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.

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Zore posted:

I mean Jalil's a black teen in Chicago in the year 2000. The cops are 100% not bothering with a protective detail for his house.

They involved the feds, but in any case they're low-level witnesses for a group that's scary to them but probably small fry when viewed in the grand scheme of things. Race has nothing to do with it; purely in terms of resourcing I doubt either Christopher or Jalil are meriting a car parked across the road.

quote:

The sail had been raised. A breeze was blowing us along and most of the rowers lay asleep on their benches. I wanted to taunt Jalil. I wanted to ask him whether he'd had a good time over in the real world. Wanted to ask him
whether seven hand washings had been enough, or had it perhaps required seven times seven to silence the mad voice in his head.

But that wouldn't be smart.

I'm curious why Senna doesn't want to goad him about his OCD in Everworld - is it a trump card she's keeping, because it's a secret from the rest of the group? An assumption that this secret is an advantage she shouldn't yet yield? The group isn't exactly Animorphs level friendship, but at this point - especially in the context of Jalil vs Senna - I don't think they'd judge him for his OCD.

# ? Nov 29, 2023 08:58

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 05:32

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

freebooter posted:

An assumption that this secret is an advantage she shouldn't yet yield?

That�s my guess - right now, it�s a card you can really only play a couple times before it loses effectiveness and playing it reveals (to Jalil, at least) that Senna doesn�t control the entire situation and that things in Everworld can be better than they are in the Old World.

She might be able to bring it up at some later crucial moment in order to knock Jalil off balance, but that�ll be harder to do the more times she tries it and right now there�s no benefit to making him upset.

# ? Nov 29, 2023 15:16

B Is For Razor: Jun 21, 2007

"It wouldn't be smart" because it would reveal that Senna was behind the Fat Billy incident, showing that she still has power and influence in the 'real world' (and is using it to directly antagonize Jail there.)

# ? Nov 29, 2023 17:44

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

Yeah okay fine that makes a lot of sense too.

# ? Nov 29, 2023 19:49

QuickbreathFinisher: Sep 28, 2008; by reading this post you have agreed to form a gay socialist micronation.
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B Is For Razor posted:

"It wouldn't be smart" because it would reveal that Senna was behind the Fat Billy incident, showing that she still has power and influence in the 'real world' (and is using it to directly antagonize Jail there.)

I will be surprised if Jalil doesn't make the connection himself. I know that the shame is maybe too powerful and his thinking is too logical to make that leap, but she's already barbed him about it before, and it's just so specific. Like someone said upthread, Senna thinks she's this subtle master manipulator, but she really only has one speed and I think this is big enough that it might actually get him to figure out what's going on with her.

Man, what an evil loving character Senna is lol.

# ? Nov 29, 2023 23:48

WrightOfWay: Jul 24, 2010

Yeah, I was definitely expecting Senna to come off as more sympathetic from her POV, rather than less.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 00:53

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

quote:

Chapter
IX

The Sun was blistering hot by the time we made it back to the dhow. David and Jalil had taken turns at the oars, and we'd had to pull over to the shore on several occasions, tie the boat off, and let them rest.

April was on anxious lookout when we at last came around the bend and into the mouth of the tributary. We climbed aboard and David announced, "I'm sleeping for a few hours, then I'll talk. In the meantime, Sechnaf, I want you to beach us over there and get your crew to start gathering up all the dry reeds, grass, palm fronds, anything dry that will burn. Fill this boat. Just leave room for the men to work their oars."

"What are we doing, Admiral?" Christopher demanded.

"Something I read about in Patrick O'Brian. It's called a fire ship." He held up a hand, forestalling more inquiries, "No more questions, I'm beat"

With that, he flopped down in a shady corner on some pillows and was snoring within minutes. I felt him pass through me on the way back to the real world.

"Fire ship?" Christopher repeated. "I'm guessing that's pretty much self-explanatory. I'll just go wait over on shore."

I found Sechnaf giving orders to his men. He accepted David's authority. Perhaps he had direct instructions from Sobek. But it was also true that David had acquired the habit of issuing orders and expecting to be obeyed. It was a sort of natural magic. The more you gave orders and were obeyed, the more easily you gave orders. Men are sheep and love to be led.

I had chosen well with David. In feet, he had done better than I'd hoped. And even if he was no longer entirely under my control, he still ended up doing my bidding. I was content with that. Still, the time would come when I would have to take him down several notches. A pawn that crosses the entire board can become a queen. Not perhaps the title David would appreciate, but the principle was clear: There was one ruler in this group and
it was me.

I sat on pillows and drank a bowl of watered-down mead. I had come to like the drink. It was fermented honey, too sweet, too strong, but with enough water it became harmless enough. I let my mind wander, ignoring the coming and going of the Egyptians as they handed armloads of grass and fronds and branches up into the boat. They chanted as they worked, a repetitive, meditative chant praising various gods.

What would it be like, seeing my mother again? What should I say? What would she say? What play would she make? What scene should we act out? The prodigal daughter? The vengeful spawn?

One thing was sure: I would have to be very careful. She was strong or she would not be in Everworld. She had crossed over, that night in my father's office. She had warped reality, opened a gateway to Everworld, and left nothing behind but me and my pale and quaking father.

Worse yet, she was a priestess of Isis. I had learned about Isis. I'd read all I could find about Isis. She was called "great in magic." Like all Egyptian deities, her role had changed over time, as society needed. She was a mother god, a sorceress, the wife of her brother, Osiris.

Osiris had been killed by Seth, a god of chaos, a sort of Egyptian Loki. Despite being dead, Osiris had gone to rule the underworld and had still managed, by virtue of Isis' great magic, to impregnate her. She had a son by her dead brother husband.

The son was named Horns. He was a god of the sky, of birds of prey.

Or had been. If Sobek was telling the truth, Horus was dead now, too. And Isis had raged against Sobek for more than a century.

None of which told me exactly what I would be facing when at last I found my mother. The Egyptian gods were not the Greeks. The Greeks wrote stories with a Western sensibility. They could be odd, but the Greek myths could be understood in linear fashion, A to B to C. The Egyptians were less direct. Each god had a dozen faces, a dozen forms, a dozen attributes, often weirdly mismatched. Or at least that was the story deciphered from a
millennium's worth of hieroglyphics.

The truth? We would soon see.

I was excited by the possibilities. Anxious, too. Maybe afraid. A part of me, too large a part of me, wanted to go to that old witch and cry, "Mommy, why? Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me in a world where I could never hope to fit in? Why did you leave me with a father who feared me and a stepmother who despised what I represented and a sister whose hatred would burn bright for all the years of my childhood? Why?"

Well, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't give her that satisfaction. I had survived. I had escaped the real world, with a bit of inadvertent help from Loki and his son Fenrir. And now. Mom, now your little girl is on her way to becoming a power all on her own.

Yes, little Senda is a pathway, all right. Her own pathway. I closed my eyes and savored the possibilities. I saw myself in my own temple, atop a mountain, up in the clear air, up in the clouds. I saw the gods of the Greeks, so reduced that they could only lend their power to me for my own uses. I saw the monster Ka Anor exterminated, his awful hive laid waste. I saw Merlin trapped in a prison from which there was no escape, stewing in his own
impotence, begging for an audience with me. And Loki? Loki would serve me, a useful tool.

I would hold all the reins of real power, play one god against the next, balance them, trick them, use them as they used mere mortals. They saw me as a witch. A gateway. A mutant freak who lived in both universes at once. To the gods I was a tool or an impediment. But they did not fear me, oh not yet. They didn't fear me because they didn't understand. They didn't see the crucial fact.

Of course the gods didn't get it, how could they? When they had left the old world, humans had carried swords and sharpened sticks. How could they guess how far behind they had fallen?

But Jalil could have figured it out, would have, if only he had opened his mind. April had a CD player in her backpack. The batteries still worked. The tiny laser still read the invisible coded bumps on the CD and music still issued forth. If a CD player...

Haven't thought of that yet, have you, Jalil? Haven't figured it out, have you, smart, smart boy? You think I want to bring all the monsters of Everworld into the real world? For what purpose, you smug fool? What would I gain?

Ah, clever, clever Jalil, you've missed the crucial fact: A gate swings open in both directions.

I laughed happily to myself. Oh yes, it was all there for me. I simply had to stay alive long enough to prepare the groundwork.

Then, for Jalil. Then, for my mother. Then, for my sister. Then all of them. All of them.

What am I missing with the CD player? It can't just be modern tech, because that's already happening independent of Senna.

quote:

Chapter
X

As night fell the oarsmen rowed the dhow out into the channel. David explained what was needed. "It's a wooden dam and they're coated it with some kind of tar to keep the wood from rotting. I noticed that their lights, their
torches, are all cantilevered out over the water. That means the dwarfs are worried about fire. Which is good for us."

"But it can only burn down to the water line," Jalil pointed out.

"I'm hoping that's all we'll need," David said. "My guess is, hope is anyway, is that the structure will be so weakened it will collapse."

April said, "Won't that cause some huge flood when all the water is released?"

David nodded. "Yeah."

April laughed incredulously. "And so we're just going to do it anyway? People could get killed."

David glanced at me, as though blaming me or at least hoping I would offer a justification.

It was Christopher who said, "Look, we do this or we end up neck-deep in crocodiles. We promised Gator Head. Besides, these dwarfs are foreigners, right? They came here, put up this dam, the Egyptians weren't for it, obviously."

David tried to move back to practical considerations. "We need to steer the ship toward the spillway. The current should do that for us, but �"

"No. Stop," April demanded. "Hey, the whole reason we're on this trip to Egypt is because we gave the Coo-Hatch the knowledge to make gunpowder. Haven't we learned a lesson here about just running around carelessly messing with things?"

It was my turn. "Egypt relies on the Nile and its floods to fertilize the land. This dam keeps the floods from happening. It is very likely that people downstream are starving as a result. We're saving Egypt, not hurting her,"

"You don't know that. You can't know that, Senna," she snapped. "This was all your idea, anyway, wasn't it? So once again, here we go following Senna's orders, doing her dirty work. Don't you guys see that?"

"The dwarfs are robbing the Egyptians of their gold and starving them in the process," I said flatly. "We're on the side of the angels here."

April sneered. "Anytime you're on the side of the angels, the angels need to change sides."

But she made no further objections. She'd earned her little gold star for the day. And she was no more interested in becoming crocodile food than I was. We climbed down the sides of the dhow into the rowboats. Three small boats, with just enough room for the crew as well.

David stayed aboard and took the steering oar from Sechnaf. A small fire burned in a ventilated clay pot. The dry
grass was piled high. The mast and sail had been splashed with flammable oil.

"You are going to get off, right?" Jalil called up to David.

"No, I'm going to go down with the ship," David said with rare sarcasm.

"He would, you know," Christopher muttered.

Down the river we glided, slow as the current. No one rowed, only steered. We were a weird, stately parade, retracing the path we had taken earlier. Silent but for the sounds of wood and water. Then we rounded a bend and saw the line of torches. Closer we drifted. No signal from David. And closer. Close enough to see dim shadowy shapes in the torchlight. And slowly, slowly closer still.

A cry in the night.

"A boat! Alarm, alarm, a boat! Foes at the gate! Foes at the gate!"

More torches now, and the sound of scabbards clattering against chain-mailed thighs. The dwarfs were rushing from both blockhouses, out onto the dam. They formed into a line of battle, clearly expecting an attack. Ax blades glinted. I could almost see faces.

David wrapped a rope around the oar, lashing it into place. Then he kicked the clay pot. It twirled, throwing off fireworks, drops of burning oil that landed on straw and fronds and branches and reeds. The fire did not erupt all at once. At first it was just a few flickers here and there, not even directly visible to us down below in the boats.
Then a gust of wind and all at once, like a living thing, like a match head, the fire erupted, leaped up, roared, caught the wind. It swirled up around the mast, throwing showers of sparks everywhere.

David dove into the water. The dwarfs cried out, dismayed, realizing now that they were helpless, that their weapons were irrelevant. The dhow, a blindingly bright, impossibly huge bonfire, drifted steadily, inexorably toward the dam.

Dwarfs hesitated, stood firm, then all broke at once. They raced back toward shore as the flaming heap slammed,
crunched, rolled against the dam, pressed against the spillway by the force of the current. The banks of the river, the blockhouses, the trees, all were painted orange and yellow. Dwarfs ran, in and out of flickering shadows, ran, scattering into the woods. The dam itself was burning now. The flames raced left along the dam, fanned by the breeze.

The fire cracked and popped and roared, sucking the wind into its vacuum. The ragged crest of the flames soared a hundred feet high. I felt the heat on my face, my cheeks burned, I wondered if my hair would catch fire. It was like standing near a star, an inferno surrounded by blackness.

Sechnaf and one crewman and Christopher were in the rowboat with me. David appeared, wet, spitting muddy water.He pulled himself up into the boat with a little help from Christopher. He squeezed water out of his hair and watched his handiwork. "That will burn for a while," he remarked. "We better pull into shore. Everyone stay on alert. If we run into any dwarfs they aren't going to be happy with us."

Our three little boats turned and began to pull back against the current, away from the inferno we had created. We landed on a muddy bank by a small stand of dying palms. The dam was out of direct sight but the glow of the flames lit up the night.

"Hell of a bonfire," Christopher said. "Now what, General Sherman?"

Jalil looked sharply at him. Jalil's last name is Sherman.

"General Sherman, dude," Christopher clarified. "The guy who burned Atlanta? Didn't you ever see Gone With the Wind?"

"Now we wait and see what happens," David said. "No one sleeps. Everyone keep your weapons handy. Watch the woods."

And the water, I thought. But I said nothing. We had done as Sobek wanted. But that didn't mean he would refrain from killing us. Perhaps not tonight. No, surely not tonight, not, at least, till he was sure we'd succeeded.

As David stood watch, I let myself drift back across the void. Back to the real world.

David was not the only general. I had my own troops to lead.

That doesn't sound good for anyone.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 02:11

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 everyone so far has been pretty laser focused on Senna letting people or gods out of Everworld.

But as she proved with our little group, even just letting in some modern teens from Earth with basic knowledge and a few trinkets can be wildly destabilizing. And now that we know she's been regularly crossing over and posessing people it sounds like she might have built up a more formidible group

# ? Nov 30, 2023 02:33

bird food bathtub: Aug 9, 2003; College Slice

Zore posted:

Yeah everyone so far has been pretty laser focused on Senna letting people or gods out of Everworld.

But as she proved with our little group, even just letting in some modern teens from Earth with basic knowledge and a few trinkets can be wildly destabilizing. And now that we know she's been regularly crossing over and posessing people it sounds like she might have built up a more formidible group

That's where my thinking is. The Coo-Hatch were destabilizing with one partially formed, non-rifled cannon that killed the ones firing it and the fairy realm is probably still turned upside-down with a half-baked telegraph system bodged together by high schoolers in a day with the threat of their hearts bursting into flames. Imagine what a platoon of guys with assault rifles and radio communications gear could do.

# ? Nov 30, 2023 14:26

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

quote:

Chapter
XI

It was exhausting work. I had to project my own physical self, or at least an illusion of myself, back into the real world. And in this case not some familiar picture of my true self � I needed a modified image, one I had invented some weeks earlier for just this purpose.

It required extreme effort. And even more effort to create the wonders and miracles that my troops demanded.
They met in a small room in the back of a dirty-windowed T-shirt store down in Rogers Park. The neighborhood was at the northern extreme of Chicago. A mix of nationalities and religions, immigrants of all types. A working-class neighborhood of brick apartment buildings with rusty window-unit air conditioners and small frame houses with carefully kept yards.

The avenues were lit by the neon of check-cashing storefronts, doughnut shops, and twenty-four-hour gas stations.
The room itself was four bare walls, a single eye-level window blocked with black construction paper, stained carpet, and six rows of folding chairs.

My troops had built a sort of altar for me. A pitiful six-inch-high platform painted black and surmounted by a large crate disguised by a drapery of red felt. On the bare white wall behind this altar was a poster. It showed two ellipses, separated, but joined together by a muscular male figure holding an ellipse in each hand. All this was
rendered in gold on a dark green background. The male figure was me. Of course, not precisely me. My own
natural form didn't fit the image required. I needed men to follow me, I needed killers, I needed the proper mix of credulous sheep and determined psychopaths. And for those people I needed a male god, not a female.

I floated above the room, unseen, unseeable, above the two-dimensional picture of the room, projected translucent on the bubble-skin of the real world. I saw into their minds, into their darkness, their emptiness.
Eighteen of them. Four more than last time. Good. I skimmed above the new ones, slid within millimeters of
their minds, touched the electrical field that snapped the synapses of their gray-pink brains.

Sheep. All of them were mere sheep. That was fine. I needed sheep. Sheep made fine servants, and they were no danger to me.

Besides, I had others. I slid above the universe and found the mind that glowed red in my imagination. I felt it, felt the twisted rage there. I felt the resentment, the failure, the absence of hope, the void. A dangerous one here. A true psychopath. He had come twice before, and he was back for a third time. He was young but so much the better; he would be wilder and yet more easily controlled.

Do you believe in me yet, Keith? I wondered. Have you accepted me as the only path to fulfillment? Have you abandoned those other fools with their ridiculous ideologies? Are you ready to accept the fact that magic, only magic, can save you from the life you are now destined to live?

