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The Hooded Hood unfold the fate of the Xnylonian exile (or as DK would have it, wench)
Fri May 28, 2004 at 09:14:23 am EDT
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#153: Untold Tales of the Wedding of Ziles: Overactive Imagination
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#153: Untold Tales of the Wedding of Ziles: Overactive Imagination


Images and Poetry by Ziles


The universe beyond our worlds is stranger than we know, and very different from the places we call home. Out there, the lands are shaped by gross matter, by the piling up of stone and timber and metal to create dwellings, by the use of force to carve whole planets into the shape their inhabitants demand. They know nothing of the Deterior Realm, nor of how a concept field can craft imagination into reality, gently releasing the true shapes of rock and plant to make places of beauty and harmony.
    It was thus with our world once, long ago. Then we underwent a great change, an evolutionary shift that allowed some few of us to see beyond the immaterial to the realities beyond. Our ancient heroes won the twelve jewels, and used them to open the way to the Deterior, so all our houses could transform imagination into reality. Each of the twelve great houses took one of the gems for their own, and so it is to this day.
    The strangers who violated our secrecy knew nothing of this, nor of the delicate balances of thought and feeling with which our realms are built. With stealth and cunning they discovered the location of our planetary system from the closed databases of the Nacluv. Using resources tricked from the Thought Beings they penetrated our Concept Field and entered Xnylonian space. They knew nothing of us or our ways; yet they acted out of love.
    They loved Ziles.

    “Why so sad, child?” Oohi asked Ziles as she combed her daughter’s long pale tresses. “Not still thinking of your nightmares in the worlds beyond?”
    “They weren’t nightmares,” the young woman answered. “Not all of them. I made friends, did good.” She looked around her old room, unchanged since she had fled Xnylone all those years before. “Now it seems as though it never happened.”
    “The troubling ideas will fade,” her mother promised. She reached and laced a blooming kathai flower behind Ziles’ ear, clipping it in place with a beautiful silver clasp she had conceptualised herself. “It will soon be time to put aside childish things and take up your duties. One day you and Mathrun will lead our world to new greatness.”
    Ziles looked troubled. “Is what I saw from afar true, mother? Violence, fighting in the avenues? Faction struggling against faction, destroying the creations of those they oppose? Art lost and ideas shattered?”
    Oohi nodded sadly. “We sought to mould new beauty in discovery, but others would not let us,” she told Ziles. “Now only your alliance with the House of Weydoon can unite enough of us to bring our society from the brink of civil war.”
    “I do not love Mathrun, mother.”
    “I know,” Oohi told her gently, rubbing soft fingertips over her daughter’s forehead, “but that can be changed.”

The daughter of Oosama and Oohi was born gifted with a closeness to the Deterior Realm. As a child she was granted her house’s jewel, and the gem was bound to her for her lifetime. This was a controversial gift, for even then Oosama had many political enemies, but his might was growing and he insisted that his daughter be her generation’s gem-bearer. And indeed, Ziles was a talented mind-sculptor, adept at thought-weaving and idea-casting.
    But Ziles was ever wayward, with a wild romantic heart that led her far from Saraniueni Palace and the quiet studies her father ordained. So it was she discovered the old hermit Ekitai, who dwelled in subconscious caves beneath the Kashkinay Falls, where the wild mishral grow in fragrant clusters. Ekitai was a holy man, although many despised him as a follower of the old disciplines, and he taught Oosama’s daughter the forbidden arts; how to use the Deterior Realm to cloak herself in invisibility, how to test the private thoughts of another, how to change matter’s relationship with reality. He did not do these things from wickedness, but because he believed that a gem-holder should know how to use her jewel to its fullest potential. Ziles agreed with him, and was as dutiful in attending Ekitai’s lessons as she was undutiful in being groomed as her father’s heir.

