The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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With the buildings sloughing off like LEGOS, the city of Cyk’Nl had a new kind of logic to it, something unlike a city altogether. The ivory roads and gutters became the seams of a shell, the levitation engines (of which there were five, arranged in a pentagon around the underside of the city) became orifices, and the polluted artificial atmosphere became a reeking sulphurous exhalation. Out of each of the engines came a very large reptilian head attached to a seemingly endless neck. Two of the heads were grey; one was green, with a lion’s mane of tentacles; a copper-colored head dotted with a long line of lichen above the eyes opened its mouth to roar and a dragon snuck out, launching off gracefully from its perch on a fang; the last head was blue, and salivated a steady waterfall of chlorine-smelling sludge from its drooping jowls.

The hydra’s heads convulsed, and from the twin main roads of Cyk’Nl emerged two comparatively scrawny and vestigial-looking wings, which flapped with a sound like a church bells. The city stopped falling and hovered, stationary, only a hundred meters above the Hydresther skyline. Fantha twitched like a thirteen-year-old boy catching a glimpse of a nipple on his TV screen.

“Can you do that a little lower?” asked Jen, out loud. “I have a knot.” She was beginning to calm down; seeing above her a physical, presumably killable representation of the insurmountability of her problem, she stopped feeling and started thinking.

”Imagine what its DNA must read like,” replied Fantha. ”It’d be… like Mein Kampf.”

”That’s an oddly human reference for you to be making, Fantha.”

”I’ve been picking this stuff up. A bit from you, but mostly from the Package.”

”Trippy. So Kath’s on there somewhere. Or in there.”

”She’ll have to kill it, won’t she? To proceed?”

”The going theory is that that’ll be her test, yeah.”

”What happens if we beat her to it?”

”I don’t know. To take that thing out, we’d need help. Hey Xad—” Xadrez was gone; in his place was a lingering smell of wet dirt. The chlorine waterfall hit a skyscraper in Hydresther, doing something to the edifice that looked more than anything like the Black Plague.

Jen looked back at the monster. Above it, the Hydresther bubble was beginning to burst, or rather leak. “Well anyway we’ll have to act fast. You know, I’ve been thinking about this whole situation the wrong way.”

”Is that so?”

”I’ve had this feeling ever since I died—or maybe before, since the Battle started—this feeling that something was coming to an end. It’s stupid. Obviously there’s something just beginning.” She turned her eyes back toward the hydra, which in its own way was now the city’s primary light source, and sighed. “Fantha dear, When you’ve been in this business for as long as I have, you get to appreciate a really good monster. It’s beautiful.”

”Mmm. What about me? Am I a good monster?”

”Bitch, you’re a worm.” Fantha drooped herself over Jen’s chest with just enough sarcasm for Jen to find it endearing.

A confused-looking dragon landed on the next rooftop over from Jen. She was a striking shade of purple with a green stomach.

“You,” Jen called to the dragon. “I shall call you Barney.”

Thirty seconds later they were in the air.

* * * * *

Kath wasn’t sure at exactly which point she realized she was traveling the insides of a living creature; the signs manifested themselves pretty gradually. And the hydra followed no sort of biological rules that she was aware of. Most living things under the sea, for one thing, kept all their tentacles on the outside, and used them to swim or manipulate objects, not just to stand up on either side of the pathway like weeds. Similarly, if the bloodstream of any conventional creature intersected with its windpipe by way of a stone bridge, that would be less of a convenience for travelers and more of a life-threatening problem.

Someone red, bloated and froglike passed her by; fearing it would burst all over her clothes if she stabbed it, Kath opted to hide behind a convenient rock. Apart from that, her journey (“quest” was the word the Green Man had used, though she still couldn’t fathom what that was all about) remained fairly uneventful until she came to the village.

“Organ” would probably be the word, she told herself. The tunnels opened up into a wide open space dotted with small tents made of a veiny membrane surrounding a large industrial-looking building. On the side of the main building a water wheel was dipped into the blood, supplying energy to something inside that was making a distinctly metallic chugging noise.

Kath was spotted right away and approached by two of the frog-things. “Organelle, identify self and function.”

“I’m Kath,” Kath said, deciding honesty was the best policy for once. “And I’m not an organelle. I came here from outside.”

One of the frogs nodded to the other, knowingly. They turned back to Kath. “It is as we thought. The Transcriber has come at last.”

They grabbed her by the shoulders and led her into the factory. Inside, dozens of organelles (some of whom were suitably outlandish in accordance with their functions) were working to maintain bizarre machines made of metal and protein. It smelled like coal.]

Kath was led to a door upon which the word “Nucleolus” was inscribed in crisp Helvetican calligraphy. Inside was an office, occupied by a very fat golden-skinned amphibian surrounded by a complex apparatus of optics. The nucleolus looked up from one microscope and lowered a pair of glasses from the ceiling to his eyes. “Ah!” he said, cheerily. “The outsider. Wonderful, wonderful. I’ll deal with you in a minute, young, er, lady. You two. What news?”

One of the frogs saluted and spoke up. “Well, we’ve got—“

The other frog saluted harder and spoke up more loudly. “The main issue at this point seems to be flooding. The wings, heads and necks are definitely in motion; brains have shut off all communication. It would seem that they’re angry at something.”

“Hmmm. Well, double production like we planned for. Obviously the insides are going to have to pull the slack for now. There’s no need to be alarmed.”

The quieter frog sternly pushed Kath forward. “But sir, if the Transcriber has truly arrived, might this not mean--”

“I’ll have none of your superstition,” barked the nucleolus. “The system has maintained for centuries. Every time we have a little excess movement, some strange radio chatter from the exo, or sexual organs are engaged with that Sk’Va tart, people like you are proclaiming that it’s the Death come at last.”

Kath was beginning to feel out of place.

“But sir, last time the wings began to flap—”

“I know my history. You know what percentage of organelles in the hydra were shut down during that incident? One point five. Catastrophe, yes. Apocalypse, no.” He turned very quickly towards Kath. “You. Exo-female.”

Kath sighed. “Is this going to involve a quest?”

The nucleolus seemed taken aback. “Well, no, dearie, I was simply going to ask if you’d planned out your—”

There was a rapping on the office door. “Dammit to the bowels,” muttered the nucleolus. “Open the door,” he commanded one of the organelle.

The frog opened the door and in stepped another, slightly nauseous-looking organelle, filled with something purple. He looked angry.

The nucleolus fell out of his chair. “Shut the door! He’s got ATP! He’s got AT—” he shouted, while at the same time the purple frog cried “Death to homeostasis quo!” and exploded.

For a few seconds Kath was only aware of dust.

Then rough, slimy hands pulled her upright. “Sorry about that,” said an organelle she hadn’t seen before. “We needed to get you out of there before the nucleolus assimilated you.” Kath, still a bit distracted by the ringing in her ears, allowed the frog to drag her over to the edge of the organ. There were four frogs crouching behind a cell and waiting to receive her. The rebels lacked the bloating of the regular organelles and were nearly translucent.

The leader, standing about seven feet tall with a long and twitchy flagellum protruding from his stomach, grabbed Kath by the shoulders. “Transcriber,” it told her, “Hero out of the Hydraether.”

“I’m not from the Hydraether,” said Kath, a bit indignant. “I hail from, er. Hydresther.”

The frog slapped her across the face. “Pull it together, exo-girl. We represent CORPSE. That’s an acronym. Cessation Of Respiration, PhotoSynthesis, Everything.” The frog flogged himself across the back and croaked. “We’re still working on the acronym. We’re working on a lot of things, especially now that we have—”

“Stop your talk a moment,” said Kath, a bit impatient. “You mean to kill the hydra.”

“We mean,” said the frog, “For it to stop living.”

“I’ve got it!” shouted one of the other frogs. “Cessation of Respiratory-Photosynthetic Slave Engine.”

“That’s perfect,” whispered the leader, “But keep your damn voice down. Exo-girl. We need your help. We have numbers but the wheels of Homeostasis Quo will continue to turn unless we take a number of extraordinary risks. And by ‘we’ I mean ‘you.’”

“Kill the hydra,” Kath repeated, twirling her sword. “Sounds about apt. Where do we start?”

* * * * *

The city-sized disturbance in the Hydresther bubble finally overwhelmed whatever power was holding it up, and it began to rise, splitting off into smaller bubbles and great walls of foam. Jen struggled to hang on to her rather ornery new mount and keep it in a position on the underside of the monster, free from the attention of its five heads. It didn’t work; one of the grey heads snapped at her with the kind of speed that you never expect from something that large. A quick, nauseating barrel roll brought Barney out of the range of the hydra’s fangs, which appeared oddly porous on this macroscopic scale.

Jen caught a whiff of something like fresh air, and took this as a signal to maneuver the dragon around the side of Cyk’Nl to the city’s surface, now in ruins. There was a splash of mist that was only ambiguously breathable and then a strong gust of wind brought around by a flapping of one of the hydra’s wings. Jen and Barney found themselves being skipped across the surface of the ocean like a pebble, the sun in their eyes, feeling the sort of high-speed disorientation and insignificance that the electron feels.

Barney recovered first, and flew off, leaving Jen weakly treading water until Fantha gave her gills, at which point she allowed herself to sink. Ignoring the thrashing of a hydra, now a landmass, Jen’s fading conscious stayed focused on another island, one that seemed to draw closer the more she

* * * * *

Jen appeared, not making the effort to show up out of any direction but merely materializing with a sound between a thud and a splash. Arkal startled. The girl was soaking wet and fast asleep upon the smooth tan surface of the island. Arkal touched her cheek gently; Jen was warm, breathing, and not a phantom (in any case, Arkal suspected that if he were seeing only an Ovoid-induced memory of the lass, she wouldn’t have that worm sticking out of her). At Arkal’s touch, Jen gave a sleepy whimper of complaint and rolled over. Arkal smirked. Feeling generous, he put a sword in her arms; Jen embraced the sword lovingly, curled up and began to snore lightly.

Arkal sat down a ways away and waited.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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The treant gave an askance look to the cowled individual running the summoning apparatus. “It would be preferable if we can-”

There was a disembodied noise of someone struggling with a doorknob, before a calm, agreeable voice chimed from somewhere behind the fir. “So this is where you were hiding, Sprocer.”

“Gable.” drawled the treant, not turning. “This is an interrogation room.”

“Yes, I've been listening. I think it's time we make it something a little more constructive.”

Gable, as it turned out after Sprocer sighed and let him through, was an old-world dragonfly of about the right vintage to court the Mayoress of Sk’va. Other than the unabashed hexapedalism, he and his muted electric colouration looked like he’d have fitted right in. The treant extended a limb and let the newcomer perch upon it as he peered short-sightedly at the captive.

“So you’re the new General.” The dragonfly had a pleasant tone, compared to the rasps and rustles of the fir tree, though it wavered from age or grief. Xadrez found it hard to tell, so just inclined his head a little. He was a warlord, not a counsellor.

What happened to the old one

The dragonfly sighed and thrummed his wings, like a Victorian lady fanning off a case of the vapours. “Killed in a stampede trying to catch a pack of disbanded recruits before they crossed the border. It’s bound to have the Virate up in arms once we’re out of this semi-declared state of emergency-”

do you not mean a declared state of semi-emergency-

“No.”

“Lord Sprocer is as cantankerous as I’ve always known him, but I did mean what I said, General. As I was saying, monkey-puzzle treants – no slur on treants in general, Sprocer, but you’d have to agree with me - are absolutely vicious. We all thought Her Majesty’s abolishment of the standard honour-execution for retiring military leaders was going to do away with senseless losses like this one.”

what

Gable continued patiently. Judging by his oratory tones, Xadrez hazarded he was an academic of some description. Perhaps a historian. “Well, before Her Majesty celebrated her first on the throne with a sweeping reform of the centuries-old Old Laws, appointment of the General’s Rank would mean the Place had a month off in memory of the old general and to officially invoke the leadership of the new. Nowadays the royal decree is that we all become far too intoxicated to remember who did what to the local gravity, but I suppose that’s progress.” The dragonfly twitched his wings as though flicking dew off them.

“Regardless, the Virate received the records of your dismissal a mere twelve hours ago, General. Since then it’s been a matter of finding all the troops who spontaneously disbanded without a head of military.”

Xadrez pinched the bridge of his non-existent nose. how hard would it have been to reappoint the old general

“Well, as soon as the dismissal came through, without a pre-appointed replacement I’m afraid the Armed Forces disbanded. Effective immediately.

“There was the implication that you were the general before your dismissal, even if our logs didn’t go that far back, so Retired General Mietzk was legally dead.” The dragonfly tilted his head, and crouched in his best approximation of a helpless shrug. “It’s all final unresolved hangovers from the Old Laws – they decree that the deceased cannot hold positions of power in the Place, although the Virate are set to discuss its repeal this coming June. In matters pertaining to defining the “people” of the Place, the matter falls to the Virate, not the Queen.”

The tactician was wishing he hadn’t asked. Fine

How would you like to me to assist in rethroning your dead queen then

If the advisor had noticed Xadrez’ jab at the contradiction, he ignored it and took it in his stride.

“The ascension of the new queen’s already been set into motion. If we can interrupt that or bugger her chances of completing it – and the steps are well-documented – then we should be able to stall her coronation.”

Xadrez tried to make his point clearer. How many months away is this talk of this repeal being raised

Gable raised a foot, hovered round to the cloaked magiteknician’s desk, and flicked through a few sheaths of paper while plotting a course across another with a compass. “Two months-”

Xadrez groaned.

“-which, if we can get a few people to pull some strings, will equate to three hours in Hydresther. There’s a forty minute window on your end after that, where ideally news of Jen completing the new queen’s Quest will turn the political tides in favour of her reappointment.”

So

I must ensure her majesty completes whatever mission no matter how ludicrous has been set for the usurper

in the specific space of one hundred and eighty to two hundred and twenty minutes in hydresther

am i at least privy to information as to what this quest is

“I’m afraid not, because I can’t be certain of anything except that she must solve the labyrinth.”

I can only assume this is something you are not permitted to divulge as anything more specific than an irksome riddle

“Actually, yes. Moses was quite adamant, and his records are impeccable.” Gable uncoiled the thinnest scrap of paper from round his delicate foot, smoothed it out in front of him, and handed it to the tactician. Sprocer somewhat begrudgingly ordered Xadrez’ restraints be released.

Zahdris (sp?) cannot be given the answer.

“Conclusive enough, I hope.”

Xadrez would’ve snorted. The summoning circle was disbanding; Hydresther and a physical form were becoming less of a hazy memory.

“If my memory serves me correctly, at least half the Quest is scaly. That, for most Questants, is the easier half. There may be a specific parameter of at least thirty feet long, but I had other commitments this morning so couldn’t peruse the Royal Archives to read up on Quests past. Will that be all?”

Xadrez glared at Gable.

what in the shattering is wrong with your country

“I’ve grown rather fond of its wrongs and rights both. But that took me half a lifetime under Queen Jennifer’s rule. Best of luck, General. All of our thoughts rest with you and Her Majesty.”
The spirit nodded. Magenta forced its obnoxious way back in again. Xadrez gazed calculatingly up into Cyk’nl’s hideous faces, spotted the failing ruins of a Hydresthean restaurant, and shortly after caught the huge, nearly gelatinous bubble it relinquished as its roof gave way.

Xadrez unsheathed his dagger, hand sweeping over his flawless pitch tether, as he rose above the chaos of two shattered cities.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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This is one of those "not-quite a reserve, but I will probably post here in the near future" posts.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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"Ugh."

