battles

Challenging Ass (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

In the barn-city of Minimil, small creatures from all across the literary canon live as one people, from Lilliputians and Shakespearean fairies to myrmidons, homunculi, and Wonderlanders.  Their lives are tenuous, valuable as they are as pieces in the proxy game of Little Wars, where conscripting countries can use them to spill thimbles of blood rather than buckets.

A decade into the Little Wars era, the largest convention ever is about to occur on Lilliput.  Among the arriving ships is the candle boat Wicky Sticket out of Minimil, carrying a secret cargo of agents sent to interfere with the Hidden Body, an ethereal nation of traitors making big moves in the littlest and most deadly game.  And behind it all the ancient slumberers toss and turn.

This is the middle of The Challenge Obscene, the second novella trilogy of the Challenging universe.  It’s best to start with the first, which can be found here: The Challenging Handful, The Left Challenging Handful, and Challenging Applause.  The first part of this trilogy is Challenging Cock.

(estimated reading time: 30 minutes)

The Challenge Obscene

Challenging Ass

by

Blaine Arcade

Bear the Ass

Your fate is determined not by deck underfoot, but waters beneath it.

When a stranger is met at the chessboard, analyze their first move: how they greet you.

Beware the world’s largest candle boat, which is Charon’s ferry for half its passengers.

-Noozy Cornerlore

Frustrated at her own inflexibility, the Lilliputian woman who had just signed her name ripped it out of her custom-made elongated typewriter and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it over her shoulder into a similar pile, a pile casually chewed and ruminated upon by a group of milling donkeys she was supposed to watch over more attentively. The animals were interested because the long strips of paper still smelled like the mild cookies they were stored near: the only stock she had access to at that point. Her new employer, the newspaper called Minimil Minutes, would grant her supplies more in line with her position as a journalist, but only after she’d completed and turned in her first big story to an approving editor. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Finale)

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(estimated reading time: 53 minutes)

Where!?

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Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Four)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 13 minutes)

Eviction Declaration

The coerced accord was signed, and in it a plan of attack. What none of them were prepared for was the degree to which mobilization of their military machine would make it clear that the experiment of Pilgrim’s Anchor was coming to an end. Should they succeed, in erasing the Bickyplots’ claims on Pursuitia and its inhabitants, the remaining Founders would then be free to attempt their Second Declaration, intended to return them not only to the American colonies, but to the exact moment they had left so they could resume their plans for a true revolution in a world they at least thought they understood.

If that happened, nothing needed left behind. So it could all come down, apart, and then alight on the wheels of war if it would be of any help in this singular assault. Everyone began to strip the stores, the walls, the cabinets and cupboards. They entered a kind of mania where they couldn’t stand to see anything with hinges closed. Anchor needed to spit up its contents, disgorge its secrets, and splinter inside out to make sure no rusty nail bent away from Bickering Hall. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Three)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 36 minutes)

Squatters’ Bill of Claim

Just as Hart’s message to her had begun to unfold into fresh shoots thanks to the magic of its green ink, so too did the political situation in Pilgrim’s Anchor find itself ripped open by growing pains. In a single encounter much of what had been settled fact for decades was upended. Now waterlogged powers desperately patched leaks. Curious stowaway rats searched for new unintentional passages.

To the Founders Pursuitia never looked smaller. Their first instinct was to retract into the tortoise shell of Independence Hall. Papering over the exterior to a mad degree, the building now looked as if wagons had literally circled it with their canvas. No doubt they were furiously at work, perched over writing desks, forcing themselves to vomit up new corkscrew legal clauses that would extricate them from this perplexing bottleneck bind. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Two)

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(estimated reading time: 44 minutes)

Leaflets

Almost every young hand was in the Jefferson Drafting Library, toiling away with writing instruments. Franklin pens were the best choice, if you could ignore the occasional zap, but there were not enough to go around, leaving only old fashioned quills, sometimes from anatimals and sometimes the diaphanous backbone-like stents found in Pursuitian worm mantles.

