Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 41 Buy Me A Drink First, Sailor!

On silent wings, Sasha the death’s head hawkmoth flitted through the darkened forest, flying for the joy and freedom of the act. Warm, tranquil moonlight showered down through the canopy, bathing the world in pale, golden light. From tree to tree she danced, twirling and bobbing to the music of her fellow night creatures.

The local birds, insects and bats had a good thing going on; very smooth and sweet in the upper registers, beyond human perception. Even a few of the local sentient arachnids were joining in, thrumming bass notes through their wide flung webs of spun silk and spider spells.

She slipped through the boughs, up into the moonlight above the treetops, where she seldom ventured. She shaded her sensitive eyes with her fluffy, feathery antenna, dazzled by the blazing moonlight, even as she thrilled to the sensation of unobstructed flight and the dangers of the open sky above.

Falcons, hawks, any number of winged reptiles or insect predators could snatch her up, even a moth of her size. Under the canopy, spiders, mantis and other ambush predators were a manageable threat, but the swift diving predators of the wide, starry night sky were far more dangerous to her physical form.

Tonight, she had company, Xyll, the vampire fruit bat slipped through the moonshadows like a ghost; silent, unseen and incorporeal. Her shadowy, vaporous form flowed through the darkness, becoming a distinct bat form under direct moonlight and sentient observation.

To simple beasts, she would appear as a dark blot of moving shadow, menacing and terrible. Her undead Animus and aura chilled the blood and rang alarm bells in the instincts of the normal creatures of the night, when she allowed them to perceive her.

The bat spirit’s voice was high and clear, ringing out in the rarefied sonic registers that humans could never perceive; bringing more of the locals out into the night. Dark, leathery wings of all sizes answered her call, dancing under the moon, their celebration took place far from day dweller eyes and well outside their hearing.

Hymns in praise of Camazotz, deity of Death the Night and Sacrifice cut as clean and sharp as an obsidian blade, splitting the darkness, calling his avatar to manifest. Among the swirling, dancing bats and that one sly, fluttering moth, The shadow, bat, vampire creature took on a physical form; that of a dark, leathery humanoid, adorned with the wings and head of a greater vampire bat. He wrinkled and furled his leaf shaped proboscis in pleasure at the scene, winging his way lazily through the small cloud of his cultists and lesser servitors.

“Heya, Cam.” Ward, the human deity of Death, Vengeance and Golden Figs greeted his colleague with a jovial nod from his own bat-like head. The formerly mortal divinity was still struggling with taking on other forms, without the help of his currently possessed familiar. “I’m going to be hanging out in the area for a while, I thought maybe you could help me out with your followers… I kinda creep them out.”

“You are a deeply strange being; as is this delightful familiar of yours.” The divine being chirped and whistled, drawing nervous, super high pitched chuckles from Camazotz’ gathered bat-kin worshippers.

The god whistled a piercing note of mild dissatisfaction at his cultists, who eventually stifled their amusement, with difficulty.

“You really do weird them out. You appear in this guise, as a strange, ungainly, unpleasantly human reflection of my own ineffable glory.” He sounded just a little smug, as he eyeballed Ward’s less than fully competent flight skills.

“Let’s have a dangle, before you crash… as amusing as my followers would find that.”

Together, they descended to a wide spreading oak on a lightly forested hillside, radiant under the moons’ light and the clear, starry sky. They hung casually from the highest suitable bough, as the lesser bats and bat-kin flocked into the lower branches, beneath their deity and his… Rival? Colleague? Cousin?

“I’ll grant your sacred beast a dollop of my blessing; that should make you less jarring to my folk. You’re a bit uncanny; so much like us and yet so deeply strange upon closer examination.”

The deity shuddered softly under Ward’s gaze and shook his head. “You’ll give their nightmares, nightmares if we don’t do something.”

“Thanks pal… that really stings.” Ward sulked a little, as he hung upside down from a tree branch, high above the forest floor, chatting with a bat god that found him creepy...

“Yeah… I get that.” He sighed wearily. “Fitting in is for babies.” The young god spoke ever so petulantly and with an unabashed, childlike, sulky, whimpering affect in his voice.

“I think I like you, kid. We gods tend to take ourselves too seriously.” It was his turn to sigh at the larger man… or bat, or bat man dangling beside him comfortably close and now feeling very familiar indeed.

