Revelations Cycle Thirteenth Iteration: The Trickster Blues
The first few chapters of this act are going to be profoundly non-linear, but I trust you all to be able to keep up. Hopefully delays of the sort recently experienced will not happen again, lolol.
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Time is a circle, but it is also a line. Knight's Heir, do you hear me? Will you heed my call? The day is long, but the hunting horn is sounding; let loose your dogs of war and join me, join the one you love. From across the sands of time fate calls you, the thing you are and the boy you were-- answer back, I beseech you. Awaken, the dawn draws near!
Awake!
---
There was a nose in Jawwhn’s face, and it was not his nose. Cold and black and wet, it protruded off a thin and furry face, and he found himself staring down the barrel of a loaded coyote. In troll parlance: Yipbeast. But the word ‘coyote’ settled in and stayed as blue-rimmed eyes met hazel, matching yellow scelera: pointed ears, pointed muzzle, a smattering of short, white whiskers dusting its cheeks-- coyote.
Everything was quiet, for a long moment, the silence of catacombs and tombs, a hallowed, somewhat eerie feeling that sank deep in the pit of his stomach and formed a hard core of trepidation. Somewhere above, the breeze whistled, and damp cold was sinking into his skin through the air as moist, hard rocks dug into the small of his back. Jawwhn watched, and the coyote watched, and the wind whispered to itself, and Jawwhn’s husktop beeped.
The coyote moved. It was lithe and graceful, a fish in water, for all that its limbs were like sticks and its ribs jutted out like the bars of a cage, matted pelt plastered up against bone and a thin layer of flesh. It had been leaning over him, but now it went, tail swishing haughtily behind it as it stalked away a perfectly respectable distance and sat, whiskers twitching. It was still watching him. Flipping the computer open, Jawwhn watched back.
TT: Good evening, Mr. Egbert, how good of you to join us. While you were out, I took the liberty of making some additions. Unfortunately, your gate appears to have gone missing, but your store of grist is well stocked and I do think you’ll find my choice of armory for you... appropriate.
TT: Or that is to say, you will. Soon enough, I should imagine.
The computer, and Jawwhn, and the coyote, were resting in the ruins of what had once been a beautiful, marble-ceilinged foyer and was now an open-air patio, the roof torn clean off and the walls reduced to rubble. Chips of ancient stonework littered the surrounding ground, and what he could see of the massive lawnring outside, which was itself a mess, carpeted in dirt clods with clumps of vibrant grasses still attached, and while the rocky outcropping beyond was lit by the dim blue glow of bioluminescence, the sky above was nothing but blackness that stretched unending, cold and dense as the heart of a neutron star. Behind him, Jawwhn could surmise, lay the manged corpse of his hive, a towering castle that had survived through the ages, housing generations of new wrigglers that moved in like hermit crabs, polishing and augmenting and leaving their mark, making it their own. He didn’t wish to think about that just now, however. If he did, it would give him a worse headache than Rosace did.
GT: don’t you think this has gone far enough yet?
GT: enough playing around, okay? haha, your demon game is very nice. real funny.
GT: in the meantime, i am as unamused as it is possible to be, and you know me, i enjoy a good joke.
GT: this is not a good joke.
TT: Why, Jawwhn, are you angry? Do you feel... tricked, perhaps?
GT: okay, fine, you caught me.
GT: my house is destroyed, my lusus has gone missing, and the local wildlife is looking at me like i’m dinner. what’s this about?
GT: you can’t still be angry about the bucket thing, right? come on, that was classic, even your tentacle horror blackmoon blooddeath lusus laughed.
GT: i mean, i think that was a laugh. it sounded like a lisping phlegmbeast choking on a bicycle horn, but it counts.
TT: I am going to give you a gift, Jawwhn. It may not linger long, but I believe that in time you will come to regard it as the greatest fortune ever to drop into your lap.
TT: Should I suffer for it, I will take my chains gladly, to deliver unto you the fire you were promised.
TT: I have made mistakes in the past, Jawwhn. We all have. I put my faith in things and people who could not be trusted further than I could throw them. I paid what was due me, but you did too, ten times over.
TT: Therefore, one last price. The last time pays for all.
TT: Whether you accept it or not is up to you. Until then, please enjoy the equipment I conjured for you, and attend to your... friend. He looks lonely.
TT: Not to mention hungry.
GT: there’s no hope of getting a straight answer of you, is there?
-- tyrianTarantella [TT] became idle at 00:06! --
GT: right, didn’t think so.
Sitting up at last, Jawwhn closed the husktop with a click that echoed off crumbling heaps of architecture and captchalogged it, brushing white-gray dust off his standard slate-dark pants and exposed calves. “You’re not going to go away, are you?” he asked the coyote dismally, and received a perplexed cock of the head in return. There was a kind of open and blatant guile flashing in its eyes, quickly replaced by typical woofbeast vapidity, golden orbs like twin harvest moons, reflecting nothing but the glow of the husktop as it powered down. Jawwhn shrugged and stood on legs that were far too uncertain for comfort, curling his toes in his boots as he wobbled and sought purchase, his internal gyroscope recalibrating to a world knocked firmly off its axis.
“Let’s get going, then,” he told it, a bit more brightly and utterly resigned. “I want to see what Rosace got me.” With a deep breath, he turned to face the wreck of his hive, and his life. For better or worse, one way or another, nothing would ever be the same again.
At the very least, it would certainly not be boring.
---
TG: hey egderp
TG: congrats on reaching eight sweeps without getting run out of town on a rail i guess
TG: fuck only knows how you managed that one
GT: aww, thanks, daevid!!!
GT: <>
GT: your wriggling day is coming up too, right? i mean, we were hatched pretty close together.
TG: <3<
GT: do you have to do that every time?
TG: yeah bro its kind of required seeing as that is the quadrant where i am forced to share space with your worthless waste of breath
GT: sigh.
GT: well, agree to disagree?
TG: egderp this is romance not what kind of beast we are going to throw on the fire for eventide
TG: have a smidgeon of goddamn class for fucks sake
GT: bluh.
GT: bluhhhhhhhh.
GT: that is what i think of that!
TG: i literally cannot believe that you are older than me
TG: look at you flailing your limbs like a stillhatched grub
TG: it turns my bile sack
GT: if i was stillhatched i wouldn’t be flailing, daevid.
GT: i would be… i don’t know. laying here not breathing, i guess.
TG: shut up
TG: shut up is what i think of that egbert
GT: anyway, yours is just a few more nights away!
GT: and you must be pretty worried about it, huh? you’re slipping, dude!
GT: i can always tell when you’re nervous about it.
GT: but come on, jadite is fine! and you will be too, i know it.
TG: you can feel free to continue shutting your slackjawed drooling shitgash of a mouth at literally any time now
TG: first off jadite is literally untouchable you and i both know that she could walk right into a subjuggulator convention wearing ghetto clown make up and they would do absolutely jack shit about it
TG: secondly i told you were not moirails you idiot you dont have to keep going on like that
GT: well maybe i want to!
TG: you can take your misapplied pity through the pale quadrant and shove it down your rancorous protein chute you disgustingly obvious bulgefiend
GT: oh, hahaha. you're such a kidder, daevid! did you get me a present?
TG: what is this appease the higherblood by bringing him tithes in supplication week
TG: and dont try to change the subject i know youre just dying to play hide the holebeast with my meatstick
GT: no, it’s my wriggling day!
TG: well yeah but
TG: look egbert people dont just do that shit
TG: its weird that you think you are entitled to some kind of reward just because your derpy ass has somehow managed to go another sweep without getting culled
GT: i guess... it just seems considerate. like, a way to show you care?
TG: yet again you have managed to confuse me with someone who gives half a rocketbooting fuck
GT: maybe watching out for me and jadite could be your present!
GT: uh. you know. retroactively.
GT: but the point remains, i got you a present last year!
