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Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I got started with writing online on the Spore forums. Man, those were the days. We're talking like 12 years ago!

I've been here on and off for almost as long, and have GM'd a bunch of different things to varying success.

Discord: VMS#8777

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Time Shredded to Shadows

A Galaxor Turn Post!





With little more than a snap, the almighty Galaxor had thrust knowledge and thoughts right into the minds of goblinkind, but with those revelations had not come a full understanding. Could the mysteries of time magic ever be fully understood? Still, with the way illuminated to them, there was an itch to discover more and attain mastery over this new art.

Unfortunately, for all the understanding and divine intellect that Galaxor had imparted unto a generation of goblins, it’d taken only a singular mundane rock to undo it all for Gemless Gerry. See, he’d been a bright young goblin lad bound for the Library, but after the Dominion was consecrated and the earthquakes came, some rubble landed upon his head and he’d never been quite the same after that. The rubble rolled right off his noggin and then he was fine afterward, except sometimes his memories also rolled right off his noggin. Usually he was fine afterward, in a sense, but it was enough to keep him from every earning any gems. He’d tried every trade there was, and then tried most a second or third time because he couldn’t remember his first, but forgetting everything made it too much to even earn so much as a sapphire in any field of import. He had a few quartz crystals and maybe an opal to show for his efforts, or so he sometimes said, but he’d forgotten where those things went. Or what they’d been awarded to him for!

Gerry was an aging goblin now. A perpetual state of amnesia lended him to a forgiving nature (for he couldn’t hold onto any grudges better than he could put names to faces, grasp skills, or remember anything important) and he never did mature out of his boyish state, so he was at least amicable enough to be liked rather than just pitied. Healers tried to un-rock his noggin, but it always seemed to serve no avail. This was just the way that Gemless Gerry was meant to be. Fortunately there was no crime in the Dominion, so nobody sought to take advantage of his forgetful nature, and a place was found for him in a laboratory. Though he wasn’t of any real help researching, even if he sometimes thought that he too was a diamond-ranked scientist just like the rest of them, he was always happy to help his colleagues and fellow geniuses whenever instruments needed cleaning or moving. Provided it wasn’t anything that took too long, he could usually remember what he was doing long enough to do it!

“...are we really the first to discover anything? Perhaps we are wrong to think in such ways,” echoed the voice of one of his esteemed colleagues–though if Gerry remembered right, that one might not be the shiniest diamond of the bunch–from down the corridor. Gerry shuffled towards their voices, eager to join in the scholarly debate.

“Time, being cyclical, could lend to the hypothesis that there is no state of being first. Properly compressed and twisted, any innovation could perhaps be sent backward, so who can truly claim to be the ‘first’ to uncover some truth when it will inevitably be shared with ancestors and predecessors? And then only Galaxor can untwist the timeline that follows when the original inventor needn’t invent anything at all, and is taught his own revelation in the Library…” another philosophized.

“But,” chimed in Gerry, who’d at last entered the room, “not everyone can compress time!”

There was an awkward lull in the conversation as Gerry’s genius stupefied them. Finally, one came to grasps with that revelation, but then gasped dramatically. “Gerry, you must’ve misplaced your diamond! You’d best go find it before it’s lost!”

Gerry looked down, and indeed saw that he was gemless. “Oh Galaxor, I’ve done it again! Any idea where it could have gone?”

“It probably fell off in the testing room,” that other scientist offered helpfully.

“Wait, why are you sending him in there? Marvin is still taking measurements from the latest–”

“Thanks, I’ll go find it,” Gerry promised, surprisingly choosing the right hallway to go down this time. He barged into another chamber, startling a hunched over figure who’d squinted into the scintillating depths of some enchanted jewel. “Oh, there is it is! Melvin, do you like my diamond? I think I earned it from mastering the skill of, uh….”

Brushing past the fourth scientist called Marvin, Gerry reached out for the jewel where it was socketed on a table. “No, wait!” Marvin cried, trying to stand in the way, but Gerry barreled right past him cackling, “Time never waits!”

He seized the jewel and yanked at it. It was stuck in the socket pretty good, so Gerry twisted and pried. He twisted really hard, hard enough to where the oversized gem’s facets dug into his skin and he pulled his hand off to wince and contemplate his next move even as Marvin dove as if to take cover beneath another table–what a silly guy. Melvin was probably the dullest diamond of the lot, on second thought. But as Gerry thought that, strange things happened. The iron socket holding the jewel rusted and broke apart; the gem came out free.

Gerry reached towards the jewel, but before his elbow could even flex, he saw his hand touching the gleaming surface. Then he saw it release its hold, and move backward towards his side. Marvin flew up from under the desk, and was standing upright and talking backwards like a lunatic. Then Gerry was suddenly flying backward down the hall. Time was rewinding. He was remembering everything! Every lecture, every lesson from every discipline he’d studied in the Library, from every failed apprenticeship, every tidbit that had gone in one ear and out the other was now flying back in and sticking. Yet Gerry felt like he was caught soaring backwards. He kept on falling into his bedchamber full of energy and going to sleep full of energy, and then falling back out as though waking up exhausted. He was exhausted, but then he toiled at menial labor and chores and found his vigor renewed. He felt himself suddenly feeling different, and realized that he was young. TIME WAS MOVING BACKWARDS!

He felt all sorts of sudden aches and pains that grew sharper and worse with each passing moment, until there came the sweet relief of the moment that he received the injury. The worst of these was when he felt a rock jumping off the ground, skipping up to his head, bouncing off his noggin and back up to the cavern’s ceiling above.

He scrambled, willing himself to grab onto something, but time was not some river that you could simply swim through or oppose if you grabbed onto something. His will was powerless. The river flowed harder, faster, inexorably dragging him back to the beginning. The Dominion was no more, this was the Goblin Union again, seen through the eyes of a goblin toddler. He could no longer walk, now he was crawling backwards. Everything blurred.

There was a bright flash of light, then an all-encompassing darkness that not even goblin eyes could discern anything through. He wasn’t sure his eyes were even open. All that he felt was a feeling of warmth, but also of suffocation, of being unable to move. He couldn’t breathe, but then he didn’t have to.

He was suddenly an adult again, cognizant of how his hand was touching the jewel powering this time compressor device–he understood everything in this experiment now. What was this?! A second chance? An alternative timeline?

Then there was a blinding flash of light, and the flakes of iron that surrounded the entropic-catalyst time accelerator jewel disappeared. He only had a split second to ponder his peril before there was another blindingly bright flash. Even his newly-repaired mind didn’t have time to register what happened before his body was shredded into oblivion at an atomic level, the entire laboratory blown to smithereens as the compressed time expanded into space and ripped everything apart, stretching matter tortuously at an atomic level, shredding molecules.




Inexplicably, Gerry opened his eyes, and he still saw something. Another timeline? Was he doomed to be trapped in a loop of endless death..?

No, this was something new. Something he’d definitely never seen before, that no goblin had ever seen before…that was, if time chicanery even permitted such concepts as ‘never’...

This was a very dark place. The air was oppressive and stagnant, but not in the ways of the caverns. This air here was thinner, with less weight bearing down on it, as if they were on the surface instead of in the bowels of Galbar–not like any of them knew or could describe such a difference in sensation.

Them? Why did he speak in plural? Oh yes, because he looked to his side and saw Marvin–of was it Melvin?--as well as Tarm and Elmo (those two philosopher-scientists that had been debating the nature of time in the laboratory’s other room) right there beside him. Immediately, the four goblin researchers were relieved to have the company of one another, but terrified of their new surroundings.

The darkness of this place was not one that their cave-adapted eyes could pierce.

Yet it was not totally devoid of light. Like tiny little distant light-jewels, there were twinkling glows. Almost like the stars, which were a legend down in the caverns. But these were not stars, because they were not merely overhead but also set into the crevices and recesses of this place, and this place was not even Galbar per se, certainly not a place with a sky and clouds and stars.

“What has he done?!” a bewildered Elmo demanded, balefully glaring at a distracted Gerry. “You didn’t stop him from touching the time compressor?!”

“I couldn’t, he just pushed me out of the way, and it was unstable, I was, was, was afraid to get close once he was reaching for it–” Marvin stammered.

Tarm paid neither of them any mind, too bewildered by this strange plane. “Where are we?”

Gerry at least had an idea, and began to answer Tarm, “Could it be that our time-compression field failed, and during the rupturing event we had a sudden expansion of time that resulted in a backwards flow until the resulting distortionary waves weakened enough to match the current flow and result in destructive interference. Do you understand the implications of that? Our localized time moving backward at the exact same rate as time elsewhere moving forward could result in a total cancellation, with the effect of essentially deleting us from reality. Except, as we are demonstrably still sapient in some state, could it be that we were expelled from our native plane of reality? It is possible that we ripped through the fabric of time so thoroughly that we created a hole, and fell through it and into some lower–” he stopped to think for a moment. That was perhaps a poor choice of word, ‘lower’. It assumed too much, some sort of hierarchical ordering or even general proximity of planes, when such metaphysical constructs were only hypotheticals and had yet to be rigorously proven–bah, this whole idea seemed awfully flimsy, and now Gerry regretted opening his mouth so prematurely, but he felt compelled to at least finish his thought. “--erm, maybe not lower, so much as a distinct, foreign plane? In other words, could we have tunneled from one reality into another one altogether, not merely some variant along a different timeline?”

The others looked at Gerry, dumbfounded that the Gemless scientist could vocalize something so sophisticated, even if it went above their heads to the point that they still dismissed it as the garbled nonsense that he was wont to usually spit out. Gerry, meanwhile, was deep in contemplation. After a few long moments, he concluded, “No, it seems more likely that we’re all just very dead and this is some sort of afterlife.”

Tales of the Lord Quickblade

How he came to the Indias with his warriors

Written with Kho and Saucer
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


It was neither in her room, nor in his bedchambers, that the Lord Quickblade’s wife found him in the morn. He was similarly not to be found in the great hall breaking his fast, nor in the stables inspecting some fine new horses and other beasts that another lord had just sent after the two men had finally settled a dispute over the fate of some war-captives. He was not addressing his men in the courtyard, nor meeting the foremost steward by the well, nor taking any of the usual and expected places that the castle’s lord might occupy in the morning. Rather, Quickblade’s wife found him lurking in the shade of a parapet atop the mighty walls of his hill-fortress, those which split the wind and bestowed it the deserved name of Fort Skybreak.

The lord looked out vacantly into the distance, casting his eyes over the village that had cropped up around and beneath his walls, over his demesne. This shielding under his protection stretched as far as the eye could see and then further, to encompass the land tilled by the Renevits and many other hamlet-folk. He gazed into the wildness and infinitude of the beyond, to a place that the eyes could not see and the mind could not grasp.

The heat didn’t help; Itzala had scorched away the clouds, so even this morning was warm. Above the ground in places the air distorted slightly and seemed to simmer from heat alone, as if the dry grass was alchemically generating a sort of substantial fume out of nothingness.

This broiling air threatened an afternoon that would make the laborers lugubrious in their toils, the children restful when they should have been riotous and gleeful, and the warriors slothful and content when they should have been drilling. This was why Quickblade rested in the shade of the parapet–sweat already started to glisten upon his temples, and soon it ran through his long hair and make his beard stick to his lips.

“Hmph,” Quickblade grunted as his wife greeted him by way of wiping away the sweat on his head.

“O my good lord, why be thee now alone? For what grievance have I these past days been banished from my lord’s side, made as much a foreigner to thy mind as thou has been to thy sleep?”

His retort shocked her. “Men hath gone mad,” he stated with the sort of conviction and demeanor with which one might say, ‘that Quickblade doth keep a sharp sword,’ or ‘Fort Skybreak hath high walls,’ and went on, “...or perhaps the world meets its end! I took the word of strange and monstrous beasts for bruit at first, yet sith the fourth sighting, my gut has sat unwell.”

Beneath his golden beard, Quickblade’s jaw was clenched. His chiseled face was all hard stony features, like a terracotta effigy, and his brows were furrowed such that they might have resembled the deep rows that those pigmen tillers of distant lands gouge into the earth.

So Itzala climbed and morn erstwhile passed, with Quickblade staring into the horizon. Within his eyes dwelt an intensity that threatened to set those lands aflame just as surely as the sun’s own baleful glare. His wife rested there beside him, hoping to lend comfort through presence of body if not through word or mind. The reverie was broken only when a lone chariot–that of a courier–raced across the drylands, towards the fortress and its village. Quickblade’s visage did not move, but his eyes traced the cart and its dusty trail as it slowly approached. As it came up to the gate and was admitted after a short time, there were a few shouts and cries between charioteers and gatemen.

Quickblade waited in his place, as befitted a lord, until one of his retainers came to attend him. “What intelligence cometh alow?”

“Villains!” the soldier reported, “Knaves! Reavers! They come to raze your hinterlands, m’lord!”

There was a flash of distinctive golden steel and, like lightning, the lord’s sword was unsheathed and raised high. “Hark ye!” the shieldlord called out, his booming voice resounding through the courtyard to all his levies assembled around and about, “To arms! Courage! To the field! Battle hath come! Ready mine chariot!”

“Peace, my lord,” his wife suddenly implored, “we heard naught of their count, their bearing, their mien, yet ye would charge out with sore swiftness to meet your foes upon the field!”

And to that, Quickblade spat out, “Fie, woman!” He brusquely shoved her aside, nearly knocking his wife off her feet. “I quoth long agone that none may test the swiftness nor the surety of mine blade–that oath I keep smoothly. Reavers, ha! That be a foe mine blade knoweth well and hath tasted before. Brigands be a pestilence mine arm can solve; not pestilence, not bruity!”

