To my reviewers:
Thank you for the wonderful supportive comments.
I had a break in the hiatus thing to put this up. I sleep now.
Enjoy!
A breeze whipped up tiny clouds of sand in the desert, twisting and twirling in the mid-night sky. Through it all walked the Osttel, her pearly teeth clenched.
She was around three foot high, wearing plain purple robes, girdled by a ring of silver. Not exactly impressive. In fact the most interesting object around her person was a wooden staff, which, although plain, was wreathed with fragrant lily blooms. She moved on her hind paws, teeth clenched as the sandstorm around her raged.
This staff, clenched in orange-furred fingers, trembled in anticipation.
"You call, I hear you my beauties." She cried in her shrill, ottsel voice. "You call!"
She jumped and danced in triumph, shaking the staff at the sky.
"You hear that, Apollo? I, Artemis, the hunter god of Darkness, have returned!"
Then she dropped all pretences, and scuttled off on all fours, in the squirrelly bouncing lope that all of her species preferred for running.
The Keeper watched her charges with a faint smile on her lips. The monks below had broken their vow and silence and were 'debating' heatedly with each other. From the depths of the temple, runes were moving, flowing like water along the temple walls, spreading messages to the disciples of light. The problem was the runes didn't make any sense, just random gobbledygook, patterns. Her expression hardened when she remembered her task. Pulling her pale form upright, she glided past the monks and into the labyrinths below.
The four Sages had finally met, only to be disbanded again by the arrival of a half-conscious, half-naked Jak. Samos had rushed off with his bad temper flaring up, which the yellow sage, Trigger, suspected concealed some kind of fatherly feelings for the young man.
Trigger banged on the bar impatiently. She needed booze, and she needed it now. That thing was back, and it would once again be the savour of worlds and everyone would fall back down on their knees and kiss his ass. And the people would rejoice. The cocky little shit.
Naw, she mused swigging back whatever was in her mug (it damn well wasn't beer), that wasn't right. She didn't have a problem with him, as a person. She wasn't even worried about the split-personality thing he had going on. It was fairly common in Sparagus, the heat and sand and whatever just got to the people left outside the gates just a little too long. From what she heard, she guessed that he went nuts with eco for a while, sometimes. That was fine.
But it couldn't be ignored that he'd single-handedly destroyed Sparagus. Firstly, by killing the king, secondly by running away to Haven-city to duck his responsibilities and thirdly - and most importantly, by destroying Sparagus' religion.
Sure, the monks still worshiped the Mightly Ones, but for most, it was hard to say that without sarcasm. Bluntly, when you're having your ass handed to you in a fight, praying to scrawny rats to save you just didn't cut it. It wasn't a faith or a belief anymore, it was a fact. A nasty-anti-climatic fact. People wondered how a bunch of rats could save them, listen to their prayers, create them. The city had sunk into a depression – literally. Religion was the driving force in the town.
She pulled out a pack of fags and sucked on one eagerly, savouring the ashy taste. Samos wanted for her to pick up some heavies to guard him, but she couldn't think of any who would manage not to shoot the bastard. She scanned the room puffing out her cheeks in and out as she thought. She was looking for a few looking for any newbie's – they wouldn't be that honour-bound –
Ten Waste Landers saunter into the bar. They were fingering their guns lovingly, and allowing everyone in the room to see the grey gear tattooed onto the heel of their palms. Other clientele shifted slightly, allowing the new-comers to see the knotted leather thongs worn round their necks. Silence dominated the room for a second, and the two groups, without a word, left.
"Just what we need." She growled, "An Fanatic Gathering."
"Go out and stop the idiots, wouldja?" Asked the bar-man.
"Why me?" She snapped. She was Not. In. The. Mood.
"Because you can shoot fire-balls."
She snorted. "Ih expect free booze, fer keepin' your gormless men breathin'"
Fantic's were the name Trig gave the new cults springing up all over Sparagus, to plug the religious gap left by the precursors. The Gatherings had started out peaceful enough, with men and women debating over whom the precursors were, and other evangical crap. From these meetings, three new religions sprang.
