View Full Version : Felda Crash Site
ooc introduction
just wanted to say thx for looking at my crappy thread. i can't imagine anybody would want to read this, but in case you do decide to take your life in your hands and read this that it is pretty bad and i hate it. the story is cliche and predictable, the characters are awful and everything is just generally bad. so ahm yeah, thx dawg srsly, appreciate your time.
but the main thing i want to say here though is that i have heavily revised this sorry attempt a few times. lots of changes have been made. so if you were unfortunate enough to glance at earlier versions of this thread please consider looking at it again because it is less bad now compared to earlier. i guess?
feedback is so very welcome.
thanks buddies, ur the best ;D
~ya boy gum
Drizzle dashed windows blurred the honey sweet street lights. The rickety-rack-rock of the railway wheels on the rainy rails was roundly lulling. Inside one of the passenger train's ornate carriages a lithe woman sat at a table. She looked from the window, passing homes and businesses after entering the city, back down to the pages on the table in front of her. Scribed with pleasant precision, the paper was parsed with precious notes. She was preparing for something important. She starred a line or two on her page, she was still adding to her work.
Then the door to the carriage opened and the conductor stepped inside.
“NEXT STOP! FINAL DESTINATION! RADASANTH CITY! RADASANTH CITY! RADASANTH CITY! All change! Repeat, all change!”
His pea-green uniform mirrored the train's verdant livery. The coordination continued, for every gold bell and whistle on the locomotive, there was a gold-stitched trim or tassel on his uniform. Each leather loafer on his slimline feet shimmered like obsidian. The shoes weren't his pride and joy, it was the grandly regimented moustache between nostril and lip that glued his identity together. His hat capped his aura with severe authority.
The note making young lady snapped her binder closed and sprang to attention. The cover of the binder gave away her name, Daisy. After shuffling from her seat, she ambled along the gangway. She reached the train's door and prepared to exit upon arrival. First was the raincoat, her jagged shoulders gripped the jacket on its way over her stick-bug frame. The coat went from neck to toe. Her umbrella was all set and unbuckled ready for the rain, she'd checked on it. After giving her outfit a once and a twice and a thrice over for anything out of place, she was ready to button her coat tight.
The Champion of the Citadel was a green and gold steam powered piece of a modern magnificence. Named for the winning blood spillers of the city's famed battle arena, the locomotive was the pride and joy of the RYT (Radasanth, Yarborough and Tylmerande) Railway Company. Beyond its attractive green and gold colour scheme, the steam engine was beautiful in the mechanical sense; its abundance of wheels were bolted to pistols and prongs in a manner so elaborate it had to be the work of a genius. The body of the train was encased in delightfully slick sheets of metal siding. Screeching to a halt with an ear bursting blast of its whistle, the express arrived at Radasanth City Central Station.
With her umbrella handy, she stepped down from the railway carriage and onto the platform. She popped the umbrella open. The platform writhed with the bad mannered clash of those heading to and from the train. Her broad umbrella made her the epicentre of the traffic jam. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Excuse me! Pardon me,” she apologised politely, but without a shred of subservience. Her space in the world was her own, no matter how the rest of society viewed her for taking up a little extra room.
Instead of being overly concerned with others, she made a point of drowning in the curiosity of her first visit to such a grand building as Radasanth City Central Station. The brick archways were put together with such a degree of accuracy that she paused when going through them, she was wondering was it mortar or tension holding them up … or maybe a combination of both!? To get out of the station she had to go down a flight or two of steps and through an underground tunnel to come up on the street side of the building. In the tunnels there was something even more captivating than the brickwork, there were pearly tiles lining the walls. Intermittent works of art broke up the blank expanse in the tile work. Elaborate mosaics displayed nationalistic propaganda; Radasanth's heroes and heroines, the city's ancient crest, famous quotes from leaders dead and living. The whole experience made her a proverbial rabbit of the provincial kind, wide-eyed and wonder struck.
She emerged onto the thoroughfare and pattered up the street towards the St. Santhalas Theatre.
Between the kerb and the cobbles was Happy Street's gutter, it carried a stream of runoff downhill while Daisy laboured uphill and on towards the theatre. She turned the corner onto Sad Lane and lifted her umbrella to check the queue at the venue. "Wow," she mouthed behind the privacy of her raincoat and umbrella. What she saw was a rain soaked snake of a queue, it wriggled and giggled out of the building's door and into the street. The young woman bit her lower lip with excitement and apprehension in equal amounts. Energised, she hurried along and by the queue, smiling and helloing at everybody giving her the pleasure of eye contact. Once past the paying public, she went around to the back of the theatre.
Daisy was to enter at the back with the other performers for the evening. She closed her umbrella and gave it a shake, shake, shake it off. With droplets dispensed, she met with the door's bouncer. "Hi," she screamed upwards at the towering doorperson. The doorperson was Steffa. And Steffa was a beat up beauty in her fifties. Fifty wins on the fight circuit that was. Age-wise, the veteran pit fighter pushed forty with an eagerness shunned by most. Her tree trunk thighs were bettered only by her oil drum biceps. While born white, her race had long since left her behind. Steffa had spent her life in pursuit of the leatheriest tan in the hemisphere. "Daisy," grinned Steffa, "I am always happy to see you my girl!" The bouncer stepped aside and let the comparatively tiny performer enter the theatre.
Elaborate relief carvings appeared throughout the theatre's interior, they were painted cream and gold. The grand old theatre's seats waved out and along a gentle incline with imperial majesty. Red fabric wrapped the seat cushions and brass studs held it all together in a pinch. The cheap seats were for the closed knees and clutched handbags of the city's dignified underclass. The St. Santhalas Theatre took pride in keeping at least its bad view seats at a reasonable price. Meanwhile, those in the expensive seats were well set to jangle their jewelry(1) in appreciation of any performance. It wasn't long before rich and poor alike were fully seated and ready for an evening of the increasingly trendy art of old fashioned storytelling.
Daisy's bandy legs walked her through the red velvet side curtain and onto the grit and grain of the well-worn stage of the St. Santhalas Theatre. She was blonde and braided, every strand was tucked tightly with complete precision. Her floral dress fountained from her waist into a bouncy hem; it made the perfect portrayal of her featherlight personality. Her blue eyes were gripping, they were distracting. After clearing her throat with dorkish discomfort, she spoke in volume with a surprising competence. And when she spoke, it was bizarre. The storyteller was barely into her twenties and at first appeared uneasy. Nevertheless, she mastered the audience with a charisma retrieved from the snap shut quaintness of a memento box.
"I'm Daisy! I'm so happy to meet everybody! And I'll be telling you a story about a mystical old shaman from the Xangu Basin(2). Please enjoy the true story of the Felda Crash Site!"
Rude chatterings were shushed with mild applause. The clapping settled into a silence nobody wanted to ruin by rustling candy wrappers in their wintery pockets.
Footnotes & Wiki Links
"Jangle their jewelry" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvBCmY7wAAU&feature=youtu.be&t=55)
The Xangu Basin
Each inch of the sweat soaked jungle itched with discomfort. Through the broad leafed undergrowth to the hardwood's canopy, all creation creaked, croaked and sang. Dheathain's steam soaked biotopes spawned species after species, claiming the renown of being the epicentre of evolution for all Althanas.
The Xangu Basin's thickest thickets fell open for her stewards; it was a clearing in the rainforest that was natural and curved around in a nearly perfect circle. A tree stump altar marked the centre of the meeting place, it was broad and flat. The stump neatly filled the role of round table. And around the round table there were five individuals. The five creatures were the Stewards of the Xangu Basin.
The Stewards had gathered to discuss the consequences of a blood fued between local clans. Warring tribes had inflicted such a wealth of death that the rivers were clogged with rotten flesh, causing the water to pour pink across the forest's floodplains. For every rotten corpse, there was a rotten soul. The looming threat of rampant souls in revolt posed as great a threat to life as did the contamination of the rivers. Spectres were beginning to overwhelm the forest, haunting every corner of the basin. It was a shaman's purpose in the Xangu Basin to maintain the procession of the dead. They had to focus on their ability to link the Overworld and the Underworld, and to help transition the newly dead into the afterlife.
A wire furred fox made up one of the five. He struggled to wrap his narrow paws around a battered old mug. After tipping the cup forward he dipped his muzzle in the honey-sweetened tea for a little sip. "Ah, that's good," he whispered with a tight rasp. The fact that he could speak surprised nobody. Nor did the fact that he was drinking from a mug. The fox was named Vermil in honour of the rich red fur coating his little body.
Gum's ridge riveted brow spread its abundant creases through a smile, "I am glad you like it. The bees might see me coming next time." Gum raided bee hives for their honey as a friendly gesture for his vulpine friend. For a fox, Vermil had an unusually sweet tooth.
To Gum's left was the honking interruption of Pinna, an old goose(1). "Enough about the tea already! I'm tired, I want to go back to sleep. How are we going to deal with this problem?" Her bulbous posterior wagged with frustration as she spoke.
A pygmy boopadoon(2) spilled out of his tiny seat, steadying himself with a palm pressed on the table. "Well," he snuffled through more than a mouthful of trail mix, "we need to make peace between the clans!" The boopadoon's name was Potama, it translated as a potato from a native dialect.
Gum, the council's devoted shaman, nodded. Vermil, the rouge fox, sipped. Pinna, the unruly goose, honked.
And the fifth Xangu steward leaned forward over the table and snarled. "For how many thousands of years have bestu(3) and humans(4) murdered each other?" Io-Io(5) was a forest demon made material. It was not evil, nor was it good. It could be found swinging through the trees, dangling from its oversized arms, overwhelmed by a thick coat of grey hair. On that day, it was summoned to address the balance of the forest.
Gum shook his head dismissively, "Temporary peace is necessary to catch up."
"And yes!" growled Io-Io in response, "You. Shaman. Are responsible for delivering the dead to our mutual friend Oxxad(6)!"
