“I can't recall. I just know I know what you refer to,” Casper responded.
“That's not very helpful,” I replied in an annoyed tone.
“I try,” he said.
“I suppose you do. I suppose … ah, how are the Force and Clein different?”
“The Force is fictional. Clein is real. It's everywhere.”
“You know talking to you is like riding a roller coaster,” I declared.
“Shall I take that as a positive?”
“I hate roller coasters.”
“Ah.”
As the next insane silence progressed, I felt a strong desire to strangle his human neck.
“Any other way the two differ?” asked Toño.
“Yes. The Force was supposed to be generated by all living things and then be everywhere. Clein resides in a deep pit and spreads out to everywhere.”
“But I asked you where it was and you … you said where it was but not where I meant to ask where it was located …” I just stopped babbling. Casper could make me say such goofy things.
“I beg your pardon?” he responded.
“Never mind.”
“But if I misled you in any way, I'd like the chance to apologize.” He sounded sincere, probably too sincere.
“No, I asked a question and you answered it correctly. My bad.”
“Ah.”
Maybe ah was a word in Casper's native tongue meaning I'm going to initiate an uncomfortable silent period now.
“Do you know where this deep pit is?” asked Sapale.
“Possibly. I've never been there.”
“Why?” asked Daleria.
“Why? Mostly because it's guarded by twelve thousand curses, not to mention hundreds of banshees, and that doesn't even count the dozen or so denizens.”
“I … I can imagine,” Daleria responded weakly.
“All that stuff,” I asked, “does it add up to bad?”
“No,” replied Daleria absently.
“Excellent,” I said, encouraged for the first time in a long time.
“It's soul-numbingly invulnerable,” she added with no emotion.
“What? How bad can it be? Twelve thousand curses? Hey,” I pointed at Mirraya, “we got a brindas. Hundreds of banshees? Duh. Slapgren over there is a minor god when it comes to war. And, what, only a dozen denizens? I can handle them with one arm tied behind my back.”
“No, Jon, we could not,” snapped Sapale. “”Even if I tied the arm behind you and left the ones with hands free. Do you even know what banshees are? Denizens?”
“Technically, no. But I have a vivid imagination and I've read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. Those genres basically list the options as to size, ferocity, and intelligence of potential foes.”
“You say you won the war with those technologically advanced dogs?” asked Daleria with real judgement in her tone. “And he,” you know who she rifled a finger at, “was on your side?”
“More in spite of him than because of him,” grunted Sapale.
“Okay, Daleria, I'll bite. What's a banshee?” I said with justified indignation.
“Fairy spirits.”
“Fairies,” I scoffed. “How tough can those be? What, they kill you with flower petals and pleasant thoughts?” I harrumphed.
“I don't know about the fairies from where you come from,” she responded, “but these are seriously bad. They are dead spirits. They feed on the souls of the living to keep from fading away. They are smart, relentless, and they are ravenous. Once they target you they will never stop—never—until they have your soul.”
“Ah, so, no problema here,” I said uncertainly. “I'm not entirely sure I have a soul for them to chop on.”
“Are you willing to bet your soul in the case that you're wrong?” she asked ominously.
“Maybe,” I squeaked. “Okay, so we add them to Mirri's column more than Slapgren's.”
“Oh, I inactivate twelve thousand curses and I combat soul-suckers?” challenged Mirraya. “You sure give me a lot of credit.”
“Deservedly so,” I defended. “A curse can't be that hard to unlock or whatever.”
“Oh they can't, can they?” she shot back angrily. “A well-crafted curse can take a master weeks to unravel. I've seen some that are unbreakable, Professor. Clueless.”
“Just for completeness, Daleria,” asked Sapale, “what are these denizens Jon's going to kill seven of with one blow?”
“They are the stuff of nightmares. Of course I've never seen one, but every description I've heard is consistent. Denizens are gigantic clouds of swirling spiked rocks. They move like an avalanche falling down a great mountain, and they do so with lightning speed.”
