Dive

I make no illusions about this being a rough first draft.  This is simply an idea that I've been toying with, possibly to turn into a new series.  Comments and criticism are certainly welcome :)

‘Alister!'

The engineer’s devices were on the fritz trying to deal with the world’s excessive neural output.  From inside their safe house, Tair, Aisling and the geist stared helplessly at a CRT monitor which displayed nothing but static.

‘Alister!’ Tair shouted into his mouthpiece.  No reply.

‘The door’s approaching, he has to be close,’ said Aisling.  She stumbled as the wall beside them trembled.  The wall had grown to accommodate the new world, turning the Rebels’ central space into a pleasant square room.  Each of the older walls had a door in the centre, unique to the Rebel whose world it once led onto.  The new wall hadn’t needed a door until Alister accidentally attracted the thief on the other side.  Now, as a pinprick grew into a catflap-sized portal and continued to grow, the remaining Rebels could only hope that Alister had outrun the thief.

‘There’s got to be something we can do,’ Tair pushed away from the small desk and tried to steady himself against the tidal forces that were seeping through the wall.  He turned to the geist.  ‘Isn’t there an escape trick or a subconscious weapon we can use to slow it down?’

The geist’s golden-white trail was beginning to pull towards the wall at varying speeds, but its face remained calm.

‘Not unless the girl used mental exercises to foster a back door...’

Aisling groaned.  ‘She’s a seventeen year old art student!  I doubt meditation was on the cards.’ The door was nearly full size.

‘I’m done with waiting,’ Tair said, stepping closer to the portal.  ‘I’m going for it.’

‘Don’t!’  The geist and Aisling spoke in unison, though the geist’s voice was more measured and neutral.  Their exclamation was of little use, each one’s voice slowing down like a bubble in treacle before compressing into floating sixty-point letters that wafted back towards them.

Tair was near the entrance horizon, so the onlookers behind him seemed to be a grey blur.  He turned the doorknob slowly, grabbing hold of the frame with his left hand.  There was no click, no opportunity for him to resist - one moment the door was closed, the next it flung out into a streaking, howling storm.

Stylised house pets and a can of peas flew past him in the void towards a dark vanishing point, both far away and too close at the same time.  Directly in front of it, rising (or falling) towards the door was Alister, carrying the precious plunder under his left arm.

Tair’s grip on the door frame began to slip.  He threw his right hand out to Alister, who grabbed it, slid back a little as the thief tried one last attempt at sucking him in, and then held firm.

Just as Tair felt his fingers give way, they were grasped tightly by someone else’s.  Aisling was floating inside the safe house, her waist attached to the door on the opposite wall by a length of rope.  A reverse image of the words DON’T LET GO followed by CLOSE THE DOOR floated in front of her before smashing into a million pieces against her face.

Alister nodded.  Slowly they were dragged back into the safety of their collective conscious, but the quasi-gravitational forces of the collapsing world were reaching the centre of the room.  The CRT monitor that they had taken from the engineer’s world was sucked into the vortex, narrowly missing Alister’s head.  He grabbed the door handle.

Before the final heave on the human chain, the world remnant and the thief behind the Rebels began to compress dramatically, creating a fast approaching 2D plane.  A roar of anger rang out and was silenced by the closing door.  Suddenly all of the suction stopped, and Aisling, Tair and Alister dropped to the floor.  It was a rainbow carpet.

The geist unbolted itself from the far wall and dropped the coils of rope still attached to Aisling.  Tair looked back at the silent portal which wavered ominously before bursting into a shower of pink and green.  In its place was a rectangle covered by an ornate pattern of chrysanthemums and carnations.  The door nob was shaped like a duck.

‘Don’t ever do that again.  Ever,’ Aisling said.  ‘This place is unstable enough as it is.’

Alister looked around the room.

‘I dunno, I sort of like some of the leaked stuff.’  The corner between his and the new wall was filled with beanbags and lined by a bench that looked like it came from a science lab.  The other corner had kept some of Tair’s toys but was considerably more colourful.

The geist aloofly helped the other rebels up.

‘I think we need a new plan to fight the thief.’

