 |
|
|
Post By Double-sized action, mystery, intrigue, and unintentional romance from... the Hooded Hood! Fri Aug 11, 2006 at 03:03:49 pm EDT |
Subject
#282: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Beyond the Fields We Know, or Through the Looking Glass | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
| #282: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Beyond the Fields We Know, or Through the Looking Glass Previously: Princess Uhuna of the Abhumans, thought to have died recently in the siege of Parody Island (UT#273), has awoken in a mysterious place with Cody Harper, thought to have been erased from existence due to a change in the timeline (UT#270). Now two beings who shouldn’t still exist have to work out why they do, where they are, and how to save the Parodyverse. Character details are in the footnotes below (but beware spoilers).  The ground was hidden by coiling luminous mists. The ceiling was too high to see by the light from the flickering kerosene lamp. Black neoclassical columns rose up from the hall’s floor and vanished into darkness. It was very cold. “Where are we?” asked Uhunalura Amalandriana Excelsior!, princess of the Abhumans, peering into the eerie gloom. “No idea,” Cody Harper answered. “I’ve been here for… well, I have no way of measuring time because it never gets light, but a long time, and I’ve still not found out.” Uhuna pulled herself from the cold flagstone floor. “I thought I was dead,” she confessed. “That was the deal. Is this hell?” Cody looked around nervously. “I hope not. But it could be. There are nasty creatures here.” “Creatures?” “Like ghosts, but like ghosts of wolves and spiders and crabs and jellyfish all mixed together. They hunt in the ruins.” Uhuna moved over towards a distant wall. It was cracked and broken. A reft had been torn in the heavy stonework, opening up the hall to the outside. “There are ghost animals out there?” Cody shook his head. “I don’t mean some look like spiders and some look like wolves. I mean they change. Sometimes they look like combinations of all of them, and worse. They hunt in packs.” The princess peered cautiously through the tear in the black brickwork. The mists drifted on as far as the eye could see. In the gloom she could just make out silhouettes of more buildings and a few dead trees. “They don’t come in here,” Cody assured her. “Something about this place scares them.” Uhuna didn’t feel reassured. “I don’t understand any of this, Cody. You vanished. Al said… it was all temporal physics. Because the future got changed your time-travelling mother Kinki the Conqueress was never impregnated so you ceased to exist. Or never existed. Al had to find Kinki and… re-establish you.” “Yeah, I know,” Cody told her. “I saw what happened afterwards. It took them two days in all that chaos to even realise I was gone.” Uhuna was puzzled. “You saw?” Cody realised that Uhuna had a lot to catch up on. He pointed out through the broken wall. “Out there are all kinds of strange places. I haven’t explored far, it’s not safe. But I had to find basic supplies. There’s some kind of city, but all the people are covered in this web stuff, sleeping. Like in the fairy tale?” “Latituna and the Rogue Geneset?” asked the Abhuman. “Er, I was thinking of Sleeping Beauty,” Cody admitted. “But whatever. Point is, they’re all in some kind of stasis. The hunting things can’t get at them. It drives the monsters crazy.” Cody pointed back into the ruined building where the two refugees sheltered. “But in here it’s different. No webs. No monsters. Something else.” “What else?” asked Uhuna unhappily. Cody held out his hand. “This way. I’ll show you.” “Dream!” the princess cried out. “Dream!” She stared up. “Can you still save him, Hood? Can you retcon this?” “I have told you, I can give him a chance. No more.” Uhuna jammed the quill into her arm and signed the paper. “Very good,” her cowled visitor declared. “I didn’t know if you really had it in you.” “What is this?” Uhuna asked, watching herself reflected in a cracked full-length mirror. This is what happened to me, just before I came here.” “I guess it is,” Cody Harper agreed. “I guess you’re who you say you are.” “What now?” Uhuna asked asked. “Draw all the illness you can out of the CrazySugarFreakBoy! Draw the death out of him.” “That’s not possible. My powers can’t transfer death.” “Your powers have been amplified for the moment. You can remove the symptoms that have slain your patient.” “That will kill me.” “You said you’d die for him.” “These mirrors here,” Cody explained, pointing round the inner chamber he’d led the princess to, “they all show different things. Always things that are connected with me though. Or you, I guess. I needed to check that you weren’t… some kind of trap.” “They show the past?” Uhuna asked. “Or the present. Or they did. A little while ago something happened and then I couldn’t follow what was happening with dad any more. Or anywhere on Earth.” Uhuna reached out her hand. “I did, didn’t I?” she whispered. She touched CSFB!, drawing Dr Moo’s treatment, the infections of the Obedience Brand, the fatigue poisons, the necromancies into her own flesh. “By the way,” the cowled figure next to her said as the Abhuman spasmed in agony, “I’m not the Hooded Hood.” “I know,” Uhuna told her as she fell over dead. “Clever of you,” Regret the Temptress told the corpse as she folded away the pact that Uhuna had signed. “Dead clever.” “That was pretty brave,” Cody conceded as the mirror faded back to greyness. “You saved the Legion. Maybe the world.” “And I should have died for it,” Uhuna pointed out. “And been damned. That was Regret, the demon temptress who stole Nats away from me on our wedding day. She hates me.” “But you still made a deal with her.” “People were dying,” the Abhuman healer answered. “What else could I do?” Cody had never realised how beautiful her big blue eyes were. “Maybe…” Uhuna considered, “Maybe all of this is some kind of test? A puzzle. A chance for us to sort out what’s going on, and then we’re allowed to get out of here. Do you think so?” Cody felt it more likely that his presence here was a cosmic fluke, the dimensional equivalent of lint getting stuck in the drain, but he didn’t say so. “Maybe. It’s better than sitting here waiting for those ghost scavengers to pluck up the courage to come in and get us. My power to translate things allows us to use the mirrors. What did you have in mind?” Uhuna moved through the misty hall of fractured glass. “We have to find out what’s going on. Out there. Back with our friends.” “I told you, the mirrors won’t show you Earth any more. There was some big fight with the Parody Master’s invasion force, then nothing.” The princess ran her fingertips over one of the broken looking glasses. “Then we won’t look at Earth,” she told him. She pressed her lips against the mirror’s cold surface. “Show me Bill,” she told it. Everrue Palace was decorated in a crimson skull-and-bones motif, as if an angst-filled goth metal teenager had been turned loose with an unlimited budget and a huge pile of human remains. Since becoming the Lord of this portion of the fields of Hell, Nats hadn’t bothered decorating. Perhaps he liked it. The visitors were led in beneath the Howling Arch by Dead Boy, and from their reactions to the décor Bill Reed began to wonder if maybe a bit of housekeeping might be in order. There were five guests, and Nats recognised some of them. The Librarian was the one he was most familiar with, striding forward in his modified Interplanetary Order of Librarians uniform with the non-regulation topcoat. It was the Lunar Public Library that had unexpectedly shifted itself to the barren plains beyond the Palace. Beside Nats hopped the reptilian alien scholar Dr Blargelsarch. The bipedal toad was looking around him with fascination, muttering to himself and making frantic notes. Bill didn’t know the confused-looking man in the stained suit or the half-Asian woman in the neat businesswear, but he identified the metal bulk of A.L.F.RED, the Library’s major domo and primary security system. And he recognised who the robot had slung limply over his shoulder. “Regret!” Bill called. “What have you done to her? If you’ve harmed…” “She’s okay,” Dead Boy interrupted. “Well, she will be. She was getting a bit… ambitious.” “I