by Rink Wester
He took a sip from his drink, tapping the rim and nodding his pleasure to his brother. He opened the box and froze. His cup slipped from his hand, crashing on the marble floor of Örên’s kitchen as he nearly choked, swallowing what liquid escaped the rim and was caught past his lips. Örên ran over, registering the alarm on Gærüt’s face and stared down in his own interpretation of stunned horror. Their faces both cracked in fear and disbelief as their minds raced and the seconds got caught on the hook and the tapestry slowly unraveled.
The box was empty.
Not empty. The dagger was missing but in its place a folded slip of tattered papyrus sat, the scribbled ink of its missive dried and flaking. The moment Gærüt touched it it transformed into a ball of watery thunderstorm and hissing mågÿck as words wrote themselves on the air, its invisible hand penning the message of its thieving master.
The dagger is mine. Your fates now belong to me, Gærüt. Releasing the son and ressurecting the mother were childsplay besides. What comes next is far more delcious. You were not alone in Hiklorim. I was The First Word. 19-7-4 Woza futhi wazi Mina! The Mother and Father will return! Look at you, you made such a mess. Have Örên bring you another caipirinha. It promises to be among your last.
55
Çhêrÿl Åÿn and Jøłëtâ Ånnët, sister wives of Chÿnáriøn and joint empresses of the terrible midnight horde, walked into their husband lord’s presence and bowed. The göddess Çåthÿ Liin, Grand Elf Witch of Minåthrorn and big sister to them both, entered from behind, standing between them narrowing her eyes in contempt and scoffing to the room of Bôkör elders.
So now we are summoned to the will of Øgdöåd? What fresh insult is this Chÿnåriön?, she screamed, droplets of spit flying, eagerly punctuating each syllable. She was the oldest Elf maven in Ëvèr, the oldest of the Bôkör, and every Elf trapped there gave her wide berth and the respect her powers and dark sorcery commanded. Including the High Viscount himself.
She and her sisters were the three Elf Queens of Minåthrorn, Bearers of the Chalice of Thräll and of the High Throne of Ëzrå Mãiz, great-grandfather to all elves. Being the eldest of their bloodline, Çåthÿ Liin was the Queen Prime and together with her sisters they had ruled their corner kingdom of Fæ in fierce pride before the Great War was lost to the Sky Father and the arrogance of men. She was now of the cursed Łöå. Answerable to the shadowy whims of living mågÿcks and the living beings on the other side of The Vœrtëx who molested them. Lesser beings who she would sooner see rot and wither on the vine than answer another of their summons or rhyme another alphabet to their favor.
Çåthÿ Liin, like her sisters was a true Minåthrian Queen in noble rank and authority, but such titles had lost all meaning here in Ëvèr. Unlike her sisters, however, and their Lord Chÿnáriøn, she was also a Bælrøg. A witch demon of might. A “void wielder”. She could summon The Väläråücø, the still living throng of demon elves, and chain them to her purpose. Her powers were old enough that The Vœrtëx merely dimenished her but did not silence the darkening fount of Minåthrorn and Fæ mågÿck within. She could do more than merely approach that great veil and peer through. Much more, she reveled secretly.
How can any of you be so sanguine?, she spat. To speak even the name of Øgdöåd here is blasphemy! What fresh insult is this Chÿnåriön?
Queen Çåthÿ, oldest and most cherished of us all, I was there the first time you asked, Chÿnáriøn countered, sap covered fingers playing at his chin. I see no insult in helping along the curse of one göd to allay that of another and, in that, free us all. I truly don’t see what has you so in such uproar golden maiden of Thrall.
Your inability to see, my young Viscount, is more than a lack of imagination but of the unfailing limits of your stupidity. When will you all relinquish the sad myth of breaking The Vœrtëx and returning to the world of the living. You would have us wage senseless war again and diminish what dying numbers were left to us? Only death awaits your folly! We Elves are cursed! We are now and forever of The Łöå. Your impudence saw to that. What other thought can remove that stain?
A thought isn’t perishable sister, Jøłëtâ Ånnët whispered, walking up and caressing her oldest sister’s cheek and kissing her open palm, But if you have ever had cause to love and trust Çhêrÿl Åÿn and I then trust now our husband and liege. We know of a secret weapon to break the Sky Father and undo Øgdöåd rule. We will sweep the nest clean and return the world to its savage elven state. The cost of life, if this can be called that, will be dear grand sister. But trust us now when we say, Lord Ôlörûn will foot the bill.
Çåthÿ Liin shrugged her shoulders and kissed her sister on her forehead as the High Viscount laid out his plan in meticulous detail and the Bôkör ranks vibrated in unconcealed malevolent anticipation.
The young are foolish but every once and again they do what the old often remember to forget, she smiled in silent musing. They adapt. Her thoughts lingered on Chÿnáriøn and her sisters’ plan as she gripped her war staff tighter and left the Grand Hall of Ëvèr to the excited, salivatory whims of the others.
She was a void wielder and she now had new plans.