    “Aaagh!” groaned Fin Fang Foom. “I mean, aaagh.” He stared around him at the crowded thoroughfare in the bustling city beneath the floating palace of Saraniueni. Although he and the Dark Knight had disguised themselves to look like locals, Foom through shapeshifting and DK using his extraordinary make-up skills, both of them were having trouble operating in the extra dimensions of Xnylone. These streets existed because somebody had conceived them, and remained because others believed in them.
    “We knew the Xnylonians had a different technology,” the Dark Knight growled. “Just try to act normally.”
    “Oh sure,” spat back the dragon. “Except Xnylonian doors don’t have hinges or doorknobs. They just imagine them open. And we can’t do that. And Xnylonians travel via ideas and emotions like we use subways.”
    “It’s disorienting, yes, but nothing a bit of willpower can’t deal with,” asserted DK. “I wish it wasn’t so damned sunny all the time, though.”
    “I never realised how hard it must have been for Ziles out in our universe,” Finny admitted. “How alien everything must have been to her. Not just how we behaved, but even how matter and energy behaved. I never knew how brave she was being.”
    “She’s being brave now as well,” the Dark Knight replied. “She’s got the idea that her world is coming apart…”
    “Well we did see the riots over in the Gardens of Grace and Beauty,” Foom noted. “Or the Gardens of Steaming Potholes and Sour Recriminations as they may have to rename them now.”
    “Whatever. Ziles thinks that only by coming home and becoming a martyr can she put things right. We have to stop her and find another way to sort things out.”
    “I know,” Fin Fang Foom agreed, “but right now we can’t even get doors to open.” He looked up to the palace above. “And the people here are dreaming a marriage for her.”

When Ziles was barely more than a child and not yet a woman, she came to understand what her father’s purpose for her was. At that time Oosama had already risen to be head of his House, and all those who had opposed his ascendance were disgraced or gone forever into the deeps of the Deterior Realm. Oosama’s voice was heard most often in the Senate of Xnylone, and when the arguments over the harnessing of the Gahream were at their most bitter it was he whose counsel prevailed.
    At that time the Gahream had been bound away for many generations. When the people of Xnylone had first discovered how to shape their thoughts into reality through the pathways the jewels made to the Deterior they had been unwise, and their darker desires had formed into demonic beings that preyed upon their fears and weaknesses. The Gahream were only bound at the cost of the lives of those first gem-bearers, who used their combined life-forces to create a concept in which the evil was bound. This was the ati, the dark portion of the Deterior which has been our nightmare ever since.
    In Oosama’s time many argued that our technology and mental discipline had grown greatly since the days of the first gem-bearers. Many normal Xnylonians now possessed abilities comparable to those only jewel owners had possessed in earlier generations. Could we not now make use of the bestial Gahreams, focussing their strength and hate to productive tasks, and so redeeming our forebears’ errors? Others argued that as we had become stronger so had the Gahreams, and that those few that has slipped from the ati over the centuries had proved as deadly and terrible as ever.
    Oosama guided us to a clever compromise. The Gahreams would not leave the ati, for binding them again might prove troublesome; but there was productive work they could be set to within their prison, and so their might could be properly harnessed to the benefit of all. For this and other solutions to our society’s problems, Oosama became the first amongst us.

    “So beautiful on your wedding day,” Oosama smiled at his daughter. “You have returned to us just in time.”
    “I came back of my own free will,” Ziles defied him, slapping away the mental embrace that seemed tainted with smugness. “Not because of the agents you sent to torment me, even the Gahream. And what was that Niles thing meant to be?”
    “But you came back,” her father said. “That’s the important thing. For a while we feared the crystal would be lost to us.”
    “And the crystal is so much more important that your daughter,” Ziles noted. “Where’s Ekitai?”
    Oosama feigned puzzlement. “The old hermit you used to play with when you were a child? Doesn’t he live in some concept-pocket beneath the Kashkinay Falls?”
    “He did,” Ziles frowned, “but there’s nothing and no-one there now, just a smudge of fear. So where is he?”
    “How should I know?” shrugged Oosama. “He was always a little unreliable.”
    Ziles bit back her reply and chose another. “And why does everything on Xnylone now have the psychic stink of the Gahream on it?” she demanded. “It reeks. Hardly a flower or tree or home or sculpture that doesn’t have their taint.”
    “I suspect your perceptions have been eroded by your time beyond our worlds,” Oosama told her. “There is no taint. The Gahream are chained in the ati as they always have been.”
    “But now you’re using them, aren’t you father?” Ziles accused. “Using them as labour-saving slaves, to re-imagine the things we have created so we don’t have to bother? Having them shore up the concept fields and service the thoughtways? And just like an offal butcher doesn’t smell the stink around him after a while, nobody here can perceive that the Gahream are pushing little bits of themselves into the things they recreate, gradually extending their being from the ati to the whole Deterior and then to here!”
    “What on Xnylone is a butcher?” asked her father. “No, don’t tell me. Another of those dreary things from the world of matter.” Oosama shook his head then fixed his mind on his wayward daughter. “The time for your defiance is over, Ziles. Now you will bend to my plans, because only I can save our worlds.”
    “The worlds only need saving because of what you have done, you foolish old man!” Ziles flung her hands out to the realm about them. “Don’t you hear the buzzing voices of the Gahream behind the angry arguments of the Houses? Don’t you see their oily sheen about the shattered ideas that litter our landscape? And all your shouting is drowning out the voices of those who really see what is going on, the only ones who can stop this.”
    “Enough!” thundered Oosama, and his will was like an iron hand upon Ziles. “You have said enough and done enough. You will conform. You will contract in marriage with the house of Weydoon. You will become one soul with Mathlun, and share with him your jewel and your destiny. And I will rise to be the greatest leader Xnylone has ever conceived.” He glared at his frightened, transfixed daughter. “It will be so!”