Hearing Jen's noncommittal grunt, Arkal looked up from his work.

"Ah. You're awake. I've got something to talk to you about..."

"Save it," she grumbled. "I have a throne to reclaim. And it's the Ovoid's stupid fault."

"And how exactly do you plan to do that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Get out of this place - where are we, anyways?"

"The Ovoid."

Jen sighed. "Figures. That stupid thing is always causing trouble. If it hadn't grabbed that dragon, I wouldn't be dead and have this worm crawling around..."

"Hey, I'm keeping you alive. I could stop if I really wanted to, you know."

"Shut up. Anyways, because of that, they said I'm not queen any more and now they're trying to make this mermaid into the new queen."

"And this is more important than the future of all non-human races in every dimension?"

She blinked.

"Right now? Yeah. Well, okay, not really, but I can do more to deal with whatever you're talking about when I'm queen again. Anyways, there's this dragon in Hydresther, it's got Cyk'nl on its back, and I'm pretty sure they told Kath she has to kill it to be queen. So I'm killing it first. Not entirely sure if that'll " She glanced at the sword in her hands. "This should help, though if you've got anything better for the job, I wouldn't mind it."

Arkal was relatively unsurprised by her reply. "What's Hydresther, and how do we get there?"

"Underwater city. And, uh... I don't know. Got anything that can crack an Ovoid?"

Before they could say anything else, they felt the ground beneath them move.

The Ovoid was descending upon Hydresther.

SpoilerShow

For everyone's reference: The Ovoid's not going to reach the city until slip's next post.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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In her youth, whenever Jen had to do something monotonous—say, shucking corn—she helped pass the time by imagining what the simple task looked like from a microscopic level. She pictured the individual fibers of the plant snapping like palm trees in a hurricane, little germs fleeing in all directions, and for a rare moment Jen stopped being the submissive daughter, the shy and unlikable middle schooler, shucked her personality of the B+ student to reveal something golden and nutritional underneath. She was the destroyer of worlds. She was powerful.

Jen allowed herself to imagine, briefly, how the Ovoid felt.

To just sink would be a bit too pedestrian for the anomaly; showy as ever, the Ovoid had to distort and stretch and speed up and slow down and generally act like a broken film reel of a lava lamp. Arkal, in a moment, was a hundred yards away from her, and then on top of a hill above her, and then gone; for a moment Jen could see right in front of her face a crew of low-budget pirate cosplayers struggling to board their vessel; when she finally bumped into Kracht, it was like very suddenly getting a boyfriend. She felt secure with the one thing in this world that was guaranteed permanent grabbing her a bit roughly by the shoulder.

“Hey there,” she said to Kracht, gratefully. She felt a little guilty, all of a sudden, for her prolonged association with the knife-wielding maniac who had devoted most of the past two rounds to killing this perfectly friendly chunk of rock. “I assume you’ve been through this before.”

”It usually doesn’t get this… excitable… this fast,” Kracht responded glibly. There was a note of sadness in Kracht’s voice harmonizing with the note of sadness that had always been there; something had changed this round. As if confirming her suspicion, Kracht asked half a question. ”I, um. Are you…”

”Spit it out, Kracht.com. Pretend it’s a list. ‘Top 5 Things I Have to Say to Jen (And Why I’m A Bitch About It)’. You can do it.”

”Are you going to kill me?” Kracht blurted out, a bit pathetically.

Jen giggled sleepily. “Kill you? Come on Kracht, you’re like a Hostess snack cake with a cream filling of pure diamond. Which leads us to, A) how am I supposed to kill something with no expiration date, and B) why would I want to kill something so delicious? Answer me this, Mr. Time DJ.”

Kracht sulked. ”Listen, Jen, when you’re as accustomed to it as I am, familiarity can be a kind of drug.” The Ovoid seemed to have settled a bit, leaving Jen and Kracht islanded in a place that was both underwater and dry, pitch-black and sunlit. ”Things are different now. All this water. Alexei. You dying, and…” Kracht looked uneasily at Fanthalion, who hissed at him coyly. ”I’m sorry, I’ve gotten out of the habit of asking names.”

”Its name’s—sorry, her name is Fantha.”

”Yes, well, ‘Fantha,’ you’re a part of it too. …I don’t know, sometimes I get these… solipsist notions. Like the whole world is just a recurring dream that incarnates all the little fragments of myself, except in this one suddenly I’m drowning. And now I’m starting to think, if I just, no, when I finally get shattered, and all these little fragments, you and Xadrez and Arkal and the whole world are just falling to the floor without a me to reflect anymore, maybe that’s when all this starts to matter. No more do-overs, no more continuity. The universe begins when I die. This sounds stupid, I’m rambling, sorry.”

Jen took a seat on the surprisingly soft Ovoid surface. “Kracht,” she said. “Moses—you know Moses, right? You know of Moses.” Kracht nodded, sitting down across from Jen. “Moses told me once when my friend Nostal Joe died, some years back. Great guy, Joe, you remind me of him, I guess. I was in a pretty bad way, and I, you know I did some spells and I was sort of out of it and I went down to this little seaside village where I met the guy, which was also where I buried him. And where I used to have friends in this place and run around with a wooden sword with ten-year-old kids and it was one of the only places in the whole Place where there was never anything unexpected going on and I could just relax, but now, now coming back there with this guy’s death just sort of treating my gut like a bouncy castle… it all seemed so small. Small, and backwards, and poor, and it smelled like fish and I… I just couldn’t look at it. I ordered it razed. I was in talks with the royal arsonists, talking about it like it wasn’t any sort of significant thing, just a day on the job, talking about, you know, how to create this aesthetically pleasing conflagration with zero casualties and relocate everyone to that city with the upside-down wall, I forget what it was called, and feed the ashes to the Indus Tree. And I was starting to relax, like it would make everything better if this place just weren’t here anymore, and I could make a new village after a while that would supposedly be better, and in comes Moses, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why he was mad. And he just pulls me aside and he tells me that it’s ‘rather common’ for people who’ve faced death to ‘attempt to recontextualize their predicament in terms of rebirth.’ Winter, for example he says, gives birth to spring. But, Moses says this and I believe him, cause the guy’s been around a long time, and not just coasting for a few infinities like you have but he really lived a long life, you know? Moses says that’s a lie. Winter gives way to spring but the spring isn’t any better than it was last year, it’s the same old shit. And that spring is guaranteed every time to turn into another winter, in turn. So who am I, he asks me,’ to seek catharsis in autumn?’ And he was right. I just wanted to watch the leaves turn red and fall off so the world would be in the same place I was.”

Kracht gave a dry smile. ”I’ve watched a lot of movies in my day, Jen. I’ve heard about all the anti-suicide speeches man is capable of writing. You don’t have to worry about me, I don’t want to die. I’m just… confused as to why I haven’t.”

”Yes, well, that’s what Xadrez is working on figuring out this very moment, as a side project from his grand plan of saving the universe from whatever-the-fuck or whatever the fuck—”

”We should talk about th—“

”No we shouldn’t,” interrupted Jen. “I have my own problems. At this point—and the degree of calm I’m displaying by suggesting this from my very, very high-stress position should be considered pretty commendable—at this point I don’t see any reason why anyone else should die at all.”

Kracht’s smile faded. ”As much as things change, your majesty, death is not an enemy that can be fought. Especially not in the Grand Battle.”

”Don’t call me that.”

”’Your majesty’? Things have changed, if you’ve decided to be modest.”

”I haven’t ‘decided’ anything,” snapped Jen. “I lost the Green when I died. The Place is a—” she spat the word “democracy for a bit, and then it’s going to be taken over by a sexy mermaid who I think is also a serial killer. So that’s… that’s how my day’s been going.”

”Oh. Yeah, well that’s different.” Kracht shuddered. ”As much as it unsettled me falling into your domain, being Green and all, belonging to someone else—someone I have never met… is worse.”

”It’s bad feelings all around. And I mean, I’ve gotten used to the idea of not really thinking of myself as a queen anymore. I was just walking around the ‘real’ world or whatever and meeting people and not paying taxes and I was pretty happy. But now this idea that I might not see it again, on account of some stupid loophole. It sucks.”

Kracht clapped his hands together with a rather piercing and uncomfortable sound. ”I can fix that,” he said. ”Of course you can see the Place again. You figured it out a long time ago. The Ovoid.”

”The Ovoid can take me there? I didn’t think we were on really good terms.”

”No, no.” Kracht stood up abruptly. ”But being here makes things a bit more pliant. You can extend a sort of scrying spell to reach the Place. Sometimes even send messages.”

Jen nodded excitedly. “Shit. Yes, of course I can. I just need to—what do I need to do?”

”Improvise. You’ve only ever figured it out in the past.”

Jen smiled. “Alright. Sit with me. Fantha, stretch around to the side a bit, it’s going to need to be the three of us in a circle. No, scratch that, in an oval. Ow. There’s a girl. Join hands.” Jen reached out and touched Fantha with her left hand, and came to the odd realization that she could feel what Fantha felt, though with a slight time lapse. Her other hand was encompassed in Kracht’s rather larger and colder hand. Kracht touched Fantha lightly on the wyrm’s chin, and the oval was complete.

There was a minute of silence, as Jen’s breathing and Fantha’s slight up-and-down motions slowed down and came into synch with the faint pulses of radiation off of Kracht’s unmoving body. Then, while remaining seated, Jen arose and stood in the center of the oval. She seemed somewhat older, though it may have just been the lack of stripes in her hair and the substitution of her bizarre tie-dye outfit for a simple green dress the strap to which constantly threatened to fall off of one shoulder (the same shoulder that would have ordinarily had Fantha sticking out of it). Jen smiled and looked down at her seated self, whose eyes were closed and who appeared very small. Then she looked further down and tapped the ground with her bare foot. “You’re in on this too,” Jen told the Ovoid, “whether you want to be or not.” The ground gave no reply. “Alright,” concluded Jen, looking up at the sky, which was itself underwater, “Let’s do this shit.”
Jen gave a gesture and appeared to be working an invisible interface, shuffling through a series of menus that only she could see. She turned a knob and there was a piercing feedback noise that managed to be beautiful and harmonic despite itself. Jen turned off the sound. “Celestereo’s up in running,” she told herself/Fantha/Kracht/the Ovoid. “What are we feeling for working music? Gangster? Green Classical? Proto-pop?” She looked around expectantly. “Alright, alright,” she said. “A bit more contemporary. Be warned that being filtered through planes and shit tends to distort the lyrics to reflect the truth, but I’ve never been in the habit of listening too hard to lyrics. So, you know.” She turned another knob and a male voice began to sing.

“When I get older
I will be stronger
They’ll call me freedom
Just like a waving flag”

“Guilty pleasure of mine, I know,” said Jen, perhaps too softly to be easily heard over the music. “So what do you think, we visit the world tree?”

“…and never go back
And never go back
And never go back,” answered the music.

“Cool beans,” replied Jen. A small stalk was growing out of the ground. Jen stepped out of the way, singing along. “Born to a throne, stronger than Rome, um, something own.” She stopped, fearing that her rather poor singing voice would slow the growth of the world tree.

She needn’t have worried. It grew to several feet above her height, sprouted a rainbow of branches, leaves and fruits that cast a glaringly bright shade over Jen’s head, further isolating those involved in the ritual. “Thanks, Norse mythology!” said Jen, patting the tree. At her touch, nine rings began to circle the tree.

“…where I was grown
Cosmos we’d roam
Out of the green I
Made myself seen I
Became the queen…”

Gold letters hanging in the air identified one of the rings as “Groennheim;” this struck Jen as completely unnecessary as it was the only ring that was bright green, and gave off an imperceptibly soft sound of children laughing. She touched the ring and everything went green. Kracht, the seated Jen, Fantha, and a sound that might have been the voice of the Ovoid began to sing along very loudly as Jen, feeling the presence of something much more powerful than her, struggled to hold onto the ring.

“When you were older
Your arm was longer
You had a kingdom
You were its verdant flag
But now you’re a rag
But now you’re a rag
But now you’re a—”

Celestereo cut out with a twang and a crash. The world tree was gone and all was red and green and beige. For a moment she thought she had failed, and then for another moment she thought she was dead, and then she opened her eyes.

The circle was now nowhere, and was also properly circular, having opened up a bit to accommodate an ovoid manifestation of the Ovoid. Fantha retreated to a comfortable length, and Kracht stood, pointing upwards. There was a sound of flags rustling.

Jen looked up and it felt more like looking inwards. Bulging slightly as though refracted through a glass ball, there was an image of a green castle.

Jen’s lips quivered but she didn’t cry. Fantha coiled around her neck in the wyrm’s closest approximation of a hug. All Jen could say was “home.”

* * * * * *

Kath felt her world becoming increasingly abstract. The veins and assorted other passageways of the hydra’s body gave way at points to stone walls, rooms of coral, and pools of clean salt water. She led her froglike companions through a digestive organ through which a river of acid run, and helped evade a couple of those dragons that seemed to litter the place for no apparent reason, but also past a virus that spoke in math and wouldn’t let her cross until she solved its riddles (when it began to cheat, she killed it). When they got lost, they encountered a tapeworm that would only tell them the way to the heart if they bought into its pyramid scheme, and failing that, if they brought him a fruit that only grows in the hydra’s adrenal gland (the fruit tried several times to escape from them, and when restrained would not shut up about its exploits in online videogaming). Kath met a brain that seemed completely unaware that it was inside a hydra at all, and Kath began to suspect that the brain was right, that she had long ago left the insides of the creature, or had never been there at all. The twisting passages of the labyrinth gave off an overwhelming impression that there was nothing outside, that she was simply nowhere, that even the politically-motivated frogs accompanying her were just paper dolls propped up to serve as foils, or perhaps tools, as a part of her test.

After what might have been weeks or hours (though she inwardly suspected, quite correctly, that it had been more like minutes), Kath and the frogs (they had no names) found themselves in a particularly clean-looking blood vessel, with walls that might have been copper except for the faint way they pulsed. Up ahead they could faintly make out the sound of rushing fluid, a massive torrent of it that caused the ground to quake beneath us.

“The aorta,” said one of the frogs in hushed tones.

“I didn’t think it would be this easy,” said the leader of CORPSE. “Transcriber, we cannot go with you much further.”

Kath suppressed a smile. A little solitude would do her some good. “Why not?” she asked.

The frogs looked embarrassed. One of them sternly looked at the leader, who scratched his head. “We… cannot swim,” he said.

Kath rolled her eyes. “Idiots. I’ve been traipsing around this place with a bunch of—”

Then there was a light.

When the light (partly) subsided, Kath found herself facing a sphere of pure white light. It was beautiful yet radiated malevolence, which caused Kath to feel a sort of kinship with it. The frogs recoiled in fear.

“B Cell!” shouted one of the frogs. “Run for your lives!” They ran and found themselves facing a second B Cell behind Kath. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh sh—”

The blubbering organelle found it within him to shut up when out of the white cell came six silhouettes; one feminine one in a mesmerizing shade of dark blue tinted with red, and five froglike ones the color of various “before” pictures in a commercial for cleaning products.

The female one approached Kath, staring intensely with pitch-black eyes. Kath realized she was looking at her own reflection, albeit inverted. The dark Kath spoke.

”I am Anti-Body,” it said with a voice like death. ”I am the other side of Alone. I am Abyss made Self. I am all that you will never learn to fear, or love.” The Anti-Body outstretched its hand. ”Join me, maid, and you will see such things growing on the underside of the Sculptor’s marble.”

