novellas

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 two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour)

Flash the Cock

Vesperos only missed the flash because he had eyelids, which was curious because the man was a bumblebee. Svelte for a bumblebee, upright for a bumblebee, rather four-legged for a bumblebee, far too intelligent to be a true bumblebee, and also far too eyelidded. Aside from these many anatomical anomalies he could also be identified by the pinkish shimmer in his thick collar-mane of thatched bee fur, also found in his otherwise black eyes and the transparent panels of his delicate wings.

His stinger bore pink fletching that shaped it like a heart, but he tried to draw attention away from it with his dress, including long wide coattails perpetually crimped at the end. Something about him tended to draw people in, and the people of Minimil were no exception, so he kept himself sequestered in the hive neighborhood of Dauber’s Comb, accreted and situated on the barn’s ceiling in the crook of a beam: the only living complex higher than Loftplace and its sprawling sand castles that drowned half the old buildings. 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 →

Snakewaist: Hurricane They (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Finally, justice for the elemental spirits powering hurricanes.  The humans have decided to use gender neutral pronouns when referring to them, as should have always been the case.  What’s this!?  protest?  They shall know the wrath of the newest and strongest storms in a climate they stoked themselves!  All the elementals need is a harbinger to guide them…

Chaxium and Ladyspiller Onthinice aren’t your typical fairies.  The couple has now spent years on the road, adventuring and battling threats in a changing world with the help of their transforming lizard-shaped vehicle Snakewaist.  Something is amiss with the weather down south, so they head off to investigate, but their best bet for help is Chaxium’s old flame Clove.  Hurricane They is the first novella in a new trilogy for the Snakewaist saga, so feel free to get caught up.

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 20 minutes)

(estimated reading time for entire novella: 2 hours, 55 minutes)

Snakewaist

Hurricane They

by

Blaine Arcade

Squall Tormenta

Occurring in the Bermuda Triangle does not place it there, responsible as it is for many of the famous disappearances at that latitude, and even more longitudinally. Occurring in the Gulf of Mexico does not place it there either. Squall Tormenta exists within an ocean current, so it is placed everywhere that current may touch and can occur without being accused of having moved at the last minute even when that is what happens, to prevent certain undesirable elementals from showing their youthful faces.

Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico the waters split in a most unbiblical fashion. Like divorcing tectonic plates they opened and drained into themselves, creating a marine canyon of raging waterfall walls and churning floor. From out of the depths came shadows, shadows that pierced walls and floor to reveal both rusted hulks and boulders uprooted. Continue reading →

Watery and Grave (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 38 minutes)

December 17th

A Very Unlucky Day

Two minions cleared the elk enough for their master to walk through and stand on the ice near the carriage. Their face and body were also obscured by cloak and hood, free of creeping growth but just as tattered as those of their servants. Tavros could see that the person was small, only about half the height of their creations.

“Tavros Celliday?” A woman by her pitch. December pressed her ear against the wooden wall, barely able to hear what was said while her siblings hovered over the giant snowflake they’d found. Their absolute silence was far more important than asking them why it distracted them so. Continue reading →

Watery and Grave (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

Enchanted to life as little more than festival entertainment, a quartet of ice sculptures find themselves abandoned, quickly becoming acquainted with danger as they flee from steaming food carts, fire-spewing domestic dragons, and the looming threat of a rising sun and a short winter.

As luck would have it, or rather as he forced luck to have it, Tavros Celliday, notary sorcerer and luck tracker, arrives to help them journey to the perpetually frozen north.  When he looks away from their luck, just for a moment, evil swoops in and snatches them away.

Oh and just wait until you find out who the narrator is!  (Yes, it’s me… but who am I!?)

(Estimated reading time: 1 hour, 22 minutes)

(estimated reading time for whole novella: 3 hours)

Watery and Grave

by

Blaine arcade

November 17th

An Overall Unlucky Day

The prevailing sentiment might be that luck doesn’t apply to infants, and that if it does the luck doesn’t take effect until the child is old enough to understand their lot in life. So even if either idea is true, it doesn’t apply here, as the four born that day were born at their full intellectual capacity.

I don’t know about unlucky, but the place they were born was certainly unusual: the fair grounds in the midst of that continent’s biggest annual celebration. It was called the Tiring Week, and it coincided with most large animals settling into their caves and dens for hibernation. On the human side of things they wore themselves out with revelry and craftsmanship, but the best naps they could muster afterward only lasted a day or two.

On day three of the Tiring Week there were many scheduled events including a sledding competition, a magical firework show, and the activity that resulted in the spawning of the four youths that we would call unfortunate if that luck debate was actually settled. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(estimated reading time: 58 minutes)

Practice

The palm reader couldn’t find his friends. He knew he was their friend because he had read that information right off his own third hand, of the four that he had. How he got four was a mystery. One day the second pair was just there, one scratching his back while the rest stretched into the air with a morning yawn.

There was no one to mentor him in the skill of palm reading; it was just something he learned by immersion, like someone dumped into a foreign land adjusting to the language. Almost everyone had palms, so it seemed strange nobody else responded to that pressure the way he naturally did, by struggling to understand them. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (part three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(estimated reading time: 49 minutes)

Multitasking

Babylon’s sky was the only sight humanity would ever see that could truly convince them they had left their world of origin. Even the celestial ocean swimming with stars was still their world, despite being inhospitable. The hanging gardens themselves could be felt and thus understood, but they were just grit forced deep into a wound and healed over. The realm itself was foreign, and they were all immortal because they didn’t belong there.

As such the endless fields of orange and gold clouds, while breathtaking and sometimes even breathkeeping, eventually wore on the soul like the unblinking eyes of a disapproving parent. The only refuge was heading for the core of the gardens where there were walls on all sides and mindless chatter about nothing could bring them back to a sense of normalcy. Except the weather. They couldn’t make soothing small talk about that, as Babylon didn’t have any. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(estimated reading time: 51 minutes)

Respawn Chat Log

There was a place inside the hanging gardens of Babylon where ghosts gathered. It was sealed off from its endless colorful sky, lit only by the pale white energy of a crystal formation at its center, standing more than fifty feet tall. It had tree-like branches, more than thick enough to support the weight of living creatures, but only the ethereal dead were present.

The ghost of Flippers sat on one such branch, kicking his feet, just waiting. Nothing in the game stayed dead forever. The crystal tomb was much more like a waiting room or a penalty box. Really it was an admirable extra step from the game’s developers. A lot of other multiplayer games just cut to another active player’s camera when the countdown to respawn started. Continue reading →