Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 45 Little Boy Blue

“He seemed really pissed off… like, properly angry.” Rio muttered crossly, looking out at the boat that was swiftly headed for the deepest parts of the lake, as evening slowly closed in.

“They’ll be fine…” Becky urged the rest of the guests inside, so that the kids could get to work on the horrible, slimy corpse tied to the dock beside Moonrise, the family’s primary yacht.

“He must have suspected… We have two freaking magic yachts, not even counting mine!”

“Three now, we captured that pirate ship; she has some really impressive and clever spellwork in her ballast hold.” Wilf called up from the half flayed monster cadaver he was mostly buried in.

“I’ve been experimenting along those lines… Oh! Neato!” He dove under, slipping beneath the vile, gelatinous surface of flatworm entrails and monster slime, reappearing a moment later with a deep, gasping breath.

“Electrical energy generating organelles… Some kind of magical energy conversion in the mitochondria…” He sputtered through a thick coating of toxic slime.

“That makes sense, it’s got a pretty complex and heavily shielded nervous system for a worm class monster, just no brain to speak of.” Rio agreed from nearer the fluke, where he was dissecting one of its pumpkin sized, primitive eyes.

“Well, those nerds are good and distracted…” Becky whispered to Amy, while obviously listening intently to their surprisingly erudite exchange… for a pair of workmen hacking up a slimy monster corpse.

“I’m serious, your folks will be fine. They’ve been needing to have this fight for years and the time was never right to touch it off.”

“Yeah, but he looked furious, and mama Shai seemed a little worried too. “I’ve never seen him look like that…”

“He never let you kids see the real Gary, the one bottled up inside that he keeps firmly tangled in his own conflicts and desires…” She whispered softly. “Even after all these years, even in the condition he’s in. When he lets it show, the world needs to brace itself for what’s coming next.”

“You aren’t making me feel any better about this, Becks…” The taller girl whispered to her auntie, or sister… whatever.

“He’d never hurt her, no matter what…” Becky sighed, hugging Amy close. In that tender, silent moment, the sound of voices raised in anger drifted across the water, floating on the rising mist, followed by the ringing slap of a hand hitting flesh.

“...And she’s nearing bronze rank…” Becky continued, as another battle raged on the once tranquil lake, her words nearly lost in a feminine cry of pain and startlement.

#

The boys emerged from their reeking corpse, slathered in unguessable filth and all manner of crud. Fortunately, the leech slime plugged their ears, leaving them blissfully unaware of the violent argument on the distant boat.

The sounds were only audible to those with keener than mortal senses, once the mist rose off the lake, hiding the boat from view as well. The discord eventually fell quiet, long after the moons had risen and turned the fog shrouded, tree covered valley into a dreamland of drifting, ragged shreds of vapor.

#

Gary crashed back against a bulkhead, flung across the boat by her kick to his middle. He brought his hand around bloody from a careful exploration of his back, where she’d slashed him savagely with clawed nails.

“That’s it, woman!” He snarled, fury radiating in waves from his bruised face.

“Aye, that’s all ye hae? Ye wretched brute?” She sneered. “Tis nae mine fault ye are nae clever enough tae suss things out, even when they be terrible obvious!”

She barked a cruel laugh at him.

“Now get yer arse back over here, Richboy! Ye hae nae finished spanking tender Shai, fer deceiving yer regal self; as tae yer awful, wretched wealthiness!”

She waved her red, inflamed bottom at him and smiled. “Ye struck a tender spot; an were kicked fer yer pains. Now ye must even out the starboard cheek, lest yer humble wife sit uneven on the morrow!”

“If I leave you in any condition to sit at all…” He growled, as he leapt back into the fray, the claw marks she’d dragged down his back completely forgotten, along with the red, tender condition of his own battered bottom.

“That’s the spirit, lad o’mine. Show yer disobedient lass the error o’ her ways!” Her brogue drawled and lilted like never before, as he clambered over and started warming up her slightly less inflamed right asscheek with the palm of his hand.

She squirmed and writhed in his lap, wriggling and giggling between swats, and gasping delightfully when each landed. His own battered bottom gave out eventually; as they sprawled together on the cushions and bedding they had scattered everywhere in a vain attempt to keep the newly cleaned and refurbished boat from getting…

Anyway.

#

As silence fell on the still lake, the last faint sound drifted up from the mist shrouded surface somewhere in the white expanse of fog, sounding strangely distorted and oddly inhuman and triumphant.

“I’m on a boat!”

They lay there, entangled in blissful sleep, drifting at anchor; both of their battered, tender backsides turned to the silent fog shrouded sky.