I drew all my powers about me. I drained power from Everworld, carried it across the blank void, called up a hundred times more than I should need, because so much was lost in transit. I was tired already and yet could not show it. I formed the image of the god I had invented: hard-faced, stern, steel-gray hair cut military short. I showed only my head and shoulders, and my shoulders were draped in folds of blazing white. I was a god, a general, a father, a leader, a brilliant madman, because of course they needed a madman.

I focused all my power and slid into the real world. A gasp from every mouth. All eyes stared. Pulses accelerated.
I shone upon their upturned faces; they couldn't believe it, couldn't and yet could. Would. Keith turned, as he always did, looking for the trick, trying to spot some projector. He wanted so much to believe, needed to, but I was asking him to change loyalties and that was hard.

I spoke in a harsh, commanding tone. "You have come as ordered." I allowed a slight nod, no more, no gratitude,
because they were required to be here, they had been ordered to be here.

"We are assembled and await your orders. Great One." The reedy sycophantic voice of a man named Dawkins. He was my high priest.

"Report," I snapped.

He stiffened, an amateur trying to approximate a professional military stance. "Yes, Great One. Your holy arsenal
has been increased by twelve fully automatic weapons, two cases of hand grenades, and �" He paused for effect and swelled with pride. "Four grenade launchers."

I nodded. "Well done, men. Well done. And I see four new warriors here. But we need still more. Only when we have a hundred well-armed men, all sworn to our cause, can we move to the next level and begin the mighty work that lies before us."

"What...?" One of the new people had blurted without thinking. He looked abashed, worried by his own temerity.

"You want to know what this mighty work is?" I said, gritting illusory teeth, then grinning a hard smile. "I will show you, men, I will show you."

I paused, gathering my energy like a weight-lifter readying himself to heft some impossible weight, I opened the gate, just a crack, just a bit, but what these creatures felt and heard and saw was a blast, an assault of imagery that bypassed their eyes and ears and erupted full-dimensional in their minds.

They saw Loki's castle and Huitzilopoctli's sparkling city and Nidhoggr atop his mountain of gold. They saw Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent and Galahad in his armor. They saw Olympus itself and all its gods. They saw Ka Anor and his Hetwan hordes. And they saw gold and palaces and castles and thrones.

They gasped. They cried out. They felt the realness of it they knew it was all true, too intense to be anything but real.

And as they gaped, entranced, swelling with greed and power lust, I said, "All of it will be ours! All of it will belong to us! We will march with the might of our world to invade and subdue another world. Each of you a king! And I as your god!"

"What do you command, Great One?" Dawkins practically sobbed.

"The time has come. You must make careful plans. But you must bring more weapons. Weapons of great power to batter down the walls of proud castles!"

Dawkins frowned. "Great One, do you mean artillery? Mortars?"

Did I mean artillery? I was weak on the terminology. I should have learned more. Should have researched. I could still screw up the illusion by seeming less than omniscient. But Keith rescued me without knowing it. He was anxious to put himself forward. Anxious for my love, you see.

"The National Guard armory," he said. "They have mortars and shells and all. And I know a guy..."

"Then make it so!" I commanded, wobbly with exhaustion. "Make it so, before I come again!"

I disappeared, collapsed, fell in on myself, sank, floating, barely conscious, back into Everworld. Back into the frail body that knelt in the dark by the bank of the Nile. I moaned softly and fell facedown in the dirt. I lay there, not caring if the others saw. I was empty. Not a spark of energy left in me. Immobile.

As if from for off I heard a sustained crash, a roar, and saw the inferno's light dim.

"There goes the dam," David commented.

I smiled, content. We would enter Egypt as heroes. And over in the real world my little army was growing. Jalil looked down at me, not exactly sympathetic, but curious.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," I managed to whisper. Fine, Jalil. We will enter Egypt as heroes. And my army grows. Before too much longer, Jalil, you'll see how foolish you were. The gate opens both ways, you see. Let the monsters of Everworld into the real world? Of course not.

What would that gain me?

But let the monsters of the real world come here and bring their tools of destruction? The CD player had crossed the divide and continued to work. If a CD player, why not a gun? And as David the general had said, a contest of guns versus swords was over quickly.

What should I call myself when my rule was complete? Queen? Goddess?

Time enough to worry about all of that.

Ah, it wasn't anything about a cd play specifically, just that real world objects could cross over and still function.

Wasn't Keith the nazi kid?

Oh man, this is NOT good!

quote:

Chapter
XII

In the morning we left Sechnafs men behind to find their way home. We discovered the boats resting high and dry. The river had dropped precipitously and we had to drag the rowboats across a hundred yards of sucking mud to reach the river.

The river was content. The river was no longer frustrated, I could feel it. The river was carrying out its charge, flowing as it should from source to sea.

"Shouldn't Gator Head give us an escort?" Christopher demanded. "I mean, we cleared the river, right?"

"I don't think gods are good at gratitude," Jalil said. "Let's just be happy he didn't try to kill us out of sheer spite."

We used only two of the boats. Christopher and April in one; David, Jalil, and I in the other. Our boat took the lead, but we stayed close, sometimes side by side. We soon reached the wreckage of the dam. It had collapsed in the middle, a wide, jagged hole through which the river swelled and rushed and churned triumphantly. The dam walls extended on either bank onto what was now dry land. The stone blockhouses still stood, but empty, abandoned.

"Don't look," David said tersely and pointed away, trying to distract my gaze.

But there was no missing the body of the dwarf. It was impaled on a broken timber that jutted up and out from the ruins. The body was burned black. No way to know if he had been dead before he burned. I tensed, waiting, expecting a crude joke from Christopher. Something about my being burned at the stake. But nothing. It was a gruesome sight. And there was more to come. The dwarfs had built a number of gold-panning sluices downstream.
These were shattered. Buildings as well, barracks I suppose they were, and storehouses. All wrecked, twisted, flattened, strewn around the wet, muddy landscape like so much garbage. There were bodies here and there, dwarfs, some in chain mail, others in long nightshirts as though they had died while sleeping.

The river curved left around a bare, rocky promontory. The rocks rose twenty feet above us. And there stood a solitary dwarf, alive, weeping into his mud-heavy beard. He blinked at us. Dashed away his tears and shook his fist at us.

"You think you are proud conquerors?" he yelled. "Gloat while you may. Dwarfs do not forget. Every dwarf in Everworld will know of your foul deed. Never stray to the mountains, dwarf-killers. You will be slaves in our deepest mines and die without light!"

No one answered him. David refused to look at him and we all followed suit. Pretended not to see or hear him.
Only when we were out of range of his guttural curses and threats did Christopher say, "Great, we really needed more people trying to kill us."

"We had no choice," Jalil said, trying to convince himself. "Sobek could have attacked us. Maybe the Coo-Hatch would have stopped him, but maybe not. How many crocodiles does he have, after all? They're fast, you know. Crocodiles. They move surprisingly quickly on land."

"It's behind us now," David said tersely.

I wondered whether Sobek had followed us through the breach. Was he still there, gliding beneath the water? I was too worn to use my powers. I was wrung out, limp.

"Yeah, let's forget about it," April said, dripping acid. "We kill a bunch of people, let's just forget about that. Jesus, what are we doing? This place... We can't let ourselves..." She petered out, unable to frame her maudlin sentiments.

But Jalil couldn't let it go. "We have to reach Egypt, we have to help the Coo-Hatch � if we don't they'll back the Hetwan, the Hetwan will take Olympus, and then it's just a matter of time before Ka Anor wins. Once he has all of Everworld he'll punch his way into the real world. We have to do whatever it takes to win. Or else worse stuff will happen. Far worse."

I said, "What an original thought, Jalil. I wonder if that rationalization has ever been used before? We have to kill to stop the killing. We have to be depraved to stop the depravity. Yeah, I wonder if anyone has ever thought that up before."

Jalil didn't answer, just dug his oars into the water and forced David to counter his ill-timed stroke.

"It's all funny to you, isn't it. Senna?" April said. "It's all a joke. You don't understand the idea of a conscience. Right and wrong is all a big joke to you."

Time for a counterstroke. Is it? "At least I have a plan, April. I could give myself over to Loki and let him break through into the real world. It would be the easy thing to do. But I resist, don't I? I resist and I plan for a better Everworld, an Everworld that is not a threat to the real world."

"Maybe you should let us in on your plan someday," Christopher sneered. "Because as far as I know your plan seems to be to screw over everyone you run into, trash everyone and everything, play everyone against everyone else until you're the only one left standing. Maybe I missed some subtleties."

I hid a smile. No, I thought silently, you have it exactly right. I felt very good all of a sudden. It was all going to work. I could feel it. How long would it take? Years? Months? It didn't matter. I knew it. It had worked for me before. After all, Everworld was not the first place I had come to as a stranger, an outcast, a despised intruder.

That first time I had come into a strange, unknown world driven in a limousine, sitting belted in across from the shaken, nervous man who was my father. It was my first time in a limousine. The driver had raised the privacy glass so my father could talk freely. But my father had very little to say. He bit a thumbnail and looked out of tinted windows at dim streetlights as we sped north from Chicago.

He was a trapped man. I saw that, even then. I knew he was afraid. That reassured me. I was afraid, too. If we were both afraid then he was not greater than I. I decided not to be afraid. By being unafraid I could be stronger. I knew that intuitively. Or perhaps it was something my mother had taught me, I don't know.

What I knew was that life had changed permanently. My mother was gone. Our world of candlelit apartments, strange visitors, intermittent school, and frequent moves was gone. Done. I could touch the black leather seats of the limousine and understand that much.

My father used the car's phone to call ahead. He'd put some thought into it. Couldn't say too much, couldn't say too little. And he had to watch what he said in front of me. After all, I was just a little girl.

"Honey, something has happened. No, no, I'm not hurt. It's... I'm bringing someone home with me. Her name is Senna. She's a little girl." Deep breath. "Honey, she's mine, and I know, I know, and I'm so sorry. But she's just a little girl and �"

I heard the click. His face twitched. He hung up the phone. We arrived ten minutes later and, knowing he was walking into a hornet's nest, he was suddenly very solicitous of me. Maybe he figured I was his only possible ally.
My stepmother's face was frozen. I could have shattered it into pieces with a hammer, it was so brittle. She looked at me, not angry at me, but angry. Livid. Pained. And guilty?

There was a little girl my own age standing halfway down the steps, in her jammies, holding a stuffed doll. My stepmother said, "April, this little girl is going to spend the night. Your father and I have to talk. I want you to take her upstairs and show her the guest room. Do that for me, sweetie, that's a good girl."

"Her name is Senna," my father said.

"I don't care!" the woman snapped.

The little girl looked dubiously at me. She had enormous eyes and lush red hair. She was terribly polite. Terribly well-raised. She helped me carry my things.

"This is the guest room in here." She opened the door. It was cold inside. The heating vent had been closed. She snapped on a bedside light. It was a room straight out of a magazine. Unlike anything I'd ever seen in my own experience. The quilt matched the curtains, which picked up a pattern in the wallpaper.

"Who are you?" I asked the girl.

"I'm April. What's your name?"

I thought about it. My name was Senda. But my father had called me Senna. Senda meant "pathway." My mother was always one for languages. It was how she made her way in the world, as a translator. In fact, I'd never thought of it, but she seemed able to understand anything anyone said, regardless of language.

"My name is Senna Wales," I said. Then, wanting to wipe the smug, pitying expression off her little face, I added, "That's what my daddy calls me."

"Where is your daddy?"

"That's him downstairs."

Her eyes clouded. "That's my daddy."

"Not anymore," I said. "Now he's mine. You can keep her."

At that moment the sound of yelling came up through the floor. A loud, shrill female voice overriding a softer, humbled male voice.

"You can still pretend he's your daddy if you want to," I told April. "But you and I will know."

All these years later it gave me shivers, that memory. I had been a smart little girl. Or at least one with good instincts. There were two paths I could have followed: Try to fit in, assimilate, join the family, be the good little girl at home and at school � and I would still never, ever fit in.

Or I could dominate them by keeping them off-guard, by manipulating, surprising, disturbing them. I could be a false part of their Great Big Happy Family, or I could create my own life and live without controls. They would never love me, no one ever would, my own mother had left me. My own mother didn't... Well then, let them be afraid of me.

Just when you thought Senna was the worst, you find out that baby Senna was already terribly manipulative and cruel!

# ? Dec 1, 2023 01:28

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 we got Senna building up a small militia that includes, at minimum, the Nazi who's already targetting Jalil and Christopher.

And some more scenes with young Senda. Despite how deliberately cruel she was to April there I still feel bad for her as a little girl who just had her mom ditch her with strangers. Like you can clearly trace how that hurt is still guiding her. Her mom did an absolute number on her.

# ? Dec 1, 2023 03:28

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Soonmot posted:

"What are we doing, Admiral?" Christopher demanded.

"Something I read about in Patrick O'Brian. It's called a fire ship."

Of course he's an Aubrey-Maturin fan. Respect

# ? Dec 1, 2023 08:26

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

Zore posted:

Yeah we got Senna building up a small militia that includes, at minimum, the Nazi who's already targetting Jalil and Christopher.

And some more scenes with young Senda. Despite how deliberately cruel she was to April there I still feel bad for her as a little girl who just had her mom ditch her with strangers. Like you can clearly trace how that hurt is still guiding her. Her mom did an absolute number on her.

I think I would have more empathy if this was a story abut young Senna. Contrasting that childhood cruelty to her refined and intensified cruelty of her teen self just kills that feeling for me.

edit: like even if her choice to own her otherness was something she came to after trying to fit in, only to e completely rejected by her stepmother, patronized by April, and feared by her father, that would have gone a long way to keeping me sypathetic. But jumping straight to "gently caress all yall" as a seven eyar old right away? Throw that entire child in the trash!

# ? Dec 1, 2023 15:25

bird food bathtub: Aug 9, 2003; College Slice

I can actually believe her reaction. I've seen that exact thing with foster children. As a trauma reaction it's not unusual to internalize abandonment like that and come away with an aggressive outlook to the world. "Everybody so far in my life has screwed me over, you're just the latest person in line that's going to do the same, I'll do it first before you can hurt me. I'm going to cause chaos because wrecking everything around me proves I have control over at least that much in my life."

Not sure how deep I can read that sort of psychology into the character development. It does happen in real life though.

# ? Dec 1, 2023 16:07

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

The moral of the story appears to be that Senna will literally conquer entire worlds through force instead of getting therapy.

# ? Dec 1, 2023 16:25

Strategic Tea: Sep 1, 2012

What district is she running in? :swoon:

# ? Dec 1, 2023 17:05

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

Anyone else get the impression Senna's mother hit the dad with the old mind whammy?

# ? Dec 1, 2023 17:28

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

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Anyone else get the impression Senna's mother hit the dad with the old mind whammy?

That was explicit in the text, wasn�t it? I�m mobile posting so it�s tricky to go back and check but it definitely seemed very clear from the conversation Senna overheard that her father was objecting and then her mother dominated his mind.

Edit: yeah, this bit

quote:

"There's no time for all this," my mother interrupted wearily. "Come. Take my hand."

Even through the door I could feel it, the glow. That's what I called it, the glow, that's what my mother taught me to call it. A light that shines from nowhere, a light that people can't see. I felt her take the glow within her, focus it, direct it, use it. It all passed through me, that glow; we were one and inseparable, my mother and I, united by the glow.

There was a pause. Then my mother's voice again, softer, soothing. "Now it's all better, isn't it? You're a good man, Tom. You want to do what's right. You want to live up to your responsibilities."

No answer at first. Then a vague, troubled voice. "Yes. Of course."

"You still love me.�

"Yes." Not a ringing affirmation, more of a reluctant confession.

"You'll take her. For me."

"My will is your will, Tom. My needs, your needs. Your worries will come to nothing. All will be well. All is well. You will take the girl, you will raise her, protect her, keep her as safe as it is within your power to do."

"Yes," the man said. A sleepwalker mumbling.

Coca Koala fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Dec 1, 2023

# ? Dec 1, 2023 18:25

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

Sorry, I mean when Senna was conceived.

# ? Dec 1, 2023 18:33

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

Aaaah - yeah, maybe?

Although actually now I�m wondering if Senna�s mother�s control of Dad will come out to the group and how April would react to learning how compromised her father is.

# ? Dec 1, 2023 18:35

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

it would fit with what we know. Senna's mom had some foretelling and needed to get with one earth dude. I don't know though, hopefully we find out more backstory because where would a translator witch end up meeting a normal buisness guy?

# ? Dec 1, 2023 23:44

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

quote:

Chapter
XIII

We paddled and drifted and paddled some more. We were hungry and thirsty, unable to drink from the river that carried the bodies of the dead dwarfs. On both banks of the river we could see the effects of the dwarfs' dam: fields of sun-blasted, scrawny wheat, trees picked clean, gaunt oxen, shriveled men and women and babies. Famine, or near famine.

They were all smiling now, the myopic stares and gap-toothed grins of the old men, the scared-hopeful Madonna smiles of mothers, the clueless smiles of little children. They gathered by the riverbank to wave at us, to cry out their thanks. We were the first people to appear from upriver in a long time and we had brought the river back with us. These people had seen the debris of the dam floating by, they'd probably seen bodies. They knew that we had opened the river again and they greeted us as heroes.

