Charlotte: I hope you will enjoy reading about our beloved Village Idiots, who were actually taken from our Screnzy last year. They're quite enjoyable to read about. We've also got Norse gods! Woo! Has anybody here read Douglas Adams' The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul? He's another one of our favorites...Also, you should probably read up a little on your Norse mythology first if you want to get a lot of the jokes in that scene, Jin Ah didn't get most of them until after doing that, unfortunately. Anyways, please do enjoy!
Chapter Six
It was hard to tell at first what had happened: all that was visible was a swirling mass of dusty cloth, what appeared to be hair, and above everything the sound of arguing.
The mass slowly settled into figures. One of them seemed to be waving its hands frantically.
"No, Archchancellor!" it said. "I explained this! This is the Roundworld, remember? You can't do things like that here, people will-"
At this point, he looked behind him to where the children, the adults, the angel, and the demon were staring at him.
"-notice."
"You're not the only one who has been to the Roundworld, you know, Young Stibbons," said another - rather rotund - figure, who was brushing dust off of its robes. "I must say I'm surprised Mustrum lets you act like this, it's flagrant disrespect towards authority. I know I'd never let Turnipseed …" he droned as behind him, various figures struggled to get up from where they had collapsed in a knotted, writhing pile on the floor.
"Argh! Get your knee out of my face, Runes!"
"I'll get my knee out of your face as soon as the Senior Wrangler stops pushing it forward with his stomach!"
"My stomach? It's practically a - a biscuit compared to the jelly donut that's your own stomach, ha-"
"Twelve ounces make the yard! Biscuit jelly fills the sea!"
"I say, Bursar, that was nearly relevant."
"What's that you said about my stomach?"
"Well, even your blind old mother would have to say -"
"You leave my mother out of this!"
"That's one of the reasons I left Unseen University, you know," the fattest figure was continuing, oblivious to the chaos right behind him, as the first figure rubbed his temples and another one watched the entire scene with an expression of annoyed amusement. The humans, antichrist, demon, and angel, were all staring with expressions of complete bewilderment.
The auditors, meanwhile, were being ignored - something that did not suit them. "Humans!" it hissed. "Organic creatures!"
The tallest figure looked up and seemed to see them for the first time. "Ah, yes," it said, a smile breaking over its face.
The first figure, the one with glasses, looked up as well. "Archchancellor!" he said urgently. "Those are very dangerous, you shouldn't."
"Be quiet, Stibbons," the other replied. "The hunter is always quiet, so as to not alert the prey to his presence."
"But they already know we're here!"
"Really? Well, then the next step is to apply swift and brutal force."
Before anyone could blink, a grin had spread over his face, and he picked up the worn length of wood he held in his hand and pointed it at the Auditors.
"Lovely to see you again," he said, and blasted them with a jet of greenish-purple flames.
"NO WAY!" screamed Pepper, and Jin Ah and Charlotte got excited little tingling feelings inside their stomachs.
"Archchancellor!" the be-glassed one fairly shrieked. "Such a huge discharge of magical energy is highly unadvisable and-"
The figure who seemed to be the Archchancellor waved a hand vaguely in his direction. "WELL, clearly no harm done, eh, Stibbons? And who do we have here!"
Aziraphale felt that, as an angel, he should step in here and restore a sense of civility and order.
"Wonderful to meet you," he said. "My name is Aziraphale, and I am an angel." He extended his hand to the Archchancellor, and immediately regretted it. The man's grip was like getting his hand stuck between Crowley's sofa cushions, which knew better than to leave any spaces for Crowley to accidentally lose his change in and end up blowing up the sofa to try and find it.1
"Splendid! Archchancellor Ridcully, of Unseen University! It's been quite a while since I saw an angel, although I must say they're usually rather prettier! And this," he said, pulling over the man in glasses, who looked dreadfully unhappy, "is Ponder Stibbons! Say hello, young Stibbons!"
Aziraphale had been rather affronted by the insult to his (he considered, rather considerable, even if he did say so himself) beauty, but managed to pull together his politeness enough to gingerly stick out his hand again. He was relieved to see that Ponder (what an odd name) did not have nearly as strong a grip.
