Chapter Twenty-Five: The Gods Must Be Bonkers
Excerpt from the Book of Days:
And thus spake the assembled Gods:
"Pyrien, you little shit."
The crowd of undead converged promisingly. Not threateningly, as the word 'threaten' left some room for doubt and suggested the threatener in question would back off if things didn't quite work out on their end. No, the crowd of undead didn't threaten. They promised. And it was a promise that spoke of chewing, skinning, fine mincing, and perhaps even a chance of paté and other such culinary delights in my immediate future. Produced, sourced, and made out of me.
I voiced that I did not much approve of this idea.
Horus suggested that he did not much approve of the whole situation.
I raised the possibility of making a strategic retreat.
Horus evidently did not think much of the idea. He suggested that if that was the course of action that appealed to me the most, then I was welcome to take it. By myself. And he promptly disappeared.
I cursed under my breath. The monsters had finished converging, and were by now looming almost over the top of me with intent of dismemberment, mutilation, and if luck would have it, a little midnight snack.
I drew my sword. My armour was still in my Inventory, and I didn't have the time to put it on. Ah, well. Maybe being smeared thinly across thirty miles of dirt and stone would be an enjoyable experience.
I think I split a zombie in half. I didn't know why. It was a waste of time, really, dragging a sword through that much zombie when I could have been, say, decapitating a creeper. Alas, Logic and Common Sense were not the prevailing traits of a person in the midst of a battle.
I ducked behind a wall of undead as the skeletons began their barrage. Common belief placed zombies as the most mentally obtuse of the monsters, but I believed by all rights, the title should go to the skeletons. It may have had something to do with the fact that their braincases were empty in the most literal of senses. Either way, they made no difference between friend and foe. Many a creeper and zombie fell to friendly fire.
I scanned the field for the Enderman to no avail. It was altogetherly possible that he was standing not two feet from me, and I wouldn't have been able to catch a glimpse of him. There were too many bodies in the way, too much movement. Something took an enterprising swipe at my unprotected back. I turned and lashed out blindly in its general direction. The staccato of falling heads indicated that I had just decapitated three of... something, but I didn't have the time to go and check what it was because another something had bit me in the leg. I jabbed my sword downwards, and the pressure eased.
"Horus!" I yelled over the gruesome cacophony of groans and hisses. "Horus, you daft bastard!"
Then I had to dive to avoid another barrage of arrows. There was no reply from the sorcerer.
Godammit.
I built a nerd-pole of three block's height to get above the surrounding chaos. Then I had to jump off it to avoid getting shot by the clumsy cloud of arrows that wobbled past. But the brief glimpse was enough. I'd seen the Enderman.
And Horus, who was in the vicinity. I suspected our Enderman friend had better look forward to a future with no limbs in it.
I waded through the crowd of undead toward the location where I'd last seen the Enderman. A lot of carnage and loss of limbs was had on the way, and somewhere during the course of my gore-splattered odyssey I'd decided one sword wasn't enough, and had pulled out my pickaxe to assist, much to the misery of the undead around.
And it was thus I burst into the unexpectedly calm circle in the middle of the battleground, gore-splattered, demented-looking, with a weapon capable of extreme unpleasantness if applied judiciously clutched in each hand.
The nearby monsters had either had the common sense to make a strategic exit or were lying in unnecessarily small pieces on the ground. Something squelched horribly underfoot. The Enderman looked like he was having a bit of an existential crisis. Good, I thought, I'll give him an existential crisis. By removing him from existence.
"Nice night, isn't it?" I gave a mad grin, and charged.
The Enderman spared me a glance of irritation. "Not now, boy!"
He disappeared in a shower of purple sparks. I whirled around, bringing my sword down to slice through-
Nothing.
I blinked. Some distance away, a slender shape rematerialised and disappeared again in another purple flash.
He wasn't attacking. He was running away.
The reason soon became apparent. A corresponding flash of white appeared not a millisecond later, and suddenly Horus had one arm hooked around the Enderman's neck and another holding his scythe to his throat.
There was an explosion of purple sparks, but when it cleared away, the Enderman was still there. "Let go of me," he snarled, twisting furiously under the sorcerer's grip.
The crowd of undead started to converge again. I shook my weapons threateningly, in case they'd forgotten the previous lesson.
They hadn't. There was a Brownian motion of backsteps.
Eventually, the Enderman stopped struggling. The field grew still. A terrifying silence set in like a thick fog.
When Horus spoke, he did so in a voice so utterly emotionless it was as if all existing emotion, after seeing what was going to happen next, simply packed up and fled the area.
