adventure

Pineberry Lights

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Rumraisin Knacklevern and his best friend Mollywald, a talking flower in a wheeled RC pot, are finally being taken to the farmer’s market where magic and produce are sold in tandem.  There they just might find what they’ve been looking for, Molly’s hypothetical boyfriend, seeing as she’s never encountered one of her own kind before.

Along the way they might cross paths with the strange denizens of the market, like amorous pet rocks, an undead hunger artist, and gourds that are better at eating people than people are gourds in this, a cozy, alternate-1990s, autumnal fantasy novella.

(estimated reading time: 2 hours, 35 minutes)


Pineberry Lights

by

Blaine Arcade

The Kind-of Long Drive

“I spy with my magical eye… something that starts with the letter P.”

“Petals!”

“No.”

“Dang. I thought you were trying to get me because I can’t see mine.”

“The only thing I’m trying to get you is a boyfriend.”

“Parking spots,” interjected the witch from the driver’s seat, having already learned the lesson of not looking over her shoulder when the last time caused both her concentration and one of the windshield wipers to slip. Maybe they’d spot it standing up on the way back, waiting for them like a hitchhiker. At least it was the passenger side one. Continue reading →

Grab (finale)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 55 minutes)

In the fog, in the fervor, in the distress, and in the uncertainty, it became impossible for them to tell how much time was passing. A grabbler can known an hour by the number of breaths, but not these grabblers. A grabbler can know autumn by the lethargy in a beetle’s wings, but not these grabblers. These grabblers were sinking in Rooth Tugt.

Falling, Jeremiad realized dumbly as she took a false step and tumbled. The fog tried to trip her with arcing roots and smooth flat rocks underneath, but she managed to put a foot down. It struck a larger rocks, which slid, so her other foot did the same, creating two little sleds that she could use to reach the bottom of the incline as long as she jumped over a few more roots and caught the slipping stone shoes on the other side. Continue reading →

Grab (part seven)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 17 minutes)

As they lapsed back into silence, thoughts of the Half-Biters and Beerbetters were left behind. The eye of Xeams did not leave their sky, but soon its powers would be neutralized under the humid greenery. If half the stories of the place were to be believed, only grabblers had a good chance of surviving a journey to the jungle’s center, facing just as much risk on the way out. Even if Roddery Graychild were to pursue them into the dense tangle it was unlikely he could get many others to do so, especially after being half-drowned or whole-drowned by the enigmatic hand of Hexaclete.

Instead the grabblers’ sights were set on the jutting ruin ahead, offering the furthest and least-impeded ingress into Rooth Tugt that, according to Beocroak, also aligned with their heading. To investigate it they would first have to scale the intimidating rock ridge upon which it grew like broken teeth, difficult, but not so much as the crumbling wall of the basin. Or so they thought during that last stretch of Welkmadat, all the way to the start of the climb. Continue reading →

Grab (part five)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 56 minutes)

HAND

They couldn’t keep him, not on their long trek cutting the coasts of Welkmadat. On a farm he could become a member of the family, a reliable hand, a forager with a nose for food better than any hound’s or pig’s, but on a quest he was a burden, a worrisome pet.

This the nameless man knew, never voicing complaint as long as they tolerated him. She got better treatment despite being a similar sort of animal, the reason being plain. Her curse was not literal. It was not grown into the bones of her face and erupting out of her skin like new volcanic lands. When she opened her mouth, which she did not often do, just like her forebears and her guardian, actual words could come out, whereas the nameless man could only produce squawks, titters, whistles, shrieks, honks, quacks, and peeps. The sound was entirely dependent on which of its many forms the curse took at that moment. No matter what his utterances sounded like complaint, so he tried to not make them in the dignified and silent company he would get to keep all too briefly. Continue reading →

Grab (part four)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 8 minutes)

Far far below, yet still so far from the endless country of sad circling nothings that was the halo of Tauntalagmite’s torpor sleep, gray fire blazed. Dead flames would not spread without encouragement, and there it took the form of a strange little parade of four ghosts and one wheelbarrow.