downloaded the text of the Holy Bible into her brain,” the Librarian supplied. “It’ll take her a while to come to terms with the sudden influx of information.” “And that’s okay is it?” Nats asked, surprised how angry he was to see his demon temptress sprawled out unconscious. “She’s my envoy.” “Then you should keep her under better control,” the Asian woman argued. Snookie Takahashi didn’t like anything about this place. She’d just recognised Nats from the tabloids and she didn’t like him either. “You know,” her companion, Arnie J. Armbruster noted, looking around, “You could rent this place as a movie set and make a fortune. I know some people. For a percentage I could make a few calls.” “We’re here by error,” the Librarian told Nats, stepping forward to take control of the conversation. “The Library had to make an emergency dimensional exit to avoid attack by the Parody Master. It followed the last local transplanar hop and found itself stuck here. We just need some time to make repairs and we’ll be on our way.” “Although we’d love to have a look around and take some photographs and measurements,” Dr Blargleslarch added hopefully. “And, y’know, not be eternally tortured,” Snookie contributed. “Or we could fight,” A.L.F.RED added hopefully. “I have ectoplasmic disruption torpedoes.” Nats turned to Dead Boy. “Are they for real?” he asked. “Not another clever ruse of Sage Grimpenghast or one of the other Hell Lords that wants this territory?” “Near as I can tell they’re the real thing,” DB answered. “But if you really want to know, why not ask Steve?” “I sent Chronic out again,” explained Bill Reed. “Seems that the Parody Master, not content with chasing off Bookman’s Library, now wants to march his armies across the plains of Hell and so invade Earth by the back door. Grimpenghast’s agreed to let him in, and the route leads right through us.” Dead Boy rubbed his pale forehead. “Oh great.” Lee Bookman looked up sharply. “Are you saying that my Library is in the path of an imminent invasion?” A.L.F.RED looked up hopefully. “Are you saying the Parody Master’s little solider boys are heading in this direction?” Arnie Armbruster looked around urgently. “Do you have a bathroom in this place? Something with a toilet bowl that’s not made out of human bits?” Nats fielded all the questions. “Yes, yes, and second left down that hall. I can’t do a thing about getting you guys out of here without lowering the defences that keep the enemy away. But I don’t know whether those measures will keep out somebody – something – as powerful as the Parody Master, whose whole power seems to be to be more powerful than everything else.” “So we’re stuck here for a while,” realised Dr Blargelslarch. “I’ll need etching paper.” “You’re stuck here,” Bill Reed agreed. “And you’re drafted.” “Whoa,” whoaed Cody Harper. “Looks like the PM is getting his fingers into all kinds of pies. But the demoness who tricked you into dying is out for the count.” “Nats seemed okay,” Uhuna noted, more to herself than to her companion. “He must have heard that I died. He must know. But he seemed okay.” Cody tried to fathom all the undercurrents in what the Abhuman girl was saying. “I’m sure he was pretty broken up. It was a crisis. Guys cover their feelings up in a crisis. Or, y’know, always.” Uhuna turned sharply away from the mirror. “Let’s see something else, shall we?” “What?” asked Cody. “What shall we look at?” Uhuna picked another broken glass and wiped some dust off it with her sleeve. “Let’s see how Visionary is doing finding Naari.” Cody peered into the glass. “That’s not Visionary!” Miiri rose from her bath sleek and glistening and wrapped herself in a soft white towel. “Okay,” admitted Ruby Waver reluctantly, “I can see what the Brass Baron sees in you. With that body you could make a fortune as a centrefold.” Miiri was indifferent to the idea. “I do not seek to have the Baron as my master,” she answered. “If there was a way to leave Perfectgaard and find the others then I would take it.” “I’m working on it,” Asil told the others. “Give me time.” The three women were in one of the towers of the shining white castle of the Faerie Queene’s Elfguard Commander. Baron Brass had brought them to safety there when the Faerie Fayre had been attacked. In the days that followed he had been busy drilling his troops, but had also been assiduous in his courtship of the Lady Miiri for one hour each day between four and five in the afternoon. A pile of gifts was stacked carelessly in the corner of the chamber. “It is wrong to regret one’s beauty,” Miiri admitted. “Caphan women are taught to enhance their appearance to bring joy to their masters, but…” “But your beauty got you sold offworld to the Slimy Slaver Lovetoad,” Ruby completed the treasonous thought. “And now it’s got you locked in a tower with this powerful warrior knight panting at your… neck.” “We’re not locked in,” Asil pointed out. “We’re free to wander the keep and the grounds.” “Under escort,” Ruby countered. “And when we ask for news of the rest of our party, there never is any. We don’t know where that hut with chicken legs took Hallie and Visionary. We don’t know what became of George and Con… or Tanner.” “They are not dead,” Miiri declared, beginning the complicated job of slithering into her chainmail bikini once more. She picked up the little glass phial of wishing well water and hung it between her breasts. “They’re not, are they, Well?” “Alas, I have no means to know how fare your missing friends,” the water replied to her. “Once yearly I could change their fate, but not foretell their ends. Take comfort though that though they face much danger in their course, from what I’ve seen they’re cunning and not lacking in resource.” “George?” Asil asked. “Cunning?” “He got this far, didn’t he?” Ruby snorted. “That boy’s not going to give up just because there’s half a fairy kingdom between you.” “Give up what?” the innocent Lisa-clone asked. Ruby glanced over at Miiri. “She’s not really that naive is she? I mean, she knows about boys and girls?” “Asil is more than she seems,” the Caphan confirmed, “but she is also untouched by the world.” “Seems to me that George was pretty willing to touch her if…” “I wonder where Tanner went,” Asil cut in suddenly. “You know him best, Ruby. Where do you think he went? Why did he run off like that?” Ruby coloured. “What are you getting at?” “I think,” Miiri intervened delicately, “that it is time for us to go and review the troops. They like to parade for us. It encourages them.” “They salute for you,” muttered Ruby darkly. “That chainmail bikini gets them standing to attention.” “These warriors must soon follow Baron Brass into battle,” the Caphan answered. “They are brave and noble men, and it is our duty to shore up their resolve and prepare them for the fight. We have time to speak with them before the Baron makes his… daily duties.” She fastened the last clip on her exquisitely engineered costume and pulled on her red hooded cloak. “Come. We have work to do.” “That wasn’t Visionary,” Uhuna accused. “That was Miiri and the others.” “Uh, yeah,” agreed Cody. “These mirrors are sometimes a bit inaccurate. Especially if the viewer is a bit… distracted.” “You seemed distracted,” the princess noted. “And you are also standing at attention.” Cody blushed and turned away. “Maybe this mirror,” he suggested desperately. The goblin hordes had finished rampaging over the captured Fayre. The worst of the looting was over and the screaming had died down to a few muted sobbings. Most of the Fayregoers had fled into the night. The rest were being pegged out on the trophy racks ready for skinning. Con Johnstantine and George Gedney were led at spearpoint to the vast half-orc in the greasy black armour who was at the centre of the carnage. “Here they are, Boss Grujjj,” a soldier told him. “They have the stink of mortality to them.” The gore-splattered commander looked the prisoners up and down. George was sporting a ripe black eye and a bleeding nose from his struggles. Johnstantine had lost a button from his coat epaulette. “Who are you?” Grujjj demanded. Johnstantine grinned. “Us? We’re the people who are too important to talk with the hired help, that’s who we are. Take us to your Wyrm.” “Con,” hissed George. “Have you considered the idea of not irritating the hell out of the