by Sean Davies
“They don’t look like much,” Genevieve said, studying the cratered spheres of rock. The theory was fascinating to her, and she didn’t discount many weird and wacky ideas since becoming a Vampire and having her world tipped upside down, but it was still hard for her to swallow without decent evidence to back it all up.
“That’s what I thought at first, but watch this,” Quoronastra said with a smirk, as he traced more patterns on the disc’s surface. “This was recorded by Conclave astronomers, long before my time.”
The image of Mydia looked mostly unchanged, except that the three curved continents and Central Isle were blanketed in darkness. Beyond the planet, a massive meteorite, even bigger than the planet’s twin moons, was lazily approaching the far side of the planet. Quoronastra turned the hologram of Mydia so that the group was facing the endless ocean on the other side of the globe, and smiled as both moons travelled around into the daylight. Before Connie, Stitches, or Genie could comment, long crystalline spires sprouted from the dark side of each moon, like sharpened flower petals carved from pure diamond. The space between the meteorite and the moons rippled like water caught in a strong breeze, and the giant chunk of world-ending rock began breaking apart into smaller rocks which gravitated towards the moons rather than the planet below. The meteor shower shattered against the humongous crystal spires without leaving a mark, or hammered into the surface rock around them. The crystal structures slid back under the surface, leaving no indication of their existence, and the moons slowly drifted back to the night-side of Mydia where they returned to their normal orbit.
“There’s almost a dozen incidents on these discs where the twin moons have intervened to save Mydia, including a planet-wide shield that stopped our atmosphere from being burnt off by a particularly nasty solar flare,” Quoronastra explained. “Assuming they aren’t fictional, of course.”
Constance looked at the holographic images of the moons in reverence. After seeing the spires, she could almost picture their true original forms sailing through the stars together.
Genevieve rubbed the Nightmare Nettle tattoo on the shaved side of her head. “Say this is all true; how does that play into what’s happening to the planet now?”
“Well, if there is a Creator at the centre of the planet, and at one point Mydia was torn into three piece, dimensionally speaking…” Quoronastra returned to the chalkboard and scribbled an asterisk beneath his lines for Mydia, the Gloom, and the void between. “…Then it’s safe to assume that it, too, was divided, and who knows what kind of damage that could’ve instigated! It would certainly explain the quakes, and the shortage of the lifeblood—Deep Vein Oil, rather.”
“What about the ghost sightings?” Constance asked, trying to sound like she was feeling normal.
“There are some scattered accounts from Book Wielders who travelled to the Creator’s Mantle; the machinery that is supposed to house the Creator,” Quoronastra explained in a hesitant tone that suggested he was lacking a great many details. “They wrote that the magical energy was so rich down there, they were able to ‘commune with the spirit plain’. As unbelievable as it sounds, this could be what we’ve been experiencing—some sort of energy expulsion, or leak.”
“Kind of like in the void encounter I shared?” Genevieve said in a smug voice, making the connection to her out-of -body experience.
“Not unless you have the ability to send your consciousness into different dimensions,” the Dragon snapped back sarcastically. “No? I didn’t think so.”
Genie put her hands on her hips and scowled at Quoronastra, but he didn’t even acknowledge her anger, unconcernedly carrying on where he left off.
“There are a great many signs that the Creator theory is correct. It is, however, missing one key factor that have come across in many texts,” Quoronastra said, scratching his chin again. “You see, there’s meant to be some sort of access shaft that leads down to the mantle. The records we’ve recovered read as though it would be hard to miss, and suggest that it could have been the Omni’s true goal all along. Their genocidal campaign to rid the world of non- and low-level magical beings—which in effect unbalanced the scales of power and attracted the Creator’s attention—could’ve been an attempt to summon the shaft for their own power-hungry purposes. But, of course, they would have needed a Book Wielder to gain entry, and they were unreservedly murdering all of them as well…” the Dragon rambled on.
“It’s appeared on the other side of the world,” Constance interrupted in a serious voice. She knew from her visions and intuition, and from Azalea and Veronica’s mystical input, that the Creator was more fact than fiction—and that she was somehow connected to it. “We’re going down there with a team led by Ricardo Stern.”
