Tag: monster

Ferrik’s Journal

Day 1

Starting a first officer’s log in case something goes wrong with our pay and this needs to go to a magistrate.  I’ve signed onto this contract with fourteen acquaintances and one confused vagabond for one Edward of Corino, known as “Edward the Pirate”, recently returned to Piraeus after a decade of exile.  His reputation is poor and well-known, hence this log, but the crew was paid an advance of 10 silver a head on total wages of two Verduan marks per man.  Frankly far more than a month of our time is worth.  The men believe Edward has a rich sponsor for the voyage, but if he does, he’s kept quiet about it.

Issues with his reputation–and his exile–stem from a smuggling deal gone bad.  He was carrying contraband to Verdua and failed to deliver payment back to the praetor who hired him.  He says Verdua confiscated the goods, but who knows.  Things with Verdua have been tense for years.  About as long as he was exiled.  The old timers doubt it’s a coincidence.

***

Day 7

One week in, no sign of this “god of the seas”, but the Captain isn’t agitated yet.  He keeps quiet, though.  No sense among the crew of whether this is according to plan or not.  The vagabond tagging along is an odd bird.  His name is also Edward, which is damned confusing.  Surprisingly competent sailor, but he says he’s never been to sea.  Apparently he’s been wandering the Riverlands teaching children arithmetic for soup.  Crew have taken to calling him “Teach” to keep the Edwards straight.

***

Day 10

There’s a growing sense of unease with our course.  Nothing of our quarry still, but I’m more concerned that we’ve been sailing due west, way off any route any of us have ever taken.  Captain ain’t showing us the charts, and the main worry now is we might be lost.  What’s more, at sunrise, it feels like we can see land on the eastern horizon, which is obviously impossible.

Teach’s interest in this job clearly has nothing to do with the pay.  He’s an amateur mage, which is divisive, since the old and new timers have their superstitions both ways about that, but he also has this almost childlike interest in stories about gods.  Says he has this friend in the Bloodwood with some harebrained historical theories he’s trying to learn more about , and the job is a lead, I guess.  

I assume the Captain knows.  I wouldn’t have allowed it, though.  Magic is whatever.  Ulterior motives are the real bad luck.

***

Day 17

The crew was already on edge finding nothing, but now we’ve found something, and it certainly isn’t a “god”.  We’ve come upon a drift of things that look a little like jellyfish, but they also seem to dart about intermittently in a way that jellyfish never would.  We can’t seem to touch them with oars or nets.  They just avoid them.  The sea is full of weird shit, though, so this wouldn’t be so notable if not for the air around this shoal.  It’s thick, like you’re breathing vapor, chilly even though the sun’s out, and it smells like rot, like a fish market abandoned for a week.

The men don’t like it.  Captain says put the sails down, we’re drifting with this stuff for the night.  I might need to talk someone out of a mutiny.

Teach seems excited.  Not sure whether that’s a good or bad sign.

***

Something is wrong with me.  I can’t be seeing this.

***

Day 18

When I awoke today the sea was different.  Fuck, the whole world was different.  The sky’s gone dark, but it isn’t just the clouds.  It’s like the light that makes it through them is shining through fluid, like that fish mist we’re breathing is actually the sea, and we’re submerged.  And above us, just hanging there–mostly in the distance, though one got close enough we could see it was at least three times the size of a warship–are these jellyfish.  They look kind of like jellyfish anyway–they aren’t.  Still not sure they are even really there.  They look like reflections on rippling water, but you can’t tell what they’re reflecting.  And the reflection unravels at the end and streams off into these branching string-tentacles.

One of the ones in the distance seemed to get sucked into the darkness before our eyes.  None of us realized what we were seeing until hours later.

The surface of the water has grown cloudy, almost silvery, and it’s become like slime.  The creatures from before are still there, but there are more of them, and they’re more varied.  A times, they seem to rise up above the surface and just swim in the air, but it might be a trick of the light.  When it’s quiet, it almost sounds like they’re humming.  We can touch them now, too.  One of the crew picked one up and just sort of lost track of where he was.  He just stared off as the thing slipped out of his fingers, and it was minutes before he came to again.

In the distance, it’s hard to distinguish where the horizon is, what’s sea and what’s sky.  At one point we saw the whole fucking sky move, a shadow the size of a city just slip down beneath the slime.  We were too afraid to speak for nearly an hour, everyone except the Captain and Teach fucking pissing themselves.