Tair stretched his arms, though he didn’t need to.

‘You think?’  He turned to Alister.  ‘You got the goods, didn’t you?’

The objects, taken from the world before it was stolen away, included an average looking pencil, a few paint buckets and a box of charcoal nubs.

‘The tools of a real Creator,’ the geist said.  ‘These will aid us greatly.’

There was a thumping from behind the new door.

‘Oh no,’ Aisling said.  ‘Not another hanger-on...’

Tair held up his hands.  ‘Wait just a second, Ash.  If anyone can use these tools properly it’s the person they belonged to.’

The woman raised an eyebrow but said nothing.  A muffled voice called out from the new door.

‘Somebody!  I don’t know where I am.’

Carefully, Tair turned the handle.  There was a quack.

Inside was a water-closet-sized room that had one recliner chair at the back end.  Every wall was covered by drawings and paintings.  Standing in the centre was the girl.  She wore a frilly red and black dress, black stockings, a black overcoat and had straight black hair.  She wore eyeliner like a goth and had a nose piercing, but was definitely not of the demeanour.

‘Where am I?  Who are you?’

‘We’re here to help,’ Tair said, realising too late that it was a goofy cliché.  ‘Come out here and we’ll explain it to you.’

The seventeen-year-old stepped into the main room.  As she did so, it became slightly larger.

‘Take a seat,’ Aisling said, motioning to the chairs around the desk.  She glared back at Tair.

The newcomer sat down and the others took up positions around the desk.  The geist was wisely hanging back - it would take a lot more than one sitting to explain what it was about.

‘Ever heard the expression that there are worlds inside our heads?’

The not-quite-goth shook her head.

‘No, not really, but continue.’

Aisling nodded to Alister.

‘Thing is,’ he began hesitantly, ‘there was an accident in a laboratory.  A rampant idea, sort of like a virus, got loose.  It’s been stealing the worlds inside people’s heads.  They go into a coma and lose all sense of where they are.’

Now the girl’s eyes widened.

‘I’d heard about the accidents.  Something about memetics.’

Tair took his turn.  ‘I’m afraid you were its next target.’

‘I’m not an idiot,’ said the girl defensively.  ‘If I’m in a coma, then how am I here?  Where on Earth is this place?’

Aisling continued the spiel.  She’d been at it the longest and had been shown a fair deal of the ropes by the geist.

‘The middle realm, or Earth, is just one of countless worlds,’ she said.  ‘We’re currently in a sort of non-place created by the subconscious energies our brains are giving off.  Things work a bit differently than in the middle realm, but it’s home.’

The girl sighed.  ‘So why are you here?  Why am I here?  And what is the thing over there?’  She indicated over her shoulder without turning around.

Aisling reciprocated with a shrug.

‘Some of this you will have to find out in time.  As for us?’  She pointed at the men.  ‘That’s Tair, short for Alastair, next to him is Alister - now you know why the first guy is Tair.  I’m Aisling, and the “thing” behind you is called the geist.  The world thief calls us Rebels, because we fight.  We're going to stop it.’

Ongoing Adventures #1: New Paradigm

To both new readers and old I present the start of Volume 1 of the Ongoing Adventures.  For a better introduction to the principle characters, you can check out the previous stories "In Defence of the Realm" and "Search for Dastardly", both linked on the Ongoing Adventures hub page.

The man was in rather plain clothes – brown pants and off-white shirt with a tunic held tight by a string of rope – but nearby were a set of lightweight gauntlets, and on a rock sat an elegant helmet. He was currently on an outcropping high above the fjord that gashed the land; not an ideal location during the frequent coastal tempests. The breeze was hesitantly growing. Before long the man was shivering slightly.

The reason for his lofty position lay in his hands. What illumination was available from the veiled sun shone onto a handful of rustling paper as the man wrote.

I am called Sir Adrian. My companions tell me that you may have heard the stories. Please take care of this man. He once helped me save a kingdom, but he has lost his mind.

The knight paused. Was it right to do this? He felt like these people didn't deserve it.

A man named Krotar is looking for him. I don't know why, but I have reason to believe that Krotar has lost his mind too.