A man splashed out to us and handed us a skin of wine which all of us but David passed around gratefully. Another man breasted the waters to press a handful of dates on us. Perhaps the last of his own food. April was no longer, whining about the dead dwarfs. Now she was seeing the other side and, typically, the emotion swayed her. The dwarfs were just as dead but now these
people were all happy about it, so...

The river wound on through desolate farmlands and past small, mud-brick villages. The people had very little but they gave freely of what they did have. By afternoon we had all the dates, figs, apricots, bread, and yogurt we could eat. All the wine and water we could drink. And palm fronds to protect us from the sun. We were even offered a slave.

"We're rock stars," Christopher said. "We could so totally take advantage of this. Egyptian groupies. Cool. Walk like an Egyptian."

"Maybe we should start looking for a place to spend the night," David said. "Couple more hours, it will be dark and we can't be on the river after dark. Maybe the next village, if we see one. The people don't seem like they'll be any trouble."

We turned a bend in the river, came out of the shadow of a bluff, and all at once were there.

"No way," Christopher said with an incredulous laugh.

"Pyramids! That is a pyr-a-freaking-mid! Look at that thing."

The pyramid was the model of every pyramid in every encyclopedia ever written, but without the ravages of the millennia on its face. It was tall, smooth, perfect in its proportions. It might have just been built. Every one of the millions of stones was sharp and clear, as though cut with a razor. And unlike the modern, real-world picture of a pyramid, it did not rise from barren sand. Rather it was surrounded by well- landscaped, irrigated gardens that seemed especially startling by contrast with the poverty and desolation we had passed through. It took an hour to reach and then pass by the pyramid. It was farther away than we'd imagined, an optical illusion. And it was huge. We were ten minutes in its shadow.

"Okay, we need to be thinking 'prepared,'" David said. "We don't know, so let's not get lazy." To illustrate his point he loosened his sword in its scabbard.

"What, mummies are gonna swim out here after us?" Christopher mocked.

"Arrows, Christopher. You know, bow and arrow? From the pyramid, from any high point on the riverbank. Anyone sees a bow, yell, duck down below the gunwale."

"The what?"

"The side of the boat," David said with a sigh.

We rowed on and swept at last out of the pyramid's shadow. But now the river carried us between two huge stone sphinxes, one on either bank. Both were painted. Lips red, eyes heavily made up in trailer-trash blue, with the cowl done in turquoise stripes.
They were at once intimidating, overwhelming, and comic.

"Mimi has been here," Christopher said.

"Who?" Jalil asked.

"You need to watch more TV, Jalil. Mimi? On Drew Carey?"

We drifted past the sphinxes and David said, �Senna, you have any handy hints on how to deal with these people? These Egyptians?"

I shrugged. "Not really. Try not to get into a confrontation."

What was I supposed to say?

Jalil said, "Last time I crossed over I did some research. These guys are highly ritualistic. They can't see any line between religion and ritual and everyday life; it's all one to them. Baking bread is a religious ritual as far as they're concerned, and they do it in exactly the same way every time. Their goal in life is to keep everything the same, year after year, unchanging. These guys make
the most ultraconservative you've ever met look like a crazy party animal. If nothing changes for a thousand years, that's cool by
them."

"Great. Should be a real party," Christopher said. "They don't do the human sacrifice thing, do they?"

"No. They sacrifice animals and whatnot. And the pharaoh is a god and you don't talk to him or look at him or touch him. If he
likes you he'll let you kiss the floor. If he doesn't like you �"

"� then you kiss his rear end?" Christopher interjected.

"No, that would be a sign of favor. You wish he liked you well enough to let you kiss his rear end. No, I was going to say that these
gods, Pharaoh included, are hard-core. You don't argue with them. They don't like you, you die, no questions asked."

"We're not here to shoot the breeze with Pharaoh," David pointed out. "We're here to find Senna's mother. Period."

Christopher laughed. "I hadn't thought about it, but this must be making you kind of nervous. huh, Moses? Hebrews and Egyptians? There's a little history going on there. Here's the thing: We get into any trouble, you'll have to go to Pharaoh and tell him, 'Let my people go.' Of course, you'll need frogs. And locusts."

April laughed. "We'll inflict the plague of you, Christopher. Pharaoh troubles us, we'll send you in to recite all the Brady Bunch
episodes you've memorized."

Past the sphinxes, the high riverbanks became sheer stone levees rising ten or more feet. Stairways, twenty, thirty steps long
descended from the elevated riverbank down into the water, or down to floating wooden platforms. The number of small boats
increased suddenly and dramatically. Upstream, the river had been blocked, but here we were nearer the sea, and traffic had
continued to move in that direction.

Yet even here it was easy to see the damage done by the destruction of the dam. A number of small boats had been smashed into toothpicks by the sudden surge. It was increasingly obvious that there were profound differences between the left and right banks of the river. On the left bank were smaller, less ostentatious structures that might have been warehouses. And it was on that bank that larger ships could be seen tied up to the quays. Some of those ships, too, had been mauled by the river's sudden rise. There were masts snapped in half and one large boat had a three-foot hole caved in its side.

But overall the left bank looked to be a pretty cheerful place. Shirtless, loinclothed workers were unloading bales, balancing
tremendous loads on sunburned backs, and laughing and singing as they worked. Beyond the warehouses I saw glimpses of smaller buildings, homes perhaps, businesses. The streets were busy but not bustling. People moved slowly, unhurriedly, some pulling carts, some pushing wheelbarrows, many carrying loads on their heads. The men wore loincloths or simple tunics; the women wore crudely cut dresses, sometimes belted. White linen was the fabric of choice, though here and there splashes of trade goods could be seen, red and indigo scarves, even occasionally an entire sky-blue or spring-green dress. There were donkeys and cattle in the streets and an occasional horse. Dogs barked. Children yelled in shrill voices. The left bank was alive.

The right bank was a different picture entirely. Here were more elaborate, larger wharves decorated with statuary, but these wharves were mostly empty of boats. The right bank was home to massive stone structures that could only be temples and palaces. There were massive, sloped porticoes ten times the height of a man and decorated with painted images of gods and goddesses; there were forts with crenelated walls; and looming statues of seated gods, hands on knees, pleated beards, and faces painted in lurid colors.

The left bank was built to human scale. The right bank belittled humans, abashed them, crushed them with its size and the sheer weight of stone on stone on stone. Very little moved on the right bank . What movement there was, was slow, deliberate. Files of men in white linen skirts and no shirts. Women in sheer linen shifts. All with black wigs, or shaved heads and topknots. These people, these slow, deliberate, indifferent people had the unmistakable look of priests and priestesses.

I swallowed in a dry throat. The right bank. I would find her there. That was the home for a priestess of Isis.

"I'm thinking left bank is for people, right bank for gods," April said. "Let's go left."

"We are looking for the temple of Isis," I reminded her. "That is where we will find my mother."

I sounded calm, but I didn't feel at all calm. This was a meeting I had so often imagined. How many times had I played this scene out in my head during the last ten years? The naive fantasies of a lonely seven-year-old had matured over time; the words, the scenes, the actions, and reactions had all been rewritten a thousand times. The play had been refined, but the play had never closed. There had seldom been a day, or more often night, when I did not see the moment in my imagination.

And now I might be within minutes of seeing her again. Within minutes of... of what? That would be up to her, at first. Over the
long term I would decide, but the tone of that first meeting, that would be up to her. If she was still alive. If she was still here. If.
I took a deep, slow breath. Keep your balance, I warned myself. Keep your powers ready; keep your mind clear and alert. Don't be distracted. Let there be no emotion.

"Senna's right," David said. "We need to get in and out of this place ASAP. So we go straight to Mrs. Wales. Tell her what's up,
and if she plays ball, we just get the hell out of here. I don't get a good feeling off the right bank."

Ahead on the right was a low stone quay reached by three stairways. There were figures there, hard to make out through the statues and through the masts and rigging of intervening boats, but I saw dull gold reflections of sunlight on bronze. Soldiers.
Guards.

"There," David pointed. "I think we're expected."

"I think I see military types," Jalil said.

"Yeah. And if we try and blow past them, they probably won't be too happy. Best go in like we have nothing to hide."

In fact, as we approached, it was clear that there were indeed soldiers, rapidly rushing down to the platform, hurrying to form up
into neat rows. Forty, maybe fifty or more. They wore white kilts, I suppose you'd call them. And nothing else. No shirts, no shoes. They carried spears topped with copper blades and shields that looked as if they were made of wood and cowhide. Some carried bows and a decorated quiver of arrows.

"They don't look too tough," Jalil said under his breath.

"Yeah, but there are a lot of them," David countered.

"They don't look tough," April said, "but they do."

"Who?"

She pointed higher. "Them."

quote:

Chapter
XIV

Three of them stood atop the high retaining wall, looking down on the Egyptian soldiers on the quay. Each of them was at least six feet tall. Each was armored: steel breastplates decorated with gold and silver, helmets with foot-tall combs of feathers, spiked
steel straps at the wrists, massive belts decorated with insignia the size of truckers' belt buckles. At their sides they wore long swords, like we'd seen the Vikings use. On the other side they wore long knives. Shorter knives protruded from the tops of their worn, knee-high leather boots. Each had a long bow hanging from a strap and a quiver of arrows. And on their left hands they wore a sort of chain-mail half-glove with a row of sharp talons protruding from the back of the hand. And then there were the coiled bullwhips.

They were hard, muscled, scarred, snarling warriors. And they were women.

They had the easy swagger of conquerors. The wide stance of natural rulers. One tipped up a jar, let wine dribble down her chin, and then spit a mouthful out in a spray over the flinching soldiers below. She laughed and her friends laughed and slapped her on the back.

"Are those Egyptians?" David asked me, incredulous.

"I don't know what those are," I admitted. I was worried. This was an unforeseen development. To put it mildly.

"I think I read about those chicks," Christopher said under his breath. "May have been in a letter to Penthouse."

I hadn't really noticed, but the women had one other notable feature: Beneath the snarls, the scars, the weapons, the armor, they were each beautiful.

"We've come to Planet Dominatrix," Christopher said. "If I'd known, hell, I'd have hurried more. I swear that's Heidi Klum with a
whip."

David said, "You really think those ladies look like they want to hear your jokes? Look at the Egyptians, man. They're cowering
there. They have copper speartips, for God's sake, copper."

�Yeah, copper, so what?"

"The ladies have steel. Steel is to copper what a meat cleaver is to Velveeta. You got forty guys down here on the platform all taking abuse from those three. So maybe this isn't the time for your little sex fantasies."

As if to emphasize the point, an Egyptian official of some sort passed the three armored women. He was dressed in blazing white
linen and wore a magnificent cowl headdress. He was attended by a half-dozen acolytes, young men with shaved heads and knots of black hair protruding from the side of their heads. The man in the cowl was clearly someone important. But as he and his party passed, one of the viragos grabbed an acolyte and fondled him in the crudest possible way. Another of the women loosened her whip, waited till the Egyptian official was past, whirled the leather overhead, and snapped it. The man jumped and yelped in pain, all dignity lost. The three women then laughed uproariously. But their smiles never reached their eyes, which were narrowed, focused, aimed right at us. They were putting on a show for our benefit. Letting us know that they were in charge.

The official recovered as best he could and met us as we docked our boats. David started to jump out, but the shocked expression on the face of the official or priest or whatever he was stopped David in midstep.

"I am the humble mouth of great King Ankha-hut, the twelfth of that name. I am come to welcome you to the City of the Sun."

"Glad to�"

"I welcome you in the name of Ra, the creator, Khnum-Ra, Amon-Ra, Harakhti-Ra, Meren-Ra, Menthu-Ra.."

For the next five minutes we stood there, frozen, unwilling to give offense, as the man named the names and attributes of various Ra's. Five endless minutes and he was clearly still early in the recitation.

"How many gods do they have?" Christopher muttered to Jalil.

"At this rate? Probably several hours' worth."

David sent me a helpless look. Waiting for me to suggest a course of action. But the women warriors intervened and saved us the effort. One of them swaggered down to the platform, pushed her way through the unprotesting soldiers, and said, "Come on. This
damned fool will go on like this forever: Ra this and Ra that and Ra my fundament. Ra is a cobweb-covered half-corpse sitting in a dusty hole mewling like a kitten."

She reached and grabbed David and half-dragged him, half-lifted him onto solid ground. She leered at him, pushing her face close to his. "So. You'd be the ones who sent those dwarfs swimming this morning. Well, you've made trouble, that's for sure, but it was damned fine soldiering. For a man. You look like you could be a spirited ride, eh? Eh, my little stallion?"

And then she grabbed David in a way that made him gasp.

"I am Merope. Princess Merope," she added, as if daring anyone to disagree. And while she still had him, she shot a look at April. "Is he yours?"

"What? No."

"He's mine," I said.

Merope released David reluctantly and gave me a dirty look. "May he give you sons," she spat, obviously a curse. "How about this one?" She jerked a thumb at Christopher.

"Oh, I'm available," Christopher said brightly.

"You're tall," the woman said. "That's good. But you'll be a few inches shorter by the time I'm done with you."

"Hey!" she cried over her shoulder to her companions. "Did you hear that? I said it was good he was tall because he'd be a few inches shorter by the time I'm finished with him!"

The other two laughed, although with the forced sound of people who've heard a particular joke before.

"Come on," Merope said, poking Christopher with the braided leather handle of her whip. "I'll take you to see the boss."

"The Pharaoh?" April asked.

Merope barked a laugh. "The Pharaoh? That bloodless, drooling, inbred sister's husband? No, my sweet innocent, we go to see Pretty Little Flower, the queen of all the Amazons. She rules in Egypt."

"Amazons?" Christopher mouthed silently.

Just then, a cry and a splash. One of the soldiers had made a break for it. He had broken ranks, rushed to the edge, and leaped into the water. He was swimming now, badly, ineptly, flailing and thrashing in the muddy water. On the far bank a few people gathered and pointed. Some cheered encouragingly. Others seemed to be placing bets. One of the men actually yanked down his loincloth and mooned us.

The soldier was halfway across when Merope unlimbered her bow. She was in no hurry. "There's no sport unless he makes it halfway first," she explained.

But the soldier wouldn't be making it that far. He screamed, surprised, horrified. The water boiled around him, he screamed again and again, Merope and the Amazons frowned. In seconds it was all over. The crocodiles had done their work.

"That will discourage the others," one of the Amazons said darkly.

Merope suddenly drew her bow and let fly. An arrow arced above the water. The man who had been mooning us had
pulled up his loincloth, but that didn't stop the arrow from suddenly sprouting from his upper thigh. The Amazons burst into laughter and shouted obscene threats across the water as the shot man was attended to by friends who moved him (and themselves) quickly out of range.

"Well, come along," Merope said. "That's all the fun for now."

I looked back as we climbed the stairs leading up to the street level and saw the official. He was still speaking; he had never stopped, never hesitated. He was still reciting the names of all the welcoming gods. Talking away to the empty space where we had stood. And his acolytes and remaining soldiers all stood at attention, expressionless, seemingly indifferent to the fact that we were no longer there, indifferent even to the horrible fate of their companion. The ritual was being observed.

What are Amazons doing in Egypt?

# ? Dec 2, 2023 02:08

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

Soonmot posted:

What are Amazons doing in Egypt?

Whatever they want :laffo:

I can see why this book is from Senna's point of view, it's very interesting to get an outside perspective on the group. David seems a lot more put together here than he has in any of his own PoV books.

# ? Dec 2, 2023 03:04

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

I can't remember, what was Senna's reason for taking her sister to Everworld?

# ? Dec 2, 2023 06:20

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

Tree Bucket posted:

I can't remember, what was Senna's reason for taking her sister to Everworld?

Spite.

She brought David to be her hero, Jalil to help her figure Everworld out, Christopher to be a destabilizing influence so the group wouldn't bond well and April because she hates her.

# ? Dec 2, 2023 06:41

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Soonmot posted:

What are Amazons doing in Egypt?

Amazons were Greek, weren't they? There was some Greek overlap with Egypt, though I think that was towards the end of ancient Egyptian civilisation. (Source: I played Assassin's Creed: Origins)

# ? Dec 2, 2023 22:48

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

Zore posted:

Spite.

She brought David to be her hero, Jalil to help her figure Everworld out, Christopher to be a destabilizing influence so the group wouldn't bond well and April because she hates her.

Ouch. I guess these are the authors who brought us Visser Three.

# ? Dec 3, 2023 02:09

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

My favourite Greek/Egyptian thing is that Sphinx is a Greek word. That one statue by the pyramids is so old we don't know its original name or what exactly it represents.

# ? Dec 3, 2023 02:11

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

And Cleopatra is a greek name. The -ra on the end kind of threw me.
Actual history is so weird.

# ? Dec 3, 2023 02:39

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

quote:

Chapter
XV

Merope and her two friends marched us through the imposing stone gateway and into the city. They swaggered on ahead, apparently not concerned that we would run away or disappear. Massive buildings, columns painted with hieroglyphs and
stylized portraits of the gods, rose on either side of the dusty street. The style was different from the Greeks'. The Greeks achieved a certain delicacy, even in the largest structures. But these temples seemed to have been made out of the largest stones anyone could find, all piled together to create massive slabs. It was a statement of size, not grace, sheer weight, not soaring ambition.