Vermil twitched his whiskers nervously. Pinna ducked her head out of view. Potama finally fell backwards off his seat and rolled across the floor a couple of times.
"Remain calm everybody," urged Gum. "I will visit the Underworld and shake hands with Oxxad. I will deliver the dead. I will also visit the elders of the tri..."
Gum's words were stunned silent by a brilliant flash and bang in the sky. After shielding his eyes and waiting for his vision to return, he looked up to see the fox, the boopadoon, the goose and Io-Io had disappeared during the celestial explosion.
Gum waited though. When his vision cleared fully, he saw something sat squarely on the tree stump altar. It was an envelope brimming with the provocation of mystery. Anxious, Gum felt the damp moss under his feet with a renewed sensitivity. He delicately picked up the message between the callus skin of his thumb and forefinger. "Should I open it?" he asked the spirits of his ancestors for advice. Their answer came to him and he stopped breathing. "I need to leave," he whispered to himself and gulped a lungful of humid forest air.
The shocked shaman turned his back on the eerie emptiness of the forest clearing and made out for the safety of home.
A fallen trunk blocked his way. He surged forward anyway. Gum flung himself at the obstacle. A clear stride set him into the air and he was soon springboarding skyward off the trunk. Tearing through the leathery leaves and lacy fronds of the tropical vegetation, Gum's body transformed from man to beast in a fraction of a second. Inside, bones twisted and cracked, taking on a new form. Skin split open to accommodate the growth of a plush coat of fur. Hands and feet lost their length to gain girth and claws. Gum's face at the point of mutation was grotesque and incredible. Dull brown eyes glowed into vibrant yellow. Side-mounted ears, fleshy and oval in their human way, pushed forward and morphed into triangles on the top of his head. Flat and frowning, his mouth bulged into a thuggishly stout muzzle. His human teeth, utterly impotent, dropped from his mouth and onto the forest mud. In their place grew a predator's arsenal of skull piercing canines and marrow munching grinders. When Gum hit the ground, he hit it with the vigour of the eternal jaguar. The creature he became was an alien invader to Althanas, but the forests of the Xangu Basin were his domain.
Footnotes & Wiki Links
Heaven Goose
Boopadoon
Bestu People
Dheathain Humans
Io-Io the Forest Demon
Oxxad and the Pantheon of Dheathain's Xangu Basin
Daisy paused the storytelling for a moment, she focused on the crowd to gauge the quality of their experience so far. "Okay, they're buying it. Or if they're not buying it, they're at least enjoying it. I suppose?" it was an internal affirmation of the shakiest sort. The story had been told to her as absolute truth, but she had doubts about talking geese and tea drinking foxes. It was all a bit whimsical to her. The storyteller had reservations going forward because she knew the tale was going to get even harder to believe.
Sunset's tangerine lull painted the path back to safety and Gum landed home in a twilight pinch. The aged shaman lived in a clearing in the forest. Another clearing, but this was a carefully tended patch of land he had carved out with elbow grease. Fleeing the last clearing in a fit insecurity proved a polar opposite to the emotions he felt stalking out of the sticky overgrowth and into familiar surroundings. After padding by his ponds of fish and pots of pansies, the big cat growled contently across the threshold and into his jungle abode. In human form, Gum was the mediocre craftsman who put his ramshackle homestead together, but as a jaguar it was an unreal sight: a savage mammal parading so brazenly into a human house. And the envelope held daintily in his mouth made it a perfect picture. He laid down the letter on his bedside cabinet and hopped into bed for a night well rested.
Gum dreamt the moment over and over for every minute of the night. In his dreams he saw silver and grey swirling in the heavens, it was a spinning sheet of shining metal dotted with lime green lights and ice blue buttons. The sky's clouds parted invitingly and the jungle beneath opened agape. A foreboding anxiety snapped at Gum's heels while he wandered all through the dream's night.
~
"Urgh," rolling into a spot of cool linen in the morning's sunshine flush was a free pleasure. But, it was still waking up. And worse than that, it was waking up to a time fraught with woe. Rays beamed through the gaps in the curtains, the illuminating shafts made magical mystery out of the floating dust. Stanky gunk crumbled from Gum's eyes and he focused on his hands. They weren't paws, they were hands. He had transformed back into a human in his sleep. "Fortunate," he thought. The transformation process took a toll on his teotl mana(1) when he forced it. Having happened naturally in his sleep, the process had not drained him. Shuffling to the edge of his bed, the forty-something man pushed his bare feet against the rough grain of his wooden floor. He ran his tongue around his mouth to lap up the awful odor of a night spent sweating between sheets. Gum stood up and ambled over to a clay container, he pissed in his shit pot. His urine was thick and smelly from having become dehydrated.
While shaking away the drops from his penis, it caught his eye; the unopened envelope on the homemade stand next to his bed was begging to be opened. Gum contemplated the context of it all. Instead of red, the wax seal was lime green. Wondering, he remembered his dream from the night before. "I do not remember if it was green," his age and connection to the spirit world had given him a wealth of conviction. Uncertainty made for a rare curiosity in Gum's life. Gum considered throwing the letter into the River Noku(2). Gum thought of communing with his ancestors and his master Do U. Then, in an uncharacteristic fit of impulse, he tore his finger into a corner of the envelope, ripped along the top edge. He opened the letter and began to read.
Dearest Gum,
You don't know me. I'm a wonderful person, trust me on that. And I know you. You're a wonderful person too. Isn't that a crazy coincidence? I adore you. I worship you. I've been watching you for so long now. I want to meet! I need to meet! You have to agree, don't you? Wouldn't you just love to meet your secret admirer?
So anyway! I will be waiting for you at the tree stump altar every night until you come back. I came for you. When we meet you'll learn that my love for you can change the universe.
~ Felda
p.s. I'm not sure what happened to your friends, but I can help you find them, okay?
Gum crumpled the bizarre love letter into a ball and dropped it into his shit pot. As it absorbed his urine it began to sink out of view.
Footnotes & Wiki Links
Teotl Mana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotl)
River Noku
Gum decided to go. It wasn't vanity that drove his decision, but the dire reality that it was likely that this Felda person was responsible for the mysterious explosion and, most importantly of all, the sudden disappearance of the other Stewards of the Xangu Basin.
The mired treacle of an anxious eve welcomed Gum into a foreboding journey. Sheathed above the rain forest canopy, the stars took a nervous refuge behind a deep blanket of charcoal clouds. Moonlight faltered and failed its duties. Struggling through the thick undergrowth, Gum realised the only sound was his legs pushing through the stems and stalks. The forest's din of crickets and frogs had retreated into silence a meek silence, warning him with its refusal to persist. Nevertheless, Gum cut forward into the woods. He was a servant of Oxxad and a student of the legendary Do U, fear of death could not intimidate him. The tree stump altar meeting place pulled him. The old shaman had a date with the unexplained.
~
Gum emerged from the trunks and leaves and into the familiar open space, the familiar meeting place. It was just as empty as the rest of the forest. He sat at the altar and folded his arms across the gaunt rib-lines of his skinny chest. He waited. Time spilled ahead of him and time pooled behind him, he quickly lost his sentient grip on which spot on the continuum he actually existed in. How many hours had it been? Why was the moon still? The stars too. Midnight kept him caged. Logic left him in the absence of time. Had his logic stayed with him then he would surely have left. Instead he waited. And waited. Nothing moved, and with time it concerned Gum further. Gum's forehead fell into his folded arms and sleepy slumber took him away with the mixers.
And awake or asleep, time kept on standing still for hours and hours.
Fragmented in a moment, his dreams had been the genesis and then snapped shut with a frightening revelation. A flashing bang gorged on the sky's navy velvet, the same light as the first night. Gum looked up and saw the brightness push through the clouds. Dream or reality, Overworld or Underworld; each carried equal merit. As the thick cover diverged, he was able to see the source of the light and the cacophony. A gargantuan disk, metallic and flashing green and blue, span into sight. Its alien illumination jarred over nature's earthy harmony. What Gum saw was bigger than the palaces and cathedrals of Corone. It was immediately clear to Gum, this craft had come from another reality -- a foreign planet or dimension. It possessed a level of technology that Master Do U had described to him as existing around in other times, places and universes.
"Is this a trap?"
That was when he froze, his mind kept thinking but his body stopped reacting. If there had been a chance to flee, the opportunity had expired. The UFO's blazing glare was all the harsher on unblinking eyes. Trapped and terrified, Gum was forced to watch the unreal mass of the alien ship come down on him. The closer it got, its truly unreal technology became more apparent; it was spinning and descending without creating a whisper of wind. Light and heat were inseparable according to everything Gum knew about life, but this ship's illumination was cold and stinging. The craft's hull seemed to flex and flow in some spots, like water, but fold and flap with gears and pistons in others.
The ship came to be so close that it filled everything from the floor of the forest to the top of the world, blocking out the every shred of the world from Gum's perception. It was when all was engulfed that Gum lost his consciousness.
It was a pivotal point in the parable and the depth of Daisy's involvement in the experience of her audience consumed her. In the privacy of her mind, she pleaded for their enjoyment. Trying to collect the details on their faces was a futile endeavour, the bright lights lining the rim of the stage made it impossible to observe anything other than silhouettes and a sweat inducing glare. She took a moment to be silent. Her pause in the story was suspended the tension, the sensation was excruciating. Or so she thought. Surely the listeners were attached to Gum by this point? Did they care if he lived or died? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Her confidence was lost in a desert of desperate, and secret, insecurity. She longed for approval and success. Daisy was dedicated to learning as much as she could, the young woman was driven to be the best storyteller on the entire planet.
She parted her parched lips and attempted to continue with the story.
Then!