'We're ready to go,' said a voice behind him.

Sir Adrian, former Knight of the Clockwork City, turned to see the speaker. Renda San was of a sturdy type, dressed in a one-piece leather garment with clipped-on greaves for her legs. These made her look much more like a mythical warrior maiden than should have been legal.

'This isn't worth much,' Adrian brandished the notes and his quill. 'I feel dirty.'

'We won't be far off,' said Renda. 'If anything nasty goes down, Nuff will give us the signal.'

Adrian picked up his spare armour pieces and followed Renda to the camp down the slope. Amongst the trees of the wooded road birds chattered at the horses or sung in tune with Nuff's snoring.

Waory had finished folding the tents and now climbed onto his horse, still uncertain and clumsy after all these days on the road. Renda woke the gnome, whom she rode with on the second horse, and Adrian gave each of them a small root vegetable to encourage the beasts. Sal had completely recovered from her laminitis, so she was comfortable with taking both Adrian and the man who called himself Dastardly. She also seemed to understand that the other horses weren't as fast as her and had kept pace at the back of the group since they'd left the capital of the plains.

'Everyone still up for this?' the knight said. Murmurs of agreement wafted about the clearing.

The false Dastardly gurgled. He hadn't said a coherent word since the old man of a village two days past had given the group a healing herb. His mind was degrading at an alarming rate.

'Onward,' Adrian said with a forced smile.  Onward, he mentally cackled.  Time to ruin somebody's day.

***

The mind and spirit once known to his allies as Dastardly Medieval finally surfaced. Perhaps, though, surfaced is an inappropriate term as its new dwelling place was far from anything resembling a surface.

The mind felt itself lying down. This was at least a physical location, it noted. Nothing was like it remembered. It, or rather he, let out a cry of pain. Death had not been nice.

'Settle down,' he heard a voice say. It was deep but not unkind. 'You've just arrived.'

Lying on a bed of stone. A smell of deep, dank earth. Much deeper than the roads the gnomes had delved.

'Now then, friendly soul, I think you can open your eyes.'

The freelancer did so. He was in cave lit by open fire torches. A presence was nearby, but there was no visual evidence of that fact until a bulky, brown arm swung a bowl on a handle over his head. Little green coals dropped from it and sizzled on the freelancer's face without hurting him.

The freelancer sat up.

'I've got to do it...' he said. 'Death, the Four Ces... it all has meaning.'  He clutched his head and groaned. 'But it's all a jumble.'

'Calm down, please, friendly soul,' said the voice. Directly in front of the freelancer was a craggy snout, like a cross between a crocodile and a pig. The head of the thing must have been a foot long. The thing's face was adorned with tattoos. Many beaded tufts of hair sprung out and dangled, glinting in the firelight. One of four stocky arms was holding the green flame bowl.

'You're a new arrival,' it said. 'We understand that the Ces put you here for a reason.'

The freelancer began to panic, feeling his own face.

'What happened to me?!' He gaped, feeling the long greasy teeth and the rough hairy nose. 'My face! My beautiful face!'

The freelancer grabbed hold of the creature's animal-skin clothing and shook it violently.

'Dastardly Medieval doesn't do ugly! What is going on? Oh, my beautiful face...'

'Settle,' the thing said, waving another arm in the air, wafting a feel of calm through the freelancer. 'That old face wasn't yours to begin with. You are no longer Dastardly, friendly soul. Your name is Stroeg.'

The freelancer was speechless. Useless scraps of information floated around his mind like chunks in soup.

The thing in front of him smiled, as much as the freakish snout could. 'I am Erk, the Death of Trolls. Maybe I can help you understand why you are here.'

The Puppethead War #7 - Friday is Almost Over

< < Issue 6

Issue 8 > >

As "Friday" comes to a close, I confess that I did not initially plan a long focus on Daiv, and I apologise if this current dark turn seems to clash with the opening issues.  Next time will be different as we shift focus to a character nearly forgotten about.

Yoh hammered the final wooden pole into the soft ground, this one standing at the north-most point of the Yerz inlet.

