Book 3: Sound And Fury

  Ch: 7 Lilies That Fester

  In the eternal ether, lost among the endless, ersatz starfields and nebue of a countless bajillion worlds, waiting to be born, the Necromancer fpped his wings of long dried leather and bones. His massive, skeletal dragon form drifted gracefully to a halt at one of an infinite tangle of tiny fissures in the veil in the ‘local area’ as such things are considered between worlds.

  With a shrug of his aura, he became a tiny drake, less than seven yards long, hardly more than a hatchling. He wriggled through the fissure between worlds, into a dim, windswept and narrow fissure in a granite mountain, high above not much at all and far from anything important.

  The sting of a prime world’s magic began to prickle his aura, even inside the cave and out of direct sun or moonlight.

  Necro gasped with relief, when he found the linen wrapped packet lying in the middle of the cavern floor, just as Ghnash had promised. He smiled a toothy draconic and ghastly grin, as he slipped back into the void. It was time to collect his passengers.

  /

  Ghnash, Dannyl, Barry and Liam were all in the garden, painting drums together, decorating the skins with a precise and intricate symbol, copied from a diagram on an easel that the goblin provided.

  “One long single stroke, in one single breath… don’t spill the paint, it contains magic and blood, can’t be easily repced.” The goblin was softly chanting, coaching the group through a subtle magic not unlike Gary’s.

  The Fool’s Entrainment gift could encourage teamworks and synergy, while also improving the mental, physical and spiritual growth his subjects experienced while under his influence or tutege.

  Ghnash possessed something more subtle, but more sting. His touch on willing auras left traces of his own, allowing closer bonds in the group to form, creating a tribe with his prolonged presence, even as he taught his students his arts and magic.

  Wilf and Rio were thumping away in the corner of the garden, providing a slow, steady backbeat for their new, green uncle, gleefully participating in the slow building ritual witchcraft.

  Amy fgged count Liam and his party down at the garden gate, when they rode down from the castle for the party.

  “Hold on for a minute, your lordship, if you please.” She called out, wearing her full admiral’s regalia for the occasion.

  “We have a little spell finishing up at the moment… Let’s see to your mounts while we wait…”

  “They aren’t summoning anything…unnatural? Are they?” The count asked softly, a faint light of concern in his eyes.

  “No, we’re just setting up for a meeting.” She answered with a smile, while gathering the reins of the count’s party. “Some of the participants can’t attend in person, so we are making accommodations.”

  “That’s not tonight… right?” He asked nervously. “Some of my attendants and vassals are new and haven’t been… exposed to the…” He waved his hands around expressively, taking in the whole pce.

  “I was promised tonight would be ‘A Soft Landing’ and ‘On Training Wheels’.” The count compined sourly, as the art squad chanted incomprehensible words in unison, flourishing their brushes with a triumphant shout.

  I have a friend in town, he's heard your name,

  We can go out driving on Slow Hand Row…

  “These are spirit drums… They need to cure in the moonlight and be struck as the first light of dawn strikes them, then they need to attune for at least a full day… so no.” She answered sweetly, with a tart smile on her pretty face. “Tonight will be just a family gathering, my lord.”

  While she annoyed her uncle, the strange, musical art ritual carried on in the garden behind her.

  We could stay inside and py games, I don't know,

  And you could have a change of heart…

  Rikki, don't lose that number!

  You don't wanna call nobody else,

  Send it off in a letter to yourself!

  “If your lordship and his party would please remain here for a moment, I will return presently…” The smiling ss continued, digging the honorifics in deeper.

  “Amy, drop the ‘my lord’ this instant, or I’ll tell Becky.” The count replied calmly.

  “You started it, uncle Lima Bean.” She sassed, before dashing off with their horses… a feat which should have been impossible.

  One small, teenage girl in fancy pirate attire darted away with twenty horses held by the reins, all following obediently, prancing along in very close cadence and formation. The thudding of hooves on the wn joined the music as the horses vanished, leaving the count’s party standing at the gate, alone.

  As she led their mounts away and out of sight, she cheerily sang out to the herd. “We have a whole buffet set up, try the local wild oat and pear sad, Annie says it’s her favorite…”

  “Wait, so we have to wait here, but the horses can go in?” Lord Argent Douche’, marshal of Foresthome and the count’s second in command demanded sharply.

  “Remember who we are dealing with Argie…” Liam warned his military commander. “And remember that he’s been crippled for years now and is now coming back into his powers. We should expect some silliness and oddities.”