TG: yeah
TG: a shitty present
TG: you never told me what use i was supposed to find for a stuffed bouncebeast anyway
TG: i regifted that shit the exact second i could and felt exactly zero remorse
GT: i got you a present this year, too.
TG: whoop de fucking doo
TG: allow me to perform the traditional celebration dance of my people
TG: involving several gestures easily misinterpreted as me inviting you to shove a series of unexpected objects up your festering pustule encrusted bone nook and let them rot there
GT: boy, you’re sure big on me stuffing things into various parts of myself tonight.
TG: sit on my bulge why dont you
GT: haha! you’re a laugh a minute, bro.
GT: sometimes i really envy you that, you know? all i’ve got are pranks, and those are great, but it’s not really the whole package.
GT: anyway, you’ve got to go! things to do, songs to write, people to see.
GT: just remember that no one blames you, daevid. you can’t help what you are, and i think that’s good.
GT: jadite needs you anyway.
GT: i'll see you soon.
GT: <>
--ghostyTrickster [GT] ceased trolling timetechGodhead [TG] at 18:47!-
TG: …<>
TG: jackass
---
The great hall was entirely destroyed, but on the lighter side, that didn’t appear to matter much. Taking stock of the ruinous, sledgehammer-happy misfortune rained down on his poor castle in the form of technological wizardry, Jawwhn sat on a toppled sandstone pillar with his face in his hands, observing as the coyote trotted around, sniffing and poking around at things with flat paws. The vast majority of the building had collapsed in on itself like a chocolate melted in the sun, walls buckled and imploding, capstones blocking what remained of the archways they had once supported. Mothworn silken banners in every (official) color of the hemospectrum hung in various states of disarray on what remained of the walls, occasionally draped over downed columns or laying in pools on the floor, tattered and languishing, soon to molder away into nothingness.
In the center of what had once been a magnificent, cavernous hall a perfect circle had been swept clean, as though someone had applied an eraser filter to it. Spotless in perfection, the same someone had arranged two racks: one with a variety of flashy, if archaic, garments, and another containing weaponry, all variations on the theme of ‘sickle’. Jawwhn had never much wanted to be a Threshecutioner, much preferring the idea of a career in the Troubleadoors or Laughssassins, noble professions where his talents in the musical arts and field of applied japery would come in handy, but now it looked as though he had no other choice. The shadows were moving in a rather disquieting manner, he was noticing, and there was the scent of danger in the air, thick and heady like incense.
“Good boy,” he told the coyote absently when it paused by the wire sickle tree and whined, mangy tail smacking against the ground. “For your next trick, maybe you could go find my sprite, huh? Thing buggered right off after I prototyped it.”
And that was a little worrying, considering what he’d thrown into it-- one of several magical dice he’d used in his FLARPing days, dear to his heart. It had swelled, drunk on power, and spiralled into the spastic nexus of the unprototyped sprite like stellar dust swirling into the gooey center of a black hole, and the energy bundle had flashed three times and exploded in a spray of blue slime nearly the color of his blood. ‘Cool!’ he’d exclaimed to himself. ‘Ectoplasm!’ but the sprite had coalesced into a pulsating shape that emitted a blinding light, and by the time he’d stopped madly blinking long enough to squint in that general direction, it had dissolved off again, leaving behind the other six dice and a burn-out shadow on the wall behind it.
So results were still largely undetermined. Jawwhn hadn’t seen any imps yet, either, which would have revealed clues to its spectral form, but that made sense; Rosace had probably slaughtered them all to amass the horde she’d gifted him with. Jawwhn was just beginning to seriously contemplate checking that out, maybe grabbing himself a sweet cape or one of those dashing hats with a feather in it (apparently she’d remembered he’d always wanted one of those-- there were at lest five of them, crafted of all sorts of interesting materials), when someone said, “Nah, I think I’d rather not get involved with that, if it’s all the same to you. You’ve got some pretty bad mojo there, kid.”
Jawwhn blinked, and the coyote stared back at him, implacable, grinning. At least, it looked like a grin. It was hard to tell when the creature in question didn’t have proper lips, and had to settle for pulling skin back to reveal rows of murderous teeth. “That’s impossible,” he said automatically, and then flushed cerulean, feeling silly. “I mean... it is, right? You’re an animal.”
“Wrong!” the coyote crowed, and Jawwhn felt briefly nauseous watching its maw work around the words. It looked like it was trying to chew them before it spit them out. “What’s the saying, you kids are using? Do not pass go, do not collect two thousand riechmarks. No? Wrong? Oh, well, you win some and you lose some. It’s so hard to keep up with your doings lately, I’m not sure why I bother.”
“Stop,” Jawwhn commanded, damming up a stream of fascinating but utterly incomprehensible blather. The coyote obediently clammed up, looking smugly amused. Jawwhn stalked up to it, rationalizing that he’d been going in that direction anyway, and summarily socked it square in the snout. It yipped in indignant pain and glowered up at him, and when Jawwhn glared back, it calmly leaned forward and bit his hand deep. “Ow!”
“Serves you right, doesn’t it?” The coyote snorted, remorseless, as Jawwhn sucked the bleeding fingers into his mouth, black tongue lapping at the already closing gash down the meat of his palm. “Shows you to treat your betters with a bit of goddamn respect, right? I’ve been here longer than you have, sonny, way before your most distant ancestors were anything but a gleam in ol’ Slick’s eye, and I’ll be here after you’re nothing but a ghost in the machine. And I’ll tell you, I’m a bit tired a’ seein’ your kind around here. I know your stories already, all your tricks. It’s time for some fresh blood.”
“Is that why you bit me?”
The coyote bit him again, but lighter, and on the shin this time, and Jawwhn hopped back as though scalded. “Oh, you are a funny one, aren’t you? I’ve got my eye on you.”
“Same to you,” Jawwhn grumbled, and turned to stare aimless at the sickle selection for a long moment, indecisive. There were so many variables to consider, and he was rather at a loss for where to begin.
“Oh, ignorin’ me now, are we?” the coyote scoffed, and John could hear the exhale of escaping air as it flopped down, rolling onto its back with limbs kicking in the air. “Mr. Highroad, I presume. Well, go on and pick your poison, then, can’t say it’ll matter in the end. Just go with your gut; you’ll end up happy or dead, and either way no one’s complaining.
Jawwhn paused with his arm half-extended towards the closest sickle. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
“Nope.”
“I could shut you up.” The sickle was in his hand before he knew it, glinting sharp and malicious in the low light, and he tossed it, catching it by the ornately carved bone handle. “I have the technology.”
“Nope,” the coyote repeated, rolling over on its stomach and scurrying away. “Now, hurry up and put on your robe and wizard hat, the grand tour is leaving.”
Instinct took him again, and Jawwhn’s eyes narrowed, mouth moving of its own accord: “I think I’ll stay awhile, thanks. I can handle it on my own.”
The coyote cocked its head again. “You sure.”
“Yeah. Escort missions are no fun, anyway.”
It cackled, and the sound echoed long after it had pressed through a crack in the rubble and absconded out of his life. “Suit yourself.”
And he did. There was a price tag passive-aggressively attached to the handle of the weapon written out in grist, lest Jawwhn ever forget what he owed her, and the product name underneath a captcha code: The Red Menace. There wasn’t much red about it, Jawwhn thought with a frown, turning it over in his hands, save for the strange insignia etched in red carnelian on the pommel. The blade itself was wicked sharp as it sung through the air, and while it felt awkward in his hand at first, it felt oddly familiar, too, weight warm and pleasantly heavy in his hand, and Jawwhn nodded in satisfaction, allocating it to his strife specibus with pride.
Next, he turned to the selection of fine clothing. He’d never been one for fashion, and while it seemed unnecessary to partake, it also seemed impolite (not to mention a waste of grist) not to accept Rosace’s offering. The only truly practical garment was a deep black riding cloak, useful against the chill of the wet wind that was clawing up against the walls, and he wrapped it around himself with mild aplomb, cursing when it got stuck on his hooked horns for a moment and nearly tore.