“On the dead world your kind came from, a few clans of humans worshiped me with rituals of blood sacrifice and torment. They imagined me as a bloody handed thief of life and one who revels in death.” He sighed again, which for him was a very high pitched whistle through his leaf shaped nose.

“I fled into the void, seeking relief from their blood drenched worships and only recently heard my folk calling me back here. I haven’t roosted in this world’s trees and caves since long before… Well, it’s been a while.”

The bat god laid one ear back quizzically and peered at Ward with a hint of suspicion in his eyes.

“You have some enchantment that is soothing my folk…” He whispered softly, as he swept his darkly divine gaze over the worshippers roosting below them.

Ward smiled at his new friend and chattered his teeth softly in agreement; falling into their body language quickly and easily as he became more familiar with the form.

“My moth friend has a power that eases us into your group unobtrusively. She makes us feel like we belong here, wherever here is, at the moment.”

“I mislike such workings, human god.” The bat said firmly, with growing discomfort evident in the way he held his wings.

“To be embraced by her gift, one must embrace it, my friend.” The human godling whispered softly. “We feel the same effects as your fine friends do, making hostility, or even mild skullduggery difficult for all sides… All sides, my friend. Her’s is a gift for easing the worries of groups, colonies and swarms, without doing harm… She’s a diplomat at heart.”

Sasha flitted down onto the boll of their tree at his whispered words of praise, spreading her wings fully to be more impressive and remarkable; enjoying the attention of these perceptive beings.

“That’s ‘cause I’m the prettiest.” She announced confidently into the cool night.

“She really makes a lot of sense.” Ancient Camazotz muttered, as he placed his blessing on the fluttering, dusky moth.

#

Sir Kermal’s dreams were… troubled was the wrong word, but certainly odd. He woke before dawn… before Becky, even, which was a rarity. He slipped from her embrace, as Amy’s new familiar took his spot with a self satisfied little ‘’Murrr.” of pleasure.

He padded down the stairs in his custom mothman slippers, a gift from his mad brother, they were made of soft shearling groundworm fur embroidered and embellished into fearsome, fluffy footwear with glaring red crystal bead eyes. Somehow, through dark arts and sinister crafts, the red crystal eyes would glow fiercely when he walked across a woolen rug while wearing them, or petted a cat.

With a fond smile, he stalked down the workshop stairs, knowing that his friend would be down there, and that he had already sensed the young nobleman’s approach, no matter how stealthy he might be.

“Hey Kerms.” Gary sang, accompanied by a darkling forest of illusory trees, foliage and wildlife. Night birds and frogs sang in counterpoint to crickets and the rustle of unfelt wind in the leaves of a forest that didn’t really exist.

“I’m feeling a little extra eldritch lately… I handled some highly dangerous and toxic metals this week… they left me faintly… charged.”

The atmosphere in the basement was even more dark and alien than usual, with eerie, formless shadows swarming in the dark corners.

From the edges of his vision, Kermal thought he could see vaguely familiar, stranger’s faces peering at him; as if pressing up against and looking through a taut, gauze curtain of impermeable shadows.

“Uhh, maybe we should open some windows down here, air the place out a little.” The young knight offered.

“Oh, no! I’m pretty spooky right now, there’s normal people sleeping around here!” He muttered crossly. “I’m a mess and it’s all weird and gross down here, cause I’m not letting any of it leak out.” He pointed to an intricately inscribed disk of clay mounted above the stairwell.

“That should clear it all out before too long. Especially now that I can get some wheels under me again.”

“Wilf mentioned that your new bike was… dangerous if mishandled…” The knight offered, hoping to start the man chattering on affably and without thought, as he once did.

Since his ‘return’ only the Wards and captain Esperanza could reveal the jolly, generous and slightly goofy man he’d been, when the sky held only a single moon.

“It’s a cursed engine… or maybe a curse engine…” Gary murmured softly, under the music. “It runs on nightmares, harvested from my dreams and juiced through a crystal and spell matrix formed of my own mortal salts and etheric waste.” He sighed.

“That means it operates on the spiritual, magical and etheric energy I freely discharge into the world; while damping down some of the eldritch echoes that haunt my dreams.