The other long-standing argument came from the division between the great houses now led by Oosama and Weydoon. While there were many complex issues, compounded by bitter history and many betrayals, the dispute could be characterised as a clash of beliefs about the nature of the Deterior. Oosama saw our technologies and talents as a means of scientific research. Weydoon felt they were tools of artistic achievement. Many others in the great houses took sides and so our world was polarised.
    Fresh from his triumph with the Gahream – for were not the dark spirits now gainfully employed crafting new concepts and doing menial work for their Xnylonian lords? – Oosama sought a solution to the schism that threatened to split our Senate and our society apart. Oosama and Oohi sought an alliance with Weydoon, a joining forged by marriage. They offered Ziles’ hand to Weydoon’s son, Mathrun.
    This was a great and generous gesture. As gem-bearer, Ziles was a rare prize. By taking Weydoon into Oosama’s house the two factions would be united, and the resulting coalition would be unstoppable. The only houses unsatisfied with the solution were the regressive elements that had already opposed harnessing the Gahream and that felt that Oosama was growing too powerful in the Senate. They could be ignored.
    But Ziles was unsatisfied also. She had seen in Mathrun and his father a darkness Oosama had not perceived; for had not Ziles spent long hours honing her empathy beneath the Kashkinay Falls? Mathrun carried with him the stink of ati, the darkness that comes from being close to the Gahream. Ziles rejected the alliance, for once she was bound to Mathrun he would share her jewel. With the amplifying powers of the gem he could sunder the chains of the Gahream and loose them to destroy all of Xnylone.

    “Ziles,” purred Mathrun, turning his handsome smile upon her. “You have grown so lovely. It seems that adversity has made you more beautiful than before.”
    Ziles tilted her head defiantly and looked beyond the perfect form into the black soul. “When did the Gahream gnaw out your heart and inhabit your body?” she asked her husband to be.
    “I am one of the new breed of Xnylonians,” Mathrun answered proudly. “We are not fettered by old superstitions and fear of our so-called darker sides. We freely own them as part of ourselves, and with them we will rise to even greater glories.”
    “And I thought you were just a hollow puppet now, silently screaming in horror at the black thing that operates you,” Ziles answered.
    “Well soon you will see,” Mathrun promised, cupping the girl’s chin and examining her flawlessness. “Soon we shall be one.”
    Ziles shuddered. “I still have to give my consent,” she answered. “You cannot wed me against my will, or the jewel you seek as key to the ati and the Gahream’s escape will be denied you.”
    “When the moment comes, all Xnylone will be joined in will, conceiving our wedding,” her betrothed reminded her. “So many dreamers, all dreaming a happy joining for Ziles and Mathrun. And this is Xnylone, where thoughts dictate reality. You are strong, daughter of Oohi, but I do not think you are strong enough to deny the will of your entire race.”
    Ziles closed her eyes. “I have to be,” she whispered.

So Ziles fled, a frightened girl with no companion but Roboti, her mechanical servitor. Using her skills she entered the Deterior Realm, plunging deeper than any had dared in living memory, pressing through the very concept fields that shield us from the universe outside. She stole a space-faring craft and escaped to the stars.
    In this way, Oosama’s daughter delayed her marriage to the house of Weydoon. She survived on the margins of galactic society, little better than a thief, using her psychic skills and her Xnylonian technologies to enter where she ought not and to pass unseen. So the seasons passed and Ziles grew in confidence and capacity; and so the raw girl became a woman of surpassing grace and spirit. Oosama and Oohi looked for her often, but ever her skills in manipulating the Deterior Realm thwarted their search.
    During her galactic adventures Ziles met the creatures who were eventually to invade our planet, and returned with them to the world whereon they dwelt, the imaginatively-named Earth. There she served as a champion amongst their fellowship of heroes, the Lair Legion. And with her in that fellowship were the last of the Makluan dragons, Fin Fang Foom, and a reanimated dead man known as the Dark Knight.
    It was they who would doom our world and bring all our future to nothing.

