Nano Writing Month, 2017.26-28

[mc776]

Every day, write some bit of fiction. Preferably over 50 words, but there will be no standard beyond "something". Posting is entirely optional.

Who am I kidding, this has long degenerated (or evolved) into a straight-up NaNoWriMo. Still reserving the right to write other shit in the remaining days if I'm blocked, though, and not to necessarily finish by November 30.


2017.26


We found him in the swamp. Where in the swamp, I am tempted to answer "yes": there were bits and pieces scattered all over. What we found was not enough to add up to an entire him, though it suggested that, in the absence of immediate and thorough medical care, he was no longer among the living.

No sign of Jean. We called out for him a few times while exploring the clearing, but received no reply: our only hope was that, whatever the alien rod in the temple used to detect us and communicate with us telepathically, he could use here too.

The only sign of the captain was her whispered inquiry: "Is it just me or are the trees covered in their blood?"

"What colour is it again?" I asked.

"Kinda like the birch crabs, but darker." We had Finkelstein explain what they meant by a "birch crab", and we all agreed it was a very fitting name for that particular species of tree.

We told the captain that none of us could really tell from where we were in the clearing; if we were close enough to it to tell something was a stain and not just a part of a tree's natural bark colouring, it was deep enough in the water for any blood to have washed away in the muck.

I saw something else, however. "Over there! On top of that tangle of roots! Is that a plasma rifle?"

"I'm looking at it through my scope now. Yeah, that's one of the ones from the Phlogistroni. I can see the ammo reading from here. Looks half full."

"It's not impossible that Guillaume could have dropped it during a fight. But why would someone leave it out in the open like this, where anyone standing there would have a clear shot against any approaching attacker?"

"And any waiting attacker would have a clear shot on the person standing there," I continued. "Captain?"

"I'd checked the perimeter of this clearing five times before I even let the two of you wade out there. There just isn't a place he could be sniping fro--" We heard the captain scream over our headsets, over a cacophony of howls and crashes and rustling branches.

In our heads, we heard a dark, rumbling voice, The wand! The wand! It is the slayer's power!

In our immediate presence, we heard many splashes and two Terran plains apes and a robot screaming as we were pulled down into the muck by about two dozen large, knife-limbed, snake-like bodies that had suddenly risen up from the mud beneath our feet.

...

2017.27


"Captain! Finkelstein! Vook! Talk to me! Hold on, we're coming!"

"We've been ambushed! We need backup!"

Tell your friend that if we are not attacked, we will not kill you.

"Fucker! Are you taking us hostage!?"

Fool, if we wished you harm you would be dead by now! Call off your backup before you get us all killed!

"Give them a chance! We need to talk!"

"Finkelstein, shut up! You are not the commanding officer in this engagement--"

Imperious wretch! The compassion of your servant, and that of the child they bear, is all that stands between you and death!

Alvarez, Finkelstein, Gunnerbot and I all let out a loud "What!?" at this, a cry echoed by Orgoth and Ai ten seconds later as Gunnerbot relayed to them what the voice just said.

For a while everything was still.

The... child... whose physical extension you bear upon your head?

We all looked at Finkelstein's head-mounted camera. Gunnerbot looked around at us and them. A long time ago Orgoth had gone to a wizard who implanted a symbolic entanglement chip in the camera and Gunnerbot's CPU, so that he could have a real presence with the group when we went planetside. In other words, when I say Gunnerbot was looking around at us, he was there looking around at us in a way that Orgoth and Ai were not even though they could see the same audiovisual input onscreen aboard the Ellobius. This, of course, explained how he could hear the alien's telepathic voice when neither of them could.

We all visibly relaxed as the significance sank in. Even the shrimps holding us down (we certainly couldn't conflate them for them, I needed a word, they looked vaguely shrimp-like in the water) seemed to relax when they noticed us relax.

But they were still holding us down. After a moment Captain Alvarez spoke, in a loud voice that carried clearly over to us from somewhere in the trees. "You are obviously not our enemies. You are neither the monsters we fought in the city nor the man we chased into this forest. What, may I ask, is your business here?"

There was one big shrimp covered in crazy red spirals painted all over its massive puke-green body, slithering about looking at each of us in turn. It seemed to be holding some kind of mace: but like them it had no thumbs nor anything soft and grippy for hands, so it was just wedged in the crook of one of its many armpits. It felt like this big shrimp was the source of the voice, though there was no sound to pinpoint.

The big shrimp stopped and blinked when the captain finished saying her piece. You and your henchmen come into our forest armed with implements of unspeakable death, and you ask us what our business is. Explain yourselves first. It was the sort of tone you'd use when you're not angry but you want them to know you're in charge and can be made angry very easily.

She didn't miss a beat. "Forgive us. We have come from a distant star, seeking a dangerous fugitive from among our people. He has slain and stolen and forced others to do terrible things through his violence and sorcery. We ask passage through this forest that we may bring him out and our people exact justice upon him."

