Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

The front page is a poorly-cycling flame animation, three rotating hand grenades and an "under construction" animation.
There is a guest book, and a visitor counter w/ a highly aspirational number of digits

# ? Jun 26, 2023 10:46

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 17:03

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

We are part of a web ring

# ? Jun 26, 2023 12:55

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

Yowzers that cover brings me back.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 16:14

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER I

In the real world the Vikings never fought the Aztecs.

This was not the real world, I had a sword in my hand. My fingers were so tight around the hilt that blood
was seeping from my articles. My breath came in shallow gasps. So little air I should have passed out. Knew I should breathe but couldn't, couldn't make my chest relax enough, couldn't unknot my stomach to let the air come in. My body was a series of vises, vises on vises, all twisted tight, tight till the bones cracked and sinews and muscle screamed. I was running. Legs stiff, like a puppet. It probably looked runny. Big, bounding, awkward steps with knees that alternately locked and collapsed. Widen out the picture and I was just one scared fool in a mass of thousands. They were all around me, ahead of me, behind me, on either side. Big, bearded, indifferently armored, helmeted, ax?swinging, sword-waving, screaming, yelling, running, running and falling and climbing up to charge again, always yelling at the top of their harsh voices. Up the beach. Over warm sand. Feet losing three inches of slide with every step. Sand sucking at you, trying to stop you, trying to keep you from this suicidal
rush. But all around was the madness. Men in the lunatic rage of combat. Hungry for murder. Thirsty for the blood that would drench the sand. Not their own, of course, never their own, because what fool ever goes to war expecting that he will be the one to die? The movie in your head has you as the hero, bravely whacking away at the bad guys. Courage without the sight of your own intestines spilled out in the buttery sunlight.

That wasn't my movie. I'm not a romantic.

I ran. David ran. He was beside me, a few feet away; we wobbled one way or the other, back and forth, nearer and farther. On David's right, hanging back, sensible person that he was: Jalil. April? Back on the boats. Back on the Viking longboats that had been beached like so many confused whales all down the strand. She had a pass. She was a girl. She had a uterus, so she didn't have to fight, couldn't, not according to the Vikings. So she was on the boat. Safe? Not if we lost. But if we won, yeah, safe, out of it, sipping bad Viking ale and eating roasted lamb and watching us as if she were in a skybox at the Super Bowl, thinking what damned fools we were. If I'd had room in my head for any emotion beside fear I'd have felt jealous. But fear was filling every wrinkle and knob of my brain. Fear soaked through the gray matter that at other times concerned itself with passing tests and getting girls and avoiding speeding tickets and coming up with clever one-liners that made everyone laugh.

Ah-hah-hah, that Christopher is so funny. Man, he's funny. I mean, he really is.

That's me, funny, funny, Christopher.

Want to know what's funny? Funny is a high-school Junior surrounded by sweat-reeking wild men, waving a sword and rushing at a bunch of Aztecs.

That's funny.

Aztecs. Mexica. Those were their official names.

Flesh-eaters. Blood-drinkers. Man-burners. Heart-thieves. The Vikings have all kinds of names for them. The Vikings think the Aztecs are a bunch of crazed psycho killers in the service of an evil god. And it's not like the Vikings are a bunch of Altar Guild Ladies from the local Baptist church.

The Aztecs were ahead of us, in a line. They looked ludicrous. They wore feather headdresses, they disguised themselves as eagles, they disguised themselves as jaguars, they carried shields made out of sticks. Their swords looked vicious enough, like the snouts of sawfishes. But then you realized they were just hardwood with sharp chips of black rock embedded in the edge. Not much use against a steel sword, even the rusty, dented, tin-can
things the Vikings use. But the Aztecs had another weapon: short spears they flung with the aid of a notched stick. We'd been warned about those. So that's where I was. Running toward a solid wall of Aztecs on a mission to chop off the head of their god Huitzilopoctli and bring it back to Loki so that he'd free Odin.

"Makes perfect sense," I muttered through chattering teeth, bounding stiffly, sliding and trying to keep from falling on my own sword.

Suddenly, from down the line, the big black Viking king named Olaf Ironfoot started yelling, "Mjolnir! Mjolnir!" We hit the Aztec line. Two lines of men slammed together, literally, physically, so that you could hear shields grinding on shields and chests against chests and swords and axes all flailing wildly. I was behind David. Some
Aztec swung at him. David ducked. Then he drove his own sword into the feathered man and lurched away. The Aztec fell. Not dead. Yet. But with blood and something black coming through the hands that clawed at his belly. There was a sound coming from me, a noise, a moan, like a wounded animal, repetitive, wordless. Coming out of my throat and me having no control, no choice but to make that sound. I was muscled aside by Thorolf, a Viking who'd taken charge of us. Thorolf was yelling, bellowing, roaring, swinging the big ax he carried up over his head and bringing it down like he was Abe Lincoln splitting rails.

I was down!

Sand in my mouth. Wind knocked out of me.

What had happened? Was I cut? Was I hurt? I dropped my sword, rolled onto my back, slapped myself frantically with my hand, looking for the wound. Couldn't see. Something in my eyes.

Blood!

I'd been hit in the head. Was I dying?

Feet stamped the sand all around me. A kick. I rolled over on my side. Dizzy.

Wiped the blood out of my eyes. Fingers grazed a cut on my scalp.

Sickness washed over me as I realized I had just touched my own skull.

I'd never seen what hit me. And now I was in the rear, the Vikings pushing on, pushing the Aztecs back. Steel weapons versus obsidian and wood and bone.

"Mjolnir! Mjolnir!" the Vikings bellowed till it became a constant background roar, loud as a CTA train rushing by, almost drowning out the cries of rage and pain.

Mjolnir. The hammer of Thor.

The Aztecs were on the run! Back toward the tall, golden walls of the city they called New Tenochtitlan. Back toward the distant, stepped pyramid that towered above those walls. I made it to my feet, tripped, staggered, caught myself, stopped, and went back for my sword. Blood was in my eyes again, my hand so wet with it that I couldn't clear my vision, "Mjolnir! Mjolnir!"

David was gone. Jalil, barely visible, just his head, surrounded by Vikings twice his size.

Could I go back to the boats? I was injured, wasn't I?

Then I saw a Viking, an Asian guy, with a short, obsidian throwing spear sticking out of his upper thigh. He was staggering forward, yelling like all the others.

"Guess not" I muttered. Besides, we were winning. The Aztecs were on the run.

And as long as I didn't run too fast I probably wouldn't catch them.

I saw a flash of David. Just his head. He was stopped. Staring.

And through the Vikings, like an ice-cold wind, the terror blew.

The cries of "Mjolnir!" died away, replaced by the low, animal moan that men make when they are afraid, deep-down-inside afraid. I knew that sound. I'd been making that sound. I'm tall. Taller than David or Jalil. Not as tall as a lot of the Vikings, but tall enough that from the back of the mob, standing on a slight rise in the sand, I could see the pyramid. It was impossibly, absurdly high. Like it had been drawn by an artist with no sense of perspective. Atop the pyramid, on the flat platform, was a temple. An open building on the front side and yet dark within, despite the bright morning sun. From that temple stepped a creature out of a madman's nightmares. He was huge! Almost as tall as the temple itself, and somehow, in defiance of all logic, his shadow fell across us.

We must have been half a mile away, but his shadow fell across us, across me, the darkness, the cold reaching deep inside me. He was mostly blue, with broad, horizontal yellow stripes across his face. The blue was the blue of a late afternoon sky. The yellow was the yellow of unpolished gold. There were burning stars in his eyes, a burning mirror in one hand, a monstrous green snake in the other.

