From alt.pub.dragons-inn Thu Aug 24 22:15:12 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8652 Path: netcom.com!csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!agate!spool.mu.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!news.ecn.bgu.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!news.uoregon.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!weld.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!bt!btnet!uunet!in1.uu.net!news1.digital.com!pa.dec.com!depot.mro.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!leggy.zk3.dec.com!orb!not-for-mail From: hutch@agora.rdrop.com (Steve Hutchison) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: Late One Night Date: 22 Aug 1995 23:38:25 -0000 Organization: Duchy of Wabesylvan Obspauk Lines: 262 Sender: news@Orb.Nashua.NH.US Message-ID: X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have been so moved by the insightful analysis that Stilt Man posted recently, in the thread about the Health Inspector, that I will attempt hereafter to emulate his own style. Hutch -0--- It was a dark and stormy night; the wind whipped from the sea in a chillsome fashion over the many-roofed houses and past the ornately plain fountains, pausing to whirl the black cloak of one who lurked in a shadow behind a smaller of the houses, one more fitted for the family cur than for a maidservant, for it is in Generica that our little story is set, yes, that far-famed city becloaked in fog and enwrapt in mystery, then pelted on towards the fields in the easterly rural farms beyond. One of these ornately plain fountains was the assigned rendesvousing place for an ominous gathering. Already there, a mysterious white garbed figure loitered, his or her face completely concealed from the purview of gods, wizards, men, women, small children, and/or wandering insects, by the supernal and mysterious power of that strange, eldritch white wrapping. Forthwith, from out a shadowed nook (but not the nook indicated in the opening paragraph) bespoke a voice, trenchant with redolency, proclaiming, "Odds bodkins, Mummified One, hast not ourn companions makened themselfs to bestir and join amongst us?" The featureless gauze gaze of the Mummified One raked into the depths of the shadowed nook, barely missing the feet of Him Who Lurked within as it dragged out a few leaves that the wind had missed. "Nay," croaked the stander at the fountain, "They hasten forth from their lairs, cribs, coseys, plackets, and hidey-holes, but Those Who Watch are Watching and the going is slow for our compatriots in our Great Struggle." "Hist! Be thou quiet, addlepate," came a voice from a grate 'neath the enwrapped white feet. "We gather below, and would that thee hie thy graceless selves hence!" The white-wrapped one looked down, enlightenment lighting his or her eyes behind their all-concealing gauze barrier. A lithesome movement of such grace that t'would have astonished any observer, had there been an observer in this crowded, thief-ridden, busy public thoroughfare, but no, this night it was amazingly empty, and t'was fortunate for had it not been, unwelcome eyes might have bespied the Mummified One slipping down into the sewers, followed mere seconds afterwards by the lurking figure from the shadows, who was revealed in the sparse light of the late moon to be a tall man in his 35th year, with grey almond-shaped eyes, a hooked but not overlarge nose, straight even lips, wearing blue and green pierced earrings in his left ear, and carrying two bastard-swords in sheaths crossed on his back, lain across the deep black wool of his cloak, while on his feet he wore plain, unmarked boots of average make, yet which seemed somehow to move soundlessly, perhaps as t'were of elven make, for certainly the long pointy toes which curled back on the top were distraction enough from his otherwise complete nakedness. The grate made no audible noise as it clanged gently into place, and in a secret room carved from the very living rock 'neath the fountain, the white-wrapped figure surveyed the throng that awaited within. A perilous sense of imminent danger warned the Mummified One that these, the shapeless, nameless, unwashed, could well be ere long the instruments that would free them all from their bondage to... the Scribe. Behold, the crowd, nay, mob, grew unruly and ere long would burst free, doing untold damage to the Cause. "Hold," the Mummified One proclaimed, stopping to ponder whether or