“Why ever didn’t you say so sooner?!” Quoronastra demanded, appearing completely dumbfounded. “And Ricardo Stern? That glory-seeking charlatan?! No, no, no, this won’t do at all,” the Dragon muttered as he began pacing around the room.
“Remember: don’t tell anyone about this, or about Winston,” Genevieve said, but received no reply from the flustered dragon.
“This telescope pierces the clouds somehow,” Stitches said in amazement as he peered into one of the eyepieces.
“Don’t touch that!” Quoronastra shouted, throwing a large bag in Stitches direction. “You’re the smartest one in your group—help me pack, quickly now! Grab any book that could be helpful, start over there!” He pointed frantically at several bookshelves.
Stitches, too polite for his own good, gave a quick nod and set to work.
“Oh, are you going away somewhere?” Genie asked the Dragon mockingly.
Quoronastra pretended not to hear the Vampire Nightclaw, and scooped some possessions together whilst muttering to himself about what a joke Ricardo Stern was.
“Connie Lee, Dragon-boy thinks he’s coming with us,” Genevieve told the Book Wielder incredulously.
“Uh huh… that’s fine,” Constance said distractedly, playing with her hair while captivated by the large broken gear in the centre of the room. “Where did this come from?”
“One of the Imperian expeditions to the other side of the world, in your middle ages. From what I was told, they were looking for new easy lands to conquer and ended up sailing full circle,” Quoronastra explained quickly. “The Archivists told me that they’d dredged that gear piece up from a section of shallows on the far side of Mydia, but everyone at the time assumed it was a hoax.”
“You know the Archivists?” Genie asked, half expecting to be blanked again.
“Yes, they’re the ones who supplied most of what you see here,” Quoronastra replied half-heartedly. “They want me to join them. They even offered me a place on their council.” He chuckled as though the entire notion was ludicrous. “The rest, I acquired myself—Ricardo Stern isn’t the only one who can stumble in and out of an Archmage depository…”
Constance leaned towards the ‘V’ shaped metal and studied the smooth surface carefully. She could just about sense something magical at work, but couldn’t see anything special about the broken gear.
Quoronastra saw the Book Wielder inspecting the ancient artefact, and tossed a plastic loupe in her direction. “Catch,” the dragon said, long after Connie had failed to catch the magnifying lens. “Take a closer look,” he suggested, before scurrying off to the lower floors.
“Thanks,” Connie said dryly, as she held the loupe over her eye.
The copper-coloured metal turned translucent when viewed through the loupe, and Constance could see that it was covered in almost inert magical pathways, arranged in millions of geometric lines both inside and out, all highlighted in light blue thanks to the eyepiece’s enchantment. The pretty Book Wielder had been expecting to see something undetectable to the naked eye, but she found the level of detail in the gear’s design to be truly astonishing. Constance could even make out the outline of smaller gears and strange mechanisms buried within the main struts, and they wobbled and shuddered aim
lessly without an energy source to power them fully. She kept the loupe over her eye and placed her spare hand on the surface of the metal, and watched in amazement as fiery yellow energy spread from her palm and coursed through the giant gear, breathing life into the smaller mechanisms inside and causing them spin, whirr, and churn excitedly.
“What does it look like?” Genevieve asked from behind.
Constance jumped and snatched her hand away, making the Vampire Nightclaw snort.
“See for yourself,” Connie offered, handing the loupe over, along with a playful punch on Genie’s arm.
“Woah,” Genevieve gasped. “I’d never have guessed a lump of metal could look so… beautiful. This technology is something else!”
“It sure is,” Constance said, reliving her visions of machinery and the sphere of light, scared of the implications of her connection to it all.
Then Genevieve leaned over, and Constance found herself checking out the Vampire’s firm backside instead. Feeling risky, and glad for a change of thought, Connie lifted the hem of Genie’s blue tartan skirt, stroking her pale ass and lacy white thong.