There were no businesses, no shops. There were no horses or mules or even camels in the streets. None of the activity that was to be found over on the left bank of the Nile. No one walked the streets at all, but for an occasional file of priests or priestesses moving along, heads down, no doubt focused on some necessary ritual. Some priests wore cowls, others displayed a shaved head, others still wore head-covering masks made to represent wolves or dogs of some kind. They wore wraparound linen skirts, or kilts, occasionally a beaded collar.

The priestesses wore white linen shifts, almost transparent in the slanting sunlight. They wore identical black Cleopatra wigs,
sometimes bound with gold headbands. They walked in files of five or ten priests or priestesses, carrying gold censers full of burning incense, the sweet-sickly smell of which made me want to gag whenever I caught a full whiff. My mother had always favored incense.

But for long stretches there weren't even any of these oppressed creatures. Just emptiness. Silence. Silence compounded by the abashing mass of stone and frozen-pose paintings.

"What is this, Planet of the Zombies?" April wondered. "This place gives me the creeps. There's no noise."

"Look, kitties!" Jalil said.

"Kitties?" Christopher repeated. "Did you just say 'kitties'?"

"Cats. I said cats," Jalil amended. "Look, there, by that doorway."

At least a dozen cats lounged comfortably on a slab of sun-warmed stone beside a doorway that could have easily admitted a dinosaur.

"Hey, look, there are more up there." April pointed. "And there. Jeez. A lot of cats."

They were easy to overlook at first in the shadow of skyscraper slabs of stone. But once noticed, they seemed to be everywhere.

"Anyone ever see The Birds? All these seagulls go nuts and start killing people?" Christopher asked nervously. "These kitties
look like bad kitties."

April laughed. "There's no such thing as a bad kitty. Didn't the ancient Egyptians treat them like gods? Here, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty."

Jalil said, "You know, watch what you say. They may be able to talk."

"W.T.E.," Christopher agreed. "Welcome To Everworld."

April diverted toward a cluster of cats in the shadow of a stone lion. Then she stopped, froze, and let go with a scream that jerked the Amazons around, swords at the ready. Merope was in full combat mode and David not a split second behind her. Then Merope laughed. "Oh, that." She sheathed her sword and shook her head in amused contempt.

April rejoined us, shaken, white-faced, hands wringing.

"What was it?" David demanded, still not sure he should relax.

"The cats. They were... There's a dead person over there. The cats are eating him."

"Not much else to eat," Merope said philosophically. "The Nile stopped up, the farmlands half barren, and the rebels over on the left bank aren't sending much food this way. Godless, motherless sons of dogs."

"You can't just leave a dead man in the streets to be eaten by cats!" April yelled.

Merope shrugged. "It was his choice. He fathered twin boys on Oriana there."

Oriana, the blond Amazon, nodded. "And he was a poor gallop at that. No heart. Like riding a sick gelding."

They all laughed at that picture.

"He was no loss, and when his time came he chose to feed the cats. A lot of them go that way. They don't have the things they need to make mummies anymore, you know, not for most of them. No way to reach the Afterworld, so they feed the cats and hope for the best. Of course, now the cats have the taste in their mouths." She shook her head regretfully. "It's only a good thing they don't hunt in packs, the little monsters, or we'd none of us be left alive."

We set off again, but with all of my companions casting nervous glances at the cats we saw. As though that were the problem. As though we had to fear a plague of cats. Egypt was dead. At least this part of the city, the right bank. It was dead, mummified. And the Amazons ruled. That much was clear. What was not clear was what this meant for me. I wondered if my mother was here, could she still be here? To come all this way and... All the years I had remembered her words. Look for me with Mother Isis.
Look for me with Mother Isis. For so long I hadn't even known what the words meant. Then one day I happened to be at the
mall.

I was perhaps thirteen. I had sprouted up, grown tall and thin. I was beginning to fill out, as my stepmother called it. She had taken me aside to warn me that boys would start looking at me with more than casual interest. And she'd told me that I would probably find my own desires growing stronger. I would have to learn to fight that part of me. It was bad and wrong and would lead to trouble.

I remember wondering if she had offered April the identical dire warning. I later learned she had, but in modified form. April, you see, was her daughter. I was the daughter of the slut who had seduced her husband. April's instruction in sex did not include the possibility that she might be inclined to encourage all those terrible boys.

In any event, I was at the mall, walking around with my stepmother's words still fresh in mind, watching the boys who passed, wondering what this new power might mean. Wondering whether it was a fearful threat or an opportunity. And I happened to notice a boy, a young man, really. He may have been seventeen or eighteen. He looked at me, watched me till I felt his eyes on me. I did not blush, did not turn away. I met his gaze and he didn't look away, either. For a long moment we simply looked into each other's eyes from a distance of twenty feet, looking past the shoppers who crossed between us.

He was attractive, I suppose. But that was not what made me stare. He had the glow. Then he turned slowly and walked into the Museum Shop. And I followed. He had the glow. I had not seen it since my mother. I had felt it, known it was in me, but had not seen it till this moment, and I knew deep down that it was no accident.

He moved confidently, knowing I would follow. I kept my distance. Not sure how this game was played. He moved along the wall, just the lighted displays of framed reproductions, past the games, past the Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass. Then he stopped in front of a display case of objects done in gold leaf.

He stopped and I stopped. He looked a long time, and I could not see what he was looking at. Then he moved on. I went and stood where he had stood and looked at what he had seen. And there she was, a plaster figure in gold leaf and enamel paint, golden wings spread wide.

A little card said, Isis.

The boy with the glow was gone. I never saw him again. For a while I wondered if my mother had simply gone to Egypt, modem Egypt. But I knew that wasn't it. My mother was somewhere, somewhere strange and impossible to reach. And she was with the winged goddess.

Now I was here, in the land that Ra and Isis and the other gods were supposed to rule. I watched as a file of priestesses shuffled past, eyes blank, wreathed in a foul cloud of incense. They prayed as they went, mouthing words, repeating, repeating lines they'd said a million times. They didn't even look at us.

Could my mother possibly be alive in this mausoleum? By all the powers, could anyone be said to be alive in this land of living death?

Seems like none of the kids picked up on the amazons kill their male lovers. Wonder how Christopher is gonna deal with that.

I also wonder if this boy was Senna's mom projecting back to the real world and possessing someone, or if there are other people with the glow in our world.

quote:

Chapter
XVI

Pretty Little Flower was not on her throne when we came in. In fact, she was doing the last thing any of us would have expected. She was singing to an admiring gaggle of Amazons who lounged, but respectfully, as their supreme leader used her lovely voice to belt out the instantly recognizable lyrics.

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that is what it means to me, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, take care of �"

She stopped when she saw us and glared angrily. Merope recoiled a step before that murderous expression.

"I did not know. Highness!" Merope stammered. "There were no guards at the door, no..."

Pretty Little Flower chopped the air apparently, cutting off the explanation. "I was not in voice, anyway. I failed to do justice to
the Goddess Aretha. What are these creatures?"

Pretty Little Flower was not quite what either her name implied or what one thought of as an Amazon. For a start she was no Greek. No type of Mediterranean at all. Perhaps Chinese, perhaps Japanese, maybe Korean, but with a mix of African and Caucasian thrown in for good measure. She was tall, like all the Amazons. Slender, lovely, and strange. Blue eyes, skin the color of a lion's mane, hair that was straight, full, and jet-black. She wore a fantastic breastplate covered with intricate scrollwork in gold and silver. It was narrow at the waist but rose in a V to form bright steel eagle claws that seemed to protect her shoulders without hampering her movements.

At her waist she wore a curved sword, a scimitar, with an impressively bejeweled hilt, in a scabbard paved with tiny rubies. She, too, carried a whip. And a small throwing disc I had seen before. Her muscular legs were encased in knee-high boots of supple fawn leather. There was a half-moon of small steel barbs projecting from the toes of her boots.

She moved with the grace and ease of an athlete or ballet dancer, always perfectly balanced. always in control of every ounce of her lean body. I saw her as a leopard, a sinuous, beautifully dangerous predator.

"Michelle Kwan meets Tyra Banks," Christopher muttered under his breath. Quiet but not quiet enough. The disc was in her hand and flying before I became conscious of the slightest movement. Even then it was barely a ripple, barely a disturbance in her impressive physical calm. The disc flew.

Christopher cried out in pain and slapped his hand to his cheek. The disc circled back to the queen and she caught it without so much as looking at it. A Coo-Hatch throwing disc. A bright red line had been drawn in Christopher's cheek. A superficial cut.

"Don't worry, big boy, it won't leave a scar," she said. "But now you will remember: A man does not speak to me unless invited. A little rule of mine."

Christopher nodded, silent.

"See? You remembered," she said pleasantly. She patted him on his good cheek and gave it a squeeze. "There's a good boy. Merope, explain your interruption."

"Yes, Highness. These are the ones who destroyed the dwarfs' dam. They arrived in boats. We brought them straight here. I did not realize Your Highness was singing."

"We're past that," the queen said, smiling to herself, amused at Merope's clumsy sincerity. "So. You're the ones." She looked us over carefully, one by one.

"You would be the warrior here?" she asked David. "Let me see your sword."

David is no fool. He drew his sword slowly, carefully, using just two fingers, and handed the hilt to her. Pretty Little Flower burst out laughing and all the Amazons joined in. "You are a wise one."

She hefted the sword and swung it in a series of slashing moves, over her head, down low, a figure eight at blinding speed. The
blade halted a hair away from David's neck. He didn't flinch.

"No coward," she admitted reluctantly. "And this is a very fine sword. The balance is impeccable. The steel is very good as well. I
would say... Old World. English, Welsh perhaps. Made in the style of the old Druids, and certainly enchanted. A very old sword." She peered at David through narrowed eyes. "Not yours."

"Mine now," David said. "It was the sword of Galahad."

"My father?" a voice yelped in distress. One of the Amazons. An olive-skinned blond with alarming pale eyes.

"Galahad's sword?" Pretty Little Flower demanded. "Ah, there was a great man. He was very nearly a woman. I mourn his passing. A dragon, I suppose?"

"Yes," David said. "He was badly wounded fighting Loki and an army of trolls. In the end, he was unable to resist the dragon that
killed him."

Pretty Little Flower handed the sword back to David and in a casual voice said, "I allow you to keep it, but you understand that
if you should budge that sword as much as an inch from its scabbard you will die instantly?"

David nodded and sheathed the sword. "Your own sword is of an unusual shape," he said, and then winced in realization that
he had addressed her without being invited. Pretty Little Flower flared, teeth bared, then relented.

"It is also of Old World design," she said. "Damascus steel. The shape is called a scimitar. It is better for close-in work, easier to draw when on horseback. It has several advantages."

I noticed David eyeing the Coo-Hatch throwing disc. So did the queen.

"Ah, you recognize this weapon, then?"

"We know the Coo-Hatch."

"A morose race, but ah, such metal-workers! If we had a hundred Coo-Hatch blades we would rule all of Everworld, not just all of Egypt."

This caused laughs and self-congratulatory babble from the appreciative audience. Pretty Little Flower ignored all that and stared hard at me.

"What are you?"

"A woman," I said.

A faint smile. "No." She pointed at April. "She is a woman, she fears me. These are men, they fear me. You do not fear me. You carry no weapons, you are not strong, not swift. So why do you not fear me?" It was a rhetorical question. I didn't volunteer
an answer. "You are a witch."

Still I didn't answer. But I prepared. I gathered the power into me, held it in readiness. If she moved I would strike. I stood poised, confident, prepared. Pretty Little Flower laughed, much amused. Her laughter was not a bluff, and that worried me. She should be worried, and she wasn't. I felt the first thin trickle of fear.

"This one would be a queen," Pretty Little Flower said. "She has the thirst for power. So frail, so weak. She must be very sure
of her powers."

Still, I had no answer. What could I say? Anything I said would be wrong.

"Let's go eat!" she said suddenly. "I feel my voice returning. Let us eat and drink and I will sing to the goddess Aretha and the goddess Joni and the goddess Madonna."

Where had the queen of the Amazons learned about Aretha? I could guess the answer. It was one of my memories of my mother. She was the cliched, hippie wanna-be, my mother was. She was too young, hadn't really been there for the sixties. But she favored flowered muumuu dresses and beads and candles everywhere. And her friends, when she had them at all, were of a similar type. Women who thought they became witches by dreaming up a sort of religion. They called it Wicca. It was harmless
enough, no doubt. Women would come over to our apartment and chant and sing and talk about "the goddess." I would be asleep by then, at least in theory. But I've never needed much sleep. So I would sit in my "room," which was nothing more than an alcove of our living room, closed off at night by drawing a Madias-print cotton tablecloth across a stretched rope.

I could see through the fabric, could make out the glow of candles, the bright happy faces. And of course I could hear the talk, the poetry, the songs, the chants. And smell the incense, the pot, and the wine. I could see that my mother glowed and the others did not. I knew that she knew that they were not what we were. They were not freaks of nature, they were just people. And what we were, we two, had nothing to do with chanting or incense or prayers to a "goddess."

But I suppose my mother was lonely. I suppose she needed friends. People do, it seems. I would lie there, blankets up to my chest, on my side, head on my hand, and listen and watch through the tablecloth, like watching a movie on a blurred screen.
As the night wore on they grew more stoned, drunker. And then the solemn chants would be replaced by less pious music. The women would put on a CD � a record then, I guess �and sing along and even stand up and perform dance moves.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Yes, my mother still lived.

And we're on page 87 of 121

# ? Dec 3, 2023 03:43

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

quote:

Chapter
XVII

Pretty Little Flower led the way from her throne room through a space whose purpose I could not imagine since it seemed to be filled with nothing but bulbous pillars covered entirely with bright picture-stories of the various gods. But after a while we were through that pillar maze, the Amazons laughing and joking and playing grab-rear end with Christopher and now Jalil. We passed through a slab-sided portal and then through more rows of columns and finally into an open courtyard. Night had fallen fully. The sky was filled with stars.

More columns. Back beneath the roof again and now we entered a narrow room, quite long, dark, and gloomy. The walls were covered with more drawings in the stiflingly stylized Egyptian mode. At the far end of the room was a stone platform. There was a sense of age, a musty smell, a funereal smell. But if the room was cobwebbed I didn't see any. I peered ahead, trying to see what was at the end of the room, on that platform.

A dozen priestesses stood in neat rows before the stone altar. They chanted something, it was a low murmur, impossible to make out the words. Dim oil lamps lit the creature who rested atop the platform. The amber light shone dully on her folded wings of gold.

Isis. A statue? An idol? She did not move. But surely it was too real to be a mere statue.

"There is Egypt," Pretty Little Flower announced with a contemptuous laugh. "Look at her: great Isis. A goddess. Covered in dust. She sits there day after day, year after year. What does she do? Nothing. Nothing at all. Just listens to the prayers, the chants, watches the incessant rituals. She observes, that's what she does, old Isis."

This speech seemed to be made for my benefit. If Pretty Little Flower expected to shock me, then she was successful. It was Isis. Not a statue, but the goddess herself. Her face still beautiful, unchanged. More exotic, more compelling than the plaster face in the Museum Shop, but nearly as devoid of life. The priestesses went on with their ritual, ignoring us, backs to us, caring nothing for anything but the ritual, the ritual.

"You come to Egypt and what do you find, eh?" the Amazon queen asked me. "You come looking for what? For Ra? For Osiris? For Isis? Well, they're all here. They are all still alive, still gods, still possessed of all their powers, and yet it is Pretty Little Flower who rules Egypt. Worship death and you become death. And if you want your rear end kissed from Sunrise to sunrise then you
have to hold your rear end very still."

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to laugh. She had summarized the fate of the Egyptian pantheon. Crudely but, I suspected, accurately.

"There are no gods in Egypt anymore," Pretty Little Flower said with self-satisfied condescension. "Not here in the city anyway; some of the far-flung minor deities are still alive and alert, yes. But here I rule."

"I see that," I said.

Pretty Little Flower grinned and said, "Come, my witch. Come with me."

I thought she was talking to me. Assumed it. But one of the priestesses took a step back, out of her place, and turned. The face... Older. Thinner. Familiar, yet not. A face I had expected to see and which despite everything, despite all the expectation, left me strangely unmoved.

I didn't run to my mother. Nor she to me. I looked at her. She looked at me. I could not see her feelings, could not tell what emotion hid behind her mask, and I knew she could do no better with me.

"Is that your mother?" April asked me. Her voice was shaky. She was more upset than I was.

Pretty Little Flower whipped her head from face to face. Her narrow eyes narrowed further. "I should have seen it. The mother. The daughter. Yes, of course,"

And now, at last, Pretty Little Flower was worried, and I knew why. She'd been unafraid of my magic because she had my mother as her guardian. My mother was her bodyguard against the powers of witches. But now the Amazon queen saw the possibility that her protector was my ally.

In a level voice she said, "Devera, Merope, Aiyana, Eirica, bows."

The four named Amazons unlimbered their bows and fitted arrows in a heartbeat.