"And these," the Archchancellor said, gesturing broadly at the mess behind him, "are the rest of the faculty! Along with a few students, of course." The knot of people seemed to realize that they were being discussed, and straightened up, brushing off their clothes and, in a few cases, their beards.
"The Lecturer in Recent Runes, at your service-"
"Chair of Indefinite Studies, pleased to make your acquaintance-"
"The Senior Wrangler, er, miss, I'd be quite pleased if you call me Horace, actually-"
"Ook."
"That's the librarian-"
"Trees. Bunnies hopping! Hopping everywhere!"
"And that's the Bursar - er - did anyone bring any dried frog pills, by any chance?"
"Yes, I've got some here-"
"I'm Rincewind," said another unhappily.
"Stanley Blixer, student -"
"Murgatroyd Hooper, for my sins-"
"And that thing's Rincewind's luggage, we don't talk about it."
"Ahem," said another, very fat figure. "Pleased to meet you," he said sanctimoniously. "I am the Archchancellor..." (he shot a look at Archchancellor Ridcully at this point, and seemed pleased to see that the latter wasn't paying any attention to him, and was instead examining a few pictures on the mantlepiece) "... of Brazeneck College."
"Here now, Stibbons," said Archchancellor Ridcully, "They've got a picture of the Disc! I mean, it's got a few extra elephants and the wossname, perspective's a little off, but ..." He waved his hand at a picture of the world being carried by eight elephants on the back of a turtle.
"Ah, yes," said Charlotte, who felt that here was finally something that she could explain. "That's actually based on Hindu mythology. You see, they thought that the world was carried on the backs of several giant elephants on the back of a giant turtle, which, I mean, is fairly ridiculous, since it's clearly impossible …" she trailed off, realizing that her guests were looking even more confused before.
"What do you mean, impossible?"
"Ah," said Ponder Stibbons. "I think I should step in at this point."
Charlotte and Jin Ah watched him, having the sneaking suspicion that he was about to explain the truth of even more wonders that day. It was too cool, being proved wrong again and again.
He did.
"You did what?" asked Anathema faintly. She seemed to be wavering between states of shocked enlightenment and complete skepticism.
The Antichrist looked at the poster quietly. He didn't think he'd called that into existence.
"We split the thaum," said Ponder in the voice of someone used to explaining things to people (but not necessarily to having them actually listen).
"Which is..."
"The smallest particle of energy. You see, it created a massive amount of energy-"
"Like the atom in our world," broke in Wensleydale.
"They're probably the same thing," said Crowley.
"Oh, I very much doubt that," said Ponder smoothly. Crowley didn't enjoy being corrected, but Ponder was clearly used to correcting people who didn't enjoy being corrected, and he plowed on. "You see, it seemed like such a waste to just dump all that magic somewhere, and it would be a wonderful exercise for Hex, and, well … I mean, you're not upset about it, are you?"
"Why would we be upset?" asked Pepper.
"I'm a bit upset," said Aziraphale. He looked a little odd. "I'm sure that's not how it happened. I mean. I was there. Well, not there quite then, but not long afterwards, and I've talked to people, and, well-" he looked a bit flustered.
"Here," said the Archchancellor. "Stibbons here isn't explaining it properly. We have a story about your creation. Is it true? Yes. You have another story. Is it true? Yes. They're both true."
"I don't see how that's-"
"That's because you're confined to one perception of possibility," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, shortly.
"Which," said Ponder, "I think, would be a good segue into why we're here."
"Why are you here?" spoke up Ridley for the first time. While they had all been talking, he'd been slowly developing another headache and wondering more and more why all of this must be happening to him. It's a good thing he did speak up, as everyone was just about forgetting that he was there. Again.
"Did it have something to do with those Auditor things?" asked Adam.
They all nodded. Absolutely, indeed, yes, that was quite the answer.
"How did you know they were over here?" asked Ridley.
They all pointed to Rincewind, who gave a wry smile and started explaining some things.
In the meantime, Stanley Blixer had noticed something shiny.