She would adapt and the walls of Ëvèr would echo her shame no longer.
56
Grynn and the Peryton göd, Åpsät Õsòòsi, both smelled like smoke and other sinister treats as they filled the silence with eons of distrust. Detective Tony Mozee dunked his Lipton lemon tea bag, added two packets of artificial sweetener and cleared his throat. Whatever rock papers scissors was going on between Grynn and that strange fellow with feathers sprouting from his back he wanted no part of it.
Join me Grynn. Together we can finally end all of this.
Åpsät stood, hovering around the table and placing a drawing of two amulets before her. The Amulet of Sihiosiaand the Pendant of Ëhiå. He told her the story of each and entreated her to see reason in this plan of his. The Łöå had come to him again and laid it all out in beautiful, final detail. He had deciphered their first message in part and with the new info they had shared he needed Pörø witchcraft and the combined powers their coven of siphonic sorcerers.
-This is madness Åpsät. What you ask is pure lunacy. It was lunacy days ago when you first sent that wretched Kitsune to arrange this meeting. You want us to scrape your bones clean of a mågÿck written by the Mother of Time and Darkness, Aeyitria, herself? An act I might add of immeasurable circumspection at best, and at worse, death to every living thing in this building.
-The Łöå were clear, Grynn. Bring witch brood to bone and bone to peel, of Mothers dark message spell releasing the seal, Place Mother and rune in highest moonlight, In human vessel void of ëgbë’s might. For when mågÿck is done and brothers’ bones lay clean, Weapon formed to eat Sihiosia shall human tool mean.
At that they all looked over at Detective Mozee watching them over the lip of his cup of tea, completely clueless as to what all those Sesame Street rhymes were about. He was just enjoying the apple fritters and tea and marveling at how surreal it all was. Kiddies, Your letter today is C. As in Calgon take me the fuck up and away.
-Detective, Grynn started, Do you remember I told you your time would come and how crucial your role would be in all this?
-I remember you kidnapped me and dropped me on a desk. Is that what you meant?
-Precisely. And here it is. This is the göd Åpsät. Åpsät this is Detective Tony Mozee. Charmed to meet one another you both are I’m sure. Detective, Ive brought Åpsät up to speed regarding Vickie and the coming catastrophe. As such we are going to strip Åpsät’s bones of an ancient mågÿckal message etched and engraved there by his Mother who was in fact The Dark Being who birthed the universe itself and once we have removed it from Åpsät must find a non-mågÿckal human vessel not attached to mågÿck but attached to the force of the gröötslâng somehow to contain it or risk releasing a nuclear sized dark ball of sorcery on the world obliterating pretty much all life as we know it. That vessel is you. Yaaaay.
Tony spit his tea across a table that looked like it had taken thousands of tiny hands thousands of years to carve such minute detail. Showing none of the gilded respect and humility that table demanded he jumped up and shouted,
The fuck you say??? Is that why you marked me with this fucking circular tattoo bullshit and called me here? Because you knew this shot was coming? So you can put, no offense, some bullshit feather boy’s dead moms mågÿckal lunch pail engraved power in me? Nooooo. I’m not into all this dark freaky hocus me pocus me kinky shit. That’s your world. And on that note, I leave you guys to it. Good pastry though. Thanks.
Sit please, Åpsät whispered softly, slamming Tony back down in his seat with a barely registered lick of telekinetic metaphysical chest thumping. And some offense taken Mr. Mozee. Just so you know. You see Detective Human Man, as it stands, we need you in our little klatsch. We need you to act as a willing receptacle for my Mother’s spell to work. We need you to choose to be our human partner, our repository, if we have any hope of helping the woman you love and stopping those that mean to do her harm and so much worse. I say we need you because that is the truth of things. Make no mistake however, neither of us will need nor miss you one jot should you refuse.
Tony let that threat hang in the air, unspoken but recorded in real time,etched and filed in the back of his mind for later. He nodded his compliance to the room in general and grabbed a glazed cruller. He would do this and anything else it required to save Vickie from this cast of weirdos. He looked over at Åpsät and readjusted his posture, sitting straighter in that high backed minister’s chair and blinking one eye at the göd. His back was definitely going to need an Advil or two later from Åpsät’s little display of man mågÿck. We’ll settle up later motherfucker, Tony thought to himself, Make no mistake about that.
Åpsät cared little if nothing at all for the threats of humans. He plucked Tony’s thoughts from his head as easily as that cruller but gave it all the attention it warranted. None whatsoever. His mind was on far greater adversaries. He would destroy young gröötslâng and become the brother of hate and release. He would make his brothers his bitch sister beg for his favor and force them all to bow, scrape, bend the knee and kiss his ring.
He would do all that The Łöå had suggested and more. But first, that cruller the Detective was eating looked awfully appetizing. I think I’ll have one myself, he thought, grabbing his baked confection and settling back thinking thoughts of dominance and sweet glazed rewards.
57
Vickie and Victor looked at one another and allowed whatever free flowing emotions each felt to populate and fill the moment.
