Miss Miller who conceived of this operation, you know." The man gestured about with his teacup. "We envisioned this private train of ours as a sort of mobile headquarters, an office on rails where we could take care of most of the business of running the company while traveling the country on it. It lets us make personal inspections of things, and ensures that we meet a good portion of our employers personally, at some point."
"We've also got workers and equipment to do minor repairs to the track and infrastructure," Miss Miller added, "Which is lucky in your case, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes ma'am it sure is." The sheriff said with a suppressed sort of cheerfulness. He wasn't exactly sure he understood matters of business and industry like that, but the conversation was doing him something good.
The train rumbled down the track slowly, clanking and thudding along, the car shifting subtly. It came to a stop in front of Jenkins platform with a short, distracted screech. Sheriff Greene had never much cared for tea, but the taste was starting to grow on him. He saw Miss Miller looking out the window, at the ramshackle and battle-scarred buildings. Greene was glad he'd got all the bodies removed by that point.
"It's such a terrible thing..." Miss Miller said. The sheriff grunted in a dire but private way, that curiously articulate sort of grunt that people who live on the borders of civilization seem to learn naturally. "A terrible thing, the sort of thing that can scar the heart as much as the body."
"Folks out here are used to rough living, to tragedy, ma'am." the sheriff replied. "You don't need to worry about us none."
"You're wrong." The sheriff looked up at Miss Miller, cocking a brow. Well, she'd seemed sweet at first, anyways. She fiddled with her teacup, not meeting his incredulous gaze. "People out here are used to scarce food and scattered bandits. Wholesale slaughter like what happened here..." The room seemed to blink as the shadow of a high-flying bird flitted over the window.
"My parents died when I was young, Mr. Greene. They were murdered in our home. The killer was never caught." Her voice was clear and steady, though she wouldn't look up from her tea. "This...left me quite disturbed. Inconsolable, you'd say. It took me awhile to realize..." she met his gaze for the first time, "I realized that even after the loss had become tolerable, a fear remained. I realized I was letting the killer destroy my future as well. So I determined I would find it again." She smiled, her tone lightening considerably. "Though, I can't exactly say I've done much with my life since then, I still would say I'm a better person because of it."
She took a sip of her tea, and Sheriff Greene stared in to his. He swallowed the rest in one gulp and stood up.
"Mister Darling, you said you said you had men putting the track back together? Think they could use a few extra hands? I imagine some folk here could do with something to work on."
Mr. Darling nodded. "Why, yes, we actually are a bit shorthanded. Just talk to my man Henry up front."
"All right then, thanks a lot, for your hospitality." he replied, opening the door behind him. "Ah, and thank you, Miss Miller."
"Any time," she smiled back. The door closed, and there was a sound of someone hammering a post in the ground far away.
-----
A mile or so out of town, a spray of stars hung low over the big desert sky. The creamy cold light illuminated the solitary rider as she galloped for the train, parked on a side-track a few miles outside of town. On the platform of the last car, Mr. Darling watched his wife ride up, stock-steady, hands folded on the railing. She pulled to a stop near enough that she could step right off the horse onto the train.
"I need to see her, quick." she said in a voice just above a whisper.
"She's in a bad shape." Mr. Darling responded. His wife nodded at him, and entered the traincar.
Miss Miller was sitting slumped over the desk, her eyes focused on a bit of grout between the window and the wallpaper. She did not look up at Mrs. Darling, who was dressed in dark, simple riding clothes, nearly-black hair wrapped in a tight bun, and pince-nez rendered opaque by the yellow gaslight.
"It seems they had the raiders executed before they could be questioned," Mrs. Darling announced, "But..."
"The bodies." Miss Miller stated.
"I dug several up. They all had the 'Draconic Oroboros' tattooed into their arms."
Miss Miller stood up, the leg of the chair bunching the carpet up. She set about the room, yanking her gloves off.
"Your rib isn't healed." Mrs. Darling said, though not with the insistence she would have used a few years ago.
"They were waiting for us. That was all for the sake of an ambush, to catch me." Miss Miller said flatly.
"You're wounded." It seemed like it should be enough. Miss Miller stopped, one hand on the tall bookcase next to the desk. She turned her head towards Mrs. Darling, though she still wouldn't look her in the face.