"What is that?" he asked. They were outside, and they were looking at the Poe's purple car with supreme interest. It was a Ford, at least twenty-five years old, and seemed immortal.
"It has wheels," noticed Murgatroyd. "It must be some kind of cart."
"But it's so … shiny," said Stanley distastefully. "I mean, even Dibbler wouldn't push around a cart like that -"
They looked at it.
"Okay, maybe he might. But," said Stanley, pushing it a little, "it's too heavy to be a cart."
Murgatroyd looked inside curiously. "There's something there in front of that seat."
Stanley looked at it with him and saw the circular disk... thingy. "There is."
Some neighbors were starting to notice the two strange men watching the car, but the student wizards didn't notice them back.
Stanley's curiosity got the better of him and he hopped around to the other side of the car, eventually figured out how to open the door, and sat in the front seat. Murgatryod shrugged and took shotgun.
Stanley was one of those stick-thin wiry people, and he had wiry red hair to go with it. It was a bit unruly and uncut, but that was delinquents for you. His (very bad) teeth sometimes seemed to poke out, and his eyes boggled blue. Murgatroyd was floating on the line between looking extremely abnormal and being one of those people you wouldn't recognize even if they were your mother. That is to say, his individual features were incredibly plain and ordinary, but the combination of the whole made your eyes water if you looked at it too wrong. It was as if there was something fundamentally wrong with his face. Of course, there was something fundamentally wrong with Stanley's eyes, and he never minded looking at Murgatroyd (although even he got headaches afterwards sometimes), and so the two had struck up an odd friendship.
"Maybe it's a sort of chair," suggested Murgatroyd. "So people can sit in it and Enjoy Nature while at the same time avoiding nasty things like rain, wind, or animals."
"Well of course it's a chair," sniffed Stanley. "The question is, what is this thing?" He put two hands on the wheel curiously, tried to heft it, found that it didn't come off, tried turning it and found that it gave a little.
"Oh, I know!" said Murgatroyd, a bit excited now. "It's like the wheel of a ship! You turn that wheel right, and the ship goes left and vice versa."
"How come it isn't moving, then?"
You can probably guess that all of this ended up rather badly. They figured out how to turn it on. They figured out how to moved about. They figured out how crash into the fence in front of them, painstakingly try and turn around (crashing into the houses they were in between at least a dozen times while they were about it), figured out how to get onto the road, and drive off down the road (and the sidewalk). They didn't figure out how to brake.
The neighbors were rather worried now, but they didn't do very much about it. They tried that old assuming trick, noting that both of the the strange people had come out of the Poe's house, and it was probably known that they were out taking the car for a spin. Some went back into their houses to watch some good old news and sip hot chocolate to get their minds off of things, and still others kept on shoveling snow.
Nicholas Fletcher and Sophia Murphy had watched the whole scene with interest and decided to go and tell the people inside their point of destination that their car had just been stolen.
Odin, Father of the Gods, looked at his companions with one narrow eye, holding the reigns of Sleipnir, his eight legged-horse, firmly as he stood before them.
"Now," he said solemnly, "you all know why we're here."
"No, actually," said Tyr. Tyr was a sturdy, brown-haired and square-jawed man2 who seemed to be middle-aged. He looked authoritative and commanding, like he should be going about leading things and settling matters and ordering people around, but for some reason wasn't.3 Right now he was looking at Odin a tad skeptically. Odin was certainly wise and all-knowing, but he had a tendency to never tell anyone what was going on in his wise and all-knowing head. The habit may have been due to him always assuming that everyone else always knew what was obvious to him. Or, alternatively, Tyr considered, it might have been because Odin had thought everyone else in the room at the moment was dim-witted and stupid, and he had simply decided to be arrogantly abrupt.
"What are we here for?" asked Frey. He had a handsome face, long sandy hair pulled into a pony tail, and thin, dark eyebrows that were usually curved either in confusion or annoyance. Beside him, his extraordinarily beautiful sister with her own long tresses of gold was getting bored.
