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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Lets read Everworld-Show me the way to go home.
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nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Fuschia tude posted:

I feel like it's better, honestly. Not just because it's written at a higher grade level. I wonder how much of that feeling is just because the last half of Animorphs was nearly all ghostwriters, though.

This is also where Michael Grant started gestating a lot of his ideas for the Gone series, so if you're familiar with that at all you might pick up on certain things here that, like certain elements of Animorphs, form the DNA of what he would later go on to do in a more fully realized fashion.

* # ? Apr 28, 2023 23:10
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# ? May 3, 2024 15:58
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Fuschia tude
Dec 26, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

nine-gear crow posted:

This is also where Michael Grant started gestating a lot of his ideas for the Gone series, so if you're familiar with that at all you might pick up on certain things here that, like certain elements of Animorphs, form the DNA of what he would later go on to do in a more fully realized fashion.

Nope. I'd never heard of it or any of their other works until watching a few interviews a couple years ago after I started reading the last thread here. Aside from filling in my Animorphs gap in that thread, I haven't read any Applegrant stories since the first 10 Everworld books.

* # ? Apr 29, 2023 00:07
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Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 10

quote:

I was shaking. I’d always hoped, assumed, believed I was brave, but I was shaking. I glanced left and saw April. She was crying. I couldn’t see Christopher, but I did see Jalil. His eyes were narrowed, his lips pressed tight. Scared but not panicky.

I shook myself, trying to get a grip on the wild images of terror my own imagination had called up to torture me.
“This is my humble home,” Loki said, waving a ham-sized hand around casually. “You’ve already
met Fenrir, my son.”

He nodded in the direction of the wolf, who stood poised, ready, bristling with barely contained energy.

I should have wondered how in hell he had a son who was a wolf, but there was a long list of things to wonder about.

“Eat? Drink?” Loki asked, mocking.

I shook my head. No. I had a horrible moment of thinking Christopher might make some smart remark. But no one said anything.

Loki leaned forward, bringing his face closer to us. His lips actually drew back in a snarl that would have been appropriate for his son. “Good. Then, if we have the necessary pleasantries out of the way, let me ask you: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE WITCH?”

The blast of sound knocked me back. It was a hammer! I hit my head hard on the floor. My ears rang. The wind of his voice, the heat of his rage was like opening a furnace door.

Then I felt more than that. Suddenly Loki was no ten-foot man, but a towering monster that dwarfed the wolf Fenrir, reducing his foul-breathed son to Chihuahua size.

He reached down and grabbed me. Fay Wray in King Kong’s grip. He held me, helpless, up to his gnashing mouth.

But this time his voice was gentle and sinister. “What have you done with my witch?”

He could have swallowed me. He could have bitten my head off and chewed my skull. He was huge; I was helpless. I shook. Uncontrollably. Just shook as if I were coming apart.

“Speak up, mortal,” Loki said, suddenly all sympathy and reasonableness. “I realize you’ve had a difficult day. It can’t be very pleasant hanging from my wall. But I had to know whether you were mortal or some more significant foe in disguise. Only a mortal could have allowed himself to be hung in chains like a criminal, so now I know what you are. Do you hear me? Are you paying attention?”

I nodded, but even that familiar gesture was jerky with trembling.

“Good, good,” Loki said. He reached over and set me back down alongside my shocked companions. I noticed Jalil’s eyes glance down at my shorts. They were wet.

Loki shrank back to his normal ten-foot dimension. “Now that I have your attention, tell me: Where is my witch? What have you done with her? Speak up.”

“I… I… I don’t know any witch…” I stammered. I cringed. I couldn’t help it. I cringed on my knees before him.

“Oh, but you must,” Loki said, still reasonable, suave. “You came through the barrier with her. I went to incredible trouble to allow Fenrir to cross over, all so I could have the witch. I have exhausted myself! I have borrowed power from others that I must now repay. Do you have any idea what that witch cost me? And now, NOW, NOW I don’t have her. And you tell me you don’t know any witch.”

Loki blazed. Literally. His hair was on fire, his face twisted, his eyes seemed to burn into me. Burn right into my brain, burn through my pathetic teeth-clenching tough-guy pretensions.

“Leave me alone,” I whispered, begging.

His expression changed to one of bemusement. He laughed. “You really don’t know. Blind little mortal.” And then he did something that rocked me to the core.

The room filled with a blinding glow. An instant later, where Loki had stood now stood Senna. She was beautiful. Dressed in the clothes she’d worn on the pier. “Fenrir penetrated the barrier and brought me back to serve Great Loki,” she said. The voice was not hers. It was a feminine voice but not hers. A parody of a girl’s voice.

“I came through the void, but the four of you came through, too. And somehow in the confusion, the imbalance of that moment, I slipped from Fenrir’s jaw and disappeared.”

Senna, who was not Senna, walked over to me. She stood very close. Her face. It was her face. Her eyes, her mouth. She touched me gently on my wounded nose. “What have you done with me?” she asked.

And then she dug her nails into my nose and twisted.
“
Ahhh!” I yelled. I batted at her hand, turned my face away to break her grip.
“
Leave him alone!” April yelled. “No one knows what happened to Senna. We didn’t do anything to her.”

Loki became Loki again. He was breathing heavily, as though he’d just climbed the stairs to his own tower. He was weary. The rage was burning out.

Fenrir decided to take a leak. He pissed a firehose stream against the far wall. The wolf urine steamed.
F
rom the shadows behind Loki’s throne a figure emerged, gliding across the floor. He was not large, no bigger than me, maybe a little smaller. But the wings he kept folded back made his shoulders seem very broad. He moved on thin, bowed legs that ended in soft pads rather than feet. They made a faint squishing sound, a little like someone with new sneaks. Just above the feet there were knees, and from the knees sharp, forward-aimed spikes protruded.

The head was round, dominated by two large, flat insect eyes. But the single thing that caught my attention was the mouth. It was almost human at its center, but three jointed, grasping claws ringed the mouth. The claws worked constantly, reaching, grabbing at nothing, then pulling in toward the mouth.

Loki, for all his evil power, was clearly a creature of Earth. Fenrir, the huge wolf, too. But this monster, this… thing… was just as clearly not.
Loki didn’t look at the figure, but I could see that he felt his presence. Loki’s lip twitched into a sneer.

“They know nothing,” the winged insect said n a fluttery, whispery voice.

“They have stolen my witch!”

“You have failed,” the creature said without a trace of emotion. “You have not opened a door into your Old World as you promised Ka Anor you would.”

Loki turned to look at the creature. “I could have Fenrir chew you up and crap you out, you Hetwan filth.”

“You are a treacherous creature, Loki. Ka Anor knows this. Ka Anor will not be surprised if you kill me. But Ka Anor will not be happy, either. I will leave now and report to Ka Anor. I think Ka Anor will eat you.”

All this without any sense of fear or worry. The delicate alien creature seemed unconcerned by Loki. And he had no interest in us.

Loki looked at the huge wolf and jerked his head ever so slightly. The Hetwan offered no resistance. He lay passively in the panting jaws. One of Fenrir’s huge teeth was drawing yellow blood.

Fenrir carried him to Loki. Loki twisted his head sideways to look right in the Hetwan’s blank eyes. “You tell your Ka Anor that I don’t die easily.” Loki threw out a hand, pointing at a tapestry embroidered with the red serpent picture we’d seen earlier.

“Do you see that? Do you know what it means, Hetwan? Odin, the All-Father, imprisoned me, bound by enchanted chains between massive rocks. And he created a snake to writhe above my upturned face, a snake that dribbled its venom into my eyes. The pain…” Loki flinched at the memory and swept a hand over his face as if wiping something away.

“It was agony. Day after day, year after year. Odin meant me to lie there in agony forever, for the crime of killing Baldur! But when the Great Change came, when Everworld was born, in the cataclysm I escaped. I lay in wait and I found the time.” Loki’s voice was a whisper now. “And I found the way. And the weapon. And I seized the indestructible Odin. And now it is Odin who lies writhing in torment.”

Loki’s face was suffused with remembered pleasure. He savored the memory. “Odin One-Eye, all-powerful Odin, is in my power now. I entertain myself devising new tortures for him.”

Loki took a few deep breaths, shaking off the happy visions. He smiled at the Hetwan. “So, you see, there’s a moral to the story. One you should pass along to that alien interloper, Ka Anor: Loki is not easy to kill. The bastard of Asgard now entertains Asgard’s former master in his dungeon.”

He nodded at Fenrir. The wolf let the Hetwan fall.

The Hetwan picked himself up. His three-clawed mouth still sought for food that did not exist. He walked calmly to one of the tall, arched windows, spread his wings, and flew up and through it without another word.

Loki glared after him.

“Double the guard,” he said to Fenrir. “Have our vassals kept alert. I will the fool who lets any Hetwan enter my domain. Likewise any creature of Huitzilopoctli. They’re of a piece, these aliens and those bloodthirsty madmen. Death-worshippers all.”

Fenrir nodded his shaggy wolf head. “And what of these mortals?” he asked in his strange, animal voice.