"Time for an intermission!" It was the gargling voice of the pink wrapped purples of the absurdly flamboyant master of ceremonies. The bizarre man burst onto the stage, he was the eye in a tornado of his own flowing garb. To Daisy, it was very unexpected. She winced at him, mouth agape and brow wrangled into a knot. His name was "Fab" Spud Haylake and he had warmed the crowd up superbly prior to Daisy's gawkish gait carrying her on-stage. No intermission had been planned, imagined problems tumbled through Daisy's worried mind for a moment or two. Her heart broke at the notion that he was on the stage to cut her act short because of a glaring lack of quality. But, all was answered once Spud sidled up to her and she could smell the thick foundation caking her colleague's complexion.
"He's here! He's really here," whispered Spud.
"Who?" she whispered back through a cartoon character crack in the corner of her tight lips.
"Gum! He's back stage," explained Spud with dinner plate eyes, wide with adolescent glee.
"What? How can he be here, I don't..."
Daisy's chain of words was broken by Spud addressing the crowd with his booming baritone. "Grab a drink. Buy some popcorn, won't you? It keeps us in business. Toffee! Butter! Salt! Cheesy! We have all the flavours, don't you know?" Spud Haylake was the theatre incarnate.
The house lights came up and illuminated the audience. Daisy had already shot back stage to find Gum, she was missing out on a chance to observe the crowd faces she longed to see. The sacrifice was worth it though, if anybody had an opinion she would value it would surely be the subject of her story.
Daisy dashed across the uneven boards of the stage and disappeared through the rabbit hole curtain to make it to the sanctuary of the backstage area. Still on stage, Spud filled the meanwhile with his wisecracking chicken strut routine. Popcorn lovers and the full bladdered alike filed out of their seats and into the foyer, the remaining faces laughed with varying degrees of thoroughness at the MC's whimsical entertainment.
Blushed and flushed, Daisy's cheeks had broken out all ruby red as she fluttered into the throng of a downtown theatre's backstage. She looked around the room filled with seasoned crew members and pampered performers from further up the card. Flicking her braid back and forward with each snap of her neck, she was bubbling with the intent to pick out the visiting shaman from the crowd. Though she had never met Gum, she had an idea of what Xangu natives would look like. A chattering din gradually consumed her patience, she began to grind her teeth with anxiety as she carefully sidestepped and sorried her way through the cocksure crowd. "Urgh," somebody's accidental elbow thumped her in the flank, the final straw snapped.
"GUM!!"
Her bursting voice lacked nothing in the way of volume. Whether it had been heard on the other side of the curtain or not was not up for debate, some things were certain. Every backstage neck in the crew pointed their fat head at the dandy girl letting her feelings be felt. Gum was nowhere to be found. In the curtain curbed distance she could hear Fab Spud struggling with his charming yet dangerously underdeveloped material. His last resource was his innate charisma. Just as she was about to give up, she heard Steffa speak to her from somewhere. The bulky bouncer called out, "He's right here, Dais'!" And so he was. Gum's unimpressive form had been entirely blocked from sight by the security guard's dominating girth. Daisy and Gum met in the middle and she began to natter hurriedly.
"It's so crazy to meet you," gushed Daisy with a reverent bow.
"Thank you. I am pleased to meet you also, Daisy," his words were the polished river cobbles beneath the mountain stream flow of her enthusiasm.
"What are you doing here?"
"I am here on business. I was told by a local friend that you were telling a story about me. Such a coincidence reveals the will of something that lives behind the world we see with our eyes. I thought I'd make sure my people and their reality is portrayed fairly," he wasn't severe, but Gum was genuinely guarded about his culture.
"I'll do my best," she smiled nervously between words.
"I made it just in time for the start. Steffa let me in and I have been listening intently. Your telling of the story has been very accurate indeed."
"Well, If you're here after the show--well if you can of course--please stay. I really would absolutely love to talk more with you?"
"By all means," this acquiescence was the smallest of favours for Gum, "I'll be here waiting!"
"I have to go," mouthed Daisy before spinning a one eighty back towards the stage.
Daisy was quickly back on the stage and continued her story with increased confidence. Her words came from the depth of her gut and were fully galvanized with the mightiest armour available: the genuine approval of her subject matter.
Gum's red-raw eyes parted into a dry glare. He was awake again. A chilling spotlight from above illuminated every crease in his leathery old skin. At first he felt like he was frozen still. This time no alien force was involved, it was because of tight straps pinning down his ankles, wrists and neck. His bare back shivered up against a cold metal table beneath. Sharp prongs extended from above and pulled his eyelids apart. He winced. Another set of prongs held his mouth open. Turning his eyes left and right, he was only able to see shadows.
She pattered forward from the black periphery. She was a grey, a small grey humanoid alien. The spotlight cast enough shine on her so that Gum was able to make her out. She was short, less than four feet tall. Her legs were disproportionately stubby. Her head was bulbous, like an upside down boiled egg. The eyes in her head were entirely black, large and aesthetically oval. Otherwise, her face was featureless. She was naked. The eyes were the only external organ visible, her body showed no hint of a mouth, ears, nose, nipples, penis, vagina and, although Gum couldn't see, no anus.
"I admire you, Gum."
She spoke in his head. Felda's words were eerily incompatible with all Gum knew about hearing voices in his mind. Gum had heard the words of the spirits of his ancestors in his mind many times. More than that, Gum communed with Oxxad, god of the Underworld, frequently. The way Felda was communicating was different. Word after word hummed in his head so completely that it could be telepathy. Those words though -- "I. Admire. You." -- they felt like real sound, but the being in his presence had no mouth.
"I'm your secret admirer Gum," she elaborated with a cosmic giggle. "I've been watching you. I used to watch your master, Do U. But when he died and you mastered transformation, I realised you were what I wanted. For all this technology you see around me, I don't understand Xangu magic."
Droplets of sweat slicked Gum's temples.
"Listen to me, Gum," said the grey, "I know you're scared. But I want to make you safe and powerful. And most of all, I want to make you mine. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Felda. I'm alone in space and I want a partner and a home."
Even if Gum wanted to reply, he couldn't because his mouth was wired open.
"I plan to conquer Dheathain. I've been watching the tribes kill each other. And I know that death in the Xangu has a connection to the kind of power you have. Death in Dheathain is power. These things, the spirits, they linger in the trees and torture the living?"
Felda's inquisitive tone about his native culture was something Gum had heard before. Researchers from the University of Radasanth had visited his people in the past and spoken about his shamanism with similar curiousity.
"It's all so strange to me. Technology has taken me across the glaxay. But what you have, and what your home has, is beyond me."
But the way this alien spoke and asked was different to the big city scientists.
"I know that without a shaman on my side I can't possibly conquer the region and harness the power that death brings."
Felda's words were anything but condescending. She accepted the Xangu magic as real and desired its power uncontrollably.
"I'm going to need you. Precious man. For the coming slaughter and the ultimate power it will give me."
She paused her scattered diatribe for a moment. A plastic pipette lowered slowly from above and dropped a viscous liquid into Gum left eye, then his right. His vision blurred. He squirmed at the discomfort of not being able to blink his eyes, they were still clamped asunder.
"And you're handsome too. Well, not really. But the jaguar you transform into is so beautiful. Maybe you can reveal that magic to me. You know I've abducted humans from Earth too? I've seen jaguars in the wild there. Do U brought them here, didn't he?"
A razor edged slither of metal jutted from the shadows and scraped a section of skin from Gum's face. He winced. Felda was taking DNA samples.
"I know about your gods too, Gum. If we're to love each other and rule Dheathain side by side, I'd have to learn your delightful religion. Of course I would. I almost think we might be gods ourselves, you know?"
Fear and potential carried Gum's thoughts downstream. Potential: a freedom from ferrying the slain clanspeople from life to death, no more answering to the stewards of the forest, no more suffering Io-Io's insufferability, no more grim cooperation with Oxxad. Petrification: pinned to a bizarre table in a bizarre ship by a bizarre being, Gum did not fear death because he knew the princes and queens of the Underworld too well, but he did fear a life of torture and agony. Do U had taught Gum to be a vital element in the balance of the forest, an ally to the living and the dead. Gum knew what was right and wrong, but a way out of the endless duty proved a savoury temptation.
"Just like Atataratzu and Thoery(1). That could be Felda and Gum. Creators. We could create a whole new race of people to rule the forest. A hybrid race. To begin with. Then eventually we can be rid of the Drakai and the Bestu. The entire continent would belong to us! Then from Dheathain we could launch an assault on all the cities, nations and races of Althanas. Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful?"
Blood trickled down Gum's face while Felda's monologue went on. Without warning, the high pitched whirring of a narrow drill startled the captive shaman. The drill descended from the light above and into Gum's open mouth. It began to drive a hole into one of Gum's yellow-stained molars. He groaned and screamed, as much as he could, through the petrifying ordeal.
"I know how you live in fear of Oxxad. I know you're supposed to be a friend with him. He knows you're afraid of him, Gum. You know what that means, don't you?"
Gum knew that his troubled relationship with the bearer of the dead would make his own passage into the Underworld troublesome when the time came.
"Just think, no more Oxxad slavery! Are you ready to accept my offer? Are you ready to be a god king?
The drill pulled away from his mouth. It had left an implant embedded deep in its wake. The prongs retracted from Gum's mouth, giving him the chance to speak.
“No. No, I will not help you! Send me to Atataratzu. I welcome eternity with her over you, invader!”
Footnotes & Wiki Links
Dheathain Pantheon
Felda folded her hairless brow into a furrow and pinched in her mouthless cheeks. That featureless face was able to scowl amply. The surprise and indignity of having her offer of glory and power refused had ignited a rage in her unlimited ego. Spurned, she span back into the shadows. A grunting sigh of disapproval echoed in Gum's head as the alien exited.