"Just typical," Thor muttered loud enough for everyone to hear. "I was just starting to settle in here, and now I expect we've got to move." Thor was a large man, expertly built, with icy blue eyes and an almost permanent scowl.
Frey cocked an eyebrow. "Just starting? Where've you been for the last few millennia?"
"Jupiter," he said, with a hint of pride. "The most brilliant sphere in the universe." His anger was quickly being replaced by eagerness. "Nothing but clouds and storm, all completely made of weather!"
"Sounds...fun," said Tyr. "Suits you."
"Teeth-grinder and Teeth-gnasher love it there!" he enthused. "Had to leave them there, of course, sure hope they're behaving themselves, old dogs!"
"I find your goats creepy," said Freyja tiredly. "Weird eyes. Awful breath."
"Well at least they're not a pair of tabby cats," he shot back, temper rising again. "Seriously, why would you choose cats?"
"I like cats!" protested Freyja. "Cats are special! They're...theyr'e...Come on, Frey, help me out!"
"...The cats are kind of random, Freyja."
"Ugh! Why do I ask you anything?"
"I don't know. Why do you?"
"You're my brother, you're supposed to back me up in times of need."
"You call defending your flying cats a time of need?"
"Shut up."
"You have to admit, they're even stranger than Thor's goats."
"I'm ignoring you now."
"No you aren't."
"Yes I am!"
"No you aren't."
"Yes I am!"
Then Frey didn't bother responding this time, and they were left staring at Freyja for a moment in silence.
"Thor, didn't your hair used to be red?" Tyr asked, breaking the ice. Thor gave him a dark look.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"It's blonde now."
"So?"
"So..."
"The Mortals' perception of him changed, I'm sure," said Frigg, speaking up for the first time. She had reddish brown hair streaked with silver, curled sweetly and neatly around her head in an elderly, ladylike way. Her face was wrinkled and kind, but also looked endlessly tired.
Thor grunted.
"You know what I don't get?" Freyja said to the group at large. "I don't get why we have to meet up in a warehouse. Whenever something used to come up, we would meet at Urd's well and the Norns would see into the future for us and all that."
"You never see the Norns anymore. What happened to them?" asked Frey.
"I think they started up a girls' band in Denmark," said Frigg.
"Oh." Frey blinked. "I didn't know they played."
"What I still don't get is why we're here at all," Tyr interrupted.
"Because I called ya," said Heimdall gruffly and blearily, still a bit drunk. "That's why." Heimdall had rusty orange hair and a beard, with broad shoulders and freckled arms. His eyes were tiny dark beetles, peering and glinting.
"Well, why'd you call us, then?" asked Thor.
"'Cause I did!"
"Tell me why!"
"I don't know! The birds in the trees were singin' in a particular fine-tuned and melodic way, the trees were sounding just the right kind o' rustle as the wind blew through 'em, the wind was howling in precisely the correct direction, the air was smelling just enough like mothballs, and, well, the time seemed right!"
"The time seemed right?" Thor trembled angrily.
"Yeah!" Heimdall stood up groggily and faced him. "That's what I do! Perceive things and such!"
"I didn't come here to follow the hunch of a drunken gatekeeper!"
"Thor, dear, you're missing the whole point!" exclaimed Frigg. "What we want to know is what caused the conditions Heimdall perceived to be perfect."
"Heimdall is perceptive," said Odin. "He has the most acute senses of all the gods, even when he's as drunk as a lord. Frigg is clever, and can already infer that great things are afoot just by considering the conditions around us. But you, Thor, are an idiot."
"What's that s'posed to mean?"
"What do you mean, 'what's that s'posed to mean?' He called you an idiot! Idiot."
Thor turned on Frey and hurled his hulking sledgehammer at him, but Frey dodged expertly and gave him a smug grin. Thor howled with rage.
"I - AM - NOT - AN - IDIOT!"
"No need to get so worked up, Thor." Frey folded his arms. "There are worse things to be called."
Thor caught his hammer as it flew back to his hand.
"Where's your weapon?"
"What?"
"Where's that sword of yours? The one that can fight by itself 'cause you're too sissy to use it."