commander of the people pointing spears at us?” “Honestly,” the Englishman admitted, “no. Best to go with that you know, I always say.” He turned back to Grujjj. “Nothing personal, old sport. Some of my best friends are minions.” Boss Grujjj gestured and a goblin struck George in the stomach. The museum curator toppled over and was sick. “Every time you are insolent, your friend suffers,” the commander told Con. “Excellent,” the irritating Englishman approved. “So, the Wyrm? About, is he?” There was a sulphurous downdraught and a hot gust of pungent wind and the invisible dragon reappeared right above them and landed with its cart-sized head six inches from Johnstantine. “Big wyrm,” the Englishman noted. “Urk,” said George. “Yes,” agreed Ashbane, poking his nose down to within three inches of Johnstantine’s head. “Urk indeed.” A little flicker of flame licked out from the dragon’s lips. Johnstantine lit his cigarette on it. “So you’re the bloke that’s decided to conquer Faerie to get in good with the Parody Master, eh?” he started. George winced and waited for the gout of flame that would sear them both to charcoal. “I am,” agreed Ashbane. “The huge piles of spoils I’m accumulating and the chance to make humans squeal and scream are just bonuses. Who are you, mortals?” George fumbled to wipe his steamed-up spectacles. “Well, I’m not sure we should tell you anything past name, rank, and number,” he warned. “We’re prisoners of war – if you can call this slaughter of defenceless refugees and innocents war.” “I’m Con Johnstantine,” the irritating Englishman beamed up the dragon’s nostrils. “You’ve probably heard of me. I might owe you money. And this is George. You’ve definitely heard of him.” “He has?” the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity worried. “I thought you said I had to keep it secret that I’m…” “Everybody’s heard of him,” Con interrupted. “I bet you’ve heard of him, squire.” Ashbane focussed his table-sized multi-faceted eyes on the curator. “George?” he mused. “Come on,” Johnstantine prompted. “The stories found their way into the mythlands, I know they did.” He pointed back and forth between them with his index finger. “George… and the dragon.” There was a reaction amongst the orcs and goblins and trolls who were clustered around the prisoners (but not clustered too close, because Ashbane was known to have a literally explosive temper). A few of them backed away, pointing weapons. Some looked to see if the young man might have some kind of huge magic sword hidden somewhere. It didn’t seem likely. “Wait…” George stammered, looking across at Johnstantine. “What are you doing?” “George,” said Ashbane. “Yes, I have heard of you. I thought you’d be taller.” “Insert size joke here,” Con grinned. “Anyhow, old thing, George has never lost a fight with any dragon he’s ever fought. And I know you can read truth in men’s words so you’ve got to know I’m not kidding you here. Every single dragon he’s ever met he’s left in a steaming bloody puddle.” “Con…” hissed George Gedney as he looked up into a mouth full of teeth as tall as he was. “So that’s why we’re here, Ashbane,” Con Johnstantine concluded triumphantly. “George had come to challenge you, to kill you, then to stop your war.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Anyone fancy a side bet?” “That can’t be right,” Uhuna puzzled as the mirror swirled back to blackness. “I thought St George was a different George? With more armour and muscles?” Cody agreed. “That Con Johnstantine could stitch people up as an Olympic sport. I’m really envious.” Uhuna walked away. “I’m tired of manipulative people,” she confessed. “I’m tired of being manipulated. Maximess, The Hooded Hood, Holy Wedlock, Vermillion Vex, Sage Grimpenghast, Regret… I’m sick of it all.” Cody followed her hastily. “Hey, are you okay? Are you crying?” Uhuna shook her head, but she was keeping her face away from the young man in the surfer baggies. “I… thought I was gone, Cody. I thought it was all going to be pain and torture for eternity after this in one of Sage Grimpenghast’s hells, with Regret calling in every so often for a gloat about her and Bill. I didn’t expect a reprieve. In a way it’s worse, knowing what’s waiting for me.” Cody closed his hands on Uhuna’s shoulders and gathered her so she could press her face to his chest. “It’s okay. Really. I don’t know how we got here, or even where here is, but I’m guessing it’s some kind of holding place.” “I can feel that too,” the princess agreed. “But it’s a temporary place, don’t you sense that? Somewhere to lodge debris until it’s… moved on. Or dismantled because its not needed any more. Or called to somewhere worse.” She huddled deeper into Cody’s arms. “I’m scared,” she whispered. The problem with being a dude, Cody reflected, was that he wasn’t allowed to admit the same thing back. “You’ll be fine,” he bluffed instead. “Well, assuming dad chooses to try and get me out instead of sticking with perky little Kara.” His voice caught on the name of his alternative sister and Uhuna looked up and saw that Cody was hurting too. “Oh…” she said. It was hard to tell who started the kiss. It was even harder to tell who stopped it, but it was a long time later. “We…” Uhuna gasped, backing out of Cody’s arms. “I mean…” “Yeah,” Cody agreed, folding his hands found his midriff and turning aside. “It’s just…” He turned away awkwardly and grasped the first straw that came to him.. “Hey, maybe that mirror can show us Visionary?” “There it is,” Fleabot announced, dripping slime from his clockwork. “The Forbidden Forest. Now could someone please wipe this manticore goo off me?” “It’s technically not manticore goo Flapjack clarified, flourishing a rag handkerchief that was probably against the Geneva convention. “Not considering the route you had to go through to stop it after you’d been eaten. And the way you had to exit.” “Shut up,” the robot flea told him. “I could probably manage to burrow my way out of one more digestive system, the mood I’m in right now.” Vizh was distracted. “Why is it called the Forbidden Forest?” he worried. “Who forbade it? Is it some kind of ‘get of my lawn, you damn kids’ thing, or what? And whose lawn is it?” “Well,” Hallie reminded him, “back at that last village…” “That wasn’t a village,” Fleabot complained. “Those people were saving up to afford hovels.” “Back there, they said the forest was under the protection of a Great Lady. You could hear the capitals.” “And she’d got a stolen girl kept in a secret cottage,” Vizh went on. “Camellia of the Fey stole Naari.” “This was a more grown-up girl,” Flapjack leered. “Probably never met a man before.” “And what a choice we’re presenting her with,” Fleabot snapped. “Can we get on with striding blindly into the next cliché fantasy trap please? Only I’m going to need winding up again soon.” He growled at Flapjack. “No more jokes.” Hallie kindly turned the key on the robot flea’s back. “There we are. You’re good for another… how long does that spring keep you going here anyway.” “Until it’s narratively amusing for it not to,” grumbled Fleabot. “Come on. If Visionary goes first we can work out what we’re up against while they’re eating him.” Hallie gestured for Vizh to lead the way into the tangled thorn bushes. “I have no pants, you know,” he complained. Hallie gestured to the abbreviated pixie outfit she’d been allotted on entry to faerie. She knew after twenty-four hours in the Faerie Fayre that whatever outfit she bought to wear transformed into this in less than ten minutes. “You think that’s bad? Look at this.” Vizh did as he was told. Hallie blushed. “You can stop looking now,” she snapped at him. Vizh tripped over a tree root and vanished into the brambles. A light drizzle turned into heavy rain as they pressed on. Promising trails all lead into sucking mud holes. Thorns seemed to delight in snaring bare legs. The trees grew thicker until the canopy blocked out almost all the daylight. Then the daylight itself began to fail. “Standard haunted wood stuff,” Flapjack assured them. “Tonight we’ll probably get wolves. There’s good eating on a wolf.” “I’ve dealt with haunted forests before,” Hallie comforted them. “Mostly in Neverwinter Nights.” She thought a bit more. “Of course, it’ll be harder to restart with a new life here.” “Without a compass we’ll never get