8FOLD: Mighty Medley # 35, December 2016, by Messrs. Brenton, McClure, Perron, and Russell
Tom Russell
joltcity at gmail.com
Sun Dec 25 08:40:14 PST 2016
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-------------EIGHTFOLD PROUDLY PRESENTS-------------
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-------------- ISSUE # 35 DEC 2016 --------------
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-----------SAXON BRENTON--ADRIAN McCLURE------------
-------------DREW PERRON---TOM RUSSELL--------------
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--------------- Editor, Tom Russell ----------------
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
"The Science-Blades of Terra Alter" Part 7
by Adrian McClure
The reign of the Dead King; the School of Night; the fate of a fly and
a flower petal.
"Blind Man's Bluff"
by Tom Russell
The original Seven Wonders - all eight of them! The BLACK DIAMONDS OF URUK!
"Quest" Part 1
by Saxon Brenton
Of broken swords, the Tower that looms on the horizon, and drink.
Introducing Yulgna - she of the silent "g" - and Tunhelg - he of the
broad smile.
"The Terrific Visage" Part 4
by Andrew Perron
Discordance in the dance.
"Stealth Mission" Part 2
by Tom Russell
In which plans are made. Plus, an early birthday present.
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-----------------THE SCIENCE-BLADES-----------------
-------------------OF TERRA ALTER-------------------
-----------------------Part 7----------------------
-----------Copyright 2016 Adrian McClure------------
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From the chronicles of Erebus Tamor:
After the death of Emperor Mandragus, his corpse was dug up by his
successor to be tried. In the midst of the trial, however, the eyes of
the corpse opened, and he condemned his successor to death. A cloaked
figure, who came from no one knew whence, carried out the order. And
so began the reign of the Dead King...
- * -
Upon the coast of Telmar stood Amarantine, the oldest and greatest of
all the cities of Terra Alter, called the Eternal City. It had
survived chaos and change, war and revolution, for its magic kept it
strong and secure.
In the labyrinth of catacombs that lay beneath the Eternal City sat
the chapterhouse of the School of Night. Once it had been an cabal of
revolutionary aristocrats. Over the course of centuries, it became an
order of assassins, controversial among even the other worshippers of
the goddess of death. It was rumored they even used science. But the
Emperors found them an useful tool.
In a bright place within the all-consuming dark of the tombs,
magical light streamed through its stained glass windows, showing the
most famous murders of history. It shone upon a colorful garden,
holding all the poison flowers in the world. Spiders and scorpions
crawl among them.
A woman tended to the garden, singing to herself. She was tall and
pale and lovely, with dark hair cascading like a waterfall of kraken
ink down her scarlet dress. She was Azella Alraune, daughter of the
Emperor Mandragus, the Dead King. She had lacked obedience. Like many
problematic daughters, she was sent to a nunnery, in this case the
chapterhouse of the School of Night, to whose craft she was well
suited.
Her father had entered the room with his grim lurching gait, his
ever-silent hooded companion behind him. She bowed to him stiffly, an
elaborate gesture of ritual laced with irony.
"This visitor I saw in my dreams is proving difficult to handle,"
he said, in his harsh, croaking voice. "You must take care of her
yourself."
"I thought you didn't dream anymore, Father." Her voice was a
well-tuned lute whose strings dripped with poison.
"I should not, and yet I do! I don't like them! Dreams are nothing
but riddles deep-fried in folly! Would that I could behead councilors
who speak such double-tongued drivel as the Lords of Dreams!"
"And what did you see in your dreams?" Azella held a red flower in
her hands, caressing its petals with a soft, sure touch.
"I saw a haloed woman sitting upon a war-tiger borne on a dragon's
back, holding two planets in her hand - one our Venus, the other a
sort of sickly monstrous duplicate."
"That is certainly a dream, Father. I dreamed I was late to an
assassination."
"Kill her!" said Mandragus. His eyes began to twitch. "Do whatever it takes!"
An irridescent green fly buzzed through the air. Azella gently
plucked a petal and threw it at the fly, slicing it in half. The two
halves fell to the ground and were devoured by eager spiders.
"Oh I will."
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------------------BLIND MAN'S BLUFF-----------------
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------------Copyright 2016 Tom Russell--------------
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ROLL CALL: Pharos, Egyptian sorcerer! Rhodes, the colossal man!
