|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| #122: Untold Faerie Tales of the Lair Legion: Several Times Upon A Time… |
Warning: This chapter contains some mature content
I
Once upon a time there was a simple peasant lad, who lived with his aunt at the edge of the enchanted forest, in the shadow of the lonely mountain, beside the blue, blue lake. And when this lad had become a young man, his aunt said to him, “Now see here, Joe Pepper, it’s time you went out into the world and made his fortune.” And Joe replied, “Aw, Aunt April, can’t I do it later?”
But Aunt April shook her head and gave Joe a few things for the journey: a spotted red handkerchief, and a half loaf of bread, and a bit of cheese, and his father’s knife. Joe hadn’t seen the knife before, and was rather surprised when it said hello to him and introduced itself as Knifey.
“Are… are you some kind of magic knife?” Joe stammered.
“No,” Knifey told him.
“Then how can you talk?” Joe asked.
“I can’t,” Knifey said nastily. “It’s all in your mind.”
So Joe took Knifey, and the bread, and the cheese, and the spotted handkerchief, and set off down the road towards the crossroads; because everyone knows that crossroads are the place to go if you want to start out making your fortune.
Now the crossroads had four roads, and one went back to the blue, blue lake. The others went off towards Dullardston, where Good King Visionary and Fairly Good Queen Cheryl ruled, and off towards the lonely mountain, and thence to the far lands of Lord Donar, Tyrant of the Thunderpeaks, and into the enchanted forest.
“Which way should I go, Knifey?” Joe wondered. “Shall I go to Dullardston, where they say the streets are paved with gold? Or perhaps to the distant Thunderpeaks, and try and catch some lightning I could sell?” Joe didn’t mention the enchanted forest, because it had strange paths and no sensible person, of even a fairly stupid on like Joe, would go in there without a very good guide.
“Don’t ask me,” Knifey told him. “I’m just a knife. Ask someone else.”
“Who else should I ask?” puzzled Joe. “There’s no-one around.”
“There’s that young woman over at the forest edge who is fighting for her life against those marauding orcs,” Knifey suggested.
Before Joe’s brain had a chance to object, Joe’s body was running over the rough grass to try and help the young lady. After all, there was only one young lady and an awful lot of orcs. And orcs are not always perfect gentlemen if they happen to catch a young lady unawares.
Joe had overlooked two things. First, Joe had never fought orcs before. They most unobligingly refused to stand still so he could stab them, and they hit him with their knobbly clubs. Second, the young lady had a very sharp war-spear and she was already doing serious damage to her attackers.
Joe woke up to find the red-haired young lady looking down at him. “I didn’t need rescuing,” she complained. “It was only a dozen or so orcs.”
“Urk,” Joe explained. He hurt quite a lot, in fact. He didn’t realise that one of the sharp pains was cupid’s arrow hitting him as he looked up into that young, perfect face. “Arg,” he told the young perfect face.
“You could thank him,” Knifey scolded the young lady. “He’s stupid and can’t fight for toffee but he did risk his life for you.”
If the young lady was impressed by a talking knife she didn’t say so. “Hmph,” she responded. “I suppose so. Thank you, grubby peasant boy.” And she set off towards the crossroads.
Joe scrambled to his feet and ran after her. “Hey, wait,” he called. “I’d, uh, better go with you. To keep you safe. And stuff,” he told the young lady with the coiled red hair.
“I don’t need to be kept safe. I’m nearly at Dullardston now. If I’ve survived this far on my own, I hardly think I need the protection of a… any protection just now.”
“What are you going to Dullardstown for?” Joe asked, desperate to keep up the conversation.
“I’m looking for a Hero,” she explained. “For a quest.”
“I can do a quest,” Joe’s libido told her.
“I said a Hero,” the girl clarified. “To save my people, the Amazons.”
“You’re an Amazon?” Joe hadn’t met an Amazon before. He had heard they were terribly fierce warrior-women who lived in an island beyond the turbulent ocean claimed by the Deepwater Simians.
“I happen to be Princess of the Amazons, actually,” the young lady told him, tossing her beautiful red hair. “I am the Princess Troia. Now get out of my way while I go and find a hero.”
But Joe Pepper followed her down the track anyway. He had decided which direction to take at the crossroads.
“It was a gryphon.” The Priestess Pelopia, Disciple of Logos and daughter of the Word of Order, pulled her makeshift spear out of the beast’s fallen carcass and carefully wiped the flint blade on the grass.
“It was a hippogriff,” argued Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove, gathering sticks together for a good cooking fire.