anywhere,” Vizh despaired. “We’re probably walking round in circles.” “Faerie doesn’t have an electromagnetic field,” Fleabot pointed out. “Besides,” Flapjack added, rummaging in the front of his hose for a leftover leg of chicken, “spirals are the oldest form of pattern. Go round and round getting nearer to the middle all the time. That’s pretty much what human thought patterns are. No wonder people have been carving spirals on rocks since they first worked out how to use bits of flint.” There were no takers as he offered round the chicken. Hallie spotted the carving on the moss-covered stone she’d slumped against. It was an ancient design: a spiral, a ring and a cup. “Flapjack? Have you actually been guiding us all this time you’ve claimed to be guiding us? Have we actually been following a trail of these carvings?” “Well, sure,” the hunchbacked butler admitted. “But it was more fun when Vizh thought he was wandering blindly.” Visionary scraped some of the moss off the dolmen. “A spiral,” he agreed. “So we’re not lost?” “Of course we’re lost,” Flapjack told him. “That’s the whole point. You can’t get anywhere in places like this till you’re lost in the woods.” He leered happily at the cup and ring carving – or at least it was some kind of longish bulbous-ended object and some kind of hole. “Then anything can happen,” he concluded. “Very true,” agreed Woodbend Windyway. “Very true indeed.” “Hey, wait!” objected Cody as the mirror darkened. “You can’t stop there.” He rapped it sharply. “Come on. Give us more!” “So who are you again?” Vizh asked as he peered across the campfire at the lanky dishevelled visitor. “I think the Juniors mentioned meeting you once at that hallucigenic Christmas party but…” “He’s a cosmic office holder,” Hallie supplied. “Like Lisa or George. He’s the Warden of the Interfaces, whatever that is.” “I’m all out of business cards,” Woodbend apologised. “Then again, I never expected you people to slam a big Celestian forcefield around Earth trapping me here in the Inner Realms. On the bright side it has stopped that nasty big wyrm from getting reinforcements from the Parody Master and it’s shifted attention towards what’s happening in the Abyssal Layers. But I’m missing the chance to see what’s happening on Caph IX right now.” “Caph?” Vizh recognised the name of the world in the constellation of Cassiopeia from which Miiri and the other former slave girls had originally come. “Something’s happening on Caph?” “How should I know,” shrugged Woodbend Windyway. “I can’t even find out what’s happening in the Swordrealms.” He sighed. “I really suck at this job.” “Was there a special reason you came to be useless to us?” Fleabot prompted the scruffy scarecrow, “Or is this just a general purpose whinging visit?” Woodbend looked offended. “I wasn’t whingeing,” he said with dignity. “Merely pondering life’s many twists and turns.” He pointed to Hallie and Vizh and chuckled at some secret joke. “But you have information?” Vizh checked. “For us. You’re the major plot revelation we’ve been waiting for?” “Oh please,” Hallie begged him. “It’s been so long since Naari was taken. We have to find her soon or it’ll be too late for the cell restoration process to correct her genetic damage! And she’s all alone!” “Well actually she’s not,” Woodbend replied before slamming his hands over his mouth. “Sorry,” he said in muffled tones. “I should know by now that to Ward the Interfaces I have to be careful what I give away.” “Well what can you give away?” Hallie asked persuasively. “Anything would help.” Woodbend considered this. “Well, I can at least fill you in on the politics of your daughter’s kidnap,” he agreed. “That’s only fair. And then warn you about the Gothanmanders.” “Gothanmanders?” Vizh didn’t even like the sound of the word. “Brr, yes,” shuddered Woodbend. “Anyhow, it all comes down to the personification of Faerie – the Faerie Queene.” “I met her,” Vizh remembered. “She was dating the Hooded Hood.” Flapjack chuckled in vicarious triumph. “Mab is the current aspect of the Faerie Queene,” Woodbend agreed. “In some senses the Queene is the land. But the aspect of her that is ascendant can change. There can be transition.” “Camellia of the Fey wants to be the new Faerie Queene, a new aspect,” Hallie suggested. “Except she can’t, so she wants to raise Naari as contender for the throne and rule through her. We got that from the Hag.” “Mmm… hags,” smiled Flapjack happily. “But Naari’s not the first child that Camellia has brought here,” Woodbend Windyway pointed out. “Not by a long chalk. It’s just that all the others proved… unsuitable.” “Unsuitable,” Fleabot noted. “Is that a euphemism for not needed any more?” “It’s a euphemism for taken into the cellar by the thing Camellia calls Auntie and never seen again,” the Keeper of Interfaces confessed. “This is a Faerie Tale. Go deep enough and there’s bone and blood.” “Life and death,” Hallie breathed. “What happens to the little girl Camellia was training up before she got hold of the former Chronicler of Stories’ daughter? What happens to Naari if she isn’t the key to success that Camellia thinks?” “All good questions,” agreed Woodbend Windyway. “All answered by a visit to the cottage in the clearing in the woods that’s about five minutes brambles in that direction. I’d really appreciate you untangling this one because it’s giving me a real headache not knowing whether the transition is going to, er, transit.” Vizh peered out of the ring of firelight. “Auntie’s cottage? It’s that near?” Woodbend Windyway hastily rose to his feet. “And that brings me to the other point. Watch out for the Gothanmanders. Really.” Then he raced away through the forest just as the howling started and the huge grey beasts broke through the clearing and fell upon the travellers. “No!” Cody called. “Come on! More!” The mirror remained stubbornly dark. “Come away,” Uhuna advised him. “Maybe we can try another mirror?” The young man reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged off. “The trouble with this place,” he complained, “is that it’s nothing but fragments. Broken pieces, unfinished. And they seem to go on forever.” “Like us,” the Abhuman girl suggested. “Cody, about before… That kiss…” “I know. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Well, not with my head.” “It’s just that I’ve… made that mistake before. More than once.” She thought a bit more. “Lots of times really,” she giggled. Then she glanced over at Cody speculatively. “Let’s try this mirror,” he said, hastily. Gatherings like this were forbidden, of course; but that didn’t stop the people gathering. They came together secretly by night, avoiding patrols that were stretched too thin, ignored by collaborator mercenaries who knew better than to follow into the shadows of the conquered city. So the Caphans gathered. There in the cellars they whispered and told their stories, and then there were songs. They sang The Lost Daughters of Ygrail, of course, and The March of Gaath. But there were also newer favourites, the forbidden ballads like Vaahir and Kaara and The Ley of the Nine Exiles. And at tonight’s gathering, in one of the old auction pits of the Market Quarter, everyone fell silent while a young slave girl with a beautiful voice performed a poignant pitch-perfect rendering of The Promise of Kiivan and Ohanna. “Oh promise me, Ohanna cried, the ancient rights of all - Protection for your people, justice, honour; hear our call. Oh promise, me, Ohanna asked, to serve as Caliph should, To stand for us with your last breath, to spend your dying blood. For here I hold in bloody hands the treasures of your reign The things my House died to protect to help Caph rise again. Here Gaath’s great sword, Ohanna called, that Emirs held of yore - Mine to bestow upon the Lord who’ll make Caph free once more.” Every people has them, the secret songs that come from the darkest times. Kum By Ya, My Lord…, Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory…, By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat and Wept When We Remembered Zion… They’re sung by desperate men and women in desperate moments, and the singing of them binds together hurting, heartbroken, lost souls into something greater: something with a promise. “That is your right, Prince Kiivan owned, and right of all our race, Who have not