The moment they appear, even Nemo and Odisseus are forced to stop arguing, both turning to regard the unexpected arrivals. Watching them pass, Nemo apparently has the same thought Moira had. “You guys forgot your–”
{Foreplanter greatly desires to spore with you again}, one of the Gitter announces, the first intelligible thing any of the entourage has said to them the entire trip across the desert.
Nemo is the picture of skepticism. “...hurray?”
{We have been dispatched to summon you}, the Gitter continues, apparently finding Nemo's response unsatisfactory.
“Yeah,” Nemo starts to remark. “Turns out we're kinda in the middle of–”
“Is anybody else,” suggests the Ortok suddenly, safe in the knowledge the Gitter can't understand Ortoki, “getting a kinda weird vibe from these guys?”
Moira scowls. “Weirder than normal?”
“I’m getting,” Odisseus confirms, sniffing peremptorily in their direction once or twice, “a very weird funk offa them. There’s something different about the way they smell.”
“I don’t really give a bloom what they smell like.” Nemo’s crossed his arms and looks disapprovingly at their hosts. “Unless there’s some way they can help us with our no-spaceship problem,” Nemo adds in a stage-whisper.
“Supplies,” Moira bluntly points out. “We’ve got water for today, food for tomorrow but then we’re boned.” She considers the four cacti, arriving at their four stations at the palanquin’s four quarters. “They won’t be getting us offworld but they’re our best chance at staying the fuck alive.”
This sets Nemo’s jaw firm. The heat, he can argue with. The wisdom of his objectively unwise plans, he can argue with. The grumbling of his stomach, however, is something even Nemo can’t endure forever. The reluctance in his face, his voice and his posture is tangible but eventually, the Captain’s forced to consent.
“Yeah. Sure,” he relents, slapping his thighs fruitlessly. “Back to Bumfuck Mountain.”
{Then we must away, should we wish to arrive ere moonrise}.
With that, the inflexible cacti stoop, retrieve the palanquin and stand stock still, waiting for their honored guests to climb aboard.
For many long moments, the crew simply exchange looks, each one held by back from boarding by the thought of another interminable trek across the sands. Nemo, so close to their goal and deflected by such a petty obstacle, throws a minor nonverbal temper tantrum, stomping his feet and flapping his arms about. Odisseus keeps sniffing, attempting to ascertain what’s changed in the Gitter’s scent.
It’s Moira, thinking of their dwindling supplies, that clambers to her feet, fixes an expectant look on her crewmates and crosses the short distance to board the palanquin.
Odisseus knows who to blame.
They’d come so close to escaping this planet. They’d stood before the very doors of their spaceship, invaluable treasure in their hands. It was only Nemo’s stupidity that prevented them from making off with the goods intact and in tow.
By this logic, every further complication that follows on the heels of Nemo locking the keys in the ship is also the Captain’s fault. It was Nemo who dragged them back across that unforgiving desert landscape. It was Nemo who plunged them back into this heady cloud of nauseating Gitter spores. It was Nemo who surrounded them with a grove of suspiciously hostile Gitter.
This theory could be extrapolated further, with evidence littered across the galaxy and the past six years. To put it mildly, Nemo is really the source of all the Ortok's problems.
Sickened from the heat, the exhaustion and the bumpy palanquin ride through the hills, Odisseus staggers eagerly to the canyon’s floor, dragging the potted plant with him. He fights the instinct to smash the thing, a cumbersome burden, against the stones and bones at his feet. Instead, the pot simply slides from his claws and thuds against the soft sand.
“We’re fucking here, okay?” snarls Nemo, likewise descending off the palanquin to address the audience. “Moons of Jotor, we’re fucking here, already! What could you possibly want?”
They’re returned to the familiar sight of the box canyon, its nursery saplings, its scattered skeletons, its imposing inhabitants. Wounded and scarred from their recent battle, the entire Skyscratch grove is convened, giving the returned Vesselborn a wide berth.
In the moonlight, the Gitter are more inanimate trees than sentient beings, despite their weapons and attire. Now that they’re all assembled, Odisseus detects that same strangeness in their spores, here writ large. Gone is the reverence and awe that the Gitter once held for their divine messengers. There’s something new, something he stretches to describe as antipathy, in the way these cacti smell.