Those twinned, bright red beacons called to those who knew what to look for.

Ward, God of Death and Vengeance smiled from his distant perch, high up in a pine tree on a far hillside and sighed softly. “About fucking time those two smashed that out.” He whispered to Xyll, his familiar and first of his sacred beasts.

“What do you think? A year, maybe less?”

Possessing the shape and the appearance of a fruit eating vampire bat, she had been torn from a mortal, human soul in the utter extremis of pain and desperation and then crafted, shaped into a new form; one wholly different from her previous existence. She had felt her equal and counterpart in Gary, when they met, so long ago.

At her core, Xyll remained the lost, remnant deathcry of a good and honest man, sacrificed in his own home by a dark cult.

His desperate, unnatural and deranged final act as a living man had birthed her from a magical fig tree, standing above an underground chamber of horrors.

The gentle, peaceful lord of a humble farming barony had spent his last ragged scraps of sanity and unguessable gulfs of his undead, imprisoned, time, pain, misery and torment to create a new form of half life… A desperate cry for help, made manifest in shadow and spirit; Xyll, remnant shade of a tortured soul, given life by his fading Will.

She’d joined Gary’s little colony of humans, when they’d met by chance in the wilds and had lived his daylit life, hidden in his shadows and rafters for a time, until Gary and his team had stumbled on the dark secret of Xyll’s own forgotten origin, all unknowing.

Together, they had shattered the demonic ritual binding her former life’s essence into a horrible slug monster of undeath and vile corruption, after putting paid to the wretched thing for good and all.

The bond she shared with her host was strong and sweet, welcoming and warm; but he had no space left in his heart for her to join, lest he turn onto a darker path and join her in undying darkness, alone… as she had been.

His occult, semi divine brother, Ward had appeared without warning; another shattered soul, warped from its natural shape and left alone in darkness. He was a forgotten victim and incomplete remnant of a similar occult misadventure, imprisoned in his own petrified heart long ago, as humans measure things.

Seeing what the two beings needed, with a little help from an understanding dryad, Gary had released her, with deep sorrow; allowing her to be fully embraced into Ward’s own damaged soul, the way poor Gary never could allow her to truly join with his.

That act of generosity had healed the pair of them; in the process, becoming one bonded, properly immortal being, from two incomplete fragments of violent, eldritch experimentation.

Poor Gary remained, adrift, broken and now cursed by petty and silly immortals from the divine realm. Xyll ruffled her vaporous, incorporeal essence in irritation at her friend’s prolonged disability and gave a squeak of ultra high pitched… something that was neither sound nor magic, but both and more as well.

“Yeah, we’ll see.” Ward answered softly. “The kids are finally shaping up though… who do we know that they might want to meet? Are there any of your siblings still around?”

She fluttered a negative response at her other half. Of the several dozen similar shades spawned in the events that created her; only she had found a home in a mortal soul and lingered beyond her original’s sweet, joyous departure from his torment.

He’d finally been released, by her odd and sweetly sad, musical friend. The one that was out on the lake, once again pummeling his wife’s nethers raw; with his own, increasingly battered member.

#

“Ow!” He gasped, when sunlight streamed into his eyes, through a curtain of red-gold hair. Shai barely stirred, disturbed by his involuntary cry, before her own gasp of pain brought him fully awake.

“You ok, love?” He gasped, as rolling over sent jolts of molten iron, charged with lightning through his own lower quarter as well. “Owie…”

“Aye, lad... Owie indeed.” She panted. “Ye did batter me nigh onto death wi that awful thing!” Too exhaused to fumble around in her boy’s storage gift, she popped the latches on the ship’s first aid kit and pulled out a packet of violet cubes of waxy, healing unguent.

Together they smeared each other lovingly and thoroughly with the slick, slippery, soothing gel. It was a little too soothing, her gentle touch stirred the battered, ragged scrap of gristle that was the remnant of his cock, back to a hideous mockery of life.

“Owww!” He clutched at the bruised organ and fended her off with his free hand. That caused her to sit down firmly on a bench seat… an unpadded, oak bench seat.

“Oww! I should hae thought to use a mite o’ fuckbutter, lad.” She moaned, as the pair of young idiots giggled, gasped and whined their way back to the inn, on the no longer tidy boat.

They emerged at home, stepping gingerly onto the dock dressed in bathrobes, since actual clothing would touch places too battered for even silk to caress.

Becky and Kermal were sitting on the waterside patio, watching as they tied up to Wilf’s place and smiled at the big smith woman and her husband in mingled smugness, embarrassment and joy.