always had their rights nor had their lawful place, And so for you, Prince Kiivan vowed, and every Caphan soul - I am your Lord, I’ll do what’s right, and one day I’ll be whole. Then wrongs shall be amended and then all oppressions cease. Then I’ll return and lead you to a day of joy and peace, I promise you, Ohanna, that our world will see new starts. This is my blood oath, Kiivan said, so hold it in your hearts.” Then the girl fell silent, and the room with her. For a moment the hope was tangible enough to touch, the need hard enough to forge into bullets. There are some songs that people die for, or live for. Then the door splintered in. The Thonnagarian warriors surged through it, weapons high, to arrest the dissidents. Except they didn’t. The first Pigeonwarrior through the door tumbled back with a throwing blade in his neck. The second oriented on the knifeman rising from the shadows and so missed the woman who raised one bronze-gold artificial wing and snapped the soldier’s neck like a twig. The attackers recognised who they were up against even as the Caphans in the hideout did. “Vaahir,” went the whisper, frightened or exalted. “Vaahir of Viigo!” “Shazana Pel!” The forbidden hero of Caph didn’t waste time announcing himself or acknowledging his identity. He moved forward with a deadly grace and launched himself into the mass of arresting officers. Shazana Pel’s combat wings ripped through the heavy mantle that had concealed them and sliced out at the surprised Thonnagarians to whom this renegade was a nightmare bogeyman. “Pull yourselves together!” barked Varana Kep, commanding the surprised stormtroopers. “They’re only two! Use your weapons, take them alive!” Then he span away as another of Vaahir’s knives barely missed his throat and took him in the arm. As he toppled he noted that the blade had been wrapped in thin stands of copper to weaken his z-alloy wristband’s gravity-manipulation defensive effects. Of course Shazana Pel, formerly of the Thannagarian elite, would know how to do that, the kva’kron zhonga-kha. There were twenty-six heavily-armed Pigeonwarriors in Varana Kep’s interrogation squad, more than enough to intimidate a cowed and conquered population. They’d come equipped to detain, not for heavy combat. They were looking for information and a little sport, not for war. Vaahir and Shazana Pel cut through them with ruthless ferocity. Even then the two resistance fighters should have been overcome. The Thonnagarians fell back, readying their heavier weapons, the gravity rifles and sonic grenades. But one of the Caphan women by the doorway pulled a pair of wicked needle daggers from her silks and jammed them into a Pigeonwarrior’s throat. Her master caught another attacker by the neck and snapped it cleanly. And then the entire room fell upon the Pigeonwarriors. Varana Kep watched the slaughter, then seized the little girl with the lovely voice and held his battleaxe to her neck. “I go unharmed,” he warned Vaahir, “or she dies.” Vaahir glanced over at Shazana Pel. The fierce Pigeonwoman was already launching her battle mace. It soared across the room at terminal velocity, charged with gravitic potential from her own z-alloy. Kep saw it flying towards him and was distracted enough for the child to jab her own concealed houri dagger exactly where her mother had taught her to if somebody tried to raid her. The mace slammed into the wall beside Varana Kep as it had always been intended to. The interrogator folded over screaming as Vaahir snatched the girl from him then slammed a boot onto the Pigeonwarrior’s face. “We are not a victim people,” Vaahir of Viigo told his captive. “None of us. We all fight, master and slave, until all of us are free.” “Well done,” Shazana Pell approved of the trembling child and of all the shocked, startled people in the speakeasy. “Tomorrow there will be something new to sing about.” “It’s you, isn’t it?” an awed and aged Caphan man asked. “The good Pigeonwarrior, who champions our Caliph?” “Good?” snorted Pel, amused. “I’m awesome.” “Lord Vaahir,” the slave woman who had struck first said, falling to her knees before him. All the others joined her. “Thank you.” She screwed up her courage and asked, “Master, is it… is it true that Prince Kiivan will return?” “Yes,” agreed the forbidden hero. “He trains and prepared daily. He makes his plans, gathers his alliances. When he returns Caph will never have seen such a Caliph.” The singing child dared another question. “And Ohanna? Is the Lady Ohanna beside him?” “She’s with him always,” Pel told her. “And when she returns then Caph will never have seen such a Caliph. I can promise you that.” The girl’s mother tried to quieten the child, but the little singer was full of questions. “What about Lady Kaara, Lord Vaahir? Will she return too, like it says in the song about you? Will she come to be your best beloved, most favoured of all your slaves? Will you own her at last and forever?” Vaahir’s face took on a strange, distant expression. “Some prizes cannot be bought for gold,” he answered. “Some rewards only come after long trials and blood. But if I live, and for as long as I live, so she wills it Kaara will be mine. And I hers.” Shazana Pel had had enough of Caphan mythmaking now. She pulled up the sobbing Varana Kep, Thonnagarian interrogator, and hauled him to his feet. “We have to go. We have what we came for, this piece of t’vlek, who can tell us the truth behind certain rumours that the Thonnagarians intend to surrender to the Parody Master and offer up this world in exchange for a place in his armies of conquest.” “And to answer for atrocities he and his men have committed in the name of information gathering,” added Vaahir. Kep shied away from the angry free Caphan who was not tied down or beaten to submission. “He will answer all our purposes,” Pel promised. “Mine too. This is not our first meeting, Kep and I, but it will be our last.” “You’d all better disperse,” Vaahir told the Caphans. “The loss of a whole patrol will bring swift response and swifter retribution. But spread the word: Caph is not fallen. The fight goes on. The Caliph will come.” Three dozen Caphans scattered into the midnight city. The legends went on. “It’s good to know Pel’s alright,” said Uhuna. “I thought Vaahir had been sentenced to Plxtrzar though?” “I guess his year serving there is up,” guessed Cody. “Or else Plxtrazar has fallen to the Parody Master like everywhere else.” “I don’t like to think of the Parody Master’s legions marching across Caph,” Uhuna shuddered. “Surely somebody is doing something to stop it.” Prince Kiivan, Emir of All Caph, came to full wakefulness as he realised someone was in his sleeping room. With a smooth single movement he rolled over, pulled the Naicluvian Nerve Disruptor from beneath his pillow with one smooth motion and oriented it on the intruder. He froze when he saw it was Ohanna kneeling on the end of his bed. “Oh. You.” “Me,” the Caphan woman agreed, unflinching from the weapon aimed at her forehead. Kiivan lowered the gun. “My apologies, Anna. It’s been a while since…” For four years of their young lives, Kiivan and Ohanna has shared a bed in relative innocence. For the last two years they had slept alone, to remain in relative innocence. Kiivan was far from the bewildered deposed boy that Shazana Pel had saved from Thonnagarian murder now. And Ohanna was hardly the wide-eyed terrified girl who had run away from the invaders bearing the greatest treasures of Caph. In fact Ohanna was now… Kiivan blinked as his mind stumbled to wakefulness and he realised that his long time companion was once again dressed in the traditional garb of a Caphan pleasure slave. In their long exile tutelage the two children had usually adopted the dress and manners of their various hosts. Kiivan had never seen Ohanna – the adult Ohanna – in the skimpy silks and gold mesh traditionally worn by women of her high class. “You…” the prince said, distracted. “You’ve grown.” Perfectly painted lips curved into a satisfied smile. “So I have, your eminence,” she agreed. “And so have you.” A human teenaged male might have been abashed by Ohanna’s gaze at the tented bedsheets, but Kiivan merely snorted and grinned. “I take it from your formal garb that there is some special purpose for your visit, Lady Ohanna, Ekooria’s daughter?” he