#288: Untold Fairy Tales of the Parodyverse:
Mything, Presumed Dead,
or George and the Dragon
Previously:
Untold Tales #274: Dreams and Fantasies
Untold Tales #277: The Faerie Fayre
Untold Tales #282: Beyond the Fields We Know, or Through the Looking Glass
Untold Tales #285: Once Upon a One Last Time
Know, O Prince, that in the Age after the rise of the Parody Master and before the Fall of the Parodyverse there was an age undreamed of, when mighty armies clashed across the vasty plains and blood was spilled in the high crags that ridged the ends of the world. From dark places came the trolls and the orcs, the woses and dwimmerlaiks, the walking dead and the great wyrms from their sleep. Thither came the hosts of lights, the Elfguard and the high fay, the centaurs from Leyholme and the nomads from the utter North to stand against the strife. At Raavenscraag they clashed, and the forces of the dragon Ashbane were triumphant; then again at Hodur’s Ford, at Chasmbridge, in Sylvanvale. Until at last the ravening hordes were at the very Plain of Seeming and brought their terrible strength to bear on the lofty White Gate of Aayesgarth. There light and darkness met again to decide the doom of fey, and red was the dusk as their swords rathed together…
From above it was almost beautiful. The Elfguard cavalry’s armour caught the setting sun, glinting with their horses’ harness as they lowered ash lances fully twenty feet in length and charges across the churned up green. From the north fell the pictsies, defiant in their brash tartans, their faces and bodies painted with blue swirls, showering the enemy with elfshot. Southwards a company of dwarves made their slow determined charge across the field, a solid wall of steel behind shields as tall as the dour bearded warriors that bore them. Here and there a fantastic creature yet fought, a unicorn or wyvern or ki-rin, each dashing in where the fighting was the thickest.
From the shadows of the east came the invaders, grey and brown except for the bright red tabards of the Bloody Brotherhood. The endless ranks of screaming goblins were punctuated by more disciplined columns of orc raiders marching to their desolate drumbeats. Over their host winged wild harpies and manticores, and even two of the great reptiles roused from their centuries of slumber and hungry for flesh and gold.
On the shining walls of Aayesgarth the battle wizards and wise women stood, mantled in rainbow magics, casting runes of defence and spells of destruction down on the attackers. Behind the war host of the Wyrm the shamans and necromancers and skinny men shook their bones and made their blood sacrifices to press their armies on to gory victory.
“Forward, brothers!” called Captain Arkenweald. He had not expected command, for many knights of greater ranks had been assigned leadership of the armies of light; but to Arkenweald it had fallen, for the losses had been heavy in the six days the battle had been fought. “They waver,” he encouraged his weary men. “They cannot hold. Dig deep and mine new seams of valour, you dwarves. Remember the oaths you have taken, exiles of the north. Hold firm to your faith in your Queene, Paladins of the Guard. We stand for all that is right and we must not fail!”
On the ground there was no beauty. The battlefield was a churned bloody mudbath, bodies trampled under the desperate tides of the war. The White Gates yet stood, although they were blackened with flame and cracked by mighty curses. But Arkenweald stood before the gates, and he called to his men and his men stood with him. In his exhaustion and anguish he could still somehow sense the shape of the battle, and it felt to be on the brink; one small deed could turn it either way now. Victory was there for whichever side did not flinch.
“Forward!” Arkenweald shouted again. “In the name of all that is good, we shall defeat them!”
Weary soldiers ready to drop roused to the press as their commander battled forward. The silver banner of the Faerie Queene was ragged and smeared but it still flew over his head as he stepped into the heart of the battle. Orcs and goblins began to break before him and flee. Knights rode to the standard, forming a wedge that split the enemy forces, casting them into disarray.
And then the shadow fell on the battlefield. Night came early, but not the clean starry night of open skies and silence. This was old night as it had been in the terrors before the making of the world, and it pressed down on the Armies of Light like the end of hope. Rising above the war came S’Chen the Empty, Singularity Rider, Doomwraith, forged from the souls of a murdered race, servant of the Parody Master.
The heroes faltered. Their strength left them, sucked into the cold void shaped like silhouettes of man and rider . Their courage broke, and with it their ranks.
Captain Arkenweald tried to step forward to challenge the foul being. Then it turned to look at him.
“No man can stop me, Captain Arkenweald,” S’Chen whispered in the soldier’s mind. And the Singularity Rider laughed.
The Armies of Light were now a rout of terrified victims. Weapons clattered on the ground as they fled, back towards the White Gates, treading over each other as they ran. A vicious cheer rose up from the goblin army and they surged forward again, to start the slaughter.
***
Con Johnstantine picked his way across the orc camp on the edge of the last bloody battlefield beside what had been the Faerie Fayre. Nothing was left of the gay celebration now except for charred sticks and discarded remains. A long line of crucified prisoners rotted at the camp perimeter, the bodies defiled goblin-style, their eyelids peeled away so the crows could do their work.
The guards shuffled uneasily out of the Heckblazer’s way as he stared at them. He threaded over the mounds of loot that the conquerors were still arguing over and found his way to the sentried pavilion where George Gedney was waiting. He pushed the flap aside and backed in, still carrying the two steaming Styrofoam cups he’d navigated through the war zone. “There you go, chief. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get two double-decaf latés with chocolate sprinkles in a place like this.”
Then he saw that George was surrounded by over a dozen attractive young women.
“But I have to admit, you win the scavenger hunt,” the Heckblazer conceded.
“Stop it, Con,” George told him crossly. “They’re frightened enough without having to cope with a sarcastic Englishman.”