"If I seem to falter, if there is any magic done here, kill the two witches. Do not hesitate, and do not wait for my order � they may stop my tongue. While these witches are in my presence you will not put away your arrows even upon my direct orders." Pretty Little Flower made a grim smile and said to me, "You and your mother may have great powers, my little witch, but an arrow well-aimed will still stop your heart."

Pretty Little Flower gave Merope a slight nod and all four arrows flew. I gasped. Not at us! Not at me. All four arrows flew and all four arrows entered Isis' left eye. For the first time the chanting faltered. Isis never moved. The arrows stuck out of her eye for a moment, then dissolved and disappeared.

The four Amazons had long since fitted new arrows into their bows and were taking aim at my mother and me. Pretty Little Flower clapped her hands, a businesslike "let's move on" gesture. "Well, I was going to have everyone join me for a night of food, wine, and sacred song, but I'm sure a mother and daughter have much to say to each other. Merope, take your warriors, escort these witches to the side chamber. Watch them. If they attempt to escape, kill them. As for everyone else, we're having barbecue!"

The queen, her warriors, and my companions all trooped off. David sent me a silent question and I nodded, releasing him from his duty to protect me. I would be safe. As safe as any of them, anyway. Merope and her fellow archers walked us to a small room
off the courtyard. And there, amid stacks of linen dresses and clay pots of oil, I spoke with my mother for the first time in ten
years.

"So. You came," she said.

"I wasn't given much choice."

"Yes, I know. Loki's efforts did not go unnoticed. But you escaped. I'm sure there's a story there. Loki is very dangerous, very clever... for a god."

At that point the conversation ground to a halt. This was it? We were to stand awkwardly in a musty little room, sounding like strangers who strike up a desultory conversation while waiting for a bus?

"How have you been, Senda?"

"I go by Senna now," I said.

She frowned. "Senna? That's the name of a tree. The bark is used for medicines. Mostly for laxatives."

"Yes. Fortunately the kids at school don't spend a lot of time reading dictionaries."

She looked down at the floor. "How have you been?"

"How have I been? For the last ten years after you dumped me off? How have I been, the only one like me stuck in a world full of deaf, dumb, and blind fools? Fine, Mom. Fine. How have you been?!"

She shrugged, looked over her shoulder, looked back at the floor. "Not quite what I expected it to be," she said ruefully.

I wanted to laugh. It was absurd. How were we supposed to talk? What were we supposed to do, discuss the last decade of my life and hers?

"You came looking for me," she said after a while. "I appreciate that."

"It's not what you think," I said. I didn't know how much to tell her. I was confused. All my neat scenarios were out the window
now, forgotten. My brain was a jumble of bits and pieces: plans, schemes, resentments, desires. Shouldn't she at least try to hug me, put her arms around me?

She looked up, met my gaze for the first time. We were not alike, despite what Pretty Little Flower had said. Maybe our eyes were the same. But her hair was dark, her skin olive. She was shorter than I.

"I didn't know any other way," she said, and her voice broke. "I felt powers watching me, searching for me. I felt them from across the barrier, and I knew they were finding resonant humans they could use to watch me. What happened to you � Fenrir, Loki � it would have happened to me. They would have dragged me across and then used me as a gateway."

"So instead you left me behind as bait," I snapped.

"No! The two of us together, we couldn't help but attract them. I knew the best place to hide was here, in Everworld, although I never knew what it was, or what it was called, back then. I just thought if they can find me in the real world I'll fool them, I'll cross over, I'll hide right under their noses."

"Like I said: with me stuck back there. Not even knowing, having no one to ask, what the hell was I supposed to do?"

She looked blank and shrugged. "I thought... I thought maybe they wouldn't find you."

I shook my head. "What? What is that supposed to mean?"

"I was scared, Senda. I was scared. I could feel them, and what was I going to do? I... I wasn't doing very well, you know? I could barely make a living. Those awful apartments. Translating, when I could find a job, and you know, all the regular jobs would mean being in an office. I was down to telling fortunes at fairs and... You know, men and... I was lost, I was... I was scared," she finished lamely.

"You just ran away, didn't you?" I said, not even angry. "Lousy apartments? Lousy job? You ran away because you couldn't cope. With life, or with me. So you dumped me off in suburbia and you disappeared."

She made a pained face. A self-pitying face. "I never fit in. I had no place in that world. But I thought if you lived with Tom and his wife, well, maybe, you know... a normal school and family vacations and all that. I'll bet you have your own car � Tom was always generous and he made a good living."

I wanted to scream. It was insane. It was incredible, bizarre. The story of my life was about her not making enough money? That was it? With all the bull she'd fed my father, she just wanted to run away so she wouldn't have to get a job? I took a deep breath, tried to slow the spinning in my head. I pressed my hands against my temples. I was an inconvenience, that was the basic truth.

Oh yes, all the rest of it, oh yes, she had felt the pressure of the powers who sought a gateway, but that was more of an excuse than an explanation. She'd been afraid of Loki, of all the predatory gods, but that wasn't the truth of it, that was the gloss on the truth. The truth was that she was just a loser, a misfit, a selfish woman looking for an easier life.

"I... I was afraid of you," I admitted, laughing at my own stupidity. "I had this whole thing built up in my mind. You were... you were this great woman, this powerful witch, you were this... I didn't know what to expect. I saw you in my mind as some high
priestess of this powerful goddess. And now? Isis is just a... a stump! And this place is a graveyard, overrun by those Amazons."

My mother looked wounded. "Isis was great, once. It's just that they're very old, you know. Much older than the Greeks or the Romans or the Aztecs. Isis had been worshiped for a thousand years before Zeus was even born. And the people, her people, the ritual became an end in itself. The gods here withdrew, further and further into observance, into the rites and ceremonies. The people and the gods together, they just spiraled down and down. Now the Pharaoh, you should see him: He's twenty-nine and has the mind of a four-year-old. He's kept in diapers. Inbreeding, generations of inbreeding. The last twelve Pharaohs have been severely retarded, deformed. This is a civilization that has fallen in on itself, collapsed, turned inward. What power is left was exercised by the vizier. He sent emissaries around Everworld, seeking help, asking for other gods to come and assume control, order an end to the rituals. The priests might listen to a god, he thought. But no help came. Instead there was the rebellion of the people over on the left bank, and the dwarfs dammed the Nile, and the city starved, and then the Amazons came. They are systematically looting this entire civilization, removing the gold and silver from the tombs, carting off everything of value."

"So now you serve the Amazons," I said. "You pray to Isis and go through the motions, but you work for Pretty Little Flower."

My mother grabbed my arm. "She'll get me out of here. She'll get me out of this purgatory, this mausoleum. And don't you screw it up, either. Do you understand me, don't you screw this up for me!"

I pried her fingers off. She had a feral look, a caged animal, trapped, terrified of missing a chance to escape.

"You're pathetic," I said.

She blinked. Took a step back. "I know I haven't been a very good mother to you, Senda. But �"

"It's Senna!" I screamed, so loud that the Amazons nearly loosed their arrows. "That's the name I've lived with, that's the name I have. You dumped me like some bad first date. And now after all this time all you can do is complain. It's all still just you, you, you."

She was confused. Unable to quite grasp what I was saying. So far from being a real mother to me that she could only peer at me, half curious, half afraid, not knowing quite exactly what was bothering me. I took a deep breath, several. My heart was going so fast I couldn't seem to get air, I felt like the walls were closing in. I wanted to hit her, scratch her, anything to get her to simply feel what I felt, feel what she had done to me.

Pointless. It didn't matter to her. I didn't matter to her. I never had. I never had mattered.

Okay. Okay, then. No more guilt. I was on my own, the way I liked it. On my own and she would realize what I had become, she would realize what I was, who I really was. Now, not years ago, a crying, lost little girl without her mother, no, that was all dead and buried now. It had been for a long time.

I was me, I was Senna Wales, and Pretty Little Flower would serve me, not the other way around. I was � My mother brushed tears from my eyes with her finger. I slapped her hand away.

"Too late. Way too late."

She looked down at the ground, self-pitying, aggrieved, the injured one. "Did you come here to hurt me?" she asked pitiably.

"No. I came here to use you." Perfect. I delivered the line with cold precision. "I need a gateway. The Coo-Hatch want out of Everworld, and you. Mother, you are going to get them out."

Now, Senna's mother, I have some sympathy for.

quote:

Chapter
XVIII

I rejoined the others. Pretty Little Flower was singing "Material Girl," while her Amazons sat cross-legged on the floor or propped on low stools, swaying to the music, seemingly enraptured.

Christopher was enraptured, too, but for other reasons. His face was shining with the effort of keeping so many good jokes all bottled up inside. He was going to burst if he couldn't say something about the wild Amazon queen singing Madonna songs to her flock.

April actually seemed to be enjoying it. She spent her Everworld life with three guys and a half sister she hated. April is a group person, a belonger. In the real world she lived in a cocoon of friends and admirers who all said the same things, and believed the same things, and felt the same way about the same things. The silly cow actually felt at home with the Amazons, like they were just some new clique that had welcomed her.

Jalil watched. Of course Jalil watched. His slitted eyes roamed over the gloomily lit hieroglyphs, always trying to understand.
David was tense. I could see it in his back and neck, in the way he held himself, ready to spring up and draw his sword. As if he had a prayer of surviving a fight.

I made my way to sit with them, excusing myself like someone who comes in late for a movie. I sat between April and David.

"How did it go?" April asked, keeping one eye on Pretty Little Flower, preparing to applaud.

"Well, I learned a lot," I said.

The creature actually put a comforting hand on my arm. She gave me one of her comforting looks. Amazing. I leaned close to whisper in her ear. "They kill the boy babies. You know that, right? The Amazons. They get pregnant, if it's a girl it lives, if it's a big strong girl it becomes one of them. The weaker ones they sell off as slaves. And the boys? They take them and abandon them in the forest or the mountains or the desert. Enjoy the show."

I was gratified by her look of horror. I was in a foul, dangerous mood, I'll admit that. And wiping the smug, pitying look off April's face made me feel just a bit better.

"What'd your mom say?" David asked me, talking out of the side of his mouth.

"She won't do it."

"Why?"

I laughed. "Because she's a scared, selfish, small woman, that's why." Then, in response to his surprised expression, I added, "If she opens a gateway, Loki will know. He'll come here. He and possibly others. Ka Anor, possibly."

He considered that. Then, surprised, "But you knew that, didn't you?"

I said nothing, I applauded Pretty Little Flower, who now launched into a weird Judy Garland impression singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." No song more recent than ten years old, many much older. The Amazons' queen-singer was stuck in a time warp, playing the golden oldies of my mother's day with an emphasis on Carole King, Bonnie Raitt, and Motown.

"There may be trouble," I said to David.

"What kind?" His mouth was set, eyes mean.

"She may tell Pretty Little Flower why we're here. The Amazons are emptying Egypt of everything they can carry away. They're very smart, the Amazons are. Very dangerous. They've become the professional thieves of Everworld. They prey on the weak, and no one is weaker than the Egyptians."

He nodded very slightly. "Your own mother would set you up?"

"She's tied to the Amazons now. She wants out. She wants to get away. They can use her as their priestess for this new religion she's invented for them. They can use her for her powers. They are often generous with other women."

"And with men?"

I smiled. "Paper cups."

"Say what?"

"Use them, throw them away."

A big round of applause and the show was over. Pretty Little Flower accepted the congratulations of her followers/admirers. The Amazon queen strode, flushed with self-satisfaction, through the milling after-concert crowd. Straight over to us. Straight to April. She jerked her thumb at Christopher.

"Yours?"

Christopher shook his head at April.

"No," April said. "Um, this one is mine." She put her arm around a startled Jalil.

"You must let me borrow him sometime," the queen leered.

She took Christopher's hand and led him, totally unprotesting, from the room to the raucous cheers of her warriors. Merope conducted us out of the temple, down a darkened, abandoned street to a guarded house. We were given rooms and food and even privacy. But we were also shown the four bored Amazons who took up guard duty outside the door.

"You are honored guests," Merope said with a surly grin.

"You freed the Nile and destroyed the dwarfs' dam. Honored guests indeed. And Her Highness would be very disappointed if you were to leave. Her Highness is not a good woman to disappoint, as your blond friend may learn."

She laughed, the others laughed, and we got the message. If we stepped outside of the house we would die.

"So, how screwed are we?" Jalil demanded as soon as we were alone.

"Pretty screwed," David admitted. "Senna's mom won't do it. Worse yet, we figured Senna's mom would be someone who was in tight with the local gods, could give us some cover. Well, I guess she's working for Pretty Little Flower."

"So is Christopher right about now," Jalil said mordantly.

David didn't condescend to respond. "Anyone have any brilliant ideas? Because we could use some. The Amazons are good. You can see it in the way they handle themselves and their weapons. They run this place."

"Mmm," Jalil said, nodding. "Perfect case study. One culture closes in on itself, inbreeds, tries to achieve stasis, shuts out anything new and foreign. Another culture interbreeds, picks up whatever it can technologically, travels, moves from place to place grabbing the best and incorporating it into their culture. I mean, look at how the Amazons have adopted the Aretha religion, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not one to praise any religion, but man, in a straight-up choice between mumbling rituals all day long and singing some decent music while you curl up with a nice glass of wine..."

David nodded. "Pretty Little Flower has a Coo-Hatch weapon. And good quality steel. The Egyptians have copper and brass. The level of training is obviously different. Education."

"Oh, shut up, both of you," April snapped. "They're beautiful women with bare legs and big bazooms. The two of you, the three! Christopher, look at him. You're not seeing straight."

"Bazooms?" Jalil mocked.

"Start thinking, David. With your head, for a change. They're child-killers. They're thieves. And how many are there? There can't be more than thirty or forty of them in the city. This is a big city and there are three dozen of them and they're cocky and arrogant."

"They are better armed, better trained than we are, and outnumber us at least six to one," David said. "And by the way, they should be arrogant. Look at what they've done here: They've conquered an entire nation. They're like what's his name. The Spanish guy who took down the Old-World Incas with two hundred men."

"She's going to kill Christopher," April said.

"We don't know that," Jalil said. "They're not black widows or praying mantises; they don't instantly kill their mates."

"Do they?" David asked me.

I shook my head. "This isn't some little male sex fantasy," I said wearily. "It's about reproduction. Pretty Little Flower thought
Christopher made good breeding stock. She'll wait to see if she's pregnant.... Then she'll kill him."

"Charming ladies," Jalil muttered. Then he looked at me. "It's kind of up to you, isn't it Senna? We can't fight the Amazons head on. They have Christopher anyway and we can't leave him. We still need your mom to help us with the Coo-Hatch. And only you can get out of here."

David and April both looked sharply at me.

"Yes, I can use my abilities to leave this building," I said. "But I can't change my mother's mind, and I can't somehow beat the
Amazons."

"Sobek," Jalil said.

I just stared. I had no reaction prepared. How could Jalil know?

"He's out there still, isn't he?" Jalil said. "Out in the river. And he's still alive and active, unlike Isis and the others here. They sentenced Sobek to lose his priests, to be cut off. And as a result he's the only one still functional."

"Yeah," I admitted! "Yes, Sobek is out there. I don't know why, or what he's waiting for. Maybe he expects Isis to dust off her
cobwebs and invite him in. Even if I reach him, what do I ask him to do?"

David and Jalil looked at each other as if hoping the other had the answer. Then David said, "Okay, we want your mom alive and in our hands. We want out of here ourselves. Those are our goals. Period. We have to keep this simple. Senna, get to Sobek if you can. Tell him what the Amazons are doing here. Try to make a deal for us and your mom. If Sobek comes, when he comes, we run for the river. There are still boats down there. I mean blue watercraft. We get out on the water and haul rear end for Greece."

"What about Christopher?" April asked.

"No one gets left behind," David said. "If the product hits the fan she'll leave him and come running. One of us �"

"I'll do it," April interrupted. "The Amazons won't expect trouble from me."

I barked a laugh. "You? You're going to take on Pretty Little Flower? With what? Your backpack?"

"No. My voice," April said. "I know some songs your mom can't have taught her."

David nodded as if that made perfect sense. Then he turned to me. "Senna? If you can get us out of here, it'll go a long way to changing how we all look at you."

Unbelievable. As if his opinion, or the cow's opinion, or that smug bastard Jalil's opinion mattered. As if I had to justify myself
to them.

I smothered the laugh, kept the derisive grin off my face. And in a parody of his own sincerity, said, "I'll take care of it."

Nothing they said or thought mattered to me. Still, I'd show them. I would show them.

I know it's their only option, but sending Senna to negotiate with Sobek seems like a Bad Idea.

# ? Dec 4, 2023 03:48

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 like how we can see that Senna is absolutely spiraling from her confrontation with her mother here. The great witch and her hope that there was at least some greater purpose in her abandonment are just completely gone now and she's getting more monomaniacal and vicious in her thoughts.

Which is impressive considering where she started.

# ? Dec 4, 2023 04:52

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

the exact opposite of what I thought this book would do. What's that? Make Senna more relatable and sympathetic... eh, how about we make her even worse?

This is a fun direction.