“Gryphon,” scowled Pelopia, butchering the fallen animal with a ferocity that suggested she’d really like to be sticking the blade somewhere else. “The Sloane Bestiary, manuscript 278 Dicta Chrysotomi, from mid thirteenth century France, is very clear on the matter. Formed from the hindquarters of a lion with the wings and head of an eagle, from the deserts of India, with an intense hostility to horses and a desire to dismember men. The translation is from the Latin is loose, of course, and my own.”
“Nah,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! assured her. “A hippogriff has the torso and hind quarters of a horse – like this one here – and the forelegs, wings, and head of a giant eagle. A typical specimen grows to nine feet long, has a wingspread of twenty feet, and weighs a thousand pounds. Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, third edition, page 119.”
A horrible thought assailed Pelopia. “We’re in faerie, a psychosensitive realm that adapts to our thoughts. Do you have the whole bloody lexicon of fantasy creatures memorised?”
“Sure,” Dream grinned happily. “Plus the supplements and boxed sets.”
“I should have killed you the first day we got stuck here,” the young woman scowled.
CSFB! sensed that his companion was getting depressed again. She did that when the world didn’t make sense to her. “Hey, c’mon. if you’d killed me we couldn’t have done the mortal-enemies-teaming-up-in-mutual-crisis thing, could we?”
“My father sent me to ensure that you did not succeed in bringing the Hooded Hood back,” Pelopia noted. “I’m still not sure if it wouldn’t have been better just to put you down. Perhaps as a public service.”
“Ah, you don’t mean that,” Dream grinned at her. “You know why you’re depressed? Because secretly you’re having fun. I mean here we are in this wonderful enchanted forest full of all kinds of adventures…”
“Surrounded by wild beasts that want to devour us, hunted by aborigines who want to slaughter us, persecuted by… what were those ridiculous men the other day?”
“Pirates,” beamed CSFB! “Real life pirates. And I’ve got to say, the baddies from my subconscious are a lot better than your contributions. That woman with the clamps? Yeuch. And those things with the surgical masks?”
“I elected to endure pain and horror so as to better serve the cause of Order by my father’s side.” Pelopia sounded more defensive each time she repeated that.
“Yeah. He sounds like a real sicko,” CrazySugarfreakBoy! opined. “I’d love to lock him in a room with my mom for just ten minutes.”
“My father is a great man!”
“So’s mine, and y’know what? He never once scourged me with steel strands to make me a stronger person.”
Pelopia ran a hand uncomfortably over her shaved scalp, which was still smooth and free of any trace of cornsilk blonde hair despite the indeterminate time she’d been trapped in this nightmare realm because she controlled her own body’s autonomic processes. “That’s why I will kill you in the end, Dreamcatcher Foxglove.”
“Nope. That’s why you’ll change sides. Really. Trust me on this.”
Pelopia hefted a haunch off the dead hippogriff and propped it over the fire. “I am not… NOT… having fun,” she emphasised.
Dream watched her in the setting sun, framed by the tropical fantasy land, graceful and passionate but so tightly introvert that she hardly even knew it. “Maybe,” he considered. “But if so then you’re enjoying not having it.”
The girl’s sobbing woke Falcon up. He felt like he’d just had a hot date with a meat blender.
He looked round. A dozen or so hopeful cockroaches skittered off him and scuttled away under the floorboards. The peeling paintwork and the garbage smells and the background noise of traffic immediately told him where he was: back home, Hell’s Bathroom, the worst neighbourhood in Paradopolis.
The sobbing was coming from the kitchen. The door hung crazily on one hinge and the tattered blinds let in shafts of smoggy sunlight. The girl wore a threadbare cotton print dress and she was huddled into the corner by the broken gas stove crying into her hands.
“Hey!” Falcon called gently.
She looked up terrified, stifled a scream, and pressed herself further back into the corner. “Don’t hurt me,” she begged. “Don’t hurt me again.”
“Nobody’s gonna hurt you,” Sam Wilson promised. “It’s okay. What happened?” the kid could only be fourteen or fifteen. She was mocha-skinned, with tangled curly hair matted with blood from a scratch on her forehead. One eye was puffy and swollen, and already the dark bruises of a recent beating were blossoming on her arms and legs.
“I’m sorry!” she gabbled, trying to push away from Falcon as he approached. “I didn’t mean it! I’ll never run away again!”
“Calm down,” Sam urged her soothingly. “You’re safe. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you any more.” He squatted down a safe distance from her and slid a grubby kitchen towel over for her to wipe the blood that ran from her nose. “Now who did this to you?”
The girl blinked and looked even more scared than before in her confusion. “You did.”