Loki shrugged. “Have the trolls take them to the pit. Kill them.” He looked right at me and curled his lip in contempt. “Have them kill the cowardly one slowly.”

So no idea who the Hetwan or Ka Anor are. Huitzilopoctli was the Aztec god of war and the sun, though. He was usually portrayed as a hummingbird, and his name means 'Hummingbird of the South". (The Aztecs believed that the land of the dead was to the south, and that dead warriors were reincarnated as hummingbirds.)

* # ? Apr 29, 2023 04:11
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Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
This is really some fascinating world building. The gods are real, they were on earth, but there was a cataclysm that booted them off and created everworld. I doubt this is gonna be the rise of monotheism over the panthiesitic nature of older religions, but that'd be a cool twist.

How long are these books compared to animorphs?

* # ? Apr 30, 2023 16:00
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Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice

Soonmot posted:

How long are these books compared to animorphs?

Book 1 has 32 chapters, compared to book one of Animorphs, which has 27.

* # ? Apr 30, 2023 20:50
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Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 11

quote:

We marched from the great hall away from Loki and Fenrir.

I had to get up off my knees to move. I had to get up and walk with my own piss drenching my shorts. Christopher was behind me. He had to see. He had to know what I’d done.

My God, I was a coward! Loki was right. I was a coward.

I was still shaking. I was glad, relieved to be away from Loki and his foul-smelling son. But terrified of what lay ahead.

All my life I’d wondered. Like every boy. Like every man. Maybe girls, too, I don’t know. But there has never been a male born who did not wonder whether he was brave.

You hear stories, you read books about men who were brave when they had to be. Men who had stood up against unbelievable odds. I’d failed. And not for the first time.

Was it Loki who had opened my mind and looked in at my secrets when we crossed over? Had it been Loki whose voice I’d heard as I hung suspended, in the blank white void between worlds?

Ah, I see.

No. Someone else. Not Loki. But Loki hadn’t needed to open my mind to understand me.

Kill the cowardly one slowly.

I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t known it was going to happen, I told myself. This wasn’t what I’d ever pictured. A war, maybe. Yes, I could be brave in a war. I’d thought about it many times. But this! My test had come and I wasn’t ready.

No excuses! Coward! Coward! I’d wet myself like a little baby. I had cried. I would have begged if I’d had the chance.

Oh, my God, how could I be a coward?

Now they’d kill me and it would almost be a relief. How could I ever tell my father what I’d done?

I was in a haze. Disconnected from what was happening. Like it was all happening to someone else. Some far-distant person was being marched down that long stairway. Someone else, someone I didn’t even know, was blinking in the sudden light of the courtyard. Someone else was walking meekly toward the pit.

Not me. Not David Levin. Not me. That wasn’t me shuffling along, head bowed, tears welling in my eyes behind a swaggering troll. No. No, that wasn’t me.

“NO!” I yelled.

It happened in a flash. I lunged. My hand grabbed the sword hilt. My fingers closed around it, unfamiliar yet expected. I pulled.

It was long. It seemed to take forever to draw out of the troll’s scabbard. Then, there it was: a blade. Not glittering but dull. There was a fine coating of powdery rust below the pommel. It was heavier than I’d thought it would be.

The troll turned his brute face to me. Seeing the sword in my hand, he registered slow surprise. I held it awkwardly, pointing straight out but with my wrist all wrong. I saw the sword point. I saw the troll’s chest and neck and head.

And in that awful moment of suspended time, some clockwork part of my brain, some cold, distant, untouched part of my brain told me, The neck will be most vulnerable.

I thrust, blindly, wildly. No art. No style. Just a convulsive jerk forward.

The iron blade entered the troll’s neck and stopped. In sheer panic, I leaned into the sword, thrusting with all my weight, all my adrenaline-powered strength.

The troll gaped at me, amazed. He reached up and touched the sword that now protruded through his neck, skewering him.

A second troll began to draw his own sword.

I yanked the sword from the troll’s neck and swung it hard. My panicked, sweeping blow nearly decapitated April, but she was just short enough. The blade caught the sword arm of the second troll.

The arm dropped, bloodless, to the ground, still holding a sword. It stiffened. It became rock, like something hacked off a statue.

“Run!” Christopher yelled.

I hesitated, but only for a moment. The troll I’d stabbed was not bleeding from the gaping wound in his neck. The area of the wound was already stone. Hard. Lifeless. It was spreading out from the wound, turning what must have been living flesh to granite.

The troll still looked puzzled. Then the stone-stiffening reached his face and the look became permanent.

I turned and ran.

Jalil, April, and Christopher were already racing back down the tunnel we’d come through.

There were too many men and trolls in the courtyard to stand and fight there. Trolls and men were coming after us, but the two nearest, our remaining troll guards, were too slow for teenagers in running shoes.

We pelted down the stairs but leaped off after only a few dozen feet of descent. We were in a tunnel, colder, darker than before. Dustier, as if it hadn’t been used much lately.

I still held the sword, which made it awkward to run. Several times the blade scraped on the stone wall and set off sprays of sparks. But I’d give up my life before I’d let go of that sword.

The tunnel came to a three-way divide.

“That’s the direction we came from,” Jalil said breathlessly, pointing at the left branch. “Back toward Loki.”

“Yeah? Then how about another choice?” Christopher suggested.

“Right,” I said, and led the way into darkness.

I was fifty feet or so down the right-hand tunnel when I realized April wasn’t with us. I stopped and grabbed Christopher, who was running past. I yanked him to a stop and Jalil plowed into us. We froze, backs pressed against dripping walls, scared of making a sound.

I looked back and saw April silhouetted in torchlight. Trolls and men, all with swords drawn, were descending on her. if we went back for her, we’d all be killed. If we didn’t…

“They’ve gone to murder Loki!” April screamed. “Stop them! Stop them! They’ve gone to murder Great Loki!”

She kept yelling and pointing down the left-hand tunnel.

It was idiotic. No way anyone would fall for such a lame trick.

And yet the motley assortment of men and trolls roared away down the left tunnel.

One man, a large, brutal-looking Norseman, hesitated. He looked at April and squinted, as if trying to form a thought. I tensed, wondering if I could take him on.

“Yeah, right,” I muttered under my breath. “He’s been swinging a sword since he was four!”

April didn’t give the Norseman a chance to form his suspicion fully. “What will happen if they reach Loki? His anger will be terrible! Do you want to be the last to defend him?”

That penetrated the thick blond head. Loki’s anger was something he could understand. Showing up late was probably not a good idea when your boss was a lunatic god.

With a battle roar, he went off in pursuit of the others.

April ran to us, panting.

“Not bad,” Christopher said. “You should be an actor.”

“I am an actor,” April said shakily. “Obviously, you missed Cuckoo’s Nest last year. I killed as Nurse Ratched.”

“Which way?” I asked, like someone might have an answer.

“How about away from the last troll we saw?” Jalil suggested.

“Fair enough,” I agreed. We took off at a trot. We were all exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, but adrenaline is an amazing substance. If you’re scared enough, you find more energy than you thought possible.

And we were definitely scared.

See, David was scared, but in the end, he came through.

* # ? May 1, 2023 03:01
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Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I'm really wondering what is up with senna. She's April's sister, but Loki says she's his witch. I'm also wondering if these kids get powers from being here,. All stuff that will be revealed in time, I guess.

* # ? May 1, 2023 12:58
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Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 12

quote:

It was a long tunnel. And a long way between flickering skull-sconce torches. Worst of all, the tunnel was not straight. It was curving, and the more it curved the more we feared it might lead back to Loki and the men and trolls who must be looking for us. Our footsteps seemed awfully loud. And we were leaving prints in the dust.

We talked in low, muttering whispers. Scared. But relieved, too. We should be dead. We weren’t.

“So are we definite that this is not a dream?” Christopher asked at one point.

I had been off in dark thoughts, remembering my shameful terror before Loki. “Not a dream,” I muttered. I smelled of urine. I smelled like a men’s room.

“Then what the hell is it?” he demanded. “I mean, what’s going on? Is this someone’s idea of a joke? Loki? A Norse god? A wolf the size of a bus? Some creepy alien? Trolls? Vikings killing sheep? I mean, what’s the deal?”

“Loki called it ‘Everworld,’ ” Jalil said. “Not that that tells us much.”

“Maybe we’ve all gone nuts,” April said, laughing a little at the idea. “Maybe we’re psychotics walking around a padded room wearing paper slippers and straitjackets.”

“Sounds like you took Cuckoo’s Nest a little too seriously,” Christopher said.

“Did you see it?”

“Yeah. I needed some extra credit in English so I wrote a report on it.”

“And?”

“And you were very good, April,” Christopher said. “But nothing compared to your performance with that dumb Viking back there.”

April laughed again. It annoyed me. What right did she have to laugh? She would laugh at me, no doubt. Probably already had. Big deal David, tough guy David, David with the attitude, crying and squirming and…

I couldn’t think about it. It made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

“This is all connected to Senna,” Jalil said. “This didn’t start with us hanging off a wall. This started with all four of us being there at the lake this morning. And her being there.”

