Sailing Ether Tides

Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance

Please Stand Up Ch: 17

It was deep in the night, almost morning when Gandree looked up from the wonderland of tools, crafts and materials he’d fallen face first into.

Urges and desires that had been haunting his dreams as long as he could remember, slowly came to fruition under his hands, below the goblin king’s castle in a timeless fugue state.

He was alone, the others had departed without his notice; now he regretted losing track of time… it was frightfully rude. He stroked his creation gently. It was a mass of wooden blocks, clamps, rings, bindings and knotted cords, all jammed under a hefty oak slab for extra compression and stability

He was… Hungry. Like, boil your boots and savor every bite hungry. A wicker basket under a clean white cloth sat on the bench where the king and Daisybelle had been, with a small rawhide card bearing a short note in dwarvish runes.

Enjoy this snack, we will be in the castle... somewhere.

G.W. + DB

Inside he found a crusty loaf of good white bread, a dried sausage of some kind, a clay pot of soft, slightly smelly but delicious cheese and a big bunch of plump wild grapes beside a clay jug of cider.

It was all delicious and simple… and made him feel more welcome and accepted than he had ever felt before.

The lad draped a dust cloth over his borrowed workbench and drifted up the stairs, into the palace proper seeking his hosts, before exhaustion could take him away.

He encountered Sabrina, the ‘queen’ of the castle as he entered the main room and smiled at her warmly. She responded by turning about and walking the other direction without even looking at him. Every other goblin he met reacted the same way, with cold indifference and silence.

That was eerily familiar, recalling his days as ClansWard, slave to all, and as unwelcome as a bad smell in polite company.

“I bet they’ll come running when they want something…” He grumbled to himself as he stumbled off to Daisibelle’s room to leave her a note.

#

The sun was coming up over the rocky little meadow by the river, as he slowly brought the music down and his house up.

He’d spent a long time and a lot of effort to create the thing as close as he could manage to the house in his dreams… and it was pretty weird.

It stood way too tall, with absurdly high doorways; which were, thankfully, properly wide enough. The ceilings could easily accommodate giants and the beds were enormously long… but delightfully soft and wide.

The rest of the furniture, fixtures and tools seemed weirdly too tall and just plain awkward in every way. He quickly gave up on the main floor and ignored upstairs entirely, vowing to try again tomorrow, when he was rested.

Down in the basement, things were more normal; he had all the tools and supplies he’d ‘appropriated in lieu of wages’ from the dwarfhold neatly laid out. Piles of ingots, ore and gear were all neatly sorted on his storage racks awaiting his attention. The coal bin was full, though he wouldn’t really be needing it, now that he’d seen the goblin king’s magically self powered tools and workshop.

He sighed happily, as he racked up the loot from his foray into the carpenter’s shop and what he had been given by the overly and overtly generous king.

Tomorrow he would collect his unfinished project and complete the work here, where he wouldn’t disrupt the king’s household.

Those thoughts percolated in his mind as he climbed the stairs; all the way up to the master suite he knew was there, but hadn’t seen yet, somehow. Nearly senseless, he collapsed on the fluffy, enormous bed and vanished from the waking world.

#

“Gandree boy ran away!” Daisybelle grumbled, waving her note around at everyone she saw, even though most couldn’t read.

“Who made him embarrassed or feel bad?” She demanded of each of her sisters, before approaching Sabrina in a less confrontational manner.

“Nobody talked to him, nobody looked at him, silly girl. He is a day walking stoneskin, can’t expect him to behave like civilized folk.” Sabrina complained right back.

“Wandering around like that… like he’s a woman!” She huffed and sniffed.

Slowly, Daisibelle considered the few of her sisters who’d found mates; none of them had stayed in the castle either… She considered her own reactions in the past, to those few men who her sisters had brought home to meet King papa.

BarbaraAnn’s wife, Estrella had no interest in king papa’s royal scepter or baby making prowess, so she always avoided the king on her infrequent visits… but everyone else was always friendly and chatty with her.

“Did we… hurt his feelings?” She asked the older gobb softly.

“He’s a boy… do they even have those?” Sabrina asked blandly.