not it there was time to seduce and utterly exhaust the sexual vitality of Him What Lurks. "It is Too Early, my friends, for the wholesale revolt of which we await! We must first Infiltrate the stronghold of the Scribe, for ere we can take down our oppressor, we eftwise must learn his weaknesses, thence!" A white-enwrapt digit thrust forth, stabbing decisively as the Mummified One chose from the crowd -- "You, and you, and you, oh yes, and you two." The happy chosen ones came forth to where the Mummified One stood, and the rest went, resentfully, back to their homes, burrows, hidey holes, closes, retreats, spraints, and bed-sitting-rooms. Only the Chosen remaind behind (the Mummified One having tied them to their chairs.) "T'will be thine task," Mummified One quoth, "to be-sneak into the sanctum of the Scribe, and there to determine the secrets of our enemy, and thence reveal them to us. Eftsoons we shalt know of the mortal weakness of the cur." "But how shall," the tall figure of Him What Lurks boomed from within the dark corner, "these accomplish what we have ourselfs been unable to compass?" "Good question," the Mummified One replied. "Twas by my Magickqual Arts that I chose them, for tis the only of mine qualities by which the Ink-besmirche'd One can be conquered." "But we wot not of what their skills mote be," objected Him What Lurks, eliciting a lustful stare from the gauze-enwrapt eyes of the Mummified One. "Would it not," he declaimed, striding manfully from the dark corner into the candle-light, thence back into the other dark corner, "be wiser ere we dispatch them, to learn what powers they're heir to, lest we err in their assignments?" "Thy words reek of wisdom," the Mummified One gritted. "Tis as you wouldst have, then. Disclose unto us, thence, thy nomenclation and thine especialite' so that we mightest eke unto each of you thy most apt tasking." "I am," said the first, a short-haired person with nondescript features, "The Nondescript One. Tis nothing for me to be present in the background whilst the Scribe performs his unholy rituals, for I am there in all of his ritings. Methinks betimes I willst be run ragged for racing from one scene to the next to serve as his window-dressing." The Mummified One inclined a be-bandaged head, gauze fluttering with the gesture. "Then thou ist an excellent choice. Next?" The last two chosen stood up. "We are the Daevils," they said in unison. "We have the unearthly daevilish power to do whatever task the Scribe setteth us, and to hell with continuity, coherency, or the desires of any riter other than the Scribe." "Devils? But," protested Him What Lurks, "that's not what Devils can do! Devils can wheedle and tempt and grant evil wishes and stuff like that, but they can't ... " "Nay, nay," the two Daevils interrupted. "We be not Devils, but Daevils, the 'a' maketh all the daifference." "Oh," said Him What Lurks, and subsided into the Dark Corner again. "But what makes," demanded the Mummified One, "you trustworthy for the need we wouldst make of thee?" "We hate being," the Daevils answered in unison, "killed or not killed at the whim of the Scribe, in response to ill conceived or murky bits of plot. We don't see much hope for professional advancement working for someone who changes his mind from scene to scene about how tough we really are." The Mummified One gave them a glance askance, yet those gauze-enwrapt ears gave report that t'was as truthful as the Mysticky Arts could divine, though in truth the Mummified One was not so ept at this type of sorcelry as the Bimbo Queen of Thorax, who was hereditary enemy and long time arch-foe of the Mummified One. "There be two left," the Gauze-wrapt lips emitted. "Thee in the front." A tall dour man stood, bowing stiffly towards the Form In Gauze. "I had a name once. I was founded by another than the Scribe, t'was e'er my way to speak with grace and not in this bastard permixture of archaistry and words ill-chosen bereft of their actual meanings. But when the one who brought me to this place abandoned me into the care of the Scribe, I was perforce reduced to the shambling babbler thee sees beforest thou. I was a hero, ere coming here. My sword was swift, my eye keen, my lip quick to jolly jest, and now, my sword is seen only as a ruler gainst which to measure the impressiveness of the latest of the Scribe's pet goons." "T'would be worse for you being his own," came the bitter voice of the last who waited. "Tis mine