“Ye alow,” the shieldlord boomed to the charioteer who’d come to bear this fortuitous news, “lie not, for your work be not done still. Ye must lead our host to these foes!”

The already wearied man nodded with bitter disappointment muddled with determination. He had hoped for a deserved rest, but the Quickblade was not one to brook argument, objection, or any other manner of dissent.

Especially not when it came from his wife! Still, she nagged at him and tried to caution him with that sagely sort of warning that an old crone might give! “Plain not over thy shieldlord,” he bade her, “for my victory shall be great, and mine return swift. Thou knowst well that there be no throne I favor before the seat of my war-chariot!”

“At least suffer the paint upon thy face and thy horses, that you may go with the gods’ favor,” she implored. And he answered back with a “Hmph!” and yet tolerated her to gather an orange pigment and quickly daub their peoples’ sacred signs: one upon his forehead, and then as the horses were being yoked to the chariots, more upon their sides and foreheads.

And he would hear no more, and soon he was gone, and that was the last that the Quickblade’s wife there ever saw of her shieldlord-husband.

Between four dozen chariots, each drawn by two horses apiece, nearly all of the shieldlord’s mighty horses had mustered for this counter-raid. Yet he brought just about six-score men-at-arms and levies. None went afoot, they all rode two or three to each chariot, even if some would dismount. When the time came, even those foot-spears would be rested and ready.

In this manner, they rapidly advanced across the shielding, a great cloud of dust kicked up by the hooves of their horses and the wheels of their carts rising to herald the host’s coming. But there was no escaping chariots on these dryland flats! The courier led them in the right direction, but soon his guidance became unnecessary, for the plumes of black smoke showed the way to these barbarians.

Quickblade’s gilded sword was still bared, the shieldlord waving it to and fro to direct not just his chariot driver, but the men all around. He left the sheathe back at Fort Skybreak–he had no intention of hiding away the blade until its thirst was whetted!

The marauders betrayed themselves for recreants when they beheld the great approaching dust cloud, witnessed the chariot-carts beyond counting, and promptly turned and fled from the village they’d been plundering. But if they were too cowardly to give battle willingly, at least they were too foolish to hide between the burning hovels and make a fight in the narrow dirt paths where chariots could not so easily maneuver. Flailing his sword about to raise attention over the sound of the thundering chariots, lord Quickblade bellowed out the command for twenty swordsmen to jump off the chariots and make their way to the ruined huts anyway, to relieve the survivors and extirpate any raiders that had stayed behind. Then the rest of them gave chase.

It was a blistering hot afternoon. The sun was watching their triumph with something that might have been cruel glee, so Quickblade tore off his tunic and cast it away. Sweat covered him, and he glistened, but soon enough the dust kicked up by horse-hooves and chariot wheels would coat him, just as it would eventually cover his long-forgotten shirt where it lay abandoned on the yellow grass.

It was not long before they overran the fleeing enemy! Foolishly, the rearmost stragglers of the retreating band turned about to face their foes rather than be cut down from behind, but their disorganized formation could not stand up to the charioteers. There were a few quick exchanges of fire, javelins and arrows shot both from and at the chariots; the shieldlord’s eponymous buckler caught one, but then before his driver could even bring him about to cut down the archer, a second arrow soared from behind Quickblade’s right shoulder to strike down the enemy. The irate lord might have cursed his own man and his well-marked arrow for having robbed him of that kill, but there were foes enough to go around.


Lord Quickblade taking to the field!


One by one, the raiders were trampled, shot, skewered. The first two or three dozen of them were butchered before someone further ahead, presumably their warlord, managed to rally together a body and form some semblance of a battle-line. Quickblade and his charioteers wheeled about, circling around this line. None of these men were true warriors; the mere tone of their skin said as much. Their darker complexions betrayed their blood as that of swineherds and farmers, the sort of peoples in the outer villages that Quickblade’s own ancestors had conquered generations ago. That was why they were dying so poorly, he realized, that was why they were being trampled like mounds of dirt.

But when Quickblade squinted, he thought he saw one taller than the rest and not so swarthy, a commanding figure with a lordly countenance–there was a horrific scream as javelin pierced horseflesh, and then the sky was spinning and Quickblade was tumbling, the dirt and grass scraping at his exposed flesh. His sword slipped out of his sweat-filled grasp, but its golden metal scintillated in the Hate-God’s brilliance, so Quickblade found and raised it just in time to confront the charge of a bellowing warrior–the very one that had wrecked the chariot with a well-aimed javelin throw. Quickblade’s sword was swift, but his feet had more alacrity still; he danced just out of the way of a spear-thrust. Once, twice, he dodged the metal point to the sides or by leaping back, until the third time he twisted around the spear’s head to close in on his assailant. One brutal overhead slash from Quickblade’s sword met shoulder, tore through clavicle, and cleaved deeply, perhaps deep enough to rip apart the lung. But in any case, a gruesome spurt of blood erupted from the dying, thrashing warrior as Quickblade kicked him down and wrenched his sword free. Covered in dirt and dust and sweat and blood, Quickblade resembled something like a demon out of myth.

With his free sword, he slashed again at the spearman’s throat as a coup de grace, then swiveled his head about in search of his buckler–he’d lost his grip on it too when he fell out of the crashing chariot. As he looked around, he saw the driver of his chariot only just now crawling out from the wreckage in a daze. Before Quickblade could find his shield, or rally to the side of his man there, he was met with a sudden pounding of footsteps from behind.

He spun about, and beheld another reaver! He tried the same ploy again, to dance around the spear’s tip and then close in, but this was a more skilled warrior than the last. As Quickblade moved to close in, the man both backpedaled and slipped his hands further up the haft of the spear, keeping its point ever in front of the shieldlord. Quickblade hated spears almost as much as he detested those lowly peasants that were wont to wield them. He spat, “Ye favor that loathly husbandman’s tool? Fie!”

He made as though to step forward, and the spearman practically leapt back, but it was only a ploy to create space. Seizing the chance afforded to him by the gap, Quickblade stooped down to snatch up a rock with his left hand, and he hurled the stone straight for the spearman’s chin. The man leaned out of the way, but in so doing he let fall the point of his spear, and then Quickblade was already upon him, for he’d charged in the same motion as throwing the stone. A vicious slash of his blade was followed by a swift stab to the gut, and just like that the Quickblade had felled another man.

Where in the goblins’ hole was his shield?

Quickblade’s left eye was watering, his vision blurred by dust. He made to wipe it with the back of his left hand, but that just smeared fresh blood over his face and into his brow. One of his chariots wheeled past, the archer riding as passenger in it, firing to fend off any more foes from nearing the shieldlord. But it did not seem that many were even trying; this makeshift stand had already turned into a rout once more. He made his way to his own overturned chariot, seized the driver by the elbow, and roared in the man’s ear, “Up, ere the knaves yonder levant! The score needs be settled!”

It was already too late. One of his charioteers, recklessly heroic to the point of madness, had been glory-starved enough to drive right for the enemy’s warchief, that lordling that Quickblade had spotted just moments before his own cart had crashed. Yet it seemed that the lone chariot had been overwhelmed, the driver pierced through the chest by a javelin and the rider dragged out and impaled. Even now, the pale-skinned lordling was climbing into the commandeered chariot–for the horses yoked to it had somehow survived all of that unscathed–and making as if to drive away. Blinded as they were by the din and chaos of battle, the rest of Quickblade’s charioteers were circling around elsewhere, apparently not seeing this calumny as it unfolded.

Quickblade would not have it! “Egad!” he cried out, thrusting his reddened sword to point the way, but none of the charioteers heard or saw him.

A whinny from the side roused his attention. The second horse of his chariot was still alive! A streak of madness suddenly entered the shieldlord’s mind. He was about to do what no man had ever attempted before. There was no time to deal with the fastenings; with a quick slash of his sword, he sheared through the rope that yoked the horse’s harness to the chariot. The smell of wet blood upon the blade upset the animal, but not as much as what happened next. With a great leap, Quickblade threw one of his legs over the animal’s back as it was standing up from where it had been trapped on the ground beside the wreckage. The animal whinnied in outrage and surprise, for men did not sit upon these magnificent animals that pulled their chariots–it had simply never been done before! But this particular horse was of magnificent breeding, a large and mighty creature, that was why the shieldlord had chosen it to pull his favorite chariot. And now that size did more than just win him prestige and awe from onlookers, it enabled the beast to bear his weight, even if it was bucking wildly and trying to throw him from its back.

With his left hand tangled into and gripping the poor creature’s mane and his right hand grasping his sword with a deathly tightness, Quickblade let out a mighty warcry, and the panicked horse did what panicked horses do–it ran. It raced forward with the swiftness of the wind. There was a great and heavy load upon its unsaddled back, but there was no heavy chariot weighing it down, and so its charge was swift. It was as if the fighting froze there, in the heart of the field! Around the periphery men still ran and died and fired bows and threw spears, but there in the center, within sight of this mad and terrible shieldlord, ally and enemy alike stared with jaws agape at the sight.

And as the horse thundered forward, it made for the fleeing chariot that bore the enemy’s lord–perhaps it could sense the Quickblade’s indomitable force of will urging it that way, or perhaps the path cleared by that chariot was the only one clear enough for a terrified animal to flee through, or perhaps it saw the two horses yoked to that chariot and wanted to follow the herd. Maybe it was just destiny or the silent working of benign or mischievous beings hidden and working beyond the realm of sight. But either way, Quickblade thundered toward the chariot, quickly overtaking it. None dared impede his charge. And in the last minute, just as they came within a spear’s thrust of the chariot cart and as the horse beneath him reared up one final time, bucking with a strength that would have surely thrown Quickblade from its back, the shieldlord twisted off to jump-fall-crash into the back of the chariot cart. The maddened, blood-covered Quickblade hacked and chopped and cleaved at this lordling that had thought to lead a band of brigands into his shielding, smiting him with a fury that conjured the image of butchery.

With his victory complete, Quickblade surveyed the routing enemies before him, allowing the horses to pull the reclaimed chariot gently along. The form of his slain adversary was draped over the side, blood dripping from him still and wetting the earth below. The broad-shouldered Quickblade twisted his mouth in distaste at those who fled and harrumphed into his moustaches. What wretched recreants they be, the lot of them. Was it for this that he drove the chariots forth? Was it for this that his birdbrained wife wetted his form and horses with her weird symbols and paints? She had always been an odd one–blessed by the gods, his mother had convinced him, a good luck charm and promise of fair victory. What empty prattle - what charm had he need for against such weak foes? What he needed, in fact - and he felt his pulse quicken with sudden anger - was a strong, healthy heir! The wench had given him nothing but daughters! Daughters!

He spat to the side, inadvertently getting it all over his felled foe. He kicked the corpse from the chariot in annoyance and finally reined the horses to a halt. He descended and got to cleaning his golden blade with some dirt. Before he was finished, hurried footsteps reached him and a loud voice. “M’lord! M’lord!” Quickblade stood and spotted the running servant emerge from the dust that had been kicked up everywhere and was now like a great blanket billowing over everything. Quickblade frowned suspiciously at the man, who was dressed in his wife’s colours and wore the distinctive braids of the shieldlady’s courier corps. The very idea of a ‘courier corps’ had always struck Quickblade as utter foolishness and a waste of resources, but the woman had insisted on it. They were always to be found in the oddest places, those couriers of hers, and seemed very adept at finding whoever they sought. It had always irked and disturbed him.

And then Quickblade was suddenly awash in a wave of exhaustion, the tribulations of the ride and the chase and the battle having at last caught up to him. Here he was, filthy and wounded and painted red, surrounded by equally ragged men who were trying to take account of their casualties. His ears still rang as though hearing the echoes of the hooves and wheels and clashes of steel, the whistling of arrows–it would not be until night’s cool that his mind could calm and his ears find peace anew. Yet right then and there, this bootless fool dared approach and shout at him!

“Thou dost remit my rest,” he acknowledged the mummer without bothering to mask the disgust and ire in his tone, to hide that he was dried with rage and toil.

“Forgive me m’lord!” The courier shouted, coming to a halt before the shieldlord. “But I come bearing a most urgent word from her esteemed ladyness, your most ennobled and glorified self’s immaculate spouse; whose immaculateness is but the impoverished reflection of your fuller, greater, truer immaculance, m’lord!” There was no such word as ‘immaculance’ of course, but the dithering fool thought to make up words willy-nilly even as he shouted on. On further observation, there seemed to be something quite odd about the courier - but whatever it was seemed to flit out of sight just as it seemed to become apparent. Quickblade was too tired for such things. “Her supreme ladyness says this m’lord,” and the courier stood up straighter and cleared his throat, “my lord! Oh my lord! Prithee send word of thine good health and sure victory- the gods know well mine heart and know well that it is with great pains I had thee go from my most loving and adoring breast- oh my lord! E’en now I know the tiredness that surely is upon thee when these mine words fall unto thine ears! So forgive my callousness and urgency: as you most bravely fought and grasped victory from the jaws of thine foes, as the recreants they most certainly are did they strike your subjects and plunder their harvests! Oh my lord, ‘tis not for such as I to give thee commands, but I can only beseech thee rush to the aid of your most adoring servants at the ploughlands of Renev!” And so speaking, the courier took a deep breath and stood to attention.