What was he talking about? I tried to tear my mind off my own self-loathing.

Jalil was right. Only it may have started even earlier. I said nothing, but I wondered if it had started with the fight at a Taco Bell. Why had we all been there? Was that part of some plan?

I flashed on my car, Senna beside me.

“Something is going to happen.” That’s what she said.

“What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. I only know something will happen. Soon. Something…terrible.”

Yesterday. A million years ago, and yet I could still see the way her eyes glittered. “Sometimes I know things before they happen. Sometimes I can see a scene in my head. Like watching a movie. And then it will happen. I think, did I make it happen? Or did I just see it somehow?”

Good question, I thought grimly. Very good question, Senna.

Senna, the “witch” Loki wanted so badly.

“David, when it happens… when it happens, David, will you save me?”

I grabbed my head with my two hands and pressed hard on my temples. No, I won’t save you Senna, I’ll shake and quiver like a scared rabbit. That’s what I’ll do, Senna.

“Hey, watch where you’re waving that thing,” April said, looking at the sword. “You have a headache or something?” She swung her backpack around and began digging inside.

The question was so mundane I had to laugh. A headache? Did I have a headache? I was living a nightmare inside a nightmare.

April dug out a small blue-and-white bottle. She twisted the cap off and handed me a round, dark rust-colored pill—an Advil.

“Here. You’ll have to swallow it dry. I better ration them, so see if this one works before you take another.”

“Oh, April,” I sighed, shaking my head.

“What?”

“Nothing. Save it. You’re right, we may need it.”

Jalil quickened his pace to catch up to us. “What else do you have in that backpack?”

“Good question,” Christopher muttered. “And if you say, ‘I have my nine-millimeter Glock and an extra clip,’ I’ll kiss your feet.”

We kept moving as April searched by dim torchlight. “The Advil. Bottle of a hundred, maybe half

gone. Um… my CD player.”

“What CDs?” Christopher asked.

“Alanis Morissette… Um, that Lilith Fair CD…”

Christopher and I both groaned.

“The Bach B-minor mass. And the sound track from Rent.”

Jalil groaned. “Oh, man. Show tunes? We’re stuck a long way from the nearest Sam Goody and all we have is whiny women and show tunes?”

“Hey, she brought some Johann Sebastian, too,” Christopher said, changing sides. “Lighten up on the girl. Broaden your tastes.”

“Sorry, if I’d known I was going off to bizarre world to hang out with trolls and Norse gods, I’d have brought a wider selection,” April said. “Not to mention extra batteries. And don’t dis Rent, drama club is putting that on this year.”

“Not just Norse gods,” Jalil said, thoughtful once more. “There’s that alien and that Ka Anor thing. And Loki said something about Huitzilopoctli. And the prisoner was talking Ra.”

“Didn’t he play third base for the Cubs back in the eighties?” Christopher said.

Humor. The just-nearly-died brand of giddy humor.

“I have this vague memory that Huitzilopoctli is some kind of Aztec god. And, of course, Ra. Egyptian.”

“Aztecs? Why would there be Aztecs?” Christopher demanded.

“Why would there be Loki? Why would there be a big freaking wolf?” I demanded, suddenly angry. “Why would we all go trotting down to the lack and end up hanging in chains? You want to start with the ‘why this’ and ‘why that?’ ”

“Touchy, isn’t he?” Christopher mocked. “Must be the wet pants.”

I was on him before he finished the last word. I grabbed him by his collar and shoved him against the wall. His hair was inches from the flame of a skull torch.

“Don’t push me!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Don’t push me or I’ll shove this sword up your rear end and see how brave you are!”

I was panting. Christopher looked amazed.

Jalil grabbed my sword hand, whipped his other arm around my neck, and yanked me back. He spun me away.

I stumbled but kept to my feet. I clenched the sword and tensed my arm, ready to do murder.

April stepped between me and Jalil.

“What are you, crazy?!” Christopher yelled.

“Shut up, all of you!” April hissed. “We’re in a tunnel, you idiots. Voices carry. You want to have those… those trolls all over us? I don’t. so shut up and calm down and stop acting like little boys.”

She was right. Obviously. But I almost didn’t care. Christopher had as much as called me a coward. I couldn’t let that stand.

April sighed and smoothed her hair back. In a calm voice she said, “Listen to me. We don’t need this. We stick together or we don’t have a chance. Even if we do stick together, we don’t have much of a chance. We have to figure out what’s going on and get home, and stay alive in the meantime. We’ll need food and water and warm clothing.”

“And weapons,” Jalil interjected.

“That, too. What we don’t need is a bunch of macho crap.”

For a while no one spoke. Christopher and I both sort of came down at the same time. Like a pair of balloons someone had poked holes in.

“We’re dead meat, anyway,” Christopher said.

“Oh, really?” April said. She pointed back down the tunnel. “Then head back that way, go find the nearest troll or whatever, and die. Okay? Otherwise, if you want to stay with us, work on helping and stop being a baby. And, by the way? We’re not dead meat. We have one big advantage: We’re smarter than those guys.”

“We are?” Christopher asked skeptically.

“Would you have fallen for that ‘They went thataway’ routine back there?” April asked him.

I avoided looking at Christopher. But I saw Jalil nodding agreement. “The Trojan Horse,” he said to himself. Then for the benefit of the rest of us, “Trojan Horse. You know, war of Troy, Greeks against Trojans.”

“The Greeks fought against condoms?” Christopher asked.

Jalil ignored him. “The Trojans are inside the city, Greeks can’t get them out, so the Greeks build this big horse, hide a bunch of guys inside it, the rest sail off and leave the horse for the Trojans, telling them it’s a surrender gift. The Trojans haul it into the city, the guys climb out at night, open the gates, bye-bye Trojans.”

“Who would be that dumb?” Christopher asked.

“I think that’s his point,” April said. “Not dumb, maybe. Just naïve. I mean, we come from a cynical age. Suspicious of everything. Maybe that’s an advantage we have.”

“Yeah, our bad attitudes versus their swords and axes and giant wolves,” Christopher said darkly. “Let’s just find the trapdoor to get out here and back home.”

“I’m for that,” April said.

We started walking. April searched through her backpack again. I had to say something. I couldn’t let it all just lie there.

So I said, “Okay, we look for a way home. But we all go. All or none. The four of us and Senna.”

No one said no.

No one said yes, either.

So as you can see, there's some tension there.

* # ? May 2, 2023 04:22
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Sorry about this. Posting the next chapter tomorrow

* # ? May 3, 2023 04:42
  • Quote
Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer

Epicurius posted:

Sorry about this. Posting the next chapter tomorrow

No worries pal

* # ? May 3, 2023 13:16
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 13

quote:

Fifty-seven Advil.

A Sony personal CD player with headphones.

Four double-A batteries, mostly charged.

An Alanis CD, the Lilith Fair CD, Bach, and Rent CDs.

Two books: Great Poetry of the English Language, and Chemistry: Principles and Application.

One spiral notebook.

A pencil, a felt-tip pen, and two ballpoint pens.

Tampons.

Clinique blusher.

Keys.

That was what we found in April’s backpack.

Jalil had keys, a Swiss Army knife, eleven dollars and forty cents, a watch that had been crushed by the chains around his wrists, and his dad’s Shell credit card. Christopher had keys, twenty one dollars and nine cents, a receipt from Marshall Fields for a three-pack of underwear, and a phone card.
I had keys and a quarter.

“Well, if keys turn out to be money around here, we’re pretty well set,” Christopher said. “Lots of keys. No Uzi, which is what we need in this nuthouse. No grenades, which would come in very handy. Nope, a little pocketknife and a lot of keys.”

“How do they keep these torches lit?” Jalil wondered. Then, “Forget the pocket knife and the keys. The most important thing is the chemistry textbook.”

“Why? You thinking we’ll whip up some—” The joke died on his lips. He grabbed April and pulled her to the side of the tunnel. We all froze. “Shhh!”

We listened, straining. Nothing. Then…

Voices!

“Behind or ahead?”

“Behind,” April said. “They’re after us.” She didn’t mention that they’d probably heard Christopher and me going at it.

“Let’s run,” Jalil said.

“But quietly.”

We ran. One big advantage we had over the Norsemen and trolls: They wore boots, we wore sneakers. Hard for men in boots to outrun teenagers in sneakers. Harder still to hear sneakers if you’re busy stomping around in boots.

We ran and now, ahead of us, gray light.

“That’s not torchlight,” April said, panting.

We soon reached the source of the light. A tunnel that went off to the left. It was not meant for people to walk through. It was no more than four feet square. But at the end I saw a perfect square of blue.

“Ventilation shaft,” Jalil said. “I don’t know how high up we are, but we’re definitely up. We go that way, we’re probably looking at a long drop.”

I snagged a piece of the frayed sleeve of my sweatshirt and ripped it off. I wedged the fabric in a crack in the rocks. “Maybe this’ll make them think we went that way.”