Frey gave him a look. "I let Skirnir have it, remember? So I could have darling Gerd."
"Well, fight with that stupid antler of yours, then!"
"I don't have it here."
"I'm not going to fight an unarmed man!"
"Then you won't fight at all."
"ARRRGGHH!"
"Oh, Thor, dear, you don't need to kill Frey just because he called you an idiot-"
"Frey! I can't believe you don't even have that stupid antler with you! What am I supposed to do if a six-headed monster comes out and jumps us, huh?"
"Just have your cats claw 'em!"
"You're going to make fun of my cats, too, Heimdall?"
"I thought I might as well join in the-"
"Would somebody PLEASE get to the point and tell me why we were called here?"
"Look, Thor, the antler wasn't completely stupid, I did manage to kill a giant with it-"
"That giant was a wimp! I could've killed him with my bare hands if I-"
"SILENCE!" Odin shouted over them. The word was so loud and fierce and deep that even Thor shut up and paid attention.
By now, Odin had brought out his uncle Mimir's head and finished consulting with it.4 He wrapped it back up in its green linen sheet and stuffed it into Sleipnir's saddlebag.
"I ride to Valhalla tonight," he announced, "to lead the army of the slain into battle."
Freyja asked, "Against what?"
"The end of the world," said a smooth, cruel, and smiling voice behind them.
The other seven gods whipped around.
"Loki," whispered Odin darkly.
"Missed me?"
He was lithe and fairly built, with curled dark hair and a handsomely boyish face. He wore a suit. He was the trickster god, complete with mischievous smile.
Heimdall gave him a long, lazy stare. "I should never have let you into Asgard," he grumbled murderously.
"But why? I made an excellent guest. So excellent, in fact, Odin went ahead and made me his blood brother. Isn't that right, Odin?"
"You stole my hammer!" roared Thor.
"Your son tore off my hand!" yelled Tyr.
"You insulted my darling Gerd!" shouted Frey.
"You killed my son!" cried Frigg.
"You called me a witch!" Freyja whined.
"You betrayed us all," said Odin. "I thought Sladi had taken care of you."
"Turns out even the intestines of a god wear out after several millennia."
"Blast, it's Ragnarok!" Thor threw his hammer on the ground.
Loki's smile grew even broader. "Gotcha."
"Yes, all right, but I still don't understand what these things do –"
Ponder sighed, with a heavy, measured, and practiced sound made only by those who have had a great deal of practice in dealing with people who never quite manage to understand what one has to say.
"It's really very simple, you see. It's right there in their names. Name. They are Auditors. They audit things. Well, really just one thing."
"Right," said Ridley, who was still feeling rather flustered. "The Universe, you said. I just don't understand how – why –"
"There doesn't have to be a why," interjected the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "They just are."
ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN.
There was a brief flash of the absence of light, and suddenly there was one more person sitting in the room. Well, not technically a person.
"Cor," said Pepper.
Adam looked at Death skeptically. "You look a bit shorter than I remember you bein'," he said accusingly.
HAVE WE MET?
"I believe so," said Aziraphale faintly.
"I would think, given the circumstances, that you would find it hard to forget," muttered Crowley.
WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WERE THESE?
Aziraphale stared at the skeleton in amazement. "You must remember! Last summer, when…" his eyes flickered towards Adam.
"The Apocalypse that might have been?" Crowley prodded. "Ring a bell?"
YOU MUST HAVE THE WRONG PERSON.
"I don't think that's too likely," said Aziraphale.
"Azrael," said Adam suddenly. "That's the name. But you aren't him, are you."
NO.
"He's our Death," Ponder cut in. "I assume that whoever you're talking about would be your Death—"
AZRAEL. CREATION'S SHADOW.
"Yes, him-"
"Wait," interrupted Genevieve. "There are multiple Deaths? And how are you even real, anyway? Death isn't a person!"
Death bowed his head, as if the question were one that he was used to hearing. I AM WHAT YOU WOULD CALL AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION. CALLED INTO EXISTENCE BY THE BELIEF OF HUMANITY.