Then there was nothing left. No getting back into his quarters, and anyway, anything he would need, he already had. It was time to look for his missing lusus, get his bearings, maybe find some answers to the ever-present quandary of what exactly was happening. The path outside his home was long and winding, but Jawwhn started down it, and down the hill into a valley and an old deserted village, a song in his heart.
---
(Moments in the past, but not many...)
"Surprise!"
Your name is Jawwhn Egbert, and you have just been woken with a whump! of unwillingly sacrificed breath by a half-ton howlbeast to the chest, and it is bright out. The brightness is everywhere, white holy light that scars and cleanses, making you blink back tears when you make the mistake of cracking your tortured lids open a fraction. There is hot, rank breath pouring in over your face, the stench of rotting meat and sour sickly sweet miasma that only serves to remind you that you have not eaten in what feels like hours, could be days. A tongue like sandpaper dipped in hoofbeast glue slides up your cheek, leaving a snail's trail of green-tinged goo behind on your skin.
"Hi, Bec," you groan, half wheezing due to the dinnerplate paw still pressing hard on your sternum, clawtips digging into your flesh just above the clavicle, right below where it would really hurt. A little yipping whine is directed your way, and you add, "Hi, Jadite."
The lusus lets you up, satisfied, and struts off with a smugly audible swish of his tail; sun still exploding behind your eyes, you roll to your side and try opening them slowly, slowly, a third and then halfway and then back down again, no, definitely too much sun, too much light. Clawed hands scrabble in the bed of crushed ferns and long grass that was your sanctuary, drawing long, rutted lines in the rich black loam beneath. You can smell the soil, damp from midnight rain, and the dewy white understalks of the grass blades you uprooted, and the tang of blue blood pooling on your lower lip where with buckfangs you nearly bit through it. You can hear the soft sway of the branches above, of the sheltering trees moving in the breeze, and the ruffle-flutter of dark-winged carrionbeasts hopping from limb to bough; it is peaceful here.
But bright, you evaluate, much too bright.
"Come on, lazybones, get up!" Jadite pipes, poking you in the small of your back with the tip of an elegant, pointed boot; it is an odd mixture of soft and hard, and you know that it must be hand-crafted of wild leather, like all her clothing, lovingly rendered from the skins and sinews of a dozen different vile and ferocious beasts. "I've got a lot of things to show you, and we don't have a lot of time. Daevid will be back from wherever he got off to soon, and he already said he doesn't want to see you. Not yet, anyway."
"He's a nooksniffing bulgelicker," you complain, smacking your cracking lips at her. "You're a nooksniffing bulgelicker. And it's the middle of the day, and your lusus is mean."
You can practically feel her rolling her unorthodoxly chromatic eyes from here, and the shame burns in the pit of your stomach; sometimes you think that Daevid was meant to be your kismesis after all, and she your moirail, but Jadite really needs no one to balance her. For all that she is wild and fierce, a force untamed, she is both mentally stable and only as violent as her lifestyle requires, and even then she is only a danger to beasts unless she cannot help otherwise.
No, between them it is Daevid who is the real hunter, you think, sitting up and blearily observing the wreck of the camp they both share. Two tents, several sacks of equipment and a firepit with a blaze burned down to ashes and still-glowing embers, the hide of a deadly stripebeast strung up between two trees, gore-side up, to dry in the harsh sun. Jadite is the tracker, with Bec beside her, following track-marked footprints in the grass and drops of rainbow blood fallen on rocks and rills, and where she points, Daevid follows-- and strikes. A gleaming sword, half-length, is propped against a beech tree, improperly cleansed; you can still see a smear of dark, natural olive green up by the hilt.
"Daytime isn't so bad," she assures you consolingly, back in the moment, patting your shoulder and wandering away towards Daevid's tree. In the crook of a branch, his lusus is perched, anthropoid figure crouched with feathered arms drawn around his body, a sharp-looking pair of tinted glasses resting just above his beak. "You like it too, don't you?" she coos, tossing him up a square of smoked meat product, which Daevid's Crowbro snatches out of the air with a lightning fast hand, talons closing around the precious foodstuff and brought up to his maw, obscured by pinion feathers. You have never seen his mouth move. ”Yes you do! Good boy, have another.” Crowbro tolerates this fuss with the regal imperiosity of coolkids the universe over, and gives you a look through his shades clearly telegraphed as Bitches love me, no big deal.
“You’re just lucky,” you grumble, watching her lob hunks of salted mystery meat at a huge feathery monster, and regret it instantly. You don’t need to see the way her shoulders tense almost imperceptibly to know that you have made another fumbling misstep, but at least she isn’t Daevid. If she was, your guts would be spilled cerulean and strung up over the campfire by now. A crackle and snap, and your eyes are drawn back to Becquerel, his fur now puffed with static like someone attempted to launder him; a wolf-shaped sparkler, a popping haze of green-white radiation electric all down his spine and glowing like firebrands in his eyesockets. The same radiation that drew him to Jadite, the scent of a kindred spirit, that the reason he pulled her, pulsing an unnatural green, fresh hatched from the caves of the mother grub and raised her well past pupation. Cut her and she would bleed, a thick green that glowed in the dark nearly the shade of sopor slime, a color that would burn at the touch of any normal troll.
“Sorry,” you try, instantly, honest remorse showing through. “I... sorry. I know you can’t help it.”
To your surprise, she turns to you with a slight swish of loose fabric, dress swirling around her, and offers you a smile, true and genuine, a palm coming to rest between two howlbeast ears so much like her own orange horns, calming him. “Don’t be,” she tells you, earnest, watching you with full eyes rimmed in her mutant color, unblinking, and you recall that the same blood that condemns her lifts her up as well, allowing her to walk in the sun’s harsh light with no repercussions at all, no shades necessary. “It’s a blessing, Jawwhn. It helps me see so many things that no one else ever does. Things they wouldn’t even think to look for.” You are stunned into penitent silence for a moment, shamed, and she comes up to pet your hair, smile turning sad. “Now, come on, night owl. I’ve got something to show you.”
Jadite’s tent is all fabric inexpertly dyed a blue the color of twilight, with a scratchy-looking bedroll in one corner and a rickety home-carved table in the center, a scrap of precious linen strewn over and held in place with a lone candle that infuses the makeshift room with the scent of talc and animal fat even when unlit. There are no chairs, but the table is low enough that when she takes a seat at the far end, legs crossed primly beneath her, and gestures for you to follow, it is no hardship to crouch down across from her, your territory plainly staked out.
“Any chance of a midday snack?” you ask, playful, and Jadite rolls her electric eyes, socking you lightly in the shoulder from across the way. “Hey, I was just asking!”
“You can have something after,” Jadite pronounces, and from the folds of her billowing shirtsleeve removes a small wooden box, the lid inlaid with gold and mother of pearl. They could never have afforded such a thing, so you swallow, knowing there are only two options-- either they somehow made it themselves, or they stole it. Somehow, the ideal of ill-gotten fortune telling puts you ill at ease. “Now,” she asks, setting it reverently on the table and squeaking open the lid, “do you know what this is?”
“It’s a deck of cards,” you say slowly, for her apparent benefit, as the object is lifted out and shuffled. She spares you but a moment for an exasperated glance, absorbed in her work and in not nicking the valuable paper squares with her claws.
“What kind of deck, fuckass?” she demands, adorably nonplussed, and you take a closer look. The cards are all face-down so far, revealing a relief of two figures, back to back and palm to palm, against a landscape of indigo ringed with foliage of indeterminate taxonomy. One holds a blade, the other a chalice, and the features of both are twisted up and wrong, pained, a visage of horrified, unspeakable agony. You tear your eyes away, swallowing thickly.
“I know that,” you whisper, fingers clenched like a vice on the edge of the table. “That’s... for the game of Swords and Cups, isn’t it?”