“Is this thing made of your piss and shit?” The warrior lord asked gently, while casting a suspicious glance at the bike in question, strung up on a rack for servicing.

“No…!” Gary mumbled, looking way too shifty to be believed. “I’m a serious craftsman with serious magical arts and potent crafts at my command…”

He fumbled to a stop mid lie and sighed weakly. “Ellie and Kelly are in the house. I can’t lie even a little.”

“Sure buddy, that’s why you failed to convince me.” Kermal murmured, as he patted his giant friend on the shoulder. “It’s surely not that you have never been able to lie to anyone about anything, ever.”

“That was kinda mean, brother. The truth is never as believable as my lies anyway.” His huge friend whispered, with a mad, crooked smile on his lips, like so long ago.

“The mainspring inside that yellow shell is forged from mortal iron, the most toxic, cursed, purely evil, blood drenched source of ferrous metals on the planet.”

“Redcaps… the nasty, cannibal fae bastards?” Kermal asked with concern writ large across his face.

“That’s them. Redcaps are the only fae beings to work iron or use iron tools… tools they forge from their own shit.” Gary said finally. “Gnomes are usually peaceful vegetarian forest dwellers; the redcaps worshiped a dark god of murder and cannibalistic rites… He is currently no longer answering prayers, nor granting boons so his cult is dying out quickly.” He grinned that mad, silly smile at his friend and nodded along to the music as he spoke and worked on his rear wheel hub.

“Most non fae sentients have iron in their blood, it works to carry things through the body that you really need.” He totally failed to explain to the patient knight.

“Redcaps can’t tolerate iron, but they are voracious cannibals, murderous and horrible little monsters. Their unnatural diet leaves them constipated and highly aggressive at all times; then, when they finally do drop one off, it’s a hefty iron clinker that can be ‘forged’.” He put very exaggerated finger quotes around the verb, signifying a very loose definition of the art of metalworking.

“Brigid nearly fainted from outrage when she explained the use of the stuff to me. She’s not a fan of their crafts.” He grinned again and shrugged, before going on.

“Then I reforged that horrible stuff to capture the damaged, mortal soul of a malignant spiritual parasite… Once I dusted him off into the next thing, I had all this haunted, cursed, eldritch, fae iron on my hands. The stuff is so impossible and improbable that it bends time and space subtly, just from pure ookieness and unnatural weird.”

“So the major components aren’t your shit, but they are turd based…?” Kermal asked patiently. “What about the ‘mortal salts’ you mentioned?”

Gary’s embarrassed look said that yes, those mortal salts were no doubt extracted from his own piss.

“Gods damn it Kermie…” He complained in a voice that was less than half serious. “I don’t wanna be the turd mage, the urine sorcerer or the privy wizard! Hey, stop writing those down!”

Two young men goofed, chatted and broke out the pipe entirely too early for civilized company. A red eyed Kermal wandered upstairs an hour or two later and confronted his wife in the kitchen, where she was making breakfast, with the four triplets and Wilf.

“The master of the house and I will be taking a morning constitutional, woman…” He pronounced with deeply stoned pomposity and silly, unwise gravity.

“We will expect a meal and fair damsels to attend our bath, as is suitable for men of our lofty station… when we return.”

Becky fixed him with a look that was made of three parts amusement and two parts wicked, vengeful glee.

“Lofty station is it now?” She demanded in a harried fishwife’s shrill cry of marital discord. “If you think you and that silly fool can go off riding and smoking whatever…”

That was count Liam’s cue to come sniffing around with dukes Julius and Abed in tow. “Smoking what and riding where?” He demanded with childlike and innocent eagerness.

“I’ll be your guide down the local trails, gentlemen.” Dannyl answered smoothly, redirecting the noble party off to the stables and receiving a thankful nod from sir Kermal.

While the nobles were discussing the day’s plans, Gary and the young knight silently pedaled out into the woods, accompanied by only their shadows and the familiar friends they both carried there.

#

Gary was sprawled out, face down and nude on a mossy stream bank, basking in the dappled sun and shadows filtering down from the light forest canopy.

“We both bump into the average person’s natural distrust and fear of the dark and shadows, because of the nature of our gifts and Contracts.” Kermal murmured from his own shaft of sunlight.