Huitzilopoctli. Aztec god.

We had come, armed with Mjolnir, to cut off his head and deliver it to Loki.

"Not happening," I said.

Huitzilopoctli grew wings, fabulous rainbow wings that spread wider than a thousand eagles.

He flew from the top of the pyramid and swooped down toward us.

Impossible, of course. Nothing that big could fly. It violated the laws of physics, that�s what Jalil would have said.

Impossible anywhere in the universe.

Only, this wasn't the universe.

This was Everworld.

I really like how so drat imposing the the description of Huitzilopoctli is. This series is making me want to run a game of Scion. We're starting just a few seconds before the last book ended, so this chapter isn't really giving us new information, but we do get a sense of how Christopher is different than David. His internal monologue isn't as sarcastic and jokey as he came across in book one when David was narrating, but it's no where near as mopey and self serious as David's narration was.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 18:27

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

Interesting, there's absolutely ZERO recap of anything that happened in the first book - no "here's the setting and basic concept", the narration mentions names like April and David and Jalil but doesn't cover who they are at all, you're just very clearly intended to have read the first book, ideally right before starting the second book, and you have to know what the gently caress is going on because we're charging the aztecs and you better keep up, buddy.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 00:48

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Late to this discussion on this one but re: David's attraction to the Viking lifestyle and April's strong disagreement, I think I saw David's point when I was a teenager myself but now I couldn't agree more strongly with April. (Also agree with everyone saying what a '90s vibe it has - it immediately reminded me of Fight Club.) It's definitely intended to underscore how deeply frustrated David is with his "real" life and his perception of his own masculinity, and how he isn't able to even properly realise that let alone articulate it.

David's character aside and the '90s vibe aside, it is obviously also a real thing that a lot of real young men feel - the dissatisfaction with the concept of a comfortable but predictable first world suburban existence and a vague notion that things were better in the old days. It's nonsense, of course, because if you want "adventure" you are more well placed to seek it out in a broader variety of flavours than at any point in human history. There's nothing stopping David or any other teenager today from joining the Marines or doing the Dakar rally or working in Antarctica or becoming an astronaut, etc etc.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 08:15

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

I feel it goes beyond adventure into just like enrichment. Because capitalism forces us to spend so much of our day away at work, toiling for others, we have no time for ourselves, because that free time is now for getting chores done.

Again to go back to my lockdown experience, not having to work while having my bills paid for those 7 months was amazing. I cleaned my house, cooked full dinners for my family, baked every couple days. And all while exercising as much as my recovery from heart surgery allowed.

It wasn't particularly adventurous, but it was fulfilling in a way had not experienced previously as an adult. Having thay sort of ennui towards modern American life isn't the sole province of adrenaline junkies.

But yeah at the exact same time yearing for a blood soaked viking life style is not the answer!

Chapter 2 coming later today depending on of I nap after work this morning or not.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 15:17

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER II

Everworld.

Somehow, someway, for some reason, the old gods of Earth decided to abandon the real world. We didn't know why. Just knew that the gods of the Norsemen and the gods of the Greeks and the gods of the Aztecs and the Inca and the Egyptians and all the endless panoply of immortals, all decided they'd had enough of the real world. Our world.

They moved. They built themselves a little space-time condo. A separate universe.

They brought all the creatures of myth and legend. And they dragged a healthy number of humans across with them, because, hey, what's the point in being a god if there's no one around to kiss your immortal butt? For a while, I guess, everything was fine. I have to guess because I don't know. I don't know much.

But somehow, into this combination Asgard-Olympus-Boca Raton, this cosmic retirement home for gods of war and love and wine and mischief and death -
and no doubt pizza, for all I know - strangers crashed the party.

Immortals. Gods. But not human gods.

Then all hell broke loose. And now, somehow, don't ask me, there was some god-eating god from some dark armpit of the galaxy who was scaring the eternal pee out of the human gods. Ka Anor. Not a nice creature. So I gathered from the fact that Loki, who isn't exactly a cheerleader himself, is scared by him.

Why was I there? Because of a girl named Senna.

Senna Wales. A freaky piece of work, but with a B-plus face and an A-plus body, assuming you're not one of those guys looking for eight pounds of silicone. Smart. Weird. Sexy. Inscrutable.

Man, I was hot for her.

Then it all went sour. Don't know why. She was like a spider who'd wrapped me up in the silk web and was ready to finish me off, and me wanting to be finished off, and then, nothing.

Next I see her, she's with David.

And yet, I was there that too-early morning, down by Lake Michigan, called there by a voice that only my deepest brain heard. I was down there watching, me along with Jalil and April and David, when the world went "tilt." A wolf the size of a tractor trailer broke through from somewhere that was definitely not a suburb of Chicago. Broke the barrier of out comfy, cozy little universe and snatched up Senna in his jaws.

We were dragged along in the backwash.

Next thing we know, Senna's gone, we're face-to-face with a pissed-off Loki and a bunch of trolls, and Loki wants to know what we've done with "his witch."

Senna. Long story short, we escaped and got in tight with some Vikings who were about to leave on a mission for Loki. A mission to kill Huitzilopoctli and bring his head home as a trade-in for the freedom of Odin One-Eye, boss god of the Norsemen. And it gets weirder. Because we aren't all the way into Everworld. We're there as long as we're awake. Go to sleep and we slip back into our old lives in the real world. In and out. Back and forth. Cutting assembly and groaning about the homework and checking out the visible panty lines one minute, being chased by murderous trolls the next.

It's a lunatic life.

Dangerous, too.

Short chapter, but hey, here's the recap! Chris seems to have a bit more information than we got in book 1. Did we know Ka Anor was not just a god, but a god eating god?

# ? Jun 27, 2023 20:42

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

Alright yeah there's the summary I was expecting in the first chapter. It's neat that it's in Chris's voice - I hate reading the words "A freaky piece of work, but with a B-plus face and an A-plus body" but it's a succinct bit of characterization for Chris.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 23:35

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Soonmot posted:

I feel it goes beyond adventure into just like enrichment. Because capitalism forces us to spend so much of our day away at work, toiling for others, we have no time for ourselves, because that free time is now for getting chores done.

Again to go back to my lockdown experience, not having to work while having my bills paid for those 7 months was amazing. I cleaned my house, cooked full dinners for my family, baked every couple days. And all while exercising as much as my recovery from heart surgery allowed.

It wasn't particularly adventurous, but it was fulfilling in a way had not experienced previously as an adult. Having thay sort of ennui towards modern American life isn't the sole province of adrenaline junkies.

But yeah at the exact same time yearing for a blood soaked viking life style is not the answer!

Chapter 2 coming later today depending on of I nap after work this morning or not.

Feudalism of course also involves spending much of your day toiling away for others, though it's arguable that in a small Viking clan - going towards your point of "enrichment" - you feel like a member of a community where you have standing, where the fruits of your endeavours are perhaps more visible, where for better or worse you know your place in things; as opposed to the global capitalist model where you are (generally) toiling away for corporate shareholders who probably don't even live in the same country.

For David I think it is very much the Rachel-esque adrenaline rush, since the Vikings' cause isn't really his cause. (Ironically if it's adventure and meaning/purpose that he wants, he's already at the start of that anyway with the school lawn strategy meeting, never mind the Vikings: stay alive, find Senna, find a way home which they've correctly figured out is more likely to happen in Everworld than the "real" world.)

Soonmot posted:

Short chapter, but hey, here's the recap! Chris seems to have a bit more information than we got in book 1. Did we know Ka Anor was not just a god, but a god eating god?