  “They are singing a song about numbers, led by what looks like the most handsome goblin I’ve ever seen… A goblin man in clothing?” The lord mopped his brow with a bright blue, checked fnnel cloth and sighed wearily.

  “My wife wanted to attend but I firmly denied her request. I see now how wise I truly was…” He murmured, as a goblin girl twirled by, dancing with wild abandon, arm in arm with a wooden, man sized, blue puppet that had no face.

  “Argie, I sent an invitation to your wife as we were leaving…” Liam muttered quietly to the older man. “My wife told me to…”

  “My lord! You know how Lucy gets around the occult…” The older man compined weakly, seeming to defte inside his coat of scarlet wool, embroidered with intricate scrollwork by that good woman herself. He fingered the stitchcraft at his cuffs and sighed fondly. “So be it, my lord.”

  “How long do you think they’ll leave us waitin’ milord?” Mallus, the captain of the count’s guard asked with a grin on his ugly and battered face.

  “If I hadn’t ridden up like a lord, we’d be inside already, I think.” Liam admitted, a little embarrassed by the awkward weirdness of it. “The art project finished a few minutes ago.”

  As if summoned by magic, and she probably was, Kree the Fool’s sugar wasp familiar buzzed over and spun a few zy loops in the air.

  “Follow me, humans! The party is about to begin!”

  /

  Down in the workshop, the Garies gathered in a huddle, all together, nearly crackling with nervous energy. As a result, Becky was stuck sitting on the workshop stairs, supervising them, to make sure they didn’t accidentally… Well, anything could happen, really.

  “Ok, guys…” Ward said with a grin. “We’re a bunch of socially awkward losers and nerds… And Shai says we can’t bust out a jam sesh tonight, because she doesn’t want any eldritch events popping off while she has guests.”

  A collective moan came up from the group, weirdly harmonized and oddly reverberant, as so many of the same voices breathed the same note into the living atmosphere of the workshop.

  Soft sparks of pale blue light began sparkling in the deepest shadows of the workshop, resolving into a legion of tiny, glowing animals, insects, birds and fish. The vast horde of critters swept out into the light; all crawling, swimming, flying or scuttling for the bright nterns hung from the rafters, where they vanished without any further effect.

  “She has a point, guys. We can bust loose in the sunshine tomorrow.” Ward promised the group.

  “Start thinking about what comes next and just rex. Some of us have been out of the loop for a while; so let’s just ease up into the happening and spread out, really naturally.”

  “Uh, what?” Gary asked, bleary and red eyed, as he passed the pipe to Ghnash. “We’re cool, man. Super cool. We’ll just hang out down here and talk… who’s got snacks?”

  “You have snacks, Gary… And no we are not going to hide in the basement and hickory smoke our brains, while the family has a party upstairs…” Becky grumbled, snatching the pipe away from her doofy, herb-addled brothers. “Potheads! The lot of you! Always have been!”

  “Aww!” They all sighed weakly, as the room developed an infestation of fluttering, glowing green moths, drifting from the nterns into the shadows.

  “Nope! Not happening, boys! Upstairs, now!” They all ambled up the steps into the common room. The sullen mob emerged into the space, grumbling about how ‘Girls Are Mean!’ and ‘No Fair!’ popping off occasionally.

  Becky drove the whole weird of Garies out into the garden…

  She’d secretly decided that was the only fitting term for a group of them; a weird of Garies… like a gaggle of geese, a congress of owls or a sparkle of unicorns.

  “Go on you jabbering monkeys. Shai’s rules; no more than two of you can join any song… and no magic!” She scolded them merrily as they scattered into the house and yard. “Nothing but trouble, the lot of them.” She sighed through a fond smile.

  /

  Hermit felt it arrive, thrumming in his web array, strung high up in the trees where he could monitor the humanoids in the valley below without causing a panic. It was certain, down in that valley, beside the ke, someone was making magic that sang in the same registers as the goblin king’s… but it was certainly not Ghnash.

  The goblin’s spells drifted and entangled the senses like mist among the trees, gentle and deceptive. His magic enticed and seduced. This spell spread out and reshaped reality to the mage’s will, imprinting his desires on the world with casual ease.