Sasha, Mariah and Kree were gamboling around in the trees, playing an aerobatic game of tag and occasionally shooting into the sky to explode in showy fiery sparks and sweet scented smoke while the two men soaked up the blended sunshine, shadows and natural magic of the shady little vale.

“We’re always going to seem weird to most people. I know it’s easy to say, ‘don’t let it bother you’ but that’s really the only answer for us.” He smiled wryly at his big friend. “Unless you wanna give up flying to walk in the light.”

“No chance.” He answered, while experiencing Kree’s senses through their familiar bond. He whipped through the branches at incredible speed on buzzing wings of semi corporeal magic, moonlight, sunlight and shadows.

Some obstacles he dodged, others he dashed though, becoming vapor, then reforming on the other side in a complex dance between existence and insubstantiality.

Riding along as a passenger or witness to Kree’s aerial adventures was the biggest thrill left to the broken mage and his greatest pleasure, since being cursed and bound by divine decree.

Lost in the delight of flying, he idly began whistling a merry snippet of ‘The Wandering Shepherd’ and forcibly stifled himself, when his gifts began writhing and struggling in their bonds, draining him of energy and vigor rapidly. His soft moan of pain brought Kree flitting back to his side in a few seconds, scowling unhappily at her idiot underling.

“If you had proper mandibles, you wouldn’t be able to do that to yourself…” She sighed, as she thrust her tiny black rapier into his bare buttcheek, envenoming him just a little.

“Though I suppose you’d just start chirping your wings or stridulating and get the same result.”

“Humans… or whatever.” Mariah agreed when she floated down from her latest ecstatic detonation. “They can be so self destructive…”

That she entirely missed the irony of her statement was amusing to the deeply intoxicated former musician, whose face had gone completely numb under the effects of the insect girl’s sting.

“Murfle, urmph flerbalfim.” He burbled mindlessly into the mossy loam he was kissing.

“Oh, very droll, or something.” Mariah sassed the incomprehensible forest rubbish he’d become. “I doubt he even knows what he’s saying.” She remarked dryly to sir Kermal, when he looked askance at her brusque treatment of their friend.

“Oh, yeah, he’s completely zonked.” Kree agreed happily. “Playtime!” Together, all three fluttered off to resume their game, leaving him alone with a seriously wasted giant sprawled out on the forest floor.

Slowly, the big man’s shadow spread out over the little dell, subtly shading every rock, fallen log and patch of bare earth in the area, leaving only living beings in whatever natural light shone on them. Moss and trees, forest herbs and small flying bugs stood out in vibrant color, just as the surface of the stream remained excitingly real and sharp to his vision.

Everything of earth and soil, everything that was once, but was no longer alive and every natural shadow became a hazy, indistinct and gauzy fabric, pulled tight across the bare buttocks of reality itself.

Those curious, interested, familiar, yet strange faces peered out of every shady overhang and from the underbrush, seeking something desperately, through the opaque but elastic barrier they pressed against so horribly.

‘We are, we are…’ They seemed to whisper silently into the darkness all around and through themselves, unheard by mortal ears, but perceived by the rarefied senses of the mortal soul as an hallowed and dreadful hunger and longing.

“Oh no…” Sir Kermal whispered softly, as he forcibly diverted his gaze and clapped loudly three times to break the spell.

He pulled his guitar from his shadow with a fond sigh for the broken man who’d made it with his own hands in better times and gifted it to him when young lord Singh had begun courting his then future wife, Becky Ward so long ago.

Soft strains of familiar music eased his friend’s troubled sleep, easing him out of whatever nightmare he’d been letting slip out into the waking world.

The young lord’s fingers danced over silver strings, pulled taut over a shining bronze ‘resonator disc’ inscribed with the intricate and deranged work of an utter madman… Sending music dancing farther and wider than any mundane instrument could ever sing out.

Since it was his, given to him by it’s creator, it answered his touch, revealing the strange nature of the magical construct.

Baobhan Sith (Cry of the Banshee) Teleblaster™, unique guitar, instrument, enchanted. Copper rank. Details occult.

Aura, sonic and mental enchantments will be enhanced when proficiently wielded by or near a source of etheric magic. Compulsion and restraint enchantments from hostile sources will erode under the influence of this magical musical instrument.