“Give the man a prize!” Jadite whoops, smacking the table with her flat-open palm, lips stretched back to reveal more than just her own pair of buckfangs. “You are absolutely right. Now, pick a card.” The deck is shoved in your face roughly, and you reach out with trembling fingers, accepting it like a death warrant and laying it out before you, still face down, while she deals the others-- four more, to form the shape of a cross. “Since it’s your wriggling day and all, you get a free reading! Now, this pattern is supposed to show balance. Turn over the card on the far left.”
Mouth dry, you obey. Jadite is unforgivably peppy, and her voice is nearly hypnotic, coaxing and cajoling you along even when you don’t particularly want to go. “Oh, major arcana!” she squeaks, excited, while you view a card picturing two trolls, a man and a woman, their horns and bodies entwined. “The Partners Concupiscent. This one represents the past. Something that was important to you, that has either passed away or fallen out of significance. It can be something good or bad, hated or loved, as long as it was something or someone you were deeply attached to other than a moirail or auspistice. Any idea what that could be?”
You shake your head, brow furrowing nearly painfully. “Jadite, we both know I’ve never... had a real concupiscent partner.” Jadite only hummed, looking down diligently at her deck as she reshuffled it. “Honestly, that thing with Rosace barely counted! You can’t--”
“You’re being too literal,” she tells you. “Or maybe you’re not! Anyway, moving on.” Before you can pipe in to register a complaint, she’s already turning over the top card for you. “This is the goal you strive for,” she says, tapping the card just firmly enough to make a small indent in the top. “And it’s another major arcana! How lucky for you.” This one shows a picture of stylized fire, sweeping through a valley, leaving behind nothing in its wake but the shadow of a bird, wings spread, rising up towards heaven. “Judgment: faith, resurrection, transformation, heeding a call. Now that you’re an adult, a lot of things will be changing, Jawwhn.”
“Next,” you instruct, noncommittal, and she flips the bottom card, frowning.
“Ooookay. This is the force that stands opposed to you!” This time the picture is horrible, a mass of tentacles and a man standing in the middle, white lightning held in his palms, and Jadite blanches. “The Devil. I think we’re going to speed this along okay?” You nod, and the middle card is revealed; “Who you are now-- the Fool. Representing new beginnings, ill-informed decisions, childish wonderment. And your future...”
Jadite picks the card up fully, holding it to her face so you cannot see, and throws it down roughly in the next instant. “How about enough of this, okay? It’s silly, anyway, just for fun. The only reliable prediction I have is the dreams, you know.”
“If it’s so silly, then why don’t you show me the card?” you ask, curious, and Jadite is paused in the act of worrying her lip, half-nervous, when a crashing ring and a peal of cursing echoes from outside, signalling a new arrival.
“Oh, Daevid’s back!” she exclaims, standing and smoothing down the ruffles of her dress. “Wait here, okay? He said he’d have something for you. And then we can have lunch! Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Before you can answer, she has bustled out, the tent flap falling shut behind her, and you are tempted. It burns in your blood, the inquisitive desire to know, and so you reach out to take the card at the exact instant your pocket beeps, signifying that Jadite has not, indeed, taken your phone off your person as you assumed she would for this cheerful kidnapping excursion. You can hear them talking outside, Daevid’s voice suspiciously raised; something must be wrong. You have no spare brain power to devote to that issue, however, with a card in your hand and a missive to be attended to.
TT: Happy wriggling day, Jawwhn. Daevid should be arriving at any moment with your gift, so I will now extend a most gracious offer to you-- would you like to play a game?
It will not, however, be attended to. Not for awhile, at least, as your phone has slid out of your hand like sand between your fingers. Clenched in your other hand is the card of your future.
In your hand, you hold your own Death.
---
Jawwhn had uncaptchalogged his wind-bladder-bellowing-irritance instrument, known to the common people as an “accordion” or “godawful racket”, and was busy yowling a tune as melodious as catcalls to himself when he came across the village.
It was, indeed, not so much a settlement as it was a ruin, a future anthropological treasure. Small huts with thatched roofs stood in a circle, some reduced to ashes and others charred black, all still smoking. And in the center of the circle stood the coyote.
“Things have changed,” it said gravely. “You will come with me.” And Jawwhn nodded as it turned, following wordlessly as the instrument let out a sad blat of wind and died, dissolving into a cloud of mismatched data and falling away. The path lead out of the village, down another hill and out onto a flat salt-marsh plain, endless pools sprinkled hodge-podge around, terraced with the winding road between them.
“Who lived there?” Jawwhn asked after they had been walking for long minutes, swerving around ponds and lakes, kicking up gravel and the occasional glowing mushroom. “Someone had to have, right? And what happened? The wind is blowing hard, was there a lightning storm?”
“No,” the coyote said simply, plopping itself down abruptly, and Jawwhn gave a start, skidding to a stop beside it. “Look down,” it instructed, and Jawwhn did, peering into one of the slick black oil pools. Reflected in the surface were stars, thousands, millions of them, burning bright orange and white, seeming to go on down forever.
“It’s pretty,” Jawwhn commented politely, a token compliment offered up towards nature, though it was also true. The view was spectacularly beautiful, almost hauntingly so, like Jawwhn could fall into it and just keep falling, an eternity of tumbling downward into cold infinity.
The coyote ignored his sophomoric comment, probably wisely. “Now, look up.”
Jawwhn did, and was confronted with a vast expanse of nothing.
“Don’t make sense, do it?” the coyote was asking from somewhere insignificant behind him, while Jawwhn stared up, blind, deaf, and dumb, slack jawed. “Everything here’s turned on its head, you’ll see. It wasn’t always like that. Things had a logical progression. You got in, you played, you got out, maybe some folks were killed but that was acceptable losses. Collateral damage. Nothing but what was needed to birth a new... well, spoiler alert, you’ll figure that out later. Maybe you woke me up, maybe someone else did, maybe I just slept for a few more dozen millenia. It’s nice, sleeping. Peaceful. There ain’t enough peace around these parts, let me tell you.”
Slowly, Jawwhn tore his gaze away, and then out at the endless landscape of pools, leading out to a bay and a sea of placid eternity. “It’s wrong,” he said quietly, voice trembling. “It’s not supposed to be like this. Nothing is.”
The coyote nodded, and then he changed. It happened slowly and all at once, only visible out of the corner of his eye and if he blinked he would miss it. One moment there was a coyote, and the next there was a man, half naked and cross-legged, feathers in his long braided hair and a pipe in his mouth. When Jawwhn looked into his eyes, he could see forever, stars and more stars and planets and nebulae and the plains of weaving gold grasses and great lakes lapping against gravel shores and a tree that wound through all the worlds and a frog larger than comprehension and fire, fire, arrows and fire, and the laughter of the gods, and--
Jawwhn sank to one knee before him, clutching at his own skull and keening in agony. When Old Man Coyote spoke, it reverberated down his spine, in every cell and atom, so hard that he thought his body would vibrate apart, a blue mist to drift eternal over the forever moors.
“You have a choice,” he said, in a voice that meant Jawwhn had no choice at all.
---
The dreams get worse every time. In this one, the one you had this morning, the two of you were seated atop a checkerboard hill, his pale hand in your ashen fingers, tiny and eclipsed by your grasping presence.
“How long now?” he asks, gray eyes gleaming in sunlight that is too bright. You are both splattered in blood that looks too much like Daevid’s for comfort, too much like his own. One arm is curled up useless against his chest, tucked into himself. His hand pulses in yours, scarred with the remembrance of white-hot pain.
“Not long,” you sigh, and your voice echoes, not quite your own, but not quite anyone else’s either. You look out on the blue sky, and the ruined grounds below, and the people hugging and touching and chattering excitedly. Your friends. His friends. All the world is a stage today, and they are the players.
You squeeze his hand harder.
“I’m tired,” he admits next, and you nod.