***

The lookout says a shadow just passed underneath us.

***

Day 21.  We’re back in the real world.  We met god, and there is an angel with us.

I cannot tell how much is true and how much is just Teach’s speculation, but he believes that we just sailed up against was the end of the world, where everything unravels into the void.  And the vast creature that surfaced beside us–that is a god, I now see.  Teach describes it as “glaucus”, a term I’m not familiar with, but it’s caught on with the crew.  Glaucus shall be the name of the god who reigns at the end of the world.

The angel who we call the Endling, the strange, eight-legged child we pulled from Glaucus’ flesh has its own mystique.  It does not speak, at least not in any way we can understand, but as Teach observed–and I am inclined to agree–it seems intelligent.  Far more intelligent than a creature of the sea ought to be.

Unfortunately, we lost one sailor in the process of recovering the Endling.  Anton touched the appendage where the Endling clung.  As soon as he did, we saw him reel back as if stung.  All we could do was watch as he mouthed words without sound, and his body grew translucent before decomposing into slime that just…wafted into the air.

A lesson for me as a not especially religious man: It is no small thing to touch a god and survive.

***

Day 24

We have made port in Piraeus nearly a week ahead of schedule.  To think that Teach’s supposed “end of the world” was so close to the city, and no one knew of it.  I wonder why it’s remained secret for so long?

The crew has been paid, a development which moots the original purpose of this log–though I now believe myself to be chronicling something more important–but the way the payment was delivered has made me damned curious.  Upon disembarking, the crew was greeted by a man named Thrasymachus, representing the Blue Ring Cooperative, who handed each of us a purse with our full wage.  It seems there was something to the rumors of a sponsor after all.  

The Captain has asked Teach and me to accompany him to present the Endling to his benefactor.  I had no reason to refuse, but besides: How could I?  I believe I am now tied to the Endling.  I helped to bring this messenger of god to Piraeus.  It is my responsibility to ensure its message–whatever it may be–is delivered.

***

Edward’s sponsor, the head of this “Blue Ring Cooperative”, is no more than a child–a girl, barely of marriageable age!  I am unfamiliar with her persona–this “Halia of Thazan”–but she seems to be taking pains to disguise herself.  She wears a heavy cloak, darkened lenses over her eyes, speaks with this strange, affected accent that still sounds vaguely Verduan.  She’s hiding almost everything, and I don’t trust her.

She seemed happy with the Endling, though.  She and Edward are going to present it to the Council of Praetors.  The want the city’s support in investigating the opportunity on their borders.  I hid my rage well, but the fury has been difficult to suppress in the hours since the meeting.

Glaucus is no opportunity.  And the Endling is no sample to be dissected!

Their appointment is in three days.  I must rescue the Endling from their grasp before then.  I think Teach may be sympathetic.  Perhaps I can persuade him to help me.  We have found something sacred.  The last thing we should do is present it to the politicians for defilement.

***

I have spoken with several of the crew now, and it seems even having been in Glaucus’ presence is having a lingering effect.  All of them are dazed, have barely eaten since we last spoke.  Some are saying that they dream of floating through the sky as great Glaucus swims below them, and they awake to find their skin translucent like Anton’s.  They say it soon recongealed, but one showed me his foot.  It now appears more mollusc than human.

I seem to have been affected much less, though I am also finding my daydreams to have a stickiness to them, as if I am drifting into that inter-zone reality at the end of the world.  My thoughts linger on the god, and it is as if the whole world grows moist, but once I shake myself alert, moments pass before the slime dries from the walls, before the people around me cease to waver as wraiths.

Growing more concerned, as much for our wellbeing as for Halia’s plans for the Endling, I tracked Teach down at the tea house on the south side of the city.  He was having symptoms similar to mine, but he’d already put together an idea of what was going on, magically.  He told me the human body normally exudes mana, but whatever happened to us has caused that mana to start degrading into something less stable.  Unlike regular mana, he says, this “proto” mana seems to do some amount of magic by itself, changing bodies, warping reality, pulling us onto reality’s exterior, that inter-zone that exists everywhere, not merely at the end of the world.

Teach thinks that the reason my symptoms are milder than the crew’s is because I too have some latent magical ability, and I’m reflexively resisting the proto mana’s attempts to change me.  He shares my concern for the rest of the crew but also agrees that we must rescue the Endling immediately.  He thinks that the council is incapable of any decision but foolishness with respect to Glaucus.  I suspect he does not share my reverence.  I may ultimately need to save the Endling from him as well, but for now he is a much-needed ally.