After that fleeting relief, Gum wrapped his worries around the moment's opportunity. With gut wrenching urgency, he engaged his transformation magic. Gum mangled the bones holding his body together with burning will. The process was fueled by the powerful focus of his thoughts and its companion currency, teotl mana. Gum was transforming from hominid to felidae, and he was doing it from the inside to the outside. Every bone, organ and muscle throbbed and ached so as to morph from its human original into a panthera genus equivalent. Fur burst from his hairless skin. The brown in the irises of his eyes drained away to be replaced by the rich hue of a yolky yellow. Through the ancient shamanistic spell, he had freed himself from his bonds. Gum was once again a powerful jungle cat, a jaguar. Unlike every other successful transformation, Gum had taken on a solid black coat--the melanistic form--rather than the usual rosette covered coat. He hopped down from the table and melded his own newfound blackness with that of the darkness surrounding the illuminated metal table. The benefit of his solid black coat was apparent.
Felda was a fool if she had failed to anticipate that the very ability she coveted in him might prove to be the one thing that allowed her captive to escape.
With his tail whipping back and forth at the excitement of the hunt, the black panther sat in a dark corner waiting to pounce.
Felda's snapping rage eventually evened and she returned to her torture table to try and convince Gum again.
Gum's ear's twitched hearing Felda's featherlight footsteps approaching.
"Gum, my dear--reconsider, won't you?" she said stepping into the room. To her horror, she realised her prisoner had escaped his bonds. The table was bare, but the straps that had been pinning him down appeared untampered with. Switching from power to paranoia had sent a jolt of alien adrenaline to her extraterrestrial heart. She was panicking. Before she could turn around to look for him, Gum's savage bulk emerged from the black and came pushing down on her diminutive shoulder blades. Felda hit the ground face first. The black panther pinned her down, Gum drove his ravaging canines into the mushy bone at the back of her alien skull and ended her intergalactic existence with the efficient bite of an apex predator. Steaming green blood fizzed around the edge of Gum's vice-like jaws. The jaguar released his grip and let the deceased invader fall limp at his paws.
"Phew," thought Gum, the ease of the kill was an immense release of anxiety.
After dispatching his enemy, Gum was adrift hundreds of feet above the ground, trapped inside Felda's dreadful craft. Gum delved into the luminous lime honeycomb maze of Felda's mothership. His bellowing roar echoed through the empty corridors, he was calling out to the abducted stewards of the Xangu Basin. While Gum could not be certain, it was a good guess that it was Felda who abducted them and that they were being held on this very same spacecraft. While a bulky creature, his padded paws pattered lightly across the unknown metal comprising the ship's interlocking tubes. There was no way to be sure if he was going in circles. Time had returned, absent since the clearing, to torture him once again.
"How long have I been running around these tunnels?"
Beginning to tire, Gum stopped running, lowered his head and twitched his nose at the air. Something smelled foul. Twisting the ears on top of his head, he was able to hear something. "It sounds like," thought Gum hopefully. Following the scent and sound it became quickly clear to him that he was going to find at least some of his friends alive and well. Three left turns and a right. He arrived to the sound of, "Gum, in here!"
The room the Dheathain shaman was arriving in was similar to the one he had woken up in. Instead of one single metal table, this room had three tables and to each was strapped one of his friends.
"Unstrap us," honked the goose, drowning in her own desperation.
"That would be nice," as wryly as would be expected for a talking fox.
"..." the boopadoon seemed to have been deeply affected by the trauma of the abduction.
Gum's steward friends were animals with the ability to speak. Gum, however, was a human with the ability to become an animal. Gum was not able to speak back to them as long as he was a cat. Nevertheless, he set to carrying out their request. Each strap was snapped apart by Gum's felid jaws and his friends awkwardly scooted from their tables and down onto the metal floor.
Io-Io was missing. Everybody else was there. It was then that Gum knew he had to endure the difficult transition back into a man so that he could engage his companions. He had to ask what happened to Io-Io. Even if Gum and Io-Io were not particularly friendly, it was Gum's duty to protect a fellow Xangu steward. They also had to devise their escape plan.
The foursome stood together in the strange room, instinctively mirroring the same circular formation they do every time they meet in the rainforest. Each looked left and right at their fellow prisoners.
"Where is Io-Io?" asked Gum.
"We haven't seen him since the meeting," explained Vermil.
"I think we're inside the flying disk," declared Gum speculatively.
"Then we have to bring it down to the ground," surmised the fox matter-of-factly.
"How on earth can we do that?" Pinna blabbed, desperate with self-defeat.
"She, it, whatever... it used to go to the left down this corridor," the fox pointed at one of the many exits to their room.
"And?!" grumbled the goose. Gum and Vermil furrowed their brows at Pinna's rude interruption.
"Well," continued Vermil, "when it went down that corridor, that's the only time I felt the floor here move. It must be where she controls this thing from."
The pygmy boopadoon, Potama, had remained silent while the discussion progressed.
"Let's go there then," said the fox, speaking of the probable control room.
The white of the boopadoon's eyes faded under the shadow of his angry brow. He unsheathed his blunt teeth in an uncharacteristic snarl. "Argh!" he screamed and bolted, his hefty weight thundered through the ship as he hurtled down the hallway. Gum's careful proposal that the stewards make a tempered expedition into the unknown area of the spaceship went out the window. Gum dashed after the boopadoon, followed by feathers and a fox.
The sound of crackling electricity and smashed metal brought the rest of the stewards to the boopadoon's location. Gum looked around the room, it was very different to the rest of the ship. It was full of consoles covered in buttons. The boopadoon had already trashed the place. "No!" warned Gum as his friend's carnage continued. Potama smashed the last console by swinging his ample buttocks into it.
Gum's narrow eyes stretched wide while he listened to Daisy tell the tale, each dark iris sparkled with a glint of fascination.
"Potama suffered for a long time after that ordeal," remembered Gum to himself.
Up until that point, the sanctity of the backstage area had proved a satisfactory listening experience for the out of towner. Gum knew though, having lived the story, that the pace was about to really pick up. Gum decided that for the climax of the story that he would be best suited to sharing in the experience of the paying crowd. He left quickly, wishing to cause no fuss and hoping that none of the busy crew would notice him take his leave.
Steffa though, a ferociously loyal friend to Daisy, sidestepped from nowhere and angrily set herself between Gum and the alleyway exit he was attempting to escape into.
"You told her that you'd stay until the end of the story. Why would a nice old man like you break his word?"
Gum smiled at being called old by Steffa, he was certain they had to be around the same age.
"I'll honour my word," explained the reverent old forest man.
"Okay, then," Steffa said with a slither of reluctance as she stepped aside to let Gum out into the pitter patter rain of the night's streetlight charm.
Potama's rectal ruin set forth a series of events that would gradually cripple the craft.
Gum reeled away from a sparking bulkhead to his right, only to shift back at the sniff of smoking panels on his left.
"Erm," worried Vermil as he watched the door to their room randomly slash open and closed.
A luminous liquid splashed Pinna's rich orange feet, "Argh!" she honked in response.
Scalding steam blasted from cracks in the flooring under their feet.
"Let's go," Gum said with decreased volume.
"One at a time, when the door opens," advised the fox.
"What are we going to do about him?" whined the goose while pointing her primary feathers at Potama.
Gum looked at his distressed companion and made a recommendation to him, "Potama, relax."
The pygmy boopadoon felt the calming pressure of Gum's narrow fingers holding his shoulders steady. Without saying anything, he nodded.
"Okay," assured Gum, "Vermil, you first."
The fox winked for the affirmative.
"Potama, you watch how he does it and sneak out after him," Gum thought letting the fox show how it's done first would be wisest.
Potama nodded nervously.
"Then you Pinna. And I'll go last."
~
While the captives conspired to escape on the inside, the ship connived to entrap on the outside. Potama's rampaging dismantlement of the ship's main control room had left the recently released captives without any hope of piloting their floating prison. There was no way for Gum and his companions to navigate and exit on their own terms. They weren't just trapped, the pygmy boopadoon's actions set the intergalactic spaceship itself on a terminal course.
Sections of the exterior hull teased a molten outcome with dangerous glows of red and white. The serenity of the ship's operating silence had roared aloud and awake, breaking into the aggressive din of an industrial monstrosity. Felda's ship possessed old fashioned emergency thrusters which were engaged by the ship's automatic preservation systems. Without the safety systems the disc would have plummeted to the jungle below. Instead, the craft's fore and aft dipped and bowed unnervingly, but luckily for those living inside, it began its forced decline with a modicum of safety.
Celestial calamity persists as a preacher's key tool, inspiring awe is easy when the story's crux is doom from above. Lacking the humility obliged to them by their simple lithospheric perspective, both human and bestu holy people placed the slow but incessant descent of Felda's ship as central to their respective doomsday scenarios.
"Is your soul prepared to meet Oxxad?" asked a priest grabbing a mother's child by the wrist. "Come on," the gasping mother tugged on the child's other wrist and hurried them home. After the mother and child escaped the holyman's hubris, he turned his unwanted attention to a gruff man drinking a pungent drink.
"And you, drunkard, are you prepared?" the priest's words pulled the drunk's attention, he had been harangued twice already that morning.
"Are you prepared you pompous fucking prick?!" the drinker's words were a violent melody for his fists to sing along to.
"Are," his arm was cocked.
"Respect the clergy, son," commanded the the priest.
"You," his nostrils blasted broad with bovine prowess.
"Now, now," pleaded the priest.
"PREPARED?!" his broken knuckle fist, balled tight, cracked the priest's bulbous nose in one blow.
"Oof!" down went the priest.
Across the entire Xangu region, the towns and villages dotted along the rivers and roads looked up as one. Society almost stood still, as minute by minute the great roaring silver object in the sky seemed to get bigger and louder. Though, a minority of people in power were engaged in productive activity. While the less virtuous of their religious orders were waxing hysterical, the cool headed councils of both humans and bestu natives were meeting in their towns and villages to discuss the impending disaster.
Thanks to the spaceship's retrorockets, there was time for the people to hold discussions. The same questions came up in every town centre across the Xangu Basin.
"What can we do?"
"How can we save our people?"
"Will this cover all of the Xangu when it falls?"