“Clouds of rock?” I scorned. “That's ridiculous. You can be a cloud or you can be a rock, but you can't be a cloud made of rock.”
“Before you slay the last one, maybe you can ask it how that works,” replied Sapale snidely.
“The cloud is bound by unquenchable flames, by the way. Anything they touch flashes to ash instantly.”
“Woah. How do we know the flame's unquenchable? Sounds like gratuitous assignment of powers to me.”
“So if you could snuff out the fire you could handle twelve of them?” pressed Slapgren.
I shrugged. “Maybe. I've beaten some pretty tough cookies in my time.”
“General Ryan,” began Toño. I knew I was in for it because he used my rank. “I've known you a very long time. We have been involved in some amazingly lame and far-fetched discussions. This, however, is orders of magnitude worse than all others.” He glowered a moment. Doc was way good at glowering. “We do not know, and I list these in no specific order, where Clein is, how to break the curses, defeat the banshees, kill the denizens, or destroy Clein if we ever got close enough to attempt to. Notice I have said nothing of our safe retreat, evasion of the unwanted attention you attacking Clein would absolutely spawn, or how stupid what you just said sounds.”
“You know what I hear?” I responded hotly. “Blah blah blah—too lazy to work out a plan. Blah blah blah—too scared to try the plan I was too lazy to come up with that Jon Ryan force-fed to me.”
“Uncle, don't you feel that's over-the-top harsh and insensitive?” exclaimed Mirri.
“Desperate times require desperate measures, Mirri. I need to see to it we remove the Cleinoids from the living column on the ledger of life.”
“How about this? You solve one,” Toño rotated a single digit in front of my nose, “just one of those problems to my satisfaction, and I will listen to the rest of your plan.”
“You have yourself a deal, buddy. Shake on it.” I held out my hand.
We shook. The whole while he had the smuggest smile on I'd ever seen.
“Oh, I forgot to mention that Vorc, Gáwar, and any number of lesser foes will be actively seeking you out the entire time.” Toño released my hand.
“Doc, sounds to me like you want me to lose.”
“No, very much to the contrary. I do, however, have some familiarity with statistical odds and the capabilities of powerful adversaries.”
So, my course was clear. All I had to do was the impossible thrice. No, wait, four … no, five times. I really did need to count avoiding the wrath of Vorc and Gáwar separately. Aw hell. After three impossible chores were on any to-do list, one didn't need to mind any others.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Trethnaur was a sidle worm on Calveras. It had spent as long as it could remember screening the mud and sandy bottom of the great ocean it did not know it lived under. Trethnaur was a simple beast. Self-aware? Yes it was. Weighed down by a complex thought process? No it was not. It had noted recently though that food was more plentiful. Much more plentiful. That was nice. It sieved out ever increasing particles of protein and a rich slurry of other nutrients. If Trethnaur was capable of joy it would have experienced it. It would seem the Darwinian forces on Calveras directed toward sidle worms were indifferent to happiness.
&nbs
p; A true boon was that Trethnaur was able to asexually breed with proclivity. It was ejecting upwards of ten thousand eggs per day. And twice in its memory it exchanged sperm sacks with other sidle worms. Again, it experienced a feeling short of pleasure. But Trethnaur definitely looked forward to sperm-sack swaps again if the food supply held up. Life was good.
The main predator of sidle worms and related species was the rapacious Guild fish. It swam with dart-like speed and had a long needle-nosed set of three jaws to dig juicy prey out of the ooze. Trethnaur noted that their scent in the water was considerably reduced of late. It was also encountering more and more worms, burrowing crabs, and shellfish. The muck was getting very crowded, what with the increased eating and the decreased being eaten. Life was good.
Why was nutrition up and predation down? Trethnaur never gave that question a passing thought. It was not concerned with existential matters like how, what, when, where, or why. Its focus was on open mouth, take in a gulp, squirt it through its filter-mesh. As noted, it was a simple creature. Taste for other sidle worms and Guild fish. End of intellectualization.