The first was originally called Resistance, but now was known as Rezza. It believed that the whole planet was created by the precursors to develop slave races, and the arrival of the metal heads were a kind of ethnic cleansing designed by the holy osttels. They also believed that the Precursors abducted people regularly, and that on the day of reckoning they would return, in full force to murder/enslave the whole planet. They always wore multicoloured clothing, as an act of 'rebellion' against their 'Overlords'
The second believed that the Osttels were themselves a slave race, for a far more powerful God they wore the leather thongs around their necks. No-one really knew why. The third group believed that they were gods, far more-powerful than the Precursors, could ever hope to be. They saw the old gods as glorified rats, which had used technology to fool everyone. They were mechanics, determined to develop Precursor tech and rise above their previous idols. They had a gear tattoo. And because the three neo-religions were so similar, and at the same time so different whenever the three got together, fights broke out. They didn't even bother talk anymore. Instead, once a fortnight, all three gathered together in silence to kick the shit out of each other.Alcohol and yellow eco don't mix. Or rather they do, just too well. Yellow eco, being the magical substance of fire was strengthened with any type of alcohol, and stopped the user to become 'drunk'. Instead, Trigger became very, very dangerous – the booze impairing her morality, but sharpening her senses, making her a killer. She walked like a leopard, stalking her prey, sliding through the silent streets.
In the comforting feral mush that her mind had become, she failed to notice that the problems with the scenario. Concentrating on the silence, she didn't realised that it shouldn't have existed – there should have been rioting, screaming and riotous incantations as the Fanatics kicked seven kinds of hell out of each other. Then she heard a sound. A short clipped word, a sound from the depths of hundreds of chests. Twisting her amber eyes all around, she padded towards it, drawing two pistols. As she walked, the sound became a horde of voices, roaring along to a single voice – BURN! BURN! As it got louder, she dropped lower to the ground, bent almost double in a crouch.
'BURN!' The crowd howled. Trigger arrived behind a flimsy wooden fence, cobbled together with driftwood from the beach, pockmarked with holes. Above her, a sheet – or perhaps a flag flapped lazily in the soft breeze, slapping the dusty stone walls occasionally.
She pressed an eye against the fence, feeling the splinters rub against her cheek.
Gol Acheron, Dark Sage, preached to the masses like he had to the lurkers, hundreds of years ago.
'WE ARE RIGHTIOUS! THE HEATHENS WILL-'
'-BURN!' finished the crowd. Trigger hissed at the man, as he strolled back and forth on air.
'BUT FIRST! BUT FIRST!' He yelled, getting the crowd back under his control. He paused, then- 'BUT FIRST WE MUST DESTROY THE LYING SCUM WHO HAVE HELD THE TRUTH FROM US! THE SAGES MUST-'
'BURN!' chorused the crowd.
'HUNT THEM DOWN!' Screamed Gol to the heavens. 'HUNT THEM AND MAKE THEM BLEED!'
In that once sentence the hunter, hidden behind the fence, became the hunted. And sober. Behind her, the religious zealots surged out of the town centre, brandishing torches, guns, knives swords, anything that they could grab- To attack the four most powerful beings living.
Trigger turned and ran, throwing caution to the winds, as she sped away, using alleyways, sticking to narrow spaces where sheer numbers couldn't over whelm her. She turned right, into a cul-de-sac, formed by three houses, all slanting at drunken angles and in some places leaning on each other. She charged forward, sprang, and grasped a window ledge high above. Here, she twisted, kicking off the wall, and grabbed one of the copper gutters of the opposite house with her bare hands and slipped her feet onto the piping.
Behind her the mob got closer.
'BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN!'
She shimmied up as high as she dared, until, her makeshift ladder started groaning under her weight. Trigger was now high above the streets, shrouded in darkness, but it wasn't enough. She looked behind her. There flapped on of the many sheets, left out to dry by some forgetful warrior. There were no grey areas about this – if she missed she would plummet to her death. (There would be, however, a large red area if she missed). But what choice did she have? She took a deep breath and jumped, across the five foot gap. She threw her arms forward, clawing at the air and just manage to grab both ends of the sheet.
'BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN!'
Momentum carried her forward.