Kath, for once, wasn’t sure if she was being led to the next part of her quest, or its end. She tentatively lifted up her hand, but was blindsided by the shockwave from the explosion that threw her to the ground (the Anti-Body remained still).

She looked around, there were only four frogs remaining, each pursued by or fighting against four Anti-Frogs. Another of the Anti-Frogs caught up with its original and the two were simply gone, causing another burst of energy.

Kath rose to her legs and faced the Anti-Kath, drawing her sword. The Anti-Body smiled and drew her own weapon, holding it by the blade and brandishing the hilt towards Kath.

The swords clashed. The Anti-Sword seemed heavier than her own, and with each motion of the duel Kath found her arm forced downwards painfully. The Anti-Body was toying with her, which didn’t seem right, according to Kath’s vague knowledge of microphilosophy. Shouldn’t they be equal?

Kath became aware that the Anti-Body was reading her thoughts around the time it said, ”We will never be equals except in annihilation. I come as an agent of the White; you are ‘dis-ease;’ you number among the ills of the world. The Hydra commumes with the White and the Anti-White to ensure Homeostasis Quo. You are neither side of the coin; you are nothing. You are merely Kath.” Kath, not knowing for sure quite why, found herself falling to her knees. She realized just how long she had been walking, how long she’d been wearing these ugly ineffectual legs. She saw her Anti-Body standing over her, not making a finishing move. Instead it leaned over and whispered in her ear.

”Don’t worry, Kath. The Ultra-Darkness doesn’t want you come to harm. We care for you. You’re the rough in the diamond. The bloodstain on the green dress. Watch.”

The Anti-Body nonchalantly raised her sword up to her mouth and touched the tip to her tongue, drawing a drop of green blood. Then she slit her own throat. Torrents of beautiful, sparkling green spilled out over her torso. ”Not exactly the standard template for an affectionate gesture,” said the Anti-Body, the melodrama draining out of its voice along with the blood, ”But we hope you get the sentiment, Kath. Don’t disappoint us.”

The Anti-Body burst into a black smoke that smelled of sex and harsh perfume. Kath tried not to breathe it in, but had always had difficulty holding her breath in air. She inhaled a brief gulp of the black stuff, but exhaled only air.

Then she was alone, with the sole surviving frog to keep her company. “Come on,” she told it, not bothering to try and figure out what just happened.

Two minutes later, they were at the shores of the hydra’s aorta. “This is where we part, I take,” Kath told the frog, without emotion.

“Yes indeed,” replied the frog, with a great wealth of emotion. “I pray that you may return to a free body, and aid in the process of decomposing the old to build a better world in the rotting carcass of liberty.”

Kath chuckled. “Of course,” she intoned, sagelike. “Because I’m doing this for you.”

The frog smiled hopefully. As his head fell off his body the smile folded into a sort of tilde. The rest of the organelle’s skin crumpled like a suit that nobody was bothering to wear anymore. Kath, despite her usual aversion to clothes, was struck by a sudden urge to wear the frog over herself. As she tied in her sword, she sighed, imagining that she felt a slight rattling in her respiratories—not pneumonic exactly, but like somebody trying to escape.

Kath looked over the edge, wished away her legs and allowed herself to fall into the river of blood.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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SpoilerShow

Presenting: A rather mediocre post in which Schazer vicariously fulfils her fantasies of fighting dragons atop city-hydras through a literarily unsatisfying commentator-esque dialogue and doesn't get a heck of a lot else done.

The blue head lifted labouriously, red-rimmed eyes glaring hangdog baleful at the tiny Xadrez as he rose past the huge, collapsing bubble round Hydresther. The way it stared, it seemed to imply the ceaseless torrent of sludge spewing from its mouth was the tactician’s fault. Xadrez noted with a glance that the head, distended even more hideously by the curvature of air and water, had spotted him, and scribbled the data on his chessboard. Beneath him, his bubble-lift threatened to break apart as a grey head snaked about and roared with a noise like machine prematurely meeting concrete. The spirit wavered, his still-rising pocket of air threatening to spill out from underneath him and cast him into the slums of Hydresther.

Fingers wrapped their way round the knife, and slammed it tip-first into the front of the chessboard. The whole assemblage tilted, the pocket of air suspending it glubbing sluggishly out from underneath, tipping the disc on a crash-course on a hopefully-smooth path into the main dome, and with a less-smooth touchdown on Cyk’nl. The surface tension of the giant bubble almost bounced Xadrez right off, before the dagger demanded a way in.

Everything ever promptly inverted, to the peal of wingbeats. It was like trying to steer loose change to some mythical Atlantean haven in the corner of a washing machine reserved for the Pocketly Forsaken. Xadrez snarled, flipping head over chessboard too wildly to sheath his knife, a neck big enough to march a funeral procession down hurtling ponderously closer-

Xadrez would’ve smirked in satisfaction if he had the features, as the obsidian disc axed neatly into the bloated, drowned-corpse sponge the blue head seemed to be made of. It arched its neck and uttered a secondary noise of choked pain as liquid filth poured its burning way down its windpipe. He scratched a few more notes, and then sheathed his dagger.

This was obviously going to be the easiest of the heads to defeat, assuming Cyk’nl’s monster could even be killed this way, but hell, Xadrez had to start somewhere. He levered his disc out; the creature’s blood-substitute evaporated off the glowing notations with an eye-watering sizzle. The dagger unsurprisingly struggled to near the creature’s overripe-fruit flesh, which burst brackish blood at the slightest touch or scrape. A bit of dragging and prodding finally freed the chessboard, which righted itself atop the hydra’s broad back. The spirit drifted Cyk’nlward, further from the languorous sway of the septic serpent’s neck; the better to study the bioarchitectural bulk of the city above him. Spongy, cerulean flesh curved upward until the point where it emerged from Cyk’nl’s underbelly, too steep for Xadrez to ascend. He coasted to the point his board started to protest the feasibility of the slope, then prodded the waterlogged wall in front of him with his dagger. Again, its tip seemed to shy from the tender flesh, knowing that even without a sharpened edge it could easily spill the creature’s toxic blood.

The dragon-hangar head swung up and around, organelles peering over the socket-rims of its cavernous eyes to stare down at the intruder. Its coppery jaws opened with a clang, a poisonously sunny gecko-like creature crawling all over the hydra’s teeth before it dropped like a stone toward Hydresther. Xadrez sheathed his dagger, hoping this sewerage-hydra head was tender enough to yield to his spectral fist. The tactician tapped his knuckle to it, feeling for the borderline constituent parts of it he could fool himself into considering as non-living, then took his best swing and ended up up past his elbow in corrosive sludge. It prickled, while the hiss of sewage on chessboard masked the snap far below of the gold dragon’s membranous fin-wings arresting its fall.

Xadrez lifted his chessboard with obvious effort, before letting its edge bite into the hydra. He pulled out his arm, shook off the sludge with a look of disgust, then raised his fist to do it again. The head swung dolefully round at this affront, but couldn’t actually lift lest it inhale more of its own miasmic mire. Then the gold dragon swooped up and latched onto its face, claws digging into its droopy features for purchase, ignoring its protesting gurgles. Xadrez’ response was to punch another hole in the monster. Wound it, make it retreat inward, dragging the tactician with it up to the inorganic, the hull, something to carve and shuck and expose with all the elegant simplicity of a dagger’s twist-

The grotesque little lizard had clambered onto the sludge hydra’s back, its cruel, hooked claws tearing up the waterlogged tissue, leaking ichor. The hydra shuddered, and Cyk’nl seemed a sudden metre closer.

The slinking, snarling dragon, however, had crossed twenty in that same time, and showed no signs of stopping as it tore a putrid path across the hydra’s neck. With a sigh, the warlord jammed his tether into the monster, and spun fluidly to brandish his dagger at the arch-backed salamandrake. Its spine rippled like a cat’s, pre-hairball; and it spat something equally foul-smelling but significantly more corrosive at Xadrez. He sidestepped (drifted?) it, and was rather pleased with the foot-wide cigarette burn it left on the hydra’s neck behind him. The duo’s living platform shuddered pleasingly, and retreated further, this time dragging the chessboard impaled in its bulk with it. The gold dragon spat another globule, before realising it didn’t do much to the obsidian disc, and opted to scramble its claw-bloodying way up the hydra’s back instead. Xadrez jabbed it at strategic points with his dagger to keep it at bay without crippling it – those gouging claws scrambling all over the hydra were doing the tactician’s job for him. Seeing as his weapon acted more like a truncheon than a knife, though, crippling it wasn’t that much of an issue. Xadrez’ own maneuverability was, on the other hand - lodged in place while the skulking, honey-coloured beast scrambled around him in its rather uninspired but persistent attempts to remove him.

Another mouthful of bile missed Xadrez’ head; another weeping burn to the hydra. The turbine was a mere two arm’s reaches away, but then gold slithered between the spirit and the city and spat acid derision all over Xadrez.

Raising an arm proved useless; it just meant he was now missing a forearm in addition to a left shoulder and side of his face. The dragon snarled with satisfaction, then unhooked its carving-knife claws and fell at the tactician.

being dislodged is highly suboptimal

To otherwise distract

Xadrez raised his knife as if to ineffectually parry, then stabbed it into the festering blast burn on the hydra’s back. He stabbed it. He struck true, the motion free of tilt or angle to let the dagger glance to the side.

And the blade, drowning in hydra blood, screeched. It was even setting Xadrez’ recently ventilated outline ashimmer, and the gold dragon didn’t stand a hope. It landed in a tangled heap on the chessboard, failing to escape while also covering its ears from the noise. It eventually writhed its way off the septic head’s back, this time without the sound of its wings catching it. The other heads of the hydra could hear the cacophony too, and didn’t sound particularly pacified by it either. The grey one with several rows of glowing eyes unhinged both its jaws and wreaked stream-crossed havoc across what was left of Hydresther as it roared.

Xadrez, meanwhile, had realised; as the turbine’s mouth approached in time with the head’s retreat; that in its present hysterical state, the knife was buzzing to the point it couldn’t cut anything. Stabbing himself with it didn’t shut it up, or clean the blood off. All it did was lend the spirit the sensation of a jackhammer striking his chessboard. Which was still wedged a decent way into the blue neck.

Cyk’nl’s underbelly, which less than a minute ago looked like access - the forced mate in six - was now looking far less helpful. And a lot more impassably solid. The knife was screaming; Cyk'nl's monster thrashed and howled, Copper clamping its jaws round Blue as though the noise what that poor stupid creature's fault. What Xadrez would've given to be able to observe all this from anywhere but here.

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

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*Edit: pooblahdingleberries.

Nevermind, can't think of anything to do.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Xadrez.

My lady

The tactician had, as per his mistress' orders, followed the flow of souls to Chartevael. The quicksilver alps of the Mirrorlands below seemed to warp and shiver through the dregs of the Dead Tide; those errant souls who failed to find the Realm's proximity unnerving. It was homesick, warped-in-the-head types like that which made more content souls forsake the place, but Xadrez trusted his mistress.

She arrived, the dead carousing and clamouring around her like they always did. The current shifted wildly around the goddess, unsurprising considering she maintained the entire fluid structure of the Plane of the Dead. The tactician felt small and insignificant and safe beneath Scout's gaze.

I came as you requested, my lady

Yes. My loyal little Xadrez. I have a gift for you. Scout radiated satisfaction as Xadrez examined the dagger.

It is-

Of the finest workmanship, yes. It was made by your old master's hands, no less.

Sabre?

Indeed.

The spirit ran his fingers along the dagger's edge, searching for non-existent flaws as he considered. If his senses were reading this right, there was a good reason the goddess had given him the knife in a place like Chartevael, where the Plane melded a little smoother with the Realm.

It can cut anything

Almost, Xadrez. Sabre himself decreed that knife shall never draw blood.

But it will cut anything else

Save flesh.

Why

Sabre himself decreed, that knife shall never draw blood.

Xadrez sighed. Being a god's favourite was certainly an enviable position, but their insistence on being so vague and riddlesome made them infuriating company. Or, at least, it made Scout, the Lady of the Dead, so - Xadrez hadn't personally met Sabre, Lord of the Living, the Craftsman, the Planesmith, the Architect. The siblings were the two lone gods of this world - though history had proven time and again they would gift mortals with traces of their power on a seeming whim - masters of their respective domains.

There was Origin, Reality Himself, too; but from what Xadrez understood of Scout's stories He had faded away after He split the world into Plane and Realm and bound Sabre and Scout to hold dominion over them both and it was only now that the tactician stared levelly into his goddess' guiltless little smile with something like reproach. She smiled, a little apologetic, having bent his thoughts that way for her strange, capricious reasons.

Why did his Lordship give you this

it is a weapon i suspect unparalleled in the realm

Sabre requested that I hand that tool to a soul of keen mind. One willing to wander the Periphery as they studied his domain from above. A deity of strategy, of fate and war and chance. Do you accept the position, Xadrez?


Xadrez was taken aback by the sudden request, but couldn't refuse. The dagger's ungodly howl tore through time before the aching recollection could be completed. The tactician hissed with frustration as Scout, the Plane, and the spirits scattered before the scream of the knife.

It wasn't Xadrez' place to kill the hydra; it was Her Highness'. The spirit had almost reached this conclusion just as everything shimmered, collapsed in on itself, then exploded back into existence all in a blink of tan. The four remaining heads roared with pain as blood and sewage rained on the ruins of Hydresther.

Oh

there you are



Xadrez coldly appraised the cavernous interior he found himself in. A blast zone of corruptive beige stretched across the muscled floor beneath him like a scar. His knife was silent, sealed in an atoms-thin shell of Ovoid that extended up to the tactician's wrist. He looked around for something inorganic, and failing that, drifted to a nearby wall and touched the tanned dagger's tip to the flesh.

There was the usual, familiar deflection as the knife shied away, when something seemed to grip it and carve a murderous red line across the wall before Xadrez could lower his arm.

The spirit stared at his weapon. It hummed, the blood trembling its way off the beige veneer - underneath it, Xadrez' fingers burned where they met the still-howling knife. He stared into the gloom, hearing for the first time a river's flow in the knifeless silence.

Xadrez deliberated for a little longer, then drifted off to investigate.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

This is probably a reserve, I'll see what I can come up with.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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Arkal was lost.

One minute he'd been talking to Jen, the next the damn Ovoid had shifted and she was gone.

He'd considered wandering, but the damn thing was moving so erratically that frankly, his chances seemed just as good if he stayed still and waited for it to drop him off near the others. He picked up his anvil and forge before the damn thing decided to fling them away to god-knows-where, then stood up and waited through all the shaking and stretching and shifting.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. The Ovoid was still.

Arkal waited a minute to make sure it was going to stay that way. It did, but all of a sudden there was a shrieking sound piercing through the walls.

"Nothing this damn Ovoid does ever makes any sense," he grumbled under his breath. "I mean, I'd guess this ghastly noise means it's in pain or shocked or something, but for all I know it means it's decided to take a nap."

Whatever the cause for the stillness, Arkal decided to start looking around. Not that he was sure just what he was searching for, but he reasoned there was bound to be something. Even if it was just Jen or Kracht.

He soon found what seemed to be the source of a river. Or at least, a river of Ovoid. He stared at the large pool of tan liquid, realized he had no idea what it was for, and decided he might as well at least check where it was flowing to. If the Ovoid was hurt, it might be using this to point him towards the cause of the pain.