“Well, we can take turns comforting them,” Johnstantine suggested.
“No we can’t,” George insisted. “They are prisoners of war. Captured by the orcs to… be horrible to. We saved them.”
“We did?”
“We did. You convinced the Wyrm Ashbane that I was some kind of big dragon-killing hero come to give him some ceremonial challenge, that we should get put up in a luxury tent with everything we needed until it was time for the duel. The orcs thought that I might need a… a comfort woman, so…”
“So you ordered a dozen,” Johnstantine approved. “Bloody hell George, you learn fast.” He leered at the collection arrayed before him: delicate willowy elves, a busty dryad, a couple of supermodel nymphs, a few pretty peasant girls with their own rustic charms mostly showing through tattered blouses. “I’m bettering they’ll be pretty grateful.”
“We’re going to keep them safe,” George insisted. “They can sleep in the back of the tent. We’ll make do out here.”
A horrible realisation came over Con’s face. “You really mean this chivalry stuff don’t you? You’re going to…”
“What would Saint George have done?” the Willingham museum curator demanded.
“Judging by the old legends?” Johnstantine answered. “Well, he’d have started with that blonde there and…”
“We’re clearly reading different legends,” George replied. “Anyway, they were given to me, and I say they stay safe in the back until we can smuggle them to freedom.”
“After you’ve killed the dragon,” added Johnstantine.
George winced a little as his irritating companion pointed out the minor flaw in his rescue plan. “I thought since you’d got me into this that you’d have some devious sneaky way out of it.”
The English occultist looked a little bit sheepfaced. “Yeah, well, I was having to think fast, like. I had this idea that maybe we could take off during the preparations for the combat – a little bit of magic mushroom in the guards’ gruel, that kind of thing. I hadn’t expected Ashbane to make quite such a big deal out of it.”
“By inviting all his generals and allies to come and watch him devour the great George the Dragon-Slayer,” George accused.
“Yeah, that kind of thing. He’s going way over the top.” Johnstantine grinned. “On the bright side you are holding up the entire war while Ashbane comes up with public ways to barbeque you. And I brought coffee.”
***
The gardens of Perfectgaard were heady with the smells of foxglove and love-lies-bleeding. Miiri was sat on a narrow bench with a handsome knight on his knees before her. He was proposing marriage. Apparently by his stare he was proposing marriage to her chest.
“Many fair creatures have I seen in this magical kingdom,” announced Baron Brass of Perfectagaard, High Commander of the Queene’s Elfguard, leader of the defence against the armies of the Wyrm, “but never one so fair as thee. Never one so beauteous, so sensual, so fitted to be my wife. You are worthy of being my bride. I call for thy hand in troth, and thou shalt be Baroness of Perfectgaard, and all glory and wealth shall be thine. And also: me.”
Miiri carefully removed her hand from underneath the Baron’s lips and surreptitiously wiped it off on her red cloak. “I am sorry, my Lord, but my answer remains the same as ever. I am content as I am, and need no new master. I prefer to remain free.”
“You cannot understand the extent of what I am offering you,” the Brass Baron explained. “You would be my lady. See the castle here? And all the lands as far as the eye can see? They are mine, and would be yours under me. Treasures rare and exotic, a thousand servants, a high place in the Seelie Court, luxuries and honours to turn the head of any woman. Why there is no maiden in the land who would not swoon with delight at the thought of marrying the famous Brass Baron.”
“Then you might want to consider marrying one of them.”
“My sweet, none of them are your equal. None of them can match your… amazing charms. Why can you not see that we are destined for each other.” He stood up to his perfect six-foot four. “For we are destined for each other, my lady. Make no mistake about that.”
Miiri tried changing the subject. “I was hoping you might have some news from beyond these walls,” she admitted. “Is there any word of our friends who we… left behind at the Faerie Fayre - Johnstantine and George and Tanner? Or of our other friends who vanished when the attack began, Visionary, Hallie, Flapjack, and Fleabot?”
The wishing well water enclosed in a little crystal phial on Miiri’s bosom chimed in. “I couldn’t help but notice all the heralds at the gate. It seems very unlikely that you haven’t heard the fate of those we travelled on with and who vanished in the fray. Great generals have intelligence. What is your intel today?”
The Baron glared at the annoying liquid chaperone that marred his otherwise wonderful view of chainmail-bikinied perfection. “Many messengers bring news of the war. News of battles. Requests for orders. I have to direct things at the front, you know. I am a very important person.”
“You haven’t heard anything about Visionary then? Or of my lost baby Naari.”
A sly look came over Brass’ face. “It is said that the man you ask after entered the Forbidden Forest, where the dark fey Camellia awaited him with cruel and deadly intent,” he revealed. “Few escape the Belle Dame’s thrall with their bodies and souls intact.”
“Then I have to go to him,” declared Miiri, trying to rise. The Brass Baron pulled her back onto the loveseat.
“You could do nothing now to save him,” the Commander of the Elfguard told her. “He is beyond your power to save. Although…”
“Although?” asked the Caphan.
“If I could find them and see them safely returned home from whatever deadly peril they face, save them from destruction body and soul and see them hale and hearty back in the mortal realms,” he asked Miiri, “Then would you marry me?”
Miiri found herself nodding.
***
“Explain again what we are doing?” Asil demanded as she followed Ruby along dark draughty corridors in the heights of Perfectgaard. “And why I am following you.”
“We’re snooping,” Ruby Waver summarised. “And you’re with me because you know how to pick locks and I don’t.”