"My plans aren't changing. We know they're doing something somewhere in these hills. Something terrible. Something no one can stop but me." Mrs. Darling said nothing. Miss Miller swung the bookcase open, revealing the secret compartment behind it, stashed with black and gold clothes.
-----
Jenkins, New Mexico. A tiny strip of wooden structures which would barely qualify as a hamlet if there were anything else in the surrounding scrublands to compare it too, Jenkins was a town that really only existed so the trains would have somewhere to stop and refuel. On one side of the clump of buildings ran a dust road that barely got out of town before splitting, squidlike, into horse paths that wound their way to the handful of nearby ranches. On the other side the railway stretched on and on and on through the dull green shrubs, such that even a person bored enough to try and scan it all the way to the horizon would quickly loose interest. Every day ranchers would ride in, argue with the shopkeep, and ride out. A bit later migrant cowboys would walk in, argue with the barkeep, and stagger out. Train engineers would stretch their legs on the sparse wooden platform and then go steaming off without a glance back. Occasionally you could hear a dog barking. This particular morning, during the heyday of what Mark Twain had dubbed the Gilded Age, looked like it would be no different - a haze of heat, grit, and laziness.
Then a crowd of men rode in and threw bundles of dynamite into the sheriff's office.
-----
Deputy Greene staggered in to a disused shed and collapsed against a stack of boards, blood seeping out of a tear in his vest. All around him he could hear more noise than Jenkins had ever made in his life, a constant crackle of gunfire and the occasional explosion. He couldn't hear the screams over the pounding of blood in his ears. He'd been heading out the back door of the jail just as the building blew up. The sheriff, his brother-in-law, had been talking to him not seconds before - it was sick, insane to think he'd just been shattered along with the rest of the building. The shockwave had thrown him off his feet, felt like it cracked every bone in his body, and something, a bullet or a bit of shrapnel, went right through his side. He was gutshot, he realized, and he was going to die slowly and horribly, just like Mrs. Blocker had died after her husband "mistook her for a coyote" during Jenkins' only murder case in living memory.
The deputy wiped his forehead, leaving a red smear across his receding hairline. He'd rarely even bothered carrying a gun, not that it would have mattered. The men never dismounted, never bothered going in to buildings - it sounded like they were just riddling every structure in town, hoping to kill all the occupants before... before what? What in the world could this many well-armed men be after in Jenkins of all places?
Deputy Greene heard a rolling thump rise above the gunshots, saw the men riding towards his hiding place through a gap in the boards. They wore dun riding clothes and nothing in the way of ornamentation, as if they wanted their bullets to be all that spoke for them. None of them had a mask. They either didn't care if they were identified later, or intended to kill anyone who could do so. This thought gave the deputy a sudden surge of desperate strength. He plowed his way through the weathered boards in the back of the shed and sprinted for the bushes. The men heard him. They rode around the shed and opened fire, chunks of sand and gritty soil spitting up around the deputy. He wasn't sure how far he got, somewhere among the tall bushes where hopefully the horses couldn't follow. A black shape suddenly appeared and pushed him over. He felt a boot on his chest, six rapid muzzle flashes and a single continuous bang that rang in his ears. He blinked the dust out of his eyes.
It was a dark figure indeed, but some corner of the sheriff's pain and fear-addled mind felt it very important that this darkness was rimmed with gold. The smoking revolver the figure slowly twirled was coated in it. In the corner of his blurred vision he saw a horse gallop by, a red-dripping body hanging out of the saddle at an awkward angle. The gunshots were distant again. He tried to ask the figure something, but nothing came out but a pained groan.
"Are you wounded?" the figure asked. The voice was low and rough, but...was that a woman's voice? The deputy's head flopped down into the sand. Now he knew he was hallucinating. The figure bent down and pulled the torn vest open a bit - it stung, but Greene was too tired to object.
"You got winged - looks worse than it is. Bleeding already stopped. You'll be in trouble if you don't have a doctor see it eventually, but for now you can just play dead." The deputy murmured a quiet but deliriously congenial "Thank you." The figure's shadow washed over the deputy, and then she was gone. Deputy Greene felt curiously numb, and was tired of thinking. There was nothing for him to look at in this position but the clear blue sky, so he closed his eyes.