There was a –crunch-, as she collided face-first into the building. Trigger felt the numbness spreading trough her face, and started climbing before the shock wore off and the pain settled in. Broken nose? Broken jaw? Or just badly bruised? She didn't know and didn't care. Hauling herself up the fabric until she reached the top quickly, before the dizziness set in, with warm sweat running down her jaw. Holding on to the roof with one hand she wiped it off, only to discover it was actually blood streaming from her nose.
Grunting, and rolling onto the thatch, she resisted the urge to shut her eyes.
'BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN!'
Growling to herself she began running across the roof tops. Trigger pulled out her comm. Unit and flicked it on, pulling down the volume settings for safety.
'Come on, cummon, cummon, cummon- Samos!'
'Yes?'
'Hey, little problem. You know tha dark sage – tha one whos rampaging? Yeah well, he's gotta whole lotta men and hunting us down like M-heads! Get ure self geared up – its gonna be a mother o' all punch-ups in abowt five minutes. You game?'
Samos spluttered, and was cut off with a crackle.
'Samos? Samos? Sa-'
'Woah, girl calm down. You're gonna help nobody or nuthin. Sig here. What's the problem?'
Trigger pressed herself onto the flat thatched roof.
'We are going to die, if Ih don't get any help here!' Let it be known that Trigger had little patience with…well…anyone tonight. The fact that she had to run away wasn't helping her mood any either.
'BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN!'
'Hold a mo would you?' Said Trigger, all too aware of her impending doom, unless she got some distance between her and the mob.
Her destination was the 'high rise', a building made out of wattle and daub with five floors. It was the power centre of Sparagus, and had cables and pipes to any part of the city. She jumped off the side of the building, and pulled herself into a kind of roof-top ally, formed by an oddly built house. Carefully she pushed the boxes inside aside, and then began piling the sturdier ones on top of each other awkwardly, in the small space. Fruit crates groaned underneath her as she pulled herself up, dripping juice. With no small amount of difficulty Trigger wedged herself between the two buildings, and squirmed upwards.
Up, up, up, the claustrophobic space she squirmed, until the icy breeze and the night sky greeted her bruised and bloody face.
She could see the mob below her - fairy lights bobbing and dancing above the ground. Of course, they were actually burning brands being brandished by big bastards that wanted to kill her, her fellow sages and anyone who got in their way, but still they were pretty enough, and kinda soothing. Taking her comm. unit from her belt, she wedged it between her shoulder and her ear she slipped off her belt.
'Listen, their heading for the palace…hello?' fuzzy static greeted her, and she turned it off. Looping the leather round her chest and holding the two ends in her teeth, she jumped up, and locked her legs round a cable above her. Bear hugging the cable, with her long trench coat hanging down from her like a cape, she unhooked an arm and grabbed on end of her belt, and deftly pulled it over the plastic coated pylon wire, while tensing her other arm to hold her weight close enough to the cable. To make things a little more difficult, the cable began cutting into her arm and legs. Clenching the belt buckle in her teeth, she fed the other end through the clasp and secured it.
With the toughened yakow leather belt now fashioned into a harness, she began hauling herself hand over hand, listening to the shouts far below and the rhythmic szzzth-szzzth-szzzth sound she made when ever she moved another arm span.
She could see the power-house clearly now, it windows dar-
-Crack!- Her whole body swung upside down, her short hair stinging her eyes as she looked at the sickening drop below, with her trench coat wrapping round her head, weighted by her many guns she had hidden round her person. Her panicked shriek muffled by the cloth, she realised that her legs – the only part still holding onto the cable- were slipping, lubricated by her sweat. Clawing out of the trench, she lunged forward for the cable as she felt her legs go.
For one sickening second she spun round in mid air, with nothing to support her. Then her hands reached the wire and held on tight, while her now arch-enemy, momentum, snapped her backwards like a pendulum, then caused the wire to vibrate, almost shaking her loose. When the tremors had stopped, she looped her legs round the wire again, and carried on.
This time, without her belt.