“Well that explains what I’m doing,” agreed Asil Ashling as she tumbled open the sixth complicated mechanism that Ruby had indicated. “It doesn’t explain why I’m doing it with you.”
The woman from the Laundry of Doom shrugged. “I’m persuasive,” she suggested.
“I guess so,” agreed Asil, “because this sign says Entry is forbidden on pain of death by torture most perilous.”
“Well that suggests there’s something really good behind there, doesn’t it?” Ruby pointed out. “Come on, you know you want to see what’s in there.”
“I don’t know that at all. I think we should be back with Miiri helping her to fend off that creepy Brass Baron, not lurking in forbidden towers heading into places that seem to have very nasty traps and very serious locks.”
Ruby snorted. “While Mr Perfect is busy with Miiri is the only time we could slip in here safely,” she argued. “And even someone as innocent as you has to know that nobody is as squeaky-clean as that Brass Baron pretends to be.”
“Visionary is.”
“I mean nobody real.”
“He’s real, dammit!”
“He’s really good at dragging his friends into trouble then disappearing,” Ruby accused. “I mean, here we are in some spooky fairy-tale castle, poor Miiri fending of fervent proposals from some demigod nobleman, and where is your idol? Nowhere in sight, that’s where.”
“His mission is to rescue Naari,” Asil defended her Great Man. “He will do that. He knows that is what we would want him to do.”
“Speak for yourself. I could do with the Lair Legion turning up in full force, flattening that Wyrm and the Brass Baron alike, then getting us first class tickets out of here.” She examined the next chamber. Like the others it was full of dusty trunks and cobwebbed portraits. Another spiral stair rose around the wall to a final tower chamber. “But since nobody’s coming to rescue us we need to do it ourselves. And first thing is to find out why this tower is forbidden.”
Asil looked nervously behind her. The torchlight has flickered, and she could have sworn something had just blocked the outside of the window for a moment.
“Come on,” Ruby coaxed. “We’ve come this far. One more lock and we’re done. Surely you learned something from all those adventures with Sir Mumphrey Wilton?”
“I learned when to stand back and not get slaughtered,” the Lisa-clone suggested.
“One more lock. Please?”
Asil moved forward with her homemade thieves’ tools. “This one is even more complex than the others. I can’t do it. I’d need to find a way to lift the tumblers in sequence and I can’t do it without specialist equipment that I don’t have and can’t make. Maybe not even then. I’m not Ziles.”
Ruby frowned, then came to a decision. “Okay then. Tell me what you need lifting and I’ll do it.”
“It doesn’t work like that. You needs months of practice with these tools. Ziles and DK made me try every day for…”
“I won’t use tools,” Ruby revealed. “I can… sometimes make things move just by thinking about it.”
“Telekinesis?”
“Don’t tell anybody. I really don’t want burning at the stake. Or turning into a superhero. But ever since that time I got kidnapped by Ultizon to remake the Supreme Interference and they pumped chemicals into my brain to stimulate my psionic abilities…”
“You can still do that?”
“Yeah. But like I said, I really don’t want to. Just describe what I’m looking for in this lock, what I have to shift, where it needs to go.”
Asil talked Ruby through the complicated process. On the third attempt there we a click. A wicked-looking needle-spike jabbed out from the door-handle.
“Ouch,” Ruby said. “If one of us had been actually using lockpicks to open that door…”
“Nasty,” agreed Asil. “But there might be worse on the other side.”
“So stay here,” Ruby said. “Keep watch. If I get into trouble you can go for help.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Just stay here, Asil. I’ll keep talking so you’ll know I’m okay. All I need to do is…”
As Ruby crossed the threshold onto the staircase to the upper chamber, a step shifted under her. A heavy iron portcullis crashed down behind her, cutting off her escape, separating her from Asil. An unpleasant series of clicks and clacks indicated that the portal had locked into place in the stonework below.
“Okay, that wasn’t so good,” Ruby admitted. “But there has to be a reset mechanism. You check for it on your side, I’ll check for it up here.”
“Be careful,” Asil warned. She considered for a moment whether she could slip through the lattice bars if she used her age-changing abilities to become a toddler; but even then the space would be too narrow. She padded back down the stairs to look for a hidden button or lever.
There was a sudden scream from above. Ruby’s scream.
Asil ran back. “Ruby? Ruby!”
There was no reply.
Asil raced back down the tight spiral stair three steps at once. Now she had to find a way through, and quickly. She briefly wondered whether she should call Miiri and the Baron, tell the Lord of Perfectgaard what they’d been doing, then remembered the warning signs. She rushed out into the circular chamber on the sixth floor of the tower.
A man was waiting for her. “Asil Ashling,” he said. He was tall and thin and he wore a cloak of some dark greasy material with a red sheen to it.
“Help me,” Asil asked him. “My friend is trapped in the tower above.”
The stranger seemed amused. “Of course she is,” he replied. “But I have no time to interfere with the Brass Baron’s entertainments tonight. I am not here as your friend.”
Asil looked around for a discarded weapon.
“Stand,” the stranger commanded her, and suddenly she couldn’t move.
“Who are you?” Asil demanded. “What do you want?”
The stranger winced. “Oh, such cliché.” He moved closer and sniffed Asil. “A true innocent,” he approved, “in so many ways. Oh this is wonderful.”
“I’m warning you,” Asil told him, “I have very powerful friends.”
“The dragonslayer? Yes, I saw you in his heart. That’s why I came.”
Asil puzzled. “Dragonslayer?” Had Visionary killed any dragons? Had Mumphrey?