“Me too. Just a little more, then we can rest. Just a little more.”
For a moment, just one moment, everything is as it should be.
<==
~~~
Time is a circle, but it is also a line. Knight's Heir, do you hear me? Will you heed my call? The day is long, but the hunting horn is sounding; let loose your dogs of war and join me, join the one you love. From across the sands of time fate calls you, the thing you are and the boy you were-- answer back, I beseech you. Awaken, the dawn draws near!
Awake!
---
There was a nose in Jawwhn’s face, and it was not his nose. Cold and black and wet, it protruded off a thin and furry face, and he found himself staring down the barrel of a loaded coyote. In troll parlance: Yipbeast. But the word ‘coyote’ settled in and stayed as blue-rimmed eyes met hazel, matching yellow scelera: pointed ears, pointed muzzle, a smattering of short, white whiskers dusting its cheeks-- coyote.
Everything was quiet, for a long moment, the silence of catacombs and tombs, a hallowed, somewhat eerie feeling that sank deep in the pit of his stomach and formed a hard core of trepidation. Somewhere above, the breeze whistled, and damp cold was sinking into his skin through the air as moist, hard rocks dug into the small of his back. Jawwhn watched, and the coyote watched, and the wind whispered to itself, and Jawwhn’s husktop beeped.
The coyote moved. It was lithe and graceful, a fish in water, for all that its limbs were like sticks and its ribs jutted out like the bars of a cage, matted pelt plastered up against bone and a thin layer of flesh. It had been leaning over him, but now it went, tail swishing haughtily behind it as it stalked away a perfectly respectable distance and sat, whiskers twitching. It was still watching him. Flipping the computer open, Jawwhn watched back.
TT: Good evening, Mr. Egbert, how good of you to join us. While you were out, I took the liberty of making some additions. Unfortunately, your gate appears to have gone missing, but your store of grist is well stocked and I do think you’ll find my choice of armory for you... appropriate.
TT: Or that is to say, you will. Soon enough, I should imagine.
The computer, and Jawwhn, and the coyote, were resting in the ruins of what had once been a beautiful, marble-ceilinged foyer and was now an open-air patio, the roof torn clean off and the walls reduced to rubble. Chips of ancient stonework littered the surrounding ground, and what he could see of the massive lawnring outside, which was itself a mess, carpeted in dirt clods with clumps of vibrant grasses still attached, and while the rocky outcropping beyond was lit by the dim blue glow of bioluminescence, the sky above was nothing but blackness that stretched unending, cold and dense as the heart of a neutron star. Behind him, Jawwhn could surmise, lay the manged corpse of his hive, a towering castle that had survived through the ages, housing generations of new wrigglers that moved in like hermit crabs, polishing and augmenting and leaving their mark, making it their own. He didn’t wish to think about that just now, however. If he did, it would give him a worse headache than Rosace did.
GT: don’t you think this has gone far enough yet?
GT: enough playing around, okay? haha, your demon game is very nice. real funny.
GT: in the meantime, i am as unamused as it is possible to be, and you know me, i enjoy a good joke.
GT: this is not a good joke.
TT: Why, Jawwhn, are you angry? Do you feel... tricked, perhaps?
GT: okay, fine, you caught me.
GT: my house is destroyed, my lusus has gone missing, and the local wildlife is looking at me like i’m dinner. what’s this about?
GT: you can’t still be angry about the bucket thing, right? come on, that was classic, even your tentacle horror blackmoon blooddeath lusus laughed.
GT: i mean, i think that was a laugh. it sounded like a lisping phlegmbeast choking on a bicycle horn, but it counts.
TT: I am going to give you a gift, Jawwhn. It may not linger long, but I believe that in time you will come to regard it as the greatest fortune ever to drop into your lap.
TT: Should I suffer for it, I will take my chains gladly, to deliver unto you the fire you were promised.
TT: I have made mistakes in the past, Jawwhn. We all have. I put my faith in things and people who could not be trusted further than I could throw them. I paid what was due me, but you did too, ten times over.
TT: Therefore, one last price. The last time pays for all.
TT: Whether you accept it or not is up to you. Until then, please enjoy the equipment I conjured for you, and attend to your... friend. He looks lonely.
TT: Not to mention hungry.
GT: there’s no hope of getting a straight answer of you, is there?
-- tyrianTarantella [TT] became idle at 00:06! --
GT: right, didn’t think so.
Sitting up at last, Jawwhn closed the husktop with a click that echoed off crumbling heaps of architecture and captchalogged it, brushing white-gray dust off his standard slate-dark pants and exposed calves. “You’re not going to go away, are you?” he asked the coyote dismally, and received a perplexed cock of the head in return. There was a kind of open and blatant guile flashing in its eyes, quickly replaced by typical woofbeast vapidity, golden orbs like twin harvest moons, reflecting nothing but the glow of the husktop as it powered down. Jawwhn shrugged and stood on legs that were far too uncertain for comfort, curling his toes in his boots as he wobbled and sought purchase, his internal gyroscope recalibrating to a world knocked firmly off its axis.
“Let’s get going, then,” he told it, a bit more brightly and utterly resigned. “I want to see what Rosace got me.” With a deep breath, he turned to face the wreck of his hive, and his life. For better or worse, one way or another, nothing would ever be the same again.
At the very least, it would certainly not be boring.
---
TG: hey egderp
TG: congrats on reaching eight sweeps without getting run out of town on a rail i guess
TG: fuck only knows how you managed that one
GT: aww, thanks, daevid!!!
GT: <>
GT: your wriggling day is coming up too, right? i mean, we were hatched pretty close together.
TG: <3<
GT: do you have to do that every time?
TG: yeah bro its kind of required seeing as that is the quadrant where i am forced to share space with your worthless waste of breath
GT: sigh.
GT: well, agree to disagree?
TG: egderp this is romance not what kind of beast we are going to throw on the fire for eventide
TG: have a smidgeon of goddamn class for fucks sake
GT: bluh.
GT: bluhhhhhhhh.
GT: that is what i think of that!
TG: i literally cannot believe that you are older than me
TG: look at you flailing your limbs like a stillhatched grub
TG: it turns my bile sack
GT: if i was stillhatched i wouldn’t be flailing, daevid.
GT: i would be… i don’t know. laying here not breathing, i guess.
TG: shut up
TG: shut up is what i think of that egbert
GT: anyway, yours is just a few more nights away!
GT: and you must be pretty worried about it, huh? you’re slipping, dude!
GT: i can always tell when you’re nervous about it.
GT: but come on, jadite is fine! and you will be too, i know it.
TG: you can feel free to continue shutting your slackjawed drooling shitgash of a mouth at literally any time now
TG: first off jadite is literally untouchable you and i both know that she could walk right into a subjuggulator convention wearing ghetto clown make up and they would do absolutely jack shit about it
TG: secondly i told you were not moirails you idiot you dont have to keep going on like that
GT: well maybe i want to!
TG: you can take your misapplied pity through the pale quadrant and shove it down your rancorous protein chute you disgustingly obvious bulgefiend
GT: oh, hahaha. you're such a kidder, daevid! did you get me a present?
TG: what is this appease the higherblood by bringing him tithes in supplication week
TG: and dont try to change the subject i know youre just dying to play hide the holebeast with my meatstick
GT: no, it’s my wriggling day!
TG: well yeah but
TG: look egbert people dont just do that shit
TG: its weird that you think you are entitled to some kind of reward just because your derpy ass has somehow managed to go another sweep without getting culled
GT: i guess... it just seems considerate. like, a way to show you care?
TG: yet again you have managed to confuse me with someone who gives half a rocketbooting fuck
GT: maybe watching out for me and jadite could be your present!
GT: uh. you know. retroactively.
GT: but the point remains, i got you a present last year!
TG: yeah
TG: a shitty present
TG: you never told me what use i was supposed to find for a stuffed bouncebeast anyway
TG: i regifted that shit the exact second i could and felt exactly zero remorse
GT: i got you a present this year, too.