# ? Dec 4, 2023 21:04

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

Well, we finish the book today! One short chapter, one long chapter.

quote:

Chapter
XIX

Shape-shifting is relatively easy within Everworld. It is tiring, as all magic is, it requires focus and energy, but it is nothing like
the effort required to change a mind or move a physical object. I'd been doing it since I was a little girl. The first time was when I was about eight. I'd been with my "new family" for a year. We were all very jolly. All very friendly. "Love, love, love, all you need is love" and all of that. I was just like April.

Except for the fact that I wasn't, of course. Not in my mind, not in anyone's mind. My brand-new mommy and daddy put on a good show, but April was inside the bubble and I was outside.

My stepmother would read to her at night before she went to bed. Not to me. The excuse was that they'd always done it. It was an established ritual. Besides, I never seemed to want to read with her. So they would curl up in there, in April's room, with just the
night-table lamp burning, and the comforter crunched up around them, such a homey little scene. And they would read a chapter of whatever. Charlotte's Web. Alice in Wonderland. Little Women. The Hobbit

It was while they were reading The Hobbit, and I was listening through the bathroom door with the light off, crouching there like a thief afraid of being caught, feet cold on the tile, my stupid little blanket clutched in my hands, listening, that I, for the first time, became caught up in the book. Little Women had been insipid, Anne of Green Gables worse still. But The Hobbit reached me in some way.

And I sat there, night after night, listening like I had never done before. Bilbo, the dwarves, the goblins. Gollum. I identified with Gollum, somehow. The first child in history to think Gollum was the hero, sad as he was, alone as he was, desperate and cut off and abandoned as he was. He was one of a kind, Gollum was. A species of one.

There was a stainless-steel trash can in the bathroom, right down near where I sat. And a bar of light from beneath the door. And as I thought about Gollum, and could picture him so clearly, see his condition, see his dank, dark cave... I glanced at the trash can. At my bent and distorted reflection.

I stood up! The mirror. Had to see if it was true, couldn't be true. I turned on the light. No, just me. Just my own face staring back at me.

And yet, wait, wait, think about Gollum, remember the words, remember the feeling, and, oh! Oh, oh, oh, impossible! Impossible. I touched my face. Touched my gray, pallid face with webbed hands. Possible. I was Gollum. The Gollum in my mind, anyway.

That night, after April had kissed her mommy good night and turned off the light, and fallen to sleep with her pretty red curls all laid out on her soft pillow, I went into her room. I focused my mind again. I drew the glow around me. And I said, "Wake up, my preciousssss. Is it awake? Gollum... Gollum... Or is it dreaming, precioussss?"

A memory I will always treasure. The big, innocent green eyes fluttering open. The scream that penetrated every wall and floor of the house. The scream that would not stop. It took both her parents an hour to get her back to sleep. On the down side, I had to read the rest of The Hobbit on my own. The nighttime reading switched back to safer ground.

But April's nights would never be entirely safe. The Red Queen showed up a few weeks later, looking for heads to chop. It took me years to really perfect the art. Years before I could do what I did now easily. I opened the door of the house. Merope, groggy, disgruntled, turned to look. And saw a rat go scurrying out into the night.

"We don't like rats," Jalil explained, and closed the door behind me.

Once out of sight of Merope I dropped that illusion and adopted another � a city full of cats was a bad place for a rat. Now I was my mother. I liked that. She was known to be close to Pretty Little Flower. No one would bother her. I walked through the dead-silent streets, past the dark temples, a ghost town. Walked down to the river. There was no one on the quay. No guard posted, no one. Two larger and one smaller boat rocked gently.

I resumed my normal appearance, bent over, and stuck my finger in the water that lapped against the stone. I repeated the tiresome formula for addressing Sobek and then added, "I humbly request an audience. I have useful information."

I didn't have to wait long. A crocodile's head, too large to be real, too stylized to be a product of nature, rose from the inky water.

"The witch," he hissed.

"Yes. The witch. I kept my bargain: The dam is gone. The Nile flows free again." "

"But still great Isis does not call to me," he complained. "I dare not leave the river until I am sure her wrath has cooled."

"Don't worry about Isis. Isis is dead. Or the next best thing. They�re all... dead but not entirely dead. Your gods don't run this city anymore, Sobek. Strangers have taken over while your fellow gods did nothing. Strangers are emptying all the gold from the city, they are stripping this land bare."

"What lies are these?"

"It's up to you to retake your city. It's up to you to awaken the gods. Unless, of course, you'd rather let them sleep. Then you would be the only god in Egypt."

"The only... Sobek the only..."

It's a wonderful thing, the lust for power. You can rely on it. Sobek was a minor god, a sort of local god. Like being the governor of Delaware or Nebraska, I guess. And now he was being offered the White House.

"The Amazons rule this city and this land," I pressed. "They are women warriors, fearsome and strong. They defile the temples, they take everything! There will be nothing left, nothing for you, Sobek. Nothing."

"This cannot be!"

"Then, you must stop them. Kill the Amazons, Sobek. You're a god. You could be a great god. You could be the only god in Egypt."

"What must I do?" he whispered, his yellow reptile eyes wide, shining.

"Gather your children," I said. "Take what is rightfully yours. Only leave my companions alone. We will leave this place and leave you to rule as you will."

He did not answer. He didn't have to.

I turned back, my brain going feverishly. How best to exploit this? How best to use the panic that would soon grip this moribund city?

What to do about my mother, that was the question. What to do about �

I turned a comer and stopped dead. She was there. My mother. Standing in the middle of the road � how had she known I would be here, what was she doing? Something. I could see that. Something. A trap? Were Pretty Little Flower's archers all waiting with arrows fitted and bowstrings drawn back, was I already dead and didn't know it?

"Mother?" I asked, shaky, unsure.

"Senda. I... I want to do what's best for everyone."

"What have you done?"

"I know I haven't been a good mother. It's too late for that. I mean, I tried, you know? I did. But I have to think about what's good for all of us, you know?"

"What do you want, Mother? What are you talking about?"

"As long as you're free, they'll never stop, they're never give up. You know that. You know that. Loki... Ka Anor... That can't happen, it would mess up everything. As long as you're free �"

"What the hell did you do?" I screamed.

Then I felt it. Felt it as if someone had turned on a spotlight behind me, the warm glow, the vibrating power of him. The sure, easy, confident way he drew the power into himself � I could feel it all before I ever saw him, before his name rose bubbling into my consciousness.

"Merlin," I whispered.

This is a roller coaster of a chapter and I love it. You start out, again, feeling sorry for young Senna, standing there in the dark and cold with her blanket, listening to stories she pretends to hate (yet keeps listening to) through a closed door.

Then we see her take delight in torturing her half-sister, and all that sympathy vanishes.

But here, at the end, as the chapter closes up, I can't help but feel anger towards her mother for selling Senna out to loving Merlin, all to save her own rear end.

Let's see how this ends.

quote:

Chapter
XX

Merlin. My mother had sold me out to Merlin. She had summoned him here and now I was alone, facing one like myself, but one with a thousand times more experience. I froze. I didn't know what to do, couldn't even, the thought had never... Merlin. I wanted to attack him but of course I would fail, wanted to run, but no, I was alone, the others all back under guard.

I stood there, staring at my mother, seeing the guilt, seeing the fleeting rush of pleasure, her realization that she had me, had me good. She was sorry, she was glad, she was anxious, she was relieved, she was triumphant. That's what galled me, she was triumphant.

She was giving me to Merlin, like she'd given me to my father: "Here, you take her, she's in my way, she's complicating my life, get her away from me, take her away, lock her up in a life she'll never be able to stand, a life she'll..."

My throat was tight. Oh, by all gods, no, not tears. I couldn't cry. I couldn't let my face dissolve into some hideous mask of grief. I couldn't let myself fall apart.

"Come, Senna Wales," Merlin said. Compassion was in his voice. Of course, why not? He could afford compassion, he'd won.

"Where are we going?" I whispered.

"A safe place," he said. "You'll be safe. You will have all you want."

"Hardly," I said harshly

I turned at last to face him, glad at least not to have to look at my mother's self-pitying, gloating face. He's an average-sized man, maybe a little smaller. He has a huge gray-white beard and a deeply wrinkled face. Sharp, clear, predatory blue eyes. He wore a mud-splattered dark blue robe and on this occasion a battered slouch hat, almost a I950s-looking thing. Aside from the hat, he was the picture-perfect wizard. The wizard all the others have been modeled on.

"You've done well to make it this far," he said. �But it's a fool of a mortal who plays games with the gods."

"You play those games," I said.

He smiled. "I invented those games. Come with me. I was carried here by a dragon of my acquaintance. He will carry us both away from here."

"You'll be okay, honey," my mother said. "This is for the best."

Then a new voice. "Hey, what's up? No way, Merlin? What are you doing here?"

Christopher!

I don't know what Merlin thought Christopher would do; I don't know what my mother thought. I knew he'd do nothing. I knew
he'd smirk and wish Merlin well. But the point was that neither of them knew that.

"Christopher! Kill my mother!"

"No!" my mother gasped.

And I drew into myself every ounce of power I could and reached to Christopher, touched his mind with an unseen hand, and he lurched. No more, just a lurch, an involuntary reaction, a spasm.

Merlin counterattacked. He raised one bony hand and I could feel the wave of power that flowed from him. He glowed like no mortal ever glowed. Greater by far than my mother. Greater, yes, than me. And yet I had my opening, slight as it was.

"Amazons! Amazons! Your queen's consort is being murdered! Amazons!"

I saw amazement and confusion on Merlin's face. He didn't know. My mother hadn't told him, and the old man didn't know that the Amazons ruled Egypt now.

"Pretty Little Flower!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "Your witch has betrayed you!"

Christopher remained frozen in the wizard's spell, and still Merlin did not realize that he was wasting his powers. He didn't know that Christopher was harmless. He held him frozen as a statue while I cried in the night, my voice echoing down the graveyard avenues.

I heard a door slam open. A blur of torches. Shouting female voices. The clatter of weapons. I broke and ran. Merlin was on me in a flash � he could move far faster than an old man should be able to move. He caught me, grabbed me, spun me around. Christopher was forgotten. My mother was running, scurrying away to find Pretty Little Flower and explain herself, explain the mess she'd made.

Merope arrived in a breathless rush, sword drawn, two other Amazon warriors behind her.

"What is this?" she demanded.

I stabbed a finger at Merlin. �This old man tried to kill your queen's consort and rape me."

"Did he?" Merope roared. "Then I'll send his carcass to Hades!"

Merlin released his physical grip on me. The compassion was gone from his face. He turned his energies against Merope and froze her in mid-attack, froze her with her sword raised over his head.

"You're a great wizard, old man. How many can you hold and still hold me?" I snarled.

I turned, he no longer held my arm with steel-vise fingers, but I could not walk away; my feet were glued to the dust. Merlin's spell held the other two Amazons as they in turn attacked. All of us frozen.

"What the hell is going on here?" Christopher demanded.

"Christopher, take his sword, he can't stop you," I ordered.

"I don't think so," Christopher said, but too late. Merlin had already reacted and now Christopher was immobilized again.

It was time to test my strength against that of the wizard. I drew all I could, all my strength, and tried to step away. And still, my foot would not budge. Still the wizard held me, held the five of us with the force of his magic.

"You have much to learn, Senna," he said. in a different voice, not a yell, but a voice intended for other ears, he said, "Come
Grymhaldrad. Come to Merlin and fulfill your contract."

The dragon. He was calling the dragon.

More footsteps, more people running. Soon others would arrive, maybe my companions, maybe Pretty Little Rower herself. But if the dragon came. Merlin would have me away from the city before I could hope to stop him. I had to get away. I needed time. Just a few minutes, no more, just minutes and now, somewhere close by, the dragon was taking wing and still I couldn't move, couldn't budge.

A rush of feet, boots on dirt.

"What have you done to my cuddle lamb?" Pretty Little Flower yelled. "Release him!"

The words cuddle lamb threw me off-stride for a moment. They didn't belong, they made no sense. Christopher looked sheepish.
Pretty Little Flower stomped over to him, grabbed his arm, and yanked him to her side. He moved like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. He still could not control his own limbs.

"I said, let him go, wizard," she seethed.

"This is an affair of magic, Pretty Little Flower. This is not your battle," Merlin warned.

"Bows!" Pretty Little Flower ordered.

Twelve Amazons took all of a half second to fit arrows to their bowstrings and draw those bowstrings tight. Twelve arrows aimed at Merlin's heart

"Let him go, old meddler. This is my land now. These are my warriors, and he is my cuddle lamb."

The wizard was fighting a losing battle and he knew it. But then, with a rush of air like a tornado, a dragon flew above the roof of Isis' temple and swept above us. Quart droplets of liquid fire dribbled and fell around us.

"I take the witch with me!" Merlin yelled to be heard above the wind and roar of the dragon. "Or Grymhaldrad will fight at my side. How many of your warriors will survive a battle with a dragon? We will have a battle that can profit no one. A battle in which many may die, and much treasure be lost."

If Pretty Little Flower had been a Viking, that would have been an irresistible invitation to slaughter. But the Amazons were not
Vikings. The Amazons did not worship glorious death in battle, they worshipped profit and power and survival. I could see that the Amazon queen was ready to deal, and I would lose. But I could see one thing more: Merlin was tiring. I moved my foot, only an inch, only a little. I moved my eyes, located the nearest darkened doorway, calculated the time it would take.

I was a chess player. But I was my own queen. I risked my own life on the board. If I moved... Merlin would train his powers on me... Would he release Merope? Would she strike? Would Pretty Little Flower overreact? Would the dragon... Too many pieces, too many possible moves, too many variables.

No. Wait. There was a move. One winning move.

I tried to still my hammering heart, tried to cleanse all the tumult of emotion from my mind. Forced myself to focus, to allow all that was in me to rise, to narrow, to harden, to sharpen, to... I aimed every ounce of my will at Pretty Little Flower. Not to make her move, not to make her obey, only to make her �

"Ahhh!" she cried in pain, grabbing her stomach.

Twelve arrows flew!

Twelve arrows stopped in midair! Stopped. Hung there quivering.

I broke and ran. Raced, feet flying, all the magic, all the wizardry, it came down to this, to running and hoping. Running and hoping.

Up the steps, slam into an unseen pillar, shake it off, woozy, run, run.

Through the door, grab it, too big, too dusty and old. It wouldn't move. A flash of fire that lit up the night! The dragon's fire lit the door, but his fire was not for me, only his light. I saw the stone that held the door ajar. I slid it away and grabbed the door
and swung as Merlin bounded up the steps behind me. Swung the door, slammed it shut in his face, a lock? Surely there was a lock?

A bar, a slide that could be pushed and yes, locked!

Okay, Senna, breathe, breathe. Okay, the door won't hold him, not for long, do it now. So tired, SO tired, forget tired! You're not
tired, if you're tired you'll live out your life in Merlin's cage. Not tired. My body was here, trapped, unable to escape, but I had other means. Cross over, Senna. You can't get your body out, but your mind can save you, your powers can save you. You're the
gateway. Senna, cross over.

I was suddenly aware that I was not alone. Seated on a stone throne was a god. He had a human body and the head of a ram, with golden horns twisted and spread wide. There were no priests or acolytes. At least none living. Before the altar was a pile of decayed rags that half-covered desiccated corpses. The god himself, whoever he was, was covered with dust and cobwebs.

Don't look. Don't think about it. Not my problem.

I stilled my feverish mind. I drew the powers to me and released my attachment to my physical body. I drifted up and out. Saw
through walls, saw the bubble of Everworld stretched beneath me. Merlin was outside the door of the temple. He was trying magic to break open the door, but the door was under the dusty god's protective spell. So Merlin called to his dragon. They would burn through in a minute or two; I had no time. No time. I flew, disembodied, across the void. The watcher saw me. The
watcher noted my fear, my desperation. He/she/it saw me, he/she/it remained unseen by me. Not my problem, not right now. Now my problem was to find someone, some particular someone and fast, fast!

I skimmed above the membrane of the real world, saw the smeared, distorted lens of that reality. Where were my followers? Here and there and nowhere. They were not assembled, of course not. I couldn't find them! Too many minds, too many possibilities,
everywhere, a jumble, a swirling mess of minds and bodies and nowhere one of mine that I could find and reach. I needed... I
needed...

There!

Yes, that one. The new one.

Steady, Senna. Steady, Senda the pathway, the gateway, the uniter of universes, it all comes down to this, to here, to now. I glowed, glowed as never before, forget Merlin's power, forget the gods, I had a different power they couldn't guess at. I formed the image of the man, the image of the Great One.

The god I had invented for fools like this. Keith sat in his room, a small room, cramped and overheated and dark. He had a bed on the floor, a desk with a computer, screen glowing, AOL account active. He sat, typing furiously. A chat room of some sort.
A swastika poster and a Confederate flag hung on his walls, thumbtacked into faded wallpaper. A stack of bodybuilding magazines with covers of tanned, beefy, oiled men and women. A military footlocker, padlocked. I appeared in the air behind him. He turned, eyes wide, jerked involuntarily toward the footlocker.

"What the�"

"Are you ready, Keith? Are you ready to answer the call?" I asked, moving an illusion of a mouth, causing an illusion of sound, a deep, resonant, insistent voice.

"How did you get in here?"