I remember this from the original series but no, I don't think we did know that at this point. Also Chris describes the Hetwan as coming from elsewhere in the galaxy - did we even know they were aliens as opposed to weird gross monsters, or is he speculating?

# ? Jun 28, 2023 08:52

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

I'm not sure. I think we guessed that but I don't remember the text stating it.

# ? Jun 29, 2023 02:00

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

I think the Vikings called Ka Anor and the Hetwan aliens at one point in book one so this might be just codifying that with Christopher's extrapolations. Or its some not super tightly edited recap info that gives away a bit more than it should.

# ? Jun 29, 2023 02:10

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER III

Huitzilopoctli flew, swooped down on us like a gigantic bird of prey, and the Vikings fell back. Instead of looking ahead to see backs, I was seeing faces now.

Worried, frightened, disheartened faces. It wasn't a stampede. More like a hand that had reached out and touched a hot stove and yanked back almost instinctively. The Big H looked like any one of his warriors. More feathers.
Larger. And blue, of course. But it wasn't what you saw of Huitzilopoctli that scared you. It was what you felt. There are people you meet, people whose eyes you happen to look into and right away you know. You know that they are apart from the basic humanity that more or less unites us. You know, without knowing why, that you're seeing a person whose pleasure comes from the pain of others, someone whose entertainment is gloating at the terror of others.

Beneath the shadow of Huitzilopoctli's wings you didn't have to look at him to feel the evil. It invaded your mind. Like an add, it ate away your defenses and seeped into your soul.

I started to run. A hand grabbed me.

David.

"We can't run," he gasped, looking feverish and wild.

"Why not?"

"It's what she wants," he said.

She? I said something like "forget you," only several shades more intense. I didn't know who she was. I didn't care. I tore loose of his grip. A big Viking slammed into me, knocked me down on my back, and kept on running. The Aztecs, emboldened by their god, counterattacked. They made a weird, trilling scream as they came on. I tried to stand up. Too many fleeing bodies all around me. Legs, knees, feet hitting me, heedless. My head was still bleeding.

David grabbed me again. Crouched next to me. We were a boulder in a stream.

"I think she's with him!" David hissed. "Senna! She's with Huitzilopoctli!"

"I don't give a drat!" I yelled.

"Stand fast with Mjolnir!" Olaf Ironfoot bellowed, suddenly now just a spear's throw away. "Mjolnir!"

"We still have the hammer!" David said.

"Are you nuts?!" I shrieked. I told him where he could stick Mjolnir.

"If we go for the boats they'll cut us to pieces," David said. "We won't be able to get the boats off the beach, and if we try we'll be exposed and helpless. They'll have us by the rear. We have to hold our ground!" Somehow that calm, cool assessment, that military judgment penetrated my panic. He was right. We couldn't run for the boats, the Aztecs would be all over us. They'd massacre us at their leisure.

I let David yank me to my feet.

"Come on!" he cried fiercely.

The glory-hog moron. Like the two of us were going to turn this disaster around.

I pushed David aside, sucked in the first real breath I'd taken in twenty minutes, and yelled, "Are the Vikings all women? Are you all cowards?" That little insult slowed approximately no one. Not one of the big men said, "Hey, he's right, what are we, a bunch of wussies?" They kept right on past. I could see the Aztecs rushing toward us. They were smiling. Smiling and waving their Stone Age weapons up at their lunatic god, who swooped low, spreading his own private cloud of doom in his wake.

"The song!" David yelled. "Give them the song!"

I knew which song. The Vikings believed we were minstrels. We'd obliged them by coming up with a song that just made them crazy. I looked at David and actually laughed. It was a sad, barking little laugh of despair, but it was a laugh.

He was right. You can't retreat with nothing but ocean and the mouth of a river behind you. We had to win this battle. Or die. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the mighty Viking lords!" I croaked in a harsh voice that would have gotten me ejected from a middle-school talent show. "They are trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored. They have loosed the fateful lightning of their terrible swift swords, the Vikes are marching on!" David had joined in, too. And man, were we pathetic. Like ants putting on a show of defiance just as someone's lowering a size-thirteen Ecco boot on them.

And yet...

And yet, about three Vikings slowed down. Thorolf was among them. Jalil was with him.

"Sing, Jalil!" I said.

We sang, the three of us. The Aztecs rushed on. The Vikings kept running. Only not as fast.

For a long, horrible moment the battle hung in the balance, hung poised on the edge of a rout and slaughter.

The ragged Aztec line was rushing. The Viking line was pulling back.

In the few yards of no-man's-land that separated the two armies stood Olaf Ironfoot. All alone. Just him and Thor's hammer About ten feet behind him was our little knot composed of three quivering teenagers and a handful of Vikings all yelling a mangled version of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." And swooshing by overhead like some kind of gigantic, satanic pi�ata, the feathered Aztec god who lived on human hearts. We sang, because we were dead meat and we'd have tried anything, anything to stay alive for another eight seconds.

"We jumped aboard out longships and we sailed upon the seas, and -"

Suddenly, a new voice chimed in. Big Olaf and his big baritone. He threw back his head and yelled the words up at Huitzilopoctli while he brandished Thor's hammer. "- and we slaughtered all who fought us and we did just as we please, 'cause we're crazy Viking warriors and we never beg for peace, the Vikes are marching on!" People do strange stuff in battle. You take a human and pump him full of adrenaline and, in the case of the Vikings, a lot of beer, and you never know what�s going to happen.

The Vikings stopped running.

We sang and they stopped running. They turned. They hesitated. Then Sven Swordeater, a kid not much older than me, yelled in his muffled, mangled speech, "Follow me!" And all down the line of battle other Viking lords yelled, "Follow me!" And the line surged back up the beach, back toward the Aztecs.

Olaf exploded in insane laughter. He drew back his arm and let fly with Mjolnir.

The hammer flew. The stubby little handle and the cinder block of steel flew. Up and up, farther, faster, harder than was possible. I mean, it was like that hammer had a rocket backpack.

Mjolnir flew toward Huitzilopoctli.

Their special power is parody songs.

# ? Jun 29, 2023 02:42

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER IV

Huitzilopoctli carried no weapons, at least not in the conventional sense. In one hand he had a sort of smoking minor. It was round, like a discus or a squashed Frisbee. It was maybe ten feet in diameter. In his other hand was a snake. The snake was a brilliant, shocking green. The snake wrapped back over Huitzilopoctli's shoulder. Its tail disappeared in the god's iridescent feathers.

Mjolnir flew. Every head craned back to watch it. Every eye, Viking and Aztec, watched.

There was a sound like a thousand-pound bullet slamming into a million pounds of raw beef.

Mjolnir hit Huitzilopoctli in his left arm. Hit him just above the elbow. The hammer broke through flesh, shattered bone, ripped the arm off, and sent it spinning slowly through the air.

Ten thousand voices wailed.

The arm, as long and thick as a subway car, fell. The Aztecs beneath it scattered. But it's tough to run in sand. The arm landed with a terrific impact that sent shock waves to weaken knees and ruffle hair. A dozen Aztec warriors
lay crushed. And let me tell you, this wasn't some fake, unreal arm.

Huitzilopoctli may have been a god, but I saw splintered white bone, as thick as an old oak tree.

Mjolnir inscribed an arc through the sky, then came racing back to Olaf's waiting hand.

The Vikings roared.

The Aztecs wailed.

Huitzilopoctli said nothing. He swooped around, slowed, then, as both Vikings and Aztecs fell back, making room, he landed. Just stopped flying, put down his legs, and landed. He was about the height of a five- or six-story building.

Maybe ten times as tall as Olaf. Fifty times taller than me because I was hugging the sand now.