***

The Endling is safe!  It was a poorly hidden operation, and I have certainly invited the Blue Ring girl’s wrath, but as I have seen no sign of cooperation from the city guard in their search for me, I can only conclude that Edward and Halia’s meeting was a failure.  The Captain’s efforts were noble–if misguided, I now understand–and it is a shame they must end in ignominy, but perhaps he too will soon share in the future I intend to build.

Teach, unfortunately, was wounded in our flight.  I had expected the Captain to be armed–I did not expect Halia to be carrying a crossbow under her cloak.  I think he made it to safety, but I cannot be sure as yet.  

After losing my pursuit in the Hospitality Quarter, I doubled all the way back south to the tea house where I had met with Edward.  It is dilapidated and undistricted and limited to the oddest and cheapest of clientele.  I rented a room there, and I doubt any but Teach will find me.  

Most fortunate, though, perhaps even divine recompense: The Endling has spoken to me.  He knows my name and desires that I gather the rest of the crew that brought him here.

***

Teach has found us, and alas, he could not be convinced of the providence fallen upon us and our city.  He was alarmed at the spirit that now animates me–as if I had any choice but to make myself an implement of the divine will before me.  He was frightened of the Endling, who has grown to the size of a man since Teach last saw him.  It is natural to quake before the miraculous, but Teach is slow to be persuaded.

I should have struck him down there as the Endling suggested.  I hesitated.  I still hope Teach will come around, but I admit that hope isn’t pragmatic.  No doubt he will defect now, and we will have to contend with Halia’s enforcers.  With any luck, though, we will be beyond any reasonable possibility of enforcement.

In the two weeks we have been hiding, the Endling has shared with me unthinkable secrets.  Most miraculous among them is that those of the crew who could not control Glaucus’ gifts have found themselves Sent into a state of strange apotheosis.  Their minds waver–if they remain at all–but the Blood of Glaucus runs through their veins in diluted form, seeping from their skin and mouths.  The Blood is new life.  Injected into one’s blood, it remakes them, strips away their shames, mistakes, failures, and ignoble predilections.  It builds them anew, as they were meant to be, supplanting their flaws with a new need for the Blood, for Glaucus’ blessing.  With the Endling’s guidance, I have been gathering it.  And I have been bringing it to those of Piraeus who need a star upon which to orient themselves.

We have a flock of almost twenty now.  Many are still sick, all are learning their new place in the world.  Amusingly, the two most dependable among them are children: two orphan boys named Alaric and Badger.  But we are growing.  Soon, all of Piraeus will understand what we are before Glaucus.

***

Badger has let me know that a “delegation” is on its way to our makeshift church.  Hali and her mercenarios, with two in tow who sound like they must be the Edwards.  Our congregation is still sickly.  It is unlikely that we could overpower them, but the Endling assures me I need not fear.  His Song, combined with our voices, will surely hold off any threat of force within our sanctum.  But he also intends to offer them something.

It is improbable that the Blood from the crew would appeal to Halia or her men–though perhaps Edward’s shame bears scouring at this juncture–but even she must have regrets.  

The Endling has shared with me that the Blood is, in fact, named poetically.  It is actually Glaucus’ venom, in this case a flawed and weakened copy, but even an image of the divine is potent, of course.  But while my fellow crew was touched merely with Glaucus’ presence, the Endling had attached himself to Glaucus’ flesh.  Within his body is a much purer form of the Blood, capable of dissolving even those regrets buttressed by privilege and ambition.  The allure is incredible, and I even I struggle to hold myself back from the serum the Endling has prepared.

***

The methods of divinity are…more twisted than I anticipated.  Our congregation is shattered, the Endling is injured, our blessed crew have been consumed.  I don’t understand how we did not foresee this.

As the Endling predicted, the Song effectively stalemated the confrontation, allowing us to make our peace offering of the Endling’s serum.  Edward accepted it reticently, and upon injection, he faded quickly into the inter-zone, where he remained, unresponsive.  I worried that this would be an unwelcome warning to Halia, but she all but seized the next syringe.

I do not know how, but it seems as if she understood its function even better than the Endling.  The serum transformed her into a horrific, billowing monster.  She turned upon us, engulfing our congregation, liquefying their flesh and drinking them.  Were it not for Teach, she might have swallowed all of us.