    It was hard to climb mountains that didn’t exist to reach a palace in the skies. Fin Fang Foom and the Dark Knight had journeyed uncountable distance from Earth, through space and time, through dimensions of thought, through emotion and concept. They had fought with things that sought to tear their minds apart, and their bodies bore as many scars as their souls. They were exhausted, wounded, seared with pain at every motion they made, every thought they took.
    And they climbed onwards.
    After a while they forgot everything but the journey. Forgot the other was beside them. Forgot who they were. Forgot everything but the climb and the destination, for that was the only way to prevail here. Stripped to the core, to the deepest part of themselves, the thing that remained, that somehow clung on to the jagged cliffs of being, was the hero.
    And the thought: Ziles needed them.

    The whole of Xnylonia turned their consciousnesses on the wedding of Ziles and Mathrun. The street-fighting stopped, the devastation halted as one by one every mind in Xnylone imagined the ceremony. In their minds’ eyes every one of them was there on the steps of the Saraniueni Palace under the rolling blue clouds of sunset, as Heiwa, the secret moon, rose in the purpling sky.
    Ziles looked beautiful, in formal silver bridal robes, her hair cascaded with kathai and wild mishral. At her own request her old servitor drone Roboti bore her train aloft. Her father Oosama and her mother Oohi walked her forward to be presented to Weydoon and Mathrun.
    All of Xnylone wanted this marriage. All of Xnylone wanted peace and harmony again, an end to the strife and bitterness. Only Ziles doubted the pact and what it would achieve. That is why she had come, and why she needed all Xnylone watching, linked in imagination at the moment of her marriage.

    Ziles could feel the pressure now, the weight of expectation of a whole race pressing upon her own will, suppressing her doubts, pushing her forward into wedlock. Even the jewel and the disciplines learned from Ekitai could not resist this inexorable expectation; as Oosama had foreseen.
    And behind the benevolent desperate hope of the Xnylonians was another will, the arrogant vicious mocking force of the Gahream, crowing in triumph.
    “I grant to the House of Weydoon this, my daughter Ziles, to be one with Mathrun in soul and flesh, now and unto eternity,” proclaimed Oosama in the traditional form.
    “And I grant to the House of Oosama this, my son Mathrun, to be one with Ziles in soul and flesh, now and unto eternity,” vowed Weydoon.
    Ziles knew the moment had come, the reason for her long self-imposed exile, the reason for her nameless crimes. She reached out for Roboti.
    “I, Mathrun, take Ziles to be my own, soul and flesh, now…” declared the Gahream inside Mathrun triumphantly, “and unto eternity.”
    The secret compartment inside the little robot slid open, and Ziles seized up the Celestian command circuit she had stolen from the wrecked Space Robot in her adventures in the Dead Galaxy. She linked her jewel’s psionic lattice to the most potent control device in the Parodyverse and she pressed her will into it.
    Ziles knew this would kill her, burn her out as if she had never existed, but in one lethal flash she could also use her gift to excise the Gahream forever, burn them even from the ati, destroy them utterly while they and all of Xnylone were linked watching her wedding. She could save her world and all it would cost was herself.
    “Goodbye,” Ziles said, and activated the circuit.
    But the power did not come. Her gem was quiescent, her will suppressed.
    “Your turn,” prompted Oosama to his daughter.
    In her confusion and shock, Ziles heard her voice speaking the words of joining: “I, Ziles, take Mathrun to be my own…”
    What had happened? What had gone wrong to hold back the will of a gem wielder so?
    “Soul and flesh…”
    Then Ziles understood. With sick horror she realised how she had underestimated the Gahream. She had fled all those years ago to prevent them gaining control of her mind-jewel to release themselves from the ati. She had never stopped to consider that there were eleven other gem-wielders on Xnylone.
    “Now…”
    Now the power of those eleven were turned upon her, holding back her own; and every one of them was now joined to the Gahream, under their control. This ceremony was not so the Gahream could break free. They were already free. It was about eliminating the very last vestige of threat to their absolute power. It was about revenge.
    “And unto eternity!”
    And Ziles had brought them the Celestian circuit, and with it the Gahream could amplify their power to cosmic levels, far beyond the worlds of Xnylone, extending the Deterior Realm everywhere. Ziles had given them the Parodyverse.
    “Yes,” grinned Mathrun, or the thing inside him. “At last you understand.”
    “Ziles and Mathrun have given their oaths before all the people,” called out Oosama triumphantly, blinded by his ambition, not understanding anything that was going on around him. “Do any say nay to this their alliance?”
    And then the big dragon tail smacked him thirty feet backwards into the doors of the palace, and Fin Fang Foom made his objection known.