One huge, sandaled foot planted itself just a few dozen feet away.

Jalil's face was in the dirt beside mine. He shot me a look. "We can hurt the foot," he said.

I assumed he was babbling. But David was nodding agreement.

The Aztec god's big toe was as big as all of me. But yeah, a sword would hurt it. Had to hurt.

"Who are you, human, that you come to trouble me?" a voice demanded. A huge, rolling voice devoid of emotion, devoid of even the possibility of emotion.

Olaf looked nervous. He spoke up bravely enough but he sounded like a Chihuahua yap-ping at a tank. "I am Olaf Ironfoot!"

"Who sends you against me?"

"I come to free Odin One-Eye from unjust captivity in the dungeons of Loki!"

I don't know if Huitzilopoctli was stumped by this or thought it all made perfect sense. I couldn't see his blue-and-gold face. Couldn't see the burning supernova eyes.

"You have a brave heart," Huitzilopoctli said. The word "heart" sounded like an obscenity.

The snake on his shoulder lunged, quicker than any human eye could follow.

The green fangs closed around Mjolnir.

Olaf jerked the hammer back and tried to swing. But the windup was short. His arm was being blocked by the snake. Mjolnir flew, but ineffectually.

The magic hammer circled back to Olaf's hand.

Huitzilopoctli threw the smoking mirror. Like a Frisbee. It skimmed out and then, just like Mjolnir, circled back, spinning at impossible speed just a few feet above the sand.

Olaf jumped. Straight up. A high jump.

Not high enough. The mirror sliced off Olaf's one real foot. It clanged against the iron foot. It careened off, still spinning, and into the Viking ranks.

The deadly, ten-foot-wide disc sliced men in two. I don't know how many men.

A lot.

Sven Swordeater was sliced in half, right at the belt. The top of his body slumped to the sand. His legs remained standing. He landed on his side. I could see him staring at his still-standing legs. Olaf was on his back. Crippled. He threw Mjolnir but the throw was weak and wild. It flew past Huitzilopoctli's head, ruffling a few bright red feathers.

The Aztec god reached down with his good hand.

"Now!!" David cried.

He was up, I was up, Jalil was up, Thorolf was up, all of us running madly for the near foot.

I got there first. I held my sword stabbing-style, drew it up, arched my back, and down, down, down! The point sliced into the foot. Thorolf�s ax, David's sword, and Jalil's all bit deep.

Nothing!

No blood, no cry of pain, no agonized reflex.

Huitzilopoctli lifted a helpless Olaf Ironfoot off the sand. He held him by the legs and used the jaws of the snake to hold the top half.

He broke Olaf in half and swallowed the king's still-beating heart.

Holy poo poo, mash F for Olaf drat!

# ? Jun 30, 2023 00:55

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

F

That was unexpected

# ? Jun 30, 2023 02:07

Malpais Legate: Oct 1, 2014

He lasted longer than I thought he would, at least.

# ? Jun 30, 2023 02:30

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Yeah that was pretty much every supporting character with a name gruesomely killed in a single page.

# ? Jun 30, 2023 02:51

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

See David, it sucks to be a viking, too.

# ? Jun 30, 2023 20:16

WrightOfWay: Jul 24, 2010

Chopped off a god's arm, Ax would be proud.

# ? Jun 30, 2023 22:01

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

/\/\/\/\ hell yeah, god catch

quote:

CHAPTER V

The Vikings broke and ran. No good. As David had predicted, they were caught trying to shove the boats off the beach. I don't know how many died in the massacre that followed. Thousands, I guess. I don't know how many were taken prisoner. I was. David was. Jalil? April? We had no way of knowing in the mad chaos. It took all the rest of the morning and into the afternoon for the Aztecs to round everyone up. Meanwhile, we sat in the sand. No food. No water. Hot, with the slowly sinking sun blistering the open wound on my head. Finally, with evening coming on, they marched us into New Tenochtitlan in columns, armed Aztecs all around us. We stumbled with the weariness of the defeated through huge gates, onto streets laid out and cobblestoned with mathematical precision. Women and kids came out of the houses to taunt us. Throw things at us: ashes from the fireplace. Bones. Feces. It wasn't pretty. I tried to look around and see if I could spot Jalil or April. I hadn't seen either of them. But it was a sea of heads, big, tall Vikings with their heads down, but still tall enough to screen Jalil or April. David was beside me. He was looking around, too.

Looking for a way out. David, the insecure hero-wanna-be. This was all some kind of macho party for him. Me? I wanted out, too. But I wanted out of it all. I was done with Everworld. I was ready to go home, stay home, sit in my desk at school and do my homework and take my quizzes and call the teachers "Sir" and "Ma'am" and rush straight home to tell my mom I loved her and tell my dad he was my hero.

That was the direction of my escape: home. The real world.

But David was busy sizing up the walls and the defenses and the proud, happy, cocky Aztec warriors. Down along broad avenues we trudged. Neat, spotlessly clean adobe and stone buildings rose on either side of us. Businesses, I suppose, shops. And some houses. Some of the buildings were three stories high. All were crowned by deliriously happy Aztecs waving palm branches and throwing poop.

"They don't throw food," a voice said.

I jerked my head around.

"Jalil! Where have you been? David, Jalil's here, man. Didn't see you, where were you?"

"Hanging back," he said calmly. "I wanted to see if you guys were in any special trouble first." That kind of annoyed me. But this wasn't the time to complain about Jalil's tendency to look out for himself. "I don't see anything yet," David muttered. "But you know, they'll probably party all night. Get faced, pass out, maybe get careless ..." He dodged a flying turd. He dodged. I didn't.

"They aren't throwing food," Jalil said again.

"You were hoping for watermelon and fried chicken?" I snapped as I wiped the stuff off with my sleeve.

"You know, you turn into a real redneck when you get stressed," Jalil said with a smirk.

"What about food?" David asked. "So what?"

"So, if you're looking to pelt the losing army with stuff, you go and dig out the garbage, right? You hit them with apple cores and ..." - he rolled his eyes toward me - "... chicken bones and watermelon rinds. But these folks aren't throwing food. Not even scraps. And look at them. The civilians, I mean."

I looked. Looked more closely, I mean, "Skinny," I said.

"Malnourished," Jalil said. "Borderline starvation. The soldiers are well-fed, but the kids and the women are not. Plus, do you see any old folks?"

I didn't And I didn't like where Jalil was going.

"Huitzilopoctli eats the hearts. Who eats the rest?" Jalil asked.

It was bad walking through a crowd of people who looked at you as an evil invader.

It was worse walking through people who looked at you as lunch.

They walked us past the base of the mountainously tall pyramid. Huitzilopoctli was nowhere in sight.

The pyramid reeked. The stench was intolerable. It made you hold your breath.

It wasn't hard to guess the source of the smell. The steps of the pyramid, from top to bottom, were covered with a dried crust many inches thick.

Blood.

I looked up those stairs and imagined how much blood it would take, and how quickly it would have to be spilled, for it to run all the way down from those heights.

I wanted to go home. I wanted that very badly.

Not a good look for Huitz here. Blood pyramid, starving people. David called out as a mopey bitch, but Christopher getting off easy on some solid racism.

# ? Jul 1, 2023 03:52

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

This reminds me that a highlight of Sean Bean doing the tech and wonder quotes for Civilization 6 is hearing Huitzilopoctli pronounced as hootchly o pootchly.
Not that I could do any better, obvs...