{The noble Vesselborn are returned to us}, greets a familiar scent and it takes Odisseus a moment to put a claw on who’s actually speaking. It’s Firstseed Flamescar who emerges, instantly recognizable from the chalky white scarification all across its body.
Nemo is confused. “You? No, where’s the other guy? The taller one, with the boring name?”
“Foreplanter,” Moira provides.
“Um–” suggests Odisseus heavily.
“That guy,” agrees Nemo, his expression sour. “Foreplanter. Blech. I tell you what, I was a barbarian king, gimme ten seconds and I could think of ten cooler–”
{Foreplanter of the Skyscratch grove}, interrupts Flamescar, {stands now before thee}.
“Uh,” Nemo stammers a moment. “Don’t think so. Pretty sure you’re Weird, Got-All-Burned-Up-For-Being-A-Dumbass Guy. Foreplanter’s–”
As always, it is the grim task of Odisseus to translate the painfully obvious for Nemo. “Foreplanter’s dead, remember?”
“Remember?” Moira repeats, scowl obvious even in her voice.
{Fallen in righteous battle with the infidel}, Flamescar is delighted to inform them. {Did thee not stay to witness the games of succession?}
“Nah, you know.” Nemo shrugs. “We had another thing.”
“Odi,” Moira beckons, a mother chastising her child. “What does remember mean?”
{I am emerged the victor of the sacred games of succession}, announces Flamescar with grandeur, raising all eight of its bulky limbs in celebration. {The title of Foreplanter has been bestowed upon my deserving personage}.
“Bully for you,” grunts Nemo.
“Times,” insists Odisseus to Moira, “and places.”
“Is there something,” Nemo begins, rubbing his eyes with his palms, “you actually need from us or did you drag our asses all the way fucking up here so you could gloat?”
There’s a subtle change in Flamescar’s spores as it elaborates. {My scouts tell me, O honorable Vesselborn, that it was thine intention to once again leave our world, to return onto the bosom of God Beyond and the Starsea above.”
“Yeah? And?”
“Did you,” Moira hisses, making a slicing motion across her throat, “Foreplanter?”
{Something, I have been told, has delayed thee}, Flamescar continues, seemingly for the crowd’s benefit. {Prevented thine departure}.
At this, Nemo suddenly swells and attempts a new tactic. The aspect of the mad prophet returns, as best he can in his exhausted state, to his voice and posture. “The affairs of the Vesselborn–”
“We maybe both did a little,” Odisseus admits, sheepishly. “On accident.”
{Why dost thou not}, Flamescar continues, heedless of all Nemo’s posturing, {simply call God Beyond’s very attention to thee? Why not simply summon another Vessel, as thou hast done in the past, to swoop down and carry thee away?}
“You tread,” warns Nemo, the soothsayer aspect cracking the moment it appeared, “upon dangerous ground, mortal. I shall not tolerate–”
“Moons,” remarks Moira with an upward glance, as though asking the literal moons for guidance.
{Pray tell us, Badass Supreme – where is thine harness?}
There’s a sudden recoil from the crowd at this, the Skyscratch astounded at their
new leader’s temerity, to speak to the Vesselborn this way. There’s shock, anxiety and, what’s more, curiosity rapidly taking root among the cactus crowd.
“Mine what now?” Nemo, ever clueless, shoots back.
Moira, never clueless, sniffs twice. The unspoken cue for battle stations, this produces an instantaneous effect on the pirate crew. On instinct, four open hands come to rest on four gun holsters.
{Thine harness}, elaborates a gracious Flamescar, explaining the concept to a very young child. {The divine raiment given thee by God Beyond. Conjure a blade of fire – if thou art truly Vesselborn, as is thine claim – here and now, that all the faithful might bear witness to God Beyond’s power}.
Nemo’s pistol comes flying from its holster. “You wanna demonstration?” Odisseus and Moira follow suit, Right, Lefty and Wreckingball aimed at various members of the grove. The three Vesselborn earn a still wider berth now from the circle of cacti. “A demonstration,” warns Nemo, addressing the crowd more than to Flamescar alone, “is very doable.”