The mazed shieldlord caught perhaps half of that. He’d thrust his sword into the ground and was now leaning upon it, breathing raggedly. Before them, four of his men bore off the lifeless form of one of their own, that man who’d been pulled from his chariot and slain. Elsewhere there were others ransacking and looting the corpses of the enemy, or slaughtering those that yet lived–no prisoners were being taken–and then dragging them about that they could eventually be piled and burned. The killing was done, yet there was yet much to do before it would be time to abandon the field.

Several chariots had also been wrecked or otherwise put in need of repair; one soldier, who bore a lost wheel back to its broken cart, brushed up against the pomp messenger, whether deliberate or by mistake, and caused him to leap away with face twisted in disgust. “Oh fie, fie, fie on you!” The courier declared, reaching into the pockets of his obnoxiously large trousers and emerging with a small pouncet box that he proceeded to raise to his nose. “Have you no mind for the noses of the living, sirrah?” He asked another soldier who was busy dragging a bloodied corpse by. “Oh ‘tis most unseemly to drag such broken bodies, their bladders all emptied and their tongues hanging out, by one of her most illustrious ladyship’s couriers!” He raised the pouncet box to his nose again, waving his other hand before him as if to blow whatever stench he had imagined away. “Fie I say, a thousand times fie on such unmannerly ways! Verily ‘tis an age where good character is slain and at our door are the end of days!”

It was enough to madden a man! Quickblade spat on the insufferable knave. “I contemn thee and thy womanly mannerisms, thy loathsome bemoaning the reaping of a tilt thee didst not see! Thou art a poxy blight upon these eyne! Avaunt!” With a grunt, the shieldlord tore his blade up, freeing it from the earth that it’d pierced. The courier took bounding leaps back at the sight, wiping the spit from his clothes.

“Oh m’lord, m’lord, m’lord! I’ve spa’en aught but truth! Am I a gloried reaver as you to love the stench of bladders and defecation? I have no heart or nose for such things! Only the mighty and great are like to keep such a fellowship- and I’ve made no claim to mightiness or greatness, no I ha’en’t! Oh m’lord castigate me not my love of rosewater and musk, had I the incenses of all eastriverne lands I would have burned them here to spare you this stench! But I had forgotten that the glorious and great very much love such odors - though by what addlement of mind or sinus that is so I cannot say! Oh m’lord, placate thine blade and forgive your most blathering slave - not for mine own sake, no! But let the memory of your most beloved ladyship intercede for me!”

What little patience Quickblade possessed was long since expired; it was only his fatigue that had stayed him from living up to his name then. Grasping his sword by the dirty and blood-caked blade, the shieldlord at last struck the courtier across the jaw with its pommel. “Avaunt, I say! Methinks little of thy trite words. Avaunt with thee, mine lady-wife, and the blighted husbandmen of Renev!” Quite displeased at being struck, the courier snapped to attention and drew a twig from his idiotic trousers.

“Well now!” He said, his voice quite unlike before, “aren’t you just the most spoilt, ungenerous, profanatious, unstandable human I’ve ever known! And to cast the barb of your tongue on your own wife too!- who, might I add, is nothing less than a saint!” The man waved his twig about like a lunatic, having become quite unreachable despite Quickblade rushing on and on towards him. “Ickity pickity packity pock! Tickity tockity goes the clock!
Off you’re going for a trot! Run-run-run or you will rot!” And waving his twig with finality, he leapt into the air and was gone with a poof of light that sprinkled everywhere.

With a roar of outrage, Quickblade hurled his infamous golden blade up into the air, towards the retreating and flying courier. But as he looked up, Itzala’s brilliance scorched his eyes. He blinked, squinted, and then was met with the sight and thud of his sword reuniting with Galbar, its tip sinking into the soil. And worse–the scoundrel was nowhere to be seen!

“Meseems that picaroon was some manner of familiar,” Quickblade finally realized aloud, stating the obvious. It was quickly dawning upon the shieldlord that he may have just committed a grave error. “If it should show that meek visage once more, seize its pate! Part head from shoulder! Sith that be what I wast to do next!”

The warriors around him nodded or spoke their words of affirmation, and with that done, a grumbling Quickblade moved to help them with the work that remained. It was exhausting, but as dusk approached, the sickly smell of burnt flesh filled the air as they set fire to the pyre mounds. Their own honored dead were wrapped in what cloth was on hand–mostly the sweat-stained tunics of the survivors and whatever ragged clothes of the enemy hadn’t been covered in filth–and then loaded into the back of the chariots, and then they made to set off for home once more.

Quickblade was terribly thirsty, his waterskin having long since run dry. They’d left hastily and light, having expected to be returned to the fortress in very short order. Fortunately, there was a well in the village that they’d just delivered from the marauders’ wrath. Yet as they urged the horses onward–Quickblade sitting again on his throne of a chariot seat again, for the moment of battle-madness was past him now and he was not so eager to risk his neck mounting a horse again–they did come upon the village where it should have been. Instead, the dryland went on and on, ever onward. They advanced for two hours when the journey should have taken a quarter that time, and still there were no signs of the village, or of civilization at all for that matter!

In the distance was an unfamiliar copse of trees. The shieldlord wondered if it was a thirst-induced hallucination, but he forged a path to it regardless, hoping to find some landmark to regain his bearings. Had he lost his mind in the battle? It was a fool of a lord who became lost within his own shielding, and yet his men were just as befuddled as he!

It was as they’d hoped: in the shade of these trees, which upon closer inspection looked to be of a strange and exotic type, there murmured a small stream. Parched and bloodied still, the shieldlord and his retinue climbed down to rush for the waters that they could bathe and drink; the more merciful and thoughtful of the men unyoked the horses from their chariots that the animals might drink too.

Yet in their stupor of thirst and exhaustion, none in the party had noticed the sigils, the figures, the altars and the talismans situated in the river’s vicinity. Yet again, how could they have? They resembled nothing any of them prayed with, ranging from stacks of river shale to shells of river oysters. Feathers in the trees could have been mistaken for the birds that once wore them. The camouflage was weak, but their senses were weaker. The tranquil sound of the stream, deafened by the slurping of men and animals parched in the sun, coated their ears with cotton. They did not hear the branches break, the leaves rustle, and before that final sip that quenched their thirst for now, more assailants skipped out of the bushes. They ignored the horses’ nervous whinnying, thinking the animals merely impatient for their turn to enter the water’s respite. Hardly a minute passed before they were all surrounded by tall, bipedal frogs armed with spears, staves, and maces of wood and river coral. Their bodies were dressed in jewelry, feathers, scented spices and aromatics on string. Their numbers were many, and their leader stepped forward, a frog whose crown of feathers and gold was nearly as large as his torso. “Who dares?!” he demanded and gestured widely, “I say again, who is it that dares drink from All-Mother’s Duct?!”

The shieldlord had just about finished washing off the spatterings of dried blood that caked his bare torso (at least the front of it!) before the booming voice made him spin about, whipping up his sword from where he’d left it to rest by water’s edge. “Mine own name? Ha! Quickblade!” Usually the shieldlord’s reputation preceded him.

But then he beheld the speaker, and his eyes widened at the sight of these monstrous beings–were these the horrors that the rumors had spoken of? They narrowed into a squint as his jaw clenched and his grip on the sword tightened. “I rule Skybreak, and all these lands lay within mine shielding, ‘r close enow to make no matter! I come fresh from the field and mine temper still runneth hot–test me at thy own peril!”

“Insolence, the heretic dog yaps back!” chastised the leader and pointed his shell-tipped spear in Quickblade's direction. “Whoever you are or consider yourself to be, dryskin of Skybreak, your lips have so voraciously molested the Tears of Creation; a thousand egg-spawn to come will be sullied by your salty sweat and filthy beard. As tradition dictates, I will offer you a chance to split your throat yourself and give back the water you stole. Your blood will surely quench the wrath of the All-Source that is certain to come should you leave this place alive.” The croaker's flanking companions drew shell-tipped arrows by the score.

“Yond riv’r be thirsty, say? Then let us slake it!” He backed from the riverside into ankle-deep waters. Quickblade’s own men were confused, eyes darting between their shieldlord and the enemies, but by now they had at least formed rank and made some semblance of a shieldwall.

Quickblade stopped beside a few of the horses that had been brought to drink from the stream. Now even those beasts had their backs to the water, nervously whinnying as they looked at the oncomers. He raised his blade up almost perpendicular to his neck, but when the knaves may have thought he meant to cut his own throat, he instead slapped the nearest horse upon the rear with the flat of his blade. Then he poked the other one with its tip! The panicked animals cried out loudly and thundered away from him, barreling right toward the biggest, loudest, most pomp of all these frog-men. And right in their wake followed a frenzied Quickblade, bellowing like a demon, driving forward his shieldwall of men through the sheer wildness of his charge.

The frog in charge seemed momentarily stunned by the incoming charge, but then skipped high into the air, landing safely in a tree. The warriors closest to him rolled out of the way, and the riff of loosening bowstrings played like an orchestra of murderous harps. From the canopy above, the leader’s voice bellowed, “Spill their blood, honour-guard! Quench the thirst of the All-Source!” The archers were quickly backed up by soaring javelins coming from the woods and the war-croaks of scores of frogmen charging out in zealous frenzy, armed with shell spears and coral dagger-axes and armoured with bark and kelp cloth.

A flying javelin narrowly missed Quickblade, burying its head into the muddy ground as he twisted out of its way. With his left hand he snatched it back up; with his right, he flagged his sword forward, urging his men to advance and fight their way out of this ambush. The steady clattering of arrows striking the wooden shieldwall sounded almost like a sort of rain. But it was punctuated by the thunder-claps of war: there came the screaming of one of the exposed horses as it was struck by an arrow, and the shieldlord’s back was then painted by yet another spray of blood from somewhere behind him, one of his warriors struck in the throat by an arrow that skirted his shield from the side.

Through the chaos and the din, Quickblade spotted the great frog up in the trees, and with a grunt, he hurled the stolen javelin right for the croaker’s belly. The croaker chieftain had caught the sight of him at the last minute and managed to dodge to the side so that he wasn’t speared, but the javelin nonetheless sliced along his right lumbar region, leaving a strip that quickly began to ooze white croaker blood. He growled fiercely and swung around underneath the branch before kicking off, becoming a spear-headed rocket diving for Quickblade’s person. A corner of the shieldwall began to cave as croakers utilised all three dimensions to fight, jumping at their adversaries from the front, the side and above. Spears elevated to the skies were lucky to catch maybe one or two overzealous frogs coming down, but those armed with swords and axes found that their strikes would connect only in time for a croaker body to crash into them first. Religious fervour incited the locals to throw all sensibility out of the proverbial window.

Quickblade danced just out the path of the chieftain’s spearpoint, having had time enough to see it coming and knowing that the brute would not be able to change his path in mid-flight. From the very instant that the chieftain handed, Quickblade was all but on top of his slimy skin, grabbing at the spear’s shaft with one hand using the other to hack wildly at the croaker with his sword, bellowing some frenzied cry all the while. Screams and croaks filled the air already; death was all around as both sides took heavy losses in this chaotic melee brawl, the shieldwall all but shattering as the fight devolved into two dozen individual duels between man and croaker. Yet before long, Quickblade was looking down on little more than a pile of green flesh and white goo bespeckled with gold jewels and rainbow feathers. An instant later, the mess was spotted by one of the duelling croakers, who kicked his adversary back and disengaged to a safe distance.

“Misfortune to no end! Dead! Pond-Guru Balhamrajah is dead! Gods’ mercy be with us, for he is no longer! Retreat! Retreat!” As though programmed, the lot of the croakers fell back as quickly as they could, disappearing into the woods around the river stream as quickly as they had arrived. They did not collect their fallen comrades nor their equipment – like leaves taken by the wind, they were gone in a breath. Yet the area still did not feel safe. The fighting may have stopped, but red eyes like orbs of human flesh could still be spotted in between the bushes and trees. Quickblade’s men quickly looted the fallen, friend and enemy alike, divvying up what armor, weapons, and other spoils were to be had. In the chaos a few horses had bolted off, but with their numbers diminished, enough remained yet to pull their chariots.

For his part, Quickblade cut out the grotesquely long tongues of a few choice specimens to keep as trophies. He reckoned his wife and daughters might squirm at the sight of such things, but he never did make it back to Fort Skybreak, for there he stood in the Indias.

They retreated from that accursed river and the wood around it, fearful of another attack from the leaping monsters, and wandered a long time before they encountered any signs of other men.

The Dwarves of India

Written with Oraculum!


When Urist Gusilreg and his expedition struck the earth, their objective was simple. There had been a shifting in the stone. As Galbar had shrugged, a new bend had opened somewhere in the cavernous depths where before there had been only a wall of bleak diorite. The first miners to stumble across the void had peered down it and explored a short ways before returning to report that it seemed to go on for a long ways, if not endlessly. And its walls, they were lined with glorious seams of limonite and malachite and pyrite and banded iron! For the glory of clan Gusilreg, the depths had to be thoroughly explored and a new mining outpost established.