Not that he had the slightest clue as to whether that was actually the case. Or if he'd have any idea what to do with whatever he found even if it was. Hell, he wasn't even sure if he wanted to help the Ovoid, the damn thing was so confusing.

Still, it was all he had to go on. He followed the liquid trail downriver, and soon came across someone following it upriver.

Xadrez.

Arkal felt the chess piece reacting, and took it out to hear the spirit's words.

the ovoid has kracht under control

consequently the hydra is my top priority at the moment

your assistance is not necessary at present i will inform you if this changes

Arkal considered bringing up Kracht's words, but decided against it; Xadrez wouldn't trust anything from Kracht, and how else could Arkal explain any knowledge of events thousands of years in the future?

It would most likely just establish him as Xadrez's enemy. And, as the smith wasn't sure how to actually harm the spirit, doing so now wasn't worth the risk.

Then he noticed the odd coloring of the knife, and on Xadrez's fingers where he held it - a color he had come to associate with the Ovoid.

"What happened to your hand?" he asked, as Xadrez hovered further upstream. The spirit continued to float away even as he spoke through the chess piece.

that is unimportant

if it is ever necessary for you to be informed of such details i will inform you of them without prompting

Arkal grumbled for a bit, put the chess piece away, then turned around and headed upstream. He wasn't too keen on letting Xadrez just do as he pleased with no one to watch him.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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Caveside is a village that attracts a certain type of resident, and this is most often attributed to the smell. It’s a sickening, chemical smell, formaldehyde and pheromones with a hint of brimstone and diesel; depending on one’s mood it might keep one indoors, or draw one into the cave from which it wafts. People who will go to a town that smells like Caveside are suspiciously homogeneous: for one thing, they’re male humans, mostly; they’re either very tall, very short, very fat, or very thin, with a very small or a very big nose; religious in a fatalistic capacity, yet not averse to crime; prone to tell stories, when drunk, of their poor relationship with their mothers. There are also a number of whores of both genders, though they tend to dodge the census, not wanting to be thought of as residents of Caveside; these whores are to the one the richest people in Caveside, though all of them think of themselves as down on their luck, due to the poor odds of their retiring or leaving in the near future.

Caveside was always one of the ugliest places in the Place, and for this reason, as well as her culpability in its needing to exist, the Queen never failed to pop in once a year to admire the harvest.

The main crop of Caveside is abominations. These are sometimes grown as plants, sometimes raised as livestock, and end up looking much the same, in that they look nothing like anything. Everybody in Caveside eventually learns the trick of growing abominations, bombarding them with murky glowing magic and pruning off anything that seems to fit in with the rest. Once the abomination is complete, when the twin helixes of form and function (as the texts describe it) are unraveled and crumpled into chaos, it is brought to the cave, and there devoured by the Mother Dragon.

Jen watches, both separated by an ovoid veil and closer to everything than she ever has been, as the dragonslayers sneak into the cave. They wear facemasks to keep the smell at bay and earplugs so they can ignore the amelodic growl that comes from the Mother Dragon’s mouth, stirring into rumbling moans as she is hit by the occasional contraction of time and space. Then slayers have been instructed that if they cut her womb open, they will find no embryo or sac of eggs but a cyclone of possible embryos, the sight of which will lead to insanity and probably undying loyalty to the queen, so they should rather go for the neck.

Unaware that they are currently being watched with disgust by their rightful queen, the two dragonslayers are comfortably awash in an idea of nobility that supercedes the irony of their destroying the last chance of their future employment. Surely they need the vast influx of money that the upcoming birth will bring them: the centaur, let’s call him Jack, has several children to provide for and has lately taken to the ignoble profesion of smuggling letters and packages through routes unauthorized by the Post; the spider-vampire, let’s call her Jill, has been unable to maintain her expensive diet of silk and her body, once a favorite subject of first-year art students both due to the intrinsic beauty of her curves and the complexity of shadows cast by her four-each arms and legs, has withered away to something barely worth commenting on. Unfortunately, neither slayer entered their profession out of any notion of romantic heroism or even the promise of wealth, but by a piercing hatred of the dragon paradigm as a whole. They intend to bring it to obsolescence before its next iteration so much as begins; Jen is confident that they will fail, probably dying but certainly learning the folly of their ways. The former Queen remarks, without a great degree of hope, that she had intended to be there for the birth; then she turns the page on reality.

* * * * *

In the Place birds are shining, the sun is singing, little pebbles are falling down; a reverse tsunami creates an entire village. The three-piece suit is invented, completed with necktie; its tailor considers it for a moment then tosses it into the fire, cursing his mistake. A river flows from the ocean delta to a lake on a mountaintop, and the wind blows downwards, to the annoyance of some subterranean puffins. In a wedding ceremony between a four-year-old girl and the locket that tells her to cut off the hair of strangers, the best man breaks down in tears, then in laughter. About thirty miles west of everywhere, there is a great bargain on reanimated toad corpses, and folks come from all directions, arriving by the east road. An actor and a cow fall asleep simultaneously, each hitting the pillow so hard that they swap dreams. A lad of twelve makes an underhanded bargain with the gods, instructing them to incarnate as a very specific set of objects along a very specific path, and in exchange he offers to share with them the prize for the scavenger hunt. The word “flifsk” isn’t used by anybody for an entire day, so it retroactively pops out of existence. All of these things Jen saw, and for the most part understood.

* * * * *

On the Isle of Fuck This Isle, the Congress of Bastards reacted to the news of their queen’s death by getting wasted.

It was the third day since the word had reached them. Jethro of Man’s Man’s Quarry was very loudly telling a meandering and pointless story to Hr’drp the 64/13 and Most Clever Earl of Sky, who both seemed to find it uproariously funny. Father Grand watched on, bemoaning their sinful behavior, while Automatomboy moped and nursed a glass of water from the Ocean of Scotch. A chess game started between Half Moon Jack and She Whose Name is Forbidden by Three Separate Laws, devolved into backgammon, and came to an awkward halt when nobody agreed to be the Dungeon Master. There was a brief uninspired debate about Herman Melville before everybody came to the awkward realization that they were in a fantasy land and Herman Melville was not a thing.

It at last came to be that everyone agreed to sit down and have a chat about how best to flatter or else depose the new monarch who would probably come into power pretty soon, to the eventual effect of being pardoned or else shortening the term of the banishment imposed upon them by the previous monarch. The bickering accelerated until the Chad Vanderbilt announced that he had to “take a dump the size of your mom’s dick” and Jen decided she’d rather look somewhere else.

* * * * *

The Unlibrarian, who in a past life had gone by the Librarian, woke up at 5 and a third hours past high noon, to the sound of a mockingbird who had been enchanted to hear the voices at the bottom of the ocean. “Cxzneuioadafjkl,” it called.

The Unlibrarian groaned and rolled onto the left side of his bed, stumbling in the dark for some sort of breakfast. He grabbed his hat, so he ate it approximately, but not exactly not necessarily more or less than, half of it.

He dressed himself in a shirt of fire and grasshopper-leather pants with a month-old cookie in the pocket; missing his hat, he covered his head in flour. The clock struck fourteen-ninety-two, and he discovered a globe, which he shattered.

The shirt of fire began to dig away at the stitches through which the Middle-Gem was sewed to his chest, so he made that stop happening somehow and by the time it was done it was rapidly approaching both two and five o’ clock. The Unlibrarian cooked and ate last Thursday’s lunch and felt that if it never made him less hungry it would make him drowsy sometime in the spring, though he couldn’t be certain.

The Unlibrarian spent twenty-one minutes throwing dartboards at a dart, while blindfolded. He didn’t keep score, though he felt he had done worse than last time, which he supposed was good. He walked downstairs, then upstairs, then upstairs, then upstairs, then jumped off the roof, then jumped off the floor, then jumped off the wall. He found himself in his study; thus it was that the Unlibrarian decided to undergo cutting up his books and rearranging the words in aesthetically awkward combinations under his bed.

The Unlibrarian made an extensive list of words that didn’t rhyme and fed them to a reptilian thing he didn’t remember ever introducing to his butler, who was dead anyways. By noon he had deified a number of flowers that neither stood out nor overtly failed to stand out, in an effort to correct this error, and succeeded somehow. He wrote a poem about his blossoming sexuality, using only words he hadn’t used in his list of words that didn’t rhyme.

It was clear to all observing (which included Jen and her companions, among others) that the strain of his job was starting to get to the Unlbrarian. He was getting old faster than he should, and also getting young in a different direction than he ought. Eventually he was compelled to leave the chaos behind for a minute and walk, left-right-left-right like he used to, out to the balcony.

Outside of the Middle-House, from which the gods take their cues, all was serene. The Unlibrarian felt the Middle-Gem throb in his chest, observing nature and beginning to draw patterns, developing rhythms. The Unlibrarian felt a pang of fear and shame and ran back into the house.

Several impartial observers (except perhaps partial in that they had taken bets) wondered when the Unlibrarian would die, and when he did, what would happen. Would the chaos he had left in the Middle-House become self-sustaining, or would it dissolve into order, stagnancy, even society? The very nature of that-which-isn’t rested on this game of anarchy. The odds at the moment favored that a new queen would arise and kill or reassign the Unlibrarian herself, bringing constancy and order to the philosophy of magic once more. There would follow a time of science.

Jen stopped watching, partly because keeping up with time in the Unlibrarian’s Middle-House was a headache-inducing ordeal, partly out of guilt. She had had to make some hard decisions, back when she couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t all her responsibility.

* * * * *

Finally she brought herself to look inside the castle. Just outside the moat, the world was ashimmer with revolution; she couldn’t see any of the various dissenters , deserters, anarchists, republicans, legitimists, ill-wishers and hippies who surrounded the castle, their having invoked a mythical right to privacy, but she had been in these situations before and could identify many of them through the muffled sounds and smells alone. Jen sighed. Whatever were to happen next, it would not be without a battle.

Inside, everything went a bit blurry, but in a different, greener way, as though a tortoise with a monocle were everywhere at once; poor Moses always got like this when not directly observed. Jen tried clearing her throat in five dimensions, and this Moses seemed to hear, for he suddenly decided to exclusively exist right in front of where she was viewing.

Moses cocked his head, as excitedly as he could do anything. He looked very old and tired. ”Your once and future Majesty,” said Moses, in that somewhat less reserved tone he always used to substitute the entire emotional spectrum, ”Very well of you to drop by. May I ask what afterlife you are in? I perceive… beige. It doesn’t suit you.”

”Moses, I’m alive,” said Jen at a pitch just sort of shouting, but the meaning failed to penetrate the barrier between worlds. The Ovoid gave a slightly feminine rumble, as though judging her, or attempting to impart maternal wisdom. The window was beginning to close.

Kracht sighed. These sorts of elaborate rituals weren’t really his style, as far as his magical training went. He rose from the circle, causing the window to begin to crack and become convex.

Kracht, feeling vaguely that he was profaning something just short of divine but not really caring, shoved aside the faintly-glowing avatar of Jen, and simply punched through the window.

Were the mineral made of flesh or even something so pedestrian as steel, this would have been a problem. In the microscopic infinity separating Ovoid and Place were suns and galaxies and demons; his arm passed briefly through a space where the universe was constantly being created. Having survived Creation events many times before, Kracht had assumed this wouldn’t be a problem, but those hadn’t been quite so… focused. It stung him, kind of a lot.

Once his arm, blackened by microcosmic soot, had punched through to the place, he pulled at the other side of the window, revealing his face in front of Moses. “She’s alive,” he told the tortoise, sardonically. “But she has bigger things to worry about right now. Whatever comes next on your end, just stall it.”

Kracht pulled his arm back through to the Ovoid and the window collapsed. For a moment there was pitch blackness broken only by the respective faint glows off of Kracht and the Jen-avatar; then the Jen disappeared, her dress folding into a scarf, and the strange unnatural light of the Ovoid flickered back on. The world-tree stayed rooted in place, although now it was just a tree.

Jen woke up, sighing deeply. There was a sound not unlike water flowing. In one quick yet slightly disjointed motion she got up, snatched up the scarf, wrapped it around Fantha a couple of times, and then confronted Kracht.

“Bigger things to worry about? Jesus on a stick… two sticks, I guess… Jesus, Kracht, show a little tact.”

”My arm,” was all Kracht would say, polishing the hurt appendage.

”Your arm? My fucking shoulder! No offense,” she added, nodding in Fantha’s direction.

Both Jen and Kracht sighed, neither of them wanting to push the matter any further. They began to walk downstream, vaguely aware that the Ovoid was beginning to decelerate under their feet. Wherever they were headed, they would be arriving soon.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Kath gasped. It might've been the extended ambulation through the innards of Cyk'nl, but she'd come down with a strong bout of oddly good sense that said she didn't want a lungful of whatever she was swimming through. The bartender-artful blending of blood and phlegm in an accessory heart seemed a good a point as any for a respiratory reminder - not to mention the walls closing in around her.

The sword came out and made short work of it, the vessel splitting with an almost musical ripple. Kath stepped out, and looked up and down the corridor.

It wasn't Hydresther, it wasn't Cyk'nl, and it was barely the innards of a monstrous city-serpent. The seweresque circulatories like the one the maid had just crawled out of were still present, but reconfigured to a higher logic again. They all ran across the corridor, rather than down it, though they varied in size and height. Kath jumped over a gutter of churning black bile, slashed through a few foul-smelling noodly vessels at head height, before resisting the temptation to prod the swollen, tunnel-sized vein embedded in the ceiling with her sword.

As she negotiated the corridor (featureless save for the blood vessels), it eventually occurred to Kath the whole thing was curving steadily to the right. Very steadily.

Kath walked a bit further, found a gap in the wall on the right, ran the rheumy-eyed crone standing there through with her sword before it could vocalise its bewildered outrage, and pressed on.


---

Hydresther was starting to drift into focus, when the Ovoid started screaming. Jen and Kracht were unceremoniously spat out. Jen hit the vaguely-intact skyscraper's top floor and swore at the beige son of a bitch, which poked its elliptical nose out at them just to make it clear they weren't out of its sights. Kracht just stared gloomily up at the snaking heads of Cyk'nl. A monsoon bucket-sized drop of blood rolled down the blue head's flanks, exploding as it hit the water.

The mineral sighed. "Whatever's going on up there, it doesn't want us anywhere near it."

"Fuck that," Jen shouted over the Ovoid, which was still wailing.

Fantha.

Hm?

Did that - did that fish cop have anything like jet propulsion?

[color=#red]I thought you'd never ask - I'll whip something up now. Although wings are probably more reliable-[/color]

I- No.

Maxwell's thing? That's all right. I understand.

Don't do that.

Sorry.


---


Kracht... felt thoroughly out of his depth. This whole round had kept him constantly on edge, each development forcing him to come to terms with the death of his perfect, victorious seven rounds. It was a bit like grieving, but with the constant depressing interruption (in the form of the latest landmark on the Xadrez and Ovoid Bastard Team Rail Trail) of your updated odds of survival.

It wasn't the first time he'd had to pull things back into shape, but it was the first time in a very long while. The nagging familiarity of the Ovoid's screams wasn't helping either.

Then it hit him. Kracht turned, but the amalgam had already vanished. The echo seemed to persist, the Ovoid-permeated landscape unable to forget the noise. He was still staring at the point the Ovoid had been when Jen grunted with pain, and primed the modified talons on her back with a unified click.

"Oh thank christ, it shut up."

"That was..."

"Xadrez? Yeah. I don't know what kind of stunt he's trying to pull, but it doesn't seem to be working for him. You think he would've learned from last time he fucked with the Ovoid, but whatever. Come on." Jen extended a hand impatiently.

