beasts

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 →