The big one stopped somewhere outside of my view and the voice said nothing for some time. I saw Finkelstein tense up, I tensed up, the shrimps tensed up, the whole damn swamp seemed to tense up.

I heard a low, rumbling, brooding and all too familiar hrrrrrmmm sound. It was coming from several of them, including the big one.

Then the big one spoke again. The Tyrant's staff falters at your words, but I do not believe you consider yourself to be lying. Know ye, all of you, that only one of your kind has passed through here, another of your two-armed, two-tailed ones with the shining stone skeletons and ancient devices of death. You will not have your "justice" which you call your petty revenge: even if each of us here slew him ten times over it would not replace those we have lost on his account. Suffice that the slayer, whom the ghost in the Tyrant's staff tells me was called - the voice paused - "The Billion Children of Robert the Unwedded, May-He-Be-Of-One-Flesh-With-Himself-In-The-Eternity-Beneath-All-Things", is no more.

...

2017.28


Jean no longer trusted his own sense of time, but it must have taken them a full hour just to figure out how to get through his captor's armour. The fact that he was struggling the whole time, reaching for various weapons (how many secret compartments did that suit even have!?) and sending everyone flying with badly aimed jump boots certainly lengthened that duration. Once they did, however, it was a mercifully brief but still ghastly game of "stick something pointy in the hole and jiggle it and see if the bastard stops moving".

Soon his captor's eyes closed, or the signals from them stopped reaching his brain, and he saw from them no more. He could hear them working for a few seconds further, then a quick sharp pain and he was alone. All he could feel was the ambient neural activity of the crab-trees and other wildlife, none of whose eyes or ears he could use, and those ineffable blobs of red repellent haze where they should have been.

So this was the end. After all that he had seen, after all that he had hoped for... all of it would lie and rot, just like the ancient civilization that had become home to him for all those years, at the bottom of a murky swamp on a dead planet with nothing but vague trepidation and fading memories.

He'd never avenge himself on the djinn. He'd never again see the light of his or any sun. He'd never return to Earth, or finish his dissertation, or finally learn classical guitar, or hitchhike across the stars for the price of a song and tale, or enjoy the caress of a beautiful woman around a faraway star.

He'd never see her again.

That he had not seen or spoken with or heard anything of her in ten years was of no matter; it was the hope. The hope of her life-loving smile (those few times he saw it, smiling to herself about something only she knew); the sharp, painful joy of her witty barbs and cocksure aim when they fought the invading Nudibranchs together; that lithe, supple body that could melt away into a ruined city in seconds and return with supplies and alien robot parts as though nothing happened; the body that he often watched curled up asleep in the other room, whimpering in her dreams, how he loved her then, how he yearned to put his arms around her and comfort her, ply her with tender caresses, let her know he was there for her, and in their perfect, loving embrace, whereupon they would--

Oh God.

Had he really said all those things to her, when the pain and the bottle were too much?

It all came flooding back into his mind. Slimy, filthy words came streaming out of the silent black void. He thrashed, and dashed himself against a falling turgid mass of obscene images, icons written deep as a spear into a lifetime of hookers, easy women and pornography. Tiny, innumerable bits of his own filth were congealing over his eyes.

If only he had that golden sword now, to cut it all away, or drive it through himself if it could not!

It kept going. Lives upon lives, reduced to eternally corrupting digitized illusions of flesh...

He heard dark voices in his head. Real voices, not himself, not his thoughts. Not the Old Ones, but they felt similar. If telepathic signals had a smell, these would have smelled more like the Old Ones than, say, Robertson or Ai, but they were clearly something else.

The red haze was nowhere to be found.

There's someone in this thing!

He seems to have gone insane, babbling about things that won't ever be again.

What sort of things? Can you tell?

They seem awfully high-context. Alien food rituals or something, I guess?

I got the impression of something squishy. Maybe it's gonna moult!

We should take this to the Meditator. He'll know what to do with it.

Where is he?

We can't bring this into the village! Who knows what it'll do! We need to get the Meditator here.

I am here. Yes, this is the rod that we had found in the Tyrant's den.

Upon that last voice saying this, Jean felt a physical vibration running throughout his body, as from a very loud sound at very close range. It was an all too familiar howl.

So it is true! This is terrible!

So he really can summon gods from the stars!

All hope is lost!

No, not lost, we must kill this one now while we have the chance!

And there was howling in sound and screaming in mind everywhere, until the Meditator's voice returned.

Quiet, all of you, and let me finish! I am trying to search this one's mind. He seems incapable of blocking me though he appears to be aware of my presence: if you may notice, he has stopped chattering to himself since we let down our guards. I must therefore seek his consent. Slayer-kin, do you allow me to search your thoughts, that we may ensure the safety of our people and thereby allow ourselves to remain unblocked from you?

Release me! he heard his own mind begging before he could properly consider the offer. Don't let me back in there alone!

Very well. You will come with us. I have already seen that you were not working for the slayer willingly, though you be of one essence with him.

Thank you, Meditator.

You can thank me once your information has saved our people. We may all be in grave danger this very moment.