'Where do you suppose Mr Sasket and the others are?' he called out to Tean. The sun was sliding lower in the sky and the riders, bound for the Floating Village over a day ago, had not yet returned.

At the other end of the beach, his brother shrugged and pointed back to Yerz. Yoh knew what would happen next, despite having little idea of how it happened. Once Tean pulled the lever, powerful energy would surge through the fencing wire.

The contents of the box, the merchant in Arten had said, were various products of the earth, primarily potatoes mixed with potent alchemical concoctions. The energy would leave the box and travel along the wire, wanting to return to the earth it came from. Touching the fence granted the energy's wishes, but the body it passed through was scorched as if by an interior fire.

'We can only hope this invention works against inhuman creatures,' said Tean, joining Yoh at the doors of the boat shed. The sight of the ramp being fenced off unsettled both of the young men, having been accustomed to seeing fishermen come and go constantly until the week past.

Yoh shrugged for no apparent reason. 'You know, I thought you'd have a joke or something lined up.'

'What about: with this energy fence, we're “lightning” the mood?'

The brothers stood in awkward silence, then Yoh remembered their other duty to be done before sunset.

'We had better make sure that all the houses are secure. The fence won't protect us if they come out with enough force.'

Tean grumbled. 'If they come out at all.'

Yoh did not lecture his brother about being too eager for battle. Instead he said, 'I'd have been more confidant guarding the town if the riders were back tonight.'

***

'You will not be returning to Yerz until early morning,' said Darrin. The “Grape” craft surfaced near the cove of the boatmen, sliders in the top half revealing a darker sky than Daiv had imagined. The lateral movement as they rose from the pressures at the bottom of the lake might have been driven by extra puppetheads – indeed, they must have required agents “on the ground”, so to speak, to take away the unconscious mindswapped bodies.

Dammit, Daiv thought. How many of these retched monsters were there? How many were willing to leave their own bodies behind in this invasion? Where were the other protesters that Laryet had mentioned?

The Grape moved towards the shore and the boy noticed that Darrin was fiddling with a mask and backpack vest. From the design of the thin metal curls it was probably a Quandu artefact.

One of the men that had jumped Daiv in the alley began speaking.

'Commander, are you going to –'

'Keep in line, Arak,' Darrin Sasket said, eliciting a confused expression from the soldier. 'I am not Commander, I am Mr Darrin Sasket. You are now Arak.'

'My target was called March,' the other man from the alley said.

'That name will stay,' Mr Sasket said without pause. He attached the mask to the body of the apparatus and then to his own face. His voice slightly muffled but still understandable, he continued. 'Those who know their target's name will be referred to by that name and nothing else. Otherwise, make something up that sounds... human.'

The front end – or back end, it didn't seem to be distinguished – of the Grape jerked to a stop on the pebbles of the beach. Daiv stood facing what he thought of as starboard, with Roran and the Floating Village boy still recovering on his right. He wasn't sure if they were also in his position or if he was the only one spared.

The boy stood up. 'I shall be called Dripelev.'

Too much to hope for, Daiv thought, as he tried to keep a straight face. One by one they climbed into the frigid waters and waded to shore. The boy who naively wanted to be named after a joke from the eastern peaks appeared less steady on his feet than the others, who would have had time to practise locomotion back on the pontoons. Daiv tried to add a slight wobble to his own step.

'Prepare yourselves and the humans' montigers,' Darrin called. 'We will leave three hours before dawn.' He turned slightly away from them but looked back after a second.

'In case you'd forgotten, that's a quartech.'

The Commander dived into the water.

***

The riders' mounts had stayed by the beach since they had left that morning. When Daiv approached Durga, he was wary of the puppethead soldiers' glances. In particular, Arak paid attention to the manner that the Yerz boy's presence affected the beast.

'I should have known,' he said, appearing at Daiv's side. 'I should have guessed that this would happen, “Daiv”.'

The rider stood stock still, his hand midway down Durga's saddle straps.

'What do you mean?'

A suspicious smile crossed the man's face.

'You've been practising with the montiger souls, haven't you?'