  Sunlight, shadows and the natural life forces all around, conspired to make things occur in ways subtle and surprising. The energies and craft involved in transforming the stony, low lying and scrubby little wedge of nd where the river entered the ke at the feet of the mountains into a whimsical paradise were beyond easy description. Shifty, shady, elusive and rgely mysterious, the workings themselves felt furtive and sneaky.

  Even though he couldn’t see the events directly, Hermit felt it happen from his nest on an east facing cliffside. After more than three hundred years in isotion, perfecting his crafts and arts, his web sensory array was a marvel. The complex magical working was able to detect subtle variations in the atmosphere and in the magical emanations and radiations swirling around the little town.

  There was a lot of it around, too. Suspiciously so, in a world with a magical density rating of css ‘D’.

  Worlds in the middle of D rank like this one were suitable for most sapient life forms, but the retively low magical density relegated them to the fourth, or even third tier among those who travel the void.

  On such a world, magical development would be severely stunted, without outside assistance, such intervention usually took the form of spiritual or divine bonds on most healthy worlds. This one had a robust etheric veil with some unique ws and innate restrictions, so Hermit suspected this world had a pantheon of some sort.

  He dug a little deeper into the soft, musical thrum of his complicated web structure, feeling for the higher registers.

  “Fey magic?” He murmured softly, as his web blossomed with sudden and sweetly choral music, sung softly in the unique frequencies of the fairy kin.

  “Fey magic indeed!” A tiny, sweetly piping voice sang from his web. “I’m Mariah, you must be uncle Hermit…”

  Sprawled neatly in his web, sat a tiny girl with fming red hair and glorious moth wings that might be autumn leaves at the height of their color, or bzing embers from a forest fire. “Uncle Ward sent me to get you, cause he says you’re shy and too much of a nerd to come to the party by yourself.”

  She smiled sweetly at the gigantic jumping spider and nodded. “I’m your date! Isn’t that fun?”

  He fumbled in the spidersilk satchel hidden behind his legs, searching for his voice, a musical instrument crafted of hides, bones and silk. Only with the device, could he approximate humanoid speech.

  “I speak spider… as do many of the guests at the party. Don’t worry, you will be hanging out in the vip room, we don’t want a panic among the normies.” The cheerful little pixie chattered at him, as she freed herself from his web with effortless grace.

  “Who are you, little pixie? Your kind seldom appear before me.” He danced at the creature, swaying his abdomen in non-threatening ways.

  “I’m Mariah, dryad of the Wildfire Plum grove!” She sang happily. “I’m barely a month old!” She grinned down at the gigantic spider and flitted around in a spiral. “Let’s go before the horsies eat all the sugar cubes!”

  Helpless before his raging curiosity, Hermit followed the flitting, fluttering ember through the sunlit woods, dashing across fields and over pastures unnoticed.

  “All the people are in the vilge for the party…” She chirped merrily. “Nobody will see us, and even if we do get seen…” She grinned wickedly, flying backwards for a moment to address him directly. “I’ll put a gmor on them, one that’ll make ‘em so drunk they’ll be seeing all kinds of stuff.”

  “Slow down, little sprite…” The gigantic spider murmured with a quick softshoe shuffle.

  “My name’s Mariah, and I’m the dryad of the Wildfire Plum grove, bug boy. Now follow me, or I’ll send uncle Gary out with a rolled up newspaper!”

  /

  When the tiny, fming moth winged girl in a sunflower printed sundress fluttered away toward the distant keshore, trailing sweet scented smoke and ephemeral, illusory embers in her wake sassed The gigantic spider, it took it in stride. Being gently bullied by the tiny, absurdly confident little creature was amusing and adorable.

  ‘And she called me uncle…’ That gave him feels in some ways he’d forgotten he could even feel, after so long, spent almost entirely alone.

  When she stopped and threatened to have him swatted with ‘a rolled up newspaper’, it kinda took him out at the knees. That’s an extra distressing sensation for a spider, they have way more knees to get taken out. For some reason, when the little critter made her silly threat, the gravity of the situation crashed down on the being like a ton of bricks.

  “Your uncle Gary… are you taking me to him?” He asked gently, when she gnced back for a moment.

  “Oh yeah, he’s there, along with the others. My papa says more of you are coming too, that’s weird, but hey, I’m an immortal, multifarious, non localized, pandimensional magical being…” She shrugged sweetly and twirled her skirts at him with a girlish giggle and smile. “Now come along, a bunch of you are waiting for you.”