**********
Twenty-thousand leagues above the barely sentient Trethnaur, two ancient gods lay supine on a beach. Berral and Mugwan could hardly move they were so stuffed. Like the goose destined to aid in the production of foie gras, they'd force-fed to the point of intestinal distress. Were it not for the enormous smiles on their faces, a passing observer might have thought them to be suffering. They were not. They were taking a necessary break in their rampage across the face of Calveras. Even a god had to pace himself or herself when the pickings were so good.
When the pair of demons first arrived, a not insignificant resistance was put up by the two main races of inhabitants. Though they called themselves the Dopla and the Bastic, Berral and Mugwan dubbed them the Grindier and the Squishier, based on their mouth feel. Neither was as delicious as species they'd obliterated earlier in the jaunt. But, to their soon-ending credit, what they lacked in taste the locals more than made up for with their spunk and pluck.
“Do you suppose,” asked Berral once he was able to speak, “it would be worthwhile plundering the sea life on this blighted planet?”
“Now,” replied Mugwan with a nauseous tone.
“No no. Breathing is a struggle presently. No, I meant eventually, as in before we move on.”
“I don't know. Your affection for aquatic life is, as you know, well beyond me.”
Berral, being a lithe monster with pinfeathers and light fur on his hide, was a natural water baby. He was only ten feet long and shaped very much like a python. Mugwan, on the other hand, was an ox reminiscent of Paul Bunyan's Babe the Blue Ox. Well, Babe the Blue Ox with electric bolts for horns. He also sported three smaller heads protruding forward from his chest with razor-blade teeth coated in the most deadly poison known to exist. In water, without magic, he sank faster than a comparably sized boulder.
“Waste not, want not. That's what my father always used to say,” reminded Berral.
“Yes, you say that to excess. Recall please you so hated your father that you falsely accused him of treason just so he'd be immortalized on Beal's Point and not in your daily life.”
“I knew he'd make such a better statue than a father figure, I simply had to pull the trigger on that plan.”
They both tried to chuckle but the pressure generated made the pair queasy, so they settled for a shared grunt.
“I say we agree to disagree on the need to sweep the planet's oceans free of life. We have, at someone's insistence, picked off the larger animals that chance to come near the surface. I say let the rest rot in place.”
“But what if there's a creature of unsurpassed delicacy and delectability down there somewhere? To leave it uneaten would be a sin.”
“I'm comfortable with sin. Have been all my life,” replied Mugwan.
“It is easy once you get the hang of it, isn't it?”
They grunted again.
“Look, you and I have been together for a very long time. We've never done one nice, considerate, or merciful thing in our lives.”
“Perish the thought,” responded Berral with a heartfelt shudder.
“So I vote to leave the bottom dwellers to their own devices and call it a mitzvah. That way if we’re ever held to an accounting, we have one good deed to our credit.”
“And you stay warm and dry.”
“And I stay warm and dry.”
“So be it.” Berral sat halfway up, for that was all he could tolerate, and looked out to sea. “So long, tasty morsels left alive by the grace of Berral and Mugwan, gods of some measurable merit.”
“Now shut up so I can sleep off my last meal,” grumbled Mugwan.
“Not yet. As a god of detectable virtue, I must bless the sea creatures I have just pardoned.”
“Can't you do that quietly?”
“Nonsense. Noble acts require loud acclamation.” He felt to his right for a bone he seemed to recall he'd picked clean but not consumed. Yes, there it was. He held it aloft. “With this bone I thee bless.” He tossed the tribute into the calm waters far offshore. Then he collapsed to the sand, asleep before his head hit the ground.