A zoomer revved and boomed round the corner, almost rebounding off the debris still scattered here and there through out the city. Slowing down, the driver wolf whistled to two girls chilling on the top of a burnt out steel chassis. The girls gave him the finger as he turned the corner. Painted blue, it was one of the last zoomers still in existence in the city, which had only survived because it had been left out to rust. Now he was the proud owner the last speeder zoomers – that he pulled up and turned around, ready to 'talk' to the two sluts who DARED to give him the finger…when he was stopped. By Torn…uh, Torn's fist. Two jabs to the face and he was down, with a nice shiner shadowing his eye. Torn climbed onto the machine, one arm holding Daxter and grabbed the wheel tightly in one hand.
"Give me two hours." He said out loud. "And I'll come back to get you. Stay there."
The eco fae hovered high above the man, invisible against the blue sky. She nodded to herself as he roared off. In the mean time, she had two hours to work out how to explain herself.
Torn picked up his pace as he sat astride the zoomer, negotiating round sharp corners. There was no traffic, most of it turned to molten metal in The Surge, and so he could go as fast as he liked. A few freedom guards spotted him, and were about to flag him down, until they saw his face and thought better of it.
Seven minutes later, Torn skidded to a halt, jumping cat-like to the ground and sprinting, into Havens palace. Inside, algae had smeared itself down the walls and tables had rusted themselves to the sewage covered floor. Here and there lay dead Kanga rats, some floating in little pools of water where they had drowned. The whole place stank of decay, damp and death.
"I knew you don't do housekeepin', Torn, but this place stinks! Couldn't you get a cleaner? Or something?"
Daxter, revived by the stench, pinched his nose and stuck out his tongue.
"Get off me." Growled Torn.
"Oh no…ooohhh no, I aint doing down there." Retorted Daxter, settling himself on Torn's shoulder and pointing at the rotten carpet. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to never wade through shit?"
Dater paused.
"Actually, judging by your smell…" he trailed off grinning.
Torn harrumphed to himself darkly and walked off, every so often twitching his shoulder to try and throw the annoying rodent off. Daxter responded the only way he knew how…by singing at the top of his voice.
"I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves,
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
And this is how it goo-o-oes:
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves,
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
And this is how it goo-o-oes:
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
Everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves,
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
And this is how it goo-o- OW! Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow"
Torn held Daxter by the tip of his tail.
"Shut up."
Jak shot bolt upright, panting, in his room in Sparagus. The room was well lit, and in one corner, the mute could see Samos and Seem watching him. Hunter's Instinct (brother to women's intuition) knew that someone was beside the door, and by peering behind him he could see Sig. The huge man was hunched over his peacemaker, stroking it rhythmically. It was night outside and the holes in the walls that served as windows let in a pleasant breeze.
From the shadows sliding under the door jamb, Jak guessed that there were people waiting outside. Jak fixed his ears straight and ridged, at right angles to his head. The new measures made him feeling uncomfortable, as he was a loner by nature and preferred to act as a protector, than a protected. Of course, some vestige of common sense left reminded him that these were sensible precautions – he had been kidnapped- but some how that just made it worse. He was humiliated, violated and defenceless. Not like himself.
"So." Intoned the Green mage, "Gol and Maia stole your voice." There was and awkward pause.
Jak tapped his throat, and gave a few short signs. 'No. It was never mine to begin with and what they've stolen instead is much more dangerous.'
Maia peered at the corpse in front of her, and then reached down and touched it. Her fingers came away covered with the tacky, stringy, disintegrating flesh. She wiped the disgusting residue off her hands and turned to her brother.
"We must work quickly, unless we wish to give the dark goddess a pool of slime as her slave."
Woah. That was…horrible. I mean, god, a drunken monkey could write better. Still…I managed to get the bloody thing finished, even with writers block, exams, course work, bitchy teachers, mock tests, homework, birthdays, set backs, the computer deleting Every Single Fuggin Paragraph on at least five different occasions (This used to have a hospital scene…it was long and boring. The computer deleted it…SIX TIMES! I took it as a sign of god.)
Yeah, so I cut some of it, and I'm moving it (i.e. re-typing it - stupid bitchy computer) to the next chapter.
Yeah, Peace lurve and egg fried rice.