Relief washed through Daiv and he turned look at Arak with his head bowed sheepishly.

''fraid so,' he said. He raised his voice. 'How about I give the rest of you a hand?'

The other three montigers had backed up the slope and into the trees, each sounding a low growl of the kind that loosened bowels in the wild. The puppethead soldiers were clustered at the door of the hut, watching for the beasts' outlines in the rapidly dimming light.

***

A fire had been put up by the more learned of the group, including Daiv, who had tried to appear aloof, in control and talk as little as possible since calming the montigers. The creatures that had taken up residence in Roran, “Dripelev”, March, Arak and the woman (named a preposterous “Evaraea”, which Daiv sorely wished to tell her to shorten to Eva) were gathered around the flames, eating rations and discussing things like the feel of wind on little skin hairs or the limited range of sight that their targets had.

'Daiv, monster tamer,' one called out. 'Join us.'

The boy had given the excuse as Laryet that it was important to spend time with the mounts, let them smell you and so on. He and the sixth puppethead agent were both a way out from the pitiful flames, Daiv reassuring Durga while watching the puppethead, who clutched his head every now and again.  He also appeared to be muttering to himself.

Since the soldiers were not particularly well regimented, Daiv approached the group as casually as possible.  Disgust rose in his throat. Knowing that these people were not people at all but evil invaders was torture enough that he almost wished Laryet had not spared him.

'What's his problem?' he asked, pointing to the shaken-looking one. He sat between Roran and Dripelev, hoping that they wouldn't get personal about life under the lake and reveal his pretence.

'You three don't know,' March said in a matter-of-fact way. 'Apparently, the Commander killed Darys's body when you arrived at the village... I sure can't blame him for being out of it.'

Evaraea – still an awful name – butted in.

'I guess that's why you let your own target escape then, “March”.'

The man was visibly distressed.

'Just be lucky you got the pick of the female warriors. Laryet here's surely miffed with her gender-bender.'

Daiv then tried to act distressed. 'Why should you care? It's what Darrin Sasket would have of us.'

Arak cut the conversation in half. 'If you ask me, the Commander has grown the grass after all these years in human.'

The circle was quiet. Daiv got the impression that each soldier was hoping the one next to him shared the sentiment, a euphemism evidently about insanity.

'You don't know the half of it,' Dripelev finally said. Daiv's hopes of a partner in subterfuge were doused. 'I heard that he tortured his own body to death in order to extract every last detail from the target.'

For the first time, Roran spoke. 'Dangerous and crazy or not, he's still the Commander.'

As the others nodded in assent, Daiv knew that he had gotten in far too deep.

The Puppethead War #6

< < Issue 5

Issue 7 > >

FRIDAY

The Trailer rose late that morning, stretching slowly and getting dressed without a care. He'd listened to the pompous man and the traders talk for nearly an hour last night, without being glanced at once. How impressive this ability was! To hide in plain sight, in the enemy's own form, like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

For a second, the Trailer wondered where that turn of phrase could possibly have come from. He knew what a wolf was, he assumed that a sheep was some sort of prey, but the idiom was totally alien to him. He tried to let it go, knowing it would rear its head at some inconvenient time.

Next door to his own room, he paid the woman who had acted as his partner and thanked her for such engaging conversation. Manners were important to the Trailer because he hoped that they were the sign of a decent person. In the midst of all of this, he had to believe he was a decent person.

The Trailer wandered downstairs and paid the innkeeper as well, remembering to tell him how surprisingly comfortable the beds were. Then he leisurely strolled to the inn's stables, found the dullest of the horses and stole it.

After all, it was still war.

***

Lunchtime came and went like the patches of trees outside the carriage. By the time their coach arrived in town it was late afternoon and Ferran, the Honch and Talon were thoroughly bored.

'This has been a very kind gesture,' Talon tried to put it as delicately as he could, 'but I honestly don't know how you stand it. And you say we've got even longer tomorrow?'

The Gaimswick Gulp was the name of the tavern. Verden and the teacher had hung back at the bar while Leyh sat with Talon in one of the booths. The trader slurped her sweet, amber-coloured beer.