asked. “There is, Emir of All Caph,” she answered, dropping out of the Xnylonian tongue they’d adopted while visiting on the distant hidden world where they had been studying and shifting to the courtly high tongue of their own people. On her lips the words were soft and sweet, like liquid honey. “News has come from Lord Vaahir.” “From Vaahir,” the prince exclaimed, broken from his happy trance. He sat up and held out his hand for the message. Ohanna passed him the parchment. “The Thonnagarians lose their grip on Caph. They seek to sell it to the Parody Master.” The Emir scanned Vaahir’s terse lines. His face darkened. The girl beside him passed him another letter. “And this from my master,” she told him. “The Hooded Hood advises that it is time for you to act.” Vaahir read the second scroll. It contained rather more detailed suggestions. With contingencies. Finally he turned to Ohanna. “And you, my lady?” Ohanna bit her bottom lip for a moment in deep uncertainty. She knew what she had to say. She knew what she had to set Kiivan to do. She didn’t want him to die. “Your eminence… Kiivan… You once made me a promise. You made all Caph a promise.” Her sea-green eyes met his. “I think the time has come for you to fulfil it.” Only then did Kiivan notice that the Honour Sword of Gaath lay unsheathed across Ohanna’s thighs. “The time has come when you must take up the Emperor’s sword,” the youngest daughter of the House of Raael told him. She leaned forward, unhooked the gauzy veil that shadowed her face, and placed a soft kiss on his mouth. “You are worthy.” Kiivan reached out and clasped the sword hilt in one hand, the back of her head in the other to prolong the kiss. Finally, reluctantly, he released her and leaned away. “What are you to me, Ohanna?” Now it was the girl’s turn to be surprised. “My lord?” “Don’t hide behind formalities, Anna. What are you?” Kiivan hefted the sword aside so it wasn’t between them. “What are we?” “You are Emir of All Caph, and I am the slave assigned to care for your needs during your exile.” “All true, but not the truth,” Kiivan replied. “You have become far… far more than that. Than anything our Caphan traditions describe. You are not mine to own, being indentured to the Hooded Hood. Though perfectly and thoroughly trained – and… and dressed - you do not play the role of a pleasure slave. Though skilled in combat and lore you are not my leman or spy or bodyguard. You are… You are…” Ohanna swallowed. Her nervous motion set her tiny gold chains jingling. “What am I?” she asked him. “You are my match,” the Prince confessed. “Something new.” Ohanna looked uncertain. “I have tried hard to retain the qualities of a good vassal, Kiivan. It’s been hard, amongst so many different peoples, so many new ideas. I don’t mean to betray my upbringing or my House.” Kiivan caught her face again, cupped it in his hands. “New is not the same as bad,” he reminded her. “We want to change Caph, not restore it. Imagine what our people could accomplish if everyone on Caph was more like you.” Ohanna felt her eyes moistening. She blinked back tears and cursed herself for not using oil-based paints around her lashes. “Kiivan, I… I don’t want to send you to your death.” “I don’t want to lead you to yours,” the Emir replied. “You will come with me, won’t you?” “Of course. Always.” “I thought so. I knew so. It would be wrong to try and discard you now.” Or ever a seditious part of his mind added silently. “You’re bound to mess it up if I don’t come,” Ohanna added. Kiivan looked at her in disbelief. “I’m something new,” she told him quickly. “A slave who cheeks the Emir of All Caph. You like new.” Then they both burst into laughter. And then Kiivan picked up the Sword of Gaath, had Ohanna gird it on him, and went to war. Uhuna turned away from the glass. “That was so romantic,” she said in a small choked voice. “They fit together so well.” “It was a nice outfit,” Cody agreed. “Those Caphans know how to make nice outfits.” Uhuna caught herself tossing her hair and smoothing the front of her yellow bodyskin to accentuate her cleavage. “They didn’t throw themselves on each other, though,” she said fiercely, whether to Cody or herself she wasn’t sure. “Even though they wanted to.” “They didn’t,” Cody agreed. He was acutely aware how well the Abhuman princess managed to fill her costume. “Look, maybe we should be getting back? I don’t like to spend too much time in the hall of mirrors. It feels like it starts watching me instead. We can go to the outer hall. I’ve got some food stashed away there from that African city outside and…” Uhuna looked round sharply. “African?” she repeated. “You’ve been out and explored those ruins beyond the rift in the wall?” Cody was a little surprised at the girl’s sudden focus. “A bit,” he admitted. “I needed food and drink, and there’s none inside this broken fortress except for coffee beans and lots of bottles of alcohol.” We really don’t want to start getting drunk now he reminded himself. “So I scouted round, avoiding those monster things. That African city out through the crack in the wall, and the other one on the other side that looks like the Jetsons live there, and the places you can only glimpse when the fog lifts for a moment…” “The African city,” Uhuna persisted, “Cody, could it be Wakandybar?” The young man’s mouth dropped open as he realised what he’d been overlooking. “The missing country that the Parody Master scooped up and stole away? Yes. Yes it could!” “And the futuristic city? He also took Austernia, where the Austernals live.” “Those people, all those people, in those stasis webs…” Uhuna laid an exited hand on Cody’s chest. “Cody, this is where the Parody Master sent all those places he’s scooped out of time and space. Where he sent that secret base that Finny and Colonel Drury were caught in. We’ve found them!” “Well, the mists go on for miles, maybe thousands of miles,” Cody countered, but he was caught up in the excitement as well, too distracted to note just how wonderfully Uhuna squished against him as they jumped up and down. “But yeah, this might be the place. Wherever the place is.” Uhuna pulled away and picked one of the mirrors they hadn’t yet tried. “Then lets find out,” she said determinedly. “I want to know how you got sent here, why I got sent here. I want to know how to break all these people out of their trances. With those questions in mind, let’s see what these images have to show.” And she touched the cracked black surface and watched the images boil. The door exploded. Sir John de Jaboz rolled off the bed and grabbed his sword as the first splinters of the shattered woodwork sliced across the sheets and rattled off the opposite wall. He rose up in one swift motion ready to fight for his life against whatever new danger presented itself. Then he saw what he was up against. “Lileblanche?” The witch of Esperine was a high-end telekinetic telepath, perhaps the most powerful of her generation. Right now her blonde-red hair floated out in a great mantle around her livid face and her eyes glowed like the devil. A few shards of the door still floated uncertainly around her as she stepped into the room. “You!” she shouted. “Yes?” Sir John asked, hastily reaching for a torn bedsheet to wrap around his waist. “Can I help you?” “Traducer!” Lileblanche thundered. “Slime! Vile panderer, liar, and… and Knight Improbablar!” She used that last name as an insult, though Sir John de Jaboz was proud to be one of the elite defenders of the Swordrealms. “Viler than vile, worm…” “It’s clear that a princess’ upbringing isn’t sufficient to teach words bad enough for me,” the young knight offered. “What have I done, exactly?” His words seemed to break through the shell of fury that Lileblanche projected. She forced herself to calm a little. Her hair fell back to its usual folds, although unbound like a shawl. The remaining fragments of door clattered to the floor. The frame fell outwards with a loud crash. “You have ruined me,” the princess hissed. Sir John de Jaboz blinked. “When?” he asked, puzzled. “More to the point, how?” She stormed into the room, her long court dresses swishing over the bare floorstones. “You know!” she accused him. “You know what you did. What they’re all saying, snickering behind their hands, laughing at me, the fallen princess!” “Er… no?” John’s