"And the Auditors?" Charlotte asked. "Are they an … anthro-anthropo-"
"Anthropomorphic personification," helped Ponder, unhelpfully.
"Yes, thank you. That?"
NO. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE. THEY HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED, BEFORE HUMANITY.
"And what are they … what are they like?"
"Bloody annoying, that's what they are," one of the wizards interjected.
"Bunch of supercilious little buggers."
"Never appreciate a good meal."
"I believe the History Monks of the Order of Wen refer to them as dhlang," added Ponder. "They believe them to be a kind of demon."
"Demon, eh?" Newt nudged Crowley, and immediately winced in pain. "Sounds like your, uh, sphere of influence."
"Little-a auditors, yes. I remember inventing those myself. Or rather, importing the concept from Heaven. But big-A Auditors? I've never seen anything like them. Demons tend to be a little less, ah, conservative."
"I've heard them mentioned a few times in Heaven," said Aziraphale. "Not extensively, but … we were always taught that the Auditors were a sort of proto-demon, but they had been locked away long before to another universe – they weren't supposed to be able to exist here. Oh, there were stories every now and then of them interacting with people, being defeated with food, things like that, but we always considered them old cherubim's tales. Until three of them showed up in my bookstore."
ALWAYS THREE.
"Because three's the most powerful magic number, and all that?" Wensley hazarded a guess.
MAGIC? NO. THE AUDITORS ABHOR MAGIC. THEY ABHOR INDIVIDUALITY. IRREGULARITY. LIFE.
The room was very quiet.
THEY DESPISE, ABOVE ALL, HUMANITY. THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR EMOTIONS, YOUR FEELINGS, YOUR PERCEPTIONS OF A WORLD WHICH EXISTS BEYOND THE PURELY PERCEIVABLE.
"Have they ever … killed anyone?" The question was uttered by Charlotte, but it was on the minds of every Earthling in the room.
CERTAIN LAWS IN OUR WORLD PREVENT THEM FROM MEDDLING DIRECTLY, BUT THEY HAVE TRIED – TRIED TO END HUMANITY.
"They tried to kill me," Ridley said.
It was at this moment that Nicholas Fletcher and Sophia Murphy arrived at the door, with Archie the Talking Guinea Pig and the news that a couple of nutters had made away with someone's car.
Jin Ah:This is probably my favorite chapter so far. The Wizards interacting with each other and everyone else, the misadventures of Murgatroyd and Stanley, and the further introduction of the Norse Gods and the event that they have assembled to witness: Ragnarok. I hope anyone reading this is enjoying it as much as we are, and if you have any comments or suggestions, reviews would be greatly appreciated!
1The sofa, however, had learned enough about Aziraphale to know that it could relax if he sat on it, which once resulted in Aziraphale having his hand stuck in Crowley's sofa for three hours. See, Aziraphale had sat down first, promptly dropped his car keys in the annoying crevice between the two cushions, and had started digging for them - but Crowley had sat down at that point, and the sofa had immediately stiffened up. Aziraphale had been too polite to interrupt Crowley's heated spiel about the absolute morons Hell had assigned to be in charge of him this time, Crowley had been to incensed to notice that Aziraphale's "Hmms," and "Yes, I sees," were even less interested than usual, and the sofa had been too frightened to risk softening up a little.
2With a missing hand. Like most people who are missing appendages, Tyr wasn't often mocked for his injury - not because of pity, as in most earthly cases, but because he was a Norse God who was fully capable of making you lose an appendage, as well.
3He actually had been Chief of the Aesir Gods at one time, but long ago had decided he might as well step back when Odin was inevitably going to become way more awesome than him anyway.
4Odin's uncle Mimir was actually the reason he only had one eye. Mimir was the wisest living being in Asgard and the one who kept Mimir's well, whose water would give any who drank it Mimir's wisdom. Odin, of course, wanted in on this action, and so sacrificed an eye to Mimir in order to get a sip. When Mimir was beheaded, Odin had been devastated, and worked night and day to bring back to life the head of his favorite uncle. He succeeded of course, and since then asked it for advice whenever he needed it. This impressed some gods, but deeply disturbed others.