# ? Jul 1, 2023 09:23

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER VI

"Well, this isn't all that bad," I said. It was an hour later. We, that is to say me, David, Jalil, and about two thousand of our closest Viking friends, were all locked in an enormous room. The ceiling was maybe twenty feet over our heads. The walls so far away they'd have been a ten-minute walk. Massive pillars, each as big around as a sequoia, held up the ceiling. Up there, interspersed between pillars, were grates to let in air and light. The light was fading fast. It was already as dark as my basement at home. People walked across the grates. Probably stopped and looked down at us. I couldn't really tell.

The Aztecs were better builders than the Vikings. That was for sure. The Vikings were at the log and straw stage pretty much. The Aztecs were into the great big Toyota-sized stones form of building. And the Aztecs cared about the simple things in life. Recessed into one wall were a series of stone cubicles with toilets. You did your business, yanked a chain, and they flushed. And they had baths. Centered in the vast hail, low-slung square vats of warmish water. The Vikings, naturally, had no interest hi the baths. I guess no one in that room had much interest in anything. The Vikings were quiet. None of their usual boisterousness. None of their bragging. No one calling for a poem or a song or a tankard of ale. No one threatening to split anyone open with an ax. Just glum, downcast faces. Not surprising. Everyone knew. Everyone knew what was coming for us. Didn't know when, but we knew we were going to be marched up the stairs of that pyramid, where the priests would stretch us back over the stone altar and expertly cut out our hearts while our blood ran rippling down the steps. Couldn't think about that.

Couldn't. It made my stomach heave, my heart miss, my throat clench. "Wouldn't mind washing the crap off my head," Jalil said.

I breathed. I'd stopped when that hideous image popped into my head. I held out a hand, palm up, inviting. "Go for it. Doesn't look like there's going to be a fight over the hot water." Jalil looked nervous. So did David.

"Locker-room willies all over again, huh?" I mocked them. "Afraid the big, mean Vikings will laugh at your... equipment?"

"It's a jail," Jalil said. "You realize that, right? No women? Bunch of guys looking for the weak ones so they can ..."

"I'm not sitting here with crap smeared all over me," I said. "I'm taking a bath."

It was a small expression of courage. But I needed to do something besides sit there and imagine what it would feel like to live for those last few seconds staring up at my still-beating heart. Like Sven Swordeater had gaped stupidly at his own legs. Like... Breathe. Breathe. Don't show the fear.

"I'd prefer a shower," I said, trying unsuccessfully to sound nonchalant. "I've never been a bath person. But I guess I'll make do."

I began to strip off my clothes. The Norsemen did not seem especially fascinated. One glanced up, I suppose to see if, as an outlander, I had something unusual, say a tail. Naked, I climbed up into the bath. I settled in slowly because right about then it occurred to me that the baths might not be baths.

But no, my bare feet found smooth stone. The water rose around me as I shivered down into it. There was something semiliquid, like melted wax, in a woven-leaf dish. I stuck a finger in and smelled. "Soap," I said. "Kind of flowery, but it's soap." I began to carefully wash the matted gash on my head. I didn't have any Bactine but I could at least get it clean.

"What do you do?" the curious Viking asked gruffly.

"I'm taking a bath." He shook his head.

"Your comedies will not lift many hearts today, friend minstrel."

I scooped up some of the mango-smelling goo and lathered it into my hair. Jalil was next to climb in.

Then David. Three all-American kids with a lifetime of soap and deodorant jingles playing in their heads. We were in the third circle of hell, but determined not to smell bad. I lay back and closed my eyes. I knew I wasn't ready to sleep.

But I could lay back and think of something other than the horror I'd seen that day. I could think about lying on the couch, watching the tube. I could think about playing tag football in the park down by the lake, using the pull-up bar as a goalpost. I could think about me and a few buds catching the train and heading down to Chicago on a hot summer day and wandering around Navy Pier with our shirts off, looking for girls, looking for fun, looking for trouble. I could think about something besides the impossible monster that would soon be feasting on my heart. No. I couldn't. I couldn't think of anything but that.

Nothing but pictures of the brutality I'd witnessed. And the things that might have happened or even be happening to April. Had Senna known? When she dragged us into this, had she known what it would be like? Had she known she'd be dragging her half sister into this? Me, Okay. Senna and I were done, but what about April? They lived together, for God's sake. I opened my eyes and looked around. David was deep in thought. Jalil, too. I wanted to ask them.

They wouldn't know the answer, but didn't we have to at least think about it? Ask ourselves what we were doing there? Jalil would at least have some kind of theory. Something more profound than my own simple belief that we were screwed, screwed, utterly, irretrievably screwed by Senna Wales.

"So how do we get out of here?" David wondered, his head pinkish-white with lather.

"On a plate, surrounded by potatoes and carrots," I said. He shot me a dirty look.

"How do we get out of here?" he repeated.

Jalil looked blank. I looked blank. I was tired. Exhausted. The warm water made me want to sleep. To sleep was to escape back to the real world, "We have more than a thousand of the toughest warriors anyone ever saw," David said, looking around at the Norsemen.

"We have squat," Jalil said. "They don't work for us. We're minstrels, remember? No one promoted us to generals."

"Hope April's okay," I said. Stupid! Don't think about April again. Don't think about April. Don't picture what might be happening to her. Breathe.

"She's probably okay," David said. "Her. And Senna."

I exploded. Don't know why, I just blew up. "Senna can die for all I care! Senna can be Big H's next meal for all I care! Forget Senna! She's the stupid head-case who got us all into this!"

Breathe. The vise was around my chest, squeezing the air out of my lungs, the blood out of my heart. I could feel my heart. It was right there, In my chest, under the ribs, under the breastbone, my God, they would split me open like a chicken, chop through the cartilage, my heart, beating, arteries pulsing, the blade, the serrated obsidian blade would sever the veins and arteries and my heart would ... I would scream. I would scream and beg and they wouldn't care, wouldn't hesitate, I was nothing to them, nothing to the blood-crazed god who would eat my heart.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. "Okay, look," David said in a low voice. "It's bad. As bad as it can be. But we have to deal with it as well as we can. There has to be a way out. Has to be." Jalil laughed with no trace of humor.

"David, the blood on that pyramid? Tens of thousands of people have gone up there to lose that much blood. Tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. They probably all thought there was a way out." I climbed out of the tub. Breathe, Christopher.

Breathe.

Am I the only one having a hard time trusting Christopher's descriptions. How much is he exaggerating? Was the raiding party really in the thousands? Also, you know these kids are from the suburbs because locals don't go to Navy Pier, not even in the 90s lol

# ? Jul 2, 2023 03:15

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Have I missed something or does Jalil have no connection to Senna (that we know of)?

quote:

I settled in slowly because right about then it occurred to me that the baths might not be baths.

Also maybe I'm dumb and missing something obvious but... what was he worried they were going to turn out to be here?

# ? Jul 2, 2023 08:29

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

freebooter posted:

Have I missed something or does Jalil have no connection to Senna (that we know of)?

Also maybe I'm dumb and missing something obvious but... what was he worried they were going to turn out to be here?

We still don't know about any connection between Jalil and Senna beyond him being part of the Everworld group.

# ? Jul 2, 2023 10:11

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

freebooter posted:

Have I missed something or does Jalil have no connection to Senna (that we know of)?

Also maybe I'm dumb and missing something obvious but... what was he worried they were going to turn out to be here?

I wondered about both of those as well.

# ? Jul 2, 2023 12:32

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

cooking pots?

# ? Jul 3, 2023 03:52

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER VII

Driving up the middle, shirt off, ball bouncing up to imprint its pebbly surface on my hand, Nikes slipping on the polished wood surface. A hand shot out, tried to snag the ball. No way. I shouldered him aside. The basket right in front of me, wide-open ... Memory flooded my brain. Vikings. Aztecs. Olaf split open like a chicken, Sven sliced in half. Huitzilopoctli. I lost the ball. It bounced away.