“Don’t look at us that way… we’re independently wealthy, when we do weird stuff it’s just eccentric, not crazy.” Gary declared, before kissing his wife firmly. Her lips were still in fine shape, even after so much…

“Aye, this man o’ mine be a wealthy eccentric, lass! Dinnae ye ferget that…” Her brogue was still as heavy and thick as cold honey, as she snuggled into his arms carefully and smiled.

They swaggered up towards the house… for two steps, before their strut of cocky satisfaction devolved into a pained shamble, leaning on each other in turns, as each one suffered in different ways.

Shai staggered, half bent over; tenderly pressing her wide spread hand to her lower abdomen, almost indelicately low down.

“Fie, an I stand straight, me very innards shall fall out, on tae me sandals…” She gasped in faux anger at her boy, who was having his own troubles.

He stumbled along in a clumsy, pained bow legged gait, as though some portions of his anatomy were swollen, or had been battered to rubble.

He propped her up when he could, leaning on her when he had to, in a strange, hobbling, intimate dance of broken booties and mangled meat.

Eventually they shambed to the baths, a sign sprang up at the entrance to the private pool, reading: PRIVATE! To make things abundantly clear.

Their twinned sighs of relief and pleasure when they sank into the baths, were sweet music to the kids’ ears, out in the common room. The two supposed grownups still kept up their pantomime of a slow simmering domestic dispute, for reasons of their own.

“Kink?” Wilf asked Rio.

“Kink.” Amy and Rio replied in harmony.

“Gross.” All three sighed, with happy, relieved smiles on their faces.

The battered duo of giants glared, harrumphed, avoided meeting eyes or addressing each other in the intimate steamy baths; all while remaining in contact, hip to hip or butt to butt at all times.

They were soon joined in the water by the older members of the family; and several close friends lingering in anticipation of a quarrel breaking out between the two… despite the sign.

“Are you guys… ok?” Luna asked with a good measure of her usual, bluff and forthright straightforwardness. The woman was as direct as the spear she wielded so ably.

“Aye, Luna. Tis an untroubled home, this little inn of ours.” She said, with a distinct emphasis on the last word. “Does some ungainly, ignorant lout spoil me domestic tranquility?”

She was double secret certain that she was not looking Gary’s way when she said that.

“Yeah, it’s all good… The offender would have to be sneaky; really, really sneaky, to pull the wool over my eyes… and keep it there.” Gary growled, with no subtext, whatsoever.

“Aye? What need be there, tae put a sack over an already dense and wooden head?” She asked sweetly. “Any wi eyes tae see would know that this home be at peace…” Her angry green eyes bored into the mist and steam of the baths, as they both glared daggers at no one, especially each other.

“Only a very great fool would think otherwise.”

“I dunno, sometimes people we trust turn out to be sneaky-sneaks, with sneakiness hidden in their sneaky hearts… sneakily.” The big man grumbled.

“Aye, an some do drift about, wi their heads all in the clouds, heedless of whae all might clearly see. An such a one steps in a hole, tis his own fault an trouble, duly earnt.”

She smiled sweetly and combed her hair in the bath, letting the wet coppery strands slide across his face and shoulders, since they were sitting back to back and butt to butt; leaning against and rocking each other to the beat of their hearts, in perfect time, as always.

“Seriously, I can’t tell if you two are going to smash right here, or start cutting slices from each other… the smart money is on both.” Luna said with a wicked grin.

Both of them turned bright red and sank down in the water, ‘til only their drifting hair touched the surface and they stayed down there for an awkwardly long time.

Eventually, Gary popped back to the surface with a legit angry look on his face. He glared at Joco, Gabbie, Khan and Luna with undisguised fury and no small amount of affection.

“Guys… we’ve never angry fucked before… it’s really great, you should try it. We didn’t get it all worked out last night… So get lost!” He growled. “Killing the vibe!”

“Upsie daisies Khan, Joco, Gabbie… Away we go, we’re intruding… You should put up a sign.” She burbled happily, as she ducked under the sign she’d ducked under when she dragged Khan in by the hand, over his protestations.

“I like her, she’s crazy, not eccentric like us…” Gary sighed at Luna’s retreating form, followed by the folks she’d pulled along in the first place.

“Where were we?”

“I dinnae ken, ‘twas some matter of a rich, powerful man, taking cruel advantage of a poor, humble inn lassie.” She murmured, nuzzling his chin. “I did hear he lured the poor dear tae the baths, wi dark designs on his mind…”

“Oh, in that case, attend my bath, girl…” He sneered in the lisping upmarket accent of the local minor nobility.

#

With their parents safely sorted out and Seahorse, once again tidied up by Wilf and Amy, the kids reconvened down in Wilf’s workshop.