"If not, where will it fall?"
"What has caused this?"
But ultimately, the last question was always, "Well, what should we do right now?"
In unison, the elders of both races came to a similar conclusion: a scouting party comprised of their race's best rangers must be sent to the area where it seemed like the ship was going to crash. Under the looming threat of the falling monstrosity, the two races produced a troupe of honest scouts.
Dutifully putting their own lives at risk, both groups headed for what appeared to be the inevitable centre of the crash site. Both parties arrived at the steward's clearing where the initial abduction had taken place, that was the place where the craft was going to crash down first. The closer's Felda's vehicle got, the more apparent the impact point became.
Face to face, the warring factions were quick to slam each other with damning accusations. Each claim was more absurd than the last. A forest floor brook separated their two well regimented lines, all weapons were readied. A human insistence of complicity between the bestu and some kind of sorcerer came first. "You did this!" screamed a human loyalist. The pygmies fired back with their own nonsensical assertion. "Black magic beyond the pantheon, you summoned that thing with an outside god!" growling and frothing with anger, the little man speaking for the bestu invoked Atataratzu's law. The law stated that any who invite foreign gods to the Xangu Basin should be punished without mercy.
Time and the obvious fact that nobody stood to gain from impact caused a cooling of the mood. The dispute settled into a silent standoff. Each group sent a single soldier back to their elders explaining the situation and requesting reinforcements. Trust between the sworn enemies was an extinct commodity.
Meanwhile, outside the theatre there were still people trying to get into see Daisy's show.
"One please," asked a late arriving audience member to the ticket booth attendant.
"But, sir. The show's almost over, don't you know?"
"I do, but I want to catch the end of the show anyway."
"Well, why don't you just go on in for free," offered the spotty teenager whose conscience couldn't allow him to charge full price.
"No, I will pay to hear even the end of the story," insisted the attendee.
"If you insist, sir," said the attendant. The attendant was secretly relieved anyway, because had his boss found out he was letting people who showed up late in for free then he'd lose his job.
Daisy squinted at the bright lights preventing her from seeing the audience clearly. Despite the impediment, she settled her sight on the silhouette of a person who was joining the audience even at this late point in the story. Unruffled by the disturbance, she kept talking with the enthusiasm she had told the story with thus far.
Delicate feelings dragged heavy in the bottom of her throat, she knew a melancholy set of events was approaching and she struggled to maintain her professional composure.
The two scouting parties had multiplied into two small armies as the requested reinforcements trickled in from the wide range of Xangu settlements. The falling Felda ship was threatening to bring their lives to an end regardless of which side possessed the tougher fighters, but neither force was willing to back down and move clear of the imminent crash site. The shorter bestu looked up defiantly from under the bulging lip of their kissing carp(1) helms. They were eyeballing the more regimented humans who wore ceremonial evertu(2) skins hung from their shoulders. For every soldier thinking, "this is stupid, we should work together," there was another thinking, "They killed my brother, now I will have my revenge!"
Rattling up and down their lines marched their respective commanding officers, two battled toughened generals, each suited to the nines in primitively linked chain mail, thick old bone slats and elaborate jungle feathers.
"Alright," yelled the human general across the waterway. His name was Boeck, and it was his birthday.
"Alright," yelled back his bestu counterpart. Winck was selected to lead the bestu due to an injury to a more experienced alternative.
They were both passionate but practical warriors. They knew entirely just how absurd it was stupid to stand off like this. Both believed themselves willing to sacrifice lives in defence of their homeland, but grandstanding was a political business.
They began walking towards each other, one mirrored the other's regal barbarity and vice versa. They so happened to be meeting at the same tree stump table that the stewards had met at the first time Felda came to visit Althanas .
"This thing is coming down," Boeck insisted with matter-of-fact urgency.
"Agreed," Winck could not deny it.
"My people think your people did this. One soldier to another, did you?"
"No. We did not summon this terrible thing. My elders insist this is some kind of human trickery."
"I assure you, to the best of my knowledge, that is not the case," the human's sincerity was punctuated with his earnest eye contact.
"I can see you're not lying," conceded Winck.
"Then I propose we both retreat a safe distance and worry about what happens after this thing comes down."
"Every other soldier in my army has lost a family member to our war," explained the best general solemnly.
"I understand," said the human, "I know what comes after this thing comes down."
Their generations of venom would rise with the opportunity for violence.
Footnotes & Wiki Links
Kissing Carp
Evertu
Back to back, the generals parted ways and returned to their ranks. The order to retreat back to a safe distance cultured a juxtaposition in opions: relief and frustration. Some, those with the calm hearts of peace, felt that bloodshed should be avoided whenever possible. Others, those with the violent hearts of the terminally aggrieved, wanted brutal vengeance and their own lives be damned. Chatter broke out in the opposing ranks.
Each commander's lieutenants marched up and down their formations, snapping confirmations in the face of dissent.
"No disorder!"
"Nobody stays behind!"
"There'll be plenty of time to fight after this thing comes down. If there's anything left."
"Keep moving."
Daisy pulled in as much air as she could, pausing to squeeze in some more oxygen with another puff or two. Then she released. Life giving air fled her chest, ran up her windpipe and escaped her frowning lips. In exhaling, she had swiftly transformed her demeanor, from bounding life to listless death.
As the warriors trailed away from the impending crash site, some glances back and over their shoulders showed them the spaceship's latest calamity. One of the roaring thrusters positioned around the disc's perimeter began to fail and sputter, before ultimately suspending operation entirely. With one of the retrorockets out of commission, Felda's ship began to shift from its intended horizontal pitch. Only moments were needed for the broken craft to turn to a ninety degree angle. With a reduced surface area and ineffective remaining thrusters, the craft began to descend much more quickly.
All had retreated to a secure distance when it was finally time for the airborne abomination to slam into the rainforest below. Horrified, the warriors watched and winced as the ship drove into the ground. At first, the rim of the ship pushed down into the earth, causing a thick slosh of soil, water and vegetation to peak up and form a surrounding hill. Felda's alien metal had strength in abundance, it held its shape flawlessly as it wrecked miles of primordial forest. Ancient trees and slender saplings alike were torn and strewn around to the pungent aroma of organic mayhem. Maintaining a solid right angle, the ship had been able to burrow a hundred feet into the ground, but eventually the remaining retrorockets were failing. It was then that the ship pancaked, flopping sideways and flattening everything under its colossal mass.
The wetness on Daisy's lips was beginning to evaporate and her saliva glands failed their duty to replenish the lost moisture. Her whole mouth was starting to dry out. She stopped, gulped and felt her heart pump out a beat to the spectre of her insecurity. The story came to a pin drop pause.
Every thing was dead.
She continued, dry.
Not every creature had the wherewithal to flee the inevitable doom. Species of plant, fish, bird, mammal, lizard, insect and arachnid that existed nowhere else but in that five mile radius were forever extinct. The sacred meeting place for the Stewards of the Xangu Basin had been obliterated. Worst of all, the course of two of the mighty Xangu's tributaries had been altered and they were fast draining into the unnatural hollow surrounding the fallen UFO.
Neither army let a moment go to waste. General Winck and General Boeck obliged their warrior's bloodthirst and sent them in.
Humans and bestu rolled as waves over the ruined forest and onto the broad hull of the cosmic shipwreck. Their marching feet left a trodden wake of mashed leaves and damp earth. With the foul haste of hatred, they met in the middle. Each force held their line immaculately, such was the diligence of their movement that they came together like the opposing blades of a set of shears. Footprints in the mud gave way to footprints in the blood, the battle was immediately gruesome.
Xongo's morning on the riverbank meant everything to him on the day. He'd fished a bonnie kissing carp from the stream and felt blessed with luck. After cleaning the fish, he took it home to his wife and boy. Even for a bestu, Xongo was especially little. A berserking human of hulking bulk, Toowai, wrapped his grizzled fist around Xongo's head and flung him into the air with a ferocious howl. Xongo came hurtling down to the ground head first, his brains dashed the cold metal hull of Felda's craft.
Toowai collected the colourful shells of freshwater clams to add ornate details to the braclet he wore in remembrance of his dear brother. Mugwort, sister-in-law to the battered corpse of Xongo, dug her nails into Toowai's thigh and lunged up his body. She slashed at his guts with her sickle. Toowai watched Mugwort drop back from his hip and saw his intestines, small and large, spill out of a gaping hole in his abdomen. Toowai grabbed at the injury while another bestu, Branbal, tugged at his shell braclet to take as a spoil of war. Toowai cried for his mother and his brother as he slumped to the cold reality beneath.
Mugwort and Branbal were smashed aside with a rounding swing of Granit's mace. Granit was an old human, his family had endured many losses to skirmishes with the bestu tribes. Before leaving for battle, he prayed at a shrine to his lost ancestors. The favours he requested in his prayers were simple, that the gods turn the outcome, whatever it may be, to his favour. "If I die, then let a shaman guide my soul to my family," and the other option, "If I live, then let me send many bestu to meet Oxxad in the Underworld."
The battle, largest in a generation, raged on. Meanwhile, the redirected waters of the Xangu began to flood the surrounding forest. The disk upon which the battle was taking place was soon the only safe haven. Both sides possessed fairly even numbers and as such the battle was consuming daylight with a ravenous appetite.
Granit slipped on something wet. It was the lapping floodwaters encroaching on the hull of the ship. After falling to the ground, Granit was unable to get up because of the tangling mess of living and dead writhing at his feet. There were foes and allies alike stacked three feet high. They, the living, were clawing at him hoping to pull themselves up. All they did was pull Granit down into the blood, mud, flesh and metal. He rolled away as best he could and ended up plunging into the water. Granit drowned in the tannins of the tropical waters.
A hatch in the ship's hull hissed and then popped as the airlock seal was broken. Whoever unblocked it then flung it open with unintentionally comedic timing. Gum's head perked up into the hell of war with deadpan delivery.