"...What? How did you-"

"It's his knife, Kracht. He's screaming blue murder about betrayl or something. Seriously not a big deal. Now are you coming or not?"

"I- last time I heard that noise I died." Kracht sounded vaguely panicky.

Jen winced as her other arm finished weaponising, then stared at the green humanoid. "When the Ovoid made that noise?"

Kracht nodded, words suddenly spilling out. "Things were really derailing and the two of them did something this noise happened and they broke their way out of Round 4. I chased them through, amplified the rend, destroyed the pocket dimension and probably nuked a hole in the multiverse itself. The Observer had to reset the Battle."

Jen said nothing.

"The conditions aren't right - this isn't a pocket dimension - they can't tear this one apart. Oh god, you'd survived that time, too, things were a complete mess I had to kill you. You and me and the hundreds of innocents trapped in the wall ghoul's labyrinth.

That was the worst iteration, Jen. I don't know if I can bring myself to do that again."

"Fine. You won't have to."

"You're sure?"

"Hell no," scoffed Jen. "Now come on."

Kracht accepted a hand, gloved in something exoskeletal. There was a click, and the two were launched skyward. The head housing draco-aerial support turned to greet them, a slate-grey beast wriggling out from between its teeth and launching itself at Jen with a screech.

Jen braced her free-flying form behind her taloned arm as she lined the dragon in her sights. The blast slowed their trajectory beautifully, Kracht grabbing for the hydra's immobile eyelid and hauling Jen up into the hangar-like upper skull's interior. She collapsed against a wall with a gasp and a radiation-induced bout of dizziness; Kracht rolled his shoulder as he morphed the crystal of his arm into something sharp and suitable for cutting through the swarthe of organelles they'd just interrupted.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Reserved, because why not.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Xadrez thoroughly ignored Arkal as they walked back to the source of the stream. Arkal couldn't tell whether it was because the spirit considered him an ally, or simply didn't consider him a serious threat.

Regardless, it soon ceased to matter, because the Ovoid started shifting again. Arkal cursed the damn thing as the walls and floors moved around him.

***

The few inhabitants of Hydresther who were still in the city and alive would have had a hard time believing they could see anything stranger.

The arrival of the floating city, and subsequent awakening of the hydra within, had been odd enough. The sudden appearance of the strange tan island was even odder; at least the hydra was something they could understand the structure of. But the island was simply bizarre.

That was before the island started growing into a head. Or something which vaguely resembled a head.

A tail soon followed, then arms, and feet. The body appeared last. Strangely, they weren't directly connected, at least as far as an observer in the third dimension could see.

Despite this oddity, and the strangely ovoid shape of its body parts, the overall form of the entity resembled a gigantic lizard, as tall as the hydra.

The new arrival grabbed one of the heads, and bit into it.

***

When the shifting finally stopped, Arkal was on the ceiling. At least until gravity intervened.

The drop looked unpleasantly long. Not wanting to find out how long firsthand, Arkal grabbed the flail he had constructed from the raft, and flung one end of it between two stalactites (or something closely resembling them, at least). The log wedged itself between them tightly, stopping the smith's descent before it could get severe. Thankfully, the sturdy cord could easily support Arkal's weight. He made a mental note to ask somebody where to find more if he had the chance.

Climbing along the cord, Arkal soon reached the stalactite. At this point, he saw that there were quite a lot of them... and quite a few stalagmites, too. Neatly organized into a curving row at the top and another at the bottom.

And there was something golden in between the rows. More specifically, something that wasn't Ovoid-colored.

And the Ovoid was moving. Flailing, almost.

Before Arkal knew it, the foreign object that served as the wall had become the floor.

He extricated his log from between the... whatever the hell you call a rock poking out of the side of a wall. Damned if Arkal knew what that was. Then he walked onto the smooth, definitely-not-Ovoid surface.

Which was sort of gooey around the wall-rocks. Liquidy. And red.

Blood-red.

Arkal soon realized that the proper term for "rocks that stick out of the wall", at least in this case, was "teeth".

Whatever he was standing on was bleeding. It was also gigantic.

And he wasn't sure whether or not it was a good idea to let the Ovoid keep biting into it.

He decided to take a chance on the answer being "no", and raised his fist, bringing it down on one of the rocky teeth.

***

At this point, only a few stubborn individuals in Hydresther were still trying to make sense of the battle.

When the strange oval-lizard's head suddenly become its arm, it seemed as though it were taunting them.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

WHO CARES IF I HAVE THE LAST POST I CAN WRITE MORE IF I WANT TO

...so, uh, reserved.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Arkal didn't even try to puzzle out why there was now a slightly smaller piece of Ovoid in front of him, with some sort of crude claw on the end. Or why he was standing on one head of what seemed to be an enormous hydra with Cyk'nl on its back.

Nor did he question why he seemed to be in some unfamiliar city, which seemed to be underwater. That actually made the most sense, frankly; with all the thoughts that had occupied his mind, he wasn't sure if the Observer had mentioned such a city specifically, but it actually made sense. At least, more sense than everything else he had seen.

What caught his interest the most were the dragons flying around. They seemed to be flying from out of the head he was standing on. Even stranger, the head was barely moving; its main purpose seemed to be spewing out dragons from its mouth.

Arkal was curious as to how exactly that worked. Was there a dragon hatchery inside or something? He'd have to get inside to get a closer look. But how, exactly?

A few dragons exited the mouth, flew upwards, and started circling the head. And Arkal had an idea.

He took out his mace. The sword would probably work better, but he didn't want to stain his message with blood if he could help it. He raised it in the air, and pounded on the head.

As he expected, one of the dragons broke out of the circle and flew towards him. As it dove in to strike, he surprised it by tackling its neck and pinning it.

Before the startled dragon could figure out what to do next, Arkal was sitting on its back.

"Now listen here," he said, having no idea if it would understand. "I want to go and see just where you came from. Fly me into the mouth, and there won't be any trouble. Is that clear?"

The dragon seemed confused for a moment, but then it took off and flew back towards the mouth as asked. Arkal stepped off when it seemed reasonably safe, and had a look around.

The first thing Arkal noticed was that the head lacked a tongue. Instead, the "floor" beneath him seemed to be made of a thick grey mush.

It shook beneath his feet for a few seconds, and a mound of mush rose up. After a minute or so, the mush formed into three fully-grown dragons; a strange organ of some sort on the roof of the mouth sprayed them with purple mist, and then they flew off.

It was very strange to witness, and Arkal saw it happen several times without being any less surprised.

He was more surprised when all of a sudden, a batch of three dragons was formed with tails in place of their heads.

The next had three dragons with heads in place of their tails.

The one after that wasn't even uniform. There was a pair of wings with no body, a dragon formed upside-down, and about eight necks attached to a single small, round, green torso.

Arkal suspected something was wrong. After the spray went off, he decided, against his better judgement, to take a closer look.

As he approached the deformed trio, the spray suddenly activated once again. Apparently, that was a voluntary action.

A voice soon sounded in his head. It wasn't Xadrez.

YOU ARE INTELLIGENT, it said.

Arkal found himself unable to do anything more than nod in agreement.

PERFECT. YOU CAN DEAL WITH THE INTRUDERS. THEY ARE IN THIS HEAD'S BRAIN. IT WAS NOT A MISTAKE TO BRING YOU INSIDE.

Arkal couldn't bring himself to disobey the voice. He followed its guidance to a path leading higher in the head, and climbed a vein.

Very carefully. He didn't want to damage Mother, after all.

***

"Kracht, do you have any idea if this is doing anything?" Jen asked.

"Not in the slightest. I've only seen this beast once before," Kracht said, as he punched yet another possibly-important cell in what he thought might be the brain. Well, it was glowing, at least.

"Well, what do you know about it?" Jen grumbled. "I'm all for smashing up a dragon's insides, but if I'm going to kill this thing before she does, I want to know that we're smashing up the right insides."

"Er... well, we never actually managed to kill it. Xadrez suspected that this particular head was issuing telepathic orders to the dragons, though, so shutting it down is bound to be helpful..."

"Ugh. You can do that if you want. I'm looking for its heart. Or maybe its liver or something, nah who am I kidding it's always the heart." She looked around the chamber. "Oh, hey. There's a hole there, probably leads further down." She started walking towards it and turned back towards Kracht. "I'll check it out, have fun with the br-"

Her words were interrupted by Arkal climbing out and slicing her head off with his sword.

"How DARE you harm Mother!" he screamed, tossing Jen's limp body down the shaft, and kicking the head for good measure. He drew his mace and turned to Kracht. "Leave Mother alone, or you'll share the other intruder's fate!"

Kracht was stunned. What had happened? Arkal had gone mad...

Wait. If this head was telepathic, then it might be issuing commands to Arkal as though he were one of its "young". Kracht couldn't be sure of the exact process, but it was likely causing Arkal to see the dragon as his mother, and obeying her commands without question...

As Arkal put away the sword and drew his mace, Kracht tore another mass of organelles away from the walls. His best chance was to find the source of the commands and destroy it; that would hopefully free Arkal...

Arkal struck. The mace was nothing to Kracht. But it was a distraction from tearing apart the dragon's brain, and he didn't want to kill the smith; not only was Arkal his only ally in stopping Reinhardt and the Hand of Silver, it would just transport them to another round...

A few seconds passed and realization struck. Jen had been decapitated. Why hadn't they been sent to another round?

***

Jen's head and body had fallen down the shaft into the dragon's mouth, and landed on a thick pile of grey mush.

A blob slowly emerged from the mush, changing form into a new life...

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Jen and Fantha had agreed only a couple minutes beforehand that should Jen die, Fantha would keep her vital signs operating as long as possible, in order to delay an untimely round transition and spare her fellow battlers a lot of awkwardness and paperwork.

This was a bit unorthodox—as soon as the host body was too dead to salvage, a wyrm usually cannibalizes its fading consciousness and attempts to latch on to a new hope or, worst case scenario, another wyrm to carry its data. Jen, hearing this, proceeded with a lengthy explanation of the true secrets of the afterlives (to which the reader is unfortunately not privy) and Fanthalion came to appreciate exactly how little she wanted to be haunted.

Kracht, never having entirely figured out the whole Bio Wyrm thing, harbored some fears that Jen was alive in a substantive way, which would be the simplest way of accounting for the perpetuation of the third round. He needn’t have feared.

Jen [higher truths redacted]

Fantha was struggling. Loath though she was to admit the fundamental tenets of Bio Wyrm methodology to herself, much less to an omniscient third-person narrator, it was unarguable that the seeds of Bio Wyrm power and even sanity were founded on a symbiosis with the host. Jen’s consciousness was simply gone, and holding onto the life signs of the vaguely crustacean vehicle that was her body was a job for two, at least. Fantha, consciously directing each heartbeat and each firing neuron, had no idea how Jen had done it on her own all those years.

It was no use. The Jen template had already been torn to shreds by the plethora of alterations the two of them had worked out, ranging from the obvious sonic weaponry to a slight thickening of the eyelashes for cosmetic effect. Fantha felt even her own identity, and within it all the data contained within herself, fading away…

After what felt like his own half-life, with the intervention of a giant beige hand tearing through the barrier that he hesitated to refer to as a “wall,” Kracht found the occipital lobe and made it not be there anymore.

Arkal reeled. He had never been a weapon before. He looked down at his mace uneasily, then up at Kracht, who outstretched a hand impassively, withholding judgment.

Xadrez was struck by an idea. Or rather, “struck” is not the right word, or if it ever was the right word it was devalued by the idiom, so it would be better to say that Xadrez was bludgeoned by an idea. It felt green and was accompanied by a momentary vision of [redacted]. Sensing a grand urgency in implementing his idea, he pointed to three suitable points on the map and gestured the organelle to depart. ”Yes, Commander Xadrez. Death to the Lesion Legion!” blurted out the organelle before exiting the ivory office (Xadrez had had a busy few minutes).

Xadrez laid a sheet of cloth over his board and scribbled a grid of the forty concepts/characters that made up a shorthand language of his own invention. Upon the cloth he placed his latest Jen miniature (upgraded with a slightly duller green and a red wyrm sticking out the shoulder). He placed the figurine lightly upon the board, placed his hand on the figurine, and did whatever the opposite of concentrating is.

Through no direct intervention of Xadrez’ own, the figurine began to move…

Fanthalion, to put it in human terms, pushed the Big Red Button; she did the Thing That You Are Not Supposed To Do. She reached into the trash bin in her mind, pulled an old file off the top, and dumped it into the mainframe, hoping this would only have to be a temporary measure.

At no point in the history of Bio Wyrm consciousness has this been recorded as going well.

A blog slowly emerged from the mush, giving way to new life… Arkal, thinking on his mother, and Kracht, thinking on fate, watched on from atop a pile of dead dragons.

It looked a lot like Jen. It wasn’t.

”Hey guys,” said Maxwell, feeling his new vocal chords with his new hands through his new neck. Parts of him were bubbling, in a comfortable way; other parts felt uncomfortably soft. “The lady in my head says I’m going to need to take a minute, and to tell you that we can get her back.”

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Edward Crossbones - formerly Captain Edward Crossbones - was more than a little annoyed.

He had just regained consciousness to find himself locked in his own brig. This was not of great concern - it happened about once every other week when that bastard Skullbeard boarded his ship. This, of course, was always in retaliation for Crossbones boarding Skullbeard's ship the previous week, which in turn was always caused by Crossbones looking to get back at Skullbeard's raid the week before. Except for the times when they launched an attack just because they felt like it, of course.

But that was a professional relationship. It was how the piracy trade worked. You looted his ship, he looted yours. All part of the job.

This time was different.

Skullbeard was a rat-born bastard who deserved to have his hands chopped off and his eyes gouged out while being boiled alive - but at least he had always let Crossbones keep his hat.

Ah, yes. It was coming back now. That strange green bastard. Appeared out of nowhere, took down a dozen men effortlessly...

He'd pay. Edward Crossbones swore he'd make the green bastard pay.

Just as soon as he found a way out of his own damned cell.

***

Crossbones had no idea of all that had happened while he was unconscious. In this respect, he was rather fortunate compared to the members of his former crew, who knew just enough of what was happening to be absolutely terrified.

Though the Ovoid shifted in strange and bizarre patterns unrecognizable to the unfortunate pirates, it always kept their ship intact. This only served to frighten them more, as they began to feel it was only by the whim of this monstrous island that they were still alive - and they did not think its mercy would last forever.

Then, suddenly, they were on the outside instead of the inside.

This would have been a welcome relief if they were still on the surface of the ocean. Instead, they were greeted by the bizarre sight of water some distance below them, and water in the ocean above them, while they rested on the curved surface of what appeared to be some strange tan monster.

They were in the mermen's country now. That would have been an unsettling thought under the best of circumstances.

Being effectively stranded on top of a gigantic monsters fighting an even more gigantic monster was not the best of circumstances.

They could hardly be forgiven for failing to check the brig, which was now empty.

***

Crossbones blinked. He'd wanted to get out of the brig, it was true, but he'd assumed that doing so would require an active effort on his part, rather than suddenly finding himself... wherever this was. Why was it so... tan?

A scythe suddenly appeared in his hands.

Then a voice spoke in his head.

As he nervously nodded in response to the voice's orders, Crossbones wondered if he'd ever get his hat back.

***

Jonathan Skullbeard furrowed his brow. Where was Crossbones? It wasn't like him to miss a Wednesday skirmish.