“Sir George. Tonight he disports himself with the spoils of my victory, sating his lusts on the damsels of faerie. But tomorrow we shall meet in battle, he and I.” The stranger had eyes like a reptile, Asil realised, and they had hellfire cores. “I’m very much a traditionalist in these things, my dear. I think there should always be some toothsome stake to such contests. A damsel in distress.”
“Wait!” called Asil as he picked her up as if she weighed nothing. “Ruby! She’s in trouble!”
The Wyrm Ashbane lifted Asil easily, manoeuvred her through the window, then shifted back to his true shape. “Think how glad your George will be to have you to fight for on the morrow,” he laughed as he winged away with her.
***
The wet night gave was to a foggy morning high on Rath Askrigg, and for the third time running the chill dawn revealed more soldiers missing. Three of the watchmen had either deserted in the night or had been taken.
“Maybe we should decamp?” worried Captain Erundeus worried-looking young Faerie knight whose commanders were all dead. His silver armour was now tarnished and muddy and his elaborate braids had become a tangled mess or dirty yellow hair.
“If you lead them down into the passes now you are leading them to slaughter,” the woman said. She was one of a pair of travellers who had been caught up in then war, swept along with the threescore soldiers of the Queene when the battlelines had been breached and the Wyrm’s orc-horde had broken through the Rammas and had poured all across the fertile countryside between the Taye and the Storke. “We know there are orcs and goblins lying in wait for you. Why make it easy for them?”
Erundeus half-worried that the travellers might be agents of the Parody Master too. They were strangers, anyhow, and the man had about him the smell of cold iron and metal wheels. But the woman had scouted their safe retreat to this place, and continued to spy out enemy assaults with amazing accuracy.
“Mistress,” the Captain declared. “Each night we have camped in these accursed ruins we have lost more men. A third of my company has gone, by orc ambush or sniper arrow or… whatever plagues the darkness here at Rath Askrigg. This is not a safe haven. It is a trap.”
“It’s not safe, I agree with that,” the woman admitted. “But I don’t believe that it’s you the orcs want so badly. It’s this place.”
“This place?”
“They have maps, Captain. Carefully drawn out, accurate maps to this mountain. And they carry digging equipment with them.”
“That makes no sense,” Erundeus puzzled. “What is there to dig here, amidst these dark ruins of ancient evil?”
The woman folded her arms and stared at him.
“Ah,” he said, a little abashed, “I have answered my own question, have I not?”
“You really have.” The woman turned to look back down at the grey shattered keep. “I wonder if my companion has deciphered those runes, yet?” she wondered. “I think I’ll slip down there and see.”
“Keep your head low, Mistress,” Erundeus advised. “The orc archers might still make out your silhouette even in this fog.”
“Oh, don’t worry about Leonard and me, Captain,” Sydney St Sylvain promised the harried acting commander. “We can take care of ourselves.”
The Fashion Faerie scrambled down the slope to where Leonard Day-Vincent was scratching away at worn stones to clear centuries of lichen off carved symbols.
“”I think I’ve got it, Syd,” Day-Vincent gold her without even looking up.
Even excited in his academic triumph he sounds old and defeated, Sydney thought to herself. When did he become so stiff? “Got what, Leo?”
Day-Vincent gestured to his close-scribbled notes. “What this place is. Was. The clue was in the name, of course.”
“Rath,” Sydney reasoned, “A faerie mound. There’s plenty of them here, Leo. This is Faerie.”
“Not just a Faerie mound, Sydney. A dead one. Long dead. And do you know why it died, why this place got an evil haunted reputation?”
“I had enough guessing games back when we were married and I was your air-headed assistant, Leo,” the Fashion Faeire told him. “Please stop educating me and just tell me what you found.”
Day-Vincent looked like someone had just run over his puppy. “This was a faerie mound – a rath – that projected into our world. My world. The material, mortal world. It was here and it was there, back in prehistory when people believed more in fairies.”
“So?”
“So it stayed there too long. That’s what these warning runes tell. It stayed too long and the fay there got stuck, too weak to come home. They died there. Only then did their dead rath slip back here.”
Sydney shuddered. Faerie blood mixed with human in her own veins. “That’s horrible. No wonder the people here think it’s accursed. It would be like… maybe a submarine that got stuck at the bottom of the sea, with all hands suffocating? A terrible way to die.”
“And that’s why the orcs are so interested in it, I think,” Day-Vincent concluded. “A little bit of Faerie that once projected into the mortal realm? Maybe it could be provoked, powered-up, to do so again?”
Fashion Faerie caught on at once. “A portal to bring the Parody Master’s forces from here to there,” she realised. “A back door for invasion.”
Day-Vincent nodded. “And this can’t be the only old place that still has a vestigial rift in it.” He looked thoughtful. “We all assumed the Parody Master’s bid for the Many Coloured Land was another push to lord it over everybody. The Elfguard have been fighting rearguard battles to delay the invasion so the people could flee. What if this wasn’t about people? What if it was about territory – places like this?”
“That’s a not-good thought, Leo,” Sydney frowned. “Not good at all.”
And then the orcs charged up the hill again.
***
Perfectgaard’s War Room was a grand chamber of marble and moulder plaster, filled with high statues of great generals of the past – or more accurately of the Brass Baron garbed in the manner of great generals of the past. Sunlight streamed down from a high roof dome onto the central tables that were strewn with maps and letters on the conduct of the war.
Miiri found the Baron seated in his throne going through the latest despatches with his generals and couriers.