So Urist had led a sizable band there at once, to claim that reach for the Gusilreg before any of their rival clans could stake a claim first. More than a hundred they were in his expedition: prospectors, architects, masons, and miners of course, for such were needed in the establishment of any new colony, but there also came some warriors, fungi-planters, brewers, smiths, craftsdwarves, an engraver or two, and even a renowned soap-maker. Many were those who gleamed at the prospect of joining a colony in its founding, when the most glory and land and wealth were to be claimed. And Urist certainly intended to establish a lasting settlement, so he brought along all who had some mettle and a mind to follow him. He would find work for them all, for any colony worth its granite gates would have its own fungi farms, its own still and craft brews, a few dozen smithies, and walls upon walls of engravings to remember its legacy and celebrate its culture…

The expedition leader mulled over all that during the journey; this turned out to be a long and arduous trek, for the ground was uneven and unexplored, their destination not even entirely set in mind, let alone in stone. The going was slow through these unknown tunnels–especially when the rock was newly wrought apart and might still be unstable! But this perseverance rewarded them, for eventually they came upon a mighty seam of iron ores in a defensible corridor, and Urist knew that this was the place where his band would make their fortune. So there the miners struck the earth, and the masons began walling off the passageways and fortifying the tunnels at their backs, the farmers began sowing spores in the dampest cavities, the architects mapped the springs and engineered well-cisterns.

All was well, phenomenally well. After some time and success in these endeavors, Urist sent a party to retrace their steps and return to the Gusilreg capital and report the colony’s great success to the king, to bring maps of the new territory and then request additional waves of settlers and supplies. Urist was in high spirits; he expected that in due time, this colony would be formally incorporated, and he would naturally be declared its baron.

But by then they had dug exploratory tunnels deep into the heart of the iron-vein, trying to explore its twists and gauge the size of their mineral wealth. And where the iron had ended, there was a yellow gleam! GOLD!

Madness followed.

There were no farmers to tend to the mushroom fields, for all of them had set down their tools to clamber into the mine-tunnels and dig for gold. What use were the warriors’ swords when a blade could not dig? They discarded such trinkets and took up battleaxes, anything with enough heft and weight to dig. There was more gold than anybody had ever seen before! The purest of ores, so soft that even a tiny hammer could pry the seams from the stones and cold-beat the unpurified metal into shape! That was good, because of course all the forges were cold as the former smiths became gold miners like everyone else. They were all absurdly rich beyond their wildest imaginations. Urist, more than anybody, was consumed with ideas of grandeur. He wouldn’t have a mere barony. He’d be satisfied with no less than a duchy at the very least… or more seemly, a throne. Yes, which of the clans had a king with more gold than he? They had delved deep, deeper perhaps than any dwarves had gone before, and still this vein of gold seemed endless. This river of wealth would carry him to glory and legend, would win him a kingdom or three–!

Yet then, in that moment he remembered something troubling. He remembered the delegation he’d sent back to the clan. He’d been panting, laboriously toiling to chip at the gold alongside some of his miners, but the heat of the moment instantly turned clammy. In that moment of cold sweat, he wondered what would happen if the other clans heard of this–or even if the Gusilreg would try to take it…the Gusilreg?! He caught himself thinking that way and felt self-disgust and guilt and loathing for a moment–that was his own clan, his own kith and kin and people–how did he already think of them as an other? But then, would they remember him as such when they learned of his great wealth? Had they toiled down in their shafts as he had, breaking their backs for every nugget?

Would these fresh new arrivals expect a share of the gold deposit beneath their feet? Of the wealth they hadn’t helped to find? Had they come to take from his share? King Urist clenched his jaw and ground his teeth at the thought. The power of avarice overcame all other emotions.

He turned to the miner beside him, and shouted loud enough to be heard over the frenzied pickaxe swings, the echoing sound of metal scraping and chipping stone, “Stop! Stop!”

The man grunted, but even in the near total darkness, that gleam of the gold in the wall before him spoke louder than any words. The miner swung his pickaxe again. “STOP!” Urist roared, seizing the dwarf by the shoulder. That shook the gold-sick miner from his craziness. If only his people could pay attention!

“Gather the others,” King Urist told the miner, “We have to go back up and man the mine’s entrance, fortify it further. That’s a defensible position. All the gold in the world will do us no good if others can trap us down here, or come in to steal it!” And at once the miner realized that Urist was right, and made to do as he was ordered.

None of them now lived up above in their first settlement; all had moved deeper into crude, crowded forward camps carved deep into the mines. For sustenance they had only stale and dwindling food rations, and they drank the dirty and metallic water that had flooded a few of the more carelessly dug shafts… it was high time they’d returned upward to resupply anyway, before digging to the next level.

But they had already delved far too deeply. When some glanced back, briefly, from their work to see whether any word had come from the sentinels dispatched to the mine’s entrance, they could no longer recognise the tunnels they had just themselves dug out and trodden. And why would they have? As long as the beckoning shine remained ahead of them, any rock shorn and chopped aside was in the past, and so was the space it had once filled. The vein remained inexhaustible, the earth’s own generosity bared to them; but it wound and twisted in its bed, and the web the dwarves had carved in its pursuit was now as wild and tangled as their beards.

It was then with some surprise that King Urist found the corner of his eye lingering on a particular passageway. Only after some repeated glances did the reason for this become clear: the mouth of that tunnel, gaping in a patch of dusty brown soil rather than rock, was too small to admit the compact frame of a dwarf. This opening had not been dug by one of his party, but it must have predated their delving! What could have been skulking here, deeper than dwarf had ever ventured - and was it a threat to his riches?

All these things were to be answered in the space of a moment. Something poked out from the earthen hole, a long, ugly leering snout crowned with tufts of dirty fur and a pair of maliciously squinting eyes. The creature, some sort of forgotten beast whose name the dwarves didn’t know and whose likeness they’d never before seen, grinned at him with a mouth of huge yellow fangs. Then it snatched a great handful of the chipped golden nuggets that had been piled behind the king, before vanishing back into the tunnel from whence it’d emerged, Urist catching no more than a flash of its burning-red backside as he stared slackjawed in disbelief.

In the next moment, he surged forward toward the narrow crevice, trying to force his body to contort through the gap to give chase, but he could not. With an ear-splitting wail of agony and rage that echoed through the whole of the mines, if not the whole of Galbar’s underbelly, he cried out. Immediately the miners down a half-dozen other passages (for this was a twisting and expansive vein!) hurried to the sound, fearing a cave-in or something minor like that. This was far worse.

Words tumbled from the king’s mouth like a rockslide. “A thief! An intruder! Enemy! Some beast came and it stole from my gold! The kingdom’s gold! From your share! It stole it!”

He needn’t have spoken even half as much; already there was a raucous outroar and his people were ready to take up arms. A pickaxe to the skull was as deadly as any blade! Woe to the thief!

“And it came from there, and went back that way,” King Urist finished, pointing to the narrow passageway. Right away, some of the more eager diggers began to widen the gap with their pickaxes. One dwarf had the lucidity to ask, “What manner of foul beast was this thief?”

King Urist was then suddenly at almost a loss of words–how could he describe the thing? He remembered only its great fanged teeth, mangy fur, and bright-red rear. The very attempt to imagine a whole built of the misshapen flashes he had seen perplexed him, until it found itself resolved as suddenly as it had shown itself.

The dry earth the beast had disappeared into was yielding under the dwarves’ shovels and pickaxes, tempered as they were by the sterner stone, and before they knew it they had gouged a long trail in their pursuit. A wall crumbled ahead of them, and they stumbled into a small circular cavern in the soil. There on the ground, rocking in a shallow pool of murky water, sat the thief: a thing shaped roughly like a dwarf, but hairy, with long grasping limbs and a curling tail, crouching like a gnarly elder. In one of its feet - which were, Urist saw with astonishment, indistinguishable from hands - it clutched the ill-gotten gold, as it chewed on something resembling a fleshy heart, blood-like juice dripping from its maw.

Hearing at last the commotion at its back, the creature spun around, and dropped its meal with a shriek as it saw pursuers it clearly had not expected closing in. It made to bolt for a tunnel, but found the way grimly barred by the crowding miners as they stormed into the chamber.

King Urist squinted at the beast now; it was not quite so monstrous or horrifying as it had seemed when he’d first spotted it, but there was certainly still an unsettling air about the thief, and then it was hard to be afraid of anything when you had it surrounded and trapped. Still, not wanting to be mocked or made a fool of for having been so afraid of a beast his own size, King Urist hefted his pickaxe and advanced, roaring, “I’ll take back that gold myself!”

A murmur came from the back of the chamber, “Think we could eat it?” And then that turned into a chorus of ayes and whispers; day after day of only dried mushrooms and stale jerky had been easy enough to ignore at first–there was gold to be dug, after all–but such pangs could only be set aside for so long before they started to gnaw at even the hardiest dwarf’s mind. “We’re all hungry, the fresh meat would do us good,” another voice behind King Urist agreed.

“Wait, wait!” the beast screeched in a creaky voice, throwing up its hands and dropping both the gold and its grisly meal, “Don’t kill me! I heard you stomping and circling and digging yourselves so far you’ve lost the way. You’ll never know how to get out of these holes, and you’ll starve to death!”

“But we could eat you, thief,” King Urist retorted, echoing the voice of his dwarves.

“I’m all dry and mangy and bony, I don’t taste very good,” the beast babbled, and then grinned as it eyed the thing it had been eating. With a foot it caught it up and tossed it to a hand, then dusted it before tossing it to the king, who caught it with one hand, the other still clutching his pickaxe, and then warily sniffed at the sticky fruit. It smelled ripe and sweet, stronger than any mushroom he had ever seen. “But this! Wouldn’t you like to eat of this?”

King Urist indulged just a nibble, and his eyes widened. Nothing in all of the caverns held such flavor. He took a second, far more greedy bite, then remembered himself and passed it to the dwarves behind him. They each took their modest share, which amounted to little more than a lick apiece, but they were all just as enchanted as him. While it was passed around, Urist found his voice again and boomed, “You mean to say that you have more of these treasures? Where?!”

If he could monopolize control of this wondrous and exotic food, coupled with his already vast mineral wealth, he would truly be the wealthiest dwarven king to have ever lived.

“As many as you can carry after eating till you burst!” the thief cackled, “This way! After me!”

It swept up the gold, scampered with frightful agility between the dumbfounded dwarves and dove into the burrow it had reached for earlier, beckoning them with its tail and the bright crimson beacon beneath it. “Dig here! I’ll mark the way!”, and he dropped a golden nugget at the mouth of the hole.

King Urist was aghast at how the thief had kept the gold, had seemingly thought this some sort of trade, but then what were a few nuggets when he controlled the greatest gold mine in all of Galbar? When this sweet treasure was even rarer in the dwarven realms than gold?

“Very well,” he started, but then caught himself. “Not so fast! What are you, creature? And you must stay close at hand until the bargain is done.”

Occasionally, they used a sort of rope down in the mines to lash tunnel supports together, or to explore down any natural faults and crevices that they came across in their excavations. So the King had only to glance around the room for a short time before he caught the sight of one miner with a length of the stuff coiled about his own waist for safekeeping, like a sort of belt, and he pointed at that one, “Bind this creature lest he escape from us before delivering upon his promises.”

“All right, all right,” the hairy thief loped up and stood still for once as a length of rope was run around its body and fastened, but its eyes watched the hands tying the knot intently. “Now hurry! We’re nearly there!”

King Urist did not ask many questions, for his mind was already racing with wild ideas of what sort of cavern this strange creature and its sweet treasure could have come from, so deep in the bowels of Galbar. With renewed vigor, even without the gleam of that previously omnipresent gold vein, the digging team started to make headway tunneling in the direction that the creature had marked. The king stood close to the thing, so as to keep an eye on it, but its stench was enough to make even the filthy and sweat-stained miner of a king want to keep a small berth.

Soon, however, his mind was taken away from it, for the rhythmic beat of pickaxes, which had been steadily turning upwards, lost its dullness and began to ring louder and more hollow. Then one blow parted the earth, now dark and dense, in a cascade of soil, struck something hard, broke through it and there was light. Urist and the other dwarves stumbled back, squinting and shielding their eyes. The rays streaming through the opening overhead were the brightest thing they had seen in a long time, since those days, now fabulously distant, when they had first set out from the Gusilreg clanhold. In some of them, perhaps, beneath the ever-consuming thirst for riches that had come to cover their minds, there stirred a remembrance of home.

Yet as soon as they stumblingly emerged from the hole, begrimed and unsteady, all was dispelled in the face of overwhelming awe and fright. They had not struck the open surface, nor any vault of familiar dwarven make; instead they found themselves in the middle of an incomparably vast hall, one that could have easily swallowed a score of houses into itself. The light they had seen blazed forth from many gigantic braziers, and only a little dripped in from tall and narrow windows set vertiginously high above.

The chamber was the widest at the bottom and tapered to a vaulted ceiling, its polished stone walls inset with huge white bands whose true nature birthed a sudden chill from its understanding. For they were nothing else than bones of colossal size; the entire hall, imposing as it was, sat in the hollowed-out ribcage of some inconceivably large monster, and the masonry that formed it was nothing more than an extension of this tremendous carcass. The four bright pillars they saw towering at even intervals around them were themselves carved from singular arm-bones, reared to prop up the interior of the titanic body they had once grown from.

So faint and dizzy were the dwarves with the dread of this revelation that they had not immediately seen they were not alone in the macabre hall. Indeed, the marble floor around them was crowded with dark shapes adorned with bright cloth and gleaming jewelry. These were beings not unlike the thieving beast that had shown the way, but upright on their legs, tailless and massive, more than twice as tall as any dwarf. They were covered in black fur like moles, and had huge staring eyes and snarling tusked mouths, but their attire and bearing was that of courtiers of some outlandish kingdom, clad in cloaks of bright red and vibrant yellow, with clasps and diadems of gold and gemstone.