"It's Gum!" bellowed a bloodstained human fighter as his eyes widened with the sight of the battered shaman.
Gum clambered out of the ship and up onto the awful battlescape. Shortly afterwards came the Xangu's other revered stewards.
"And the rest of the stewards!" a bestu pygmy interrupted with a smile.
The fighting stopped and the remaining warriors began to move apart from their foes, rediscovering their initial formations. A space was made for the revered, and neutral, wardens of the woods. Gum's gaunt gaze brought his lower lip to frowning quiver. The piles of the dead shocked him. He groaned with sorrow. Vermil lowered his muzzle respectfully. Pinna goose did not honk her noisy bill. Potama averted his eyes, refusing to look.
Generals Boeck and Winck, who were still very much alive, came together in no man's land and stood sober in their shoes. They were waiting for the stewards to reach them. As soon as Gum was in earshot of the battlefield's commanding pair, he spoke with solemn certainty.
"End the fighting now. Send your soldiers back to their homes."
Each general knew that to disobey Gum, the man who would kindly carry their dead to the afterlife, would be a great dishonour. The remaining combatants of both sides began to scour the waterlogged battlefield for those who could be taken back alive and perhaps receive lifesaving attention.
"Our original problem has been compounded," Gum exhaled his words more than he spoke them.
"Well, maybe we're destined to be one of them haunted forests?" Vermil's jokes at the dead's expense came too soon.
"Argh," the goose was back to complaining.
"Dear me," the rampaging boopadoon mouthed silently to himself.
While the reduced council of stewards debated their next steps, both generals approached the confabulators to join in the discussion.
"Both sides fought with honour," Boeck was the first to congratulate himself and his opponent.
"Thank you, Boeck. Both sides fought well," replied Winck.
"Now it's our duty to help Gum and send," began Boeck before Gum interrupted.
"The problem your dispute has given us is unacceptable," the shaman's words were uncharacteristically sanctimonious.
"Now, wait a minute," insisted General Winck.
"I'm with the stupid shaman," Vermil and Gum had always seen eye to eye on matters of pacifism.
Gum was obliged to educate the two warmongers.
"The afterlife is more real than this life, I can assure you of it. Very few are punished in the afterlife, but all spirits in Atataratzu's realm suffer. They suffer their own guilt, regret and any melancholy suffered in life. They experience that pain from life ten fold because they can never rectify the wrongs of their lives. It has to be devoured before they can enjoy eternity in peace. Or before they can take on the challenge of life again and return to this reality or another."
Both generals lowered their eyes in response to Gum's ongoing lecture.
"For you to so easily break the bond between loved ones is a true horror. I said that few are punished. Those making up the few are those who act without empathy. Do you two show concern for your soldiers and their loved ones? Do you imagine their fear and pain in their moments of death? Are you so happy to flood the Underworld with the miserable dead?"
Winck and Boeck realised then that the exhilaration of battle had taken their souls. They were so far gone that they knew the only way to save their soul's from Oxxad's wrath was to repent, assist Gum and change their ways.
Gum continued, "Take my words back to your elders. Tell them the truth, that this attack was from a foreign invader and not part of this terrible civil war. We should unite against external threats. If your elders want to make peace then have them meet us here tomorrow. It would be fitting that peace be brokered on the spot that a great enemy to us all was defeated."
Both generals nodded before returning to their few remaining troops and leading the march home.
Daisy choked, rushing her fingers to her throat as she gulped a dry swallow. The storyteller took a step onto her heels and licked at her dried out lips. The hem of her dress bounced a bit with her motion. After gasping for a breath she tried to continue the story.
Then...
She couldn't. Flaring her nostrils wasn't enough to help her catch her breath. She sniffled, maybe that would help. Her eyes felt sodden. A lump in her throat grew, it felt like a grapefruit was lodged in her windpipe.
Then...
She flushed red and begged forgiveness, "Excuse me, I've got..."
The late arrival to the event stood up from his anonymous seat in the crowd and spoke out, "Let me tell this part. I was there after all." It was Gum. The aged Dheathain native ambled along the gangway of his seat and then wearily hobbled up the aisle and towards the stage. Steffa, the security guard, came around the side from the back and gave Gum a boost up into the limelight.
Gum stood next to Daisy and apologised, "I hate to be presumptuous."
"No, by all means, go ahead," Daisy was relieved to have the support.
"I'll give you a moment to get a drink and then you can tell the end, deal?"
"Sure, yeah," said Daisy as she grabbed a glass of water provided by the suddenly present "Fab" Spud Haylake.
Gum had spoken many times before in front of elders and townspeople as part of his duty as a shaman of the Xangu Basin. This audience, however, was a little bit more cosmopolitan than what he was used to. Nevertheless, he attempted to continue the story as best he could and try to maintain Daisy's high standard.
The daybreak shimmer on the wrecked spaceship's metallic exterior made for a jarring scene in the broken basin of the Xangu River. Gum, Vermil, Pinna and Potama spent the night basking in the starlight. Sleep was a distant desire for them. Instead, they'd talked and talked about their experiences since being separated on the day of the conclave. Were more Feldas going to come? Is Io-Io somewhere inside the vast ship, lost? And if we never see him again, who will replace him on the council? Maybe the humans and the bestu will finally make peace?
Gum turned away from his group to see the promising sight of canoes carrying delegations arrive. As proposed, a group of elders from both races came to the site of the battle. Each side had selected one leader to do the majority of the talking during the negotiations. The human and bestu dignitaries carefully exited their boats before approaching in parallel. Gum was polite enough to meet them halfway. Vermil and the others watched from a distance.
The humans had sent Vellanot. Her bristling hair tangled along the length of her back and down to her waist. Considering her lofty extent, the growth of hair was to be admired. Every inch of her body told of her extensive experience with its tan, or a wrinkle, or a scar. She wore blue and white robes, the ceremonial dress of her people's leaders. Golden Mask was her nickname, for the obvious reason that she wore a mask wrapped in a thin layer of gold. Underneath the eye holes could be found the mask's most striking feature: a row of jagged golden teeth, irregular in their distribution.
She kept the mask on when she spoke, "Gum, it's good to see you again."
"And you, Golden Mask," the old shaman responded with a bow.
The bestu representative was Horehound. His defining feature was a handsome face, something he tried to obscure with a mess of tattoos and piercings. In his younger days he had been a successful bestu raider, and for that reason he had felt a need to mask his babyface as best he could. A former warrior might not make for the best of diplomats. For Horehound though, it was the opposite. The humans respected him for his miraculous record of having only raided military outposts. Horehound and those under his command even refused orders from above to attack peaceful villages. This diplomat also went by a nickname, Lord of Glass; this was on account of his penchant for obsidian weapons.
"Gum, thank you for inviting us here," the bestu warrior looked up at his two negotiating partners.
"I wish we were all meeting under better circumstances," admitted Gum ruefully.
Golden Mask and the Lord of Glass smiled pragmatically and their hands met in the middle for a hearty shake.
"Lord of Glass," she said respectfully.
"Golden Mask," he responded in equal measure.
From behind the negotiators, Potama hacked loudly and suddenly, “belrghhhhhhhh,” before vomiting violently. As the contents of his guts hit the deck, his brow broke with sorrow. There was blood in the vomit. Enough blood to cause him to clutch at his stomach. Then he noticed it. Something had skewered him, a metal prong had shot up from the hull and ripped his stomach open. He slumped on the jagged protrusion, his spirit joined the dead.
Vermil tumbled back from his chunky friend, he saw it happen but could do nothing. He was stunned. Pinna, however, was a honking whirl of panicking feathers. Gum, Golden Mask and the Lord of Glass watched from a few feet away.
"Annoying bird," a quaking rumble voiced its vengeance from within the wreck.
An unseen force pulled the mask from Vellanot's face. She grabbed at it, clawing desperately. But the golden mask floated away from her and up into the air. They watched as the mask softened and melted into a suspended sphere of molten gold. The goose's bill was obtusely agape as she continued to honk hysterically at the unfolding events. The ball of molten gold shot towards the goose and found its target in her noisy gullet. The goose fell down in agony, choking and burning. Pinna's spirit would join her friend's in the next world.
Vermil held Gum's eyes with a glum desperation, he sensed his time was coming. The shaman, along with his maskless friend and her bestu counterpart, rushed over to the fox and made a circle around him.
"Show yourself," the Lord of Glass demanded.
"You'll pay for taking my mask," insisted an infuriated Golden Mask.
Gum prepared to shapeshift into a jaguar.
With their backs to the fox in the centre of their circle, the stalwart defenders were not witness to what happened next. There was a flash of heat from behind them, an exhaust in the craft's hull had opened up and blasted Vermil. The trio turned around to see the fox's fleshless bones tumble apart.
A portion of the ship's hull folded away to create a new opening. Gum and the others readied themselves and watched. In spite of everything they'd experienced, there was something about the assault of the unknown that brought them under the weight of true terror. A wriggling object shot from the opening, it was catapulted high into the air. Instead of dropping, the object settled into an unnatural levitation. Perplexion overpowered Gum, his brow formed a wrought divot. The colours of the object were alarmingly familiar to him: grey and green. Felda's skin was grey and her blood was green.
"It is her," Gum explained to his newfound allies.
She revolved in the air with a harrowing blankness on her featureless face. At half of a full circumference the back of Felda's head was visible. Sure enough, there was a gaping hole in her cranium where Gum's teeth had pierced the alien's soggy skull. The sight of the mortal wound was a relief to the withering shaman, he was starting to struggle with what was real and what was not. Felda's limbs flailed limp and lifeless while her heard, in awful contrast, was stuck upright with ominous pride. The alien invader showed herself to be dead and alive.
The Lord of Glass pulled out his two primary weapons, a pair of matching branches poorly shaped into crude batons. Each arboreal weapon was heavily studded with jagged chunks of razor sharp obsidian. "I doubt these can stop her, but I have no other choice," admitted Horehound through the sour smile of sure defeat.