TG: whoop de fucking doo
TG: allow me to perform the traditional celebration dance of my people
TG: involving several gestures easily misinterpreted as me inviting you to shove a series of unexpected objects up your festering pustule encrusted bone nook and let them rot there
GT: boy, you’re sure big on me stuffing things into various parts of myself tonight.
TG: sit on my bulge why dont you
GT: haha! you’re a laugh a minute, bro.
GT: sometimes i really envy you that, you know? all i’ve got are pranks, and those are great, but it’s not really the whole package.
GT: anyway, you’ve got to go! things to do, songs to write, people to see.
GT: just remember that no one blames you, daevid. you can’t help what you are, and i think that’s good.
GT: jadite needs you anyway.
GT: i'll see you soon.
GT: <>
--ghostyTrickster [GT] ceased trolling timetechGodhead [TG] at 18:47!-
TG: …<>
TG: jackass
---
The great hall was entirely destroyed, but on the lighter side, that didn’t appear to matter much. Taking stock of the ruinous, sledgehammer-happy misfortune rained down on his poor castle in the form of technological wizardry, Jawwhn sat on a toppled sandstone pillar with his face in his hands, observing as the coyote trotted around, sniffing and poking around at things with flat paws. The vast majority of the building had collapsed in on itself like a chocolate melted in the sun, walls buckled and imploding, capstones blocking what remained of the archways they had once supported. Mothworn silken banners in every (official) color of the hemospectrum hung in various states of disarray on what remained of the walls, occasionally draped over downed columns or laying in pools on the floor, tattered and languishing, soon to molder away into nothingness.
In the center of what had once been a magnificent, cavernous hall a perfect circle had been swept clean, as though someone had applied an eraser filter to it. Spotless in perfection, the same someone had arranged two racks: one with a variety of flashy, if archaic, garments, and another containing weaponry, all variations on the theme of ‘sickle’. Jawwhn had never much wanted to be a Threshecutioner, much preferring the idea of a career in the Troubleadoors or Laughssassins, noble professions where his talents in the musical arts and field of applied japery would come in handy, but now it looked as though he had no other choice. The shadows were moving in a rather disquieting manner, he was noticing, and there was the scent of danger in the air, thick and heady like incense.
“Good boy,” he told the coyote absently when it paused by the wire sickle tree and whined, mangy tail smacking against the ground. “For your next trick, maybe you could go find my sprite, huh? Thing buggered right off after I prototyped it.”
And that was a little worrying, considering what he’d thrown into it-- one of several magical dice he’d used in his FLARPing days, dear to his heart. It had swelled, drunk on power, and spiralled into the spastic nexus of the unprototyped sprite like stellar dust swirling into the gooey center of a black hole, and the energy bundle had flashed three times and exploded in a spray of blue slime nearly the color of his blood. ‘Cool!’ he’d exclaimed to himself. ‘Ectoplasm!’ but the sprite had coalesced into a pulsating shape that emitted a blinding light, and by the time he’d stopped madly blinking long enough to squint in that general direction, it had dissolved off again, leaving behind the other six dice and a burn-out shadow on the wall behind it.
So results were still largely undetermined. Jawwhn hadn’t seen any imps yet, either, which would have revealed clues to its spectral form, but that made sense; Rosace had probably slaughtered them all to amass the horde she’d gifted him with. Jawwhn was just beginning to seriously contemplate checking that out, maybe grabbing himself a sweet cape or one of those dashing hats with a feather in it (apparently she’d remembered he’d always wanted one of those-- there were at lest five of them, crafted of all sorts of interesting materials), when someone said, “Nah, I think I’d rather not get involved with that, if it’s all the same to you. You’ve got some pretty bad mojo there, kid.”
Jawwhn blinked, and the coyote stared back at him, implacable, grinning. At least, it looked like a grin. It was hard to tell when the creature in question didn’t have proper lips, and had to settle for pulling skin back to reveal rows of murderous teeth. “That’s impossible,” he said automatically, and then flushed cerulean, feeling silly. “I mean... it is, right? You’re an animal.”
“Wrong!” the coyote crowed, and Jawwhn felt briefly nauseous watching its maw work around the words. It looked like it was trying to chew them before it spit them out. “What’s the saying, you kids are using? Do not pass go, do not collect two thousand riechmarks. No? Wrong? Oh, well, you win some and you lose some. It’s so hard to keep up with your doings lately, I’m not sure why I bother.”
“Stop,” Jawwhn commanded, damming up a stream of fascinating but utterly incomprehensible blather. The coyote obediently clammed up, looking smugly amused. Jawwhn stalked up to it, rationalizing that he’d been going in that direction anyway, and summarily socked it square in the snout. It yipped in indignant pain and glowered up at him, and when Jawwhn glared back, it calmly leaned forward and bit his hand deep. “Ow!”
“Serves you right, doesn’t it?” The coyote snorted, remorseless, as Jawwhn sucked the bleeding fingers into his mouth, black tongue lapping at the already closing gash down the meat of his palm. “Shows you to treat your betters with a bit of goddamn respect, right? I’ve been here longer than you have, sonny, way before your most distant ancestors were anything but a gleam in ol’ Slick’s eye, and I’ll be here after you’re nothing but a ghost in the machine. And I’ll tell you, I’m a bit tired a’ seein’ your kind around here. I know your stories already, all your tricks. It’s time for some fresh blood.”
“Is that why you bit me?”
The coyote bit him again, but lighter, and on the shin this time, and Jawwhn hopped back as though scalded. “Oh, you are a funny one, aren’t you? I’ve got my eye on you.”
“Same to you,” Jawwhn grumbled, and turned to stare aimless at the sickle selection for a long moment, indecisive. There were so many variables to consider, and he was rather at a loss for where to begin.
“Oh, ignorin’ me now, are we?” the coyote scoffed, and John could hear the exhale of escaping air as it flopped down, rolling onto its back with limbs kicking in the air. “Mr. Highroad, I presume. Well, go on and pick your poison, then, can’t say it’ll matter in the end. Just go with your gut; you’ll end up happy or dead, and either way no one’s complaining.
Jawwhn paused with his arm half-extended towards the closest sickle. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
“Nope.”
“I could shut you up.” The sickle was in his hand before he knew it, glinting sharp and malicious in the low light, and he tossed it, catching it by the ornately carved bone handle. “I have the technology.”
“Nope,” the coyote repeated, rolling over on its stomach and scurrying away. “Now, hurry up and put on your robe and wizard hat, the grand tour is leaving.”
Instinct took him again, and Jawwhn’s eyes narrowed, mouth moving of its own accord: “I think I’ll stay awhile, thanks. I can handle it on my own.”
The coyote cocked its head again. “You sure.”
“Yeah. Escort missions are no fun, anyway.”
It cackled, and the sound echoed long after it had pressed through a crack in the rubble and absconded out of his life. “Suit yourself.”
And he did. There was a price tag passive-aggressively attached to the handle of the weapon written out in grist, lest Jawwhn ever forget what he owed her, and the product name underneath a captcha code: The Red Menace. There wasn’t much red about it, Jawwhn thought with a frown, turning it over in his hands, save for the strange insignia etched in red carnelian on the pommel. The blade itself was wicked sharp as it sung through the air, and while it felt awkward in his hand at first, it felt oddly familiar, too, weight warm and pleasantly heavy in his hand, and Jawwhn nodded in satisfaction, allocating it to his strife specibus with pride.
Next, he turned to the selection of fine clothing. He’d never been one for fashion, and while it seemed unnecessary to partake, it also seemed impolite (not to mention a waste of grist) not to accept Rosace’s offering. The only truly practical garment was a deep black riding cloak, useful against the chill of the wet wind that was clawing up against the walls, and he wrapped it around himself with mild aplomb, cursing when it got stuck on his hooked horns for a moment and nearly tore.