We continued along the tunnel, running at a pace we could handle. The noise behind us was fading. We were gaining. Then, a sudden turn in the tunnel, around the corner with Jalil in the lead, and—

“Stop! Back! Back! Back!” Jalil stopped fast, jumped back, and spread his arms to stop the rest of us.

I glimpsed a sheer drop. The tunnel simply came to an end, opening into a vast natural cave. Stalagmites shot up from the floor, natural skyscrapers. Stalactites hung down from above. An eerie glow filled the cavern. It was a glow that came from a living creature. There, curled and coiled, its loops wrapped casually around pillars of stone, lay a snake. It was radioactive green, with a pattern of hollow squares, like yellow leopard spots, all along its length.

The yellow spots were each the size of a basketball court.

It was a snake the size of a fifty-car freight train. And that was only the part we could see. There was no way of knowing how far back down the caves this hideous, impossible creature stretched.

“You know that film they showed in, like, fourth grade?” Christopher said. “That nature film where they showed a python eating a small pig and you could see the bulge of the pig going through the snake?”

I didn’t remember ever seeing that film. But I knew what Christopher was talking about.

“Well,” he said, “this snake could swallow a cement truck. With no bulge.”

We stood rooted in place at the edge of the precipice, the four of us pressed against Jalil’s arms, staring down at the snake.

Just then, I guess someone finally told Loki we’d escaped.

“FIND THEM!”

The voice blasted down the tunnel. It was thunder! It was bombs going off! It shook the rock beneath our feet.

April fell against Jalil.

Jalil windmilled his arms madly, trying to fly. I stuck out a hand and grabbed his right arm. He spun to face me. His foot slipped. He fell.

The snake is probably the Midgard Serpent, one of Loki's children, apparently taking a break from eating the World Tree.

* # ? May 4, 2023 03:57
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 14

quote:

I gripped Jalil’s hand but his fingers escaped.

His face hit hard on the edge of the floor. His hands scrabbled on stone. April screamed.

Jalil was slipping. I dropped to my belly. Jalil’s left hand waved, helpless, unable to grab anything but air.

I clamped both my hands on his right arm, but it was a weak grip. His fingernails clawed at stone. Sweat slicked his forearm.

And now I was slipping. I snatched his sleeve to improve my grip. But I was being dragged, dragged toward the edge.

He looked at me, eyes huge, mouth open like he was screaming, but no sound came out.

Slipping… slipping… I had to let go or I’d—

April landed on my back, too hard, almost knocking the wind out of me, but stopping my slide.

I caught a flash of Christopher down on his belly, too. He was extended out over the edge, trying to grab Jalil’s flailing hand. My fingers slipped. Damp, smooth flesh. I couldn’t hold on. I dug my fingernails, ready to tear Jalil’s skin to save him.

Slip!

“Ahhh!”

I caught him again at the wrist. Now his other hand was too far for Christopher to reach. But I could hold onto the wrist better. Both hands tight around Jalil’s wrist till they cramped.

Then, behind Jalil’s head, I saw it.

The snake’s head rose up, up, slit eyes amused and eager. A bluish tongue, forked, thick as bridge cable, thirty, forty feet long, whipped out, whipped back, whipped out and quivered, tasting the air.

I flashed on Loki’s tapestry, the uniforms of his men: Was this the snake who’d been used to drop venom on the god’s face?

“FIND THEM!” Loki cried again. The sound hammered at them, confusing my thoughts.

“I HAVE THEM, FATHER!”

This voice had come from the snake. No lips had moved. It had no lips. But the sound had come from the snake with the intelligent, mocking eyes.

“Father? Father?” Christopher demanded shrilly. “I thought my family was messed up!”

The snake’s mouth opened like an automatic garage door. It opened and then there were the fangs, glittering in the puffy pink-flesh mouth.

Jalil flailed. Christopher nearly toppled over the edge, reaching for his hand. In seconds the snake would strike.

“April! Backpack,” I gasped. “Give it to Christopher.”

I could feel her on me, squirming, getting it off her. “Here!” she yelled.

Christopher wrapped one hand through a strap and swung the pack out, trying to lasso Jalil’s other hand.

A grab, a miss! A grab…

Yes!

Jalil’s hand snagged the strap, Christopher clamped his own hands around Jalil’s wrist, and we pulled. Jalil’s feet scrabbled at th sheer wall below him and found some tiny edge to push against.

Up he came.

The snake’s eyes darkened.

Like a bullwhip, it struck!

Jalil clambered up as the snake’s head slammed against the tunnel opening, fangs out. Fangs so big I could have stuck my fist up inside the hypodermic hole.

But the snake’s head was too big for the tunnel. We wobbled to our feet and ran. Then we stopped very suddenly.

Christopher yelled a curse. We were face-to-face with a tunnel crammed with trolls and men, all with swords drawn and axes held ready.

Behind us, the enraged snake reared back and slammed itself against the tunnel opening again.

“Down!” Jalil yelled. He shoved me face-forward. I plowed into April. Christopher must have figured it out on his own because he hit the dirt like he’d been tackled from behind.

The snake’s forked tongue shot just inches above us. It darted forward down the tunnel, knocking down a handful of trolls and men like bowling pins.

The forked tongue curved and wrapped and snapped back.

Snapped back over us with several hundred pounds of bellowing trolls and wild Norsemen.

I was kicked, pummeled, and nearly slashed by a sword blade. I raised my head just enough to see them sucked, screaming, into that pulpy pink mouth.
The two men and single troll who were left backpedaled fast. I charged, sword held straight out in front of me.

Taken by surprise, the two men slammed back against the tunnel wall. The troll stood blinking stupidly. I rammed the sword into his chest and kept on running.

April was right behind me, Jalil, Christopher.

Suddenly, the sound of a bag of cement hitting the ground.

One of the men had tripped Christopher. The Norseman was drawing a long knife from his belt. He pulled Christopher’s head back by the hair, exposing his throat.

Jalil fumbled in his pocket.

“drat it!” I yelled in utter frustration. I had no weapon. Nothing! The remaining Norseman was grinning. Grinning at April. He grabbed at her. She evaded him.

Just then I saw the tiny Swiss Army knife open in Jalil’s hand. He slashed at the knife hand of the guy who had Christopher. The big man gaped at the small red wound on his hand.

Christopher twisted around on his back, pulled both his legs up into fetal position, and unloaded with every muscle in his body.

His feet hit the big Viking in the very location that no man—not even a big Viking—wants to be kicked.

“Argh!” the Norseman said. He stumbled back and grabbed himself.

His companion guffawed like an idiot and said, “Now I’ll have the woman to myself! Haw, haw, haw.”

April swung. The heel of her hand came up and nailed the end of the man’s nose. I grabbed hissword arm, slammed his elbow against the rock, and yanked his sword from his numbed hand.

We didn’t stay around to see any more. We hauled.

“The air shaft,” Jalil panted. “Only way.”

It was just fifty feet down the tunnel. A hundred feet down the tunnel was a new rush of armed men.

A race.

I hit the air shaft first, about three seconds before the wave of Norsemen. I jumped to block them from reaching the opening.

“Go! Go! Go!” I yelled to the others.

I held the sword out, ready. A huge man, blond hair greased into Heidi pigtails that hung down from his dingy helmet, stood facing me. He was holding a long-handled battle-ax.

He looked like I was the best thing he’d seen in years. He laughed. He grinned the happy grin of a mad warrior getting ready to do battle.

He roared a threat at me, like some World Wrestling Federation character putting on a ferocious act. Only this was no act.

The others were all in the air shaft, crawling like infants. An undignified parade of butts.

I could stay and fight. I’d lose. I barely knew which end of a sword to hold on to. Or I could run for it.

I backed up into the air shaft, keeping my sword out. The Viking looked disappointed. But he wasn’t going to let me get away. In he came after me.

I was crab-walking, scuffling, backward-crawling, losing more skin off my knees, banging myhead on the low ceiling. I swung the sword weakly, back and forth.

“I’ll kill you!” I yelled.

The Viking laughed. With good reason. He was crawling forward, I was going backward. I was scared to death. He was at a party. He was having the time of his life. He was grinning like a guy who’d just scored the winning touchdown.

But he’d overlooked one major fact: It’s hard to do much with a four-foot-long ax in a four-foot square tunnel. He jabbed, but I could stay out of reach and even knock his sword aside occasionally.

I heard Christopher cursing behind me. “There’s nothing here!” he yelled.

I kept backing up.

“It’s like, a five-hundred-foot drop into the water!”

The choices were not good. But I knew one thing: There might be a ninety-nine-percent chance that a drop that far would kill us all. There was a one-hundred-percent chance we’d die if we stayed to talk things over with the Vikings.

“Do it!” I yelled.

“Oh, man, I should have just let the snake eat me,” Jalil said.

I glanced over my shoulder. The square of light was closer than I’d expected. I could see it past Jalil’s butt and April’s hair.

The Viking took advantage of the distraction. He lunged with the ax. The side of the blade bit into my chest just below my collarbone.

“Just jump!” I bellowed in panic. “Jump! Jump, he’s gonna kill me!”