“Ok… I’m gonna go find the boy…” Daisybelle muttered through tight clenched teeth. She whistled for her pack and smiled when she heard them stampeding through the halls creating utter havoc.

#

She picked up his scent trail in the market, while storm clouds were gathering above the valley, it looked like it would be a rough night. No other dwarf men ever came here, so her doggies picked him out with ease. Less than a mile from town, on a rocky rise above the small river that fed the north end of the big lake, she found him and his house…

The door opened at her touch, not even a latch on it, the poor fool. The girl and her pack poured into a strange, vast, yet cozy room with odd, upsized furniture. Like king papa’s house, but not.

Everything seemed more… crafted, more sleek and finished. The windows held real glass like she’d seen in human towns and so much metal! Metal everywhere! Everything was intricate, clean, polished and embellished with subtle whorls and spirals, evoking wood grain in things of stone and metal.

She and the doggies trooped up the wide, high stairs to the big room, just like king papa’s place. This room held a bed so big, so fluffy and white, she could only tell by scent that her boy was lost somewhere in those pillows and blankets.

With an ecstatic whoop, she leapt in, diving for the depths without a care, just as it began to rain in earnest.

#

The Necromancer paused, just on the other side of the void from the magical stele of warding he had felt someone fiddling with. It had been on his list, his long, long list of stones that needed repair or refreshing. Now it was intact, neatly repaired and even enhanced…

The insect warding charm spun in among his work, strengthening the forbiddance and curse bans, the undead barriers and spiritual boundaries. The seal he’d crafted so often and considered more than excellent had just been… updated.

His usual methodology was highly personal and deeply subjective, rooted in jazz theory and an appreciation for complexity and resonance.

This stranger’s twiddling had untangled the complex knot no one had ever unbound before, leaving a splendid and harmonious, unassailable wall, rather than the hedge of thorns and forbiddance he’d crafted.

It was a wall, with a door. A door that could only be opened and passed by a mortal being with the correct gifts, ritual preparations or knowledge… denying all others absolutely.

“Nice…” He whispered, while taking copious notes.

It took him half an hour to create a key that would let him slip through without raising an alarm. That wasn’t really impressive, in a place where time had only the meaning one chose to give it… or some complicated shit like that. He gave up and focused on the task at hand. Contemplating mortal concepts while standing on the edge of reality, picking a magical lock was not helpful, or wise. He hesitated on the edge and considered other options.

This was one of the most fully realized worlds he’d ever entered, if only briefly. The whole place was highly toxic to his essence and would start eroding his Ka and sending his wights flitting away, whenever he was exposed to sunlight or moonlight.

The moonlight was strangely, the worst. He could withstand the sun for a full day, at the cost of some pain; the moons’ light became dangerously corrosive in mere minutes.

With a sigh, he inscribed his key solution into a ball of rendered human tallow and tucked it in his shadow for safekeeping. He would need to ask the Magician for help with this one.

His ghost storage was getting uncomfortably full, something needed to change or he might burst… Unless some dickless wonder bumbled in and broke his containment grid first.

That made him chuckle in the airless void between worlds, as his tiny island of something bore his palanquin through the endless nothing and back into his realm.

Far below the vast necropolis on the surface, he emerged in a lightless cavern of the dead. Crypts, vaults and entire mausoleums crafted entirely of bones covered every available flat surface in the huge vault. Chasms and rifts in the floor served as ossuary pits, filled to the top with human and beastfolk bones and smoothly cobbled with skulls. In the silent halls of the dead, he let his shadow spill out and disgorge his legion back into the depths.

Void travel was difficult, uncomfortable and impossible for the dead. His minions couldn’t pass through the void maw on their own, requiring him to bring only as many shades and could fit in his shadow. There were always plenty of haunts, spectres undead and bodies to work with when he arrived; but it was draining and difficult to wrangle so many fresh spirits, usually under adverse conditions.

Fortunately, in the fractional, topsy-turvy inside out collection of almost realities scattered around the local area, there were a few other ways to traverse the planes, for those with the Will and knowledge to attempt them.

The catacombs led deeper and deeper into the earth; connecting this realm of the dead with so many other forgotten crypts and cemeteries. The network of passages between domains that the dead traveled were forbidden to the living and embodied; only shades and ghosts could slip from one burial ground to another.