“More whining from the front,” he complained, thrusting Captain Arkenweald’s report back to a lackey. “Every local commander thinks that their situation is the worst in the world, more dire than everywhere else. We do not have troops enough to answer the pallid dithering of every junior officer.”
An old centaur general with many medals braided into his grey mane whinnied deferentially. “Perhaps we could consider detaching some of the divisions who are now retained for ceremonial purposes here in Perfectgaard, your grace?”
The Baron snorted. “Those men are needed to protect our command post, and the rich lands beyond that would be ravaged were the orc horde to come this way. We cannot spare any to reinforce wild borders that are already adequately protected if only their officers would do their jobs properly.”
“Still, sire, the White Gate is a key asset and if it were to be breached…”
The Brass Baron waved his general to silence. He’d noticed that the Lady Miiri had entered the room. “My love!” he bowed to her.
“Baron,” answered the Caphan. “Have you seen my friends? Asil and Ruby?”
The Baron shook his head. “Are they perhaps wandering in the gardens, enjoying the beauty of the evening?”
“I cannot find them anywhere,” Mirri replied. “Please search for them.”
Brass gestured to the centaur general to make it so. Soldiers were detailed to hunt for the missing women.
They wouldn’t find them.
***
“Bright and refreshed, are we?” asked Con Johnstantine acidly as George Gedney stirred stiffly from the rugs heaped on the ground at the front of the tent. “Relaxed and fresh and ready to fight wyrms?”
“Still sore about the rescued maidens thing?” the curator recognised.
“Sore all over, mate, after havin’ to sleep out here.”
George picked himself up and tried to brush his hair into a semblance of order. He fumbled his glasses onto his nose and looked out at the busy marching camp with a shudder. “But not being able to sleep, you figured a way to get us out of this mess?”
“I figured out a way to find half a bottle of whiskey that stopped me worrying about it.”
Over at the edge of the camp the orcs were marking out a killing ground where the knight would meet the dragon. The perimeter was defined by heads on poles.
“There’s only one way for me to stand a chance against Ashbane,” George noted. “I have to use the pocketwatch.” The young museum curator had recently become Keeper of the Chonometer of Infinity.
“Not a good idea, George,” Johnstantne warned. “Once you push that winder you’re sending up a big flare saying ‘Here I am. Crush me.’”
“Where as me fighting a two hundred foot long dragon without using the Chronometer’s time-manipulating powers would go so much better.”
“Believe me, mate,” Con warned, “there’s worse things in Faerie than being eaten by a Wyrm.”
“I’d really prefer not to be eaten at all.”
Johnstantine looked around to check that nobody was eavesdropping. “Well, there is a chance we could still slip out of here, given a big enough diversion. Say somebody had been round during the night and soaked all these tents with good flammable whiskey and happened to still have a cigarette lighter in his pocket.”
George frowned. “How could all of us creep out unnoticed that way?”
“All of us?” Con’s face became a mask of horror. “You’re serious about saving all those skirts?”
“Aren’t you?”
The irritating Englishman rubbed his forehead. “Save me from idealistic hero-types,” he muttered. “Look, if you use the Chronometer, the Parody Master’s lieutenant here will know about it. And we do not want to take on a Singularity Rider. Better face a dozen dragons.”
Above them the first of the Wyrms invited to watch the contest began to wing their way down to perch above the battlefield.
“Better two dozen dragons then,” Con growled.
George was peering down to the killing area too, puzzling over the large scaffold some of the dark dwarves were erecting. It almost looked like a wooden frame designed to chain a human to. There were even silver shackles dangling from the ends of the crossbeams.
And then George saw why.
“Asil!” he shouted across the camp, ducking past the goblin guards and pelting over to where a squad of thankfully-veiled medusae were ushering the captured girl towards the scaffold.
“Why is it never simple?” sighed Johnstantine.
***
The orc skirmishers renewed their attack on Rath Askrigg at dawn, reinforced with more archers and a trio of battle shamans. The tattered Elfguard were forced to fall back. The outer ramparts of the ancient fortress were overrun.
“Don’t panic,” Fashion Fairy advised Captain Erundeus. “Brown really doesn’t go with silver armour.”
“If I could just establish a few more basic principles about arcane engineering we could respawn this real estate onto Earth,” Leonard Day Vincent declared, more to himself than to others. “Of course, I’d need a massive mystic power source and access to the original runecodes for interstitial transfer protocols, but given a few days…”
“We don’t have a few days,” Captain Erundeus warned as the elf next to him went down with a black orc arrow in his eye. “We don’t even have a few hours.”
“So be especially brilliant, please, darling,” Sydney St Sylvain told her ex-husband.
“I can’t work with nothing,” Day Vincent fretted. “If I could just unlock the transperceptual packing data and find a medium to synthesise post-conceptual reimagination…”
The first orcs topped the ridge, ready to start the slaughter.
And vanished. Something moved out of the mists, grabbed them, and disappeared with its captives.
There was a gooey ripping sound.
More orcs rushed forward to exploit the breach. More vanished.
Discipline began to break amongst the attackers. When something huge and savage leaped out of the fog to decapitate the battle shamans with easy strokes they began to back away. When their leader’s head was tossed so hard it broke a sergeant’s skull they began to run.
A desolate howl echoed over Rath Askrigg.
Tanner kept on hunting.
***
“Traditional rules,” proclaimed the Wyrm Ashbane. “Virgin dragonmeat, would-be hero, one master reptile.”
The crowd of watching orcs, trolls, hags, wyverns, and assorted other creatures hooted, cheered, hollered, snorted, or cackled according to their natures. The gathered round the killing zone on the edge of the massacre site where the Faerie Fayre had been just days before and waited to watch the sport.