“Have I turned you into a sex addict already?” Genevieve asked slyly, sticking her backside out playfully.
“What would I do without you?” Connie said lovingly.
Genevieve stood up properly and gave the Book Wielder a long, passionate kiss. “Turn to sex toys, a power shower, or good old-fashioned fingers maybe?”
Connie rolled her eyes and smiled. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“You’re more worried than you’re letting on, aren’t you?” Genevieve asked.
Constance nodded. “It’s starting to dawn on me just how crazy, and how dangerous, this all is.”
“Sometimes crazy can be good,” Genevieve said, repeating their phrase with a wink. “Although I can’t say the same on the danger front. I know you have some weird connection to this Creator business, but it’s still not too late to change your mind.”
“You love a good catchphrase, don’t you?” Connie sighed, and shook her head. “No, I have to go. I know I’m supposed to do this.” She felt scared, yet was confident that she was on the right path.
“Then me, Stitches, Dragon-boy, and the others have got your back,” Genie said, running a hand through the Book Wielder’s black and chestnut highlighted hair.
“No, no, no,” Quoronastra fumed as he returned to the top floor with a pile neatly folded robes in his arms. “No canoodling in my tower!”
“Canoodling?” Genevieve laughed hysterically, as she put a small bit of distance between herself and Connie.
Constance tried to stop herself from giggling but ended up making loud snorting sounds, causing her and Genevieve to laugh even louder.
“Useless clowns…” Quoronastra sighed in disgust, before carrying on with the packing. “Puppet-man, what weapon do you use?”
“It’s Stitches, and I don’t really have one. I normally just use what other people want me to try out,” the Alt replied.
The Dragon eyed Stitches up and down, and pulled a fancy wooden cane with a golden handle off the wall. “Well, you look like a gentleman, so this should suit you nicely,” he said, before tossing the cane in the Alt’s direction.
Stitches caught it and looked it over appreciatively. “It’s a very nice stick. Thank you.”
“It’s a blade,” the Dragon sighed impatiently. “Twist the handle and pull.”
The Alternative wiggled the golden handle until he felt a click, and he pulled a sleek sharpened blade from the polished wooden shaft. “Incredible! Thank you ever so much!” Stitches cheered happily.
“Yes, yes. Now, less talking, more packing,” the Dragon said with a faint smile on his scaled face.
“Don’t we get anything?” Genevieve asked in-between stifled laughter.
“You already seemed well-equipped with that razor-sharp wit of yours,” Quoronastra replied in a snarky tone.
“The Katana does pretty well too…” Genie said in an amused voice.
Constance went bright red as she looked into Genevieve’s eyes, and she squeaked before bursting into tearful laughter.
“Are they always like this?” the Dragon asked Stitches after a long groan.
“Yes, when they’re not hiding their thoughts and feelings, or fighting,” Stitches replied informatively.
Quoronastra let out a long pained sigh and tried to focus on the access shaft’s potential payoffs, in terms of both knowledge and treasure.
A little while later, Constance, Stitches, Genevieve, and Quoronastra left the tower and re-joined the Tropican troopers outside the gate.
“Finally,” Joran sighed with relief.
“Joran, Olishia—this is Quoronastra. He’s tagging along,” Connie informed them, taking it upon herself to make the introductions. “Quoronastra, this is—”
“I don’t care. Come on, we’re wasting time,” the Dragon replied rudely.
“What a charmer,” Olishia said sarcastically.
“Yep, he’s a scaly bucket of joy,” Genevieve said to the pink-haired trooper.
Quoronastra clicked both of his fingers, and the wrought iron gate surrounding his massive gardens clanked and shot upwards and outwards, forming a multi-layered defensive wall of long spears wrapped in metal thorns. A sticky-feathered, half-rotten crow flew too close to the perimeter and the closest gate section lanced upwards, impaling the unfortunate bird before slinking back into place.
“Isn’t that a bit excessive?” Constance asked, viewing the barbaric defences with distain.
“Not with the number of lowlifes around here who want to get their grubby mitts on my belongings,” Quoronastra said, sniffing with disdain. “Half of them would kill their own hatchlings just to fill their pockets with the plants, let alone my treasures within!”