II
When one is a heroine in search of heroes willing to undertake desperate adventures in exchange for gold and glory there are certain protocols to follow. If one wishes to avoid being locked in towers or chained to rocks etc., which is a somewhat extreme way of hero-summoning, then the best bet is to go and find a tavern. And don’t just find any tavern. Look for the sort where rogues and traders and warriors and dwarves all gather waiting for trouble, the sort of tavern that every Dungeons and Dragons scenario features, and where there will be a brawl about every forty minutes regular as clockwork.
The Princess Troia, well versed in theory if not in practise on the recruitment of mercenary warriors, therefore found the Sign of the Rancid Ferret and went inside. Joe Pepper, determined to protect her from the vice and debauchery within, trailed behind her; and in truth her protestations of not needing an escort were a little less frequent as she picked her way through the inn’s dark interior.
“List, ye people!” she announced when she picked her way to the bar. “I seek heroes to accompany me on a death-defying quest to save my people and overcome terrible enemies. Who is with me?”
“What does the job pay?” a burly scarred fighter in smelly leather demanded.
“Well, I’m sure there will be treasure on the way,” Troia assured him, “Booty from fallen foes, that kind of thing.”
“No gold up front before we rescue your people?” a weaselly looking cut-throat demanded.
“Strictly cash on delivery,” the Princess told him.
“And the hand and accompanying other bits of the fair lady?” a third barbarian leered.
“Only if you enjoy major spear wounds,” Troia assured him.
There didn’t seem to be a lot of interest in joining Troia’s life or death mission for no pay or perks.
“I’ll go,” Joe Pepper volunteered.
“It seems as though you don’t have a lot of friends, pretty lady,” the big barbarian grinned nastily. “But you can be friends with us.”
Troia was reaching for her spear when another voice from the back of the tavern said, “We’ll go.”
The barbarian turned around and frowned. “Who said that?” he demanded.
A couple of young fighters sauntered forward. “I’m Foreman the Exile and he’s Bryan of the Golden Eyes,” one of them said. “Who’s asking?”
“Bryan of the Golden Eyes?” the barbarian scorned. “I heard he had a touch of the elf about hi…”
In a blur the other warrior had pinned the big man to the bench and had a dagger at his throat. “Yes?” he asked. “What did you hear exactly?”
“Nothing,” the barbarian sweated.
“Very wise,” Bryan of the Golden Eyes assured him.
“What’s the job, milady?” Foreman the Exile asked the Princess.
“Oh, it’s a magic book retrieval mission,” Troia explained. “A multi-part quest to pick up the tome, the key, and the lens needed to read it.”
“Sounds fairly interesting,” Bryan admitted. “We’ll take it.”
Troia hesitated. “I, um, I suppose I should warn you that the lens is in the treasure horde of the wyrm Fin Fang Foom.”
“That’ll be a challenge,” admitted Foreman.
“And the, er, the book is in the castle of the dreaded Lady of Waltz, on the far side of the Thunderpeaks.”
“Hmm. That could be a problem,” Bryan conceded.
“And nobody’s actually sure where the key is,” Troia concluded.
“Simple, really,” Knifey muttered.
“This is getting really risky,” judged Foreman
“Sounds like really bad news,” a half-drunk archer at the end of the bar chimed in. “Impossible odds, dastardly villains, ancient mysteries. Count me in.”
“Who’s he?” Joe Pepper whispered to Bryan.
“Bastion the Hunter?” Bryan hissed back. “He’s supposed to be a great woodsman. This is getting interesting.”
Foreman, Bryan, and Joe were all looking to the end of the trestle where Bastion was quaffing, so none of them noticed the big barbarian slipping his dirk from it’s sheathe behind the golden-eyed adventurer. The first the knew of it was when the sound of breaking bone and the howl of a would-be assassin alerted them. The barbarian was curled on the floor clutching his wrist and screaming, and a shabby grizzled man in a tattered herald’s outfit stood over him. “Count me in too,” the Courier told them.
“Bry, that’s,,,” Foreman began.
“Someone we don’t know, and would be glad to have in the party,” Bryan interrupted him, loudly and deliberately.
“Er, yeah. Right,” the Exile agreed. “Welcome.”
“Thank you, warriors,” the Princess Troia told them. “We five shall ride with the dawn, and seek out the lost treasures.”
“Six,” Joe Pepper corrected her. “Six. Princess Troia? Hey, Princess? Princess?”
Beneath the crystal waters of the lagoon there were shoals of multicoloured fishes dodging through rainbow coral and long, whispering grasses. Dream waited until one of the bigger ones slithered round his legs then grabbed it.
“Gotcha!” he shouted, pulling the trout he’d tickled out of the water and wading towards the shore. “Pelopia, I got one!”