Welcome children. Come to mama.
They weren’t mistaken. They had both heard the words but for some odd reason the Plinko disk wouldn’t land on ten thousand. They stood there in their night gowns, addled and in dazed shock, trying to piece together the puzzle of what they were seeing. Vickie hugged her pajamas tight to her body trying to recapture warmth as Victor bowed and did what atavism had long taught him in isolation to do. He attacked.
Victor transformed into his gröötslâng form and flexed, his tusks already dripping in directed venom. He lunged at Nänå who actually laughed a deep throaty welcome-to-the-party laugh as her eyes and head emitted an aurora of firy luminescence and she kissed the air, her steaming blue swords disappearing as she captured Victor mid-stride, mågÿcks and movement immobilized, an infant man stuck in invisible amber. He hung there motionless, bellowing and apoplectic in rage, as Vickie flew to his aid, eyes violet in mantis mågÿck and timed precision. She sheathed her body in a thick layer of sorcery and menial onslaught and blasted Nänå with the same ferocity that dispatched the last göd that had underestimated her. Nänå again cackled, the wicked witch of emerald city nightmare, and caught Vickie’s göd-bolt with a careless open palmed flick of her wrist like so much blown smoke.
Vickie doubled her attack, flinging hex mågÿck and conjured spells at Nänå in split second ferocity, each act of mågÿckal parry dismissed or absorbed by Nänå in subtlest almost sleepy disregard.
Enough, Nänå whispered, again that solar play of fire and light kissing the air and shutting off Vickie’s power like a rolling brown out, faucet of mågÿck dryimg up so suddenly Vickie actually gasped. She held Vickie there, feeling carbon negative and threadbare, transfixed like 3-D art, sharing the same invisible air rift that held a now fuming but otherwise subdued Victor, now returned to paralyzed human form and staring daggers at the regal form before him. The Other well met, he said, transfixed in his moment and entreating hers.
Vickie, in a tone far softer but no less biting, inquired, Are you the beast of that dream of daggers and tusk I keep having? Why have you summoned us? Why do you call us “your children”? And why won’t any of our powers work against you?
Nänå released her floating progeny and settled them softly on their socked feet. She waved her hand and a great banquet table laden with every breakfast food imagined appeared before them. Southern delights of a kitchen and grandmother well into the past that Vickie hadn’t seen or eaten in years and that Victor had never seen before. There weren’t very many buffets trapped in an eternity of darkness.
Children, I am the göddess Ÿêmøjá. You can no more harm me with your powers as I would harm you with mine. You are flesh of my harried flesh, bone of my immaculate bone. Your powers flow from me and your father. We will get to him much later. For now, come, eat and drink of the feast of punishments to come. Mother will answer your questions. Mother forgives you.
Vickie and Victor sat and watched one another, each looking for a signal the other had neither perspective nor reach to give.
Vickie again hugged her scant pajamas tight to her body trying to recapture that same warmth from earlier as Victor bowed and did what atavism had long taught him in isolation to do. He attacked. The food. He piled his plate high and ate ravenously as Nänå cackled and the morning kept right easing down the road.
58
(Shower Radio Playing. Radio announcer presses the applause button as he introduces the next song. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by the Eurythmics followed by Marilyn Manson’s cover of the same.)
??Sweet dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Sweet dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
I wanna use you and abuse you
I wanna know what's inside you
Moving on, moving on
Moving on, moving on
Moving on, moving on
Moving on...
Sweet dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
I'm gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside...
Gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside you??
*****************************************************
He loved that human song about wicked dreams and self abuse pouring like wine from the shower speakers. He blasted the volume and turned the shower’s water temperature up as high as it would go. Another headache. Another blackout. He relished their distressing frequency.
Nothing a scalding hot shower and good music wouldn’t compliment. On the brighter side of things at least he now had the dagger. The mad might of Ädårønh Tir was now his to command. It was all so deliciously familiar and titular. He saw again in his own fever hot dreams both Gærüt and Örên drinking their caipirinhas and plotting mad tactics. He saw the fight between Gærüt and his gröötslâng Queen. He felt the undeniable depth of his loving hate for her so viscerally it was infuriating. The Gröötslâng Lord’s stark conceit. He wanted only to gnash and bite them and rend them to pieces, swallowing them down in great choking bolts of torn muscle and carnage. His dreams showed him every corner of the Sky Father’s life. He saw him fly from Örên’s penthouse pad after hearing his papyral message to his hidden Küqålä Corp chambers in Atlanta in the Sallie Douglas building. He was looking for something but couldn’t remember quite where he had put it. His göd mind was failing him. No. No. That wasn’t it. He was hiding it from me somehow. On some unconscious level he could sense me watching him. Cataloguing him. They would all know soon enough. He had thrown down gauntlets meant to bruise Sky Father’s supremacy. That of he and his mewlimg Øgdöåd brothers. The seven faces of one. They thought they were alone in power. Alone in Hiklorim.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