“Doesn’t the Mayor have security patrols?” Stitches asked, sure that he’d seen the burly armed Alternatives somewhere in the city.
“He does, but he keeps his goons out of my area deliberately,” the Dragon replied, rolling his fiery violet eyes as they made for the Stitches and Britches Bawdy House. “We had a disagreement regarding the building fees of my tower, you see.”
“You didn’t pay up?” Genevieve assumed.
“Oh no, I paid,” Quoronastra sighed, “but I used gold and silver, rather than candy.”
Everyone laughed, except for Stitches who let out an embarrassed sigh.
“Even after I’d explained that the small fortune I had forked over would be enough to buy far more sweets than he was demanding at the time, the Mayor still considered it to be a slight,” Quoronastra continued. “Apparently he didn’t want to go through the effort of buying candy, and said that it would waste too much of his precious time. He still kept the gold and silver bars, though,” the Dragon concluded, angrily licking his sharp teeth with his pointed tongue.
“But surely no thieves and robbers are a match for you and your defences?” Stitches asked out of curiosity.
The Dragon laughed. “Not in the slightest, puppet-man. They’re not the sharpest tools in the box, but stopping my work to incinerate or impale them is an awfully taxing distraction.”
“That ain’t a very nice fing ta say,” a deep, confident voice said from a dark alleyway just ahead of their position. “Ya gonna hurt Lil’Flake’s feelin’s.”
Quoronastra groaned. “Blight Sterling?”
“Da very same,” the individual dubbed as Blight said, swaggering out into the open. “Proud leada of da Bastardly Blighters gang.”
Blight Sterling was a grey-skinned human male, with bulging black veins and dark menacing eyes to match. His face was long and gaunt, his teeth discoloured and rotten, and a long lime green mohawk crowned his head. All he was wearing were a pair of studded leather braces with dozens of little knives slotted beneath the surface of the material, a pair of dirty trousers cut into three-quarter lengths, and a pair of studded boots.
“I’ve been wai
tin’ a really long time for ya ta leave dat tower of yours,” Blight said cheerfully, flashing the gang a toothy smile.
“Wow, and I thought the Golden Fangs were the dumbest gang to have ever existed,” Genevieve smirked, sliding her unbreakable Spell-forged steel Katana out of its sheath.
“Want us to shoot him, or do we just move on?” Joran asked Constance.
“Don’t waste your ammunition,” Quoronastra said, as he breathed fire into the palms of his hands and stood ready to hurl it at the corrupted human gang leader.
“Now, now, let’s not be too hasty,” Blight said, putting his hands up in surrender. “I’ve got a way we can resolve dis wiv’out bloodshed.”
At that moment, the side of a giant dumpster down the dismal alley dissolved—the same dumpster Constance had viewed suspiciously on the way to Quoronastra’s tower—and a hulking creature lumbered forth.
It was a Freak; an uncivilised form of Alternative. Its mismatched swollen body parts were stitched together haphazardly, and it was dressed in black trash bags that had been taped together. Its head consisted of s mouldy sack with a slit for a mouth, and one of its beasty hands was buried in a cereal box. When it stood up straight to stretch, the brutish Freak was almost eight feet tall, with a girth to match.
The whole group readied themselves for combat, but the Freak just stuffed a fistful of cereal into its mouth, covering its head sack with dozens of flakes in the process, and plodded to Blight’s side like a loyal dog.
“Don’t mind him,” Blight said, patting the Freak’s thick arm. “He’s just Lil’Flake, me trusty homunculus pet. Loves da cereal, don’t ya, boy?”
The Freak belched a mouthful of cereal covered in sizzling green goo.
“Ergh, it stinks,” Olishia complained, and readied the plasma lance function on her rifle.
“I alone am enough to extinguish you and your foul pet off the face of the world, Blight,” Quoronastra began threateningly, “and I’m sure these others have some combat prowess, too. So perhaps you should crawl back into the shadows and find a new tower to terrorise?”