“Are you alright?” George asked Asil anxiously.
“Apart from being strapped to this frame about to be eaten by a dragon? Fine. But we have to get out of here and get back to Perfectgaard. Ruby’s in trouble.”
“More trouble than being strapped to a frame about to be eaten by a dragon?”
“Maybe. We’ll have to kill Ashbane quickly.”
“It’s good that so many friends and allies have gathered here to pay me tribute,” Ashbane declaimed. His massive wings swept wide as he reared on his hind legs. “After tonight’s entertainment – and the subsequent feast – we’ll all be travelling north to the White Gate. Lord S’Chen is breaking it. Once Aayesgarth is breached the whole of the heartlands will be ours to plunder.”
The host liked that idea. They were hungry for destruction. Their time had come.
“Did you have some idea how we’re supposed to beat Ashbane?” George asked Asil cautiously.
The Lisa clone blinked at him, “Didn’t you?”
George looked sheepish. “Only one. Well two, but Con couldn’t find the poison for me to take that would poison Ashbane when he ate me. But the other plan… I’m not sure quite how to manage it.” He looked at Asil. “Unless you can tell me?”
***
Miiri looked up in desperate hope as the Brass Baron came to her room. “Any word?” she asked. “Has someone found Asil and Ruby?”
“It seems that they are no longer in the castle,” the Baron told her. “It may be that, impatient of news of their menfolk, these two foolish girls have set out to find their lovers by themselves.”
Miiri knew that they’d been attempting the forbidden tower, but she couldn’t say so. “They would not have left without bidding me farewell,” she argued.
“It was rude of them,” Brass agreed. “But they may have been jealous of your good fortune in securing so fine a match.” He smiled his perfect smile. “Because we are now to be wed, my Miiri.”
The Caphan frowned and quietly reached for the knife under her pillow. “I said…”
“You promised to wed me if I undertook a quest for you, regarding your bastard with the one named Visionary. You asked that the child be seen safe home with the ones who sought her in Camellia’s lair.”
“Visionary?” Miiri sat up and reached out to grasp the Baron’s arm. “He’s safe? And Naari?”
“Word has come to me from an elf named Zebulon who sought employ as a military courier,” the Brass Baron assured her. “As promised, I have seen Visionary and your child safe home. My eternal vow that they are delivered back to the mortal realms, and their companions with them.”
“Zebulon the elf?” Miiri recognised the name of the creature who had served the Lair Legion for many months. “Let me speak with him!”
The Baron shook his head. “Alas, milady, an elf of that low sort, little more than a tinker, is not fitted for service in the court of Perfectgaard. I have sent him with my instructions to the captain who bleats at the White Gates of Aayesgarth. He will be better suited at the front, I deem.”
“But Naari is safe home with Visionary and Hallie?”
“Yes,” agreed the Brass Baron, “as we bargained. And so…”
“And so I will marry you,” agreed Miiri of Earth.
***
George eschewed the various swords, axes, and billhooks laid out for a dragonkiller to use. He ignored the elaborate suits of armour. He strode onto the killing field in his rumpled black academic gown, his striped school scarf trailing behind him.
“Any last words?” Ashbane mocked him. “Before I slaughter you and devour your woman?”
“We’re just good friends,” Asil clarified, with an apologetic look at George. “I mean, that thing last Christmas never really went anywhere. You can’t count it. Besides, time got rewound.”
A forked tongue flicked from the wyrm’s mouth. “Such innocence,” he gloated. “So sweet to devour.”
Asil saw the dragon’s gaze, and felt her courage fraying. The dragon was evil, and it was looking forward to hurting her. All the people who usually protected her were far away.
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” George quoted to the dragon; and he glimpsed mischievously at Asil.
It was that little glance that made Asil’s heart do a tiny flip. George wasn’t afraid. George was standing up to the bully.
George was smiting the ungodly.
She waited until all attention was on the Wyrm and his challenger then used her genetic gift to be whatever age she chose to become small enough to slip from her shackles.
“Where is your mighty sword?” Ashbane jeered at George. “Where is the mighty knight who has slaughtered every Wyrm he has encountered?”
George sighed and pulled out the heavy pocketwatch that was the Chronometer of Infinity. He glanced around but there was no sign of Con Johnstantine, which meant that the irritating Englishman must have managed to slip into the warlocks’ tent as planned.
“So falls all of humankind,” promised the Wyrm, rising up over George and taking in a deep breath. Ashbane exhaled and searing flame washed over the spot where the curator was standing.
When the smoke cleared George was still standing there; but he’s reshaped the Chronometer of Infinity to another iteration. Instead of the golden pocketwatch there was a golden two-handed sword with an hourglass on the pommel.
“The sword of time will piece our skin,” he quoted again. The words just came to him, and it was only much later that he realised where he’d got them from. “It doesn’t hurt as it goes in. But as it works it’s way on in, the pain gets stronger, watch it grin.”
Ashbane breathed again. George shifted the flames in time again.
“What else?” he asked the Wyrm.
Asil grinned as she realised that George was actually enjoying this. She moved to the edge of the arena. The nearest orcs shifted to stop her. She found the largest, reduced him to a squirming heap on the floor clutching his belly, and borrowed his halberd.
Ashbane caught the warning from the crowd and swung his serpentine neck to see his treat escaping. “Not so quickly, Asil,” he told her. “I’m looking forward to hearing you scream when you see what I do to your hero.”
