fairies

Snakewaist: Species Invader (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

Logistics

With the mathematical minds of the gigagoyles on their side, they were spared the most difficult calculations of roster and rendezvous. That isn’t to say things went smoothly and without argument, there was in fact no greater concentration of interpersonal discord in the history of life on Earth than occurred between those tens of gigagoyles in the days immediately preceding departure, it just happened in channels of infinitely high bandwidth and thus took only microseconds for each barb to be thrown and countered.

In the strictest terms, acquiring their army should have been child’s play. Gigagoyles had unfettered access to most ferrier software, as they were always intended to be compatible. Plenty of couchgrousers were without pilots who might disconnect their machines from networks when not in use. Any of Onthinice’s recruits could zap to a machine they detected, insert themselves as a pilot program, and be just as effective as a flesh and glitter-blood pilot. Continue reading →

Snakewaist: Species Invader (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Chaxium and her formerly human partner Ladyspiller are modern fairies, fighting the good fight against human encroachment, and this time fighting the fairy who goes too far, Chaxium’s ex Clove!  In fey warfare there is only one reliable tool, the living magical machines they can pilot, called ferriers.  Clove’s latest scheme seeks to harness a new breed of them, turn their noble nature to instinctive violence aimed squarely at mankind in this, the fifth Snakewaist novella.  You can find the beginning of the series here.

Snakewaist

Species Invader

by

Blaine Arcade

Underground Networking

Teaching the rules of a board game to a new player is always a taxing process, rewriting their entire world view on a smaller scale, and it becomes infinitely more difficult when new people keep wandering in, staring curiously until they ask to participate, and the unfinished teach must start all over again… and again… and again!?

“So everybody gets two pieces on the board and an understudy in their wings. What, you too? No, sure. We can modify it to accommodate- one, two, three, seven… seventeen players. So, you get two pieces on the board-” Blizzardime the diminutive, the genderless, struggled to explain.

“Is that a-“

“Incredibly fun board game?” they finished. “Yes it is.” 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 Three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(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)

~ 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 →

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 →

Challenging Cock (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 55 minutes)

Tame the Cock

The Wicky Sticket heard many bad ideas over the course of those two days, concentrated in the empty ballast tank where the challengers made camp, guarded at most hours by some of the collaborating eggties.

Suggestions swirled about the tiny table quickly cobbled together from scrap wood. The representatives of the Death-or-Glory gang suggested they kill Zamshy by dropping directly onto him knives in hand, hoping that one went deep enough into the neck. There wasn’t much confidence in the idea, as they recalled dragon slaying being a rather rare skill, and Zamshy was at least half dragon. His serpentine flailing could buck them all off before they’d found a good spot to stab. Too many variables, the Wayfarer and Vesperos agreed. Continue reading →

Challenging Cock (part three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 52 minutes)

Study the Cock

“They call it the Dreamtime, far more south than I’ve ever coasted,” the Wayfarer said, guiding Vesperos through the quietest alleys of a worker’s district. It was just the pair of them, and a little distance from the boisterous toads was something of a relief. Not that the bee didn’t like them, or feared their insectivorous nature, it was just that his cell back in the hive had been such a perfect sort of peace, not silent, alive with the hum of all the other bees and wasps, but free of conflict. It had been the sound of harmony, of vibrating on the same wavelength as the planet. A symptom perhaps, to enjoy such a thing this far into his divine degradation, but no matter. It was closer to Psyche.

“Dreamtime,” he repeated, only to keep the Wayfarer talking. The sanded grain of the rat’s affable voice was almost as good as the hum, and he hardly seemed aware he was a font of incredibly varied knowledge. ‘Coasting’ as he described it had taken him from Constantinople to near the summit of the world, but never far inland. Continue reading →

Challenging Cock (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 6 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.

Worse still, someone has petrified their goddess, Hestia, and it falls to her nephew Vesperos, the god of love reduced to a mere bumblebee, to find out how and why.  He’s joined by a ragtag group of woodland critters who have heard the wind in the willows, and wish to help him rescue the reputation of their good friend Mrs. Toad, who is somehow caught up in the hatching of a cock’s grand scheme.

This is the beginning 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.

(estimated reading time: 24 minutes)

(estimated reading time for entire novella: 3 hours, 11 minutes)

The Challenge Obscene

Challenging Cock

by

Blaine Arcade

Tease the Cock

Only one creature found themselves caught out in the rain, but it should have been zero, scheduled and announced thoroughly as the precipitation was, the notice posted all over the city and found in the weather & events section of the Minimil Minutes: the only newspaper circulating in the entire barn.

Just under an advertisement for the concert of Fadfid Paganinny, the world’s smallest violinist, itself just under, and in fact cutting off, a complaint letter to the editor, the announcement was printed thusly:

On Monday the 18th of October 1926, on the hour of seven until one in the morning, there will be rejuvenating rainfall over the neighborhoods of Banker’s Dozen, Hopalong, and Tin Junction, graciously provided by the cloud, water, and wind nymphs of Bonsai Park. The cost of enjoying the rain and its spiritual benefits is nothing, afforded to us once again by our lady and master Hestia of the hearth-throne. Continue reading →

The Pick-Knows

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(estimated reading time: 13 minutes)

The Pick-Knows

by

Blaine Arcade

I had a bad morning guys, even though I everytasked as goodly as the other mornings in my collection. First thing out of the matchbox and quilt I cut the iron filings with coffee grounds to really wake up the magnets, angled the solar coins to bounce crystal clear sparkles to the costume glass and gold-painted links, beat the stickers to free the hairs, checked the electric frog battery for tangy white creep, and oiled the swatter so it misses the flies so I don’t miss the joke of the huge-mans missing the flies.

But the morning was still bad. Had to be somebody else’s fault. They made 6 AM sharp, 7:11 sticky, 8 a bad breakfast, 9 lives long, and 10:04 no good buddy. All my stuff looked goldy-oldy at a glance. Then I amble up the right-by and it catches my surprise (that I didn’t even leave out to stale) by doing some pose of the possible that benefits me leastways. Continue reading →