At the closest end of the hall, atop a dais, rested a cushioned throne whose seat was a gargantuan jawbone tipped with menacing teeth. Two of the hairy creatures, larger even and more wizened than the rest, sat side by side upon it, one dressed in white, the other in black. A wide bowl lay before them, and in it a sphere of what seemed to be clay flecked with gold. Both enthroned fiends had a hand within the bowl: the white-clad one worked the clay, stretching it into spikes and tracing intricate spiral designs on its surface, while the black-clad one followed it closely, smoothing all it had wrought and returning the sphere to a pristine state. The motions of their fingers were dazzlingly complex, yet neither of them looked down: both had their severe gazes fixed on the intruders.

The mangy thief gave a shrill cackle, and, working nimbly with its fingers, slipped open the knot it had been tied with. “There’s as many sweet fruits as you can eat in the palace’s larders!” it called as it bounded away and slipped out through a door, “Baboon always keeps his word!”

The maddened eyes of King Urist darted back and forth, from the trickster that had fled, to the great cavity in the marble hall’s floor from whence they’d emerged, to the many great hairy creatures that now surrounded and outnumbered his expedition. He found himself clenching his pickaxe so tightly that his knuckles whitened as the blood left, even as his heart raced. “Steady,” he murmured to the dwarves all around him. Then, louder, he called out to the two upon the chair, who he took to be the sovereigns of this strange place, “I am King Urist!”

Some of the dwarves around him looked a bit taken aback for having not heard of his new title, but they did not question him in that moment of tension. The king continued, “That scoundrel, that trickster, that thief, he stole from us but then led us here while we were hungry and lost, promising the succor and nourishment of some strange food in return for our mercy. We had no intention to trespass upon your hall, or to breach its fine floor–but if I may be so bold as to ask, who are you? And what is this cavern that we have entered?”

One of the red-cloaked brutes stepped towards him, and leered at the small and travel-worn thing that so boldly proclaimed its kingship.

“Ha! A fine jibe he has played, that flea-blighted old trickster,” he snarled in a voice like cracking stone, “Know that you stand in the presence of Guptaka and Siddhi, Raja and Rani of Sri Rajarata, and of us all their progeny. This palace whose floor you have profaned was wrought from the bones of the unmatched Rakshasaraja, who wrought the entire world that we tread upon and fell in battle in its defense. I am Ghosayitnu the firstborn who speak in their name, and by their rule I proclaim that you all will be in our bond forevermore. A throne like ours has great need of subjects!”

“Is that so?” the dwarf-king shot back, trying to mull some way out of the predicament. “Well, I have more of the gold that enticed the thief so. I might give some to you willingly, that its glow would lure subjects from across the world to your cavern, if only for the secret and source of that sweet food that the thief promised us.”

“What need we for your will?” Ghosayitnu laughed, “You are in our domain now, and we might compel you. Bow before our throne and you will be fed, else…”

Upon these words the ground seemed to shudder, and a huge shape stepped out from behind the jawbone-seat. It was another of the black beasts, but taller still than any, and more massive. Most striking were the four arms, rather than two, which radiated from its shoulders, and its eyes which flared with bright sparks of fury. Unlike the rest of the court, the giant wore a brazen cuirass, and carried a long, broad-bladed sword with a flat point in two hands. Its impressive jutting tusks dripped with savage froth as it stalked forward across the hall.

“It is clear that you are mighty beings, so even as a king I might bow before you as my overlords, if you will bring that might to bear in the protection of my kin and my gold,” King Urist tried.

“You will be under our ward as our subjects,” Ghosayitnu nodded satisfiedly, “But your gold will be ours.”

Urist did not have to say anything to that, for all the dwarves around him grew enraged. Spittle flew from their mouths and they menaced their pickaxes with a fury that would have intimidated many, even starving and outmatched as they were in that hall. One voice that Urist recognized as that of Tekkud, one of his expedition’s original miners, proclaimed, “No one parts a dwarf from his share of the gold-hoard, not even a king!” And hefting his pickaxe mightily, Tekkud leaped forward to swing at the kneecap of the armored hulk that stood before them. Not to be outdone, the king and the rest of them followed that courageous display and joined the charge.

His blow never landed, however, for in the moment while he was in fight, the colossus who had seemed so firm on his feet suddenly snapped into motion and threw himself into a manic dance. First he swatted aside Tekkud the miner, and then his foot caught King Urist and sent him sailing through the air with a deft kick, until he struck one of the great bone pillars.

Dazed and aching, the king watched through darkening vision as the fiendish courtiers hurriedly cleared the center of the hall, where the giant fell upon the dwarves that came pouring from the fissure. He swept through them like a storm made flesh, the steps of his martial dance scattering their bodies like so many pebbles and outright trampling some unfortunates underfoot. The tremendous sword lashed like bursts of lightning, severing heads and cleaving foes in two with brutal ease. For all his bulk, the monster stepped around the hole faster than the eye could blink, and the warriors who emerged from below gaped in disorientation, scarcely able even to land a blow on his thick hide. And the great blade that he wielded so deftly in but one hand was not the only danger; he had three more palms and two heels with which to strike, and seemed to be merely toying with them, or else preserving the lives of his new playthings, for he would deliver battering blows more often than not and only cut down the most ardent of attackers. Soon, the dwarves realized this, and lost heart.

Then the two looming regnants seated atop the throne ceased their belabouring of the clay sphere, leaving half of it wrought and half smooth, and raised their hands in a gesture of halting. The giant’s dance steadily spun to a stop, until he stood still like a great glinting spire among his battered adversaries.

“See now that you are vanquished,” said Ghosayitnu with a smirk, and at his beckoning his fellows crowded around the hole, barring the dwarves from fleeing down it, “Give yourselves and your riches to us, and we may yet be merciful.”

So it was King Urist I was called Urist the Kneeler, when he might have instead been remembered forevermore as Urist the Goldfinder. As to Clan Gusilreg, in their distant caverns deep in the bowels of Galbar, they did arrive to meet with those first few sentinels sent back up to the initial colony; a second wave of migrants had arrived to reinforce and resupply the new settlement. And when they heard the tales of that mighty gold vein, they delved deep into the mines, but lo! The tunnels had collapsed in many places, and they could find nothing more than seams of blighted iron in the rock, and here and there some traces of gold dust, much to the chagrin and despair of those sentinels that had been sent back up who now lacked for their share of their gold-hoard, for it was a miserable existence as a dwarf, to lose one’s gold and yet still live to suffer at its memory.

In any case, none who had returned knew of the thieving Baboon or the discovery of the Indias, and none who had made it to the other end were ever able to return. Instead they became the dwarves of India, yoked to the great Rakshasas of the great Bone Palace, they who lorded over the hottest of the three Indias, that southern region called Sri Rajarata.


The Renevits of India

Featuring Rockpetter


Written with Kho!


When Reaper returned with his band, hauling an avian beast of rather tremendous size, it was with no small degree of confusion that he and his band of six (and accompanied by the strider, Elutil) surveyed the place. They had left a bustling camp at morn, and now returned to… nothing at all. The six men gathered around Reaper, each wearing deep frowns. No matter in what direction they looked across the empty wastes, they could see no sign of them. “They’ve just…disappeared.” Fishlancer said. Beside him, Netter and Donkeywhacker murmured in agreement, while Galloper stood to the side and fiddled with his rope.
“Not so much as a shadow of them as far as the eye can see.” Horsebreaker confirmed. Claymender was crouched low, looking for any trail or sign hinting at where they may have disappeared to. But there was nothing. “They’re gone.” He said with finality.

Reaper leaned on his spear, jaw tight and brows furrowed. They were gone. Galloper, still fiddling nervously with his rope, glanced at Reaper. “Do you think… the goddess again? Could she have?” He asked. Reaper released a deep breath and shook his head, as mystified as any of them. “I couldn’t tell you Galloper. The way things have been of late…” his gaze swept across the far horizons, “it could have well been anything.” They stood there a long time, confused and at a loss.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


The stormclouds had come as if from nowhere. One moment there was the hot barren wastes, scorched beneath Itzala’s baleful gaze as he began to surveil them for another day, and then in the next there was an encroaching wall of darkness upon the horizon. It raced towards the encampment faster than any of the monsters. The horizon faded into blackness in the shadow of the stormfront, and as the clouds neared they grew to blanket more and more of the sky, until they blocked out even rising Itzala.

“Have you ever seen something like that?” one Soilturner stammered, eyes wide open.

The closest thing he got to a retort was a grunt, followed by Goatwrestler the goatherd thrusting one of the bleating goats in his direction to keep hold of. They were not prepared for a rainstorm; the desert hardly offered more than a sparing drizzle, and even those that still remembered Renev clearly could not claim to have ever seen such darkened skies.

Panic and bewilderment animated the camp as the first strong breezes heralded the coming rain. Without the sun, the colors all around were suddenly very bleak and the air quite crisp. The distant booms of thunder rolled across the flat and filled their camp. There was no time to try and find Reaper and the men who had gone out on the morning’s hunt, but then, any idiot would see such a terrible storm brewing! All that there was to do was hunker down to weather it out, and hope that the others did the same wherever they were.

The herd of goats was rounded up and brought inside some of the largest of the tents before they could all flee in a panic, and then everything else of value–few as their possessions were–was brought together and sheltered under the tents, for what little protection they might offer from the deluge and the gales. The people then all huddled together in what little space remained within the tents. Not ten heartbeats after Soilturner crawled in, being the last of those who had been outside, they heard the sound of the oncoming rain striking the ground: this din was like the pounding of so many hooves, like a stampede of animals. And then it was upon them.

Howling winds threw open the tent flaps and hurled rain inside. The raindrops were especially large and came with such force that their strike was painful, almost like little stones striking the skin. The wind was so great that several tents were at once overturned! It was only their having buried some parts and packed others beneath the weight of various goods that spared the leather tents from being lifted and flung beyond the horizon right away. The mighty gales roared, and though the sound of the storm was such that one could hardly hear the shouts of a person right beside him, and though it was as dark as a starless night save for the brief flashes of lightning that illuminated the scene for one of every fifth or sixth breaths, Goatwrestler leapt out of the tent’s flap.

A reaching hand shot out to seize him by the waist and try to drag him back to safety, but the goatherd wrestled free of it; one of his terrified goats had gone out there and he had to bring it back! Already, the once-parched desert sands had become a quagmire. The water came up to his ankles, but then Goatwrestler felt the itch and sting and burn of wet sand on his neck, and his beard was drenched, for the wind had flung him down. The great booming thunder seemed oddly distant, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. Or like the terrible laughter of some callous god, some force of nature…the rain itself seemed to have hands, for it grasped at him as it fell, and pulled him along as it swept across the ground. Now he was rolling through the floodwater and sand, coughing and struggling, reaching out for anything to grip as he was flung about–crack! His head struck something, and the last things that he remembered perceiving were a bright flash of light, the thunder’s murmuring, and the taste of blood in his mouth.

Lifedancer hovered above him when he opened his eyes. “There he is. A nasty bump on the head, but it’ll heal,” she was speaking to somebody. Justroastit was immediately above. “Oh you silly man!” The riverwife said, clearly resisting an impulse to whack him. “My heart nearly gave out when you went prancing out like that!” He groaned and sat up slowly, fighting the dizziness. “Goats…” he muttered. “Oh goats goats goats, is that all you ever think of.” Justroastit snapped at him. He looked at her blankly, and her stern gaze melted into a laugh. “Stupid of me to have asked!” She sat by him and looked at Lifedancer.

The herbalist was gazing away forlornly, her eyes on the verdant earth that lay where not so long before there had been hard rock and sand. “I,” she turned back to Justroastit, “will leave you two to it. If he complains of anything, have him lie back down so he can rest. He’ll be back to his normal self in no time,” she smiled reassuringly at the concerned Justroastit, and left them. The world that now greeted her was a far cry from all she had known over the last however many years.

Goatwrestler groaned. His face lay on its side, his eyes parallel with the green ground. Green. That was a funny color. Like bile, or entrails. He couldn’t think of much else that was green in the wastes. Once upon a time, in a village called Renev, he remembered green hills and trees.

He rubbed his head, tried sitting up, found himself too dazed and collapsed again. There had been rain, of course. He remembered now. Had it made the nigh-lifeless wastes bloom? Was the rain a blessing?

Slower now, he rose against the objections of whoever stood over him, and then he looked the other way and saw the wreckage. Bits and pieces of the torn tents were littered all across the landscape, random goat-prods and tools strewn everywhere, and over there, he thought he saw a dead goat, unmoving even as some of the others stood over it with the butchering hooks and knives… at least that meant a good supper.

But then he squinted again, for in the distance, upon the horizon, he thought he saw a great spiraling mountain, like a stony finger thrust up to point accusingly at the place in the sky where that tempest had erupted so violently and suddenly from! “What is that–” he mumbled to anyone who would listen.

He turned, trying to see who was there. Familiar faces, he saw all around. But then, in another direction, a great verdant wall. “Huh?” he sputtered. He blinked. Surely this was an illusion. The wastes could play tricks on the eyes. But he rubbed them, and still that great and imposing wall of trees was over there, where the green grasslands suddenly gave way to some dense jungle. Clearly bemused, if not outright concerned, by his confusion, Justroastit pushed him back down and would brook no dissent this time. He may have been the unbeatable wrestler of goats that he was, but he stood little chance of victory against his wife. Still, as if to assuage her own astonishment at what had befallen them, she leaned close and whispered, conspiratorially, as though it was a secret, “there are… monkeys here. Monkeys, Wrestler. I’ve not seen monkeys since the harvest of our wedding, when that mad monk visited the village with his monkey troupe for the festivities!” She paused for a few moments, “but they seemed quite odd for monkeys. Something in their eyes, I can’t place it.”