George stopped time, ran in, and sliced his chronosword into the dragon’s hide. He’d heard that all wyrms had one weak spot, but everything becomes weak in time. The impervious scale cracked and shattered with age.
Ashbane roared and lashed out with a mighty wing to splinter every bone in the young man’s body.
George shifted himself forward in time so the leathery appendage missed him, reappearing just at the right moment to slash at the cartilage and muscle of the underwing.
The crowd of dark creatures howled their displeasure. Ashbane just howled.
Asil used her halberd to pole-vault over the wyrm head and drop down in a neat somersault beside the dragon-fighting curator. “Could you hurry this up?” she asked him. “We have places to be.”
“Sorry,” he apologised. “I’ll struggle for my life faster.”
Ashbane swung his tale in a massive arc, its razor ridge-spines just at George’s neck level. The Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity grabbed Asil in his arms and time-jumped again.
The previous time-displaced dragon-fire blossomed round the wyrm instead.
“Be careful,” Asil warned George as they reappeared. “You’re burning temporal charge like there’s no tomorrow. Exhaust the Chronometer’s supply and for you there won’t be.”
“It’s my first dragon,” George replied. “I’m on a steep learning curve here.”
“You’re doing okay so far,” Asil relented. She was feeling a little bit guilty about being the damsel in distress and really the hapless curator was the only person she could take it out on. “But really you need to finish this fast, before it finishes you.”
Con Johnstantine strolled away from the warlock’s alchemy tent puffing on a newly lit cigarette. He was humming. And quietly counting down.
“So you have little magics, dragon fighter,” Ashbane mocked George. “Perhaps that is your secret. But I am no lesser wyrm, pale and soon vanquished by temporal tricks. I am the most terrifying of the dragons.”
“You’ve clearly not seen Fin Fang Foom before breakfast when somebody’s used the last of the Weetabix,” Asil noted.
George concentrated hard, holding up the chronosword to catch the wyrm’s incoming claw while shifting the force behind the blow into the future. Then he caught to wyrm’s neck in a bubble of frozen time, pinning the monster where it stood for the fifteen seconds of remaining chronal charge in his instrument.
Asil moved in, ramming the halberd down through the upper ridge of the wyrm’s muzzle, momentarily pinning its jaws together and preventing another gout of flame-breath. George jumped onto the dragon’s head, reversed his chronosword, and plunged it down into the dragon’s brain.
“Every dragon has a weakspot,” he told it. “This is yours.”
Beyond the melee the warlocks’ hut exploded in a ball of crimson fire, spraying the nearby tents and the nearby crowds with flaming shards. The volatile alchemical ingredients of the war machines reacted to the flames and began a chain of secondary explosions the fire took hold, passing from tent to tent, igniting the camp.
George twisted the chronosword in Ashbane’s brain, then felt the weapon revert to its familiar pocketwatch manifestation as the last of its chronal charge expired.
Ashbane rose up, shrugging the curator off, sending him tumbling heavily to the ground. The dragon reared up and up, roaring.
George had a blurred impression of Asil trying to shelter him as the wyrm crashed down inches from where he was sprawled. The commander of the armies of darkness fell dead at his feet.
Con Johnstantine called to the hostages in the hero’s tent to run for their lives now. He’d cleared a way to the edge of the forest. From there they had a chance if they moved quickly and didn’t look back.
Asil dragged the stunned George to his feet as an angry mob of demihumans and monsters milled about in confusion and horror. “Stay back!” she warned them. “The dragonkiller hasn’t had enough blood yet today!”
George tried not to vomit. It would certainly have spoiled the effect.
Johnstantine raced up. “Well, top marks for de-dragoning the situation,” he admitted, “but like I said, minus twenty million points for showing everyone else that there’s a bloke with cosmic-level office here.”
“George isn’t stupid, Con,” Asil defended the curator. “Just inexperienced. That’s why he needed me to tell him how to reconfigure the chronometer’s physical manifestation. And how to shift the telltale signs of chronal disruption into the future as well.”
Johnstantine blinked. “He what?”
“I pushed the warning time disruption signatures you were worried about two weeks forward,” George explained. “It was tricky, but it meant I could use the Chronometer.”
“Has anyone ever done that before?” asked Johnstantine.
“No,” admitted Asil. “But then, George didn’t know it wasn’t possible.”
“Sorry,” apologised the green-faced young man. He tried not to let the shudders show.
“Nah, you did all right, mate,” Johnstantine grinned. In the background there was a yelp of horror from the war elemental handlers as the alchemical blaze reached the confinement crates and the magical manifestations burst loose. The mighty war camp was in chaos, with stampeding fell wolves, searing flames, screaming and shouting orcs, panicking goblins. “That’ll teach the buggers not to have a decent coffee shop.”
“We have to get out of here,” Asil told her companions. “Ruby’s in terrible peril. Maybe Miiri too.”
Johnstantine sighed. “Right. We’ll just take on the rest of this army and then we’ll be ready. Come on, Georgie-boy.”
***
The great snows were just beginning, and the nomads were packing their tents to follow the Grand Trunk southwards to warmer and safer climes. Captain Arkenweald rode up just as the last of the wagons was being laden and asked to see the High Priestess.
“A soldier,” one of the weary-faced women who was gathering the tents together recognised. “Have you come with news of our men at the front?” Then she noticed the sling on the Captain’s right arm and the fresh red stain that was seeping through it’ “Do you need a healer?”
“It won’t heal,” the commander of the White Gate replied. “Not these four days, maybe never. But I do have news of your kin. They did good service before the Gates of Aayesgarth, and stood when many ran.”