"You will address me as Great One!" I roared. This idiot was wasting my time, I had no time, my body was trapped in a room waiting for Merlin's foul, gold-hungry, mercenary beast to burn me out.

Keith blinked. A slight nod He glanced around the room, embarrassed by what I was seeing. "What do you want?" Pause. "Great One?"

"You, Keith. You. And all the weapons in that footlocker."

He froze. Guarded. Scared. Unsure. Tempted, "Now or never," I said, trying not to sound desperate. "Now or never. Do you want to stand at my right hand? Do you want to sit in this squalid room forever, or do you want to pursue your destiny? Will you grab your destiny with both hands?"

Hesitation. Ticktock. The dragon, how long did I have till he burned his way through?

Keith knelt and spun the combination lock on the footlocker. He threw back the lid. How many guns? Three at least, and steel boxes of ammunition, long gray clips loaded. Keith grabbed, stuffed ammunition and clips into his pockets, his shirt, his belt. Two guns, a handgun and something still deadlier. The weight was almost too much for him, but weight didn't matter to me.

I turned my attention inward, collapsed myself into myself. I drew my body to my mind, my mind to my body unified myself, drew all of me together.

I opened the gateway.

In a flash, in an instant it was open. I was open. I was a tunnel between universes, my body hollow, my mind seeing, feeling both worlds at the same instant, and more worlds besides.

Glorious! A rush, an incredible rush. A heroin addict's rush of drugs into his blood, a drunk's first drink burning down a raw, ready throat. Oh, oh, I wanted to, to scream, to flail out of control. It was mind, it was body, it was sex and money and power and revenge and triumph all rolled into one. I was in Keith's room and in the temple, and they were no longer two places but one. A Confederate flag hung on the wall of the dusty goat god's temple. A computer screen bathed the crumpled bones of his priests with a blue glow.

But I was also in the spaceless space between universes. I felt the watcher's eye on me, but oh, so many more eyes, too. The gods felt me, became aware of me, some only vaguely, some felt a mere disturbance, but others snapped their gaze toward me in a flash and knew exactly, exactly what had happened.

I felt Loki's malevolent outrage, felt Ka Anor's surprise, and others without name, all seeing me, knowing that the gateway was open, that the wall between universes had become an open door.

I snapped the door shut, cascaded back into Everworld, and there I was again, within myself, trembling, a thin-faced girl, exhausted, kneeling near a door that blazed yellow and red in the darkness. The heat was like a blast furnace. In a second the door would melt into a puddle or burst into flame.

Keith stared, wild-eyed, uncomprehending.

I stood, grabbed his arm, my own true self now, no male god figure. "It's me you work for," I snapped. "You want power, I'll give it to you. You want to live, I'll save you. Me and no one else."

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

"There's a dragon on the other side of that door. He'll be in here very soon. Shoot him. And shoot the old man with him."

All at once the door melted. Stone had been turned to magma. Liquid stone puddled. The fire was quenched. Through the smoke and cinders a dragon's arrogant head, mouth dribbling napalm, was thrust into the room.

The beast eyed Keith. Saw me. Said, "Well, Master Merlin, there will have to be an extra charge for burning down that door. Enchanted doors are very hard to burn."

I put my hand on Keith's shoulder, touched him, reached into his murderous mind and pushed him the little bit he needed to be pushed.

The submachine gun erupted. The noise was deafening. Spent brass shells clattered on the stone floor. Bullets tore into the dragon's head. How many, I don't know. It was all too fast, all too sudden. I felt the vibration of the recoil. The dragon looked surprised. Hurt, As though his feelings were hurt, as though...

He fell suddenly. Like a marionette with the strings sliced. The massive head simply crashed to the floor. The liquid fire in his
mouth spilled out. Keith jumped aside to avoid it, I scurried back.

"The old man," I snapped. "Where is he? Get the old man! Go!"

But Keith didn't even hear me. He let out a shrill yell of triumph and pranced in front of the dead dragon. "Aha! I killed it! I killed it! Did you see that? I freakin' killed it! Ba-boom."

He was nearly hysterical, out of control. The ram god must have stirred slightly and Keith heard the noise. He spun, leveled his weapon from the waist and fired again.

I pushed past the dragon, ran from the temple. Keith was insane, killing anything. I might be next. Had to take my chances outside.

Where was Merlin?

In the street, madness. Sheer madness. A seething river of crocodiles washed down the street, sinuous, slithering, twisting reptiles by the hundreds.

The Amazons were atop stone monuments, scattered, firing arrows down into the crocodiles. Arrow after arrow found its mark. Crocodiles died and their fellows crawled over their corpses.

I froze, stared, unable to take it all in. It was as horrifying as anything I'd seen since Hel's underworld. Slaughter. Mayhem. The crocodiles were a rioting mob. Just in front of me half a dozen of the beasts were tearing apart the body of a priest. The Amazons kept up a disciplined fire, killing and killing, but never slowing the invasion.

Where was Merlin? Where were the others? And my mother? No one in sight. Just crocodiles surging up stairways, looking to
cut off and surround the viragos.

The temple of Isis. If the others were anywhere, if my mother was anywhere, it would be there.

But how to reach it? How to cross a street filled with murder? Behind me, from within the temple, came the muted sound of gunshots. What was the sick little creep up to now? I had to get away. Merlin, Keith, the crocodiles, the Amazons, dangers on all sides.

Then came Sobek. He had grown to massive size. He strode down the street, twenty feet tall, the stylized crocodile head looming, a nightmare dinosaur. He stepped on the backs of his children, indifferent to them. Straight toward the nearest knot of Amazons. Pretty Little Flower was among them.

"Forget the crocodiles!" she yelled.

The Amazons shifted their aim and began pouring arrows into the god. Three, seven, fifteen arrows sprouted from his crocodile head. Sobek laughed and swept the shafts away.

"Do you attack a god?" he demanded.

Pretty Little Flower never flinched. She reached for her Coo- Hatch throwing blade. The Coo-Hatch blade that would cut anything. Huitzilopoctli had been injured by an enchanted hammer. Could Sobek be hurt by a Coo-Hatch blade? Gods were immortal, not invulnerable.

One chance.

"Sobek!" I yelled. "Beware! She has an enchanted blade!"

Pretty Little Flower shot me a murderous look. Then she let fly with the Coo-Hatch blade. Too late. Sobek jerked aside, the blade passed harmlessly and circled back toward Pretty Little Flower. She was no longer there to retrieve it. Sobek had opened his mouth and darted in to grab Pretty Little Flower. He snatched her off her pedestal, shook her like a dog shaking a rat, and tossed her to the crocodiles.

The Amazons stayed strong. But they knew it was time to retreat. Egypt was theirs no longer. They formed into a hollow square and backed toward the nearest open door. Their arrows were spent. They fought with swords and daggers against the crocodiles.
Sobek watched for a while, satisfied. Then he turned his evil yellow eyes on me. "I was wise to spare you. What is your wish?"

"I must reach the temple of Isis."

"Then reach it you will." He lifted me up and placed me on his shoulder. I was Fay Wray atop King Kong. He marched down the avenue, carried me above the slaughter, and deposited me safely on the steps of Isis' temple.

"Egypt is mine," Sobek said. "You and yours will be gone from this city before the sun reaches noon tomorrow. After that, you,
too, will die. Thus speaks Sobek, lord of all Egypt!"

"We'll be gone," I said.

I dragged myself, shattered, up the steps and collapsed into David's arms. He was waiting, sword drawn, face grim. He hauled me roughly into the temple and Christopher pushed the door shut behind us. The sudden silence was unnerving. The screams, the hisses and roars, all shut out.

"Merlin?" I gasped. "Is he here?"

"No. Christopher said he was around. Said your mom sold you out."

I nodded. Had to gather my wits, had to get it together. Had to get control. But I was empty. Beat and confused. None of it was according to plan. Nothing made sense. Madness and betrayal and violence.

"Pretty Little Flower is dead," I managed, "The Amazons are done for. Sobek has the city. We have till noon tomorrow."

"Don't worry, we'll get out of this hellhole just as fast as we can," April said. Her face was tear-streaked, dirty. No, not dirty, bloody.

"She's dead?" Christopher said.

For a minute I couldn't figure out what he was asking. "Pretty Little Flower? Yes, I'd say she's dead."

He nodded. "She was okay."

"She was a killer, you imbecile," I snapped. "She'd have killed you eventually. No matter how good you think you are."

"It wasn't like that," he insisted. "We didn't do it. We just... you know. We cuddled."

Was I losing my mind? Was I in some absurd dream? What was the fool talking about? We were surrounded by crocodiles who were busily killing anything that moved. And he was moping for Pretty Little Flower?

"We have your mom," David said.

That reenergized me. "Where?" I snarled. "Show me where she is." I got up, swept the hair out of my face, and started to go in search of her.

David stopped me, held me back with one hand. I could have made him eat his own hand given enough energy, but as it was, all I could do was scream.

"She sold me out to Merlin! She sold me out again. Again! I'll destroy her."

David nodded. "She knows."

Jalil appeared for the first time, stepping out of the gloom. "She's scared of you. Doesn't know what you'll do to her. We made a deal."

"A deal?" I asked stupidly.

"Yes. A deal. She takes care of the Coo-Hatch. She will become a gateway and help them to escape. But she wants something in return."

"To live?" I grated.

"To be forgiven," Jalil said.

I laughed. I laughed and didn't think I could stop. She what? She what? She wanted forgiveness?

"You mean she wants to know she's safe from me," I said.

David nodded. "Yes. That's the deal. She does the Coo-Hatch, once she's in a safe place, that is. That will take a while. But once she gets away from here and finds a safe place for herself, she'll help the Coo-Hatch. Only not if she's looking over her shoulder waiting for you."

Jalil said, "She knows she wasn't a very good mother. She knows that. She's so sorry. She's sorry about everything. Maybe she was weak, maybe you were right, all the things you said. But she never meant to..." Jalil sobbed.

David's gaze never flickered.

I shook my head, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Jalil sobbing. Right.

My mother the shape-shifter.

What was I supposed to do? She had abandoned me once, and given me over to Merlin. What was I supposed to do?

"You underestimated me," I said softly to Jalil-who-was-not-Jalil. "You could have been with me. You went to Isis, you went to
Pretty Little Flower, you went to Merlin. And all the time, Mother, all the time, I was the one who could have saved you. Everworld will be mine. Mother. Mine."

"Please... I'm not... Please..." Jalil said. "Despite everything, I am your mother."

The image of Jalil began to soften, shrink, to slide toward the image of a woman I'd never known, a million years ago. I saw the real Jalil now standing discreetly off to one side.

"No. Don't change; Mother. Here's my deal: You can escape this city if you know how. And as long as you take care of the Coo-Hatch and keep your bargain, you won't have me to fear. But I'll never see your face again."

"I could still be good for you," she said. "I still could teach you, show you how..."

I turned my back, slowly, deliberately. Turned away. Left her to stand there pleading helplessly.

And it should have been so sweet. It should have been a perfect moment. It should have been vindication for the little girl who had wondered night after night why her mother had... It should have been so sweet.

Instead I felt hollow. Like my insides had all been carved out.

Well, I was tired, that was it. Tired. It's exhausting being me

Holy loving poo poo was this book a banger. We have an insane white supremacist with a poo poo load of guns in Everworld, on his own because Senna doesn't care about her tools or consider what they'll do on their own, if they're no use to her.

We were given an intimate look at her desires and thoughts and they were repulsive.

We'll take a break for a fews days as normal, because I think there's gonna be some things to talk about.

# ? Dec 5, 2023 04:19

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

It's kind of hilarious how awful Senna is at all of this.

The thing is, Merlin is kind of famous for taking on lady apprentices that are his undoing. Senna could have gone with him, learned his famous magic, then turned on him or helped him or whatever she wanted to do. There was absolutely no need to start a massive fight here that got everyone killed, yet our heroine immediately tips her hand and puts herself way up the threat scale from "dumbass teenage witch" to "dragonslayer".

On top of this her reward for helping Sobek is getting kicked out of Egypt :allears:

# ? Dec 5, 2023 15:01

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

Man that really felt like it went from 6 to 60 real fast in that last chapter. When you said we were almost done with this book I thought that the Amazon plotline was going to continue into the next book but nope, Merlin Ex Machina, Dragon Ex Machina, and then Keith Ex Machina to wrap it all up.

I can�t wait to see Christopher learn that Keith is stomping around Everworld now - on that note, I�m also curious if Keith is fully in Everworld like Senna is, or if there�s an Old World Keith harassing Christopher and occasionally getting updates on Everworld Keith like the rest of the gang.

# ? Dec 5, 2023 18:47

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

Also yeah if you can kill a Dragon with small arms Everworld is completely hosed when Senna drags the rest of her little Militia in. Like we do see Isis shrug off things like the arrow to the eye here so they might not be able to kill the gods as easily, but Dragons are definitely played up as some of the bigger badasses around and if any idiot with a gun is able to take them out then that group is instantly gonna catapult in power.

But hey, at least the Coo-Hatch get their gateway and an exit from Everworld, that's honestly a pretty big win and takes the threat Ka Anor poses down like 15 notches.

# ? Dec 5, 2023 19:14

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

That dragon also had it's head in a doorway and wasn't expecting anything that could hurt it. But yeah, just having weapons that any idiot could use to kill a dragon without Galahad level skills is a game changer.

Also really interested that Christoper and Pretty Little Flower (rip) just stayed up and chatted all night. I wonder if he'll make a mix tape in her honor and what songs would be on it.

# ? Dec 5, 2023 21:56

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

I gotta say, these cover just do nothing for me.

We got some short chapters to start, so three of them are going up today.

quote:

Everworld #10
Understand the Unknown

Chapter
I

There's a saying: It was the calm before the storm. Maybe it originated with people who lived close to the water and learned to read its rhythms and moods. Maybe those people had to get smart enough to read the world around them, the changing wind and air pressure and light, in order to predict what was going to happen next. In order to survive. Maybe some poet first said it just that way, "It was the calm before the storm," talking about how once disaster hits, people tend to look back and remember just how peaceful everything seemed before. Even if, in reality, things were never really calm.

Anyway, it was the calm before the storm. Again. Because in Everworld, there's pretty much always a storm just waiting to crash
down on your head. The calm is never more than temporary. We were five teenagers from the Chicago area and we were a long, long way from the peaceful shores of Lake Michigan. We had just left a shattered, bloody Egypt and its musty, moribund gods. We were hoping to get back to Mount Olympus, where we would help its ranting, juvenile gods destroy the Hetwan, the forces of the alien god-eating god, Ka Anor. And we were traveling in a quinquireme, a Roman adaptation of a Greek or Carthaginian trireme. The crew was Greek. The captain was a small, dark man named Nikos.

How had a Roman warship manned by a Greek crew gotten to Egypt? Why was a warship being used to carry a cargo of dates, palm oil, and dried fish? I didn't even bother to ask. There was probably some sort of explanation, magical or otherwise, but I'd long ago stopped needing to know the "why." I just dealt with the facts. There was a ship with a crew and the captain was willing to sail us down the Nile, out of Egypt, and into the ocean or sea or whatever the hell it was out there. We'd paid him off in gold looted from the temple of lsis, Isis didn't need it.

Around me the others slept. April, Christopher, Jalil. Only Senna was fully awake, sitting with her knees to her chest, gazing at
the blue sky. I was tired, too, but didn't feel like sleeping. Didn't want to go to sleep and cross over to the real world, the old
world. Just wasn't in the mood to deal with my mother or my job or school or any of those other people and things about my old
life that no longer seemed very important.

Nikos had let me take the rudder once I'd demonstrated that I was no lubber. So I stood in the stem, working the large oar that hung over the port side, observing the sky, the sea, excited in spite of myself to be on this ship. The quinquireme � a ship I never imagined seeing � was a long and slender warship. She was more a galley than a sailboat, really. The single rectangular
sail was really of use only when the wind came from right astern and now with the wind on our starboard quarter, the sail was
furled.

The boat had oars on each side, set in banks of five. There were three levels of benches, with two rowers on the top bench per side, two in the middle level, and one strong rower on each side of each bottom bench. As with the Viking longboat, the crew had to row in unison or they'd foul one anothers' oars. But in this case the ship carried less than a third of its nominal crew, so the oars were plied with less discipline and the ship moved sluggishly.

Back in the real world, I'd been doing some reading on great societies, particularly those that had risen and prospered through warfare of one sort or another. The real world was still good for that: for books. And the Romans made good reading. The Romans were professional borrowers. Copycats and mimics. In typical fashion the Romans had stolen the idea for the quinquireme from the Greeks and improved on it. It was a cool ship, with its painted eyes on the bow and the long, dangerous ram that protruded underwater. It was a state-of-the- art killing machine, the Everworld equivalent of an Aegis class cruiser. Of course, if it had been relegated to merchant shipping and/or smuggling, it had to be on its last legs.

But old and tired, or fresh out of the shipyard, it was pretty much the same ship I'd have seen two thousand years ago in the real Rome, in the ancient real world. The real world had moved on, the real world had learned how to design sails and yards and masts and above all true rudders to allow a boat to lie close to the wind. Everworld had stagnated. I could build a boat that would sail rings around anything anyone here had. As mighty as this ship was in its heyday, I nevertheless could take some weekend sailor's twenty-eight-footer and a box of Molotov cocktails and sink this ship or anything the Romans or the Greeks could float.