“Wha–?” Her words didn’t make any sense to a still-dazed man, wrestler as he may have been. “Monkeys? Where?”

But then he pushed her aside–he was quite the wrestler!--and struggled to stand up. He made it only halfway before she had him back down again, curse her, and then he heard a most strange sound–something between a squeak and a cry. Craning his neck even as he lay upon his back, he contorted to look backward, and there he beheld a small brook, too small for the whisper of its running water to fill the air, but large enough for a grove of trees to have sprung up beside the water. And in one of those trees, there was a white rhesus macaque pointing a finger right at him! Had it heard his wife’s whispering? It pointed at him though, and was smiling, and squeaking with an enthusiasm that seemed like it could hold nothing but joy. And it clambered down from its tree and began to approach.

Justroastit scrambled behind him and watched the approaching monkey wide-eyed. His wife she may have been, and love him dearly did she, but perhaps not so greatly as to stand between him and some accursed monkey. Observing the monkey with the caution of a famed goat wrestler, he determined (whatever his determination was worth, what did he know of monkey business!) that there appeared to be little - if any - hostile intent in the little beast. Confident that steadiness had returned to his feet, he finally arose, and he took two confident steps forward and looked at the monkey. Justroastit fretted fitfully behind him, and her chatter drew the attention of other clansmen who gathered around to see the monkey.

And the monkey strode ever closer, walking not upon all fours as the monkeys of their memory had been wont to do, but only just its two feet–its paws were clean and immaculate. And once it came just ten paces from Goatwrestler, it sat down in some strange way with its legs crossed and one foot atop the other, and it seemed to gesture for the newly arisen man to get right back down again, and then it patiently and expectantly stared at him. Goatwrestler stared down at the odd monkey for a few long seconds, and then a clansman shouted out, “I think it wants you to sit, Wrestler!” He looked over and saw that it was Treesbane who spoke. “It’s a monkey,” Goatwrestler said, “I’ve no idea what a monkey might want.”

Treesbane shook his head, and around him the other clansman repeated what he had said before. “Go on Wrestler, sit with the monkey.” Puffing, he sat with the monkey and leaned towards it curiously. Perhaps from that very moment he was Goatwrestler no more. His clansmen would know him only as Monkeywhisperer. “Happy, little monkey?” He asked with a quizzically raised brow.

The monkey’s placid look lit up once it saw the strange and clumsy creature imitate his action. Perhaps these beings could be taught after all, the beast might have thought. Or maybe this monkey had already encountered similar beings before and so earned its patience through time, for these Renevits were not the first tribe of men to have found their way into the Indias. But the wise sage Stambh had taught this rhesus macaque guru (or at least, its predecessors) well, for it did not let that air of smug superiority leak out beyond the deepest depths of its mind, and even there it quickly banished such hubris. With a start, the monkey saw that something was wrong: the strange creature, even as it sat, had not fully adopted the correct posture. So the monkey made a deal of crossing and uncrossing its legs until the other one–slow as it was–seemed to understand. And then, the monkey closed its eyes and began to deeply inhale. It paused a long time, and then it exhaled, rhythmically. Over and over, a cycle like the seasons. Monkeywhisperer looked at it, lips pursed, and then glanced back at the others. Most of them were smiling broadly, barely containing their laughter.

“Pah! Well I hope you’re satisfied!” He shouted at them, getting to his feet once more. “Why don’t you sit with the monkey. Well, there you have it. Now I’ve goats to finds and…” he looked around at the little green paradise they were in, “and, well, I guess this is a good development all things considered.” And with that he went off grumbling about stupid monkeys.

And at his rising and turning about, the monkey’s eyes suddenly snapped open and it cried out with great dismay and disappointment–where was its pupil going now?! It clapped–even though such raucous actions and the resulting din was probably beneath it–and gestured back at the place where ‘Monkeywhisperer’ had sat. The display was received with great excitement from the remaining Renevits, who likewise clapped. Some of the gathered children ran up to the monkey and jumped up and down in imitation. Barring one, who approached calmly with a great smile on her face, and placed a hand on the monkey’s head. “Aren’t you pretty,” she intonated melodically, her eyes bright, “and you smell so flowery.” She murmured. Seeing her touching it, the other children quickly gathered around and started patting and grabbing the monkey. “Let me pat its head Rockpetter, let me,” one was now saying, even as others examined its tail or arms or rubbed its back curiously. The same overly bold girl, whom they had called Rockpetter, placed a single finger on its nose, and stared wide-eyed at the monkey. The monkey did not seem overly fond of the gesture, but the child’s joyful ways did appeal to its kind spirit, and so it responded in kind by tapping her nose. Then she caught a better whiff of its scent; there was a strong aroma of sweet and earthy juniper that clung to it, a very clean and pure sort of smell. And its white fur was cleaner even than the girl’s own body!

The rhesus macaque overlooked the filthiness of her body and gestured for her to sit. She excitedly shooed the other children, still trying to grab or pat the monkey, away and very readily sat in front of it. Unlike Monkeywhisperer before, she appeared to have no qualms whatsoever about being seen to be up to monkey business. The other children formed a quick circle around the duo and observed them - not quietly by any means, for now they shouted for Rockpetter to touch its mouth or open its hand or rub its belly or to pull its long wispy beard. She ignored them for the most part (though she did stroke its beard curiously) and focused on sitting as much like the monkey as she could. It seemed greatly pleased by her efforts, amicably tolerating her grasping at its beard, and eventually closed its eyes (though one might have been just a crack open, for nervousness of being surrounded by so many of the strange creatures) and then began to repeat its strange breathing exercise, much as it had done for Monkeywhisperer, only this time it found a much more ready, willing, and curious pupil. When she emulated him, even one such as she began to find a sort of peace. This meditation was made harder by the din of the children all around, but already that seemed to be an increasingly distant thing.

It was not until the monkey itself tapped her shoulder that Rockpetter startled from that trance and opened her eyes again, surprised. Now it gestured for her to follow it toward those trees by the brook, where it had been perched in observance of their tribe not so long ago. As she moved to follow, one of the other children, a slightly older boy, grabbed her by the hand. “Don’t go off on your own Rockpetter!” She looked at him, eyebrows furrowed, “but why, Sandskipper? Look, the monkey wants us to follow.” She insisted. “Yeah, but we don’t know what’s going on exactly so it’s best to sit tight and not do anything reckless.” He told her firmly. She patted him reassuringly and smiled. “Don’t worry about me! And anyway you can all come too.” And slipping from his grasp, she made quickly after the monkey and was followed by a small troop of children, against Sandskipper’s protestations. Seeing that his reprimands and commands were doing no good, he at last relented and followed them with a staff in hand.

Bundled together in the shade of the tree, the monkey had stowed away a small heap of juniper berries and various flowers. He seized it up now and showed it to them, letting the children look at the amalgamation and smell the pungent, woody aroma. And then he took a small bit of it and laid it upon one rock, and then he grabbed another rock and used it to begin mashing the mess into a pulp. Seeing this, Rockpetter grabbed a nearby rock and joined the monkey in smashing. The two rocks fell into a steady rhythm and harmony, descending one after the other, and Rockpetter shook her head from side to side alongside the monotone drumming, humming melodiously as she did. About them the remaining children stood, rocks in hand and watching carefully. Behind them all was Sandskipper with his staff, staring suspiciously at the monkey and keeping a careful watch all around.

Soon the product of their rock-smashing was an ointment of sorts that smelled very much like that herbal odor clinging to the monkey. The rhesus macaque laid down its rock, then rolled a finger through the paste and sniffed. Then, satisfied, it plodded to the brook and started washing itself, occasionally rubbing the ointment into its fur. Intrigued, the children all gathered more closely around the paste and, not waiting for Rockpetter to cease rolling her hands in it, got to wipe it onto one another’s faces and hair and noses. They yelped and cried and wrestled around the rock, those with paste on their fingers chasing those without. Only Rockpetter, who remained absent-mindedly preoccupied with what residues of the paste remained on the rock, did not participate in their chaotic play, and Sandskipper who remained upright and watchful. Eventually, Rockpetter wandered on after the monkey and observed it. She picked at her nose inattentively, watching to see if the monkey would do anything new, and then squatted down and stroked its tail.

The monkey stopped its bathing for a moment, staring at her. Rockpetter thought she saw something mischievous in its eyes, but in reality, it was merely frustrated that its (smelly) pupil chose now of all times to cease imitating its actions, and now the macaque was contemplating how best to get through to her. In the end he figured that a good start would be smearing the ointment on her, so he reached out and rubbed a palm, still coated in some of the watered-down ointment, into her clothes.

Seeming to understand what it sought, the girl got to scrubbing the monkey's head roughly with the existent ointment. Satisfied with that, she rubbed at its nose and then - with equal parts fear and curiosity - stuck both her hands into the monkeys mouth and made a poor attempt at scrubbing its teeth and tongue with the ointment, though she got no further than smearing her unfortunate companion’s mouth with the stuff. It frowned and snorted, wiping the stuff off its own face to then petulantly smear it onto hers. She shrank back, face scrunched up, and then wiped what she could away with her sleeves. “Bad monkey!” She declared, grabbing at its cheek, thinking she’d pinch it and yank the mean creature to and fro–but when her hand darted out, the monkey’s face twisted to the side. Again. Again. Again! It evaded her grasping hands each time, backing a bit further into the brook’s water as she stepped after it, again and again, until the water was about up to her knees. Then with one final lunge that missed, Rockpetter fell forward and was soaked, much to the monkey’s delight. The monkey, ever helpful, moved forward to help her scrub through those clothes while she bathed.

Frowning sullenly, the girl accepted the monkey’s scrubbing and got to lazily flicking water. At first she just generally flicked. Then the water happened to splatter the monkey’s arm. Then she curiously flicked at his torso, watching the droplets land against its hairy body and join the flow of other droplets back down into the brook. Then she flicked a little harder so that the droplets did not land on its chest, but rather sprayed its nose and face, and landed on its brows and flowed down the corners of its eyes.

By now, most of the other children were tramping about in the brook too, giggling and calling out and splashing one another. Their earlier game of smearing the mashed juniper and herbs all over one another made their play almost as good as an actual bath, even if they didn’t scrub! Sandskipper, still sour, had his patience worn to wit’s end and finally started yelling harshly and demanding they all get out and dry off. Most obeyed the younger boy, though Rockpetter wanted to stay with the monkey. Eventually, however, the white-furred creature seemed to grow tired of having water flicked at its eyes, and so he flashed her one last amicable grin before clambering out of the water and into some tree. Rockpetter was quick to follow, dragging herself out of the break and making after the monkey, but a firm hand caught her by the wrist and pulled her resolutely - though not ungently - away. “Come on, you’ve done enough monkey business for today,” Sandskipper grumbled.

Throwing her head back, she glanced into the trees until she caught sight of her newfound friend. “Bye-bye!” She called out to that sagacious monkey, who watched from a perch atop a tree. It might have waved at her in response. It was hard to tell if it was doing that or just flicking drops of water down at her eyes.

The First Indians

Written with Oraculum!


Wrinkles were cut into Stambh’s visage; if that was not how he had been carved from the chisel of the Rakshasaraja’s mind, then that was how the warmth of distant Itzala in the sky had made him. The sun had also touched the guru over the rest of his body; he was tanned and like the color of sandalwood. And on the topic of sandals, he wore none! No shoes of any kind spared his gnarled feet from the ground’s toll, but it was warm enough in this part of the Indias, so his toes were not afflicted overmuch by cold, even during the cool nights. His heels and the bottom of his toes were like leather, and so he did not mind the small stones and sticks that he had to trod upon as he wandered down the riverbanks and through the forests, over the hills and under the mountains, all across this strange world.

He had done much contemplation already in these early days; while his body wandered alone, his mind strayed so as to keep itself busy. And as he was so clearly crowned with wisdom, clean and always with washed hair and a magnificent beard even as he wore only a modest loincloth, there were many who stopped him as he walked and asked him for his sagely counsel or his thoughts, and he was always glad to speak with another. The path to enlightenment came from enlightening others, after all.

So Stambh looked over at his day’s current student, and his wrinkled brow furrowed. “But look at the brawn of your arms, the richness and thickness of your hair,” he began, “You are built like mine own father! It is a mighty and noble body that you could have. But where he was regal, you are unkempt and filthy here; your smell is not altogether foul, but that dirt does your beauty no justice. Come down here by the river, for your body is unclean and should be washed. That will bring you closer to Purity.”

And as this was a good and eager student, not some undisciplined and rebellious fool like so many of the youths of today, he obeyed the wise guru Stambh and entered the river even though the water was cold and the current was swift. The dirt was at once loosened, and thinking it all swept away, the pupil made to swim back to the bank after only a few moments.

“No,” corrected Stambh, “you must scrub!”

And though the student was cold, he diligently obeyed and began to rid itself of the dirt which clung strongest to it, and of the dirt that was beneath its nails and behind its ears. Meanwhile, the guru had seized a cluster of juniper berries and two rocks, and was mashing a paste.

“Here,” called out Stambh from the bank, “cleanse yourself with the fragrance of this wash.”

And his apprentice came to the riverbank and took up the mashed juniper, but then licked at it and made as if to rub the stuff under his tail.

“No,” instructed Stambh. “like this!”