    Ziles blinked in disbelief. She wondered for a moment if she had somehow imagined up the one thing she had wanted to see more than anything else. Then she knew she wouldn’t have been allowed to by the eleven gem-wielders who restrained her by their combined wills. There really was a fighting-mad three hundred foot dragon making war upon the Houses of Oosama and Wayloon.
    “Andy,” Ziles grinned, as the weight of a world suddenly seemed easy to bear.
    “Weddings are evil,” Finny growled, lashing his wings out to sweep away Oosama’s household guard.
    Eleven gem-wielders oppressing her? Ziles suddenly felt one of the wills fall away, and then a second and a third. She glanced around and saw a dark trenchcoated figure targeting the possessed psionics with lightning precision. “Greg?”
    The Dark Knight said nothing. He was concentrating on his battle with eight skilled psionic martial artists. But the frightening thing about the urban legend was this: he was grinning.
    “Aliens!” shrieked Wayloon, backing away in horror. “Outworlders from the margins of matter and energy!”
    “They will die,” promised Mathrun. And he released the Gahream.
    Ziles felt the wave of primal terror ripple around Xnylone as the ancient horrors burst from the Deterior Realm to fall upon Fin Fang Foom and the Dark Knight. For all their assumed sophistication, the people of Xnylone had been raised fearing Gahream as bogeymen. In their pride they had convinced themselves of their superiority over their dark shadows, had assumed courage to prod and poke the creatures they believed chained and helpless. But now the Gahream were free, racing at will through the minds and lives of the Xnylonians, and all their childhood terrors were back.
    “Ziles!” called Finny, “Make your move!”
    Ziles concentrated her will on the Celestian circuit. Then Mathrun hit her from behind and snatched the precious device from her. “Ah-ah. I can’t let any wife of mine play with such dangerous toys.”
    “I’m not your wife until the objection to our alliance is resolved,” Ziles pointed out. “So this isn’t domestic violence.” She kicked him in the head. “It’s just violence.”
    Mathrun snarled and reimagined himself into a form that was half-human half-Gahream.
    “What?” gasped Oosama, staggering back into the chaos and melee that his carefully planned political event had become. “What is this?” And to Ziles’ surprise he hurled himself at Mathrun. “Get off my little girl!”
    “Daddy!” shrieked Ziles as the Gahream tore him apart.
    “And now you, little chained dreamer” promised Mathrun.
    There were five gem-wielders still restraining Ziles; but none of them had studied long and long under the hermit Ekitai beneath the Kashkinay Falls. Ziles smashed them away with her anger, scattering them like ninepins, and then she turned back to destroy Mathrun.
    “Not yet,” called DK from under a pile of possessed Xnylonians who were reverting to their bestial shadow forms. “There’s too many. Use your brain!”
    Ziles delivered a nerve punch to Mathrun’s wrist, grabbed up the Celestian circuit that fell from his numbed hand, and dived into the Deterior Realm.
    The Gahream were gathered there waiting for her.
    “Right,” snarled the Xnylonian champion. “I was going to burn myself out killing you all, but now I don’t think I can do that. So instead I’m going to imagine some help.”
    The Gahream leaped forward.
    Ziles pushed all her power into the Celestian circuit, and cried out, “Lair Legion, LINE UP!”
    And three dozen Gahream exploded backwards in a spray of lighting. “Ho dark felons!” shouted Donar, hemigod of Thunder (just like Ziles remembered him). “Come forth and be smitten into small gooey chunkeths for the nonce!”
    “Yo is thinking these are to be being very nastying creatures that are to be needing a good rapiering.”
    “Whatever these darkling creatures are, they shall fall beneath the prowess of Pegasus!”
    “Okay, let’s see how well these shadow-things do against my Con Edison helmet!”
    “Spirits of the rotten soul, I shall bind them to oblivion!”
    “You oblivion em, I’ll tangle them in silly string, okay?”
    “Did you hear that? Somebody else shouted Lair Legion Line Up! It wasn’t me.”
    “Aw, shut up neo-spiffy and concentrate on kickin’ th’ enemy, willya?”
    They poured out of her, out of a part of Ziles that had nothing to do with Xnylone, that had never been corrupted by the taint of the Gahream: Goldeneyed and Exile and Lisa and Dancer and dull thud with Cressida and NTU-150 and Visionary and all the rest, racing forward in their fearless folly to take on creatures that made a world tremble. And wherever they smashed into the terrible Gahream, the monsters of hate and fear gave way.
    “That is to be because you are believing in cure Lair Legioning,” Yo explained to Ziles as she focussed her will on the Celestian circuit. “Although Yo thinks you should be to be believing in cute ManMan and Messenger and Chronic and De Brown Streak and Lisette and Al B. Harper and Dynamiting Boy and Saint and Captain Astounding and…”
    Ziles laughed out loud as the horror fell away from her and she charged forward with the Lair Legion one last time.