'Oge's gonna stay here with the coach, that's for sure. He's gotta pick up some things but I've got an –'

The Honch and Ferran arrived with their own topped up tankards and Leyh switched her attention to them. For what must have been the second or third time today, Talon felt unnecessary.

'Oh good,' the trader said. 'Have either of you ridden a horse?'

The adults stared at each other for a moment before looking back to Leyh. The youth wondered absent-mindedly about if she'd been brought up somewhere that had horses.

'Never in my life,' said Ferran.

Despite himself, the Honch's mouth twitched and he said, 'I did some training on a ranch out east.'

Leyh turned to Talon with that powerful expression on her face. This might have been the beer's face, Talon thought, but it seemed to work.

'We can take the horses to Bing-Milton,' she said. 'Shouldn't be more than an hour and a half. Then if we leave early tomorrow, we'll be in Carpol no more than ten hours.'

Talon's elders shared a survey of the youth, suspicious of what he might have given away.

'Why would we need to race all the way?' said Ferran. 'Your coach will be there tomorrow evening.'

'Why race indeed?' the trader said. She winked at Talon. 'Obviously you aren't in any real hurry, but I thought it would be a welcome change of pace. If you could pay for the replacement horses on the coach.'

The four of them sat in silence, each contemplating his or her next move and occasionally taking swigs of drink. Finally, Ferran produced a decent handful of coins from a recess in his jacket. He flicked them over the table and Leyh, still holding her glass with one hand, swiped them from mid air with the other.

'We have another deal, boys. Let's fly.' She looked at each of their blank faces. 'Metaphorically speaking.'

***

Daiv's brain rebooted, painfully aware of motion. Wherever he was, whatever this place happened to be, it was accelerating downward.

***

Mr Sasket rested on the concave wall with a massive grin on his face – he was enjoying this. Certain losses had been taken, indeed a great many soldiers had fought till death on the surface, but the four who remained were worth it.

The men from the alley had carried Roran, Daiv and the Floating Village boy to the central pool where an oblong transport nicknamed “the Grape” had been waiting, guided by the last of Sasket's phase two squad. The Grape had been designed for human-sized passengers but the mass of the thing was small enough that soldiers could push it through the water.

As the prisoners were loaded on board, he wished that there had been just one more agent to track the boy's mindswapped compatriot, who had somehow escaped the attack in the alley. When he closed the hatch and rapped the go code to the pilots outside, Sasket concluded that the escapee would probably die on the beach, gasping for air without knowing to use his gills. That was solace enough.

The Grape sliced through the water, into the deeps and to the south east. There would be no taking chances this time, Darrin thought. The three remaining phase two agents, currently steering the Grape to the city's outskirts, would be heavily sedated just prior to the mindswap process. Daiv and Roran, this other boy too, would awaken in the lowest level of the darkest dungeon in the ruins, waiting for Mr Sasket to decide how useful they were.

'Commander, the Yerz boy is waking up,' said one agent, inhabiting the body of the young man named March. The soldier from the plaza had joined the others but had not spoken since he'd seen his own body killed.

'Good,' said Sasket. 'You should know from experience that the process is less than comfortable with an unconscious target.'

Daiv stirred. 'What's going on?' He then remembered what had happened in the village. The boy sat up straight, having been laid on the metal floor of the Grape between the other two captives.

'Roran!' He moved forward and became aware of the three battle-scarred men and one woman who shared the cramped space with him. The boy drew back and glared at Mr Sasket.

'I knew it was you,' Daiv said.

The old man did not appear to have heard him. 'We were unprepared for Ferran's case.  My agents were too inexperienced. Now that I've had time to train them in your history and mannerisms, you and Roran will be perfect infiltrators as we prepare to leave.'

'Talon will warn the Overarchy before you get a chance to invade,' Daiv said. 'Any suspicious activity in Yerz...'

'Try and see logic, boy,' the old man said. 'Those government bigwigs won't believe mid-Ryndian fishermen about bogeymen from the lake.' The Grape decelerated sharply. 'Ah, I believe we are ready to go.'