“I have acquired two,” the Priestess of Order retorted primly. She rose from the lake like Aphrodite, shaking water from her slim nude body and brandishing a pair of marlin in her hands.
“Then you win,” smirked CSFB!
Pelopia was rapidly learning that it was useless being so competitive with such a habitual team player, but she couldn’t resist it. “Why can’t you be like a normal person?” she demanded of him.
Dream looked down at his sunburned naked body as if checking. “What, you mean like you?” he challenged in a tone of good-natured teasing. He cocked an eyebrow, grinned, and shook his head. “Normal’s just a matter of perspective. It’s what you’re used to, is all. I mean, from where I stand I am normal, and it’s the rest of the world that’s always been weird.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Besides… why would I want to be normal?” he asked in a puzzled voice.
“Because…” Pelopia found that she didn’t have a good answer for that.
“You said we should all strive for excellence,” CSFB! remembered. “Well, I try to be really good at being me!”
Pelopia pointedly snapped the spines of her catches. “How long have we been stuck here?” she demanded. “Why haven’t we tried to escape? What did I do to deserve being trapped in purgatory with you?”
“Time runs strangely here, which I’m guessing is faerie,” Dream considered, “so we could have been here ten minutes or a hundred years. We haven’t escaped because we haven’t yet found the door out. It’s no good hiking to those mountains or building a raft. It’s not going to be that kind of escape.”
“And you? Why you?”
“Well, according to Pegasus, you’re my nemesis. Which is kind of cool when you think about it.”
Pelopia slumped on the wild iris beds to let her body dry in the sun. She made sure her weapons were near, but she realised it was because there were manticores and wyverns in the jungle, not because CrazySugarFreakBoy! was near. “And why am I with you? Why aren’t we trapped in faerie separately?”
“I guess it must be more interesting to strand us together. Anyway, I’m glad you’re with me.”
“You are?”
Dream padded over to her and dropped down beside her. Pelopia disciplined her heart to slow to its normal pace. “Sure,” he said. “I mean, I’d go crazy without someone to talk to, but it’s really neat that it’s you.”
“Why? I mean, why me?”
“Well, you’re smart, brave, good in a fight against pirates. You’re pretty to look at, that’s for sure. And you have ideas that challenge me, make me think a bit. I guess you might even change me a little bit.”
Pelopia resisted the urge to cover her body. Shyness was a weakness, and she was the Daughter of the Word. She raised her head defiantly and prepared to fight on this new battlefield.
“CrazySugarFreakBoy!, we have been stranded together for… well, for some time now. I am, as you say, attractive to those of male orientation. Yet you have never attempted to make advances towards me, nor to force your attentions on me. May I ask why?”
Dream gave her one of those dazzling innocent smiles of his. “You never asked me to,” he told her. “Besides, I figured you might be kind of repressed about sex, what with your strict upbringing and stuff.”
“I am not repressed!” Pelopia snapped. “I have been trained by experts, experts, to drive a sex-partner to the heights of ecstasy. Any repressions, as you call them, were expunged when my training in carnal matters began at the age of twelve when my father had me raped.”
What?” CSFB! exploded. “Why that bast…”
“It was to hone me,” Pelopia shouted back. “It taught me that love is nothing, a hormonal fantasy, and the body is just one more tool in service to the cause of Order.”
“It was barbaric,” retorted CSFB! “A foul abuse that taught you a falsehood. Pelopia, sex and love aren’t weapons or weaknesses. They’re things that people share to be close to one another, to exchange part of themselves. Are you telling me you’ve never fallen in love, or made love with someone just because you wanted to give and receive pleasure?”
“That is… it’s irrelevant.”
“No. It’s not,” Dream told her earnestly. “Really, it isn’t.” He reached out and brushed Pelopia’s cheek. “May I show you?”
“You are my enemy, and my father’s enemy.”
“May I?”
“Yes.”
“You’re mistaken,” Sam Wilson assured the battered girl that crouched before him. He noticed now that he was in civilian clothing – well, if civilians wore tattered sweaty C Murder t-shirts and ghetto bags. He tried to remember how he’d got here. There had been a battle with lots of supervillains…
“Are you doing drugs again, Sammy?” the girl trembled.
“Sammy?”
“Sorry! I’m sorry!” the girl winced, flinching from the expected blow. “I meant Falko. Not Sammy. You’re Falko now!”
“What the hell is going on here?” demanded Falcon. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“Oh no, please don’t space out like this again Sa… Falko,” the girl pleaded. “Remember. We’re at Teresa’s place on 2nd Street, okay. I’m Lindy. Your sister?”
“Sister? I don’t have a sister.”