"I am not, by nature, a violent and malicious person," he said quietly. "However, I certainly did use to be one, and sometimes I forget myself. The map, now, if you please, before something regrettable occurs."
"Look at me," the Enderman said, raising his hands in surrender. "Do I look like I have it on me?"
The hand holding the scythe shifted. A thin line of blood appeared.
"Yes."
The Enderman hissed, more in surprise than pain.
He took a moment to consider his options, and evidently realised he didn't have many. "On second thought, you are correct." The Enderman waved a hand and something materialised in a shower of purple sparks. "I do have it on me."
Without further ado, Horus unceremoniously plucked it out of his hand. He released the Enderman and stepped back.
"Go," he said abruptly. The Enderman left. The congregation of monsters retreated glowering into the nearby woods, silently promising to be back in time for dessert if I didn't watch my back.
My sword and pickaxe disappeared into my Inventory, and my arms sagged with relief. I gave them a few experimental swings. Yep, couldn't feel a thing. If the fight hadn't ended when it did, I'd have been sushi in... about three minutes from now.
My shoulders gave a painful twinge. Tomorrow morning was going to be Hell.
Well, it had been a crowded street.
Pyrien strolled down the said street whistling, Dog in tow. The other member of their party was presumably happily causing chaos and strife elsewhere, something to do with a very inebriated bull and a street full of egg vendors.
A repetitive clicking sound floated down from the opposite end of the street.
In the gutter, two dozen rats trampled each other in their haste to flee the scene. A cloud of pigeons rose squawking from a nearby rooftop and made themselves scarce at an alarming rate. Some sheep in an enclosure chewed through the iron bars and disappeared without a trace, although the later generations would grow to fear the sound of baa-ing in dark alleys and moonlight bouncing off steel-toed hooves.
The Dog appeared thoroughly unamused by the events. It sniffed the air and made a face composed of 50% irritation, 50% resignation, and 200% likelihood of reducing any onlookers into a pathetic wibbly puddle of adoration. While the Dog understood that the universe had rules such as 'there is no going above 100%', it had chosen to regard them as one may regard a lawn ornament; to be only paid attention to when one is studiously avoiding eye contact with something odious and there is no other alternative.
The clicking sound grew louder. A lone figure appeared at the end of the street, gradually picking its way along. A dull aura of mindless maliciousness seemed to emanate from it. Pyrien winced. The Dog growled deep in its tiny throat and slunk behind Pyrien's legs to scowl sullenly down the street in relative safety.
Pyrien glanced down at the quivering Dog. "I'm going to die," he said cheerfully, and strolled down the street.
The shape resolved into an elderly woman. She held a pair of knitting needles and worked as she walked, every so often producing an erratic clicking sound that sounded somewhat offbeat for no apparent reason.
Click. Click-click. ClickClickClick... Click. Click.
The loitering Dog gave a full-body twitch.
It wasn't that they expected knitting needles to produce, say, the consistent rhythm of a metronome. It was just that for some inexplicable reason this particular woman managed to take the most minor of annoyances and multiply the irritability by tenfold. Untied shoelaces gained unfathomable power. A snide comment could instigate a murderous rampage. An innocuous tile, misaligned by a nanometer, could started a brutal five-way war between the biggest and most well-managed kingdoms in the world.
"Fancy meeting you here," Pyrien greeted cheerfully. "Small world, eh?"
The woman lifted her head and scowled unpleasantly. The needles did not so much as pause. "Not small enough, as it seems. What are you doing down here, you meddling pest?"
Pyrien gave a blithe shrug. "Pretty much whatever people tells me not to do, generally. I've got a list. Oh, and trying to save the world, I guess. I'm looking for a motley crew of capable adventurers, so on and so forth," he tilted his head. "Isn't that what gods generally do when the world's in danger?"
The woman gave a derisive snort. "Fat lot of good that'll do. The quality of heroes nowadays have gone to the dogs. The ones you get around here generally get by with waving their swords menacingly, making a lot of noise, and then riding off into the sunset with some wench. And then they settle down and live a normal life. Can you believe that? Some fate-chosen dragonslayer abandoning their sword and - gods forbid - opening a restaurant? Disgraceful! Where's the prophecies? The child of fate? The valour, the honour, the selfless sacrifices?" She shook her head in disgust. "Heroes shouldn't settle down. It goes against tradition!"
"Ah..." Pyrien cleared his throat. "We've got to flow with the times, you know? But moving on-" he added hastily as the woman developed a nasty look in her eye. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in trying the hero-ing business yourself? The world's in danger, as you know, and somebody's got to do something."
The old woman gave a contemptuous humph. "Wouldn't trust anyone else to do it right, would I? Though the world nowadays, it deserves a bit of destroying. Clean slate, I say..."