Flamescar doesn’t budge an inch. {Look thee all}, it broadcasts to its followers, {how they abandon the whole façade, the moment their unquestionable sovereignty becomes questioned}.
“How many?” mutters Odisseus, scanning the Skyscratch.
“Too many,” supplies Moira. “Especially when you consider they’ve each got four fucking arms and four fucking swords.”
“Point taken.”
Flamescar continues to pontificate to its audience. {Did I not say that when their testimony failed them, out would come the weapons and the threats? No Vesselborn are these, but rank parasites, cast from above to dwell here amongst we scum}.
Nemo wildly swings his pistol across the tumultuous throng, the theological ground given way beneath his feet. “What heresy is this? Only those–”
{They are outcasts! Exiles! Pariahs!} At each word, the crowd seems to mutter and shift, absorbing Flamescar’s rhetoric. {And what do the mighty Skyscratch do to those found unworthy, those who would profane the name of God Beyond and the sacred messengers of the Starsea?}
{Fernhollow!}
It starts humbly, with only a few cacti daring to pipe up in defiance of their godlings. As the scent proliferates through the Gitter, however, it only grows in strength and fervor.
{Fernhollow! Fernhollow! Fernhollow!}
A scowling Moira leans towards Odisseus for translation. “What’re they saying?”
“Fernhollow?” Odisseus repeats, the phrase sounding extra bizarre when spoken aloud.
{We shall plunge these blasphemers}, Flamescar declares, to the roaring approval of its fanatic followers, {into the depths of Fernhollow, with the offal and the refuse!}
Savage satisfaction rolls off the Skyscratch grove, enough to stagger Odisseus backward. Nemo, however, spins a few slow circles, his face a mask of incredulity. “So, what? A fucking luxury resort? A housing development? A nature preserve?”
{Fernhollow! Fernhollow!}
Nemo calmly holds up a hand, suing for silence among the jeering hordes. “As nice and totally non-threatening as that sounds,” he stipulates politely, “I’m pretty sure we’re gonna pass, actually.”
{Seize the charlatans}, orders Flamescar menacingly. {We depart at dawn}.
“Hey, whoa,” is all Nemo has time to remark before the Skyscratch burst into action.
As one creature, the entire warband surges forward. There’s a blur of motion, impossible to follow, as hundred of glassrock swords, axes and spears are brandished from as many great spiny arms. For a moment, the Skyscratch grove resembles the slain thorncloud – an autonomous mass of jagged points and muscular branches.
On their long legs, they instantly close the gap between themselves and the outnumbered offworlders. The moonlight glints off dozens of outstretched weapons as they push past their new Foreplanter to fall upon this new batch of heathens.
Moira’s predictably the first to fire, Right and Lefty lighting up the night with blasts of vibrant yellow. She’s smart enough, Odisseus notes, to spreadeagle both pistols and keep the horde at bay on either side. A number of scattered cacti are instantaneously wreathed in crackling yellow flame.
The first to come within range of Odisseus is promptly blown to cinders by his Wreckingball. Blackened chunks of cactoid flesh litter the ground, but the Ortok hardly has the time to cock and fire another round before they’re all around him. He sweeps about frantically and looses another shot, fortunate enough to blast a pair of Gitter through the midsection. Even this, however, only buys him a second of reprieve.
Nemo’s strategy is drastically less effective. Throwing as much profanity and shouted nonsense as he does ammunition, the Captain lays about randomly with his Carbon Industrial piece. Several of his shots, his aim mangled by panic and chaos, whizz dangerously close to Odisseus. In a heartbeat, however, he’s overwhelmed, swallowed among all the pressing cactoid bodies.
Odisseus makes a feeble attempt to come to Nemo’s aid, to force his way through the chaos towards his surrounded saltbrother. Blasting away uselessly, the Ortok starts to clear a path to Nemo before the precise slice of a glassrock sword wrenches the Wreckingball from his paws. Spun halfway around, Odisseus manages to dodge a stabbing spear and, on instinct, he almost lashes out with claws and teeth, to rend his attacker with his natural weapons.