Bah. Worthless Crossbones. Couldn't be counted on for anything.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

“Ok, sir, that order seems to have been processed – but whatever's in there's gutted the hox-box. I'll send an order through to bail ou-”

“Haaaaave you locaaaated the hear-ar-ar-ar-ar-”

“No, uh, no change. Sir. It's still online. Just... missing in action. Still.” The organelle, understandably scared out of his wits, couldn't tear his gaze away from the twitching golden nucleolus Xadrez held at arm's length. The organelle had heard the Probiotes often worked in strange ways, but the tan fingers crush-gripping the foreman's skull were a bit much for the poor Synapse. Still. The ghost looked a bit like the top half of an Synapse himself, and if that weak familiarity was what the organelle needed to stay professional, so be it.

But bowels, if that knife-like tongue nestled in the Nucleolus' throat didn't give him the creeps.

“A squadron left the Lymph Node not a heartbeat ago. If anyone can trace it, sir, they can.”

Xadrez put the foreman down, or at least took the weight off his arm by lowering the toad to its feet. He caught himeslf plotting Kracht's demise again, and hissed. The lackey nearly leapt out of his skin in fright , and did it again when Xadrez released the nucleolus. It curled up on the floor with tiny wailing noise, similar to the knife, while it pressed its sickly hands to its ears. The noise made Xadrez irritated. And bored. Boredom had a habit of leading Xadrez on years-long vendettas over dislikes that had formed over the space of hours. He sighed; there were more important things vying for the spirit's attention. A monster to slay. A heart to bleed dry. A throne to usurp, or secure. The distinction seemed unimportant.

Xadrez picked up a chess piece that needed no further shaping, and scratched at it absently. He didn't particularly like this new arrangement of the Ovoid's, but couldn't complain after what he'd done to the hydra. His hands still burnt like fire where they met the knife, ceaselessly shrieking beneath the shameful blush of beige. The tactician tried for a further moment to get the green knight's tail right, before putting it down again with the tiniest noise of frustration.

It wasn't the same. Where the knife incised, the Ovoid punctured. Where it slitted, it now gouged. It spasmed and phased and plasticked about entirely separate from Xadrez' volition. It was penance, an ugly tan reminder of the tactician's blunder.

He wanted Kracht bested, and to rejoin Scout's side. Whether they joined the agents of the Network in uprising against the Grandmasters, or returned home to rebuild, Xadrez didn't care. To find Scout was the end to truly justify all the means necessary. An end goal so simple it was a wonder everyone else wasn't striving for it with the tactician.

“Boost distrurgh-” garbled the Synapse as Xadrez jammed his hand through the back of its head, “disghtribushggggon to thaaa-a-a-a wings”.

Whether the wings became a haemorrhaging site for Cyk'nl's power supply or not were mostly immaterial to Xadrez by now. He exited the Nucelolus' office and headed toward what could be be described as the “basement”. A pair of organelles threw open the doors, slamming them shut again behind Xadrez to muffle the shrieking.

The spirit hovered through the reddish dark, stopping in the dead centre of the pericardial lid. Like an enormous manhole cover, the organelles had only succeeded in pulling it off a sliver before the Ovoid's knife-induced screams from within pierced the air.

The shaft should've provided direct access to the heart and neural cloud, but the Ovoid and the Quest and Scout knew what other parties had gotten their insidious tendrils in everything, leaving Xadrez to shiver in his dagger's howling beratings instead. With the room this dark, and the screams so enveloping, Xadrez could almost pretend the Ovoid had no part in it. The Ovoid would lead him to the heart when everything aligned - which by the tactician's mapping could be influenced by up to fourteen key factors, but probably couldn't happen until Sprocer had softened up the Virate.

Which, according to Xadrez and the dragonfly's calculations, wasn't going to be much longer.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

To say that Maxwell was having a crisis of identity would be like saying that the sun was burning—it seems to be a bit of a tautology, but an astute reader will understand the emphasis. The sun, coincidentally, was burning. Barring the wind chill, it was a good ninety degrees above the surface of the endless ocean, and Skullbeard was grateful for the brim of his hat and the spray of salty mist against his elaborate facial hair situation.

It was a beautiful day, and with his best nemesis likely in his cups John Skullbeard was content to have the heat and the cool, the ocean and the sky, and all the other miraculous contradictions of the pirate’s life, here in the middle of the end of the world.

There was a sound like a change in the tides as the merfolk arrived.

In other oceans, where the water was just shallow enough to shine green, the sun was setting red. It was a beautiful, complementary red, reflecting off the ocean in shards like the very incarnation of Kaleidon, Cubist God of the sea.

Moneptune, who depending on your school of thought-belief was either a different God or the same God in a different style, in a fit of envy whipped up a storm and threw the waters into an impressionistic blur of violent motion. The redness, which might have been viewed as a portent were any members of the Virate watching the sunset, passed into a grey and murky night. Like everything in the Place that wasn’t beautiful, it was sublime.

Maxwell saw red. It was a sharp, complementary red, like blood, and he momentarily thought he was having a stroke before it told him her name. Fanthalion had a voice like red velvet, a sharp compliment from the blue-black curses and orders he was used to hearing from Sikarius. She told him disjointed truths like a Picasso painting, and he believed her. He was dead. Jen was dead. He was Jen. Death was not—necessarily—death.

Predictably, Sik cut in—or maybe it was just a memory of Sik—or maybe both, a preserved voice, now just another victim of the Wyrm. Maxwell appreciated the ironic comeuppance, but like all abuse victims, made the mistake of listening.

The doctrine of Sikarius was simple and direct, as always. Hunger. A thundering hunger like a storm.

Sprocer admired the storm from up in the grand hollow of the Tree House and found himself swaying. He gave a rustling sigh. Negotiations had been going poorly. The Tree Party was rather fond of tradition, and there wasn’t much precedent for reinstating a reincarnated monarch, at least not one who had died abroad. If only Jen had died along the Crossroads like Old King Phoelix...

No matter. If the General held up his end of the bargain, the once and future queen would certainly be able to put things into order, or at least throw things into a more sensible sort of chaos.

Yes, all would be well, so long as Jen restrained herself from up and dying again…

Arkal rushed after Maxwell, who had rather adamantly failed to follow whatever command had told him to “take a minute.” The lad had sprouted wyrm-wings and flown off into the innards of the hydra without so much as a what’s-going-on-there-was-this-light-was-I-sleeping, and Arkal had gotten just enough of the look on his face to suspect that this meant ill tidings for the prospect of “getting her back.”

Arkal felt he had some stake in the matter. She was perhaps the only other person in this battle who appreciated a good weapon, and he had grown fond of her.

Kracht adored a good weapon, not that anyone had ever bothered to ask him.

The term “mental breakdown” seems a bit strong when applied to somebody whose head is literally a rock, but the increasing devolution of all precedent or even logic to what was going on in this round was beginning to take its toll on the mineral. Kracht was even beginning to radiate just a little faster, which in defiance of all science was his equivalent of breaking a sweat.

He made a stern resolution that he just wasn’t going to deal with this shit any longer and then he dropped into a column of Ovoid.

Rather than just popping out somewhere convenient as is the amalgam’s usual modus operandi, he found himself in a tan place, pulled downwards through infinity at about 6 Gs. The complete vacuum of the space-between-spaces he inhabited meant he couldn’t really feel himself accelerating, but this was somewhat familiar ground, and he knew what was coming next. The Ovoid loved to do this...

Kath was mildly apprehensive about what was coming next. The surface of the water was clear, phlegm-free, and sparkling lightly in a way that made her strongly suggest she was being lured somewhere. She didn’t know if she was in the heart yet or what she would find when she got to the middle of it, but she was vaguely aware that at some point she was going to become queen of what, given her luck, would probably turn out to be a landlocked nation.

None of these grand adventures were really improving Kath’s life. She wanted to kill something.

Kath dipped a toe into the water and flicked a few droplets into the air. The resultant ripple had a somewhat meditative effect on the maid, until something deep inside the water started growling. It wasn’t a conventional growl but rather the kind of layered electronic noise that suggests a mouth designed more to hurt or intimidate than to vocalize or even properly kill.

Kath visualized ribbons of blood cutting the beautiful surface of the pool. The effect was more calming than revolting and she realized that even in her darkest imaginings, it was never her blood. She drew her sword, fused her legs and penetrated the water, making only enough of a splash to mark her passage. Descending into the depths, there appeared to be a green light following the mermaid, and she looked all the world a queen.

Fanthalion wasn’t quite sure what was going on in her head, but was somewhat aware that she was losing.

Letting in Maxwell had been a mistake not because she was letting in Maxwell—the boy was charming in his own way and they seemed to share the same goal of getting Jen back—but because she was also letting in Sikarius. The elder wyrm hailed from an age that was less tactful but nonetheless more effective at the psychic stuff, and his presence pushed aside her own like a gorilla fighting an accountant. Sik didn’t care a lick for Jen (Fantha wasn’t quite sure why she was bothering herself—maybe she just didn’t like to leave anything half-finished) and was instead drawing Maxwell towards a much more primal goal.

Sik wanted to eat the Hydra.

Despite the obvious temptation, this was a monumentally stupid idea for any one of a dozen ideas Fantha attempted to telepathically outline. First of all, getting a usable gene sample for something so complicated would take hours, which was longer than the round was likely to last. Secondly, the hydra was psychically as primal and stubborn as Sikarius, as sexually frustrated as Maxwell, and as clever and magically-infused as Jen, a combination that might easily overwhelm any wyrm or two who tried to devour it. Thirdly, Fantha was simply more anxious than hungry and wanted to get this whole Grand Battle clusterfuck over with before Jen got old. And obviously it was going to end in the heart.

Fantha had picked up enough magic to reason that whatever door opened when Kath completed the labyrinth would be infused with enough green energy that a hasty spell could be devised to bring Jen back into the fold—at which point it was simply a matter of kicking the mermaid’s ass to the curb once and for all, returning to the Place (where hopefully even the Observer would have to give due obeisance) and becoming Special Advisor to the Queen in Matters of Devouring the Flesh of the Living. She imagined the magical beings, chimaeras and spirits and things that photosynthesized using only the sunlight they had trapped and killed themselves. It would be… delicious.

Sikarius disagreed. Sikarius impressed upon Fantha that they were currently inside the greatest most powerfullest creature he had ever seen and can I have it can I can I can I don’t answer that of course I can. Fantha felt like an ineffective mother and wished there could be some wyrm equivalent of getting Sik diagnosed with ADHD and shutting him up through medication. Alas.

Maxwell was listening to his first wyrm, out of force of habit, and had found a gland far enough away from all other signs of life that he could chow down on a city’s worth of flesh in peace. Fantha prayed for a miracle.

Xadrez believed in miracles, in that he always tried to account for the possibility, however slim, that his enemies would produce one. The plan that the tactician, the Ovoid, and the series of messages that called itself “Ouijen” had cooked up (the first providing all the actual strategy while the latter two simply handled matters of clairvoyance, of course) was almost completely foolproof, but there were still three main ways Kath could pull this out.

First Miracle: Arkal or Maxwell die before the operation concludes. This whisks everybody who stands in Kath’s way away, allows the mermaid to assume the throne without any further interruptions and sticks Xadrez in an unpredictable fourth round in which Kracht would probably kill him.

Second miracle: Ouijen, or the Ovoid, was lying to him. Xadrez was forced to admit that, vague hunches about writing style aside, he had no way of knowing whether the entity communicating with him through the grid of letters on his chessboard were actually the spirit of his co-battler, or if she was, that she wasn’t simply messing with him about all this Maxwell being alive business. As for the Ovoid, Xadrez still wasn’t quite sure how the two were communicating, except that he was nearly certain the amalgam was in on the plan. There was a very slight possibility that the tactician was simply insane, but of course that had been a constant for a long time.

The third miracle, which Ouijen seemed to be stressing over but which seemed rather farfetched to Xadrez, was that Kath had somehow figured out the secrets of magic. Xadrez wasn’t much of a mage, but he knew that these things took time, and honestly, what were the odds?

It took Skullbeard a good deal of yelling and promise of gold to convince his crew to allow two hundred merfolk aboard the good ship Merfucker. Once it had been firmly established that this was going to happen, God be damned, the crew voted in an overwhelming majority to only let the women aboard, despite minority protestations that mermaids’ bodies “leave you nothing to grab onto.” Guiltily, Skullbeard took this proposition back to the mayor of Hydresther, who was almost too incensed to consider it, but eventually Skullbeard took out his musket and through some passionate orations and bullets convinced the men to let only the children aboard for a place to sleep and we’ll work things out in the morning.

The first merboy climbed the rope rather adeptly, but by the time he reached the deck the winds had crystallized the water on his skin and he was shivering with cold. Skullbeard groaned with a mixture of pity, exasperation, self-pity at his exasperation, and exasperation towards the fact that he was feeling pity, and offered the lad his coat. The merboy looked up at the pirate with those lashless, murky eyes that had haunted Skullbeard’s dreams ever since the day he had first set sail, and looked at the coat as though unsure as to what to do with it.

The captain helped the boy into the coat. “It’ll keep you warm, see,” he muttered, worried about looking too maternal in front of his crew.

“Sea above and sky below,” called the first mate. “Look at all of ‘em.”

Skullbeard looked over the edge of the boat to see that another group had arrived. Merfaces gazed up at him from the hull to the horizon, salt in all of their eyes, tears in most. For all intents and purposes, their city was gone. These waters would never be the same.

The monster wasn’t as big as Kath had been expecting it to be, honestly.

No, no wait. She’d simply had her perspective wrong. It was huge.

Then again, suddenly it swam behind her and grabbed her shoulder roughly with a hand only twice as big than her own. Merely eight feet tall, it was somehow even more frightening than it had been when she’d thought it to be a giant—

A tail the size of a skyscraper hit Kath’s sword arm and nearly, but not quite, knocked the sword out of her hand.

She had been expecting it to be green. In the clear blue water it stood out in a menacing complimentary shade of red, black as a cherry.

Suddenly five reptilian arms grabbed onto her torso from different angles. Something seriously messed up was going on with this monster.

Kath stopped trying to make sense of things. She closed her eyes and listened to the water. The water seemed to be screaming.

Something sharp came at her and her sword cut through the water and hit it with an uncomfortable ringing noise. She felt something hit her tail out from under her and she smashed her head into it, drawing something that smelled more like moss than blood.

A sharp heat stung her back and forced Kath to open her eyes. She was surrounded by a ring of fire, and all around she saw leathery wings silently flapping.

A single tooth the size of Kath’s head whacked her sword, almost playfully. Kath had lost all sense of time.

There was blood in the water. It was her blood.

Arkal decided, probably wrongly, that the best option was to take something blunt—specifically a mace he’d forged from a tooth on the way over—and whack Maxwell in the face with it.

Before the discussion commenced, there was a fight. Arkal lost, and not in a way he found comfortable, but the losing afforded him an opportunity to talk.

“Maxwell!” he grunted. “Dammit, I don’t know how to say this without resorting to clichés. You don’t have to do this! Remember that she needs you! You’ll regret this for the rest of your life!”

A fleshy claw hit the tissue an inch away from Arkal’s head. Maxwell was covered in blood and had absolutely ruined Jen’s clothes. With a shocking degree of optimism Arkal thought to himself that the queen would probably be upset about that.

Maxwell settled down as though it were part of a script. “It really is just like every movie, isn’t it?” he said. “I never meant to become a tragic hero. But I don’t think there’s really an option where I don’t… sacrifice myself.”