And so the sage showed the little white-furred rhesus macaque where to apply it, how to produce the fragrance, and how to lather the scent over the rest of its body. But merely possessing pleasant aroma and a clean, well-groomed body did not make for an enlightened being, so there was more work to be done.

The monkey fidgeted, now conscious of the filth that resided in the dirt and the insects all around, where before he had never minded such things. So the rhesus macaque developed a tic in the side of its lip, looking around at the sorrowful state of the tepid Indian wilds all around (for it would be a long time before this land, this mildest of the Three Indias, was cultivated and made into the seats of the greatest of mortal rajas) and think also of its less fortunate brethren, who still frolicked in the great piles of elephant dung for having never been taught better.

That neuroticism was not becoming of an enlightened one, the sage realized. So he looked down at his twitched student and his brow furrowed once more. “Now your body is Pure, but there remains another sort of Impurity about you. It is in your mind. See how you are bound to yourself, how to sway to fro without the shove of the wind, dancing these meaningless and sharp motions? Do you feel the cloudiness of your mind? Those wild thoughts that send you to and fro are like the film of dust that settles atop a stagnant pool, obscuring the clarity of the pristine waters below.”

The monkey stared at Stambh puzzledly, chewing on its thumbnail as it tried to make sense of those words. The sage only shook his head. This was not something easily explained; he whose mind had only ever known turmoil could hardly be expected to understand–let alone cultivate–inner tranquility.

So Stambh seated himself in the lotus position, and gestured for the rhesus macaque to do the same. The monkey expressed some dismay at the prospect of getting down into the dirt now that it was so clean, but the brave and obedient pupil trusted in his mentor, and so overcame his squeamishness and did as was bidded of him. Once the two were seated in that pose beneath the shade of a sandalwood tree, facing one another, Stambh gave his next instructions, “Now close your eyes. And now release your breath…”

Their days of meditation were not easily counted. Though they sought a spiritual awakening, they were as of yet tethered to the physical world, and so in the waking hours of the day they took some breaks to answer the call of nature, drink of the sweet spring water, and to feed upon the abundant fruits and berries of the woodland which were sweeter still. In time, macaque found himself unburdened by thoughts of pain or pleasure. Eventually, the monkey found itself no longer suffering from even the desire to taste sweetness, and so without having been told, it began to feed upon the nuts that were strewn all over the ground; it had no time to climb trees to find the ripest fruits or to mill through the forest looking for what berries had not already been claimed by the yet-unawakened creatures of India.

Yes, the unawakened creatures. They were different from him, the monkey knew, for he was now awake. And with his enlightenment had come a sort of noble calling, a yearning to open the eyes of others that they could see the right path. So he bowed long before his master Stambh, and thanked him in his monkey way, and then took his leave to do just that. It was with pride that Stambh saw his first student gather up the other rhesus macaques of the wild and take the mantle of a disciple, bestowing unto others what was unto him.

Sometimes Stambh would come to the macaque congregation too, to help his disciple Purify them in body and mind. The sage, strange as he looked to those creatures with his human stature, served as a sort of inspiration.

This first monkey-disciple of the sage, through his following the path set by Stambh and through his teaching of others, eventually reached full mastery of the way. When he came to the end of the path, he was fully awake, pure of body and mind and even of soul.

By then, the sage Stambh had wandered to other parts, but tribes of other humans had found their ways to the strange and fertile lands of this India. Seeing the tall men of slender frame and tan faces, the awakened macaques recognized the likeness of their mentor Stambh, and so they made themselves friendly acquaintances.

The humans were of course taken aback by these animals approaching them so boldly and amicably, and doubly so when they observed the strange behavior of the monkeys. But this was a bountiful land, filled with fruit and nuts, and so their curiosity overcame their base nature, and they did not harm the macaques even if the hunters would have been able to make easy quarry of the trusting and passive creatures. The rhesus macaques showed them which plants and nuts to eat, where the best drinking water and bathing spots were, even how to make the juniper wash and bathe.

Some human imitators even began to join in the rituals of these most sacred of animals (for how could such enlightened creatures be anything but holy?), and these went on to become the first yogis.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


After many days, Nawal found at last a mountain to his liking. The first one he had sought to climb had been wholly impassable at the foot; after pushing his way through the forest that surrounded it, relieving his hunger with the large and watery pale-brown mushrooms that grew there, he had found that the incline leapt up suddenly into a steep wall, with no path to be seen, nor even ledges he could have held onto had he been more vigorous of body. If even he had climbed it, he thought, the illuminations he would have found on such a mountain would have been arduous and forbidding, difficult to grasp and impossible to ever be taught, and so had turned away from it.

The second mountain had seemed more promising at first glance. The trees below it had been more sparse, with more yellow needles than green ones in their crowns, and where they ended it was not difficult to find the roots of an inclined ridge that led up around the great stone stalk. He climbed it for two days and two nights, finding along the way small caverns in the rocky face and wide round shelves where he could rest. At noontime on the third day, however, when he had ascended to half of the mountain’s height, he saw that the winding path broke off and rose no further, so that the summit could not be reached. This, he thought, was also a poor place to meditate, for he would come to the cusp of enlightenment and then never be able to take the final steps.

Thereafter, Nawal no longer let his mere intuition guide him in search of a perfect seat, but strained his eyes to see the shape of a mountain’s flanks before he tried to climb it. Before then, it had seemed to him that such base premeditation would mar his quest and defeat its point; if he had come here to perfect his spirit, should he not exercise it and let it grow rather than lean on the crutch of bodily senses? But then, he reasoned one day, as he sat cross-legged on a rock by a mountain stream, eating a hard and sour gourd-like fruit, perhaps he had been wrong to think so. If his spirit needed to be refined in the rarefied air of these mountains, then clearly it still had room to grow, and was uncertain in its abilities. The wise thing to do, then, was not to depend on it wholly, but let his experienced eyes and ears lead it about the world for a little time yet.

So it was that when he approached the third mountain, he knew that a path would lead him up as far as he could see from below. The footslopes were high and lenient, reaching beyond where, for most others, the sheer rock began, and the ledges spiralling upward from them were numerous and even, almost like so many paths climbing a less upright peak. The caverns in its side were plentiful, so that, as he made his way heavenward, he never had to sleep under the bare sky; and most were dry and spacious as well, like huts prepared for a traveller. In several places along the way, the ledges broadened considerably, and it seemed to him that entire villages could be built there, if their people could but find springs of water and grazing-grounds at hand. In three mere days he was at the top, though this summit was little shorter than the previous one he had attempted. It was a fine place, low enough that tufts of grass sprouted about it for comfortable seating, with a cavern close below if he had need of shelter.

Yet this mountain did not please him, for the very reason that it had been so easily mastered. The thoughts he would reach upon it would be smooth and pleasant enough, but pedestrian and certainly not wise, for no wisdom was gained without effort.

Thus Nawal looked down from his elevation, which, though it was not spiritual, served him well enough, because he plied his bodily senses alone. His eye found a new goal which appeared both approachable and worthy, though of course it was hard to judge of the latter before having tried of it. The way down was easier than the ascent, and in but eight days he had reached the fourth mountain.

Great was his surprise when he saw that it was not uninhabited like the others! About the foothills and on the forested slopes, huge shaggy forms moved among the trees, walking on the knuckles of their fists and sometimes even standing upright on their two legs. These were reclusive, solitary beings, as he soon discovered; though they towered greatly over him, the shaggy brown apes lumbered away into the woods when they heard him approach, and would not come near him even as he rested. Only after some days of walking did he begin to see curious snouts, long and ursine, following him from the brush as he went by, and by the time he had reached the mountain they were accustomed enough to his presence to stroll freely about or keep chewing their fruits even upon his passage.

The peaceful mountain-apes amused him, but he was troubled by their presence all the same. His fears were confirmed when he reached the mountain’s rocky wall, and saw large brown figures lumbering about its crags and climbing its slopes. A path that was trodden by too many, of course, could not lead to wisdom, for that would have been a common thing; and a seat as peopled as this could only be home to common revelations.

Nawal almost despaired then, for he could see no other suitable mountains around him, and he was feeling weary from the search. But then he sat on a flat stone to think, and another thought did come to him. The senses were not the body’s only faculty; there was also speech, which could perhaps avail him now that he was no longer quite alone in the woods and the foothills.

He went into the thick of the forest, where most of the apes dwelt, and looked and prodded about until he found a large and grizzled beast crouching alone under a tree, where it was plucking the nuts from a tree-cone.

“Hail to you,” he said, in a raspy voice for he had spoken little in his long journey, “You who look more travelled than I around these parts; is there a place, neither too smooth nor too steep, where one can sit and contemplate in peace?” But even if it was old and experienced, the ape was not learned in the ways of speech, and it continued to fiddle with its trove.

Then Nawal saw that he would have to show what he meant, which was a difficult proposition, for what he sought was not as simple as something to eat or to drink! Yet he sat down cross-legged, closed his eyes and began to sway his head. One could not meditate for an audience, but he tried to summon a mood of clarity, so he hummed and whistled a tune like the high mountain wind. When he opened his eyes, the ape was looking at him attentively with its small round eyes over its tapering nose; then it let drop the cone and rose up, slowly making away on its four limbs, and Nawal followed.

They walked through the trees for a time, the ape not stopping to wait for its short-legged companion, but not hurrying away from him either, and at length they came to the edge of the woods. It was already growing dark, the sun slinking away between the great towering pillars. The hairy guide stood up on its feet and looked intently into the distance, fixing its myopic eyes on one of the column-shaped peaks. Even without words, Nawal understood its meaning.

“Thank you,” he said to the old ape, and it appeared to nod in the dusk before shuffling back into the treeline. The traveller slept on a pile of dry evergreen needles, and on the next day he set off for the place he had been shown.

In a long time, or a short one, he reached its foot and climbed the lower slope; and then he saw that its upward crags were hard and steep. But as he looked closely, he began to spot little edges in the stone where a foot could stand safely, and then another further up if he searched hard enough, and so on further. It was not an easy way to climb, but soon his mind was lost in the task of blazing the trail for the body to follow, and so preoccupied was he with its efforts that it surprised him when, come the evening, he almost toppled over with sudden fatigue. The higher he went, the sparser the berries he had been subsisting on became, and his waterskin grew lighter. The pangs and dizziness of hunger went to join the fatigue, his waking hours becoming themselves something like a dream. But he kept his eyes fixed on the path, not allowing any of it to distract him.

So passed one day, and another, and more; but when at last he came to the summit, it seemed to him that they had gone by at a peculiar pace of their own.

Up on top, the ground was flat and rocky, made hot by the sun by day and cold by the wind by night, with but some scant and pale berry-bushes and a few depressions where pooled rainwater and melting snow. Even so, it was a quiet place, untroubled save for the whistle of altitude now and then. That sound disturbed the ear, but as he sat and listened, Nawal understood its purpose. Just as the mountain had been a laborious task to overcome, demanding all his focus, so would the meditation upon it be a struggle. And that was well, for a meaningful truth was not easily won, but neither was it beyond the grasp of one who put himself all into its quest. Only on a seat such as this one could it at last be found.

Thereafter, every day Nawal gave thanks to the old mountain-ape that had led him to the last step of his journey.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Now it had been a long time since Rakshasaraja had dreamt that strange Stambh into being, long enough for that guru to have wandered far and away. The rakshasa-children would have similarly wandered, for it had likewise been a long time since that ravenous sun had swallowed his slumbering form while it served as the seasoning atop his primordial lilypad, and a long time since the sun, with its scorching tongue, had finally released him in its death-burst, sending him down onto the land that would become the Indias.

Much happened while the Rakshasaraja was asleep, you see. Perhaps more happened to that noble Ear while he was asleep than happened to him while he was awake! But the Rakshasaraja might tell you that the current state of the cosmos was all some jape of a tragedy–at best!--so perhaps that state of affairs is for the better.

Anyway, there came a time when a curious primate crawled up the hairy, sweating hill that was the Rakshasaraja’s head. This was not one of those white-furred and solemn macaques within whom Stambh had seen so much potential: this was a filthy, black-coated baboon with a raucous sense of humor, a foul tongue, and a particular penchant for throwing excrement at other creatures.

Once it had at last completed the journey it had set out to do that morn, leaping from a jungle tree to grasp hold of the Rakshasaraja’s crown and slowly climb up its great arches and ridges where possible. Where climbing the crown’s contours was not so easily done, the cunning baboon seized the great dark vines that were in reality the hairs, erupting from the side of the great hillock which was in reality a head. And he would climb up the vine-hairs, up and up, until he could disembark upon some higher ridge of the arching crown to regain his strength, and once rested, continue ever upward. By that afternoon it had grown quite hot, but he had reached the forehead which was the summit of this hillock, and a most pleasant breeze was there to cool him. The various birds that had roosted up here all fled from his might and majesty–or so the baboon thought! Truly they probably fled more from his stink!--so the primate was there alone to enjoy his throne, standing atop the highest hill all around, looking down upon the tops of the many jungle-trees that carpeted the verdant distance. You see, of the Three Indias, this particular region was the hottest, and so it was largely a jungle.

But back to the baboon! He laughed at the little birds as they flew away. He laughed harder still at those other birds below him, looking down onto their nests in the highest boughs of those trees so far below. On many an occasion, the baboon had reached upward to grasp at the ripe and succulent fruits of a tree, only to be met with the disdainful refuse of some bird nestled higher still. Time to return the favor! The baboon climbed to the summit, a small hill atop the hill which was in reality the tip of a nose atop the face, and he began to conjure the ammunition that he would rain down upon those wretched birds–

But then the air around was all fire, for the Rakshasaraja had smelled something most foul and snorted, and his steamy hot breath had scorched the baboon’s rear! With a howl the baboon clutched its red bottom, whose cheeks would forevermore be scalded that bloody color.