**********
Half a meter under the seabed, Trethnaur took in another gulp and forced it out his sieve. It was rich and fulfilling. It quickly sucked in an even larger mouthful. But as it tried to extrude, a long thin object emerged from the goo and lodged against a cheek. It twisted and turned violently, but the bone would not dislodge. Trethnaur drew in more substrate, hoping to move the bone. It not only didn't budge, but Trethnaur found it was unable to expel the load because the affected cheek wouldn't contract. Unable to breathe, Trethnaur slowly died in tortured anguish, writhing in the mud and sandy bottom of the great ocean it did not know it died under.
Trethnaur’s last act of intellectual insufficiency was to not appreciate the irony. Berral, a foul and hateful monster, blessed Trethnaur with death. The inclination to sin was both inescapable and eternal for the ancient god.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A semi-didn't-suck idea came to me. The morons who did the fabrication of the neutral matter might be of some help. They were sort of scientists. Scientists were into knowing stuff. Maybe they knew something about Clein. They certainly were dumb and gullible. Easy to manipulate was always a plus in my book. Of course after the Mission Impossible stunt we pulled, all the technonerds might be dead. Vorc was not a fellow who possessed mercy one would want to test by failing as completely as they had failed him.
Having no other options at least made checking out the fabrication drones a permissible waste of time. I took Mirraya and Daleria along. My entire posse was too large and would draw unwanted attention. If nothing else, I'd learned that Godville was a paranoid place. Everyone suspected everyone else of plotting and conniving. That was good because the whole damn lot of them probably were. The day was, as all were, pleasant. A long walk was nice. Unfortunately, it was also rather short.
From behind something hit me like an ICBM. I tumbled forward multiple times, coming to a stop on my back. I was looking up at Gáwar. He was frothing and drooling and he panted like a worn-out dog.
Daleria screamed bloody murder, which I do believe she anticipated seeing any second.
Mirraya transformed into an armor-plated bull with nastified horns and heaved into a charge.
“Nice to see you again, undead robot,” snarled Gáwar. Dude was seriously enjoying himself.
“Ca … can't say the … same,” I wheezed. It was hard to speak with his enormous hands around my neck.
“That's okay, toy human. You won't be around long enough to hate me much.” He bent his head back and roared convincingly.
“Cur … curious, you asshole?” I managed to state clearly.
Gáwar began pounding the back of my head against the street, hard.
Mirraya slammed into the side of his head with everything she had. It turned out that wasn't enough
. Gáwar batted her away like she was a stuffed animal.
“Oops, that's gotta hurt,” he sprayed in my face. “I hope your little bitch is well enough to try again. She's fun.”
“Say … again. Curious?”
“About what, pathetic speck?”
“Me.”
“Oh,” he shouted. He stopped banging my head and returned to throttling me. “No, not really.”
“Get off and I'll tell you how.”
He pretended to consider my proposal. “Nah, I'm good. I'll kill you again, eat you again, then I'll get off.”
“If … you eat me how … can you get off … me?”
He angled his head. “Hmm. I'll deal with that incongruity when the time comes.”
I managed to free my left hand. “Do you … like surprises?”
He puzzled his lips a second. “No, I'd have to say I don't.” He started with the head pounding again.
I slammed my right thumb onto his forehead hard. I drew a wiggly cross on his skin as I shouted the words, “I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Then I set my hand on his chest and pushed him away.
The look on his face was absolutely, positively priceless. First, he was confused. Second, he slapped his head and glared at his hand. Third, he cried out in agony. Fourth, his skin began to simmer. Fifth, and my personal favorite of all, the cross burst into white-hot flames.
“What have you done?” he howled. Gáwar shoved his big claw-hand toward me and screamed, “One drop of blood … ahhhhhh.” He rolled off me in pain and began slamming his head against the pavement. All he accomplished was to make a bloody, flaming mess of his ugly face.
“What … have … you … done, infidel,” he cried out in terror and torment. The terror part, that's what I really loved to hear exiting the monster.
I stood and towered above him. “Something you should thank me for. I blessed you, pig fart.”
“What is this …. ahhhhh. What blood is this?” He held out his now flaming hand.
“The blood of Christ. You know of Him?”
Torment of the Ancient Gods Page 22