Golden Mask joined him, she pulled apart her cloth robes to reveal the light armour she wore beneath. She carried axes at her hips and brought them to a ready. "I suppose we were fools to fight each other all these years. Fighting seems so right though, doesn't it?"
All three reeled with gasp when a buzzing din erupted from the same hull breach Felda had emerged from. A swarm so thick that it was impossible to see through came spilling out and up into the sky. Gum suggested his theory, "Bees? Wasps? Locusts?"
Felda's eerie voice could be heard again, booming through the fabric of reality. "I have my weaponry. They are something far beyond your understanding. They are machines the size of fleas and mites. As I speak, some are inside my veins, keeping me alive. And the rest are going to bring back all your dead little people from the battlefield. The human and the bestu, your loved ones are coming back to kill you. And Gum! Precious thing that you are. I will have your secrets, Gum."
"Maybe you will, but you will not have Vellanot and Horehound," and as Gum said that he snatched a piece of obsidian hanging from Horehound's armour. "If you kill them, I will open my own veins. And I promise you. The Xangu secrets you desire will die with me!"
"I have my weaponry," Felda responded, "Now all of you have yours."
The swarm of technobugs descended towards the dead. Open wounds and orifices provided entry points for the symbiotic machines. Each fallen warrior began to rise with grievous intent as the tiny machines reactivated their expired bodies. Bestu and human alike laboured to their feet together. No matter the severity of the injury, every corpse was successfully reanimated by Felda's intergalactic ingenuity. The army of undead cyborgs swept a gruesome panorama along the bloodied space steel of the ship's hull. Headless soldiers stood tall, while legless torsos flattened their palms to the floor in place of feet, open chest wounds bore the unsettling scene of unbeating hearts and all together they began their advance. Felda's forces drooled forward in a tumbling jumble of joints bending in unnatural directions. In spite of their unique methods of motion, the undead soldiers were able to hold a line just as well as they had in life. Invisible radio waves beamed between every nanomachine on the battlefield, coordinating the movement of the united force according to the single will of Felda.
Golden Mask charged the line with a pirouetting flurry of her dual axes, chopping down four of the nanomachine driven undead. She reeled back from her own attack to see those she had knocked down adjusting their dismembered bodies, they got back up completely unfazed. The Lord of Glass tugged Golden Mask back from their advancing line and pulled her close to himself and Gum. Every breath Horehound took was a desperate gasp, his eyes were bloodshot and broad. "Well, fuck," he snarled. A headless body blew out from the enemy line and rushed at the horrified trio. Horehound stepped forward and hacked the living corpse apart. Strike one, he brutalised its right leg, severing it entirely. Strike two, he buried his weapon in its left knee. Strikes three and four shredded the flesh and bone of the arms clean from their torso. "If I can do that a thousand more times, we'll be fine," he laughed anxiously between the words. Chunks of cartilage from the joints he'd separated were spattered across his face.
Their struggle against the odds continued with the flared nostrils and tensed muscles of valourous violence. Vellanot broke limb from body with relentless intensity while Horehound did the same. Grunting, Golden Mask was splattered with the misery of the congealed claret of the day old dead. The Lord of Glass met Golden Mask's body count at every turn, and as he did his mouth frothed with spittle and his nose dripped with runny snot. He was lost in a desperate frenzy.
Gum stood ready with the obsidian shard at his jugular as his two allies were about to overwhelmed by the encircling army. "Do not let them capture me," commanded Gum as he sank the weapon into his own flesh.
The obsidian dagger nicked the skin, but then Gum stopped. He fell short of suicide. "Impossible," the old shaman mouthed the words at the leering emptiness of the undead forces. Gum's eyes were pointing upwards. Vellanot and Horehound kept fighting. Felda kept spinning mindlessly, "Give it up, Gum. Let me take you and we'll shapeshift across the universe together!"
Gum ignored her, he kept looking to the sky. "Impossible," he repeated it again and again. "Impossible. This is impossible," he was watching monstrous thunderhead clouds churn into existence. The burgeoning storm cast the battlefield in a sombre shade. Instead of foreboding grey or fluffy white, the clouds seemed heavy with the colours red and purple. A rumble of thunder marked the crackling formation of a descending funnel, the foretelling of a tornado to come. Rain fell, it pattered the bloodstained deck and diluted the red to a delicate pink, washing it away.
"Hold on," commanded Gum to his nigh overwhelmed heroes, "we might still die today, but it will not be at the hands of this vile invader."
The spinning storm of nature's anger lowered its tip towards the ground. Felda came to a halt and pointed her dead eyes at the developing danger. "This won't stop me," she screamed inside their heads. The furious funnel touched down in the centre of the undead horde and tore a hundred of their lifeless bodies into its wall of wind. Nevertheless, Felda's forces remained numerous.
Golden Mask split a bestu techno zombie into two with a smashing uppercut of her axe, "Gum, we can't hold on!"
The colourful tornado tore into the battlefield hull, disappearing. At the point at which it penetrated the ship was a molten mix of metal and blood, it bubbled like the witch's cauldron in a children's tale. Hazy steam spilled from the edges of the glowing concoction and filled the air.
"The old shaman masters told tales of magic storms like this one," yelled Gum above the bedlam of battle and rain.
Horehound shot back impatiently, "Is this going to help us or not?"
"I do not know," admitted Gum grimly.
The red mist from the tornado's portal flooded outwards and grew to conceal the shipwreck's hull entirely. On a molecular level, the mist bound itself to the metallic material and began to transform it into something that felt so much softer to the barefooted Xangu shaman. Then thirty years of forest grew in thirty seconds. With the quickly transforming metal exterior of the ship as a medium, trees of every type pushed up into the sky and outwards in all directions with a verdant expanse of lush leaves. Vines and undergrowth consumed each inch left open by the tree trunks. Many of Felda's remaining troops were knocked aside by the magnificent resurgence of Xangu's nature. The modern sound of a storm pelting a metal expanse gave way to the soothing lullaby of forest rain showering forest leaves. The storm's anger began dissipate.
"I think Hoel(1) has come to save the forest," Gum said with surging relief. Hoel was a member of the Xangu Basin's pantheon of deities. Believed to have been forged from a thousand of the Bestu's oldest souls, Hoel is the most compassionate and understanding god of the pantheon. Hoel is the daugther of the two female gods, Thoery and Atataratzu. Hoel is associated with compassion, lust, generosity, spring, water, birds, flowers, good luck and love. Hoel uses the love of parents to conjure the souls of newborn babies. Occasionally she flirts with Oxxad, son of Atataratzu, in order to bring a soul back from the Underworld so it can be reborn into the living world.
Felda watched the bizarre scene from the safety of the sky, she continued to float above the green growth below. Her unspoken will brought her horde of cybernetic zombies, now numbering in the low hundreds, back to their feet and she flung them again at the three allies with renewed fervour.
A new voice shook from the bubbling portal that initiated the transformation, "Hoel?! I'm disappointed in you, Gum," the male voice laughed through the forest with a sore rasp, "you think my cousin cares about you?"
When Gum heard the familiar voice of a different god his head dropped into a slow shake of sorrow. It was Oxxad ascending from the Underworld to visit the Overworld. "He is here for the dead," explained Gum to his allies with an instant melancholy. "And us too, when we die."
Footnotes & Wiki Links
Dheathain Pantheon
"Gum, I'm back!"
A second voice came from the portal, it was another voice Gum recognised though and it was one he felt much less fear of. Io-Io, the forest demon and only other remaining member of the forest stewards, leapt from the magical hole and grabbed a vine. "I went to get help for us. I wasn't going to let Felda take me the way she took the others. And besides that, I knew you wouldn't be able to handle this kind of crisis alone."
The creature's long arms allowed him to swing from bough to branch with alarming pace. As the forest demon closed in on the remaining undead he screamed his own name without relent, "Io-Io, Io-Io!" The remaining undead horde flailed their limbs and weapons at the sailing forest demon impotently. Io-Io traversed the distance across Felda's forces, lowering himself enough to pick up undead minions so as to smash them against the nearest and stoutest tree trunk. The threesome became a foursome when Io-Io landed beside Gum, Golden Mask and the Lord of Glass.
"Drop the dagger, Gum," Io-Io said pointedly, "We're winning this battle. Start fighting!"
"Right," Gum replied letting the black stone weapon fall to the ground. In that moment, Gum shapeshifted into a jaguar.
Golden mask span circles towards her foes, chopping down zombie after zombie with her brutal axes, "DIE!!!!!!!!!!"
"Argh!!!" the Lord of Glass buried his stone studded weapons into the oncoming corpses with renewed delight.
Gum pounced into the decaying throng of fighting corpses. In his initial landing, his hulking paws knocked undead warriors down to the freshly regrown underbrush. Gum snapped his grinding jaws at the arms and legs of his marauding enemies. Each bite tore clear a limb from a body. For the past twenty minutes Gum had observed his allies de-limbing the undead, he knew precisely how to immobilise them.
Io-Io giggled, "Here he comes, Gum! Our dear master!"
Oxxad was soon to appear.
A skinless skull began to ascend through the seething pops and bubbles of the diabolical portal. The pulverised corpses of the two armies slowly skidded through the reborn forest and towards the skull; they moved like iron filings drawn to a magnet. Marvelous magic had the forest itself step aside to allow the broken bodies of the fallen reach their destination; broad leaves and delicate fronds alike bent their stems appropriately. Even the trunks of the mighty hardwoods made way. The resulting blend of blood, flesh and bone began to circle the floating skull which had commanded its presence.