Little brass shells plunked into the dirt at the figure's feet as she reloaded her gun, stealthily approaching the back of the general store. It was the only two-story building in town - the shopkeep had insisted on building it that way, even though he didn't need half the space. The figure slid her revolver into its clever quick-draw holster and pulled a much stranger weapon out from somewhere in her coat. It was an oversized chunk of machinery with a steel cylinder running under the barrel and a U-shaped grip like the handle of an umbrella. The figure fired at the edge of the roof, a sharp pneumatic pop masked by the unrelenting gunfire from the front of the building. A barbed spike bit into the wood, a thin steel cable spiraling behind it. The line grew taught as the figure yanked it a few times. She pressed a little catch next to the trigger and held on tight, walking her way up the wall as the device reeled itself back up with a series of grating clicks. As she ascended the wall she could feel thumps at her feet as the raider's bullets passed through the ruined shop front windows to strike the far wall - the figure wondered if anyone in the building was even still alive, but realized there was simply no time to worry about them.
She pulled herself up on to the roof, crawling on her stomach and drawing two revolvers from her left hip. These were her workhorse guns, swing-out models with a jet black finish, bigger, clumsier, and deadlier than her golden quick-draw gun. She peered over the front edge of the roof, which was torn up with repeated bullet strikes, almost as if a giant had chewed on it. The shooting had slowed down a bit, and a handful of the men were trotting up to the doors of the houses. Finally ready to clear out any survivors, the figure thought. Well, now seems as good a time as any.
"Scoundrels! Miscreants! Violent, heartless mongrels!" The men jerked their heads up, leveling rifles by reflex, bewilderment the only thing that stopped them from immediately shooting. The figure stood impetuously atop the roof of the general store, a gun held casually in each hand, the smoke from the raider's fire wafting up to her like a wreath of clouds. Everything she wore was either black or gold. A honey blonde braid stuck out of a black hat, black leather vest with gold buttons and trimming over a shirt made of cloth-of-gold. She wore black chaps over black denim jeans, black riding boots with gold stitching and spurs. Her gunbelt and bandoliers were black with gold buckles, and the long black coat she wore over everything had gilded steel plates sewn to it. The raiders looked at each other, dumbfounded. The figure grinned. As uncomfortably hot as this outfit was, it certainly had an effect.
"I'm giving you one warning only! If you've any logic in your addled heads, you'll throw down your weapons now, or face justice at the hands of fuck!" the woman threw herself on to her back and scrambled away as a bullet tore through the brim of her hat, a hail of rounds throwing up chips from the rooftop where she'd just been monolouging. She pushed her hat down firmer and cocked her guns, muttering to herself. "No sense of honor, no sense of drama at all, honestly."
She rolled to the side, several paces, sticking an arm and an eye over the lip. She fired two shots, scrambling back without waiting to see what they hit. Pulling herself to her feet, the woman dashed for the edge of the rooftop, leaping for the wooden awning of the train platform next door, a full story down. She twisted in the air, squeezing off two shots just before she landed - they weren't even remotely aimed, but when her target was a mass of disorganized men on horseback finesse wasn't really necessary. She glimpsed two men falling from their saddles, a puff of reddish sand leaping up behind one as the bullet went straight through his chest, just before she crashed down behind the waist-high "Miller & Darling Railroad Company" sign. It provided her some protection from the bandit's bullets as she hobbled, crouching, down the awning, further from the shop, sneaking a shot in now and then. They were still massed in a rough firing line in front of the shop - fairly good shots, but they obviously weren't used to coordinating fire, and their horses weren't conditioned to gunshots, which didn't help matters. She spotted three of them breaking away from the main group. Trying to flank me, eh? Well, I've survived one stupid stunt today. Second time's the charm? A bullet ripped through the sign inches from her face, spraying splinters snidely voicing their lack of confidence in her.
She reached the end of the awning and gripped the edge of the sign, listening to the hooves thundering past the front of the structure. She took a sharp breath and swung herself out around the sign, her boot catching one raider right in the collarbone. He was knocked out of the saddle and she landed right in it, half-prone and backwards. Her legs flailed awkwardly as the horse predictably bolted, but she somehow managed to put a slug in both of the kicked guy's buddies and emptied both her guns into the mass of the raiders as her uniquely purloined ride fled as fast as it could. The horse's bucking knocked her out of the saddle, tumbling her behind the ruined stone wall of an empty lot.