One of the "shirts" snagged it, turned, and started driving down the court.

"What the hell happened to you, Hitchcock?" the coach yelled.

My fellow "skins" glared at me.

"Hamstring," I said, reaching down to hold my leg. I limped off the court and sat on the bleachers. I was back. Somehow I must have finally fallen asleep in Everworld. Hard to imagine. I'd been lying there on clean straw beside dirty men, staring up into blank darkness and trying to think about anything, anything besides that pyramid. But I had fallen asleep. It was the only way I could possibly be here. Back in the real world. It's the way it worked. We didn't know why. Fall asleep in Everworld, you woke up back in the old life, the old body, with two intact sets of memories: the dull, ordinary details of an-other dull, ordinary day of school and home and more school. And you had the memories of the other side. Memories that were not so dull. It, like the real me, the normal me, the me that didn't attack Aztec gods with Viking swords, got a little update every now and then. And vice versa. Like I, we, both of me were tuning in to CNN every once in a while and learning about what was going on with the other self. Oh, interesting, I see I got a B-plus on the chem test. Oh, interesting, I see I'm about to have my heart ripped out to feed Big H. Well, thanks for the update. Good luck getting to third base on your date Saturday! Thanks, and good luck to you in escaping from cannibal hell. See ya! The others. I had to find the others. But there was still another ten minutes before we were supposed to hit the showers. Somehow, somehow, I didn't know how, we had to stay here. We had to not go back. Maybe there was some copy of me over there too bad. As long as I, Christopher, the brain, the memories, the thoughts, the sense of humor, the nasty, self-interested creature called Christopher, isn't there, I don't care. Huitzilopoctli can eat heart. As long as I'm not there to see it.

"Coach!" I yelled too loudly.

"What do you want, Hitchcock?"

"I need to see the nurse. Need a couple aspirin or whatever before this swells up."

"Uh-huh. You are the laziest human being I've ever met."

"Can I go?"

"You're no good to anyone here," he said. I took off, careful to hobble as I went.

Once in the locker room I showered fast, slipped on m clothes, and went looking for David. Instead, I found April. She was in the hall heading for the library. "Oh, man!" I yelled. She nodded, cautious. Amused, too. I grabbed her arm and pulled her aside, practically shoving her into a locker.

"Where are you?" I hissed.

"Um, right here?" She pried my fingers loose. "No, I mean on the other side. Where are you in Everworld?" She shrugged.

"Last I knew we were still on the longboat, heading for an attack on the Aztecs."

"You haven't fallen asleep yet," I said.

"Either that, or... or I don't know," I finished lamely.

"How'd it go?" April asked.

"What?"

"The battle."

"We didn't exactly win," I said, trying to keep my Instinct for sarcasm under control.

"Is anyone hurt?"

"Of us, no. Not yet. Although you, maybe, we don't know where you are. Sven's dead. Olaf's dead. And the rest of us are being held, pending the removal of our freaking hearts, after which we will be barbecued and served up buffet-style with coleslaw and baked beans!" I had failed to control my sarcasm. I was nearly screaming. I was spitting on her with each percussive sound.

"Where am I?" April demanded, scared.

"We don't know. But you were back with the boats which, trust me, all belong to Huitzilopoctli�s happy crew now."

Her face was pale. The huge green eyes grew more huge.

"Oh, my God. They could be ... I could be ..."

"Entertaining the Aztec warriors? Yeah."

goddamn, what age range were these books for, just making the implied sexual assault explicit a bit. Also cool to see how self interested, even in his own words, Christopher is, even when it affects �himself� in Everworld. Sure, bizzaro chris can get his heart ripped out and eaten, real Chris is fine.

# ? Jul 3, 2023 18:06

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

I feel even if their body is physically rested, snapping off into another world where you're awake so that your mind is constantly conscious would be very mentally exhausting? (Although even if the time differences don't line up I suppose theoretically, a third of the time the Real Them will be asleep too.)

# ? Jul 4, 2023 05:44

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

And here we're really starting to see Christopher's deal. He instinctively lashes out at others when he's under stress and will go for really low blows and just generally be incredibly lovely. Like he's in a life or death situation where the other 3 Earth people are just about the only people he can even remotely count on and he's already started throwing out racist barbs and implying sexual assault.

# ? Jul 4, 2023 09:27

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER VIII

She looked sick. That had been a harsh thing for me to say. I do that when I'm scared. I take cheap shots at people. Not one of my more attractive personality traits.

"What if I've been killed?" she asked.

She put her hand on my arm. She's a babe. Any other time I'd be doing a nice tingle and thinking, My backseat or yours? But I knew better. This wasn't a romantic touch. This was a "tell me it's all going to be okay" touch. I couldn't tell her it was okay. It wasn't.

I said, "Not to sound cold, April, but if you're dead over there, cool. That means we can survive dying over there. Believe me, with what's happening to me over there, I'd love to find out death isn't fatal."

She nodded. Slowly. Still looking sick.

"And if it is fatal? I could, what, drop dead any second because of something that's happening to me in Everworld? Something I don't even know about?"

"Have you seen David or Jalil?"

It took her a few seconds to respond. She was far away. I thought for a minute she'd snapped back. You know, that the Everworld April had arrived. But then, no.

"I saw Jalil in class. Just now. He didn't give me a look or anything. Are you sure both of them are alive?"

"Last I checked. I think I'd have woken up if someone came along to drag them away."

"What do we do?" she asked.

"Oh, gee, I don't know, I guess we go to our next class and wait to see if... I don't know. I don't know! This is bizarre. How do you make sense of this? How do you figure your life out when you're late for a class and about to be sacrificed to a pagan deity? I don't know which life to lead. Any second now I could wake up and boom, I'm back there, and then I, the me who's left here, I go around like you're going around now. Waiting to find out what happens when they cut the heart out of Everworld Christopher."

That vise was around my chest again, tightening, tightening. "I wish I would go to sleep," April said. "Then at least I'd know where I was."

A teacher passed by right about then. She must have overheard part of what April said. The teacher shook her head slightly and walked on.

"We keep this up, pretty soon we'll be dead over there and in a looney bin here," I said.

"We need to find David," April said.

"What's he going to do?"

"I don't know. Something. I hope."

I was kind of hurt. April had just dissed me without meaning to. David would do some-thing. Me? What was I good for? Not much, I guess. The bell rang. Doors all down the hallway flew open. Kids exploded out of their classrooms, yelling and talking and laughing and running and swinging their backpacks up onto their shoulders. David appeared. Jalil was with him.

"Are you here or there?" I snapped.

"I'm asleep," Jalil answered. "David's not."

"Come on, let's get out of here," I said.

"I can't cut last period!" April protested.

Suddenly, I was back in a dark room full of smelly men.

"No!" I yelled. Jalil jerked awake. David? Gone. Not in sight. I looked around, trying to see what had awakened me. There were Aztec warriors making their way through the flopped-out throng. A half-dozen heavily armed warriors. And two characters who looked like Pig Pen from Peanuts. All grown up, and still refusing to bathe. They wore black.

Probably. It was hard to tell what color their long robes might have once been. Their hair was long, matted, sticking out in dreadlocks, hanging in greasy strands. Their faces were blackened. Not black black, because unlike the Vikings, who had evidently welcomed all races to their happy little Looney: Tunes world, the Aztecs were all identically copper-skinned and black-haired.