    Finny dropped the last mangled Gahream onto the steps of the Saranuieni palace. Already the nightmare creatures were melting away, back to the ahi, broken and powerless to brood and be trapped for the eternity they so often spoke of. “Okay, I need footnotes,” the Makluan dragon admitted. And as usual he looked round for Ziles.
    The Xnylonian woman shimmered to him from the Deterior realm. “The Gahream made their big move,” Ziles said simply. “And they’d have won everything. Except… well, except for my friends butting in.”
    “We just fight evil wherever we find it,” the Dark Knight answered gruffly. “It’s what we do.”
    “Oh rubbish!” answered Ziles, and gave him a kiss. “Thank you, Greg.”
    Finny resumed his Andy Dean form; and not because it was easier to smooch with or for any reason like that. “So what happened?”
    “Well, I burned out a perfectly good salvaged Celestian control circuit,” Ziles noted sadly. “But I did manage to get the Gahream to attack with their full strength with the whole of Xnylone linked together watching it. And of course they were rooting for the good guys.”
    “You mean us?” Andy said.
    “You and the others,” Ziles replied enigmatically. “But I’d never have been able to harness all that hope and valour and clothe it in dreams if it hadn’t been for… oh, just kiss me and stop asking so many questions!”
    Sometimes Fin Fang Foom could be a very wise dragon indeed.

And so Ziles returned to the worlds of Xnylonia. She founded her temple on the secret moon Heiwa, where the silver lakes tumble down into the eternal sea, and there she trains the eleven girls who have been selected to wield the other mind jewels. From there our worlds are reimagined, gradually restored to what they were; and one day we shall remake them even better.
    And to remind us of the future that might have been without the love and valour of two intruders from beyond the worlds we know, there is a sculpture of crystal and of memory, of a wyrm and a walking dead man, sparkling in the sunlight beside the Kashkinay falls, where the wild mishral grow.
    Sometimes Ziles walks there, when the sun is low; but what she imagines nobody can tell.



Coming Next: I seem to recall we left Nats somewhat married, so I suppose we’d better see how poor Uhuna is coping with being Mrs neo-spiffy. Sir Mumphrey Wilton decides it’s time to get to know the troops a little bit better. Visionary demonstrates escapology to the Junior LL. CSFB! expresses his views about Mr Epitome being on the team. Falcon on Trickshot. Tricky on Falc. That, plus Whitney finally finding out about Hatman being alive, should fill up 5500 words or so. You’ll find it in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Chats With Mumphrey, or Leadership Issues.



When You Wish Upon a Footnote…

As may be obvious after reading this chapter, the source of most of the material and plot is Ziles. This episode simply seeks to do the best it can to offer some closure to the ongoing story of the Xnylonian exile until such time as her author feels moved to take up keyboard once more. I’ve tried to be as faithful as possible to her concepts, and I hope she doesn’t feel I’ve been too unfair to the ideas behind Ziles’ flight for freedom.

The poetry and images attached to this chapter are all by Ziles, taken from her website at Ziles’ homepage. If like me your computer is set not to play Flash media you could instead try here. A second Ziles site at Xnylone.com now sadly seems to have disappeared. And that’s Ziles’ sexy voice introducing herself when you open the page. All the thumbnails on this page are linked to larger versions of the original art.

Finally, those of you wanting to read the original Ziles material – by Ziles – can get hold of the full story in Ziles Omnibus #0 and
Ziles vol 2 #1.

And special thanks in advance to KS and AG for hosting the replies part of the show.

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 © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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.





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