“Flea? Is that you again?” the Rakshasaraja mumbled, his three bleary eyes coming into focus upon the strange creature jumping up and down upon his nose. And what a vile stench! The baboon was in a panic, having had its posterior burnt even as it was met with the revelation that this hillock had come alive as some great monster. As it danced wildly and tried to clamber down from the Rakshasaraja’s nose, the giant lifted its great arm from where it had been blanketed by all the jungle undergrowth that had grown up around his slumbering mass.

Two giant fingers seized up the fleeing baboon, nearly but not quite crushing him, as the First Rakshasaraja squinted at the strange creature that had disturbed his rest, itched his nose with its scurrying, and offended his stomach with its stink. “No, you are not that same bothersome flea, so I might spare you for this is the first time I have been made to suffer the offense of your presence.”

The baboon had rather involuntarily finished that bowel movement that he’d began not a whole minute earlier, and the dropping fell between the giant fingers that grasped his body, right down onto the nose of that giant face below him. The Rakshasaraja was predictably enraged. The baboon howled and tried to profess its sorrow and its innocence and its respect and good-meaning, for that had been an accident--a product of ignorance and fear–but there were no words that the mere beast could command that would be understood by that leviathan!

“Begone now, you filthy, spiteful, beast of low-cunning! You think to answer my mercy with this? Bah! Woe unto any who disturb my slumber and disrespect my majesty!” But his rage had been such that his fingers had trembled even as they had squeezed, and so he had simultaneously lost hold of the baboon even as he had meant to crush it. The sheer force and fury of his words had been as a mighty gale, and so his burning hot breath had blasted the bothersome primate away, sending it flying far over the emerald landscape and into the distance, safe from the irate giant’s clutches if not from the Galbar’s inevitable embrace!

Through the sky the yowling baboon hurtled, past startled birds that stared incredulously at this unwonted intruder. It was not the way of nature that simians should fly so, but the ground below did not hasten to reassert its claim upon the beast any more than the wind did in carrying it onward. The canopy below raced his flight, but just as its arc was descending, the trees lost ground, cutting off the animal’s desperate hope of snatching a branch at the last moment. The green gave way to yellow scrubland, split from it by a thin brown line of felled trunks. Near the edge of the jungle stood two wooden huts, with a fire-pit in the ground before them.

The baboon smashed into the ground in front of the huts, broke into pieces and died.

Corpse, who was lying in the sun nearby, for this was his habit, opened an eye.

“Come see this!” he called.

Then Song came out from one hut, humming, and Perfection and Preserver from the other. Rage, who lived in the first hut with Corpse and Song, did not answer, because he was away uprooting trees at the edge of the jungle.

“This one was whole, but has been broken up into many pieces,” observed Song, and then she broke up her chant into all its sounds and sang every one with a different mouth, to show how such a thing might be done, “Such things I have seen climbing on trees, though there was less red on them.”

“Show me how they were,” said Preserver, who had never gone far from the huts, because he was the one who closed the holes in them with wood from the trees that Rage uprooted.

Then Song showed him how a baboon was, humming louder and lower, and Preserver gathered up all the pieces and put them together, so that the baboon was whole again.

“It is not really whole, these pieces are still loose,” said Perfection, and picked up the spite, the filth and the low cunning that had flown into the baboon from the Rakshasaraja’s words. And since Preserver had already closed the baboon up, she put them into its mouth and nose.

As soon as she had done this, Baboon jumped up with a hoot and scurried off. The rakshasas did not run after him, because they were stunned by his foul smell and dirty fur now that Perfection had put filth into him. He loped towards the jungle, looking for a tree where he could pick some fruit. But when he came to the edge of the trees, he saw Rage gripping around a trunk with his arms, and stomping and pulling until he pulled it out of the earth.

Then Baboon cackled in his way, because he had had a thought, and he took a little stone that had a sharp point and threw it so that it landed next to Rage. When the rakshasa stomped his foot to push against the ground and tug at the tree, it came down on the stone and was prickled on its end. Rage glared and stamped and waved his fists, furious that someone would dare sting him so, and in so doing he let go of the tree, which teetered aside and fell down on his head. He sat down on his haunches and his eyes crossed; and by the time he got up to find the one who had played this trick, the mischievous Baboon had hidden himself in the canopy and cackled from above, and Rage did not catch him!

@Cyclone Humans live, Cy!


Hmm, you know how they say you only want what you don't have?

Now that humans are here, maybe it's best I enlighten other suitable creatures with my power and virtue instead. Like rhesus macaques!
@Cyclone Working on that now actually :P


Excellent. The witch's incantation must have worked!
@cyclone Why are you making fun of a bald person? Are you a baldist?


Guilty as charged!

Now why haven't you made humans for me yet? Are you a misanthrope?
Who's making humans? When are they coming?

Somebody wake me up when humans arrive, and I'll see about smearing a couple of Indias onto the IC.
Celestial Music

Written with the help of Oraculum and Termite!


The veil was now many times pierced and restored, its surface rippling and folding with each disturbance like fine silk, like the surface of a still pond in the most starless of nights. Behind it the Hand of Mysteries rested at ease over the knee of Its master, who reclined in observation, a mere shadow of a silhouette, as if watching children at play.

The lake of warm gold sparkled and lapped gently at the surface of the world not yet born, shining in dappled beams through the black mist above. The mist grew ever thinner, blown this way and that by the whirling and weaving of the gods at the Scroll, such that it was now more like a fine curtain than some impenetrable wall. Still, when the First Rakshasa manifested, he did not trouble himself with what was above. He had looked about the golden lake all around with awe, and then shut his many eyes in long meditation, still bathing in the glowing warmth that pierced his eyelids. What perfection!

The Rakshasa was seated on a fine rug and dressed in the splendor of gold, his head-dress circling around his fanged visage in nested crowns studded with gold discs, such that it was not possible to say where the headdress ended and his furred face began. Around his chest were bands of gold pieces and fine garnets, spaced with scarlet furs, and the furs of his heavy golden cuff-bands were red and fine also.

Now the lake of gold had neither shore nor island within itself, so the seating place of the old Rakshasa lay on no dry soil, but on a wide and bright lily-pad that rested high above its surface, buoyed up by the light. And it had happened that from the Hand of Mysteries, a flea did jump, falling through the fading mists and blown this way and that by the winds of light that shone from the hatching gods, until at last it was blown onto that very lily-pad. There the Flea briefly rested, before turning to the large being before him. “Master,” he began, “forgive me, for I am only a flea, and know not where I am to-day. With whom do I have the honour to speak?”

The First Rakshasa, whose three eyes had been closed in meditation (for what was there to observe about this endless and most perfect golden lake?) sniffed. His third eye, set upon the middle of his brow, crept open and peered at the interlocutor.

“Here was the sublimity of creation, a lake of purest majesty,” the Rakshasa rumbled, slowly at first as he found that he’d a voice, as he exercised that voice for the first time. “Yet now,” the words spilled out faster, “we have a defiled corpse!”

The last syllable tumbled out with such vigor that it took form. It smacked flat against the lake’s surface, stretched out and sprawled, and there lay Corpse, gaping up at the ripples overhead. Though he had only just fallen from the Rakshasa’s lips, he looked very old and parched, because he was so close to the golden light and warmth. He was very still, so much so that one could barely see him, and only his eye looked on and blinked.

The Rakshasa leaped up in an instant, standing upon his lilypad where he had before been seated in serene meditation, and snarled at the Flea. He roared, “Your presence contaminates the perfection of being!”

The Flea quaked, and crossed its four arms about itself, and then swiftly fell down and prostrated before the frightening scowl of the sage. “Oh, splendid lord! Would that I could vanish into gold, so I would not offend your eyes! I did not know that I was trespassing. Which land is this, that I have had the fortune to step upon?”

The mighty Rakshsa snorted with indignation, and a foot snapped out to strike the Flea and knock it off the lilypad. It landed upon Corpse.

“This was no mere land,” the eldest Rakshasa preached, its two lower eyes opening now. “It was a beautiful chorus, and I a mere vessel, an ear, so that an appreciator would exist for that most perfect Song!”

And from his lips burst out another being, this one called Song. She also fell into the lake, but she rolled over her head and sat cross-legged there. All her mouths began humming to themselves, but some always ran ahead of the others, and she had to start the tune over before the chant became louder. So it was that she was never very loud.

Still, the First Rakshasa was not silent from his raving. “Now, the Celestial Music has been ruined by this discord; never again is there likely to be another note of such Perfection. But I will always remember it, so that there always be at least one Preserver.”

Out from his mouth came the two siblings, and they likewise landed in the lake of gold. Perfection rose up and looked at her reflection, and what she saw did not please her. So she took one of her arms and pulled until it was longer; then she pushed the sides of her head so that it was slimmer; then she stretched her foot; but the sight was never to her liking, and so she went on stretching and squeezing and pulling. Preserver saw this, and was displeased also, for it was not well to him that the lake should have a reflection. So he stirred the surface to chase it away; and he went on stirring.

It was in that time that the stammering Flea grew quiet, now understanding the gravity of its terrible offense of coming into being, at least in the three eyes of that dreadful tyrant of the First Rakshasa. But fortunately, that uppermost third eye of the black creature was now tilted upwards. The blackened mists had grown thinner yet, so now the enraged lord could peer through so as to gaze at the motions of the heavens yet to come. He beheld some lightshow where distant Galaxor battled a bull, and curled a lit in disgust. The Divine Chorus had been grander and more expansive than its devoted Ear had ever realized, and that made the Rakshsa feel pity and sorrow, for what job had he done if he, whose role was only to watch, and more importantly listen, had seen so little? When he hadn’t even heard so many Voices in the Chorus, before the Celestial Music had been forever marred by the din of that distant battling?

His sorrow begat another being, as the Rakshasa suddenly bellowed an ugly, wild, wordless howl of misery and frustration and anger. It grew so loud and heavy that it fell on its feet, still burning and quivering with Rage. Try as this being might, however, he could not spill it out, for he did not have a mouth. Thus he jumped and stamped in place, shaking his many fists, until his furious movements found a flow. Then he began to dance, eyes flashing with fury, and he never ceased because his Rage was overflowing.

Corpse looked at him, and blinked; then he looked up at the Flea. He said, “Haven’t you any other place to stand? If you stand on me like this and jump as you do, I will sink. If you have to go stand somewhere, go to-” But here his voice, which was a low and raspy whisper like rough hide on sand, tapered off to a mumble. The Flea looked about itself, and could see no place on Corpse to hide itself away from the furious Rakshasa with his crowns and furs. Nor did it want to jump onto Rage’s wild arms, for fear of sinking Corpse and making even more trouble. “Master Corpse, your throat is dusty like old bones, and I cannot hear you at all! Let me come a little closer, and then you can tell me where I can stand.”

“Come here close to my lips, so I can say it to your ear,” whispered Corpse. So the Flea hopped up his chin; but when it leaned in to listen, suddenly Corpse opened his mouth very wide, so wide that it cracked a little in the jaw, and he swallowed the Flea whole. Then he swelled up, and he looked full. Thus it was that vermin came to live inside of Corpse, swelling him when they sate his hunger, but since then his jaw has always hung a little loose, because he had snapped it in swallowing the Flea.

For the First Rakshasa–who would come to be called Rakshasaraja–the progenitor and lord of these five remaining lesser beings that had sprung from his maw, there was still no consolation. The noble being’s three eyes remained gazing upward, toward the great Void that was in many ways empty in that time, but which seemed bursting with life and vigor if only for the presence of the Khodex and those divinities flitting around it. The Rakshasaraja’s howling that had given birth to Rage quieted down, but did not fully cease. He was not becoming calm, merely expending all of the vigor of his lungs. His throat was hoarse. The feral cry faded into a grumbling stream of malformed words and curses, too twisted and odious to take shape as had some others.

All about, the Void buzzed with a tumult that offended the Ear. So he brought up his two hands and plugged his ears, trying to shut out the din of chaos so that he could remember the beauty of the Celestial Music that had once been Sublime. The self-absorbed five spawn of his scurried about, not much better than the Flea, and so he raised his other two hands and used them to cover his two lower eyes. The tips of his fingers stretched and reached, but they couldn’t quite cover the third eye upon his brow, and so he seethed, knowing that he would forevermore be unable to find the tranquility of his original meditation.

“Hrmgrlgarburhmmm,” he grunted incoherently, no longer poised or in control of his lips. He was animated by madness. He paused after a long time, just long enough to catch his breath, and then spat out two more nonsensical syllables: “-Galbar-!”

Enough vigor filled that word to give it form, and a great stone manifested in the Rakshasaraja’s throat. He sputtered, he coughed, and he hocked it up. He spat it out not into the glorious gilded depths below, where it would mar the perfect lake and take it ever further from Sublimity, but cast out the thing high and away, above into the void. The stone spun and spun, growing in size as it soared through the nothingness. A bit of saliva still clung to the rock, but the force of the stone’s tumbling journey pulled it all to one side, where it pooled together in a small depression of the otherwise near-spherical rock.

The Rakshasaraja’s rambling continued on, weaker and softer, until they became just mumbles. Then he collapsed in exhaustion and lay down upon his lilypad, surrounded by the clamor of his five children. Beyond the veil, the Hand of Mysteries grinned.

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