ignorance seemed to irritate Lileblanche even more. “The rumours!” she told him. “The gossip and innuendo! It is broached around your court and mine that you have conquered me.” She spat. “They are saying that we are lovers, that you have taken me as your paramour!” The light dawned on the confused knight. “Ah. I see.” “Do you?” shouted Lileblanche. “You might be well pleased to be thought to have tamed a daughter of the High Sorceress, your blood enemy in our recent war. What a deed of manhood! But I have no wish to be thought a trollop who would crawl into the bed of a Knight Improbablar, an enemy boy with little lore and less sense! I will not have them say it! I will not have you boast it!” “I haven’t said anything of the sort,” Sir John assured her. “No man would repeat such a claim in my presence unchallenged.” He sighed. “But you have to admit, we have spent much time together unchaperoned when we were sent to the world of the Lair Legion. We fought together much.” He sighed again. “Often against enemies.” Lileblanche’s hands closed into tight fists. “Well, so we are clear: I do not desire you. I find you hard, arrogant, insensitive, annoying, feeble, arrogant…” “You already said arrogant.” “See? You see? And you wonder why I despise you!” “If I was wondering that I couldn’t be insensitive, could I?” Lileblanche barely restrained her hands. “You think this a joke? You are my enemy, John de Jabez. It is only mutual survival that demands we temporarily ally.” “Well, I was hoping that this common threat might help weld out two peoples into one,” the knight admitted. “Our worlds of Swordrealms and Esperine have been dimensionally conjoined forever by the assaults of the Parody Master. Now we stand together or die apart as he prepares his war.” “We are enemies,” Lileblanche insisted. “If you ever doubt it then look to that old scar on your face.” She took a deep breath then finished her confession. “I was the one who put it there.” And then the thing was out in the open: princess and knight had fought before, briefly, at the terrible battle of Elsinore. “I know,” Sir John told her. “You’re hard to mistake. Or forget.” “You knew? All along? And you didn’t tell me?” fumed Lileblanche, her momentary penitence washed away in more fury. “Why you…” But whatever inadequate insults she might be formulating were lost as a new figure appeared in the shattered doorway. “Hello, cute-friends,” beamed Yo, pure thought being emissary from the Lair Legion. “Yo is to be hearing of shouting.” Lileblanche and John looked like stricken schoolchildren caught being naughty. “We were… discussing,” Sir John said. “Discussing how this… cur… has destroyed my reputation,” Princess Lileblanche blurted. “Yo is hearing from many peoples,” Yo agreed. “Yo is very happy for you both. Yo thinks you are loving each other very much.” “No,” Sir John protested. “Sir Yo, you don’t understand…” “We’re not…” Lileblanche objected at the same time. Yo beamed at them. “Is cute. Yo is to be knowing when is love. Yo is hoping you are like bunnies.” It took the two young people a moment to decode that, then Lileblanche blushed furiously and both spoke to put the confused thought being right. But Yo was already moving on. “Yo is to be sorry to interrupting of you at your playing,” s/he told them, “but Yo is to be here on important business. Yo is to be having things to say.” “Business,” Lileblanche forced herself to adopt a more formal stance. “Would it help if Sir John had pants on?” “Is not to be mattering,” Yo assured her. “Is not to be to you or to cute Sir John that Yo is needing to be talking.” S/he turned away and waved at a blank wall. “Is to be to them. Hello cute Cody and Uhuna! Yoo-hoo!” Uhuna’s jaw dropped. “Yo? You can see us?” “He can see us?” Cody echoed. “She. It. S/he.” “Yo is not able to be seeing you,” the pure thought being explained, “but Yo is usually knowing of when cute-Chronicler is checking up on Yo.” “Chronicler?” Cody puzzled. “The Chronicler of Stories?” Uhuna asked. “But he went…” Things dropped into place in her mind. “He went missing. When the Parody Master attacked the conceptual plane. His whole fortress of stories went missing.” “This is his place?” Cody asked. “The Chronicler’s place of Ravens and Destiny? No wonder it creeps me out to the maximum.” “Yo is thinking is to be important you are there,” Yo called through the mirror. “Yo is thinking you are to be finding of Chronicler if you can, and to be getting him back to work. Is not good to be that you are stucking where you are.” “And where are we?” Cody asked the mirror desperately. “What is this place?” Yo couldn’t hear them, only sense them. “If you are to be getting home, be telling of cute Mumphrey and cute Hatty that Yo and Enty are helping of Swordrealms to be getting of army. Is to be repairing of dreadnaught Bunny of Crossness to be fighting of uncute-Parody Master when is time coming and Celestian barriers are being down. Is to be Swordrealms and Esperine joining together in happiness and peace.” S/he gestured to Sir John and Lileblanche. “Also, is cute Sir John and cute Lileblanche to be in love!” Any denials from the hapless pair were lost as the mirror went dark. “Whoa,” said Cody. “So what do we do now?” It was two days later when they found the Chronicler’s cloak. There was no sign of the cosmic officer holder himself. “But I am sensing something,” Uhuna whispered. It was natural to whisper this deep in the halls of narrative. “A life, I think. Very weak.” Cody followed her through the debris-strewn chambers until she found a large pile of rubble from a fallen wall. “Under there?” he asked. It took the better part of three hours to clear the stones enough to find a hand. By the time they pulled the shattered body from the wreckage both Cody and Uhuna were exhausted. “Who is it?” Cody Harper asked, looking down at the broken and burned figure. “Is he really still alive?” “Somehow he is,” the Abhuman princess confirmed. “I can… I can heal him a little. But only if I transfer his wounds to us.” Cody winced. “That’s going to hurt. That’s a lot of wounds.” “Shared three ways it might be possible,” she apologised. “Look, he’s the only person we’ve found who’s not in that webbing stuff. He might be able to help us make sense of this stuff. I recognise him.” “One of the good guys?” “Oh yes.” She held out her palm to receive Cody’s hand. “May I?” “Sure,” Cody agreed, reluctantly. He hadn’t expected the princess to take his hand then lean across and kiss him. Only then did she lay her other hand on Amazing Guy’s chest and wake him up. “Wha?” the protector of the Parodyverse asked as he regained consciousness. “How long was I out?” He reached round with his cosmic awareness. “How did I get trapped in Comic-Book Limbo?” But the two people who could tell him were both slumped unconscious in each other’s arms. Next Time: Back on Earth, between the battles, life goes on. There are scores to settle, arguments to resolve, mysteries to investigate, and a night out with Dancer to survive. It’s not so much downtime as time out in UT#283: Life In Wartime Tie-Ins include Nymph O’Mania by Visionary Core Dump by the Manga Shoggoth Another Front by Hatman C for Chaos by CrazySugarFreakBoy “Curiouser and Curiouser,” Footnoted Alice Our main characters, Cody Harper and Princess Uhunalura, are both somewhat displaced individuals; hence their presence in Comic-Book Limbo. Cody Harper is the love child of Legionnaire Dr Al B. Harper and Kinki the Conqueress, daughter of the time-travelling Wang the Conqueror (a.k.a. Kink the Conqueror). Unfortunately, since Cody was conceived in a future that hasn’t yet happened and was then sent back in time to be raised in an orphanage (or by dingoes according to him), the teenager ceased to exist when his parent’s future-nookie was interrupted. Complicating things further is the appearance of Kara Harper, teenaged daughter of Al and Kinki who was conceived instead of Cody. Cody’s gift to translate any language was once thought to be a mutate ability, but has remained with him since all mutates lost their powers and is still unexplained. Princess Uhunalura Amalandriana Excelsior! is the youngest of the Abhuman royal family, a genetically engineered offshoot of the human race. The Abhumans disowned Uhuna when she accidentally ended up in bed with