Then there was nothing left. No getting back into his quarters, and anyway, anything he would need, he already had. It was time to look for his missing lusus, get his bearings, maybe find some answers to the ever-present quandary of what exactly was happening. The path outside his home was long and winding, but Jawwhn started down it, and down the hill into a valley and an old deserted village, a song in his heart.
---
(Moments in the past, but not many...)
"Surprise!"
Your name is Jawwhn Egbert, and you have just been woken with a whump! of unwillingly sacrificed breath by a half-ton howlbeast to the chest, and it is bright out. The brightness is everywhere, white holy light that scars and cleanses, making you blink back tears when you make the mistake of cracking your tortured lids open a fraction. There is hot, rank breath pouring in over your face, the stench of rotting meat and sour sickly sweet miasma that only serves to remind you that you have not eaten in what feels like hours, could be days. A tongue like sandpaper dipped in hoofbeast glue slides up your cheek, leaving a snail's trail of green-tinged goo behind on your skin.
"Hi, Bec," you groan, half wheezing due to the dinnerplate paw still pressing hard on your sternum, clawtips digging into your flesh just above the clavicle, right below where it would really hurt. A little yipping whine is directed your way, and you add, "Hi, Jadite."
The lusus lets you up, satisfied, and struts off with a smugly audible swish of his tail; sun still exploding behind your eyes, you roll to your side and try opening them slowly, slowly, a third and then halfway and then back down again, no, definitely too much sun, too much light. Clawed hands scrabble in the bed of crushed ferns and long grass that was your sanctuary, drawing long, rutted lines in the rich black loam beneath. You can smell the soil, damp from midnight rain, and the dewy white understalks of the grass blades you uprooted, and the tang of blue blood pooling on your lower lip where with buckfangs you nearly bit through it. You can hear the soft sway of the branches above, of the sheltering trees moving in the breeze, and the ruffle-flutter of dark-winged carrionbeasts hopping from limb to bough; it is peaceful here.
But bright, you evaluate, much too bright.
"Come on, lazybones, get up!" Jadite pipes, poking you in the small of your back with the tip of an elegant, pointed boot; it is an odd mixture of soft and hard, and you know that it must be hand-crafted of wild leather, like all her clothing, lovingly rendered from the skins and sinews of a dozen different vile and ferocious beasts. "I've got a lot of things to show you, and we don't have a lot of time. Daevid will be back from wherever he got off to soon, and he already said he doesn't want to see you. Not yet, anyway."
"He's a nooksniffing bulgelicker," you complain, smacking your cracking lips at her. "You're a nooksniffing bulgelicker. And it's the middle of the day, and your lusus is mean."
You can practically feel her rolling her unorthodoxly chromatic eyes from here, and the shame burns in the pit of your stomach; sometimes you think that Daevid was meant to be your kismesis after all, and she your moirail, but Jadite really needs no one to balance her. For all that she is wild and fierce, a force untamed, she is both mentally stable and only as violent as her lifestyle requires, and even then she is only a danger to beasts unless she cannot help otherwise.
No, between them it is Daevid who is the real hunter, you think, sitting up and blearily observing the wreck of the camp they both share. Two tents, several sacks of equipment and a firepit with a blaze burned down to ashes and still-glowing embers, the hide of a deadly stripebeast strung up between two trees, gore-side up, to dry in the harsh sun. Jadite is the tracker, with Bec beside her, following track-marked footprints in the grass and drops of rainbow blood fallen on rocks and rills, and where she points, Daevid follows-- and strikes. A gleaming sword, half-length, is propped against a beech tree, improperly cleansed; you can still see a smear of dark, natural olive green up by the hilt.
"Daytime isn't so bad," she assures you consolingly, back in the moment, patting your shoulder and wandering away towards Daevid's tree. In the crook of a branch, his lusus is perched, anthropoid figure crouched with feathered arms drawn around his body, a sharp-looking pair of tinted glasses resting just above his beak. "You like it too, don't you?" she coos, tossing him up a square of smoked meat product, which Daevid's Crowbro snatches out of the air with a lightning fast hand, talons closing around the precious foodstuff and brought up to his maw, obscured by pinion feathers. You have never seen his mouth move. ”Yes you do! Good boy, have another.” Crowbro tolerates this fuss with the regal imperiosity of coolkids the universe over, and gives you a look through his shades clearly telegraphed as Bitches love me, no big deal.
“You’re just lucky,” you grumble, watching her lob hunks of salted mystery meat at a huge feathery monster, and regret it instantly. You don’t need to see the way her shoulders tense almost imperceptibly to know that you have made another fumbling misstep, but at least she isn’t Daevid. If she was, your guts would be spilled cerulean and strung up over the campfire by now. A crackle and snap, and your eyes are drawn back to Becquerel, his fur now puffed with static like someone attempted to launder him; a wolf-shaped sparkler, a popping haze of green-white radiation electric all down his spine and glowing like firebrands in his eyesockets. The same radiation that drew him to Jadite, the scent of a kindred spirit, that the reason he pulled her, pulsing an unnatural green, fresh hatched from the caves of the mother grub and raised her well past pupation. Cut her and she would bleed, a thick green that glowed in the dark nearly the shade of sopor slime, a color that would burn at the touch of any normal troll.
“Sorry,” you try, instantly, honest remorse showing through. “I... sorry. I know you can’t help it.”
To your surprise, she turns to you with a slight swish of loose fabric, dress swirling around her, and offers you a smile, true and genuine, a palm coming to rest between two howlbeast ears so much like her own orange horns, calming him. “Don’t be,” she tells you, earnest, watching you with full eyes rimmed in her mutant color, unblinking, and you recall that the same blood that condemns her lifts her up as well, allowing her to walk in the sun’s harsh light with no repercussions at all, no shades necessary. “It’s a blessing, Jawwhn. It helps me see so many things that no one else ever does. Things they wouldn’t even think to look for.” You are stunned into penitent silence for a moment, shamed, and she comes up to pet your hair, smile turning sad. “Now, come on, night owl. I’ve got something to show you.”
Jadite’s tent is all fabric inexpertly dyed a blue the color of twilight, with a scratchy-looking bedroll in one corner and a rickety home-carved table in the center, a scrap of precious linen strewn over and held in place with a lone candle that infuses the makeshift room with the scent of talc and animal fat even when unlit. There are no chairs, but the table is low enough that when she takes a seat at the far end, legs crossed primly beneath her, and gestures for you to follow, it is no hardship to crouch down across from her, your territory plainly staked out.
“Any chance of a midday snack?” you ask, playful, and Jadite rolls her electric eyes, socking you lightly in the shoulder from across the way. “Hey, I was just asking!”
“You can have something after,” Jadite pronounces, and from the folds of her billowing shirtsleeve removes a small wooden box, the lid inlaid with gold and mother of pearl. They could never have afforded such a thing, so you swallow, knowing there are only two options-- either they somehow made it themselves, or they stole it. Somehow, the ideal of ill-gotten fortune telling puts you ill at ease. “Now,” she asks, setting it reverently on the table and squeaking open the lid, “do you know what this is?”
“It’s a deck of cards,” you say slowly, for her apparent benefit, as the object is lifted out and shuffled. She spares you but a moment for an exasperated glance, absorbed in her work and in not nicking the valuable paper squares with her claws.
“What kind of deck, fuckass?” she demands, adorably nonplussed, and you take a closer look. The cards are all face-down so far, revealing a relief of two figures, back to back and palm to palm, against a landscape of indigo ringed with foliage of indeterminate taxonomy. One holds a blade, the other a chalice, and the features of both are twisted up and wrong, pained, a visage of horrified, unspeakable agony. You tear your eyes away, swallowing thickly.
“I know that,” you whisper, fingers clenched like a vice on the edge of the table. “That’s... for the game of Swords and Cups, isn’t it?”