A wailing Hodmim Holz was lashed to a post stuck in it at an angle, like he was a ship’s figurehead. From him smoke billowed out of his mouth, out of the flapping fissures stretched over his collarbone. Pale flame flicked and licked his skin the way lizards taste the air. Pushing him along, forcing the wheelbarrow over every loose rock instead of turning slightly, was Crosscup, so close to his own backsliding goal. Continue reading →

Grab (part three)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 24 minutes)

It would have been the perfect time for the exterminator to arrive with his dog Plucker. The door was thrown open with a bang. In strode, with brilliant confidence, Crosscup the cleric. He’d invaded countless perfect times, never his own, and he mucked this one up worse than most. For he was recognized by Reyvathird, from the first moments of his gray reticence, and the man did not take kindly to his presence.

The sovereign stood, dropping his arms, and Bedlamoyne was curious about the invader too, making no show of their separation, nor slamming her hand on the table in victory. In their deadlock they’d both forgotten about the contest the rest of the mead hall had been cheering on. With its sudden deflation, almost heard like wet flatulence, the mass of gray groaned and protested. Continue reading →

Grab (part two)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 28 minutes)

Meanwhile Beocroak was streets and alleys away, which was a problem. What he wanted was disorganized rock, not a bricklayer’s pattern or a mason’s mosaic anywhere to be seen. Gray ways hid the actual ground if he moved too swiftly. Twice he’d nearly planted a foot in nothing and fallen into a crevasse that, if it had a bottom, would’ve finished in Tauntalagmite’s gullet, as the queen of infested skulls, who bedded oldest thing on oldest rock, was also the swallower of darkness. Souls lost in lightless fall were the medicine she took in the morn she never saw.

After finding a gray spiral staircase that might have ringed a gargantuan stalactite he was made to follow it, every other path obscured behind spreading gray walls that only cracked to grow plaques and mortar. Up was his goal, not down. Forced to battle confusion he was, as his descent was coupled with the visible rise of Toeteld in the foggy distance. Continue reading →

Challenging Ass (Finale)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 1 minute)

Ingest the Ass

“Say, what’s that I hear? My garden, ever so square as I am, used to be so peaceful, but now there’s all this noise from amorphous demons beyond our ken. I hope they can’t bother my sprinkleberries. Used to have bulletmelons too, but God went and tore that strip away; now I’ll never see them again.

Mustn’t criticize. The world doesn’t belong to me, with my paltry four corners. In fact, I must do more than avoid criticism. I’m supposed to be listening, those were my heptagon priest’s instructions. What was it? Continue reading →

Challenging Ass (Part Three)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour)

Work the Ass

“I could give it a good jab,” Elizabug proposed, this time feasible despite that being her suggestion for most things: part of the philosophy that if a problem couldn’t be solved with a prodding stick or a whacking stick it couldn’t be solved at all and was better treated as a feature of the natural landscape.

“No no,” Darnette said as they both stood just out of its reach. When it extended its claws that reach was increased, forcing them to take another step away from the hole in the wall they hoped to be their portal into the main convention hall of Stained Atlas. “A hungry cat with this many prospective meals about will be an impatient creature. Give him a moment; he’ll grow bored of not murdering us and wander away.” Continue reading →

Challenging Ass (Part Two)

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(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 27 minutes)

Flaunt the Ass

Tropical Lilliputian air pervaded the convention center, for its massive walls weren’t built all the way up. There was a ceiling of hollow glass oblongs to keep out the rain, but it was supported only at corners, leaving a gap for local atmosphere to pour in like waterfalls. The flaw was called intentional, excused as a way of promoting a breeze and dispelling the sweat-fog of war, when in truth the actual cause was a disparity between the construction company’s claims and the Lilliputian labor force’s ability.

An auction had been held for the convention’s location, and Lilliput’s winning bid was achieved by cutting corners in the venue budget. A Lilliputian could be paid in peanut dust, a Blefuscan even less, so hiring thousands upon thousands of them still took far fewer resources than hiring big people. Continue reading →