These guys were black not from melanin but from soot and cinders and a complete aversion to soap. I'd only thought the Vikings smelled. The Vikings were walking, talking Clinique sales-people compared to these two. The Vikings were dirty by accident. These two had made a career out of being filthy. The reek was intense, powerful, hideous, and disturbing. It was the reek of body odor and dirt and fungus. But most of all, it was the stench of dried blood. The two walking sewers, and their escort of well-groomed warriors, picked their way gingerly through the snoring bodies. From time to time they would point at one of the Vikings. Then the guards would rouse the Norseman, not unkindly, and pass him along, unescorted, to the far end of the room.

"Priests," Jalil commented.

"What are they doing?" He slid his eyes sideways to look at me.

"Choosing up teams for the big volleyball tournament. How would I know what they're doing? I'm as ignorant as you. Almost. But if I was to guess, I'd say they're ordering off the menu."

The priests kept coming. Should we sidle away? Or would that draw attention? It was like some awful version of the old classroom game: Keep the teacher from calling on you. Jalil and I pretended to go back to sleep. Breathe, Christopher, I told myself.

"These two," the priest said. "Young. Their hearts will be tender and unblemished."

# ? Jul 5, 2023 02:47

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER IX

I could have said, "No! Not me!" I didn't. I stood up. Shaky. Numb. Like I couldn't quite feel my own body. Maybe I was trying to convince myself I wasn't really here. Maybe I wanted to believe that I was back there, back in the world, back in school, in a familiar hallway, standing by lockers, talking to my friends, far away, not here. It couldn't be real. Could not be. I stumbled, a step behind Jalil.

The warriors were almost gentle in their treatment. Respectful even. Not just to us but to the Vikings as well The Vikings went along like sheep. We did too. But I guess I expected more from the Norse-men. They just hung their heads and shuffle along.

"Where's David?" I asked Jalil.

He shook his head.

"Figures he would find a way to hide out," I said bitterly. We were outside. The moon cast a blue glow over the city. Golden adobe walls and terra-cotta roofs and volcanic black cobblestones were all blue and silver, shadows and darkness. The air was humid. Jungle air. Warm, even at night. Thick. But there were no mosquitoes.

Strange. Maybe Huitzilopoctli had banished them. Maybe he didn't want any competition for the blood supply. I did see rats, or something awfully much like rats, scurrying across our path, trundling along the bases of walls. They marched us along the street in near silence but for the shuffle of feet. Maybe two, maybe three hundred of us, guarded by no more than twenty warriors.

"Not many guards," I whispered to Jalil.

He nodded. "They're armed, we're not. But it's not like they're carrying shotguns or machine guns. One guy with a stone sword can't stop ten times his own number."

It was weird. We could have taken the guards down. We didn't. No one but us even seemed to be thinking about it. The guards themselves were laid-back. Relaxed.

"Come on," I said. "No one said we have to keep up." I jerked my head subtly. Jalil caught my hint. We started walking a little more slowly, letting the Vikings flow around us. Maybe I was looking for David. Maybe I was just looking for an opportunity. Something.

Anything. What we found was Thorolf. He's a picture-book Viking: big, big arms, big chest, big beard. An older guy. Middle-aged. Not a kid. But we liked him. Thorolf was about as close as you could get to a mellow Viking.

"Thorolf!" I whispered.

"Yes, it is me. More the shame." He didn't look like himself. Not the bluff, loud backslapping, guffawing guy we knew. Then again, I wasn't exactly myself, either. Imminent death will do that to you.

"Thorolf, we can take these guys," I whispered "There's hundreds of us. Just a handful of them."

He looked puzzled. "We are prisoners."

"What Christopher is suggesting is, maybe we don't have to stay prisoners," Jalil said.

Thorolf kept on looking dumb. "We lost the battle. Their power was greater than ours."

"Yeah, we were there, dude," I said. "We know who lost and who won. But that was before. Right now we outnumber these guys about ten or fifteen to one. Bada-bing, bada-boom, we take them down, run for the gate, make it to the boats, and haul butt."

"Their god is too powerful. Even Mjolnir wielded by Olaf Ironfoot could not defeat him."

"Maybe Big H - Huitzilopoctli, I mean - maybe he's asleep. I mean, it's night, right?"

Jalil jumped in with his usual "I've figured it all out" tone of voice. "If there are still warriors in this society it can only mean that Huitzilopoctli limits his involvement. I mean, why would those guys still be training and practicing and making weapons and so on, if all they had to do was dial up Big H every time they ran into trouble?"

"What he said," I urged Thorolf, pointing at Jalil. "Come on, man. Give the word. Let's take these guys out!"

"Give it up." David! He was just a few paces behind us.

"Oh, so nice of you to join us," I said, torn between relief and annoyance.

He shrugged. "I didn't go anywhere. I've spent the night trying to get some of these guys to work on an escape. No luck. Not happening." We sidled back from Thorolf to join David. "They don't get it," David explained. "For these guys the battle was it. The last word. They bring Mjolnir, the Aztecs bring Big H, everyone's brave and heroic, our side loses. So that's it. Now they're prisoners. The end."

Jalil nodded. "I was afraid that was it. Fatalism."

"Fatal is right," I muttered.

"It's a fatalistic outlook," Jalil went on, probably soothed by the sound of his own brain churning. "It's what comes of believing that great supernatural powers control your life."

"Yeah, well, great supernatural powers do," I said. "Or didn't you happen to notice the big blue guy with the snake on his arm?"

"No. Bull. I'm not saying Huitzilopoctli isn't real. I'm just saying he doesn't seem to be able to keep his people fed. And anyway, Olaf knocked Big H's arm off with Mjolnir. So he's not invulnerable." We had reached the end of our march. We had gone around what looked like the back side of the pyramid. There was a large building there, foul stories tall, with no windows and a single large door. The door was open, a rectangle of golden, welcoming light. The head of our column started through.

"Now or maybe never," David said.

"The three of us, alone?" Jalil said. He shook his head. "You ask me to commit suicide before can be murdered? Uh-uh. There may still come a better chance."

I hesitated, waffling between the two of them. Then, I heard a strange, incongruous sound. The sound of a female voice giggling.

"There may be a better chance," I said.

We reached the doorway. Stepped through, behind the first hundred or so Vikings. Inside there was a line of nine priests. A Supreme Court of dirt, crusted blood, and odor. Several of them had knotted cords of thorns passed through their tongues, lips, cheeks, ears. Some of the thorns were an inch long. There were lacerations from pushing the thorns through the flesh. Sideways, in some cases. Some of the priests had ears that looked like the fringe on a buckskin jacket. The Aztec priests took their body piercing very seriously. At one end of the room was the best buffet table I'd ever seen. Huge mounds of bananas, mangoes, brilliantly red tomatoes, and something that looked like cactus with the prickles re-moved. It was like the exotic produce section of the supermarket, times ten. There was roasted corn and roasted potatoes. Eggs in a dozen different sizes. Whole pigs. Whole ... some other animal. There were pottery jars full of beverages. Flowers. Pastries. Tortillas. Beans. It was a brunch at the Aztec Hyatt Regency. But, as hungry as I suddenly was, the food was only the second most interesting thing about the room.

Because behind the line of priests were women. Young, attractive women. A lot of women. At least one, maybe two for each prisoner. A lot of pretty, underfed women, most as skinny as Courtney Cox, many with faces painted yellow, and very little clothing between them.

"Our farewell party," Jalil said mordantly. He was right, of course. The Vikings had mentioned this aspect of Aztec behavior.

For the Aztecs, feeding your heart to Huitzilopoctli was an honor. (One they themselves tried hard to avoid.) They figured the human sacrifices should be in good shape, well-fed, and happy. They were going to stuff us full of food and booze they themselves didn't have enough of. All to make us fit for Huitzilopoctli. The Aztecs were giving us a nice send-off. But still, a send-off.