The bones separated from the blood and flesh. They came to a smashing clatter above the skull, they continued to crash and grind until they rapidly reverted to the dust from which they were comprised. In complete control of the dust cloud, the ominous skull was able to reshape the dust of a thousand bones into a fresh skeleton for its own use. The newly molded skeleton floated to its place beneath the skull. Next came the flesh and blood, the skull sucked it onto its bones to the macabre chorus of squelches and splats. A tangle of bandages sailed into the air from the portal below, they wrapped every inch of the amalgamation's body. The bandage wrapped abomination appeared to bear the shape of a human, but one of gigantic proportions. It was twelve feet tall. Oxxad commanded a shaft of bamboo to fly into his hand. The strong stem split down the middle and from the vertical slit grew a length of sharped steel, it was his weapon.
Gum admitted his fears aloud for the first time, "It is Oxxad."
"He's helping us, Gum," argued Golden Mask.
"Even if he's a lord of the Underworld, the Xangu Basin belongs to us and he is one of us," Horehound agreed.
Io-Io stymied a mocking chortle, he knew Oxxad in the same way Gum did. After all, they were both his servants in the living world.
Oxxad's presence in the living world was forbidden according to the old texts. Possessing a determined and disobedient nature, Oxxad was known to have broken that rule at various points during the long history of the Xangu peoples. In every case in the past, his breaking of the rules had brought about a war between the members of the Dheathain Pantheon.
Felda had watched Oxxad form with an unfamiliar sense of horror. She quickly grew to understand that she was the king on the chess board, and Oxxad was the queen.
On the ground in the thickest of the new forest, Gum prowled through the undergrowth. With singular drive, the shapeshifted shaman pulled down one Felda minion after another. The undead met the ultimate dismemberment between the jaguar's jaws. Io-Io loomed from one swinging vine to the next, shouted down to his allies below. "Horehound, to your right. Human undead," the forest demon was orchestrating the clean up job. "Vellanot, one for you. Directly ahead!"
Meanwhile, Felda was putting her swarm of nanomachines to rapid use. With their aid, she began to ascend even higher. Her fearful haste overpowered her in a way she had never felt in her immortal journeys through the entire universe. She was aiming to escape the Xangu Basin, hoping dearly that Oxxad was tied to his worshipers. She felt she would be to the safe up in the stratosphere. As she hit a height of twenty thousand feet the connection with the few remaining corpse soldiers below was broken and they instantly fell limp.
Io-Io was the first to notice them failing, "It's over."
Gum's piercing jaguar roar bellowed triumphantly, it echoed for peace in the Xangu Basin once again.
Horehound fell against the hips of the much taller Vellanot and declared, "Thank fuck it's over."
All four of the triumphant warriors turned their concern to the frightening calm of the horrific god become mortal. Oxxad was still, silent and levitating before them. They wondered if the Underworld's second in command was going to let Felda escape. They were all afraid to speak. Oxxad was not known for his tolerance of mortal concerns.
Gum looked back to the portal out of which Oxxad had emerged. "I hope he returns to the Underworld soon," thought Gum. As he thought that, Oxxad turned his bandaged head to scowl at him. It was then that Oxxad faded from sight.
"Phew," said Gum.
"So that's it?" asked Golden Mask, "no justice for the invader?"
Io-Io jumped into the conversation, "So little faith!"
"I think we'll never know," mused the Lord of Glass.
True to Horehound's supposition, little did the foursome know, Oxxad had reappeared in the thickest clouds ahead of Felda. As she came into the the colossal cumulonimbus she saw something. It was Oxxad waiting for her. With a swing of his bamboo blade, he sliced Felda vertically. Her body split into two completely equal sections. The alien invader's green blood fizzed in the air. Yet, she was utterly unfazed. The two separated sections of her bodied continued upwards independently before merging back together with the assistance of the repairing machines ensuring her immortality.
"I will have your soul for my cells," demanded the Dheathain god. Oxxad whipped the clouds with his bamboo stick, churning the batter of his target's demise. A storm brewed with its thundering centre focused on the tip of the bamboo weapon. Oxxad cracked his weapon at her, unleashing megawatts of his anger. The jolting impact brought the storm's fury down on Felda, the lightning obliterated every machine in her body.
Felda's intergalactic jaunts were over.
The crowd in the St. Santhalas Theatre applauded at the demise of the story's main villain. Gum bowed his head graciously and stepped back, motioning for Daisy to step forward and finish the story. Her struggle to tell of the demise of Vermil the fox, Pinna the goose and Potama the boopadoon was out of the way, and she was ready to step back into the centre of the stage.
High above Althanas, Oxxad turned his weapon on himself. He severed his own head from his body with supernatural intensity. Through this death, Oxxad was able to return to his home, the Underworld. After entering the realm of the living, death was the only way to leave it.
While Daisy finished off the story, Gum had discretely departed. The Xangu shaman exited through the side and returned to the backstage area with as little fanfare as possible. Gum was hoping that his intervention in Daisy's moment of difficulty had not been too rude, it was not his intention to detract from the talented storyteller's impressive achievement.
It was on the back of this momentous shared victory that peace was brokered between the humans and the bestu. As part of the peace agreement, Gum had proposed that the Lord of Glass and Golden Mask be invited to sit on the Council of the Stewards of the Xangu Basin. They both accepted. With the loss of Vermil, Pinna and Potama, new members would be required. The animal kingdom would have to have representation on the council also, and so Gum's search for replacements for his fallen friends began.
Daisy continued to struggle talking about Gum's deceased friends, her natural compassion was a credit to her.
[td]
The peace gained from the defeat of Felda stands to this day. There is peace in the Xangu Basin. Gum is training more shamans to aid him with the shepherding the dead to the other side.
"That's the end," smiled Daisy. "I'd like to thank Gum, I promise you him being here wasn't staged! Just a quirk of good luck I suppose."
The crowd applauded with warm enthusiasm.
"Thank you," blushed Daisy with delight. "I appreciate it, I really do. I'll be back the same time next week, hopefully I'll have a new story by then."
The applause continued as she left the stage.
Daisy flung herself between the stage curtains, letting the heavy fabric overwhelm her before her own tears could. She strode crestfallen into the backstage throng, which, for once, succumbed to silence. Every pair of eyes in the room was on her, judging. "They must think I'm so green," she thought to herself. Her own criticism was the cruelest. She span around from their glare and, trying to look unaffected, played with some dusty props leaning up against the wall.
Gum bypassed Steffa the security guard and headed for the distraught Daisy. He placed his warped old fingers on the girl's shoulder and insisted she not cry for the dead stewards. "They are the happiest spirits I know," said Gum assuringly. Daisy turned to smile at Gum. She appreciated his sentiment, but doubted the reality of the Xangu afterlife. He held out his palm to her, flat and open, begging of her that she place her hand in his. As everybody watched, she abided.
Once her hand was in his, something happened. Together, they slipped into the Underworld. Their bodies were left behind, null and entranced to any in the real world looking upon them. Meanwhile, their spirits were making a great journey. With a feeling of sheer immediacy, they were there. Daisy looked around, inhibited by the lonesome lostness in her watery eyes. All she could see was the black of the world of the dead. Shadows and gloom beckoned something from her soul. It wanted anything, it wanted whatever inner melancholy was born of all the tragedy from her past. Every moment of wrenching sadness was an iron shackle around her wrists, neck and ankles.
Oxxad stepped forward, materialising from the nether. The death god's appearance in his own realm differed from that he had taken on to assist Gum and his allies. Oxxad's true nature was distant from the humans that worshiped him. His ribs gripped his torso from the outside, instead of the inside. The organs dangling from Oxxad's inexplicably open gut were numerous and unrecognisable to those familiar with human anatomy. Between the legs of Oxxad were the shredded remnants of both male and female genitalia, the mutilation had been carried out in a pattern of sorts; it seemed ritualistic. Both hands had digits numbering in the twenties, each finger crept like a spider's leg. From the base of his rear protruded a waving monkey's tail. Beneath the guts were the spindly legs holding Oxxad at his lofty height. He was the tallest being in the Underworld. Looking up at Oxxad's face was to look upon peeled lips and jagged teeth, his face was pulled tight over a deformed skull and his eyes were gone, but obsidian lumps had been shoved into the sockets instead. A flock of white doves circled his head ad infinitum. Beside Oxxad was a totem of rotting corpses, the freshly dead were stacked at the top and the old bones were slowly turning to dust at the bottom.
Daisy's soul screamed out in terror when she looked at Oxxad. Suddenly Gum was beside her.
"This child does not belong here," Oxxad chided Gum for bringing Daisy's soul to the Underworld.
"I am not in Dheathain," warned Gum, "you have no power over me now and I am free of my duties for the moment. She is under my protection."
"Very well," laughed Oxxad as he reared back from Gum and Daisy in delight.
Gum tugged Daisy on and along towards their goal. Daisy followed Gum precisely, she looked at his footsteps in the sulfurous substrate and was careful to place her own feet where his had trodden. "Through this door," Gum said of an old oak entrance that appeared from nowhere as though it had always been there. Gum held the door for Daisy and she rushed through into something new on the other side.
Dandelions and clovers patterned the rustling grass which had long gone to seed. A gentle breeze made waves out of the meadow, it was like a calm day at sea. The light warmth of a summer afternoon was the finishing touch on the scene's idyllic perfection. Such a temperate wonderland could only have been sent by the gods to satisfy the weary flesh of the worldly.
"Here we are," the shaman was speaking of their arrival in paradise.
"Is this..." she couldn't say it, if she'd said heaven then it might have gone away.
"It is." said Gum, his own joyous tears were held back but barely.
"Why did you bring me here?"
"..." Gum pointed to a weeping willow on a pond at the foot of a harmless hill.
"What is it?"
"Look closely," smiled Gum.
In the shade of the tree sat the three lost stewards. Vermil was drinking from his honeyed tea while he watched the Pinna swim across the water. Meanwhile, Potama was nose deep in a bottomless sack of trail mix.
Shinsou Vaan Osiris
12-12-16, 12:24 PM
Gum recieves 2745 EXP and 375 GP!
Shinsou Vaan Osiris
12-12-16, 12:32 PM
All rewards added!
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