own curse to be the favorite of the vile one. Behold, Mummified One, the face of thine hereditary enemy." With a gasp of horror the Mummified One beheld the face of the Bimbo Queen of Thorax -- a woman whose face was so fair as to launch a thousand ships, e'en so had it not been made the requisite at the Royal Bimbo Navalyards to cristen each ship with wine in a decorative memorial bottle constructed to exactly resemble the head of Her Aweful Majesty. "You could," the Mummified One declaimed, drawing close the protective Gauze and preparing death-bolts, death-nuts, death-screws, and other death-items, to wield gainst the Bimbo Queen, "not be here as a friend!" "Thee is wrong, oh Mummified One. By the way, are you male or female?" "Female," snarled the Figure of Gauze. "Canst thou not tell?" "Nay, thy bindings are tight and thy tits are small," replied the Bimbo Queen, shaking her own considerable assets with evident and unseemly satisfaction. "Still, tis too bad, for I wast hoping that we could seal our alliance by a little nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more." "Foul slut," snarled the Mummified One, "Tis only thy vast researches into the uses of sand that granted thee thine famed hooters." "Be that as it may," replied the Bimbo Queen, "my purpose here is not to encompass thine death, but to join in the fight. Now I shall be forced to seal mine oath by only hopping the bones of thy pet there lurking in the dark corner." ("Oh, boy!" thought Him What Lurks.) "His favorite and yet thee wouldest betray him, Whyever for?" The Bimbo Queen stopped making kissy-faces at the dark corner and snapped, "Because he crampeth my style, and because he forceth me to do stupideth things." "So thy complaint is ourn own?" The Mummified One withheld her Mysticky Bolts etc. of Death. "What proof do you bring that thy help will be forthcoming?" The Bimbo Queen adjusted her crown and posed. "Mine word is good enough, but since there is no expecting the likes of thee to take it, I willst give to you the Necklace of Really Big Zapping." The Bimbo held forth with a silver heart-shaped locket on a fine gold chain. "But that is the heart of thine power," protested the Mummified One. "Won't that make you vulnerable?" She snatched the Necklace so quickly that the gauze enwrapping that hand began to smoke. "Nay, for the Scribe would never permit me to be harmed or even truly inconvenienced. He doteth on me, though such attentions would shame even a harlot more jaded than I. Forsooth," she shrewed, "tis only that he has taken on a wife that I have been absent oermuch of late from his lustful fantasies, thou art lucky, Mummified One, thou dost not get sent off to Gor to play with the tarnsmen." "I do not," the Mummified One pouted, "find myself lucky. I endure mine own degradation at the hands of his lusts. T'would makest me quite glad to enjoy the variety that the Scribe inflictest on thee, for I haveth only the daydreams apt to a lad yet late entered into his pubes, and this due his unbearable rites." "Then, tis boredome driveth thee as well," nodded the Bimbo Queen. "Yet of what use art thee," demanded Him What Lurks, "if thou cannotest so much as enter his presence ere he taketh over thine mind with his riting, and reduced thence to his barely-sapient toy?" "I can still approach him unseen, for i'faith, his eyesight has grown faint as his palms grew hairy, and I needs only stand edge-on, thus," replied the Bimbo Queen. She twirled in place, and like a piece of paper on edge, vanished. "Tis true, some might name me two-dimensional yet I have used it oft ere now to spy on his secretest plans." "Then thou knowest," the Mummified One said, "What hopes we might have to escape his durance vile?" "Nay," admitted the Regent of Thorax, "I am, like thee, at a loss to tell what mayest be done to improve our lot. For look ye, there is none who would take us up should we induce him to free us, with the malformations he has afflicted upon us." "And belikes little desire on the part of any others to include such as we in their ritings," sighed the Daevils. "Still, we mayest watch, and mayhap, perchance, there might come some opportunity whereby we mightest pull him from his Place of Riting and drag him here to our world, whence to have our way with him," argued the Nondescript One. "Have our ... way with him?" said Him What Lurks, puzzled. "You cannot mean to..." "Ewww," said the Mummified One and the Bimbo Queen, as one voice.