Arkal shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on in that head with you and that worm, boy. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to you.”

Maxwell shuddered. “Me neither. Everything’s… hectic in here.” The boy shot his head over to one side as though having a conversation with the worm… but it was the opposite shoulder from the one the worm was sticking out of. That disturbed Arkal more than anything else he’d seen in the last few minutes. ”I… I think everything would have been okay if Jen hadn’t… gone off. But the part of her that was her is just… gone. She didn’t even wait to die, really. Must be a queen thing. Or maybe she just… wanted to go.” Maxwell sniffled, and Arkal put an arm on his shoulder, unsure of what to say. He wasn’t very good at advice even in situations within his realm of comprehension.

That was when the pirate ship showed up, riding a wave of Ovoid. The captain wore a priest’s collar and a heavy ivory cross hung around his neck, only partially obscured by his magnificent beard. He was holding a strangely familiar scythe. “Blessed Easter!” the captain growled. “I be granted a vision of a smith and a lad with a red demon on his back. And here y’are, true to life! Aboard, then, for we’ve a green whale to catch, so to speak, and a leviathan also, or so the Lord tells me.”

This was the sort of proposition that Arkal had learned over the course of this battle not to say no to. He grabbed Maxwell by the arm and rushed towards the rope that was lowered for him. Even before they had gotten on deck, the sails were raised and the innards of the hydra were replaced by an endless river of tan.

Xadrez was the first person that the Ovoid dumped in the heart, floating on a tan platform high above the surface of the water. He admired for a moment as the mermaid battled with something ugly, mercurial, and only vaguely dragonish. He didn’t know why he was expecting something more conventional.

Either way.

Xadrez pointed his dagger at a point in the air, and the Ovoid made good on the promises it had somehow managed to make. Traveling at a speed most mortar shells only dream of, Kracht shot out of an Ovoid-portal directly at the leviathan, smacking it squarely on the head and knocking it prone.

Xadrez got a warm feeling inside. There were plenty of things that could have been used as a projectile—Arkal’s hammer was probably the best choice—but this was… satisfying.

The tactician pointed at another spot in the bottom of the heart chamber. The Ovoid opened up space again, and water began draining out. Rapidly. Xadrez noted with some satisfaction that Kath, master swimmer though she seemed to be, struggled against the whirlpool that begin to form.

For perhaps the first time in this whole Grand Battle, Xadrez felt that a plan was finally going well. Phase three.

At a point of the dagger, the pirate ship emerged into the spinning whirlpool and began to circle. Crossbones’ crew kept its cannon trained on Kath and the leviathan.

The tactician teleported on deck. It was mostly up to Maxwell now.

Kracht wasn’t blessed with the faculties to fall unconscious in any meaningful way, but smashing into a monster that seemed to be simultaneously roughly his size and two hundred feet long was one of the few instances that reminded him he was capable of pain. He reminded himself that it wasn’t really Xadrez’ fault.

He opened his eyes and saw somebody he’d never seen before.

There was blood in the air, a thick red that complemented Kracht’s rocky skin and made him feel very green and anthropomorphized and vulnerable. Kath’s pupils went wide with possibilities and a sparkling green look came into her eyes as she looked upon Kracht. It was a look of magic.

Ignoring the cannonballs whizzing past them or the monster that was quickly rousing itself for round two, Kath kissed the mineral on the mouth. Her lips were like water and Kracht suddenly felt like a pebble somebody was about to skip across the surface of a pond.

The red blood in the water turned to green. Then it turned to silk. Then it wrapped itself around Kracht’s neck. Kath wrapped her tail around Kracht and told him he was going to do what she said now.

Kracht had forgotten about eternity and priorities; he had forgotten what the word “magic” meant except for this. He decided it was a good thing. “Yes, of course,” he said.

The monster roared as though upset that it had lost the mermaid’s attention. Kracht turned towards it, radiating rage. Mistress and slave both lunged at the leviathan, and blood filled the water.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

Xadrez raised a beige fistful of dagger, the ship lurching to a halt as a salvo of cannonballs ploughed its keel upon a rut. One soared with nearly choreographed grace by Kath’s adeptly switching bottom half, much to the tactician’s disappointment. Jen was dancing haphazard circles on the chessboard, more like a moody spider’s grumpily tossed-about anchor-lines than any discernible pattern.

Her energy, it seemed - by the jitterbug scrape of jadeite upon whatever the shattering this cloth was made of - was boundless. Oh, to be young again, thought Xadrez, though perhaps in not such wistful terms. This was a skirmish. A skirmish was what Xadrez had been waiting to tease out this whole damnable “battle” – or, at least, one where Kracht had regained his rightful place as pawnsome cannon fodder. Leviathan fodder. The point was, Kracht was on a leash and the tactician couldn’t have been more grimly satisfied.

In a moment of toe-stepping interruption to the usual mechanical musings, it dawned on the spirit that Ouijen was the first of his kind he’d had to engage with in a while. Xadrez spontaneously grew a little awkward in her spectral presence while things turned to an oddly consolatory hell all around, for a reason he couldn’t quite define. He felt – though he couldn’t have articulated it - older and scarred and bitter and wrong and self-conscious about all of it in Ouijen’s presence, though she couldn’t have picked up on it either. A hateful old patriarch with a bright-eyed fresh soul gazing up at him. He felt guilty, without Jen’s accusation made explicit in the first place.

She was asking what they were going to do. Somehow, her confidence in Xadrez’ contingencies for Kath getting her murderous - presumably webbed - hands on magic was even more crushing than good, old-fashioned Jennish scepticism.

I’m thinking, replied the tactician. He tried his best to sound irked, if only so he could cover the worry. The magic was a considerable problem – still, problems were for solving. They weren’t some philosophical mental meander; they marched through the tactician’s mind with assembly-line efficiency. Acquire problem. Affix solution. Hear the spectral tide ooh and aah in admiration.

Fingers flicked through and beneath four-space, rapping on surfaces that existed on a schedule altered by perceiving it. Below, Kracht seized a cannonball in one cranelike arm and slugged it into the leviathan’s side. One gesture to the ceiling set the Ovoid in motion, a deep churning noise lightly accented with the distant screams of pain from the heads of the hydra. The noise seemed to rouse Maxwell from a halfway-working dream, a sullen stone pawn with a severed copper worm in its back staring him in the face. He took it.

Maxwell, do not speak do not attract Arkal’s attention

Sikarius, Fanthalion, you two as well

Now

Xadrez picked up Jen’s possessed chess piece with a level glare, as though he were attempting to irradiate his intentions from it.

as I understand it my aims have already been laid out for your perusal

I need the meddlesome anomaly removed while his grip is weakened

I need him dead and thus I ideally require your cooperation

How averse would the three of you be to

how to put it

simply be declared dead to this battle

Would that particularly inconvenience any of you


The ceiling cried as though the sound had taken a sanity-questioning detour through beige, as the Ovoid worked its magic or chaos or order or science into the already-coagulated mess of zoological giganatomy and adherence to the motifs of the Quest and the Place. Xadrez’ link to the tan demon was providing some manner of illuminative overlay. He did his best to ignore it.

Jen has informed me of some of the intricacies of your kind

Regrettably Maxwell you get little say in this seeing as you are currently the salvaged fragments of a memory from a dying wyrm’s mind of a tool used none-too-gently by its previous owner also currently a salvaged fragment of a memory

If I wanted your snark, you insufferable spectre, I’d have torn it out of your throat when I had your knife handy.

“I don’t get why-”

the point

is your spirit cannot leave this battle

agents conspiring; dest’nies transpiring

they are drawn to her the agents inexorable and the three of you all are entangled heinous within their machinations

you may heroically sacrifice yourself yes and yes that may rethrone Jen convert Kracht and make the Ovoid carve us a path to the Observer where we may proclaim from his citadel to the multiverse his downfall

but really

who are we so hopelessly trying to deceive save ourselves

such fanciful schemes will save no-one

Kracht will die to the beast here in Cyk’nl’s heart

the Ovoid knows it; hence why it dragged along the city when you joined us Fanthalion

I need only scheme and plan as much as I wish to, the agents know my movements

ponderous musing a sacrifice play gambits apathy cowardice valour all of it leads to the same result

which brings us back to you three


The tacitican had noticed Arkal’s attention drawn upon them, and made a subtle movement with one hand. A final noise rippled its pained way down five hydra throats, compacting in the stomachs of all those present in Cyk’nl’s heart with a kind of heavy smack.

As one, they stared upward. Bile dripped, black and sickly green, from the ravaged ceiling. Fanthalion

The red peeled away, uncoiling from its blue-black tandem; the mismatched teeth wavered like reeds as they whispered the Queen’s edict. The rungs on a ladder, clambering toward comphrenesion.

Really it is up to you

you may choose to resurrect Jen dragging yourself and Sikarius and his boy embroiled in your own code further into this battle risking true confrontation on my part and others and thus risking your demise

or you may entrust her to me and fend for yourself in this world

save Cyk’nl slain by the usurper its survival will otherwise be assured

the data it stores a valuable resource for you and your biowyrm kin, I presume

“But she said-”

She is but a little girl and I know that none but the gods themselves may truly know what lies beyond death

as I mentioned

she has charmed the agents

whether her kind find a final end on mortal expiration or some parting of the soul thereafter does not concern me

all I know

wise as she is her spirit is young

I may not be a king or a wyrm or the mortal crossroad of the agents themselves but if nothing else I am a spirit

and caring for this little one is the least I can do


That with your cooperation here I may promise I will do until she sees fit to fend for herself

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Tentative reserve, I may not get to it today or I might step aside for the sake of someone else's plans.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

The monster was agile, but Kracht soon had a good sense of its movements. As it dodged a blow from Kath, and then a cannonball from the ship, Kracht ran towards it and gave it a solid punch. The creature was thrown backwards into a wall of the heart.

The hydra shrieked; the impact had hurt it badly. Its body started to tremble in pain.

And as it did, the pirate ship rocked back and forth heavily, much to the dismay of its passengers - at least, for those who couldn't simply float above the disarray. Although Xadrez didn't particularly appreciate Maxwell clinging to his obsidian disc for stability.

Arkal was flung towards the side of the ship, and gripped the railing in desperation. When the shaking calmed, he picked himself up and looked over the side to see if he could figure out what the hell was going on.

He noticed an imprint in the wall, and Kracht and... somebody else... fighting a... something.

A moment later, Kracht landed another fortunate strike on his foe, and the shaking began again. Arkal was smart enough to put two and two together.

Besides which... from this vantage point, Kracht was starting to look very unlucky.

The second tremor was worse. Fortunately, the first had put the crew on guard. Arkal shouted to them at the top of his lungs.

"WE'VE GOT TO BREAK UP THAT FIGHT OR THE SHIP WILL BE SMASHED!"

A tan, round platform suddenly materialized next to him. It seemed to be waiting expectantly.

"A ride, huh? Well, I guess I could use it. It'd be tough to swim with this anvil, after all."

The smith hopped on, and the Ovoid floated him down towards the battle.

More platforms appeared; the crew looked at them hesitantly, until Crossbones spoke up.

"What are ye waitin' for, ya scurvy bilge rats? Help that feller out!" He paused. "And get me hat while yer down there! Whoever brings it back is me new first mate!"

For a moment, First Mate Bartleby looked like he had something to say about the captain's offer. The urge soon vanished as he saw Crossbones glaring at him.

Bartleby was a smart enough man to realize that his best chance at keeping his current job was to retrieve the hat himself. He hopped onto the nearest tan platform as it floated downward.

Kath was the first to notice the oncoming forces, largely due to the fact that she was neither enchanted nor feral; Kracht and the monster were too focused on each other. For the briefest moment, Kath considered shouting a warning to her partner, but the thought was quickly pushed aside when she realized that she could take advantage of the situation.

And so, as an aging blacksmith and a few dozen pirates jumped down and tried to stand between Kath's enchanted "boyfriend" and the monster protecting the heart, the mermaid simply slipped away. The monster was really just a diversion for her, after all. If it was kept busy, she could work uninterrupted.

"I'll handle Kracht!" Arkal shouted as he hopped off his platform. "The rest of you, hold off that monster!"

This strategy was ignored by First Mate Bartleby, driven as he was by the need for job security. He leapt from his Ovoid mount directly at Kracht's head; he received a green fist directly in his face as the crystalline man spun around to see what all the commotion was about.

The blow caved his skull in. Kracht then flung Bartleby's corpse at a pair of pirates and prepared to turn his attention back to the leviathan.

At least, until Arkal hit him in the back of the head with a log. Kracht turned to deal with the latest nuisance.

"Kracht, what the hell are you doing?" Arkal shouted. "You're going to kill us all if you fight that thing that way! Are you that desperate to get rid of Xadrez?"

"Who are you, and who is this Xadrez?" Kracht replied, annoyed. "Never mind. It is irrelevant. All that matters is that you are in the way. I must slay this fiend for my lady Kath."

He lunged towards Arkal. The smith dodged, and flung his log-flail towards Kracht's feet. His legs were caught on the thick wire connecting the logs, and he fell to the ground.

But it was a minor nuisance; he was made from a much stronger material than the wire, after all. He carefully picked himself up as best he could, and snapped the wire in two to free his legs.

The effort had, however, given Arkal ample time to ready his crossbow, now loaded with a flagpole from the ship. He launched it at Kracht, and the force of the shot knocked the green man backwards towards a pair of pirates.

Kracht grabbed one of them. The other took the opportunity to snatch the hat from Kracht's head, and then fled in hopes of living to see his promotion.

Kracht ignored the fleeing pirate, and threw the other back towards Arkal. The old man was interfering with his task for Kath, and that had turned him into a priority target.

The fact that Kath had apparently vanished didn't even cross his mind. Not that it would have mattered; he wanted her to be safe, after all.

Arkal ducked, and the pirate flew over his head, colliding with another pirate who had been just standing around wondering how the heck he was supposed to fight a dragon-thing which sometimes seemed only a little bigger than him, and sometimes seemed a lot bigger.

It didn't matter to Kracht. He ran towards the smith, ignoring everything else. Arkal pulled out his flamethrower mace, but he had no time to fire it before Kracht was upon him.

The crystalline man grabbed the smith by the neck.

"You have interfered. I will destroy you, and then club that monster to death with your corpse," Kracht said. "For Kath."

Then a small piece of Ovoid appeared between the two. It exploded.

Startled, Kracht's grip loosened as he was blown backwards. Arkal was also flung away, and dropped his mace in surprise.

The mace struck the ground with great force. Its internal systems were badly damaged.

If the former scrubots vocal circuits hadn't been severely damaged when Arkal had repurposed it, it would now be saying "WARNING: SYSTEM OVERLOAD."

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Tempestuous as the waters of the Hydra’s heart were, they at least knew how to pick a winning side.

Tainted green, as though a particularly verdant school of fish was swimming just below the surface, a pillar of water shot upwards like the neck of a second leviathan, carrying Kath with it.

Kath figured she could get used to this magic thing. That said, she hadn’t yet. There was a taste in her mouth like holy water and she felt drunk in an unpleasantly introspective way. Either way, she couldn’t deny the results. The water launched her right up to where the winged boy was just regaining his balance; she went legs just in time to wrap them around the man.

Up close some manner of sixth sense confirmed her suspicions: he was Jen, or at least what was left of her. Good.

”Um. Hey,” he said, flustered. He was an idiot, too. Perfect.

Kath thrust her forehead against the boy’s and looked into his eyes. “Magical pheremones,” she said, not quite whispering. “Give in.”