Panels along one wall of the craft started to slide back and a huge pressure increase popped Daiv's ears. Between him and the near darkness was a crackling membrane. The shapes of multiple puppethead arms pushed against the thin window and Sasket picked at a point to release a gush of water. The cold water splashed on Roran's face and he woke up. The window re-sealed itself, but before Daiv could ponder the ramifications of such a material his head was pressed hard against it by one of the puppethead agents.

No longer was Daiv in the submerged, metallic cigar. A creeping dread rose as he realised that there was absolutely nothing around him, just an endless blackness. Then the music started.

Some kind of stringed instrument, he thought. A guitar or lute. The tune was simple and soothing like a lullaby. The stringed instrument was soon joined by a dull percussion and the boy felt a second presence in the void.

--We have very little time--

What was that?

--Stay calm and listen to me--

Is there somebody here?

--In human speech my name is pronounced Laryet. I'm what you know as a “puppethead”--

'You aren't taking our world!' Daiv shouted out. 'Least not me!'

--Don't speak, the soldiers will hear you--

Daiv prepared to resist whatever came next, all the while the music was building in his mind. Nothing happened. Laryet, though invisible, felt like he had moved closer.

--I'm actually a she, for your information--

The creature could hear what Daiv thought. That connection disgusted him.

--Listen, you will pretend to be mindswapped when this is over. There is usually a period of disorientation--

This was insanity, thought Daiv. He'd cracked.

--Followed by confirmation with your commander. Tell the one called Sasket that you hear a rippling wave--

This monster was trying to enlist him. For what reason?

--Not all of us want the invasion, you have to stop this stupidity and... the sedatives are beginning to take hold; we probably won't meet again--

The black void was gone and the boy was back on the underwater vehicle. It was rising slowly.

'Ready, Laryet?' said Mr Sasket. He lifted Daiv to his feet. The boy didn't need to pretend, the experience had left him groggy enough.

'… a rippling wave,' he managed to mumble.

The Puppethead War #5

< < Issue 4

Issue 6 > >

FRIDAY

'Where's Sasket?' Daiv said. Roran kneeled near one of the dead bodies – the reek was unimaginable. He placed his hands together and closed his eyes, mumbling something, then lifted the crossbow from the man's cold hands.

'He went in amongst the buildings. As long as he's safe...'

'Roran.' Daiv stood away from the wall and spread his feet to balance on the rocking floor. 'I think that the teacher may have suspected Mr Sasket of being one of them.'

The boy pointed to the lake monster. Its motionless corpse was several times larger than the one that had attacked Ferran. Clearly more than a baby.

'Nonsense,' said the other rider. 'Darrin Sasket has been with the village since before I was born, since your teacher was barely as old as you.' The man's head wavered side to side. He weighed the crossbow in his hands, aiming through the building's doorway.

'He might have been taken even before that...'

Roran ignored Daiv's comment, though his eyes flicked about warily. 'Do you hear that?'

'There's nothing,' Daiv said.

Roran stood up. 'Right. If anyone was still fighting, we should have heard them as soon as we got here.'

'Shouldn't we keep going?' the boy said. His voice cracked. 'I mean, I'm not trying to –'

'Grab the other crossbow,' Roran said. Feeding his own bow, he tossed Daiv an unusual ten-bolt clip.  'Shouldn't take you too long to figure out.'

Throughout the known world, there had never been a single exponent of industry. Instead, various inventors and tinkerers had risen and sparked out, leaving behind a patchwork of ideas. Some of these were easier for blacksmiths and farmers to replicate a dozen times over – others, much like the Quandu technology they were based on, were one of a kind.

What Roran failed to mention was that setting a crossbow was hard. These weren't like the hunting bows they'd used in the forests around Yerz. Daiv could handle those. What ruined him was that Hem had made it look so easy on the boat.

'Get a move on!' Roran hissed. 'We'll make our way to the central plaza.'

Without warning, Daiv invented.

***

The one called Darrin Sasket passed between two larger buildings into a wide open space that was strewn with debris from a burnt-out battle. Several stalls in the village's plaza had exploded into wooden splinters and bits of people. The sheer physical energy expended here made him nostalgic. He swung the crossbow at his side.