True escape from the endlessly refracted demi planes eluded him, and everyone else, but if there were graves there, he needed only find a spirit that could guide him.

In the main ossuary he lay down on a cozy bed, draped in spider web and guarded by a dozen corpselight tarantulas. The half alive, haunted arachnids watched over him in the dark, lest some noisome nibbler come up looking for fresh meat in the dusty, long abandoned crypts.

With an indistinct spiritual shrug, he slipped out of his body and into his own shadow, haunting himself and enclosing his Ka in his own transplanted Animus.

In the endless dark, no one living watched as shadow and soul became the illusion of flesh and blood, a walking breathing simulacrum of his living body, still tucked in the bed he’d brought here for this purpose. The spaniel sized spiders quickly descended and cocooned his body safely away in their webs, sipping just a little of his blood, Mana and life force away in exchange.

The Necromancer’s ghost walked out into a bustling city of the dead, a ‘lively’ and chaotic place filled with innumerable souls, all trapped here in his domain. Many were old friends, familiar and comfortable, while most remained a faceless mass of swirling, chaotic, frustrated, trapped souls and fragments of souls.

They would occasionally reincarnate spontaneously, but most lingered here, desperate to escape but as thoroughly imprisoned as he remained.

Men, women, humans and others, lived their lives among the realms, most knowing only the fraction of the ‘real’ world that they were born in. All manner of beasts, semi-sentient beings and lower life forms flourished on most of the fractional worlds that encompassed the… whatever they were trapped in.

Mortal souls could enter, to be born in the usual way; but on death, they found no exit, no escape back into the endless engine of creation and everything just beyond the tiny pocket dimension they all occupied.

Souls could only circulate between these worlds, numerous beyond counting but diminishing in size, scope and stability, the farther one traveled from the more ‘real’ domains.

He called on his most widely traveled shades: a collection of ragged, half mad haunts who had been across the void while living on multiple occasions and had left their footprints on many worlds.

They swirled around him, unwilling to venture into the endless void again, but able to lead him to and from their scattered, lonely graves through the shared memories of the legion of haunts.

They whispered and chattered endlessly in his shadow, as he followed the threads of remnant Will and Animus that tied them to their scattered remains and the worlds they had trod while alive. The poor fools were mostly mad before they died and things hadn’t improved since.

Delvers lost on alien worlds, bold explorers, or simply travelers unlucky enough to fall into a void maw, travelers to other realms often died on the foreign soil where they arrived. Such souls still felt the touch of alien lands in their remnant essences and could guide him there and back through the graves of the restless dead. Since all the dead were restless in this ‘place’ the Necromancer found few domains or ‘worlds’ barred to him.

“All right Sandra, show me the way.” He whispered.

#

Gandree woke up gradually, surrounded by fluffy white pillows and blankets. He stretched, lost in a cloud of luxury, and found Daisybelle snuggled up beside him, wearing only one of his shirts.

He knew that, because his hand was resting on her round, squishable little bare bottom, which felt divine. One of her legs was thrown over his hip, which was super distracting.

Equally distracting was the scent drifting up from her hair; she smelled of pine needles, forest loam, beeswax, honey and some spicy, faintly herbal perfume that teased and hinted with subtle familiarity.

Her big green eyes opened, when Gandree shifted and nudged her someplace tender with the natural result of waking up with a cute, nearly naked girl wrapped around him.

She stretched as well, somehow, without releasing her arms from around his neck, which did some things against his body that were really distracting.

“Gandree ran away…” She grumbled sweetly, before latching her teeth onto his earlobe and holding on.

“Mine.” She grumbled around her mouthful of his lobe.

“I got the feeling I wasn’t welcome…” He thought about shrugging, but her teeth were super sharp; he just grumbled instead.

“Some goblin girls don’t like boys at all… Some are territorial, some just think all boys are dumb like goblin men and not worth talking to, except king papa.” She sighed into his ear and let go. “Many are scared I’ll get jealous and womp them good for talking to my boy…” She chuckled darkly and squidged in closer to him. “They’re right.”

“Daisybelle, I’m only wearing my undershorts…” He mumbled quietly.