“Give the man a prize!” Jadite whoops, smacking the table with her flat-open palm, lips stretched back to reveal more than just her own pair of buckfangs. “You are absolutely right. Now, pick a card.” The deck is shoved in your face roughly, and you reach out with trembling fingers, accepting it like a death warrant and laying it out before you, still face down, while she deals the others-- four more, to form the shape of a cross. “Since it’s your wriggling day and all, you get a free reading! Now, this pattern is supposed to show balance. Turn over the card on the far left.”
Mouth dry, you obey. Jadite is unforgivably peppy, and her voice is nearly hypnotic, coaxing and cajoling you along even when you don’t particularly want to go. “Oh, major arcana!” she squeaks, excited, while you view a card picturing two trolls, a man and a woman, their horns and bodies entwined. “The Partners Concupiscent. This one represents the past. Something that was important to you, that has either passed away or fallen out of significance. It can be something good or bad, hated or loved, as long as it was something or someone you were deeply attached to other than a moirail or auspistice. Any idea what that could be?”
You shake your head, brow furrowing nearly painfully. “Jadite, we both know I’ve never... had a real concupiscent partner.” Jadite only hummed, looking down diligently at her deck as she reshuffled it. “Honestly, that thing with Rosace barely counted! You can’t--”
“You’re being too literal,” she tells you. “Or maybe you’re not! Anyway, moving on.” Before you can pipe in to register a complaint, she’s already turning over the top card for you. “This is the goal you strive for,” she says, tapping the card just firmly enough to make a small indent in the top. “And it’s another major arcana! How lucky for you.” This one shows a picture of stylized fire, sweeping through a valley, leaving behind nothing in its wake but the shadow of a bird, wings spread, rising up towards heaven. “Judgment: faith, resurrection, transformation, heeding a call. Now that you’re an adult, a lot of things will be changing, Jawwhn.”
“Next,” you instruct, noncommittal, and she flips the bottom card, frowning.
“Ooookay. This is the force that stands opposed to you!” This time the picture is horrible, a mass of tentacles and a man standing in the middle, white lightning held in his palms, and Jadite blanches. “The Devil. I think we’re going to speed this along okay?” You nod, and the middle card is revealed; “Who you are now-- the Fool. Representing new beginnings, ill-informed decisions, childish wonderment. And your future...”
Jadite picks the card up fully, holding it to her face so you cannot see, and throws it down roughly in the next instant. “How about enough of this, okay? It’s silly, anyway, just for fun. The only reliable prediction I have is the dreams, you know.”
“If it’s so silly, then why don’t you show me the card?” you ask, curious, and Jadite is paused in the act of worrying her lip, half-nervous, when a crashing ring and a peal of cursing echoes from outside, signalling a new arrival.
“Oh, Daevid’s back!” she exclaims, standing and smoothing down the ruffles of her dress. “Wait here, okay? He said he’d have something for you. And then we can have lunch! Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Before you can answer, she has bustled out, the tent flap falling shut behind her, and you are tempted. It burns in your blood, the inquisitive desire to know, and so you reach out to take the card at the exact instant your pocket beeps, signifying that Jadite has not, indeed, taken your phone off your person as you assumed she would for this cheerful kidnapping excursion. You can hear them talking outside, Daevid’s voice suspiciously raised; something must be wrong. You have no spare brain power to devote to that issue, however, with a card in your hand and a missive to be attended to.
TT: Happy wriggling day, Jawwhn. Daevid should be arriving at any moment with your gift, so I will now extend a most gracious offer to you-- would you like to play a game?
It will not, however, be attended to. Not for awhile, at least, as your phone has slid out of your hand like sand between your fingers. Clenched in your other hand is the card of your future.
In your hand, you hold your own Death.
---
Jawwhn had uncaptchalogged his wind-bladder-bellowing-irritance instrument, known to the common people as an “accordion” or “godawful racket”, and was busy yowling a tune as melodious as catcalls to himself when he came across the village.
It was, indeed, not so much a settlement as it was a ruin, a future anthropological treasure. Small huts with thatched roofs stood in a circle, some reduced to ashes and others charred black, all still smoking. And in the center of the circle stood the coyote.
“Things have changed,” it said gravely. “You will come with me.” And Jawwhn nodded as it turned, following wordlessly as the instrument let out a sad blat of wind and died, dissolving into a cloud of mismatched data and falling away. The path lead out of the village, down another hill and out onto a flat salt-marsh plain, endless pools sprinkled hodge-podge around, terraced with the winding road between them.
“Who lived there?” Jawwhn asked after they had been walking for long minutes, swerving around ponds and lakes, kicking up gravel and the occasional glowing mushroom. “Someone had to have, right? And what happened? The wind is blowing hard, was there a lightning storm?”
“No,” the coyote said simply, plopping itself down abruptly, and Jawwhn gave a start, skidding to a stop beside it. “Look down,” it instructed, and Jawwhn did, peering into one of the slick black oil pools. Reflected in the surface were stars, thousands, millions of them, burning bright orange and white, seeming to go on down forever.
“It’s pretty,” Jawwhn commented politely, a token compliment offered up towards nature, though it was also true. The view was spectacularly beautiful, almost hauntingly so, like Jawwhn could fall into it and just keep falling, an eternity of tumbling downward into cold infinity.
The coyote ignored his sophomoric comment, probably wisely. “Now, look up.”
Jawwhn did, and was confronted with a vast expanse of nothing.
“Don’t make sense, do it?” the coyote was asking from somewhere insignificant behind him, while Jawwhn stared up, blind, deaf, and dumb, slack jawed. “Everything here’s turned on its head, you’ll see. It wasn’t always like that. Things had a logical progression. You got in, you played, you got out, maybe some folks were killed but that was acceptable losses. Collateral damage. Nothing but what was needed to birth a new... well, spoiler alert, you’ll figure that out later. Maybe you woke me up, maybe someone else did, maybe I just slept for a few more dozen millenia. It’s nice, sleeping. Peaceful. There ain’t enough peace around these parts, let me tell you.”
Slowly, Jawwhn tore his gaze away, and then out at the endless landscape of pools, leading out to a bay and a sea of placid eternity. “It’s wrong,” he said quietly, voice trembling. “It’s not supposed to be like this. Nothing is.”
The coyote nodded, and then he changed. It happened slowly and all at once, only visible out of the corner of his eye and if he blinked he would miss it. One moment there was a coyote, and the next there was a man, half naked and cross-legged, feathers in his long braided hair and a pipe in his mouth. When Jawwhn looked into his eyes, he could see forever, stars and more stars and planets and nebulae and the plains of weaving gold grasses and great lakes lapping against gravel shores and a tree that wound through all the worlds and a frog larger than comprehension and fire, fire, arrows and fire, and the laughter of the gods, and--
Jawwhn sank to one knee before him, clutching at his own skull and keening in agony. When Old Man Coyote spoke, it reverberated down his spine, in every cell and atom, so hard that he thought his body would vibrate apart, a blue mist to drift eternal over the forever moors.
“You have a choice,” he said, in a voice that meant Jawwhn had no choice at all.
---
The dreams get worse every time. In this one, the one you had this morning, the two of you were seated atop a checkerboard hill, his pale hand in your ashen fingers, tiny and eclipsed by your grasping presence.
“How long now?” he asks, gray eyes gleaming in sunlight that is too bright. You are both splattered in blood that looks too much like Daevid’s for comfort, too much like his own. One arm is curled up useless against his chest, tucked into himself. His hand pulses in yours, scarred with the remembrance of white-hot pain.
“Not long,” you sigh, and your voice echoes, not quite your own, but not quite anyone else’s either. You look out on the blue sky, and the ruined grounds below, and the people hugging and touching and chattering excitedly. Your friends. His friends. All the world is a stage today, and they are the players.
You squeeze his hand harder.
“I’m tired,” he admits next, and you nod.
“Me too. Just a little more, then we can rest. Just a little more.”
For a moment, just one moment, everything is as it should be.