The big lad passed his tray around, holding seven finely wrought silver pendants, each one holding an inscribed black pearl the size of a large pea. They glistened wetly, their oily, polychromatic and iridescent sheen unmarred by the magical inscriptions graven deeply into the free floating, spinning jewels.

Somehow the jewels were suspended in the setting, resisting any attempt at removal, but equally, free to revolve or spin in any direction, while offering a faint feeling that they might just spin in any direction, any at all.

The Jewel of Pain, cursed object. Enchanted; spiritual, divine, etheric, fae. Unranked. Minor mana drain, minor sensory feedback enchantment.

“These will simulate a low grade spiritual attack on your Animus, it should feel like a mild, spiritual sunburn. That will stimulate your aura constantly, hardening your defenses against spiritual attacks.” Wilf explained quietly.

“We learned that in basic aura cultivation…” Harry sighed unhappily. “We aren’t babies with soggy diapies.”

“We can’t activate our auras while we’re asleep, doofus. That’s the problem!” Larry gently chided him, while Perry unloaded a brotherly ear flick on the youngest Ward.

“Exactly, only a being with whom you have actual resonance, or a bonded Contract, will be able to enter, manipulate or draw you out of your dreams. That means only a being you fully trust can touch you without initiating an actual spiritual attack.”

“A spiritual attack?” Larry asked, once Harry was done complaining.

“If a being has identified your light from among the near infinite number of living and otherwise active beings on this world, they can still contact you… which you can refuse.” Wilf explained patiently. “Only by actually attacking you spiritually can they force an encounter… Which is forbidden under divine law and is a risky proposition for both parties.”

“And if they get froggy and decide to jump?” Barry demanded sharply. “They’re getting pretty aggressive lately, I imagine our new Contracts will piss her off even more.”

“With these on, any attacker will receive a unique and unpredictable curse effect… I have no idea how it’s going to work in that case. It could be anything!” Wilf was smiling brightly and bouncing on his butt like a little kid and spinning on his stool every few seconds.

“Whoah, slow down big guy!” Amy called out. When Wilf got like this it was always trouble.

“I see I’m just in time, kids… Lady Dana has; as we say in the council of the divines, ‘shit her robes’. She’s done a thorough job of it too.” Ward said calmly, as he stepped from the shadows.

“In your own homes, now that you are of age, your invitations allow me to pass freely, children.” He sighed happily, before they could ask.

“Yet another bond falls away, soon perhaps more…”

“Don’t try and get all mystical, Ward. we know you’re just a big horny chuni.” Rio whispered from inside his uncle’s hug, the one the scary Death god hadn’t realized was going on already.

“Yes, kids, I am at that…” He sighed warmly, as every flower in the garden bloomed and turned its blossoms to face the sun, high above.

“Let’s leave your folks alone for the day, who’s for a trail ride?” He demanded, drawing the bike his brother had created just for him from some deeply strange materials.

Somehow the physical and real material object was capable of being manifested in the divine realm, since it was crafted from Golden Fig lumber, harvested with the assistance of the dryad in charge of that species.

Ward loved to pull sweet bike stunts in front of the other gods, just for funzies.

“Today is gonna kick ass.”

It did kick ass, it kicked all their asses, leaving the four triplets crashed out in Rio’s cottage above the river and the others asleep in Wilf’s place, just down the embankment on the riverside.

#

Dana, the Balm in Man’s Troubles, yanked her avatar back from the gleaming soap bubble that contained the mortal fragment, Barry’s dreams. She shook her hand a few times, a look of consternation running across her features for a moment, before she reached out again, much more forcefully.

Again she was repulsed, with even more vigor, renewing the odd phenomenon in her avatar’s hand. A wash of alien emotions flooded her essence, leaving the goddess dizzy and… furious. She lashed out, striking a ringing slap to the fragile mortal bubble before her. It jiggled abominably, shimmying and bouncing away, to vanish among so many others. That was no matter, she could find it again.

Still lost in strange new emotions and foreign sensations, she turned to the first of her confidantes.

“What is this?” Dana demanded archly, as she stared in wonder at her hand. It had turned bright red and was emitting a new sensation into the Healer’s divine essence, through her avatar.

“Caduceus, is this… Pain? Have I been… burnt by a hot stove…? Is that what this is?”

“Yes, my lady, that is my diagnosis…” He whispered in abject, trembling terror and fury. “But I have no healing unguents nor soothing balms for the divine…”

A quiet, angry voice spoke behind the deities, shaking them from their discussion.