Still and all, it was a cool boat.

I glanced again at Senna, apart and alone. At April, curled into the fetal position, her long red hair covering her face like a blanket. At Christopher, head leaning back against the side of the ship, mouth open, snoring. At Jalil, sitting a few feet from where Christopher sprawled, arms folded across his chest, head down, long legs straight out in front of him.

Who were these people, really?

I'm not good at people and their motivations, what makes them tick and why. It's a serious weakness. I usually don't get people right, not at first anyway. Still, you can't spend days and days and what might be months, for all I know � the passing of time in Everworld having little if anything to do with the passing of time in the real world � with the same people without knowing something about them. Without coming to some sort of conclusion about their personalities and characters. Without knowing, or being able to make a pretty close guess, what they might do or say in a particular situation.

Jalil is smart and unsentimental. Intellectually unsentimental, I mean; he doesn't shade or dilute the truth: He takes it straight up. I admire that. But it means that sometimes he's with me sometimes not. I trust him as a person, but he's no friend of mine, not really. There's no ordering Jalil to do something, no cajoling him, either. You convince Jalil. There's no other way to move him.
He and Senna have a strange relationship, maybe as strange as my own with her. I don't understand the nature of their connection, don't know where or when the roots were put down. But I do know, or think I do, that after what happened in Africa with the Orisha, after I agreed to help Jalil use Senna � use her for the good of the group � after that. Senna wanted very badly to hurt Jalil. Maybe not kill him, because I'm pretty sure that each of us is still of some use to Senna and her own personal goals. But maybe make Jalil wish he were dead.

April is Senna's half sister and everything Senna is not. She's honest. She actually cares about other people. She's no cynic. She's pretty and sexy and dramatic and funny. She's the girl you want to go out with because you know you'll have fun and you know things won't get weird and you know that even if it doesn't work out she'll let you down gently. Senna, on the other hand, is the girl you want to go out with for the same reason you want to ride a Harley without a helmet. It's fair to say that April loathes Senna, and though I can point to more than a few reasons for April to be angry at Senna, I just don't get the depth of the loathing. But, like I said, I don't get a lot of things. And as long as I can keep those two from killing each other, I guess I'll have done my job.

Christopher is a tough case to figure, though. Since this craziness started he's changed some. Christopher's always been right out there, totally up front about who he is, what he is �weak or strong, a jerk or a clown or a stand-up guy. When he's an rear end in a top hat, he's an unapologetic rear end in a top hat. When he's brave (and he often is) he still bitches about it. The whole stoic, take-it- like-a-man thing is lost on Christopher. He drinks. My opinion? He drinks too much. Maybe he's an alcoholic, I don't know. Maybe he'll beat it. He seems to be getting past his more outrageous racial stuff at least. That's progress, so maybe Christopher will get it together in the end.

Senna. What can I say about Senna; what can anyone say? Human but other. Witch � but good or bad or a little of both? I suspect that only Senna knows who or what Senna really is. And I suspect she wants it that way. There was a time when I needed, when I wanted Senna. There was a time when I was the addict and she was my pipe. I'm past that. As past it as any junkie ever is. Back in Egypt, finally, after almost ten years apart, Senna came face-to-face with her mother. Not a happy reunion. Not exactly an Oprah moment. Her mother is a self-serving creature, not so different from Senna herself, though without her daughter's genius for cool, deliberate manipulation. Senna's mom had abandoned her, basically to save her own rear end and have what she thought would be a better life. Senna was not forgiving. Senna has what you might call flexible morals: Whatever she does to other people is fine; what anyone does to her is unforgivable. Not exactly an earthshaking surprise to me.

And anyway, not my problem. I tried to turn my mind to the tactical position back at Olympus. That was our goal. The Hetwan were besieging the mountain but had been stopped. For now. We had done a deal with the Coo-Hatch that should keep them from providing their primitive cannon to the Hetwan. Should. And the Greek defenses around Olympus should hold now. Should.

I tried to think about all that, tried to play Napoleon, to see the way to win. But I had a steering oar in my hand and tucked under my arm, and I felt the living deck of the ship under my feet, and I heard the creak and splash of the oars and the steady music of water rushing along the hull, and my mind was seduced away by those basic pleasures. I love boats.

I let go of worry and figured to hell with it, plenty of time to worry. It would be a long trip, and unless we caught a steady breeze going in pretty much the precise direction we needed to move, it would be a slow trip. I gazed around at the flat sea. I sighed for the breeze, which was refreshing but useless. Squinted up at the sun and wondered if there was any way to build a sextant from
available Everworld materials. Wondered if there was any point: After all, for all we knew, Everworld was flat or concave or
shaped like a doughnut.

My gaze was drawn to a half-dozen flying fish breaking the surface. And then I saw the sail off the port bow. The distant sail bellied out with a wind that did not exist.

Calm over. Storm about to begin.

quote:

Chapter
II

It was a smaller boat than ours, and faster. Maybe it was bringing up the wind, riding at the front of a new breeze, but I didn't believe it. Not from that direction, not running exactly counter to our own breeze. No. That boat was self-propelled somehow. There were no engines in Everworld � the place was not about technology � so whoever was in that boat was commanding the wind to rise just for him.

I looked at Senna. She was alert. Watching. Her gray eyes were dark with worry, the color of mercury.

"It's him," she said. "It's Merlin."

"Yeah. That was my guess, too."

We had evaded the old man in Egypt. He'd been called there by Senna's mother, but in the chaos of destruction that had followed we'd lost him. As the strange boat closed in on us I could see the old man's long, once-blond, now grayish hair and beard, imagine his intelligent blue eyes, sunken beneath a lined brow. Remember what I'd seen him do � bring dead animals to life,
make a wall rise from a pile of rubble, command a dragon to do his bidding hold fierce Amazon warriors in suspension. This was the wizard who wanted Senna, who wanted to keep her from Loki's clutches. Who would imprison her if he could, kill her if he had to.

Wasn't going to happen. Not if I could help it.

"Everyone up," I said. "We have trouble."

Jalil, Christopher, and April stirred, awoke with varying degrees of grace. Christopher shaded his eyes and stared. "It's freaking Merlin, man."

I called to Nikos. The captain was sitting in the shade under an awning, drinking wine with what had to be the first officer, a guy who occasionally stirred himself to yell at the rowers. The two of them were moderately drunk, but the sight of that sail sobered them pretty quickly.

"Captain? Can we outrun him?" Knew that it was a ridiculous question. How would the captain know the extent of Merlin's magic?

Nikos knew as well as I did that the other boat was not obeying the usual laws of sailing. "The gods will decide," he said with a fatalistic shrug.

"Well, kick the rowers into high gear," I said. "And raise sail. We may get close enough to ram him."

"This is my ship, friend," Nikos said. "I will decide. And I do not wish to offend the gods. No. That boat is too small to be a
pirate; he cannot attempt to board and take us. I think he is interested in something else." He gave me a fish-eyed look that made it clear he was not risking his ship for our sakes. The gods wanted us badly enough to blow this boat toward us? Fine with him; he'd been paid, and the gods were welcome to us. No point in threatening a fight: The crew was small for a ship this size, but Nikos still had sixty guys.

"You worry about the gods? This isn't about the gods. See her?" I pointed at Senna. "She's a witch. Raise sail or she turns your cargo into so much worm food."

The captain thought that over for a moment. There's a real shortage of skepticism in Everworld, and he never doubted my word that Senna was a witch. "Raise the sail," Nikos ordered. "We will run before the wind, but we will not outrun the will of the gods."

That was the extent of my brilliant plan. Raise sail and hope our fitful breeze would carry us away from Merlin's purposeful wind.

The rowers advanced their rhythm, the sail dropped, and we turned to take the wind from straight aft. The ship responded. I could feel it surge forward and I could see that it didn't make a damned bit of difference. The other boat would catch us. And then what? Was it Merlin alone? If so, maybe we could still keep him from boarding.

Then again, maybe not.

Didn't want to ask the others for ideas, though if someone made a brilliant suggestion, I'd put the plan in motion. Better Jalil's plan, or Christopher's, than no plan at all. No plan was what I had.

Senna? No. She had powers, but she was like a really good high-school player trying to go one-on-one with Shaq. She was a long way from taking Merlin down. What were we going to � The sea erupted! The stretch of sea separating the two converging boats simply erupted � a pillar of water billowed and rose up � impossible.

It looked like some sort of bizarre Hollywood special effect. The sea was opening up, rising up, forming a twisting pillar of boiling green water. It looked like...

"It's like the Ten freaking Commandments!" Christopher yelled.

Exactly. Like the movie when the Israelites cross the Red Sea. But now the water was taking shape. A huge figure was emerging from the swirling green whirlpool. It undulated wildly, but still a vague outline was discernible. A man, a human, at least a creature vaguely resembling a human. A god. Had to be. Like a massive, shifting, crudely human-shaped jellyfish. Translucent, like a giant blob of hair gel on the palm of the water, piled upon the water, rising from it. And inside the creature, part of the creature, swimming around in its belly and brain, there were what looked a hell of a lot like dolphins and sharks and rays and other sea creatures I couldn't quite make out. Clumps of seaweed, for all I knew. Maybe whales � it was big enough. The crew moaning and praying and wailing, the name Poseidon on every tongue. April, making the sign of the cross. Jalil, openmouthed, still in some way, on some level outraged by the mere fact of magic, the Everworld reality of charms, spells, physical laws broken and mended and broken again.

Christopher, trembling, mumbling something about Charlton Heston, Pharoah, and "Let my freaking people go."

Senna, standing alone, facing the monstrosity, a cold wind making her hair blow straight back. Calculating. Wondering whether this was Merlin's doing or whether the sailors were right and this was some far greater power.

And then, the watery thing spoke.

The voice if that's what it was � hard to tell with my eardrums near to bursting and my eyes closing against the sound, my feet slipping out from under me, knees hitting the wooden deck. The voice spoke, shouted, roared like a too, too loud surround-sound system in a too, too small movie theater. The voice seemed to come from the entire body of living water, from no one place in particular, no lips moving or tongue wagging. "Who dares to command the winds and waters of mighty Neptune? Who dares use magic to challenge my will?"

It took me a second to get it. Neptune wasn't pissed at us. He was after Merlin! I saw Merlin doing a quick bow-and-scrape and looking more nervous than I'd have thought possible.

"This arrogance, this impudence will not go unpunished," Neptune roared.

Then... he, it, Neptune was gone.

The squall attacked with such sudden violence it was like the concussion of a bomb. Winds of terrifying, irresistible force. The
squall hit the sail, laid us over on our side. I slid, fell, tumbled down a deck suddenly as pitched as an IHOP roof. I hit the rail, slammed hard, arm numbed. A wall of green water swept over the ship. Would we come up? Would the boat swim? The wave swept past, carrying away the mast, the sail, oars, many of the rowers, and all the crates and crap that had been stowed carelessly around the deck. The ship began to right itself, but so slowly, so heavily. It wallowed like a barrel. I spit water, clawed my way back to the oar, had to be able to steer � if the next wave caught us broadside we were all done.

"Row!" I bellowed. "Row, dammit!" The only hope was to get the ship moving, get her bow into the waves.

No rowers. The crew that hadn't been washed overboard was in a state of weeping panic. I saw a soaked, battered Jalil stagger to a surviving oar, but no way, not one guy, wasn't happening, and now the second wave, the mother of all waves, was bearing down.
The deck fell away sickeningly as we slid into the trough. The wave towered above us, towered above where the mast would have been. It was a mountain of water. No hope.

A hammer blow that caught me, snatched me away from my precarious hold on the steering oar, and carried me away, once more to be stopped by the bulwark. I was half drowned, dazed, bruised. Still she swam. But the quinquireme was low in the water.
Gunwales barely clear.

The crew, what was left, clung helplessly to rails and the stump of the mast. So did my friends. Hopeless. Another wave coming. Relentless. If we stayed any longer we'd go down, sucked down with the ship.

"Off the bow!" I yelled in the weird calm between waves.

"Grab an oar, jump! Go, go, go!"

I saw April running. Christopher limping. The deck tilted perilously. We were stem on to the wave. Now we were rolling, falling toward the bow. Christopher jumped. Where was Senna?

The wave... I jumped.

Interesting how the book begins with talking about rome stealing ideas and now we run into Neptune and not Poseidon

quote:

Chapter
III

The wave lifted the boat nearly vertical, slammed into the stem, and drove the ship down like a spike under a sledgehammer's blow. The ship speared into the water and then disappeared.

"Senna!"

Suction caught me, a swirling drain with me no more than a bug.

Blinded by salt water and confusion and pain, I put one hand over my head, palm flat up, and kicked, used my left arm as a paddle, had to get to the surface, hell, I could be on the surface, couldn't tell, woozy, head hurt. Remember, David, save yourself first, be able to save the others

Palm hit something hard, better than hitting with my head. I felt along the object, lungs beginning to burn, still Wind, kicked to my left, used the free arm again to propel myself beyond the barrier, strong stroke down... broke free! Air! I took deep, deep breaths, another slap of water almost choked me, rushed down into my lungs. I coughed, gagged, rubbed my eyes until they opened. blink, blink, had to find the others, had to find Senna! I grabbed a floating timber. All that was left.

"Who's there?!" I shouted, but I didn't know if anyone could hear my voice over the boiling sea, a sea tormented into an artificial frenzy by Neptune, a sea meant to kill us. A sky lowering and black, a sky now raining hailstones like bullets. Impossible to see. The waves were mountains around me. I rose with the swell, was swamped by the crest, then slid down the far side of the wave.
Then... through the needlelike spray and biting foam, a form, a figure. I kicked, thrust my arms through the water, breaststroked, dog-paddled, anything to fight my way through the chaotic sea, to get closer to that form, that person "April! April, hold on!"

Struggling, flailing manically, long hair streaked across her face, wound around her neck like an oil slick. April. I swam, saw her gulp about a gallon of water. Saw her eyes close, saw her slip under, one pale hand. No! One more awkward stroke, thrust, lunge, and I would be there. Where? Where had she gone down, exactly? I was exhausted, confused, in the middle of a wrathful storm, but no choice, I had to try. Gulping air, as much as I could hold through the sudden overwhelming weariness, I dove, tried to
open my eyes, managed a slit, felt stupidly around with my hands, crying silently, April, April, April. Had to come up for air. No use to anyone dead, right, David? Gasping, pulling wet, heavy hair off my forehead, yanking my eyes open with my hands Nothing, no one, only debris in this watery canyon.

I took another deep breath and, shivering, teeth chattering, prepared to dive again, and again, as many times as it took, when I was hit from behind. A jagged piece of the destroyed ship, I couldn't guess more than that, speared me in the back and thrust me under the angry waters. The fear-sickness overtook me. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think straight, I was disoriented � had I reached the surface again? Couldn't tell, because now my body was being turned round and round, I was revolving, twirling, like some half-smoked cigarette tossed in a flushing toilet.

Panic and struggling and inhaling water and more panic, more struggling, now vertigo, nausea I knew about sailing I knew about drowning knew the causes and stages and how to try to revive a near-drowning victim. I knew all this and forgot every bit of it as I began to drown in that violently whirling sea. Neck snapping with each revolution around and down and around and down Neptune's whirlpool, the final force sent to finish us off. Spine cracking, arms and legs slapped to my side then torn away, flung wide, somehow I knew this but could not really feel my body, arms, legs. Could not see � were my eyes open or shut? Could not hear � was I imagining the roar of water, hallucinating the scream of wind? Could not breathe, could not think, could not live...

All over. All over. I sucked in water, but it didn't matter, nothing mattered because it was over.

And I breathed. Gagged, wretched, but breathed and did not die. Choked but breathed again and habit or instinct made me spit it out, the water that I was breathing but still, I breathed and was alive. How how how how? And I was sinking, slowly, gently, down down down, my eyes open, un-stung by salt, open and aware and what, what was that I was seeing beneath me, what was I
falling toward? Maybe I was dead after all. Unconscious at least, imagining, dreaming, hallucinating, and this was my dream of heaven or whatever world there was beyond death.

Funny, I'd never thought I had the creative power to come up with something so...

No, not a dream, no hallucination, somehow I knew that. Something told me I was there, taking up physical space, alive, observing the scene I was about to become a part of. And not only me because now I could see Jalil close by, others, some of the sailors, and yes, April, now Senna, Christopher, all of us slowly floating downward, alive, unbelievably alive. Senna caught my eye, moved her lips but I couldn't hear or guess at what she was saying. After a moment she looked away.

Below us was a city. I might have been skydiving, falling toward it. A city. With tiled roofs and neatly laid-out streets. Roofs? Why, to keep out the rain? People down there. Swimming? Walking? It was crazy. I was wrong, I was hallucinating. Had to be. So far down below the surface of the water, how was it possible to see so clearly? Why wasn't everything shrouded in complete blackness; where was the light source; what was the light source?

Why was I bothering to wonder? W T E

# ? Dec 7, 2023 02:25

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Remalle: Feb 12, 2020

What's the Roman equivalent of Atlantis?

# ? Dec 7, 2023 04:40

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

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