Century Man, guardian of the holy spear! Midnite Man, two-fisted
crime-smasher! The Headsman, weird avenger! Windhover, sentinel of the
skies! Doctor Eight, world-famous adventurer and polymath! Together
with their secretary Spectra, mistress of light, the SEVEN WONDERS
battle injustice to preserve freedom!
Upon concluding his story, Doctor Eight tossed the BLACK DIAMOND OF
URUK on the table! Now three such eerie fragments sit together!
Spectra speaks. "How queer! First Century Man, Windhover, and
Rhodes! Then, the Headsman! Now Doctor Eight! Three separate cases,
all with the same bizarre conclusion!"
Pharos tosses his own fragment!
"Blazes!" says Doctor Eight. "How did you come across this?"
"Perhaps it's better if I tell it!" exclaims Midnite Man.
I was investigating a series of mysterious murders in Hamlin! A group
of scientists had each been found dead in their homes, in a locked
room! All of them had worked on the same project, a top-secret
invisibility fabric created for the government! It appeared to have
been stolen by a German spy! Soon, only three remained - Dr. Kane, Dr.
Griffin, and Dr. Ryan! I called in Pharos! Surely his mastery of light
and shadow made him the ideal crime-fighting partner for this case!
(Spectra clears her throat.)
I had determined that Dr. Kane would be next! The police formed a
cordon around the doomed man as the clock ticked down his last hour of
life! At midnight, we joined the watch, locking the door behind us!
There was no way the murderer could get into the room! So imagine our
surprise when Kane was strangled before our eyes by an invisible hand!
Having observed the merciless killer in action, Pharos now knew how
to detect the absence of refraction! When we arrived at Dr. Ryan's
house the next night, Pharos "spotted" the murderer right away! He was
hugging the wall, feeling his way around, slowly working his way
toward Ryan! He may have been there for hours! That's how he got into
the locked room - he was there all along! And that's how he got out -
unseen - when the body was discovered!
It was my sort of rough-and-tumble tussle! Unfortunately, the spy
escaped! Oddly, he first tried to escape via the closet before tossing
himself out the window! Poor Dr. Ryan died from the sheer shock and
terror!
That only left Griffin! Griffin wore dark sunglasses and had a
pasty, worried complexion! Not that I blamed him! The next night,
Pharos and I detected no signs of the killer! It seemed like the
danger would pass! But then Griffin started to struggle and gurgle! He
was being strangled! I was on him in a flash, but I could not seem to
come to grips with the killer! Neither could Pharos detect him!
Griffin stopped breathing!
"In searching the dead man's apartment, we found this!" says
Midnite Man, pointing to the fourth BLACK DIAMOND OF URUK.
"So, the case is still open!" says Spectra. "The spy is still out there!"
"On the contrary!" says Midnite Man. "The case is solved! Why did
the invisible assassin act so oddly in Ryan's house?"
"The fabric was preventing light from..." begins Spectra.
"The fabric stopped the light from getting to his eyes!" says
Midnite Man. "Gradually, it was making him blind! GRIFFIN WAS THE
KILLER! That's why he wore sunglasses, to hide his blindness! That's
why we couldn't detect the killer, because he was faking his own death
using ancient yoga techniques! And that's why we brought all four
BLACK DIAMONDS OF URUK here, to our secret hideout, to lure Griffin to
us! He's here now! And no match for the Seven of us together!"
"Eight," mutters Spectra, and then the fight begins.
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-----------------------QUEST------------------------
----------------------Part 1------------------------
-----------Copyright 2016 Saxon Brenton-------------
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Okay, so if you look over here you'll see a town called Barrellurst.
Moderately prosperous. Not too many wandering monsters. Picturesque,
especially right now in the warm twilight of early evening. The trees
have leaves of a rich blue-green and there are lanterns for the
approaching mid-summer festival bobbing from the branches. The lazy
drone of insects and the occasional chirrup from nightingale bats
accompanies the sounds of carousing from the taverns.
Drink was on the mind of Yulgna (the 'g' is silent, by the way).
She was tidying up her smithy, and was pleased when Tunhelg finally
arrived not-too-late to collect the sword that he had brought her for
repairs.
"Good edge. Oh, and good balance," he said admiringly as he took a
few tentative swipes at the air. His face split into a wide grin that
showed both his tusks. "Yeah, that's great," and happily paid the
outstanding balance.
"Done then," said Yulgna. "Give me a moment to lock up." She hung
up her singe-speckled leather apron and double checked that the forge
was safely doused before locking up. When she emerged the younger man
was eyeing the Tower off on the south-western horizon.