“No, you do not. That is the domain of mortals… like the one you just attempted to enforce your will on… Despite a number of unambiguous refusals.” Marduk offered calmly.

“To attack a mortal soul so… This has never been done.” He spoke coldly and with a keen, bitter edge to his words.

“Mortals are of no real moment, in the greater cycle of things…” Caduceus sniffed disdainfully. “What is concerning is the state of my lady Dana’s hand.”

“Gods do not have a unique hold on curses, mortals work their own, at times.” Marduk replied coldly, like a chill wind coming down from the heights.

“This is a working of craft, Will, Mind and Animus, a mortal working.” He sounded a little smug at the end there.

“Impossible! No mortal arts can touch the divine realm! It cannot be done!” Baba Yaga, the witch of the deep forest insisted, in her creaky, ancient voice of sinister and somehow motherly care.

“She touched him.” Ipet announced, her words a brazen gong on the quiet heavens. “To attack a mortal soul, you must be willing to risk harm yourself, harm you have just received.” She roared at the gathered coterie of divines, clustered around Dana.

The hippo headed, jewelry bedecked, nearly nude goddess of Justice announced her presence with a thunderclap and the sound of a brazen door slamming closed.

“Do you forget that you trouble the kin of one who is MINE?!”

Her voice shook the heavens, clanging and ringing out across the realm in a cacophony that called the divines and immortals to witness.

In a timeless moment, the gathered courts of the fae, most of the active lesser immortals and spirits and all of the major deities and spirits were present; summoned by the Will of a goddess in the fullness and proper exercise of her remit.

“Dana, goddess of Healing… you have committed a crime.” She called out for all to hear.

“Your essence has been bound into this avatar and will be unable to escape for some time. During that period, your right upper extremity will suffer a status condition that mortals call ‘Burnt’.” She smiled, her hippo lips peeling back from her tusks unpleasantly.

“As in, ‘you’ve been burnt’. This condition will persist until released by the mortal you assaulted, or until that mortal’s death.”

“Acceptable…” Baba Yaga murmured, a wicked smile on her craggy face. “Mortals are fragile, I will send a…”

“Remember who you face, Witch.” Ipet sneered. “And what happened to every other immortal who has meddled carelessly with my first mortal cultist.”

“I hate to be late to a party.” Ward mumbled, as he slouched up, dressed in an unbuttoned hawaiian shirt with nearly naked hula girls scattered among the hyacinths and hibiscus.

He hitched up his bright white cargo shorts, curled his toes in his sports sandals and tipped a wide, shady straw hat back on his head. His smile was oily, unctuous and brought to mind a coiled black adder, waiting to strike the unwary or foolish.

“Dana, I’ve let you play your games and pester my kids, mostly cause you’re amazing in the sack… but funtime Ward is on vacation now.” He sneered coldly.

“I literally just finished telling them that you would never, ever be stupid enough, arrogant enough or just plain crazy enough to actually force the issue… you made a liar of me in front of my kids.”

Dana tried to sputter in rage and deny his accusations, but this ‘pain’ thing was building into an intense, distressing sensation. “Enough.” She gasped, clutching her hand and turning pale. “I withdraw… undo your curse, Ipet.”

“Not my curse, Dana… the mortals wrought this, only they can release it… I feel like we just went over that part. Are you paying attention? Perhaps you are distracted by the rewards of your own actions?” She asked sweetly, smiling so pleasantly that the goddess’ new friend, ‘pain’ intensified further, drawing a moan from the divine lips.

“Perhaps I can intercede with him…” Marduk offered, with a cruel smile. “I think Ward is currently unwilling to aid you in the light of your most recent folly.”

“True, ducky, very true!” The formerly mortal being chirped merrily, smiling winsomely, when the goddess moaned and writhed in her latest discovery, ‘agony’.

“Pain is a mortal experience, most divines and immortals never learn this valuable lesson. This will make you so much more effective and compassionate, when it finally ends.” He cheered gleefully.

His happy, giddy expression melted away a moment later. “Now I need to attend to what none of you who are still here, spared a thought to consider.” He muttered, looking cross and disgruntled with the gathered immortals in general.

“Marduk and Ipet stayed here to scold, berate and humiliate you, but Thirp and Shiro the Nekomancer have already gone to check on the victim of this assault… A mortal child, one still unripe by two whole, mortal days.”

He smiled even more cruelly at the sobbing, confused and terrified goddess. “I almost forgot! Another new light has joined the immortal realm…”

The cold, eager light in his eyes was disturbing and manic, as he spoke.

“Shiro the Nekomancer is a resident of this domain now, through some obscure means that we will look into… eventually.”

#