battles

Grab (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(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)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(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 six)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 14 minutes)

Survival was more of a current question for Graychild, who judged the eye’s fall by the encroaching shadow out the nearest tiny window. He was back on the ground, with Breakwater freed from the table and positioned across the throat of a woman collapsed against the captain’s chest, like a bow across a cello. In his other hand was the eye of Hexaclete, godly power making his wrist quake. It was eager. Impatient, and thus corrupting.

He knew he was stronger, but there was the matter of it dropping from the heavens. That would overpower him. The only reason the cowering crowd around him hadn’t done so was their fearful watching of the same shadow. Fools. Minds of rabbits, not men. So much more time they’d spent in the company of the old fencer, cozying up to him, and yet they hadn’t surmised the mechanics of transferring his power to themselves. Continue reading →

Grab (part five)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(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)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(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)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(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)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(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 →

Grab (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 9 Comments

Hunt with your bare hands!  This is the world of grabbling, where the mightiest warriors in the land equip themselves with wildlife by ramming their arms down various throats and making them into weapons.  Delve deep underground in this low fantasy epic where the grabbler Beocroak, sole survivor of a petty bloodbath, must battle his way out of a rising ghostly city capitalizing on all that foolish subterranean death.  Should he make it out of that cavernous grave, there is still the harsh world beyond, of Goodly and ghastly gods, of giant floating eyes watching your every move, and of sinister curses illuminated by green witchfire.

Grab

by

Blaine Arcade

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 22 minutes) (time for entire novel: 10 hours, 44 minutes)

Curse

Bound in hide, scorch-writ on wood, death diverse and plenty harvested this tome from the minds and lore of men. Safe and content it sits upon the owner’s shelf, in the author’s legacy. You are a guest in its pages. Do not smudge with your fingers. Do not mar with your drool. This is a meal for the soul, so do not eat or drink near it to avoid damage.

If you are unwelcome, if your eyes be thieves of words, know that you are cursed when these contents leave the shelf, lose their blanket of dust, and are not properly and primly returned. This curse has fingers that can touch in different ways. Should you abscond with the book you will die, and you will know it before it happens. Should you steal it with a lie, and claim to be its author, or its subject, your spirit will die, and your words will seem to reach no living ear, shouted from the bottom of a sinking wet hole.

Our ire against thieves must be understood, and it will be in the detail of a curse wrought.

Purloiner of these pages, may you be skewered and fried and fed to those so desperate they do not identify their meat, and whom strip their meat of names and titles should it have them.

May you garden in shards of glass, with only lead onions to harvest, and be only rewarded with them when you can uproot with nothing but your bloody wrist nubs and set them down away from the glass.

May your sword run black with ink and turn into a brush when you most need a sword; your enemy will strike you apart while you write your pleas for mercy, each becoming a laughable relic when stained with your blood.

May your bedfellow secret serpents into your sleeping presence, free to envenom your body and dreams alike.

May you find calamity upon the road, and have all your bones and organs trampled by the horse and cattle that pass until you are of the dirt: a smear too indistinct to draw remark.

May a fissure develop in your nethers, and from it you will birth discharges of diseases you never had to catch, but are caught from you instead. May your bedfellow witness and reject you in horror. Only the diseases will call you parent, and celebrate you when they claim the title of plague.

May a smart tiger injure you and leave you in a clearing, your miserable squeals to serve as bait for better prey. Slowly you will die, and many times it will use you, keeping your wound open with a claw. You will have to eat your own kind, left from its meals, just to continue on as this wretch.

May you boil in the sun, not under it.

May two arrows, fired across the world, change direction as the compass needle does and each find one of your eyes.

May your bones be rearranged to arthritic catacombs.

May a rhinoceros find your bung fascinating. It will obsess him as the alchemist obsesses over a blotch of gold in a brick of lead.

May you become fixated upon this tale until your mind reads it when it is not there, when you have long discarded it to hide the evidence of your crimes. Its pages will stick to your back and not peel, its characters will join you when you bathe, in the forms they took after the page of death, and look into your eyes while you wash, blaming you for their fate. Its burned words will forever be in your palms, and when you flex them the page will turn and they will burn closer to the end.

This is your curse for trying to own this book with your hands, or for trying to master it with your own words. It does not belong with you, to you. Let it pass through you without greed. You can hold the hide, but nothing else. You are supposed to be empty enough to desire the contents, you fool.

And so, cursed or no, continue.

Hole

Do not die underground. That is what they say. Goodly Gods live in the sky, clear of the gnarled grabbing hands of filthy lowly man. They look down and witness death, descending to take righteous spirits to join them in endless gardens of cloud. If you die underground they do not see. If you die underground you fall into your grave. There you remain. Only those lower than the lowly will ever take note.

Four thousand people did not heed this wisdom. Two thousand of them were under the banner of Sovereign Reyvathird, and had marched into the mouth of Wormskoll Cave with no intention of dying. What they intended was the taking of the cave itself, and of the frosty iron gates deep within. Through those bars man and demon and Subtlerrannean god could barter and bargain. Poisons and potions could change hands, but no bodies, and no possessing spirits. Continue reading →

Challenging Ass (Finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(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 Two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(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 →