Lindy winced again. “Don’t hit me,” she pleaded. “I think you busted something. It’s hard to breathe.”
“I’m not going to hit you,” Sam assured her. “But I am having one royally weird day here.” He held out his hands in as unthreatening way as possible, and noticed here was blood on his knuckles.
“Fal… Falko, listen. I’m not giving you backchat, really. But you’re not well. It’s the drugs. You took too many before you went off to your meet with that guy in the suit, that’s all. They make you… irritable.”
“You claim to be my sister?”
“Momma said so. Least your half sister, cause we dunno about the daddies, right?”
“This… none of this is right. I don’t have a sister. And I’d never hit her if I did. And I sure don’t do drugs.”
Lindy looked at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding?” she asked him. “Why do you think I was running away, ‘fore you sold me to some pimp for your next hit?”
III
The Dreamwraiths attacked as they camped by the roadside on the first night of their quest. White and whispering the abyssal phantasms gibbered out of the darkness, falling upon the little band of heroes even as Courier raised the alarm.
“What the hell are these?” Foreman the Exile demanded, rolling out of his sleeping furs and slicing his sword ineffectually though the insubstantial Dreamwraith.
“Dreamwraiths aren’t supposed to exist any more!” Bryan of the Golden Eyes complained, falling back as his weapon proved useless. A chill from where his blade penetrated the translucent white spectre numbed his arm.
“They sure as hell look like they’re the real thing to me!” warned Bastion the Hunter. He gasped as one of the vaporous shaped raked through his chest with its ragged claws.
“The secret of calling up the Dreamwraiths has been lost since the Legendary Isle sank a thousand years since,” Courier frowned, having no better success at defending himself than the others. “The secret of defeating them was lost at the same time.”
“Hey,” Joe Pepper wondered, betraying where his mind was, “Where’s Princess Troia?”
“She went down to the lake to bathe,” Foreman told him. “Hey, this whole attack might be a diversion to keep us away if someone’s after her!”
“I’ll go check,” Joe offered. “Not because, uh, she might not have her clothes on or anything.”
“Fight your way to the lake, all of you” Courier commanded; but the paralysing grasp of a Dreamwraith drew all the strength form his body.
Joe Pepper lashed out blindly with Knifey at the phantasms that surrounded him. Knifey slashed through them with ease, sending them shrieking backwards trailing oozing ectoplasm. “Hah. I’ve still got it,” the sentient blade crowed.
“Knifey? You can harm them?” Joe gasped.
“Sure, kid. Just make sure the pointy end of me goes into the bad guys and I’ll do the rest.”
“Never mind us, doofus!” Bastion called to the peasant boy. “Get down to the lake and see to th’ princess.”
“I’m on it!” Joe promised, hacking wildly at the Dreamwraiths and slithering through the wet undergrowth towards the dark waters. “Princess! Troia!”
“Great tactical move, archer, sending away the only weapon that can save us,” Bryan frowned.
“Ah, we’re heroes. We’ll find a way t’ beat ‘em,” the loudmouthed bowman assured his golden-eyed companion. “You know how these things work.”
“What, a sudden rescue from a knight in shining armour?” Foreman the Exile sneered.
A knight in shining armour rode out from the forest and charged towards the melee.
“Yep,” smirked Bastion.
“Avaunt foul wights!” the knight commanded, hurling some kind of shimmering dust at the creatures. As the glitter fell amongst them, the Dreamwraiths broke into pieces and vanished like the morning mist.
“Alright,” Bryan enthused. “What was that stuff?”
“Pixie dust,” the knight admitted, reigning in his charger and sliding down to join the group.
“My pixie dust,” a tiny glowing figure clarified, flitting out from the treeline and flying over to hover around them.
“A fairy?” Foreman the Exile wondered. “I thought the old folk had all been lost.”
“Not so much of the old, if you please,” the tiny figure demanded, tossing her waist-length black hair and pirouetting in mid-air. “I just don’t like ancient horrors wandering round in my woods, so I did a little dance and lo and behold a brave knight appeared to get rid of them for me.” In this way the bold adventurers were introduced to the Feydancer.
“And who are you, Sir Knight?” Foreman the Exile asked the golden-armoured horseman.
“I know ‘im,” Bastion the Hunter replied. “This is Sir Jay, Knight of the Helm. He’s a champion of Good King Visionary, right?”
But Sir Jay was looking at the other member of their party. It was clear that he had met at least one other of the adventurers before.
“Envoy,” he acknowledged tersely.
“Knight,” Courier spat back. They said no more.
“Hey, what about the Princess? And that Joe guy?” Bryan suddenly remembered.