Oh yes, that is a cracked rib if I ever felt one. She thought as she pulled herself back to her feet and made sure she was crouched completely behind the wall. Well, I bet they're hurting quite a bit more than I am right now. She swung out her gun's cylinders and shook the empty casings loose. I can hear them riding up. Sound like they're pissed. She stuck the guns under her belt and jammed fresh bullets in, two at a time in each hand. Well too bad for them. Bunch of violent maniacs who can't shoot straight, can't ride - she pulled her guns free and snapped the cylinders shut with a flick of the wrists - can't even come up with a tactic beyond "waste lots of bullets." Come right on over then, you bastards, so we can end this. She peeked out behind the wall, smiling grimly. The bundle of dynamite made an oddly metallic thump as it bounced off her hat and landed right in her lap. In other circumstances, she'd have found the look on her face quite funny.
She leaped out from behind the wall, her screamed oath cut off by the explosion. A wall of men charged at her, guns blazing. She charged at them, likewise. A rifle round clipped her hat, tearing some leather free and bouncing off the compact helmet concealed under it. Men and horses dropped before her, as if the clot of bandits was a breaking wave. Another bullet hit one of the metal plates in the arm of her coat, scraping a patch of gold off to reveal the dull steel beneath. The impact threw her last shot off - in the corner of her eye she thought she could see little glittering golden motes trailing the dented bullet that had nearly ruined her arm. She dropped the big revolvers and snatched up her quick-draw gun. It was emptied in a flash too, but she couldn't stop running. She leapt over the bucking hooves of a dying horse - something gave in her when she landed. She'd been hit somewhere she hadn't noticed - or maybe she was just running out of steam. There was only one guy still standing. His horse had been shot out from under him, and he was staggered, holding his rifle at a weird angle. He tried to level it at her. She grabbed it and got inside, past the end of the barrel. Powder burned her hand as he fired wildly - but she had the momentum, so she didn't let him hold it for long. The stock slammed into the center of his chest. He was on the ground, so she dropped it. Breathing hurt, and her heart was pounding so hard she thought her head might explode.
"As I was trying to tell you," she said, a second before a swift stomp dadadadada, "The name is Goldie Black."
-----
"Goldie Black?" Sheriff Greene asked, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, who would honestly call themselves that?" The newly deputized Mr. Dawkins could only shrug.
"That's what Mrs. Reed says she heard. Well..." the deputy suddenly had trouble meeting Greene's gaze. "I guess we should start calling her the widow Reed now." Sheriff Greene felt something bilious rising in him. He looked down the bluff the two were sitting on, down at the town. It looked tiny from here. He saw a thin column of smoke still rising from the bombed-out jail, and if he squinted through the morning light he could see the nooses hanging from the bullet-riddled general store, from which they'd hung the raiders who'd survived their wounds. Nothing else was moving in the town, which made sense, as more than half of the population was now buried in the makeshift cemetery atop the bluff. The sheriff looked at the uneven rows of wooden crosses and thought of the bodies they'd just dropped, coffin-less, into shallow, sandy graves. Normally, if someone died in Jenkins their bodies would be sent up the tracks, to Empire or one of the other towns big enough to have its own undertaker. But now...
The sheriff threw his shovel aside and wandered off into the bushes, spitting at the unmarked mound they'd buried the raiders in. Now, of course, on top of everything else, it turns out they'd bombed the rail too. The sheriff kicked at a root. They still had no idea what the men were after. No way it was money - if they'd grabbed every last bill in town it wouldn't cover the expense of all the bullets and dynamite they'd used. Were they maniacs? Some anarchist group? And what would the goal be even then? Dawkins had said they should have at least spent more time questioning the raiders before hanging them, but he'd overruled him. He wasn't sure why. Maybe he thought it'd make him feel better. The sheriff kicked another root, much harder this time.