And yet, I thought, if you gotta have your hear ripped out, you might as well enjoy the last few hours.

Take a shot everytime there's a 90 reference.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 03:03

Malpais Legate: Oct 1, 2014

David had his problems but boy how do I think Christopher here is a jackass.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 22:30

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

Malpais Legate posted:

David had his problems but boy how do I think Christopher here is a jackass.

100%

# ? Jul 6, 2023 22:51

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

I mean, I'm not saying I want him to get eaten by a god, but

# ? Jul 6, 2023 23:29

Kazzah: Jul 15, 2011; Formerly known as
Krazyface; Hair Elf

Yeah Christopher is, to put it politely, a very authentic strain of �90s highschooler

# ? Jul 7, 2023 01:49

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

quote:

CHAPTER X

"Eat up," David said. "But stay away from the women."

"Yeah? How about, forget you?" I said. I grabbed a fried plantain and a piece of what was probably ham. Maybe ham. There were two attractive women draped around me, clinging, hands reaching here and there with very pleasurable effect. "Did someone die and make you God, David? Must have missed that."

"Is that ham any good?" Jalil asked. I took a big, ripping bite and chewed it in David's face.

"Yeah, it's very tasty. Wish I had some yams to go with it." Jalil nodded.

"That young lady on your arm there? That's what she'll be saying about you: tasty. Wish she had some yams to go with you." Jalil was right. Later, tomorrow or whenever, this skinny girl would be gorging herself sick on my left calf, ripping at it with her tiny white teeth, smacking her lips, enjoying the crispy, crunchy, fire-roasted skin. . . .

"Get away," I muttered. I gave her a shove. Not a harsh shove. Not as harsh as I ought to give someone who was thinking of whether she'd have me broiled or fried. She shrugged and took her friend off with her. The Vikings, needless to say, were not even slightly restrained. All around us was a TV evangelist's vision of hell: gluttony, drunkenness, and more different types of wanton behavior than you see on Cinemax late at night. My vision of heaven. If you left out the part where they cut out your heart and eat you.

"You know what?" David whispered to Jalil and me as we huddled together like the three biggest losers ever to blow a cool party.

"What?" I moaned, unable to stop myself from looking around at everything I was missing.

"I don't know if anyone has ever tried to escape from the Aztecs, but I know one thing for sure: If anyone ever did try, they didn't try during this particular phase." Jalil nodded. Even he looked wistful.

"Guess not, probably. Most are like Thorolf. They figure it's fate."

"So we book?" I said skeptically.

"Yeah," David said, putting on his crud-eating, fear-nothing, James Bond grin. Save me from insecure jerks with hero fixations. I looked at Jalil. Jalil was a prickly, self-serving know-it-all, but he wasn't trying to prove to the world that he was Conan the Barbarian.

"Now or maybe never," Jalil said. He looked sick. I nodded in approval. I trust a guy who looks sick when he's getting ready to do something suicidal. If I'd had a mirror I'd have seen one sick face looking back at me. Ninety percent of the trouble in this world comes from guys who think they have something to prove.

"You know what we do?" I suggested.

"We walk right out the door." David nodded.

"Yeah. Like we're going outside for a smoke or to take a leak."

"Cool and calm," Jalil agreed. "Then, when they try and grab us, we run. But where? Which way?"

"Out of this city," I suggested. "Into the jungle."

"April," David said.

"We can't help April dead," I said harshly.

"We all go home together, or no one goes," David said. "Us, April, Senna."

"Yeah, whatever," I said.

"Not the jungle. Down the shore," Jalil said, "Down the beach, that's a footrace. Maybe we can win. But into the jungle, that's about animals and bugs and quicksand and being chased by guys who know the Jungle a lot better than we do."

Made sense to me. I jerked to my feet very quickly. I didn't want to have a deal with David doing a big "Let's go, team!" thing. I wiped my sweaty palms down my pant legs.

"I would trade my mother for an Uzi," I muttered. The three of us walked through the wild, drunken, gulping, pleasuring crowd. We looked like a trio of missionaries who'd stumbled into Caligula's New Year's Eve party. Legs stiff-casual, arms jerking with a pathetic overdone display of nonchalance, we headed for the door, still open to the warm night air, Two guys made up with eagle feathers and craft-show eagle hats stood there, arms crossed over their hairless chests. Closer. Closer. My eyes strained for the first sign that the two eagle knights would whip out their obsidian swords and hack us to death.

"Laugh," David whispered tersely. "Talk."

"Ah-hah-hah-hah!" Jalil said.

"Yeah, you are so right!" David yelped with idiot enthusiasm. "The Cubbies are going all the way this time. Hah-hah-hah!"

"You're killin' me, that is so funny!" I said with the kind of phony cheer you usually reserve for visits with Great-aunt Whatever at the old folks' home. Closer. Closer. Nothing. No movement. No reaction. I grinned at one of the guards.

"Great party!" He reached for his sword hilt. I swung. Big, dumb right-hand aimed straight for his chin. I missed his chin and caught him in the side of the head. Swung again. Caught air. The sword was out. The second guy was moving fast. David slammed into him, knocking him back against the doorjamb. My guy whipped his sword in an uppercut that swished a millimeter from my chin. I fell. I kicked. A little of both.

My foot caught shinbone. I slammed on my back, wind gone. Jalil swung on my guy. Connected with his ear. My guy staggered. David was all over his guy, swarming him with short punches, staying in close, gasping like a beached fish.

I crawled, tried to fill my lungs, staggered up just as my guy went down. I snatched his sword from his weakened grip and took a wild swing. Obsidian flakes caught in his collarbone. I yanked the sword out. All this with no yelling.

No cries of alarm. Grunts of surprise and effort and pain. "They don't box," David said, panting. His victim's face was a mess from a dozen hard, short jabs.

The guy hadn't even managed to draw his sword. The guy looked like his brain had been knocked into next week. Confused, stupid.

"Let's haul," Jalil said. Into the night, running, sneakers on flagstones bouncing weird, UFO echoes off the walls. My heart was hammering. Huitzilopoctli would hear it! He would hear my heart and come to take it from me. I still had the heavy, awkward sword.

"Which way?" David asked. It was dark. Not civilization dark. This was no-streetlight dark. Middle-of-the-woods dark. The moon was behind the clouds. We could easily lose one another in this dark. And we had long since lost our way. Then, not fifty feet away, we saw her. She shone as if the moon were sending down a single, tight, floodlight beam just for her. Senna.

# ? Jul 7, 2023 03:39

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

Why don't they just morph?

# ? Jul 7, 2023 08:10

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

I'm actually pretty amazed that our kids DON'T have any powers yet. They're just "modern" teens in a weird world.

Also love that Cinemax was called out for softcore, but it loses points for not being called Skinemax

# ? Jul 7, 2023 13:34

Malpais Legate: Oct 1, 2014

One of them has to get Mjolnir and start throwing that around, right? There's got to be some sort of supernatural heroic destinies coming for them or something.

Not that I'd complain if it's subverted and they're just four kids way out of their depth, but yeah, the lack of "powers" is suspicious.

# ? Jul 7, 2023 14:22

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 17:03

Coca Koala: Nov 28, 2005; ongoing nowhere; College Slice

I can clearly how david can be set up for some kind of redemptive arc where he has some realization about the nature of manliness etc but i�m super curious now to see what kind of character growth there is for somebody whose archetype is �exceptionally lovely teenager in the 90s�

# ? Jul 7, 2023 14:34

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.

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