My memory of Teach’s reaction is the haziest.  I distinctly remember him accepting the serum and injecting it.  He was…dimly resigned.  As if this end was inevitable.  But my memory of him throwing the full syringe aside and leaping to Alaric’s and Badger’s defense is equally clear.  Ultimately, the handful of us who survived, including the Endling–who now bears multiple wounds from Halia’s molluscoid barbs–owe it to Teach’s sudden and fierce resistance.

Halia escaped into the harbor.  Teach left, seemingly disgusted.  The Endling is recuperating in the inter-zone, and he has advised that I take the faithful into hiding.  It seems that our nascent temple will need to remain a cult awhile longer, though the thought fills me with despair.

The Endling is vexed but not enraged.  He says it is fitting–though he says it reluctantly–that the compass rose should have more than one direction.  I wish I understood what he means.

The Maze in the Mists, Remixed

An extended version of a short piece I posted here three years ago.

You have been walking this road for some time now.  It is an unremarkable road, unpaved, trodden uniformly by an infinity of unrecognizable footsteps.  All around you is mist, itself unremarkable for its familiarity–you’ve been living in it for longer than you’ve been walking the road, after all.  It is everywhere in this place: blanketing the fields, suffusing the woods, wrapping the scattered towns between in its damp embrace.  You suppose you can still remember that there was a time without the mist, but the specifics elude you.  All you remember is this:

You were a soldier once.  You and your companions.  You no longer know who you fought, what you fought for, or where, but by the time you stopped you had nightmares.  Bad ones.  The kind that woke you not screaming but frozen, paralyzed by the notion that whatever you had been running from in your sleep had crossed into the waking world.  It was there with you, standing over you, behind and to your left, just out of your peripheral vision, breathing heavy, deafening.  You could feel the rancid condensation of that breath on your forehead as that nameless creature reached down and caressed your hair with dirty fingers and whispered:

“Why would you do that?”

Whether you could answer the query is moot–you can’t anymore.  You never told anyone about the nightmares, save your companions, and you all agreed it wasn’t the sort of story anyone would want to hear.  The war stories, though?  The ones that preceded the nightmares?  Those you traded away gladly for the means to sleep soundly again.

That was the thing.  This place in the mists operated by different rules.  The people here had different wants, a different economy.  When it came time to pay for your meal, your provisions or board, they did not ask for coin.  They asked for a story.  And when you told it to them, it was gone.  It was no longer yours.

Not all of your stories were horrible.  The good memories you traded for fine food, company, and wine.  The solemn ones you traded for fresh clothes or flint.  The everyday occurrences, the uninteresting daily nothings weren’t worth much, but in a pinch you found they bought you attention, an ear to listen as you vented your increasingly formless rage.

You learned ways to make your stories last.  You could tell only a single side of a complex tale, embellish banalities, omit details that you could cling to for a while longer.  Sometimes it worked.  Most often they would see through you, not that they minded.  You were still offering a story of sorts, and it was still payment.  A falsehood was just worth less than a truth, and what you bartered for was measured accordingly.

As time passed, as you walked the road, you grew poorer and poorer, and you remembered less and less.  Sometimes you were able to trade your labor for someone else’s story.  Sometimes your travels and choices and happenstance allowed you to forge your own anew, but too often you found yourself giving away more than you got, and now…well, now you have been walking the road for some time.  You don’t remember the last time you saw anything but the dirt and the mist and the imprints of travelers before you.  Of course, that could be for a number of reasons.

But now, whenever now is, however long it’s been since a suitable referent, the road has given way on one side to an irregularity.  A stop.  An inn.  It is hard to say whether you need the rest or the provisions no doubt therein.  You are tired, but you no longer remember a time when you weren’t.  And your hunger has grown hour over hour, day over day.  Bread no longer sates it, but still you eat, because ignoring it is impossible.

You do not know if you need to stop, but you do not know when you last stopped, when you may stop again.  You enter the inn.

You find the tavern room crowded with shifting, murmuring bodies, mostly shadows in the mist, which seeps in even here.  But at least it is warm, and the damp pall of the road has begun to lift.  You approach the barkeep and ask for food and drink.  You cannot see his face through the haze, but you recognize his eyeless stare nonetheless.  He is waiting for payment.  Your companions look to you–it is your turn, it seems.