I backed and backed and backed, and suddenly there was nowhere else to back.

The last thing I saw as I fell was the Viking’s crestfallen face.

So now that we're about halfway through the book, what do people thing? Lot fewer comments on this than there had been on Animorphs, which I put down to people having a bunch of Animorph nostalga.

* # ? May 5, 2023 04:20
  • Quote
kiminewt
Feb 1, 2022

 Yeah probably.

It's interesting in a "kids in way over their head" sort of way, but I can see why I stopped around this part - there's no clear objective for our protagonist (find Senna I guess) and you still have no idea what this world is about (besides "gods") or what our protagonists are supposed to be doing (are they going to get powers? Have to use cunning? Learn new skills? Just run and hide?).

Constrast that with animorphs, Harry Potter or like the Hunger Games (other books for a similar demographic). You know what you're in for within one to three chapters.

* # ? May 5, 2023 07:54
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice

kiminewt posted:


Constrast that with animorphs, Harry Potter or like the Hunger Games (other books for a similar demographic). You know what you're in for within one to three chapters.

I haven't read hunger games but as far as I can tell, part of the difference between this and the Amimorphs and Harry Potter, in those, each book I'd a stand alone story. There's an goal that runs throughout the books (get the Yeerks off Earth, stop Voldemort), but you can read one biik in the series abd have a full story. As far as I can tell, this is one story told over 12 books.

* # ? May 5, 2023 12:37
  • Quote
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, I think one of the reasons Everworld had some issues taking off is that we really don't even have the full setup yet and we're halfway through the book. I'm actually a bit surprised looking back that we haven't seen some of the basic stuff yet

* # ? May 5, 2023 13:14
  • Quote
Kazzah
Jul 15, 2011

Formerly known as
Krazyface
Hair Elf
I'm having a good time, but I always preferred it to Animorphs. I guess the heavier continuity is part of the appeal, for me? The kids never totally settle into a routine or a status quo. The dynamics between them are always shifting. The best parts, the things that stick out in my memory, are basically the four of them bouncing off each other, like in the corridor scene earlier.

* # ? May 5, 2023 14:02
  • Quote
Malpais Legate
Oct 1, 2014

 I had a collection of the first few books in a single volume that I read, but god I retained nothing.

I think a lot of the engagement issue is what you said, we're halfway through the first book and I have no idea the direction it's going.

* # ? May 5, 2023 15:29
  • Quote
bravesword
Apr 13, 2012

Silent Protagonist

Kazzah posted:

I'm having a good time, but I always preferred it to Animorphs. I guess the heavier continuity is part of the appeal, for me? The kids never totally settle into a routine or a status quo. The dynamics between them are always shifting. The best parts, the things that stick out in my memory, are basically the four of them bouncing off each other, like in the corridor scene earlier.

Animorphs is a bit like an older TV show, where there’s some light continuity but you can watch episodes out of order, miss one, etc, and still have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on, due to the fact that its premise is mostly used as a springboard for self-contained adventures and there’s a lot of returning to the status quo until the endgame significantly changes things. Everworld, by contrast, is more like a modern show — it’s more of a singular thing you’re meant to experience in its entirety.

* # ? May 5, 2023 16:14
  • Quote
Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I will say that the action sequences are better than many of the ones in Animorphs. I think that's a consequence of being able to write for an older audience instead of being hamstrung by tween language. But yeah, I posted earlier that I'm wondering what the kids are going to have to do to survive.

* # ? May 5, 2023 18:43
  • Quote
Zonko_T.M.
Jul 1, 2007

I'm not here to fuck spiders!

 I'm enjoying it and In excited to see what happens when Applegrant doesn't have to pull their punches as much (it's pretty great so far) but yeah I have zero idea where this is going right now, and I can see that turning off a lot of kids. And there's no obvious hook, like Animorphs has the whole THEY TURN INTO ANIMALS!!! gimmick to get kids to grab the book.

* # ? May 5, 2023 19:55
  • Quote
someone awful.
Sep 7, 2007


 yeah, i'm also enjoying this so far, but having very much no idea of what's going on or where we're headed means i don't have a lot to say about it yet

* # ? May 5, 2023 20:44
  • Quote
nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013
 I am also enjoying things regardless of what may or may not be happening in the plot because, as I've said a few times now, I find this series a fascinating bit of protoplasm for what Michael Grant would ultimately wind up doing later in his career with the Gone books and other more mature teen-aimed novels. You can tell he wants to tell the kind of story that takes a 500 page book like Gone to achieve, but he's also bound by Scholatic's edicts where it's gotta be under 120-ish pages, so him and Applegate seem to have gone "okay, gently caress it, the whole series is just one big continuing novel then".

We'll see if it holds water or if it sputters out in the future though.

* # ? May 5, 2023 20:51
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 15

quote:

I dropped rear-first from the air shaft.

My foot caught and spun me so I twisted around facedown. I could see the others below me. I could see the inky water below them. I could see the cut-with-a-knife cliffs all around us.

We were falling.

Falling four hundred feet. The height of a forty-story building. Like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, which people did when they didn’t expect to survive.

I was going to hit that water and die.

Except that I was still falling. And so was Christopher, who was closest to hitting. We were all still falling. But slowly. Way too slowly. The air felt normal; it wasn’t whipping past. I breathed it in short, desperate gulps. My heart was hammering. My deep brain was still convinced I would be crushed by the impact.

But then I saw Christopher hit. He entered the water with barely a ripple. Like an Olympic diver. Right behind him, April and Jalil. Both with no more impact than if they’d jumped off the side of a pool.

I had time to straighten myself up, to pull my legs up, then extend them again, pointing downward.

And as I did this I happened to see a pinpoint of light shining from between two daggerlike rocks atop the cliff. The light shone, then winked, came on again and, just as I hit the water, disappeared.

My feet hit water. I plunged down, but no more than five or six feet.

For a few seconds the water actually felt good. My wrists were scraped to the meat, my upper chest had been stabbed, and my nose was still a mess.

More to the point, the water cleaned away the rank smell of my own cowardice.

But then, cold. The water was about one degree away from being a big block of ice. I plowed back up to the surface.

“Oh!” Jalil said, sucking in air not two feet from me. “Oh, that’s cold.”

Christopher and April were not far away.

“Swim for shore,” I said.

“Gee, do you think?” Christopher chattered. “I was wondering if maybe we could get up a game of water polo.”

I kicked hard to push myself up for a better view. We were in some kind of narrow inlet. The black cliffs rose around us on all sides. We almost could have been in some huge well. I felt I could sense which way the open water lay, but I couldn’t see it. The cliffs seemed to hang like curtains in every direction I looked.

I saw a boat. Instinctively I ducked. But that was stupid. Anyone in the boat would have seen us falling. Besides, the boat seemed to be drifting.

“There’s a boat,” I said. The cold was really attacking my muscles now.

“Leonardo,” April muttered through shuddering teeth.

\“What?” I said.
“
Leo DiCaprio. Titanic. Drowned in the icy North Atlantic. Cold like this.”
“
I didn’t see it. Come on, let’s swim for the boat.”
“
You didn’t see Titanic?” Her incredulous voice followed me as I began swimming hard for the boat.

It wasn’t far. I grabbed the gunwale and rocked the boat down so I could look inside. No one. Some stuff tied up with rope and a couple of oars.
The boat belonged to someone. But it was my boat now.

I hauled myself up like I was doing a push-up, then twisted and squirmed until I flopped, wet and frozen, in the bottom of the boat.

I wanted to just lie there and rest, but I hauled my lead-heavy body up to my knees and helped manhandle Christopher up and over. The two of us easily yanked Jalil and April up out of the water.

Then we all just lay there, lifeless, crumpled, arms and legs splayed out, staying as we’d fallen.

We knew we should be running or at least rowing for our lives. But we’d been long since exhausted, and nothing adds to weariness like cold.

I hauled my granite-stiff body up and leaned back against the tied bundle. It was soft. I closed my eyes. I never intended to fall asleep, not there, rocking in a twenty-foot rowboat. But I was done for.

I closed my eyes on the black cliffs towering over my head.

And I opened them in World Civilizations. Last period.

“Ahhh!” I sat upright in my desk. My book went sliding off and hit the floor.

"Once, Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly.
A vivid, vibrant butterfly
who didn’t know about Zhang.

Suddenly he awoke, and was a startled, surprised Zhang
who didn’t know:
Was the butterfly in Zhang's dream?
Is Zhang in the butterfly’s dream?

Zhang and the butterfly—there’s definitely a difference.
Let’s call this, things change."-Zhuangzi

* # ? May 7, 2023 03:39
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 16

quote:

“Yes, Mr. Levin?” the teacher, Mr. Arbuthnot, asked me, arching one eyebrow and peering over the top of his half-glasses. “Was that an exclamation of delight at the contributions made by Galileo?”

I grabbed my desktop. I stared at the girl sitting across the aisle from me. I was in my desk. In my desk.

I was dry. Warm. I was dressed in jeans and a baggy cotton sweater. I stared at my wrists.