  “I’ve met several of the others before, little one. Tell me about your uncle Gary.” Hermit urged her gently, since she had decided to fly backwards, to keep up the conversation on the move.

  Somehow, she managed to navigate the woodnds without watching where she was headed, infallibly avoiding any obstruction with deft and graceful maneuvers. “Uncle Gary is…” She gave another adorable little shrug and twirled her skirts again. “You’ll understand soon.”

  The flickering, fluttering little bug maiden led Hermit through the woodnds, around the more poputed areas and across a narrow span of the river, which the agile jumping spider leapt.

  Scores of humans and other beings were moving in and out of the tall, strange and extravagant garden inn that now loomed over the formerly dismal patch of rocky ground and shallow soil. Mature trees and shrubs graced the broad wns, among flower beds, herb and vegetable patches.

  A hotspring bath straight out of a Japanese cartoon steamed improbably beside the cool mountain ke, while a cluster of smaller buildings were scattered around the peaked, red tile roofed inn.

  Many people were moving about in the garden, enjoying some kind of celebration.

  Mariah and the arachnid observed the festivities from the thick, dark woods on the edge of the compound for a few seconds, before she silently indicated that he should discreetly enter the open basement door of a smaller, red roofed inn; one much like the main building in design. The fluffy white spider being slipped inside, unobserved, thanks to high hedges and thick woodnds behind the inn compound.

  In the dark, quiet interior, he felt much more rexed and far less exposed, even if it was a stranger’s house… it felt deeply welcoming though. The whole pce seemed to embrace Hermit with a warm and deeply hospitable aura of peace. It felt like a home…

  And what a home! Like Ghnash’s pce, the basement was a vast workshop and boratory, filled with an assortment of tools, both familiar and arcane. He felt that old familiar longing burn, deep inside; the desire to craft objects with human hands again. It struck him often, when visiting the goblin king’s home. Hermit spent a few seconds gazing at the workshop and admiring the partially completed projects on the benches and caught in cmps. There were musical instruments around; a guitar and a few drums id out awaiting assembly and a banjo shaping up on one workbench. Someone was building a complex crossbow of some kind in another corner of the workspace, while a short hafted ax sat in a cmp awaiting the file on another bench.

  “There you are, brother.” A warm and very familiar voice spoke from directly behind him, startling the arachnid from his revery with a jolt. “Nice to meet you in the flesh, I’m Ward, the guy you clowns have been calling ‘Borrowed Snake’...” He frowned in deep dissatisfaction for some reason, before continuing on. “Just call me Ward, alright Hermit?”

  It never failed to disturb Hermit, seeing his own human face stretched over a person who was not, but could have been… This guy took the uncanny valley and made it a yawning gulf filled with alien stars.

  Gary’s own former mug was too handsome to be real, in the idealized, fuzzy filter romance movie star kinda way, paired with a smile that was too even, wide and bright to be anything natural or mortal.

  “What you are feeling is very normal… I’m Ward, the local god of death, vengeance and the dryad of the Golden Fig Grove… I’m pretty spooky, spider bro.”

  “Wait, you cim to be a cod?!” Hermit demanded, so upset and confused that he tripped over his own feet and stumbled for a moment.

  “Yup, I’m a cod, want me to show you a mackerel? Should I feed the masses with fish and chips?” He chuckled and grinned like a huge asshole, confirming that this dude was definitely one of the family.

  While the weirdly too handsome version of Gary was chuckling over being asked if he thought he was a fish, Hermit desperately tried to recover from the spider equivalent of biting his own tongue while talking.

  “Seriously…” The spider muttered in a neat cross step that rattled on the fgstone floor in a tidy drumroll. “That’s a wild cim.”

  “Yes, I’m one of the local gods… don’t make a big deal about it.” He sighed after a few more seconds of abusing me with puns and fish jokes.

  “Both you and that little pixie both identify yourselves as ‘dryads’... what’s the deal?” He was just grasping at loose thread now, hoping to find anything he could cling to.

  “Yes, I’m a divine being. I am the essence of every golden fig tree on every world in every universe… and there are a ton of them out there. I am simultaneously each and every one of them, in every instance of reality where they exist.”

  He grinned and chuckled again. “It’s pretty complicated, I suppose. Mariah is my daughter, did she tell you she’s barely a month old?” He smiled, though this one was an honest and proud expression of deep joy.

  “The family is about to get a lot bigger, Hermit… And if you believe it, we’re getting even weirder.”

  /