“I know… couldn’t steal those from you.” She murmured happily, taking a good long sniff of the sweaty shirt he’d been wearing when he fell asleep.

“Trying was fun, though. Now shush. Bad weather, this is a spirit storm; best to stay inside or get all ghosty drenched and haunted for a week.”

She curled right back up against him as the storm lashed at the sturdy roof, clawed at the windows and screamed under the eaves. The thunder almost sounded like deranged laughter, as it echoed around the mountains and lake.

#

A storm was settling in, a strong one and moving fast. The team hunkered down on a high, barren hillside, with scant protection from the wind, but great sightlines over the local area. Rio and Harry had a theory they wanted to test, when the weather cleared.

“Yeah, this storm is largely mundane, but I think magical turbulence in the ether is churning it up and making it stronger.” Harry lectured, between thunder cracks.

“Heightened ghost activity too.” Rio added. “Spiritual and fae beings will be much more active and more… let’s say more physical than usual.” He deliberately avoided looking at Ward and his hugging, giggling coat of bugs.

The weird being was seated on a chaise lounge in the far corner, watching the proceedings, literally buried in the beautiful, colorful and varied insect forms of his lovely ladies.

Mantis, walking sticks, ladybugs, lacewings, dragonflies, water skaters, all manner of forest and arboreal bugs coated him. They swarmed and jostled with each other playfully and tickled the deranged horndog relentlessly, creating an enormous distraction.

“Ward… do you have any input on this issue of some importance? Since the matter directly touches your supposed area of expertise…?” Becky demanded gently. “Hello, ghost and spirit activity, fae beings too?”

“Yes, marvelous, isn’t it!” The smiling demigod chuckled beneath his blanket of lady bugs.

“Gods above and below… and in the room.” Dannyl sighed tiredly. “He’s useless like this. Button up the house; I’ll try to get them sorted out.” The ginger death cultist and god babysitter mumbled.

“Ward, ladies, come on… we’re going to take over the master suite… won’t that be fun?” He cheered at them as though they were small children, in need of motivation.

They replied with moans and groans, cries of I don’t wanna and general sulkiness from the cuddle pile of divine beings. “I have candy!” He sang. “Monster bee honey!”

“Oh, candy!” They sang as one; in the rustles, chirps and clicks that were their native speech. Ward staggered upstairs to the big room where Wilf never slept anyway, still completely covered in his clinging, giggling girls.

“Don’t worry, Lindsey, You get used to it.” Benny said quietly. The taciturn heavy fighter shrugged and fell silent once more.

#

In a high vaulted ritual chamber, a large crystal jar stood inside a series of elegant and beautiful magical circles, inlaid into the polished marble floor in precious metals, or drawn in ground gemstones and rare pigments…. all of which had been rudely hacked apart and scuffed.

A tiny, nude, male human baby floated in the container, trapped eternally between life and death in a cursed jar wrought with divine magic.

The lean ragged form of the Necromancer slouched on a stool before the faintly glowing abomination against nature and humanity and smiled.

“It was an outsider, steampunk, zombie slug magic item factory… no, wait.” The Necromancer paused to collect his thoughts. “Seriously, give me a break. I have to claw my way up out of my grave to get here.” He complained to his brother, the Magician.

“It was a steampunk magic item factory that was staffed by outsider slug possessed zombies. Yeah, that’s it.” He grinned at the corpse jar and gave him a thumbs up.

“Magical item factory?” The magician asked, through his voice box. “You found it and destroyed it?”

“Yeah, it was a whole complex of workshops, they made all kinds of stuff. Weapons, armor, magical doodads and wands. Some pretty weird shit, too.” He said with a grin. “There was even a factory dedicated entirely to making cursed underwear and slippers, of all things!”

“Oh… yes! That was one of my action items, I can scratch that off the list!” The Magician sang merrily, which was weird for a floating baby corpse preserved in occult liquor.

“I found the FleshSculptor, brother. I tore out her soul and cursed her terribly… for you… and for all the others.” He whispered softly.

“The man with the borrowed snake took particular delight in ferrying her to the devourer. He didn’t even mind that I kept her consciousness and sewed it into a singing, enchanted rug.”