Nothing! No blood, no scabs, no scars.

I slapped my hand to my chest. No stab wound.

I touched my nose. Cotton bandages. My nose was tender. At least that was real.

“A dream?” I muttered.

Mr. Arbuthnot had lost patience. “Mr. Levin, we are rather busy studying the Italian Renaissance. Granted, only two or three of your fellow students are paying attention, but do you suppose that for their sake you could control yourself?”

This was insane. It had all been a dream? No way. Not poss—

My eyes snapped open. Open on Jalil’s annoyed face. He was smothering me, his hand clamped over my nose and mouth.

I slapped his icy fingers away. “What the hell are you doing?”

“See?” he said calmly. “No need to yell. Simply shut off the flow of oxygen and a person will wake up.”

He sat back, clutching his arms, shivering.

I blinked at him. Utter confusion. A wet April and a wet Christopher glared at me.

“How can you sleep?” April demanded, outraged.

“He has the only pillow.” Christopher pushed past me and began untying the bundle I was leaning on. But the knots wouldn’t give way to his blue-tinged fingers.

Jalil unfolded his knife, inspected the ropes and cut once. He pulled the rope away, wound it up, and stuck it into April’s backpack.

I stared, uncomprehending. I was still dealing with having been in Arbuthnot’s class. Was that a dream? Was this? Both had seemed real. Both had felt… complete.

“Clothes,” Christopher said. “Warm clothes. Here.” He tossed a dull gray wool dress to April.

“I must have dreamed,” I said. “I was back home. In class. Last period. World Civ.”

“Yeah? Well, your dreams suck,” Christopher said. “You could have dreamed anything. You come up with World Civ? Here.”

He handed me a skin. Shaggy gray fur. Actually two, crudely stitched together. I wrapped it around myself. I found a belt and cinched it around the waist. Then realized I had the rough garment on upside down. There was no neck hole, but the skins formed vague shoulders.

And really all that mattered to me was that it was warm.

“Okay, does anyone else have a slight problem with this?” Jalil asked. “There just happens to be a boat and no one around? There just happens to be a bunch of warm clothing that just happens to fit us?”

I rose gingerly to my feet, careful not to capsize the boat. I looked around. Bare rock wall plunged straight from the clouds down into the water and probably hundreds of feet farther down. I saw no beach. No place to get out of the water, except for a tumble of boulders where one of the rock faces had collapsed.

“If we hadn’t found the boat, we’d have frozen and died,” I said. “No way out of the water.”

“We were awfully lucky, then,” April said darkly. “Way lucky.”

“How about the way we fell?” Christopher asked. “Like slow motion. You can’t be jumping that far and survive.”

“Someone wants us alive,” April said. “And I want to thank them.”

Jalil shook his head. He was bundled in a sheepskin jacket, fur turned inward. He’d found a matching hat. I would have laughed, only I was wearing a fur coat. And to be honest, I was jealous of the hat. It looked warm.

“Before I thank them I want to know how they did it,” Jalil said. “How do you make someone fall slowly? No wires? No parachute? How do you make someone fall slowly?”

Christopher looked like he was trying to work up a snappy comeback. But instead he unwrapped a small parcel that had been with the clothing. He pulled out what looked like it might be a turkey drumstick.

“What? No cornbread dressing?” he said wonderingly. “There’s four of these. I don’t see any maggots or mildew or anything.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” April said. “And even if I weren’t, I don’t think I’d be eating skanky old turkey legs.”

“I’d eat a live turkey about now,” Christopher said.

“Let’s get this boat moving,” I said. “Anyone know how to row? How to handle a boat?”

“What’s to know?” Christopher asked as he ripped a mouthful of meat from his drumstick.

“What’s to know,” I muttered. “Figures. I’d better row.”

I settled myself facing the stern and fitted the oars to the carved bone oarlocks. I dipped the oars and the boat began to move. It was a sluggish thing, but I felt better moving.

“We need to think about where we are, what we’re doing,” Jalil said.

Christopher grinned over his drumstick. “Surely you know where we are? We’re up a certain well-known creek, but with a paddle.”

\Jalil did not smile. April did. And she glanced at the meat, too.

“Want some?” Christopher offered a piece to Jalil.

Jalil shook his head. “No. I’m waiting to see if you die first. Salmonella. Botulism. Poison…”

Christopher took a defiant bite.

Jalil said, “So, here’s what we have. We’ve been transported to some place that shouldn’t exist, but obviously does. We’ve run into creatures who shouldn’t exist, but obviously do. Loki, Fenrir, that snake the size of a derailed Amtrak, trolls. Not to mention Vikings. We jump and fall too slowly, just happening to land near a boat loaded with clothes for three males and one female. And while we’re at it: Why does a Norse god speak English?”

I was getting into the rowing. The familiar rhythm was reassuring. But it was causing blood to seep from the shallow puncture in my chest. Not much blood. Not enough to worry about. But it wasn’t going to heal with me rowing.

The cliff face passed by, undifferentiated, featureless. I glanced over my shoulder every so often.

Nothing visible ahead, either.

I saw April smile mischievously at Jalil. “It’s magic. It’s all magic.” She was baiting Jalil. I guess she knew something about him that I didn’t.

Jalil jumped at the bait. “Magic? You mean, what? Something supernatural?”

The word “supernatural” was a sneer.

“Superstitious nonsense. It’s for idiots. Horoscopes, New Age baloney, magic, auras, all of it. If something exists, it’s part of nature. So the whole idea of something being ‘supernatural’ is ridiculous. I mean, by definition nature is the sum of all things that exist, so if something exists, it’s in nature.”

April grinned, satisfied at having provoked Jalil. “So what’s your explanation, Jalil? I may be wrong, but that guy back there calling himself Loki looked pretty supernatural to me.”

“No. No. see, that’s my point. I’m obviously not denying that Loki and all the rest of this is real. I’m just saying that one way or another there will be a logical, natural explanation.”

Christopher laughed. “You know, I thought all black guys in Chicago area wanted to grow up to be Michael Jordan. You want to grow up to be Mr. Tuvok.”

“Who’s Mr. Tuvok?” Jalil said coldly. “And by the way, all black guys don’t want any one thing. Oh, wait: No, we do all want not to be stereotyped by ignorant white trash.”

Christopher held up his hands, palms out, miming “no offense.” Then he said, “Hey, I basically agree with you. I believe in what I can see and touch and eat and drink and spend. Everything else is bull.”

April nodded. “You are so right, Christopher. I mean, you are so right and so forceful and all that, you just get me hot. I mean, you really do, and we’re going to die anyway, so just take me now.” She scooted back toward Christopher and lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I want you here and now.”

She was just convincing enough that Christopher made a sort of move to put his arm around her. She pushed away, laughing slyly.

“Ah, so you just believe in what you can see, huh? Looks to me like you were ready to believe in a miracle.”

Christopher flushed, gaped, and then laughed. I gave him credit for that. Lots of guys can laugh at someone else. Christopher could laugh at himself. You see a lot less of that.

\I kept rowing. I was thinking about what Jalil had said. He had definite beliefs. Me, I was clueless. I just knew one thing: All of it involved Senna.

I was remembering her when we came around a sharp corner and were, very suddenly, not alone.

So morale isn't necessarily that high right now.

* # ? May 8, 2023 03:04
  • Quote
Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
Huh so they can hop back and forth if they sleep? I don't think that was a dream.

* # ? May 8, 2023 17:00
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 17

quote:

The longboats wallowed at anchor, masts bare, empty. Other ships lay beached at the bottom of the crescent-shaped harbor. They’d been pulled up onto a stingy strip of black sand. All together there must have been thirty or forty warships and an equal number of broader-beamed cargo ships.

There was a village to our port side—left, if you’re facing the bow. I saw smoke curling up. Through the masts, over the low-slung ships, I glimpsed crude stone houses. I saw people moving back and forth, lots of people.

The black cliffs curved up and behind the village, petering down into a series of upjutting rock teeth. Trees grew behind that dragon’s spine of stone. A forest of tall, straight, dark pines rising on a gentle slope.

I noticed some sort of wall, but I couldn’t see it very well, just bits and pieces.

Between the wall and the rocks was bare grass. Open space. It had probably been forest once, cut down to build the town.
‘
Get us out of here!’ Christopher hissed. ‘Before they see us.’
‘
They’ve already seen us,’ I said. I nodded toward a man standing on a nearby anchored ship. He stood with his foot on the gunwale. He was resting his hand on a longbow and watching us with a marksman’s eye. ‘I wonder if he’s any good with that bow.’

‘Let’s not find out,’ Jalil said.

April took matters into her own hands. ‘Hello!’ she yelled, waving at the Viking bowman. ‘Hi, how are you?’

No response.

I kept rowing. A good bowman could hit us from this distance. A really good bowman could probably put a shaft through each of us inside of about thirty seconds.

I felt that shaft. Felt it in my guts, felt it sticking out past my spine. Imagined being able to reach behind me and grab the bloody arrowhead.