"What do you go by in this life?" Pyrien asked as politely as he could manage.
The old woman spared him a sharp glace. "Polly. My servant girl called me Polly. You?"
Pyrien gave a dramatic sigh. "I'm always Pyrien."
We set up camp in relative silence. Horus disappeared mysteriously into the forest some time ago. Occasionally I could hear random things dying noisily in the vicinity and rightfully concluded whatever was happening was no longer my problem.
The guy was weird and getting weirder by the day. The mysticism was really getting on my nerves, and the sarcasm was nice change, yes, but there was no need to pile on so much of it. I suppressed a sigh. Well, at the very least he wasn't acting like a human shaped polar ice cap anymore. Now he was a human shaped, sarcastic polar ice cap.
Great. Just great. I massaged my temples.
And I'd noticed he hadn't being using magic a great deal lately. What's up with that? Did he run out? Can't be. It'd be like asking the sea if it had run out of water. Maybe it's a time thing.
Speaking of magic.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what the sorcerer taught me earlier. No, 'taught' wasn't quite the right word for it. More like 'branded into my brain and then wandered off to stab something with no explanation'. My poor sense of reasoning didn't stand a chance. Horus said one thing and meant another, unless he was annoyed, in which case he went to startling lengths to make it perfectly clear to you that you were an irrelevant waste of space and if there was a chart to measure intelligence, then your marker was still accelerating when it hit bedrock.
Suffice to say, if he ever went to a mind reader he'd have gotten his money back along with a pretty hefty bribe not to come back, pretty please and thank you, nobody liked night terrors.
Several failed attempts and one minor explosion later, I decided to leave it for another day and wandered aimlessly into the woods like a true moron. Judging by the results of tonight's activities, the monster population hereabouts had dropped by roughly three-quarters and whatever remained had firmly embedded themselves into the dirt out of sheer terror and was unlikely to see fresh air until at least the next decade.
It was a cloudy night. The sky was blanketed in a slate-grey sheet and the moon and stars were nowhere to be seen. The woods were quiet, for the most part, and although I occasionally heard hurried rustling sounds as I approached a particularly dark patch of the undergrowth, nothing horrendous and homicidal leapt out to attack me. It was almost... peaceful. Unusually peaceful. Having spent the past week or so running for my life from one murderous monster congregation to another, this state of things was highly suspicious. My hand kept twitching for the hilt of my sword in the firm conviction that something was bound to be afoot.
After an hour or so of listless wandering, I was proven right.
In the midst of the darkened woods, over the ominous howling of the wind, rose the faint noise of somebody swearing very, very loudly.
A tree toppled in the distance, followed by more swearing. I stared at the empty place where a tree used to be, partly in mystification and partly in fascination. Whoever it was, they weren't a Crafter. Otherwise the tree would probably still be upright, albeit missing a trunk.
Whoever it was, they were also evidently very angry and probably react violently to being approached by a stranger, and it would be an unbelievably stupid to seek them out.
Which was what I did.
I pushed through layers of undergrowth toward the source of the sound.
"-bloody hellfire what I wouldn't do for a goddamn GPS I should just build a highway-"
I tripped over a root and managed to catch myself just before I gave the dirt a very intimate greeting.
The voice stopped. There was a cracking noise, and an ominous creaking that suggested a tree was about to come to an unfortunate end.
I swallowed. There was another cracking sound, and the voice muttered a string of something that didn't bear repeating in polite company.
"- highway, you hear me? I should set up a toll gate while I'm at it, bloody hell, and I can hear you, you moron."
I froze like someone who'd seriously pissed off an ice magician.
"Yes, you, in the bushes. I'm dead, not bloody deaf, there's the difference of a letter and all that."
The voice paused. I considered backing out of the bush and hooking it back to camp and then decided I'd probably get two feet before getting pulverised by a falling tree. Besides, I reasoned to myself, they didn't sound very angry. Just mildly irritated. Very irritated. Maybe a little antagonised.
"Come out, come out," the voice called cheerily, all sign of their previous annoyance having evaporated into thin air. "I can't imagine it's very comfortable down there. I won't eat you, I promise. Human probably tastes disgusting."
Reassuring. Real reassuring.
I crawled cautiously from the undergrowth and emerged, blinking, into a newly-made clearing. Moonlight lanced down from the treetops, illuminating a row of fresh tree stumps and a very unimpressed-looking girl with eyes the colour of blood.
"You!" I exclaimed.
"You," Az sighed in a terribly disappointed voice.
"Excuse me?" I said, affronted by her tone.