What stops him is an impenetrable wall of spikes. A weak defense against ditrogen, the Gitter’s thorny green skin proves unassailable against unarmed attack. Fangs bared, claws extended, Odisseus hesitates a moment, unsure precisely how or where to strike.
Something sudden and bludgeoning – a spear haft, he imagines – jabs Odisseus at the base of the spine, forcing the Ortok to the ground. His snout slammed against the sand, he growls and writhes a moment in fury, before he feels a delicate line of pressure – a glassrock axeblade, he imagines – pressed against the nape of his neck. It would take very little effort from his unseen executioner to drive that blade home and the Ortok’s accordingly still as stone.
From his limited vantage on the ground, Odisseus watches the scuffle go south just as fast for his embattled comrades. A thicket of spears hover an inch around Moira Quicksilver, Righty and Lefty dangling from the trigger fingers of hands held up in surrender. It boils the Ortok’s blood, snuffling and snarling in the dirt, to see Nemo, his saltbrother, with a savage glassrock sword pressed beneath his neck, his pistol nowhere to be seen.
The Captain, for all that, sounds perfectly reasonable. “So, Fernhollow it is, then?”
Moira Quicksilver is actually an old hand at escaping magnetic cuffs.
The secret is alarmingly simple, truth be told. It’s exactly the sort of parlor trick that looks like magic when performed properly but completely loses its luster the moment its pedestrian method is explained. Had she been bound with conventional magnetic cuffs, Moira would have shirked them hours ago and, by now, be much further along on her escape than square one.
Unsurprisingly, the Skyscratch had instead bound the three of them – together, hilariously – by a length of strange, spongy vine. Thus far, it’s enthusiastically resisted all Moira’s escape attempts. This may, she acknowledges, be verging on paranoia, but she can almost feel her restraints tightening whenever she wriggles her hands.
That’s ultimately not what’s important. What’s important is that, with her hands so devilishly bound, they’re not free to strangle the ever-shitting life from that ugly cactus motherfucker who’s wearing her pistols like a pair of discount sunglasses.
Dawn broke hours ago, when the warband departed the nursery, heading this time further into the mountains rather than out across the wasteland. This high into the range, the sun’s only occasionally visible, more a reflection against this glassrock crag or another. Every vista they pass would, under any other circumstances, be strikingly beautiful, sunrise splayed out against jagged cliffs in scintillant patterns. Wonder of wonders, there’s even a faint breeze that whistles through the peaks, a bree
ze one might describe as refreshing, were one not currently marching to their own execution.
The three of them – Ortok, lunatic and Moira – stand back-to-back-to-back upon the lip of the precipice, each one bound at the wrist and then bound to one another in an outward facing circle. On the surrounding slopes and promontories, wherever their roots can find footing, are arrayed the Gitter of the Skyscratch grove. To a plant, they’re all dolled up, decked in ceremonial dyes and dress for the big execution today.
An honor guard of the stoutest warriors encircle the prisoners, each armed with a twenty-foot glassrock glaive. Even could Moira escape the restraints, any one of their captors would happily impale her the moment she lunged for Foreplanter.
To such a death, however, would Moira eagerly go, knowing she’d given her life attempting to wrest her beloved Lawmen from the unworthy grasp of some mutinous backwater savage.
Foreplanter, formerly known as Firstseed Flamescar, is very clearly enjoying its newfound office a little too much. Standing atop the highest peak it could reach, it strikes as regal a pose as an eight-armed cactus-man wearing a grass skirt possibly could. To complete its ridiculous ensemble, it dangles all four of their firearms – Righty, Lefty, Wreckingball and Nemo’s flintlock – around a hempen cord that it wears over the shoulders, like tribal fetishes or trophies of war.
The sheer insult of this burns Moira Quicksilver straight to her core. From where they hang, the weapons’re too inaccessible and far too delicate anyway for the Gitter’s thorny fingers to even hope to aim or fire. What’s worse, someone’s gone and smeared that ceremonial dye all over them, clogging the internal machinery of Moira’s precious revolvers with bright blue, yellow and red gunk.
Moira Quicksilver, on trial for willingly impersonating a god, cannot conceive of such a blasphemy as this.
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