”Um,”

The worm slapped her across the face. Less perfect. For a moment there she’d had an inkling that the kid might have resisted the ‘mones, too.

Before Kath could regain her bearings, something that was neither the boy nor the worm seemed to take over. It snarled in a voice like a bruise and made the young man’s left arm explode into something bony and serrated. Kath decided the best course of action at this point would be to disentangle herself from the ruin of Jen’s body and plunge back into the water.

This proved less than optimal, as she nearly fell into the “0”-shaped void that was sucking in all the water in the hydra’s heart. The slightly beige hole in space didn’t seem to lead anywhere and the magical sixth sense she was beginning to develop sort of bounced right off of it, so Kath decided it was something she wanted to avoid, which was difficult at the rate the water was swirling. Instead, she grabbed onto the prow of the pirate ship.

As a young maiden, Kath had been conditioned to hate pirates, especially Cap-N-X-Bones what with his blind hatred of merkind and zealous devotion to the Zombie God. Of course, given her antipathy towards the population of Hydresther, which her pediatrician failed to diagnose as psychopathy for years on end, she had long idolized piratekind and fantasized of swimming away and joining them on their merry adventures of physical, sexual and financial domination of the seas.

Now that she was actually in their presence, she realized that no, she really hated pirates as well as everyone else she had ever met. They smelled. She killed a couple to keep her hands busy while she watched her lovely, loyal little bitch Kracht battle with the leviathan.

The monster had stopped doing its copulation thing, either because it was hurt, it was out of water, or because it was trying to copulate with the ship. Nonetheless, it was still stronger than the rock, who was doing a pretty awful job of taking it down.

A strapping (if a little old for Kath’s tastes) man with white hair coming out of its jaw in the pirate fashion shouted, ”TIMBER!” and brought the ship’s mast down on the leviathan’s neck, which seemed to actually hurt the damned thing. Well, someone was taking the initiative in slaying her dragon for her, at least, even if it was just a smelly pirate.

Speaking of. A particularly grizzled pirate-voice shouted “Merwitch on deck!” as though that were some sort of universally recognized call-to-arms, and shot a musket shot the size of a pearl right past Kath’s ear. The maid whirled around to find herself staring at the face of what she could only assume was Cap-N-X-Bones, on account of the ridiculous extravagance of his clothes. The equally extravagant gun he was pointing between her eyes eclipsed her view of his face, though she imagined it was quite ugly.

“Hello, Cap-N,” teased Kath, flicking her feet in ironic deference (merfolk never took to bowing, as it looks ridiculous from a swimming position). “I thank you for allowing me upon your ship; he’s a fine vessel, and you ought tend to his not being devoured“--she gestured towards the Leviathan, now chomping happily on Kracht’s leg—“rather than acting on ancient and obsolete racial prejudices.”

X-Bones paused in the middle of loading another pearl into his blunderbuss (oh, neat, it was a pearl) and considered this. He grumbled assent and shot the pearl at the Leviathan; not checking to see whether the projectile had done any damage (safe to assume it hadn’t), Kath drew her sword and poked it at his heart.

The sword grazed harmlessly off of the pirate’s chest with an obnoxious tinny noise. Cap-N-X-Bones shot Kath a look of betrayal but mostly awkwardness and growled, “Serves me right for trusting a womanatee,” drawing his scythe.

Kath slapped the pirate’s weapon aside and grabbed at the inside of his coat. She pulled out a small book lined with steel—the book of the Zombie God, presumably. “Ah, the holy gospel,” she said, tossing the volume into the 0-void and running the Cap-N through for real this time. “Brackish lot of good it did you between your heart and your coat. Maybe if you’d kept it between your head and your hat, you’d have miracled up the good sense not to shoot at me and miss.”

The Cap-N was satisfactorily dead, but not properly mutilated, so Kath pulled her sword out of his mammaries and straddled the corpse. Around the time she started cutting circles into his head, the boy wearing Kara’s body alighted on the deck, looking angry. Kath groaned. “I was going to cut out his heart and eat it. Every time I try to have a little fun in this life, I’m interrupted.”

The boy held up the spiky-looking thing that was his arm and grinned. ”Hi,” he said. “I'm Maxwell. Are we gonna have this fight or what?”

* * * * *

Ouijen was becoming increasingly articulate. Oh no they are not going to kill Kath and you did not just tell them to kill Kath she scribbled on the board. Xadrez rolled his spectral eyes.

They made their choice

But I had already made mine

This is simple damage control your late Majesty

If the inhabitants of your body wait for Kath to open the door to your home in a mad attempt to harness the Green to restore you to full consciousness etc. etc. I can’t even say it it’s such an awful plan

They will fail and Kath will become queen, which I know you don’t want

Ouijen scribbled so hard the statue nearly fell out of the tactician’s hand. This is a sex thing for you isn’t it

You just want to keep me here as your little ghost-wife to stay home and do the dishes while you go off to your job at the tactics factory or whatever the fuck

Well I can’t say I’m not flattered but that’s not really my style

Xadrez gave the figurine a quizzical glare. I admit, I prefer you this way, he intoned.

It comes with certain advantages

For instance if I ever want you to stop talking I can just-- The tactician lifted the Ouijen statuette off the board, where it rocked back and forth in his hand impotently.

Tee hee

* * * * *

The kid was putting up a fight, Kath had to admit.

She had the feeling it was less because he himself had any skill with a, er, weaponized arm, and more because he had the force of at least three brains in there guiding him. Or maybe it was because Kath simply wasn’t very good at this out of water. Her footwork was atrocious.

A punch to the face (from the fleshy arm, thanks to the Zombie God) sent Kath flying uncomfortably close to the Leviathan’s mouth. She glanced up at the monster that was her destiny, sort of, and noted that it was blinded in one eye from a well-aimed pearl. Huh.

Kracht lightly grabbed the maid by a shoulder and turned her aside from a bite from the Leviathan that might have taken her head off. “My thanks,” Kath said dryly, pushing her slave into Maxwell. The rock obediently began to throttle the boy, leaving Kath unoccupied but unfortunately leaving the white-bearded fellow alone to fight the Leviathan, which was beginning to dislodge itself from the ship and shrink down to a more mobile size.

Kath sighed. So much to do. Was this what being a queen would be like?

She took a moment to kill another pirate, then walked back over to Maxwell and jabbed her hand into the bony arm. A bit of bone like a fang went right through her hand, which seemed to get the boy’s attention.

”What the hell are you—“ Kath sent a wave of green thoughts through her hand up to Maxwell’s brain and made him stop talking. She felt around in there, enjoying a pleasant invasive feeling equivalent to wandering around someone else’s house and taking their stuff.

She found the bit she wanted—like a bruise. “You,” she told the bruise. “I like you. You’re in charge now. That is all.”

Maxwell’s face distorted into a manic, antisocial grin. ”Thank you, sea slut,” he said, raspily. Then he turned to Kracht. ”Get off me, rock. I’m going to kill and eat that oversized lizard.”

Kath ripped her hand out of Sikarius’s arm, admiring the wound and tasting her own blood a little (it was salty). What was left of Jen’s body exploded into a barely humanoid mess of bones and wormy parts, the red worm hanging off the back shoulder with what the mermaid liked to imagine was a look of terror. Kracht and the bruise jumped at the Leviathan with abandon. It wouldn’t be long now.

* * * * *

Watching all the excitement from his Ovoid platform, Xadrez accidentally laid Jen’s figurine on the board again, and it began writing immediately. Oh God dammit look what Sikarius is doing to my body this is all your fault

Xadrez took her back off again. Forget about your body

Not that I care about such things, but objectively it wasn’t all that great to begin with

The figure shook in the tactician’s hand until bits of it started chipping off.

* * * * *

It didn’t last long. The Leviathan, having shrunk to a manageable eight feet, was strong, but not strong enough to defend itself against both Kracht and Sikarius. They got it pinned inside of a minute. There was a brief, peaceful moment where the poor reptile ceased struggling and the rock and the wyrm kneeled on either side of it, as though in prayer. Kath drew her sword and approached.

Then Sikarius tried to eat the Leviathan and Kracht punched him in the face. As though to punctuate the obnoxious prolongation of the scuffle, the other half of the ship exploded for no reason that Kath could divine, and began to sink into what was left of the water. Kath watched with some displeasure as Cap-N-X-Bones and his scythe were sucked up into the 0-void, never to be seen or mutilated again.

The Leviathan, meanwhile, had gotten the idea from Sikarius that it ought to have wings, and the two were engaging in a rather ungraceful dogfight in midair. Kath rolled her eyes at the display, tripped and fell onto the deck, and allowed Kracht to help her up. The remainder of the boat was tilting at an unsafe angle. The mermaid looked up at Kracht. “Toss me up there,” she commanded.

Kracht obediently lifted her up on one shoulder and tossed her like a cannonball up towards the two grappling monsters, catching both of them by surprise. She cut their throats and they fell to the now-dry floor of the hydra’s heart.

Kath landed between them, as nimbly as she could. Both were still alive, and the wyrm was recovering. Kracht showed up and held him down.

Kath swung her sword from side to side playfully. “So who’s first?”

* * * * *

Looks like that’s it for your body

Xadrez decided to be a merciful spirit and put Jen’s figurine back on the board again. She burst into nagging complaints immediately, of course. Fantha can handle damage control, it’s not as bad as it looks

Anyway you were banking on the monster taking out Kracht so how’s your tactics now mr tactician man

It’s not as bad as it looks

I have a theory

* * * * *

Okay, this time Kath was definitely going to eat the heart.

She put her ear over the Leviathan’s chest. She could hear it; it beat triplets. Ba-da-thump. Ba-da-thump.

There was another sound. At first she just thought it was the Leviathan’s strained, dying breaths, but it was more… vibrant. Like a buzzing. An anticipatory buzzing.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly understanding. She turned to Kracht. “She’s pregnant.”

She pulled out her sword. “Well, we’ll see what we can’t do about that.” She cut the Leviathan open from navel to neck.

The first thing that came out was green light. It was beautiful, and presumably served the purpose of confetti, celebrating her victory over her designated dragon.

Then came the little ones. There were hundreds of them, the size of dragonflies, green as grass and simply thrumming with the desire to devour all that is beautiful and sacred in the world. Except their new mother, of course. They alighted on her arms and shoulder lovingly, nestling into the crook of her elbow. They tickled her in a slimy sort of way, and despite herself, Kath giggled.

“That’s right, babies,” she cooed. “We’re going home.”

Kracht stood at attention. “Yes?” she asked him.

The rock shuffled back and forth uncomfortably. ”T… take me with you,” he begged. Poor thing. He looked like he was starting to resist her spell, too.

Kath smiled. “Sorry, baby. I don’t think that’s going to be possible.” She gestured as his chest.

Kracht looked down. There was a lump of himself protruding from his chest, like a tumor. He stared at it a bit, puzzling over its purpose or how it had gotten there, before he realized.

It had appeared when Kath had completed her trial.

It was a doorknob.

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

One of the babes uttered a trill, like the wings being simultaneously torn off one million butterflies. The Queen bid her hush, wiping off a splash of bile that had landed on its wing, and advanced on the weakly protesting Kracht. Something arced over his head, and Kath caught it despite herself.

It was a stone figurine, thrumming with impotent, indignant rage. Kath heard the sound of one beige hand clapping.

Congratulations

your majesty

An gaunt silhouette of a man, with a tan knife for a left hand and a big black disk where his tail should've been halted its applause, bid Arkal wait on the ship, and bowed.

I apologise for interrupting your moment of triumph with administrative matters

but I assure you it is sufficiently urgent

seeing as I intend to resign from my post shortly

"You're..."

Xadrez placed an Ovoid hand on Kracht's shoulder, so everyone could hear it. General Xadrez

Supreme commander of the armed forces of the Place

He bowed again. A dangerous flicker of recognition seemed to cross Kracht's face, or it might've been a mineral equivalent of nausea. Kath scrutinised the chess piece's face, idly wondering why stomping it into the bile underfoot felt so appealing.

"Why the resignation?"

Appointed without my knowledge by your predecessor, your highness

Tasked with oddly enough destroying this city we stand in

I assure you it is nothing personal with your majesty

"Nothing personal? What's stopping you from serving under me, then? Hmm?" There was a sting of Green to it that shouldn't have caught Xadrez by surprise. He took a moment to compose himself.

Be

Because there is no life debt, your majesty

The Queen laughed. "Oh, that's easy! I just spare your life here and now-"

No

I mean

the laws decree you must save a life your majesty

one of my choosing

If you would consent to this your highness I suggest we expede the matter with your newfound talents

first I would require Sikarius find a new host in the hydra

The Bio-Wyrm in question had finally risen to what could be tenuously described as its feet. It was mad and furious and a little bit confused about whose orders it was meant to be disobeying on principle or disobeying out of spite, but had digested the discussion through the chess piece still lodged somewhere amongst some ribs. Fanthalion said nothing, in case it tipped her senile compatriot's decision in the wrong direction. Whichever way that happened to be.

"Go on," Kath urged him, with the tone one might dismiss a dog you'd been forbidden from keeping, but not one you'd quite yet fallen head over heels for. Sikarius stared the Queen and the General down in turn with his loathsome excuse for a face.

"I'll be rid of the lot of you?"

The Ovoid will repair the septum before departure, nodded Xadrez.

"Deal."

Fanthalion spasmed, before a dart of data snicked between her tusks and fired itself into the floor; the abomination crumbling away to reveal a Maxwell just past the verge of collapse. With a twitch from Xadrez, the Ovoid started doing something to the still-dripping roof.

"The beige... uh... thing. That's yours?"

I have an alliance with it as an interim measure

Now your majesty

please use the green to expunge the spirit trapped in that chess piece

transplanting it into that vessel

"Wait... what?"

Kath barely paid Maxwell a glance, instead watching the way one of her green little charges wrapped its curious mandibles round the rock.

"Necromancy, hm? That's a first for me, but sure. I think I can do it. And once I've saved this ghost, you agree to serve on as my general?"

...

Once the formalities have been completed over There- Xadrez motioned to the still-paralysed Kracht- then yes

The life debt forged I will be yours to command

"Hah. Ok, then. I'll resurrect your ghost-girlfriend for you. General."

Comprehension suddenly hit Maxwell, but his limbs didn't seem to be repairing themselves. He looked over one shoulder, then the other, and found a hazy presence of an entirely wrong colour. I'm sorry

The Queen was coming his way, the bile flashing green as it swirled round her feet. She took Jen, touched her against her sword, drawing it with an anticipatory verdant gasp. He couldn't move, Jen glinting wicked sharp in her Majesty's hand as they stood over the boy. She seemed to be searching for a human form amidst the wreckage Sik had wrought, then quit dithering and tapped her sword lightly on each of his shoulders. Maxwell stared Jen down, her point shining like angel with a halo of red and green.

Kath stabbed down sharply, driving the ghost-tinted sword right through to the hilt. Her abominations leapt off her at the sudden movement, but settled again as she stood, drawing the sword that wasn't Jen out with her. She gave the body one last look, then marched back to Xadrez. "I think that did it."

Did it? asked Xadrez, of the Bio-Wyrm still attached. Fanthalion tore her gaze from MaxwJen's face, remodelling already in progress, and coiled around the chess piece.

... yes. Xadrez nodded, and bowed to the queen again.

Thank you your highness

I apologise again for the dalliance

"No worries, General," smiled Kath. She pocketed Jen's old chess piece, fixed her coat of beautiful little horrors, and headed for the door. The tactician shivered.