The heroes scrambled down to the water’s edge; but though they found the Amazon princess’ clothing, they found no sign at all of Troia or Joe.
Sam Wilson carefully bound Lindy’s chest with a torn up bedsheet, strapping them tightly with his best SPUD combat medical training and trying not to notice the bruises and strap marks on his supposed sister’s washboard ribs. “How’s that feel?”
“B-better, Falko,” the girl stammered.
“Let’s make it Sam for now, okay? So let me go over this again. You’re Lindy Wilson, daughter of Misty Wilson, and you’re thirteen years old. I’m your big brother Sam, and I’ve been taking care of you since mom OD’d five years back?”
“Yes,” Lindy swallowed. “You’ve been lookin’ after me real good.”
“I don’t remember it,” Falcon confessed. “I don’t remember any of it. I remember being an only child, son of Martha and Donald Wilson, nephew of Samuel Wilson.”
“Mom had an Uncle Sammy,” Lindy recalled. “She sometimes talked about him, but I never saw him.”
“This has got to be an alternate reality,” Falcon concluded. “Only answer. A world where Sam Wilson’s a drug-pushing street scum slime. Makes me want to kick my ass.”
“Sam?” Lindy was still terrified of him, and he seemed more unpredictable than ever now.
“No, don’t worry. Look, whoever you are you’ve had a real tough time, and although I know you have no reason in the world to trust me I’m going to see you’re okay.”
Tears welled in Lindy’s eyes. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t make fun of me. It’s bad enough you’ve roped me into your crimes with that guy in the closet.”
“Huh? What guy in the closet?”
Lindy shivered again. “What guy? The guy you and your ‘homies’ brought back here, that guy. The white dude in the yellow raincoat?”
“Yellow raincoat? Did you say a yellow raincoat?”
“Indeed,” agreed the Hooded Hood.
It was the middle of the night and the stars were a wheeling canopy above the darkened forest. Pelopia lay on her back, with Dream’s arm limp across her chest, and stared at the distant constellations.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! slept as he always did, deeply and untroubled. Pelopia’s mind was a tangle of conflicting thoughts and ideas. She rehearsed the conversation she would have with her father when she reported her weakness in this mythic jungle. She marshalled arguments that she was gaining influence over her enemy, weakening his guard, confusing him with erotic arts. But she knew she was only trying to fool herself.
She hated him, this Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove. She had been brought up to hate him, of course, and the cause he championed, but that had been the academic hatred of an inherited quest. Now her loathing burned bright and new. How dare he? How dare he touch her like that, make her feel like that? How dare he break down the disciplined barriers she had built around her heart and make her yearn in such disobedience to her father’s will? How dare he make her question everything she’d ever known, make her surrender to the moment like some common foolish trull?
CSFB! stirred and shifted in his sleep. Pelopia smoothed down his tufted hair with tender fingers.
Then she saw it, the shimmering twinkle in the darkness of the forest. Someone was there, watching. Someone hidden from normal perception; but not from one of Pelopia’s breeding and training.
The fay, of course. They’d arranged all this for their entertainment, after all. Surely those deceitful voyeurs would be here to witness the culmination of their subtle manipulations? To enjoy her tormented yearnings, the conflict of a heart she’d long thought frozen being thawed to bleed anew?
They were quite nearby, secure in their glamours of invisibility. Pelopia could reach out and seize one, then force it to take them from this place.
But her mission… wasn’t she supposed to keep the CrazySugarHero from escaping and finding the Hooded Hood? Even if it cost her her life, or the rest of her life here, in this place, living and loving with this man, letting his arms fold round her, kissing her, reaching down and…
No. She had failed in her mission. To stay here would destroy her, break her discipline, change her into something unrecognisable. She had to escape, before it was too late and her enemy conquered her.
She hurled herself across the clearing and grabbed the hidden creature. It screamed like shattering bells. “Dream, help me!” Pelopia shouted.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! was there in an instant, tangling the faerie in that fluorescent tape of his, securing it fast. The other presences fled.
“Is it a faerie?” Pelopia asked as they pulled on their clothes and stared at the sad captured creature of twigs and leaves.
“It’s our ticket out of here,” Dreamcatcher said. “Well done Pelopia! I love you!”
“The Hooded Hood! I should have known! This smells of retcon all over!” accused Sam Wilson.
Lindy looked with alarm at the grey-mantled stranger who was suddenly stood in the dingy flat. “Sammy, who’ this?”
“He’s a dead man, and the guy I’ve been lookin’ for for some time,” Falcon answered.
“Don’t kill him!” Lindy screamed. “Don’t kill anyone else!”
“Anyone else?” Sam had a nasty feeling about the cold weight in his pocket.