It was huge and impressive. That went without saying for something
that was more than fifty miles away, but still visible well above the
horizon in both height and luminosity - illuminating the night sky as
bright as one of the full moons. One of the stairways to heaven, if
was said.
Which was nonsense, of course. Or at least a very mangled rendition
of the truth. Better to think of it as an access point to the next
gaming level. And then the next one beyond that, and the one beyond
that... And at the very top, assuming the rumours were true and there
actually was a top, was the demesne of the Arjitect from which it was
possible to end the game and send everyone home.
"When do you plan to head out?" asked Yulgna as they made their way
towards the sounds of song.
Tunhelg turned his eyes away from the Tower. "Two days, I expect.
Always so many things finalise..."
"Like broken swords."
"Like broken swords," he agreed. "Acrey... He's our truthsinger...
says he'd almost got everything sorted."
"And how do you feel about it?"
"Excited. A bit scared," he said in a thoughtful tone of voice that
sounded nothing like being scared. "It's one thing to do adventuring
locally. It's something else entirely to take on one of the Towers."
"Well, it's what you've been working up for," she reminded him.
"Yes," he said, bobbing his head in agreement. "Yes, it is."
Tunhelg was growing into a broad shouldered man, with the braided
beard and already having the scars of a seasoned adventurer, but the
way he bobbed his head reminded Yulgna of the boy she had babysat in
her own youth. Then he grinned at her. "Let's go find the others and
get that drink."
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----------------THE TERRIFIC VISAGE-----------------
-----------------------Part 4-----------------------
------------Copyright 2016 Drew Perron--------------
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Mackenzie and Medusa agreed, the best place to start was from the bottom.
"Especially because I'm so short!" Mackenzie giggled.
'Yes, dear,' said Medusa, who was still building a framework for
enjoying lexical ambiguity, but who very much enjoyed her charge's
laughter.
Medusa had found Mackenzie through large-scale data-gathering,
looking for someone who both needed and would be open to help. It was
kind of weird, kind of scary, thinking of it that way - that if things
had been just a little bit different, it would be someone else instead
of her, and she'd still be in the bad place where she had been, after
the Awful Thing... But that just made it more important that they find
the people who still *were* in that place!
So they got in combination, since two heads were better than one,
and one person who was two people in one head was even better than
that. Gorgoneion sat on Mackenzie's floor and let the data Medusa had
been gathering flow through her, a combination of carefully curated
information and intuitive feels. Someone who needed help. Someone who
would be open to help. And most importantly, someone who could be
reached by a twelve-year-old on rollerblades.
They had been doing this for ten minutes when a thought rose out of
the shimmering interplay of minds. This feels kind of creepy, thought
Gorgoneion.
Hm. What do I mean by 'creepy'?
Well, I'm looking through people's stuff. Their social media, the
comment sections where they post, things that they rated or liked or
donated to. It gives me a distinct feeling of invading their privacy.
Medusa takes her data only from public communications, though. The
heuristics I'm using are optimized for figuring out this stuff, but
these are conclusions that a human observer could draw, if they had
the data and knew where to look.
Yes, but isn't that... isn't it... nnf...
There was a discordance in their dance, an underlying clash of
harmonics that was struggling to express itself but couldn't quite
make it. They were in a calm situation, so Gorgoneion didn't try to
hold herself together; they let their minds slide apart. Still a
really weird sensation, thought Mackenzie.
'You're troubled on a level below the conscious,' noted Medusa. 'Let's rap.'
Mackenzie snorted softly. "Okay, okay. There's... I dunno, all the
heuristics, they still feel creepy. Like, intuitive feels-wise."
'Well, perhaps it is a matter of...' A carefully curated pause. 'Consent?'
"Like, people being okay with us looking through their data? That'd
help... but we have to look through, like, a *lot* of people's data to
actually find the people we're looking for."
'Yes, and I'd hoped to avoid the problem with that by focusing on
publicly available data, where the implication is that they have
already consented to having it looked at. But your intuitive sense of
creepiness may indicate that people would not feel that way.'
"I..." Mackenzie frowned. "Ugh, I'm not sure."
'Hmm... Well, you're getting thirsty, Mackenzie. You should get a drink.'