Time was moving on, so he wandered across broken bodies of both species to a pontoon that had sunk slightly. The corner was dipping into the circle of water that formed the centrepiece of the plaza and a heavy breathing caught his attention.

In the central pool, the head of one of his soldiers' bodies was balanced on the pontoon's edge. A human was trying to push its neck back into the water but stopped when Sasket arrived.

'Hark... a rippling wa...' the human began.

'Summer flows,' Sasket replied. The human slumped beside the soldier, whose heavy drawl echoed around the buildings. With the rudimentary lungs they were granted, the one called Sasket thought, they were lucky to breathe at all in the low pressure air above the water. This one would not survive much longer if it couldn't submerge its gills.

'Soldier,' Sasket continued, 'what are you doing?'

The human took a deep breath, and the body behind him did likewise. Sasket knew the answer that the mindswapping soldier would give him.

'I need somewhere... to return...' the soldier said. 'Don't I?'

The one called Darrin Sasket realised that the soldier's new body was not in top condition, but Sasket had been around enough wounded humans to hedge his bets. He raised the crossbow and aimed at the weak spot between two cartilage plates on the soldier's original body, straight into the central nerve cluster. He fired once, lowered the bow and took the time to load another bolt. Then Mr Sasket fired again. The laboured breathing stopped.

The soldier stood up, clutching at his side.

'What have you done? I...' But the pain was too great and he fell again.

Sasket wrapped the man's arm around his shoulder and helped him up.

'I've freed you,' he said. 'The human is dead. This is your body now.'

***

Down an alley that rocked to some far off wave, Daiv and Roran circled each other back-to-back. They came across a darkened door hanging ajar.

'We can cut through here,' said Roran. 'Stay alert. Some of the invaders might still be here.'

The space was barely a shack, a low maintenance home that might have drifted its way to the centre of town from the poorer districts near the wharf – likely the Floating Village's form of social climbing. A bed was broken and dark fluids were sprayed on the walls. The battle had reached here. A scraping noise outside attracted Daiv's attention and he waved to Roran to follow him through the opposite door.

Daiv was not very knowledgeable in subtlety, especially not in dangerous situations such as this. He poked the end of his modified crossbow past the doorway and towards the scraping noise, then peaked around the corner.

There was a huge mass blocking the right end of the road outside the door, comprised mainly of matted seaweed, but Daiv recognised the shape as that of a puppethead. Without thinking, he leapt from the shack and fired a bolt into its back. The creature groaned but kept trying to drag itself away. Daiv levered the custom loader with his left hand and another bolt slotted into place.

A voice rang out from beyond the beleaguered creature. 'What are you doing now? Come to finish us off?'

A human boy, probably younger than Daiv, had scrambled on top of the heap that covered the puppethead's flesh.

'You can't steal me!' the boy said, dancing left and right with his hands flat beside his ears. 'March, they're coming, get to the water!'

'Stay where you are, or I shoot again,' Daiv said, aiming his next bolt at the boy.

Roran rested his arm on Daiv's shoulder.

'Easy there, I think we have to calm down.'

Daiv turned to face the other rider without lowering the weapon. 'I know what you're thinking, but these things will do anything to trick us.'

'I'm just saying we should stop yelling –'

Roran was interrupted by a scrabbling on the rooftop to their left. Before either rider could do anything, two men had jumped down to the street, one in front and one behind. Both carried multiple injuries, at least superficially.

'You are our prisoners. Come to the main plaza,' said the one behind them.

The boy down the street stamped his feet. 'Run! Get on your feet... legs... whatever!'

The puppethead beneath him struggled to move faster away from the group outside the shack, but the man in front of Roran and Daiv was on top of it in three quick strides.

'I think I understand.'

'Quiet!' the man behind them flipped a knife into his hand and pointed it at Roran. He continued regardless.

'They start a battle to bring out the strongest warriors.  Strong bodies to steal.'

'I said be QUIET!'

Daiv and Roran turned for a better view of their apparent captor. They hadn't made a move when, like lightening, he snapped their heads together, knocking them both out.