He found himself in a spot among the bushes, where the sandy soil had been whirled around, like a dust devil had touched down. He'd unconsciously wandered over to the place where he'd passed out. Under the bandages, a spot in his side ached. That woman - if anything, she'd made things worse. Showing up out of nowhere, killing or disabling the whole horde of raiders (she must have had help, were there sharpshooters on the bluff?) and vanishing right afterwards. A loud and violent end to a loud and violent beginning - sure they'd managed to survive thanks to her, but what had they gained? Nothing but a distinct feeling that forces they couldn't understand were bowling over their lives without even noticing. It was the uncertainty that was driving him mad. He vaguely remembered she'd told him to play dead. Well, what in the hell else was a man supposed to do in this situation?
A shrill whistle startled him out of his reverie (rework). A train whistle?
"Aww, hell." The sheriff broke into a run, towards the train tracks (rework). Whose job was it to report that the tracks were damaged? Whoever it was, he supposed they'd be dead by now. It'd completely slipped his mind, and now it looks like there'd be another disaster because of it. He scrambled up the gravel embankment the train was set in and waved his arms frantically at the approaching engine. To his luck, it wasn't necessary - the locomotive, an ornate black beast with brass fittings much fancier than what usually came through Jenkins, was coming in slow, and ground itself to a halt just a few yards away. He saw the blue and white stripes of an engineer's cap sticking out of the cab and heard someone shouting at him, but it was rendered indistinct by the churning of the train. He was too busy doubling over and trying to catch his breath to answer, anyways. By the time he could stand up straight again, a man in a fine three-piece suit had hopped out of the train.
"Tracks...are out...past the town..." he said, his voice hoarse.
"Ah yes, we'd heard." the gentleman said. "We're actually here to do maintenance on them. But by God, man! You look like you're about to keel over! Come in and have some tea, we'll take you the rest of the way into town."
The sheriff couldn't quite think to refuse - it'd been quite a while since he slept, and that run seemed to have taken what little spirit he had left. The big man helped him get on the train, waving a signal to the engineers as he did.
Sheriff Greene found himself in a traincar whose state startled him. The car was decked out like some sort of parlor, or the office of some big-city banker. A creamy floral-patterned wallpaper edged with fine wood paneling ringed the car, studded with low bookshelves. There was a great mahogany desk in front of the one big window, and a smaller table with a checkerboard top and several chairs.
"This a pay car?" the sheriff asked. His host chuckled.
"Of a sort. But I haven't introduced myself, I am Laurence Darling, co-head of the Miller & Darling Railroad Company."
"Er, Howard Greene. Sheriff Howard Greene, sir. It's a pleasure to meet you." The sheriff shook the man's hand, feeling a little self-conscious over how dirty it was. This man didn't look much like an important businessman - the way his rapidly thinning straw-colored hair tended to whisp about whenever he moved robbed him of any air of authority he might have had. The sheriff sat down at the smaller table, then immediately regretted it.
"Sorry, Mr. Darling, I think I may have just got dirt all over your chair."
"Oh, not at all," he said, falling into a chair himself, "I imagine you've been rather too busy to wash, what with..." Mr. Darling trailed off as a dark look came over Sheriff Greene's face. They looked at each other for a moment, then looked away. The door at the other end of the car swung open, and in walked a young woman carrying a tray.
"Tea's done! Oh, do we have a guest?" she said chipperly, curiously unintimidated by the dirty, haggard man sitting with Mr. Darling. The sheriff reflexively reached up to take off his hat, only to discover he'd left it back at the graveyard. He chuckled inwardly at how out of sorts he'd gotten. The woman bent over to put the tray in front of the two men. The sheriff was having trouble placing her - she had an almost childlike face, and her salmon dress was bedecked with frills and ribbons like those the young daughters of the local ranchers were always trying to get the shopkeep to order, but she was awful tall and...wide...to be that young. She had straw blonde hair a lot like Mr. Darling - his daughter?
"Ah, yes, this is Mr. Greene, the local sheriff. Mr. Greene, this is Henrietta Miller, the other head of the company." Miss Miller blushed theatrically.
"Well, in name at least. I inherited the railway from my late father, but Mr. Darling is the guiding force behind our business."
"You sell yourself short, dear. It was Miss Miller who conceived of this operation, you know." The man gestured about with his teacup. "We envisioned this private train of ours as a sort of mobile headquarters, an office on rails where we could take care of most of the business of running the company while traveling the country on it. It lets us make personal inspections of things, and ensures that we meet a good portion of our employers personally, at some point."