“Amidst a long journey,” you say, “I came upon a child in the foothills.  There was once a village there, but it had been scorched in the war.  The child was the only survivor, huddled in the burnt out remnants of a cabin, clutching a small stuffed animal.  Because I was alone, and there was no one to judge me for my pity, I gave the child my horse, a pack of rations, and a water skin and gave them directions to the nearest settlement.  Because of my guilt, I asked nothing in return.”

A moment passes, and the haze warps as the barkeep silently judges your lie.  He takes a cup from beneath the bar and reaches to fill it with filthy grog.  

But your ambivalence interests me.  I will forgive you this one.

Abruptly, the barkeep looks up.  He reaches instead for the wine cask.  For you and your companions, he sets forth wine and bowls of thick broth.  You know this far exceeds your payment, but the barkeep’s pointed finger preempts your query.  Behind you, at the corner table, you see a lone traveler hunched over a book.  He is clad in black, a ragged hood pulled over his eyes, leaving only his filthy jaw visible.  You see him–you see me, no need to bury the lede.  You carry your food and drink to the table.

“What did you take from the child in return?” I ask you, showing teeth but not quite smiling.  You don’t answer, of course, so I shrug.  You see that though I hold a pen, the open pages of my book are white.

“Fine,” I say.  “Will you tell me, then, whether you imagine it possible to escape a hell you choose for yourself?”

It is one of your companions who responds:

“Well…” they say haltingly, “why did I choose hell?”

I laugh quietly, though you may, if you choose, imagine that the walls shake at the sound.
“You think I know?  Fair enough, I suppose.  But then what follows?  If I know, what good could the answer possibly do you?”

Top Image: From Spirited Away

The Maze in the Mists

Slight change of pace. This is the introduction for a new setting I’m working on for the Rale universe. Credit to Kelsyn for the original concept.

You have been walking this road for some time now.  It is an unremarkable road, unpaved, trodden uniformly by an infinity of unrecognizable footsteps.  All around you is mist, itself unremarkable for its familiarity–you’ve been living in it for longer than you’ve been walking the road, after all.  It is everywhere in this place: blanketing the fields, suffusing the woods, wrapping the scattered towns between in its damp embrace.  You suppose you can still remember that there was a time without the mist, but the specifics elude you.  All you remember is this:

You were a soldier once.  You and your companions.  You no longer know who you fought, what you fought for, or where, but by the time you stopped you had nightmares.  Bad ones.  The kind that woke you not screaming but frozen, paralyzed by the notion that whatever you had been running from in your sleep had crossed into the waking world.  It was there with you, standing over you, behind and to your left, just out of your peripheral vision, breathing heavy, deafening.  You could feel the rancid condensation of that breath on your forehead as that nameless creature reached down and caressed your hair with dirty fingers and whispered:

“Why would you do that?”

Whether you could answer the query is moot–you can’t anymore.  You never told anyone about the nightmares, save your companions, and you all agreed it wasn’t the sort of story anyone would want to hear.  The war stories, though?  The ones that preceded the nightmares?  Those you traded away gladly for the means to sleep soundly again.

That was the thing.  This place in the mists operated by different rules.  The people here had different wants, a different economy.  When it came time to pay for your meal, your provisions or board, they did not ask for coin.  They asked for a story.  And when you told it to them, it was gone.  It was no longer yours.

Not all of your stories were horrible.  The good memories you traded for fine food, company, and wine.  The solemn ones you traded for fresh clothes or flint.  The everyday occurrences, the uninteresting daily nothings weren’t worth much, but in a pinch you found they bought you attention, an ear to listen as you vented your increasingly formless rage.

You learned ways to make your stories last.  You could tell only a single side of a complex tale, embellish banalities, omit details that you could cling to for a while longer.  Sometimes it worked.  Most often they would see through you, not that they minded.  You were still offering a story of sorts, and it was still payment.  A falsehood was just worth less than a truth, and what you bartered for was measured accordingly.

As time passed, as you walked the road, you grew poorer and poorer, and you remembered less and less.  Sometimes you were able to trade your labor for someone else’s story.  Sometimes your travels and choices and happenstance allowed you to forge your own anew, but too often you found yourself giving away more than you got, and now…well, now you have been walking the road for some time.  You don’t remember the last time you saw anything but the dirt and the mist and the imprints of travelers before you.  But, of course, that could be for a number of reasons.