“But do they live?” asked the woman.
Arkenweald felt his throat tighten. “Some,” he replied. “Is the Priestess here?”
One tent was still erect, a rich affair of blue silks and white furs, guarded by one of the few dour northmen not away at the war. Arkenweald was directed to the flap, and fumbled with his left hand to pull out his sword to leave with the porter.
“Keep it, knight,” the nomad said. “You will not harm her.”
Arkenweald ducked under the flap and entered the sweet-smelling interior of the pavilion.
“You have travelled far,” the wise woman noticed, reading the tired lines in the young soldier’s face and the worried look of new responsibility. She was young and comely, and a shawl of golden hair ran down over her shoulders. Yet she was grave, for she bore the weight of all her people’s woes.
“A day and a night’s journey from the White Gates,” Arkenweald admitted. “I could scarce afford to be gone, for each day brings us closer to ruin and the men’s courage hangs by a thread. But they say you can see things that are hidden to others. I think I need that.”
“Things do not go well at Aayesgarth.”
“No. All know it. A Singularity Rider of the Parody Master commands the siege, and though he ventures forth seldom his dark strength inspires his minions. Each day more of the magics of the gate are sundered. The siege will not last long.” The Captain sighed, and for a minute he looked like a tired, frightened boy. “I did not ask for this command,” was all he said. “The war chief of your tribe, it was he who sent me to you.”
“He lives, then?” The Priestess’ face lit in a radiant smile for a moment “He lives!”
“He fought before the gate. Many that would have died survived because of his stand.”
A cold breeze stirred the tent-flap “We are following the sun,” the Priestess warned. “We move to the lowlands to safety. Relative safety. Ask your questions quickly, Captain.”
The soldier nodded. “Very well. I’m charged with holding the White Gate. If it falls then nothing stands between the armies of the night and the heart of Faerie. I sent word begging for reinforcements but I have had no reply from the Brass Baron. He does not seem to understand how dire is our plight. Our strength is failing. What I need to know is how to hold the Gate. I’ll pay any price. I’ll give my life.”
“I am sure of that,” the wise woman said. “Let us hope that will not be required.” She turned and picked up a scrip filled with sealed letters. “If your commander will not aid you then you must find other allies, friends who can stand against the Doomwraith.”
“Who could stand against that?” choked the captain.
“You must select a messenger who will not fail and you must deliver this call to arms. It will win you allies that no gold nor political favour could ever buy. And your envoy must return with this help before the Doomwraith breaches your walls or you are all doomed. We are all doomed.”
Arkenweald stiffened. “I will risk any journey to accomplish my mission,” he promised
“It is not your journey to take. You will find your messenger,” the Priestess predicted
The Captain fumbled into his purse for some coins, but the wise woman laid a soft hand to stay him. “I’m no gypsy you need buy with silver. But if you’d be so kind as to deliver some letters of mine to the same address then all your debts are paid.”
“Of course,” agreed the soldier. “Where am I to send? Who am I to seek?”
“You need heroes,” the High Priestess answered him. “Special heroes. A company of heroes. You must send to a far realm and seek out the company called the Lair Legion, and you must recruit their aid in this matter.”
“Who is this Lair Legion?” Arkenweald asked. “Of what race and kin?”
“They are champions of the mortal realm,” answered the wise woman. “You face a common foe.” She handed him parchments already written in a pouch already prepared. “Give this to the lord called Donar Oldmanson and bid him come and be captain of your host. And this to Jay Boaz, that he might understand why the Legion must come.”
“I shall,” agreed, Captain Arkenweald, “but why should they come so far to aid ones they do not know?”
“Did I not say they were heroes?” smiled the wise woman. “They will come, and they will stand with you if you can bring them soon enough. But if it helps, your messenger can tell them they are bidden to come and aid you for friendship’s sake by their old friend… Valeria of Carfax.”
***
Next issue: ManMan may have crossed the line. Mumphey and Hatman have to draw the line. Trickshot tries to straddle the line. Liu Xi receives the pick-up line. And what will happen to the Lair Legion line-up? Untold Tales of the Court Martial of Joseph Pepper, coming soon to a Parodyverse near you.
***
Come Not Between the Footnote and His Wroth:
Ruby Waver gained her telekinetic upgrade in UT#214: The Plot Device.
The Fashion Faerie (Sydney St Sylvain) is a retired size-shrinking superheroine who runs an exclusive fashion house, including a strong line of designer superhero gear. But she is also of fey blood and can pass in faerie for one of their own if she so chooses. Leonard Day Vincent is one of the most brilliant minds in the Parodyverse and was formerly Sydney’s husband and partner in adventure. The two of them were dispatched to Faerie some time back at CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s suggestion to learn what the Parody Master might be up to there. Now they know.
The Chronometer of Infinity is a primal artefact, one of the regulation devices of the Parodyverse’s cosmology. Amongst it’s other functions it counts down to the Parody War that determines the fate of the Parodyverse. George Gedney recently succeeded Sir Mumphrey Wilton as Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. The Chronometer customarily appears as a large gold pocketwatch on a fob chain, but has previously appeared as an hourglass as well. George interprets its form differently again in this story.
Valeria of Carfax, the White Lady of Carfax and Shandalar, prophetess of the Secret Fire, was a long-time guest of the Lair Legion before returning to guide her people with her lover Exile (Derek Foreman). Their long and complicated romance is collected in UT#141: Valeria’s Story. Valeria has good reason to know that the Legion will come and be heroes if only they can be called in time.
***
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.
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