‘Maybe we should just row away, you know, and keep smiling,’ Christopher suggested.

My sword was lying in the bottom of the boat. If I could get close enough, maybe…

Suddenly, around the back of the nearest ship, a boat only slightly larger than ours came into view. Two men with arms like my legs were rowing it. The boat turned neatly around the sea serpent prow of the ship and came for us.

‘We just cannot catch a break,’ Christopher muttered.

One of the oarsmen stopped and stood up. ‘Who are you? Why do you come here?’

Three of them now. Four of us. But that was comparing Marines to toddlers. They were armed. They were dangerous. We were four lost fools in a rowboat.

‘My name is April,’ she said, putting out a dazzling smile.

The Viking glared. ‘Does your woman speak for you?’

‘Sexist jerk,’ April said. But in a whisper.

I backed my oars, killing our momentum. ‘My name is David. This is Christopher. This is Jalil.’

‘Strange names.’

‘We are strangers.’

‘What manner of men are you? What land do you come from? Are you from the sun-worshipers, the filthy man-eaters?’

‘I’m thinking we answer a big N.O. to that,’ Christopher whispered.

‘No,’ April said, ‘we’re from… from north of Chicago.’

The Viking stared, not liking the answer. He was deciding. I could see it in his eyes.

My life was in his eyes.

Suddenly it was like a light went on in the Viking’s head. ‘Are you the minstrels? King Olaf Ironfoot is expecting a troop of minstrels. He has grown impatient and feared that they have been killed by wild beasts or else murdered.’

‘Well, worry no more, we are your minstrels,’ Christopher said quickly, voice shaky. ‘We haven’t been killed by wild animals or murdered, although it’s not for lack of people trying.’

But the suspicious look was back on the Viking’s face. He shot a warning look at the bowman. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the bow come up into its owner’s hand. With shocking speed, he drew and fitted an arrow.

‘If you’re minstrels, give us a song.’

I looked at Jalil. Jalil looked at Christopher. We all looked at April. At the same time

I bent over just enough to grip the hilt of the sword. Maybe a quick swipe and I could take down the big guy. Of course that still left the bowman.

‘I don’t know any Viking songs!’ she hissed.

‘Give him something with lots of killing in it,’ I said.

‘What, Marilyn Manson? I don’t listen to that crap!’

‘Don’t you know anything with killing in it?’ Christopher demanded. ‘Where were you when everyone was into gangsta rap?’

April bit her lip, eyes darting back and forth as she dredged through her memory.

‘Killing!’ she yelled suddenly.

‘ “Killing… killing me softly with his song… playing my life with his words…” ’

I froze. The world froze. She was singing and the Viking was deciding whether we heard the end of the song or never heard anything again. The arrow would fly. I would reach to stop it, but by the time my hands came up, by the time my fingers began to close, it would be in me, through me, draining my blood in fountain spurts.

But now April was getting into it. The shaky fear voice was giving way to a singing voice that grew stronger and more confident. Her eyes were closed. Her hands were white as she twined them nails digging into bone.

The girl could sing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I thought of as a Viking song.

‘ “I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style. And so I went to hear him to listen for a while…” ’

I watched the big Viking closely as April’s beautiful voice seemed to fill the harbor. His expression remained hard. But then I saw something amazing:
The Norseman was crying. I don’t mean a little moisture. I mean tears streaming down his scarred cheeks into his greasy beard.

The oarsman behind him was similarly affected. I shot a look at the guy with the bow. No tears, but he was gazing off into blankness now, lost in memory.

I let go of the sword hilt. We weren’t going to fight our way out.

We were going to sing for our lives.

Killing Me Softly is a really good song.

* # ? May 9, 2023 03:53
  • Quote
Fuschia tude
Dec 26, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

nine-gear crow posted:

You can tell he wants to tell the kind of story that takes a 500 page book like Gone to achieve, but he's also bound by Scholatic's edicts where it's gotta be under 120-ish pages, so him and Applegate seem to have gone "okay, gently caress it, the whole series is just one big continuing novel then".

Epicurius posted:

Book 1 has 32 chapters, compared to book one of Animorphs, which has 27.

Book 1 is 208 pages long, compared to 184 of Animorphs #1. The font and spacing is slightly smaller, too, so the word count is probably more than 10% higher as well.

* # ? May 9, 2023 06:13
  • Quote
Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I literally loled at killing me softly, yeah that song slaps

* # ? May 9, 2023 18:29
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 18

quote:

There was more to the village than I’d thought. The architecture wasn’t grand or imposing, except for a sort of town hall kind of place that had been built out of whole logs and rose above all the surrounding buildings.

Three piers extended out into the water, with a wharf built of tarred, split logs.

Longshoremen off-loaded bundles from wide-hulled merchant ships. The longshoremen must have been slaves. They were a motley bunch, ranging from the blond, blue-eyed Viking look to smaller, olive-complected men and women to black people, but all with shaved heads. I saw no whipping going on, but a couple of big, old Vikings were roaring away, giving mostly superfluous orders and pushing people around.

Beyond the primitive dock sat warehouses that also looked like they were built of Lincoln Logs. They’d have been right at home in the old West.

Just beyond the far pier and curving away inland was the defensive wall I’d glimpsed earlier, logs set vertically and cut into sharp points. I guessed that it ringed the entire village, but I couldn’t see it. I did see a tower, again like something out of an old cavalry movie. Except instead of bluecoats carrying Winchesters, there were bowmen pacing around a parapet and looking pretty alert.

We headed uphill to the tow proper. Here the population became more noticeable.

We saw a lot of people. More people than could possibly have fit into the twenty or thirty buildings that comprised the village.

And surely this village could not have supported the fleet of ships in its harbor. It was a forest of masts. I counted to thirty and still had only counted a fraction of the ships.

For the most part the men seemed to be engaged in swaggering around, talking in loud voices, and clapping one another on the back. Most were armed. But not all were armed alike. Or dressed alike. After a while you could start to make out differences between what had to be officers and ordinary soldiers.

The officers often wore chain-mail shirts. They carried swords with jeweled hilts or gold-scrolled scabbards. Some carried battle-axes with carved handles and elaborate heads. They had tall leather boots, more luxuriant furs, better-sewn pants. They had attendants, helpers, whatever you call them, who carried their helmets and axes.

Squires.

The common soldiers wore simpler clothing and carried simpler weapons. No chain mail. No gold. No engraving. Axes that looked like they came from Kmart instead of a jewelry store. Helmets that could have been banged together out of recycled soup cans.

But even the common soldiers were a loud, swaggering, boisterous bunch. No cringing. No saluting. No groveling. None of what my dad would have delicately called “military chicken product.”

I began to notice something else, too. Not all of these Vikings were quite what you’d think of as Norsemen. Yes, the big, blond type predominated heavily, but there were Vikings who looked like they’d just come in from South America, Africa, or China. And a lot who looked less easily identifiable: mixes of Nordic and Asian, Nordic and African.

These were as likely to be officers as common soldiers, and all had the same swagger, the same haw, haw, haw laugh, the same eager, dangerous eyes.

Blond or brown, these were big, strong, muscular, dirty-faced, smelling-of-sweat-and-charred-meat warriors. They weren’t playing dress-up. They weren’t putting on an act. These guys killed, face-to-face, ax-to-ax. Everywhere I looked I saw nasty scars, missing eyes, ears, hands, and arms. One young Viking, probably no older than me, had a livid scar, a puckered puncture wound on both cheeks. Someone had stuck a sword
through this guy’s mouth.

I felt small. Weak. Not something I’m used to feeling. Not something I like feeling. The memory of my own terror was still all over me. It popped up out of nowhere. It was attached to other thoughts the way remoras are attached to sharks.

Of course, not every man was a warrior. I saw unarmed men as well. Some were richly dressed. Maybe businessmen. Others were working. We passed a blazingly hot smithy, open forge aglow, two sweaty slaves working a huge bellows while a hairy shirtless Viking with shoulders like the front end of my old Buick hammered away, whang! whang! whang!

Swords hung from the front of the building, and a nice selection of battle-axes. But hoops for barrels were on display, too, along with nails and woodworking tools. Our guide—or captor, it was hard to be sure which—led us on past an area where more than a dozen open fires had been reduced to coals. Entire cows, pigs, sheep, and goats were blistering and burning on slowly rotating spits. Vast iron pots bubbled. Fish, some several feet long, others smaller, were sandwiched into iron grids and suspended above the fire.

Maybe fifty women were working this outdoor kitchen, hustling around like any harried bunch of cooks. It was overseen by an immense woman with black hair gathered into pigtails.

‘My wife,’ our guide said genially.

‘She’s very impressive,’ April said. ‘May I ask her name?’

‘She is called Gudrun. Gudrun, Man-Beater.’

I looked closer and saw the staff she carried. A five-foot-long piece of skinned tree branch. On the end was a doubled fist-sized knot.

‘I am Thorolf,’ he added politely. And then he did something that surprised me, without my knowing exactly why. He pulled out a leather pouch and a rough-cut rectangle of thin paper. And he proceeded to roll himself a cigar.