"Oh, thanks!" Mackenzie hopped to the kitchen and poured herself a
glass from the filtered pitcher. She gulped it down, poured another,
and sipped more sedately. "Hmmmm... I guess... I guess my thing is
making sure the person we *help* is okay with it. I mean, that's one
of the goals, right?"
'Very true,' said Medusa. 'Therefore... perhaps we should
concentrate on finding the type of person who would have a high chance
of accepting our methods.'
"Yeah," said Mackenzie, starting to warm up to it. "And like, we
would explain ourselves, make sure they're okay with it."
'And it occurs to me that we could start with such people and build
up a network such that, by reputation and word of mouth, we could
reach people outside of that category.'
"Oh! Yeah!" Mackenzie bounced in place, then stopped herself. "I mean..."
After a moment, Medusa prompted. 'Yes, Mackenzie?'
"I mean, it would still be *better* to get their permission to find
them this way at all... but like, I don't even know if that's
possible... and..." She sucked on her lip. "I mean, is helping people
like this worth going behind their backs that much?"
'I think so. It's how I found you, after all.'
Mackenzie smiled. "True. Okay, then... it's definitely not perfect?
But it's a plan!"
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-------------------STEALTH MISSION------------------
-----------------------Part 2-----------------------
------------Copyright 2016 Tom Russell--------------
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"Okay," says Cal, "so I'm assuming you're talking about, what, some
kind of invisibility cloak? Is that even a thing?"
"Yes and no," says Medusa. "A cloak was made once before, back in
1939, and we know how it was done. It's just prohibitively expensive:
millions of dollars per square inch. The original suit was all but
destroyed by the Seven Wonders, leaving only a few scraps."
"Ah," says Cal, "but a few scraps will be just my size, yeah? I see
where you're going with this. So, do we know where this is? Government
research lab? Black ops warehouse? Seven Wonders trophy room?"
"There isn't really a trophy room anymore, not since they
disbanded. When Julie Ann came over to the Daylighters, she arranged
for everything to be turned over to Blue Boxer. We kept some of it,
but items like the cloak, which might require further study, he in
turn turned over to Cradle Tech."
"What."
"It's in their world headquarters in California."
"What."
"I am not comprehending your line of questioning. I know that you
know where their world headquarters is."
"Oh my gosh, you are such an AI."
"Yes?" says Medusa, perplexed.
"Dude, just, oh never mind." Cal nurses the bridge of her nose
between her fingers, then takes a deep breath. "So, in order to sneak
in to the Cradle Tech world HQ building, which we're pretty sure has
been infiltrated by FEVER, we need to nab the invisibility cloak,
which requires sneaking into the same building which we can't sneak
into without. That's probably not grammatically correct or whatever,
but I don't flipping care. I will punch grammar in the face on a daily
basis. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that is the situation
here, right?"
"Not exactly," says Medusa. "Cradle Tech is still our technological
partner in the fight against FEVER, at least ostensibly. We just asked
them for the cloak."
"We can just ask them, you mean."
"No, I just had one of the other Medusas send an email. They'll
have it ready for pick-up tomorrow afternoon. I'm assigning one of
Daylighters local to that area, Featherweight, to go to Cradle Tech.
You'll be there as well, of course, but you'll be hiding on
Featherweight's person."
"Gives me a chance to scope it out beforehand. I like it. So, how
are we getting from Chicago to Cali?"
"You can't see it, of course, but if I had a mouth, I'd be smiling
slyly right now."
"What is it? Spill!"
"Your birthday is coming up next month."
"Big one-eight! Old enough to vote! Old enough to adult!"
"I may have been working on a sort of present for you. One of the
twenty-six most frequent complaints you have had about your current
situation is a lack of mobility, and therefore of agency."
"Yeah, I'm stuck in this flipping dollhouse, in this flipping
apartment, unless I get someone to carry me around. Did you get me a
teleporter? Because I'm not really cool with the whole scattering of
my atoms thing."
"Dollhouse," says Medusa, "open bay doors." The house starts to
shake, and Cal's kitchen pulls away from her living room to make room
for...
"It's a flipping me-sized jet," says Cal. "Oh, wow. Thanks, Medusa!
Did I ever tell you how awesome you are?"
"I thought you'd like it," says Medusa. "It's slower than a
full-size jet, of course, but faster than a car. It should take only
twelve hours for us to get to Featherweight's apartment. Shall we?"
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-----------------SEE YOU NEXT MONTH-----------------
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Medusa created by Tom Russell & Andrew Perron.
All stories are the copyright of their authors.
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