Clad in a robe and slippers, sir Kermal Singh, veteran knight, first advisor and champion to the duke of Port Clement played a selection of merry country tunes over his passed out friend, whiling away a pleasant morning as the children played and exploded far above.

#

Gary found himself in his old bedroom again, the impossible forest fantasy of whimsey and childish wonder he’d created so long ago, only to lose the power to conjure it forth. Reality pressed in more fiercely now, demanding that he conform and comply with the laws of nature and the physical world. Somehow he was back in that mossy room, under the sky mural, half in daylight, half in star spangled, moon drenched night.

He sat up from Shai’s favorite coverlet, the one embroidered with tiny, twining roses and violets that he’d nearly died to purchase for her and that she never used in the real world, anymore. It was securely packed away, to be a wedding gift for Amy’s future spouse.

Here he found all the old familiar things, magical mushroom lights and toadstool furniture, river stones and wild jasmine and roses crawling up the walls.

He peered out the windows at the storm lashed sea below his old home on the tiny forest moon, though a deep and impenetrable mist closed off everything more than a half mile away. He should have been able to see the curvature of his moon super easily, and should have been able to glimpse the crater where he’d died and taken a good slice of the pantheon with him to a world without gods, magic or immortality. There they would live and die as mortals, bound to the great engine of creation and entropy that constantly whirled, behind reality; driving the eternal everything on into the future and the past… and probably a whole bunch of imponderable otherwheres and everywhens as well.

The immortals, deities, divines, fae and outsiders who’d gathered to either participate in or simply witness his enslavement to the will of a few deities and one of the great ladies of the fae had been the only witnesses to the detonation of his definitely illegal weapon of carnal destruction.

The SexBomb, a glass jarred, super jarring, erotically irradiated, thermo-sexual, frisson-fission-fusion device had gone off in a moist and organic explogasam that had spurted the immortals into his ruptured rear crater, on the dark side of his moon.

Beneath the fleshy pink and tumescent marble obelisk that loomed over the crater lake and Ballsack Island the madman was a terrible threat. He persued the gods of Craft, War and Order around the disrespectful, penile tomb of a godcorpse the fool had murdered, before the entire gathered pantheon, with impunity.

The court of judgment found themselves very mortal and under the power of a madman, one whom they had already murdered and sacrificed in dark rituals for their own ends so very many times.

Enraged, dying and with zero fucks left to give, Gary had sent them all… and himself, sailing off into the ass-tronomical almost-anatomical, puckered rear entrance of the universe. From the vast, cosmic, anus shaped nebula that was the Devourer of Souls, there was no return, save by passing through and emerging, to live and die as a mortal of one sort or another, for eternity, almost all the time.

The god of Beasts had worked some bargain with the inscrutable and wholly incomprehensible Devourer of Souls, to return him to his family for the span of a mortal life, back on the magical, mystical, manifold realm of faery.

He scampered down those familiar stairs into his common room and took up his first guitar, the one he’d made as an apprentice piece before he’d died the first time, back on earth when he was still just a kid dreaming of the stage, with sawdust in his hair.

He strummed the instrument, in perfect tune and far superior to the basic and workmanlike guitar he’d actually made and then lost to the greedy, hungry, all devouring system, back on earth.

Sweet music spilled from his fingers again, after so terribly long; just playing music without draining his life away was worth whatever backlash his curses gave him when he woke from this dream.

He alone had returned from where his ‘SexBomb’ had blasted them; only to be met at the veil by the remaining pantheon with a complex and unassailable curse. It was a terrible thing, wrought by the entire divine realm, including his own unwilling deities, who were compelled to join the working by divine law.

Wrought in his body by all the gods in concert and bound through deities Contracted to his very soul, he’d spilled out into his garden, alive and whole as a mortal man, but broken inside.

He could build and enchant instruments and tools, create weapons and armor; even condition his body and mind for the rigors of an Adventurer’s life, all of which he’d done… but any use of his gifts would wreck him in a few short seconds.

Now, here, he could feel his power again, in its fullness and depth. Like lungs starved for oxygen, he gasped in the sensation with all he had, drawing the feeling deeper inside.

“Gary, I’ve been waiting for you…” Marduk whispered from behind the bar, where the child god was busily polishing a martini glass.

#