Even Kidd was there, behind a student’s desk of her own. She would be by far the slowest at producing leaflets, but the Founders apparently thought every five would count, though they might taker her half as many hours. Continue reading →

Covers! Next up, Porce: my Bathroom Pirates Series

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My series of crummy placeholder covers for my free books here on the blog continues.  Say hello to the Porce series: four high fantasy novels infused with lowbrow humor.  Join the guileful Captain Kilrobin Ordr and his rowdy crew of sink pirates as they traverse their colossal public bathroom world, battling monsters, ornery gemstone skeletons, and whoever they just stole from.  They’re all free to read, so please check them out if you’re interested.

porcecoversmall

Declaration: Pilgrim’s Anchor (finale)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 37 minutes)

Correspondence for Proposed Prisoner Exchange

More weeks had passed, Fool’s Gold Floyd as diligent a calendar as his many other functions. The date was December 11th, which meant the Stoking Dramas were now just three days away. After that would come the first blizzard of Pursuitia’s aggressive winter, blanketing the ground in penetrating permafrost that could claim all a man’s toes before he could take as many steps.

If the blizzard came and Blueberry was still incarcerated then she would be riding out the entire winter with the Bickyplots, who would themselves not dare to leave Bickering Hall the entire time but for the briefest and most vital of errands. The fiends would grow bored, then cajole Chattelpool into breaking out his favorite pet for them to play games with in the torture dungeon-cum-gaming hall they undoubtedly possessed. Continue reading →

Declaration: Pilgrim’s Anchor (part four)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 7 minutes)

Log of Two Hundred and Forty some Severed Personalities

The company’s retreat could’ve been five times as raucous, the giant Franklin kite could’ve struck shrieking sharpsychords instead of Bickyplots, and Private Blueberry still would not have heard it. Partly this was sheer focus, the narrowing of her perception so that it excluded everything from the bigger battle to the breath whistling out her own nose, so that all she heard was the pitter-thump-patter and scrabbling tooth scratching of Bludgehaven’s heart across the wooden floors deep within Bickering Hall.

Also contributing was the labyrinth of chambers, causing even sound to lose its way. Half the rooms had purposes she couldn’t guess. Interior balconies overlooking nothing. Hot coal floors with uneven rake marks. A sauna of yellow clouds and what might have been chunks of vegetables floating through them, suggesting it was a gas of soup not water. Doors boarded up, painted over, clutter piled in front, terrible, angry, living noises piled behind. Continue reading →

Declaration: Pilgrim’s Anchor (part three)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 27 minutes)

The Rules for a Trip to Jerusalem

Independence Hall was locked tight for several days, nary a Founder coming or going, with many of the young staying in private rooms or the barracks left with nothing to do but keep their ear to the wall, pointlessly so considering that the rooms in which those men debated and drafted were so heavily posted with their own authority that no sound could escape them.

What they debated was without question. How would the mission plan be affected by this unexpected invitation to the very same event they might attempt to infiltrate? Could they afford to let the opportunity simply pass by? And whether or not he would be accompanied by a full company of soldiers, would a Founder be in attendance? Continue reading →

Declaration: Pilgrim’s Anchor (part two)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 24 minutes)

Invitation to Bickering Hall

On the Occasion of Mister Godswallop’s String-Snapping

An aerial view of the homes and structures of Pilgrim’s Anchor revealed a great many things, the least consequential of which was the only area within the fencing that could contain the temporary tents and stands of the autumn fair, though even light questioning would reveal that too was deeply tied to the political rifts in the marooned colony.

Anchor was a cluster of tight bricks at its core: Independence Hall, the Franklin laboratory, the Jefferson Library and Drafting Hall, as well as the armory and the ink coven. Surrounding them was a loop of empty space, ostensibly a road and walking paths, but functionally an invisible barrier between the Founders and those they had struck a thorny peace with, despite being responsible for their new castaway lives in the first place. Continue reading →