“Good evening, my dear,” the Hood bade Lindy, making a small bow to her with old world courtesy. “Please excuse my unexpected presence, but I have come to discuss matters of some importance with your brother here.”
“What’s your game, Hood?” Sam demanded.
“Chess, today,” the cowled crime czar answered. “The part where a pawn can become promoted to a knight.”
“I’m sure eventually you’ll get to a point and tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“Indeed. Well, to be brief enough to cater to your arrested attention span, I should explain that you and your fellow self-proclaimed heroes have now been dragged into the Faerie realms, there to be subjected to the subtle wonders and terrors of the Fey. In your case, however, they seem to have latched on to one or more of the various alternate personalities you have worn over the years, occupying themselves with a mere shell of a character, missing the deeper man.”
“So I’m in faerie? This isn’t real?”
“This? This is memory, Sam Wilson. This is how things were… before your retcon.”
Sam felt like he’d been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer. “What? What d’you mean?”
“Sam Wilson was a vicious, petty, cruel little thug, a drug-dealing sister-beating small-time hoodlum, who happened to come to my attention. I placed him… differently, so that he might attain one of a number of possible destinies.”
“You retconned me?”
“I arranged things to play out another way, causing your mother and father to meet under different circumstances. Of course there was a price.”
Falcon frowned. “What price?”
The Hooded Hood glanced over to Lindy. “This girl never existed. But her life was one of misery and suffering anyway. You wouldn’t want to sacrifice everything you’ve achieved, your happy childhood, respect, career, friends, future, just to save a sister you’ve never known for a life of horror, would you?”
Lindy stared helplessly at the two men determining her fate. “What’s going on, Sam?” she pleaded. “What are you going to do to me?”
Hooded Hood turned to Sam. “Well?” he asked the Falcon, “What are you going to do?”
IV
“If you open your eyes I will of course be compelled to kill you,” Princess Troia explained to ManMan.
“I see. Or rather, I certainly don’t because my eyes are firmly shut, honest. But if we both have our eyes shut to avoid seeing any exposed flesh we shouldn’t see, how are we going to get out of here?”
“I never said I was keeping my eyes shut,” answered the Amazon.
“No!” frowned CrazySugarFreakBoy! “This isn’t where we want to be. This is just another one of ManMan’s naked Troia fantasies.” He shook the captured faerie. “Try again.”
I
Visionodonary Sackins was a Bobbit. He was one of many Bobbits dwelling in a land of rolling hills and green valleys, of beautiful trees and a bright blue sky; the Shear. To the common man’s eye, a Bobbit would appear to be the size of a child. The tallest Bobbit of record grew to reach an astonishing, by Shear reckoning, 3 feet 13 inches; many Bobbits are unwilling to admit a Bobbit may reach 4 feet in height. Their lack of size lead some other races to call them halflings. Others prefer to call them “fake men”.
Visionodonary was not an exceptional Bobbit. He lived in Sack End with his uncle, Aposto Sackins. Visionodonary enjoyed a good mug of ale and a pipe between his teeth, and a song to brighten the day; all that is required for a happy Bobbit life. He had a good many friends, but none as loyal as Asilwise Clonegee, Asil for short. Asil did some work for Aposto in his garden, keeping the flowers happy and the weeds away.
“This is no good,” CSFB! called to Pelopia as they wrestled to hold the struggling faerie. “He’s just jumped us from one fantasy land to another. We have to get him to take us where we need to be, not where he wants to take us.”
“Sir Mumphrey the Grey!” Aposto exclaimed in surprise. He ran to embrace his old friend.
“Yes indeed Aposto. You would not think I would miss your birthday, would you now?” The two separated. “Right then, are you to keep a weary traveller on his feet any longer, or will you be starting the tea?” smiled the old man.
“Come on!” shouted CSFB! in the faerie’s large, cow-like ear. “You’re not getting away. Take us to the Hooded Hood!”
“To the Hooded Hood?” asked the creature. “That’s your wish? To be with the Hood?”
“Yes.”
The faerie laughed that cracked-bell giggle again. “Done!”
Next incarnation: Falcon’s decision about brotherhood, G-Eyed’s reaction to fatherhood, Pegasus’ view on martyrdom, Dancer’s opinions on retirement, spiffy’s behaviour on a blind date, and Nats’ discovery about the mystery villain. But mostly it’s the long awaited return of Visionary and… the Hooded Hood. Next week, or whenever the faeries bring it.
Author’s Comments:
What, you thought just because we didn’t have footnotes this time you were going to get away with it?