"We've also got workers and equipment to do minor repairs to the track and infrastructure," Miss Miller added, "Which is lucky in your case, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes ma'am it sure is." The sheriff said with a suppressed sort of cheerfulness. He wasn't exactly sure he understood matters of business and industry like that, but the conversation was doing him something good.
The train rumbled down the track slowly, clanking and thudding along, the car shifting subtly. It came to a stop in front of Jenkins platform with a short, distracted screech. Sheriff Greene had never much cared for tea, but the taste was starting to grow on him. He saw Miss Miller looking out the window, at the ramshackle and battle-scarred buildings. Greene was glad he'd got all the bodies removed by that point.
"It's such a terrible thing..." Miss Miller said. The sheriff grunted in a dire but private way, that curiously articulate sort of grunt that people who live on the borders of civilization seem to learn naturally. "A terrible thing, the sort of thing that can scar the heart as much as the body."
"Folks out here are used to rough living, to tragedy, ma'am." the sheriff replied. "You don't need to worry about us none."
"You're wrong." The sheriff looked up at Miss Miller, cocking a brow. Well, she'd seemed sweet at first, anyways. She fiddled with her teacup, not meeting his incredulous gaze. "People out here are used to scarce food and scattered bandits. Wholesale slaughter like what happened here..." The room seemed to blink as the shadow of a high-flying bird flitted over the window.
"My parents died when I was young, Mr. Greene. They were murdered in our home. The killer was never caught." Her voice was clear and steady, though she wouldn't look up from her tea. "This...left me quite disturbed. Inconsolable, you'd say. It took me awhile to realize..." she met his gaze for the first time, "I realized that even after the loss had become tolerable, a fear remained. I realized I was letting the killer destroy my future as well. So I determined I would find it again." She smiled, her tone lightening considerably. "Though, I can't exactly say I've done much with my life since then, I still would say I'm a better person because of it."
She took a sip of her tea, and Sheriff Greene stared in to his. He swallowed the rest in one gulp and stood up.
"Mister Darling, you said you said you had men putting the track back together? Think they could use a few extra hands? I imagine some folk here could do with something to work on."
Mr. Darling nodded. "Why, yes, we actually are a bit shorthanded. Just talk to my man Henry up front."
"All right then, thanks a lot, for your hospitality." he replied, opening the door behind him. "Ah, and thank you, Miss Miller."
"Any time," she smiled back. The door closed, and there was a sound of someone hammering a post in the ground far away.
-----
A mile or so out of town, a spray of stars hung low over the big desert sky. The creamy cold light illuminated the solitary rider as she galloped for the train, parked on a side-track a few miles outside of town. On the platform of the last car, Mr. Darling watched his wife ride up, stock-steady, hands folded on the railing. She pulled to a stop near enough that she could step right off the horse onto the train.
"I need to see her, quick." she said in a voice just above a whisper.
"She's in a bad shape." Mr. Darling responded. His wife nodded at him, and entered the traincar.
Miss Miller was sitting slumped over the desk, her eyes focused on a bit of grout between the window and the wallpaper. She did not look up at Mrs. Darling, who was dressed in dark, simple riding clothes, nearly-black hair wrapped in a tight bun, and pince-nez rendered opaque by the yellow gaslight.
"It seems they had the raiders executed before they could be questioned," Mrs. Darling announced, "But..."
"The bodies." Miss Miller stated.
"I dug several up. They all had the 'Draconic Oroboros' tattooed into their arms."
Miss Miller stood up, the leg of the chair bunching the carpet up. She set about the room, yanking her gloves off.
"Your rib isn't healed." Mrs. Darling said, though not with the insistence she would have used a few years ago.
"They were waiting for us. That was all for the sake of an ambush, to catch me." Miss Miller said flatly.
"You're wounded." It seemed like it should be enough. Miss Miller stopped, one hand on the tall bookcase next to the desk. She turned her head towards Mrs. Darling, though she still wouldn't look her in the face.
"My plans aren't changing. We know they're doing something somewhere in these hills. Something terrible. Something no one can stop but me." Mrs. Darling said nothing. Miss Miller swung the bookcase open, revealing the secret compartment behind it, stashed with black and gold clothes.
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