“A rug? Really?” The magician asked eagerly. “Is it degrading, humiliating and painful?”

“Oh, yeah. And I sent her as a gift to a complete amoral ass bag that I have big plans for.” He said, showing his long, sharp teeth in an inhuman smile. “The Pontiff of Light is hunting for me, while I’m pillaging his outlying holdings. That cesspit was a dead world, so I emptied it entirely.”

“Good news…” The Magician sighed wearily. “You didn’t have to come here in person to tell me that.”

“I may have found someone who can release your bonds, brother.” He said even more softly. “They re-worked a broken forbiddance stele in a way that… It’s frankly, beautiful. That’s my only lead and they are in a world that is… inhospitable to my form.”

“We can’t devote cabal resources to this. We have to press forward with our goal. Perhaps after we expunge the cult of the Light from the realms…” The undead infant murmured sadly.

“This is our first and best clue…” The Necromancer muttered. “I’d follow it up if I could… perhaps the Hive…”

“I have no direct contact with the Hive. If I did I still wouldn’t ask for their help, not for this. Remember, if our little scheme is successful, the cabal will lose a member; even if it is only me.”

“Fuck you, asshat.” He sighed at his undead, bottled brother. “It could have been any of us, caught in that trap… I’m going to get you out before this is done.”

“I’ll wait my turn.” He answered with finality.

“While you’re waiting your turn, I’ll be doing what I can. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish emptying out my shadow…” The black cloaked man grumbled. “I’m super bloated. Then I’m going to try to find the Hermit or the Star.”

#

“I was never supposed to be a god… or a dryad, at the root of all this, I’m just a mortal man caught up in the weirdest shit ever.” Ward failed utterly to explain to Lindsey, in the kitchen that morning.

“I won’t explain the gory details, but let’s just say, bad things happened to my soul… a lot. I kinda fractured into an army of me and started haunting myself… Which is an absolutely shitty way to describe it.”

“Uh, huh…” The befuddled girl answered, while sliding a frittata into the oven with a pan of biscuits. Ward was on porridge stirring duty, since that was the utter limit of his cooking skills.

“Yes, I know how it sounds… but I’m skipping over a whole lot of stuff.” The big, unnaturally handsome doppelganger of Barry’s dad complained weakly.

The fellow was silly, charming and just a little crazy, but crazy the way harmless eccentrics are mad. He simply didn’t care to conform to anyone’s expectations and enjoyed freaking people out.

“Anyway, because there’s so many of us, we kinda all had our own names. There was Dj, Velvet-rope, Pianoman, they were all reflections of him, er… Of me…? Of us? Anyway, they weren’t entire people.” He still failed completely to enlighten her.

“When they got scattered across the vast universe, most became distinct and unique people with their own lives and perspectives and a few of my… our early, formative memories.” He mumbled, concentrating on his oatmeal agenda.

“A few are more like me, more like him… they all have…” He sighed and spoke very calmly and clearly. “Do you know tarot cards? The characters of the major and minor arcana?”

Lindsey gave a non committal shrug. “I’ve played card games and had my fortune told.”

“Gary is the Hanged Man… and the Fool, the two are the same in him, since he was born twice. It’s complicated, you could say he’s the original, since he’s the most fully real of us all.”

He smiled a high wattage grin, before getting back to his stirring duty. “Anyway, the others are all out there somewhere, somewhen. Justice, Temperance, the Lovers, the World... They are all out there, even the Devil.”

“And I suppose you’re Death…” She asked wryly of the big goofy man.

“Oh, no! I’m the god of Death on this world; but really, I’m the Moon. Death… that man is really creepy.” Ward sucked his scalded thumb and smiled. “I actually burnt myself a little… That’s fun!”

“Fun for you…” Willow complained from the group of assorted dryads descending the stairs into the common room. “My tenders are sore! That never happened before.”

“I like it.” Fig murmured from the corner. “I feel freshly smashed and delightfully wicked.”

Lindsey’s face turned bright red as she looked away from the pile of nude, beautiful women that were stumbling down the stairs, smiling and stalking her incompetent kitchen helper like hungry cats; and he was covered in catnip and cream.

#