Nats (Bill Reed, q.v.), thus dishonouring her people and wrecking their genetic bloodline plans. Uhuna and Nats grew closer and planned to marry, but the machinations of the demonic Sage Grimpenghast and his agent the temptress Regret prevented that, ripping Nats from Uhuna’s side. The distraught Abhuman sought solace in a wild and prolonged fling with De Brown Streak, but now Josh Clement has also moved on since losing his mutate abilities. Uhuna’s Abhuman gift is to shift health and illness between people, and she recently bargained with Regret to be able to save CrazySugarFreakBoy! – and through him break the Parody Master’s Obedience Brands – at the cost of her life and soul. This is recounted in the story above, flashbacked from UT#273. Her subsequent appearance in Comic-Book Limbo was a surprise. Comic-Book Limbo is the place where the old forgotten concepts and characters of the Parodyverse end up, the place of power of the Hero Feeders (or Lurkers Behind), the creatures Cody describes in this story. It’s not been featured in our stories since UT#10-17. We now know it to be the place where the Parody Master projected the real estate he stole and placed in stasis, such as the African kingdom of Wakandybar, the Austernal city, and even the Chronicler of Stories’ Halls of Ravens and Destiny. Some remaining virtue of the Halls keeps the Hero Feeders at bay for now. The cracked mirrors are what remain of the Chronicler’s tools for doing his job of monitoring all the strands of narrative that make up the Parodyverse. Nats (Bill Reed) is a former Legionnaire who accidentally absorbed the powers and property of a Lord of Hell. Naturally, other ambitious Lords of Hell such as the demonic Sage Grimpenghast are keen to relieve him of it. Regret of the Damned was set to be Nats’ personal temptress by Grimenghast. Nats has recruited his own staff consisting of Chronic, an undead musician with the Devil’s Guitar, and the mysterious revenant Dead Boy. The Librarian (Leonard H. Bookman) is a current Legionnaire and keeper of the Lunar Public Library. However, the Lunar Public Library is currently not affiliated with the Intergalactic Order of Libraries, which has been taken over by agents of the Parody Master; is currently the sole repository of the massive central database removed from the Central Archive to deny it to the Parody Master; and is accidentally shifted to hell, to Nats’ domain, in the path of an invasion from (you guessed it) the Parody Master. A.L.F.RED is the Library’s robotic major domo and defence system. D.D., rather preoccupied while this chapter is happening, is the Library computers’ artificial intelligence. Dr Blargelslarch is Chair of the Friends of the Library, and an expatriate bachtrian from the planet Frammistat Eight. Arnie J Armbruster is a private eye/attorney for hire. Snookie Takahashi is his long suffering (and apparently satisfyingly squishy) secretary. Visionary is one of the earliest Legionnaires, a possibly-fake man who recently became a father. He was briefly a substitute Chronicler of Stories. His baby daughter Naari was cursed, crippled, and kidnapped by the Belle Dame Sans Merci Camellia of the Fay, a dark faerie. Visionary and various companions travelled to Faerie to recover the child, but have become split up in the turmoil of an insurrection if Faerie aimed at giving control of the Many Coloured Land to the Parody Master. Miiri of Caph former alien pleasure slave and mother of Naari, has been “rescued” by faerie knight the Brass Baron, and with Asil Ashling, Ruby Waver, and a bottled wishing well. All are being kept safe and secure in the castle of Perfectgaard. Heckblazer Con Johnstantine and new keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity George Gedney face the wyrm Ashbane. Tanner, mysterious lycanthrope from Mr Lye’s laundry of Doom, remains unaccounted for. Woodbend Windyway is a minor cosmic office holder, tasked to be the warden of the interfaces, responsible for maintaining proper boundaries in the Parodyverse. No wonder he always looked so untidy and unkempt. This is Woodbend’s second chronicled appearance, following his debut in last year’s unfinished Christmas round robin. Caph XI is a minor planet in the Andromeda nebula notable only for its beautiful green-skinned slave girls. It was recently conquered by Thonnagarian Pigeonwarriors, the last vestiges of their race, but Prince Kiivan, 12-year old Emir of All Caph, was rescued by renegade Thonaggarian Shazana Pel and the Hooded Hood. Since then the Hood has become sponsor (and technical owner) of Ohanna of Raael (Miiri’s little sister), keeper of the sacred treasures of Caph, and of the Caliph himself. Using the abilities of the Portal of Pretentiousness to send Kiivan and Ohanna through time to be trained in other places, six years have passed for the two youngsters while only a few months have passed since their departure from Caph. Meanwhile legendary Caphan rebel Vaahir of Viigo has been recruited to the struggle to free the conquered planet from its oppressors. After a long time provoking battles between the forces of the Parody Master and the Pigeonwarriors it looks as though the two enemies are finally reaching an accommodation that will not bode well for the Caphan peoples. And now Prince Kiivan is going home. This isn’t our first exposure to Caphan poetry. The form was discussed in Manga Shoggoth’s Ordinary Level Caphan Literature Examination, which them promoted the following excerpt to be published: Canto II Stanzas XII-XVII are my favourites: With trembling hearts they waited for their fate Poor exiles from their lost and blissful home No help left now but kneel low and await Their master’s will. They stayed to hear their doom. With tread like to colossus lords of old Regaliad in princely mustard gown Imperious Visionary as foretold Came to inspect his trophies with a frown. His noble gaze swept o’er the captured prize Who cowered eager for his royal word Afraid that he might cast out or despise Or slay them cruelly as they had heard. Yet pity moved his mighty, gentle heart And never did he do his chattels woe But embraced them and stood to take their part And brought them home to shield them from all foe. No art may speak the wonders of his lands His House of marvels where he ruled as master He healed his slaves with kind and gentle hands And sheltered them from peril and disaster. Prodigious was this Visionary king Or mighty size and strength and full of fight None could resist his will in anything The rest of him was just of medium height. Sir John de Jaboz and Princess Lileblance of Elsinore are young heroes from parallel Earths where magic and psionics rather than science are the norm. Their two worlds were catastrophically merged as part of a plot of conquest by the Parody Master, leading the knights of the Swordrealms and the witches of Esperine to war with each other, a war in which John and Lileblanche clashed as enemies. After the war Yo, pure genderless thought being of the Lair Legion, managed to unite the two peoples against the cultists of the Parody Master (to whom Lileblanche’s sister was due as a Bride). Sir John and Lileblanche represented their cultures in a diplomatic visit to Earth and fought beside the Junior Lair Legion before returning with Yo and NTU-150 to prepare their own combined world for battle. Clearly their relationship needs a little more working out. The Chronicler of Stories is one of the major cosmic office holders, and was a primary target for the parody Master, who held him to be a signal threat to his conquest of the Parodyverse. The Chronicler was apparently defeated and possibly destroyed in battle as his halls were cast into Comic-Book Limbo. A careful reading of UT#238 will indicate what happened then. Amazing Guy is the Protector of the Parodyverse, gifted with cosmic awareness and the ability to manipulate multiversal energies. He was present in the Hall of Narratives when the Parody Master attacked, and stood beside the Chronicler in the final battle. Amazing Guy’s home, the dimensionally wandering town of Littlesmallville, is amongst the galactic real estate cast by the parody master into stasis in Comic-Book Limbo. And now AG is awake. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
| Echo™ v3.0 beta © 2003-2006 Powermad Software |
|
|