"I'm lost," she complained. "Terribly lost. Horribly lost. I'm in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and definitely in the wrong universe, again."
The prisoner was humming to himself again.
Andras stared until his eye started twitching. He turned away to look at the horses instead, who were eyeballing him, or rather, his hair, with their front teeth.
He instinctively put a hand to his hair to make sure it was still there.
"... t'was a thick summer's day-"
"Shut up," Alex snarled. "If you sing another one of those goddamn bar songs I will decapitate you. With a fork."
The proportionally-blessed man gave a woozy grin that leaked a little at the edges. "Music is the, the, wossit, cloth thing, fabric an' weave of life," he slurred. "Factual. Can't live without it. I'd, I'd do the drying thing, wither and die."
Alex was by no means sophisticated, having spent the majority of her life in a forest shooting small furry creatures for sustenance, whose only relatively human contact for a least a decade had been a nihilist magician whose one brush with society had involved murdering a part of it in a dark alley. Next to this man, however, she was positively aristocratic. Compared to this man, even Andras looked educated. Which just showed how deceiving appearances could be.
Andras shuffled over to Alex. "Er... why did we kidnap this guy again?"
Alex looked at him like he belonged in a kennel. "What, can't you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"Divinity," Alex said impatiently. "It's pouring off him in waves. The twit's a god."
Andras glanced back at the man, who had shown no sign of godliness aside from the godly proportions of his torso, which could probably pull in small planets. "Er... one of those ones what go around smiting in the old legends and stuff?"
"No, not one of those," Alex muttered. "You'd know all about it if you meet one of those. Or not. Depends on how fast your reaction time is. Point is, this twerp isn't one of them. He's a small god. Can't even disguise his divinity properly. What I'm trying to figure out is who the hell he is, and what he's doing on the Overworld."
"Carl," the man piped up. "Call me Carl. That's what I got called last time I came down here."
"Is it your name? No, I thought not." Alex scowled. She turned back to Andras and shook a finger in his face. "Let this be a lesson to you. All gods are twits."
Andras went cross-eyed looking at the finger. "All gods?" he repeated weakly.
"Yes, well. You know the saying? "To err is human, but to well and truly screw shit over, one needs a god""
"My bad, really," Az sighed. "It all started with that damned sword. Take it from me, never make swords of power for heroes. Especially if you're the king of Hell. It'll come back to stab you later, in every sense of the word. And then the bastard went and dropped a building on me. Ungrateful, is what it is. Wasn't my fault I sank the continent. I wasn't even sapient at the time. You do unpredictable things when you're a mindless mass of destructive energy. And besides, it was two thousand years before he was even born. Seriously, it was the worst excuse he could have possibly found. And those gods? They never get off their fattening behinds except to chase after some poor mortal who'd caught their eye. And suddenly they all turn up in the chariots with divine radiance and whatnot, proclaiming judgement of something or another. Twits."
I nodded politely, for the lack of anything else to do.
Az sat cross-legged next to the dying fire. Occasionally she flicked a stick into it. I had offered to build a shelter, but she declined, saying something about wanting to experience the fresh air for the first time since, well, dying.
"So, about this companion of yours." Flick. "What are they like?"
"Er, well," I began. Then I stopped. How did one go about describing the likes of Horus? I had the feeling that 'magician, slightly homicidal' wasn't going to cut it.
"... Difficult at times," I said. "But an okay guy. Yeah."
I winced inwardly. It did not sound convincing, even to myself.
"Sounds like a character," Az said cheerfully. "I look forward to getting on his nerves."
"You'll be disappointed," I muttered. "The guy's like a living ice statue. Pretty sure whatever emotion he used to have just drained away a long time ago."
Az looked thoughtful. "Reminds me of somebody I used to know. By the way, when is he coming back?"
"Beats me," I said gloomily. "Probably never."
"I wish to differ."
A shape detached itself noiselessly from the surrounding darkness and moved into the circle of firelight.
"How long have you been there?" I asked peevishly.
A shrug. "A second, more or less." Horus glanced at Az, who was sitting very still, and froze.
Blue eyes met red.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Horus abruptly turned on his heel and left the way he came.
"You know, out of all of your forms, this is the one I could stand the least," Az yelled after him. "Goodnight to you too, sir!"
"... Ah. I see you have already met," I said weakly.
Year Twelve. Exams. I have nothing else to say for myself.
Please feel free to comment. It gives me motivation to keep writing.
Also, if anyone's interested, I may have gotten a side project going on Wattpad. It's only got four chapters and is pretty much a shitpost disguised as fiction. My profile name is CrimsonReynard.
Having no luck at all with the actual book. 16 chapters in and have stalled indefinitely.