I occasionally like to clear out chunks of material that have been sitting on my hard drive for too long. The Mumphrey sections of Untold Tales #99 started life as a mini-series that never made if through the starting gate and got recycled into a Lair Legion story, for example. It must be pretty clear that some parts of this chapter started out from similar obscure origins.
The fantasy quest sections of this chapter were written in summer 2000, and the relationships and active cast of the series more or less reflect on where the board was back then. ManMan and Troia were two of the board’s most enthusiastic and active participants, Zemo was still around, and we’d yet to be much troubled by hoi-poloi like Nats and AG. Before I had a chance to take the story further, the board changed. Different characters and relationships came to prominence, and we entered a new age.
I considered rewriting it to reflect a more accurate portrayal of the fictional landscape today, but in the end decided to let it stand alone and recycle it as-was. I hope it retains some marginal interest.
For those who are curious as to who else would have been involved in the quest, here’s the cast-list in full from my notes at the time:
Joe Pepper (ManMan)
Princess Troia
Sir Jay, Knight of the Helm (Hatman)
Bastion the Hunter (Trickshot)
Foreman the Exile
Bryan of the Golden Eyes
Courier
Feydancer
Whitney the Sorceress
Xander the Improbable
Dreamer, the SillySweetForestFlitter! (CSF
Fin Fang Foom, Wyrm of the Northern Steppes
Lord Donar, Tyrant of the Thunderpeaks
Yo the Pure Thought Djinni
Good King Visionary and Quite Good Queen Cheryl
Lisa the Enchantress
The Pantsless Fool (Space Ghost)
Baron Zemo
Banjoooooo, King of the Deepwater Simians
spiffy the Jester
The Invisible Night Fear (Dark Knight)
The Mystery Shoggoth
Jaimie the Artificer
The Lord of the Rings spoof material is drawn from the last writing to date from Hatman, and the full text of the first chapter of “The Guy With the Ring” is available here.
I checked both the Falcon and CSFB! sections with the respective posters before going ahead with the plots here. Kirk (CSFB!) Boxleitner sent back some amendments which I have incorporated with thanks. However, his last suggested change, offering more insight into Dream and Pelopia’s love scene, didn’t fit with the pacing I was going for. I include it here for interest’s sake, though:
Pelopia suppressed a shiver as she regarded her compellingly savage companion, his autumn auburn brown hair grown long and wild with the oddly incalculable passage of time in this place, his previously pale Caucasian skin made red and slick with sweat by the hot sun that had beat down upon
them both, his faded jade green eyes turned fierce in the sudden intensity of passion that they projected, as he slowly leaned across her reclining form in a low, protective crouch. "You are my enemy, and my father's enemy," she stated assertively, hoping to buttress herself against the storm of her own unbidden emotions with the eminently sensible strength of such a self-evident statement.
"May I?" he quietly pleaded, and she saw him for the first time, a beautiful brave descended from a long line of proud warriors, openly humbled by his almost worshipful desire for her, and in that split-second instant, her decision was made.
Pelopia swallowing hard as she rested her hand gently upon his, and slid it down to the still-smooth juncture between her legs, before breathing out the only word that mattered to either one of them at that moment.
"Yes."
Here’s how I explained my own textual choices to Kirk:
I've worked the alterations in, albeit with minor changes in sentence structure to fit more with my own writing style, with one exception.
The last revision you suggested, with more detail in the motivations of Dream and Pelopia in making love, was actually nearer to an earlier draft of the story that I edited. I ruthlessly edited my text down for three reasons:
1. The CSFB! story is juxtaposed with a parallel Falcon story set in the unfaerielike Hell's Bathroom, and this scene cuts right into Falc talking with the thirteen year old girl who's been badly beaten up by her big brother. I wanted a contrast between romance and violence, but I didn't want the readers going into the scene about an abused young girl with a raging hard-on.
2. I was setting up the next CSFB! section which is about Pelopia catching the voyeuristic faerie, so I tried to limit my descriptions as the love scene approached to what an onlooker would see, and stay out of the minds of the lovers. We get Pelopia's confused thoughts in the next bit too, which is pretty much written from inside Pelopia's head.
3. The pacing seemed to demand a less-is-more type conclusion to the scene. I cut out detail more and more as it concludes, even leaving the reader to attribute the dialogue themselves rather than adding "he said" "she said". I'm trying to focus down, putting the dramatic beat on shorter and shorter sentences until we conclude with that one last important word "Yes."
However, what I propose to do is to add your version as an annex in the notes to this chapter, so that people can understand the motivations from a different perspective too. Than at any point when you want to flashback to this moment you can draw upon those thoughts and feelings to flesh out what was happening in those critical moments.
I hope that's okay.
IW
HH
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
Graphics on this page come from
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