‘Our names, again, in case their oddness may have caused you to forget, are April, Christopher, Jalil, and David.’

‘Who is your lord?’ Thorolf asked, as casually as if he’d asked what school we attended. But it was a loaded question. A dangerous question, I sensed.

‘We’re independent,’ I said, trying to match his casual tone.

Bright blue eyes narrowed at me. He lit the stogie, inhaled, and breathed out a cloud of smoke. ‘You are free men? Not slaves?’

‘Free men,’ I said.

‘You are not from around here,’ he said. A statement.

‘No,’ I said, keeping it simple.

Thorolf accepted that. Accepted, at least, that we wanted to mind our own business and have him mind his.

‘I will arrange for food and drink. King Olaf will send for you when he wishes entertainment. He is in counsel with the other kings and earls.’

He led us on to a corral containing forty or fifty stocky, shaggy horses. There were lean-tos around the perimeter of the corral fence. Most seemed to contain hay and alfalfa for the horses. Some contained what you got from horses after you fed them hay and alfalfa.

‘You stay there,’ he said, pointing to a decent, clean little shed, open on one side.

‘Food will be brought. And drink, eh? Eh? What point in food if there is no drink?’

he stomped off, blowing clouds of cigar smoke into the frosty air.

‘Tobacco!’ Jalil said excitedly. ‘Hah.’

‘It bothered me, too,’ April said. ‘But I didn’t think it was the right time to bitch about second-hand smoke.’

Jalil waved his hand impatiently. ‘Who cares about smoke? The man was smoking tobacco. A Viking!

We all stared pretty blankly. I was busy trying to see a line of retreat if things got bad.

‘Tobacco is a New World plant. So is corn. And tomatoes. They were stewing up corn and tomatoes back there. None of which any real Viking would have.’

‘That’s what you focus on?’ Christopher asked. ‘You focus on tobacco and corn? The man’s a living, breathing Viking, speaking English and living practically next door to Loki’s happy little family, for God’s sake. Why wouldn’t he have a stogie?’
‘
It just proves it’s not a dream,’ Jalil said defensively. ‘I might dream about Vikings, and since I don’t speak Nordic they’d have to be English-speaking Vikings. But I’m not dumb enough to have a Viking firing up a panatela. And I don’t know why I’d come up with Asian Vikings. Black, maybe.’

‘Just proves it’s not your dream,’ April said. ‘Maybe it’s my dream and I just think it’s kind of… exciting… all these big, burly men and all.’

A woman appeared quite suddenly, carrying a tray. Without a word she set it down on the ground and walked away.

We took a look at the tray. A loaf of dark bread. A single, big bowl of soup. A hunk of rank cheese. Two deep-cut bowls. One water, and the other…

‘Beer!’ Christopher said, delighted. ‘Hey, maybe this is a dream. My dream!’

‘I’m thinking maybe getting faced isn’t a great idea,’ I said. I don’t drink. My personal choice.

‘Say what? After the day we’ve had? This is the best excuse for getting hammered I’ve ever imagined.’ He took a deep, defiant swig of the beer and glared at me over the rim.

April laughed and took the bowl from him. ‘I’m guessing the drinking age here is about three,’ she said. She took a sip and spat it out on the ground.

‘Okay, let’s try the water.’

We broke up the bread and wolfed it down. It was excellent. The soup was even better, despite having to dig the chunks out with our fingers.

‘Food is freaking magic,’ Christopher said. ‘I mean, after a day of hanging around the castle walls, being terrorized by insane mythical gods, you need some food. Food and beer,’ he added, looking defiantly at me again.

I calmly took a drink from the water.

We heard an explosive guffaw. I spun left and saw Thorolf. He was hysterical. I mean, laughing like he could laugh himself to death. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

We’d made the man cry twice in an hour.

‘Come, come,’ he managed to gasp. ‘The king has called for you. Oh, you really are minstrels! Drinking the washing water and leaving the beer! Ah-hah-hah-HAH!’

So finally some vikings who don't want to kill them on sight. That's a step up.

* # ? May 10, 2023 03:21
  • Quote
kiminewt
Feb 1, 2022

 Time to sing some Britney, tell the tales of Bilbo Baggins and ask the king what is the deal with ovaltine

* # ? May 10, 2023 11:46
  • Quote
Malpais Legate
Oct 1, 2014

 The beer is probably safer to drink here, you clowns!

* # ? May 11, 2023 01:59
  • Quote
WrightOfWay
Jul 24, 2010


 There was a group of vikings that rather famously made the trip to North America before Columbus, Jalil.

* # ? May 11, 2023 02:34
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 19

quote:

‘We don’t exactly have an act,’ April muttered.

We marched through the pushing, shoving, happily drunk throng. The crowd grew more and more dense as we approached the large building that dominated the center of town.
‘
Make way, make way!’ Thorolf yelled, pushing common soldiers aside, roughly but without malice, and shouldering past officers.

The proportion of officers grew as we progressed. So did the general level of drunkenness. I was a good head shorter than the average guy we passed, a head and a neck shorter than a lot of them. And most of them were armed.

Suddenly we were shoved out into an open space. I hadn’t even noticed when we’d passed within the great hall, but now I could see.

It was like a model version of Loki’s throne room. Timber walls that had been roughly plastered instead of Loki’s stone. A high, wood roof supported by massive beams.

Shields, all scarred, many with holes, hung from the top of the left wall. Along the right were various flags and banners. War trophies, I assumed. The shields and banners of enemies who hadn’t done too well upon meeting the Norsemen. Like something you’d see in a museum. Only these didn’t represent some long-ago, forgotten battle. Some of the bodies represented by these banners and shields still lay rotting on misty fields. Widows and orphans still living remembered the men who’d fallen behind these banners.

In the center of the room was an open hearth the size of a small swimming pool.

Smoke rose to a hole in the roof. The smell stayed behind: the smell of burning meat, joining the smell of sweat and beer and smoke.

‘It’s like one of my brother’s frat parties,’ Christopher said, in a shout that could barely be heard above the level of voices all around.

Back from the fire, behind a clothed table sat a dozen or so Vikings. These were rich men, powerful men: silver brooches, lush furs, polished leather, chains of silver baubles around their necks, elaborately filigreed silver goblets, silver-handled knives sticking out of the piles of meat before them.

Some of the men at the table looked like punks. Drunk, glaring, mad-at-the-world, don’t-make-me-kick-your-rear end punks. Sadists. Psychos.

But for the most part they were a sober, bright-looking crowd. They were swilling beer and something that came in smaller glasses, but they still looked clear-eyed enough.

Then I recognized a face I knew. At the far end of the table, ignored by everyone, was the old man who had sacrificed the sheep.

He looked at me. I looked at him. We both knew we’d seen each other before. I had to work to start breathing again.

At the center of the table was a black man chewing at the edges of a slab of pink meat on a silver knife.

Thorolf pushed us forward. ‘My king! The minstrels are here,’ he said in a bellow that was normal conversational speech in this crowd.

‘They had better be good,’ King Olaf Ironfoot warned. He jerked the meat-laden knife toward one of the other Vikings to his left. ‘My good friend King Eric the Grim says his sword is hungry for blood.’

This evoked quite a bit of guffawing by all but Eric, who glared and said, ‘Would I dirty my sword with these… these gamesters? Better to throw them into the fire and hear their fat crackle in the flames, as the sun-worshipers do!’

Now an argument erupted. Another Viking said, ‘That’s not the sun-worshipers. My second wife was a princess of the sun-worshipers. They did not burn men, they cut open their chests while still alive and drew out their still-beating hearts.’

This was accompanied by hand gestures and by rude asides from some of the others at the table: ‘Princess, my arse, she was a slave girl with nice—’

‘They burn them, too!’ Eric said, punctuating his statement by pounding on the table and making a burned pig jump. ‘They burn them and eat their bones!’

‘Are you saying I am a fool? That my second wife, mother to my eldest son, would dare lie to me?’

Olaf held up a placating hand and even put down his knife. ‘Worthy kings, worthy kings. There are four minstrels here. Enough for you, Eric, to burn, and for you, Hedrick, to cut out their hearts.’

Another fabulous witticism from Olaf and the place erupted in haw, haw, haws and ‘What did he says?’

‘Come, minstrels. Juggle, jest, or recite the poems composed by your betters. If you amuse me you will be well-rewarded. And if not—’ He looked around, building to the big joke. ‘If you do not, then we must in the spirit of fairness cut out your hearts… and then roast you.’

The last time I’d tried to entertain anyone had been the ill-fated poem where Christopher had made everyone laugh.

This was going to be worse.

What passed for silence descended. In other words, there was a sort of lull in the mayhem.

‘April! Sing something!’ Christopher said through gritted teeth.

‘I—’ she stammered. ‘I—’

The look in Olaf’s eyes grew darker. He wasn’t laughing anymore. ‘Give us a poem!’ he roared in a voice that rattled the roof timbers.

I opened my mouth. ‘Twas brillig, and the s-s-slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the—’

‘Do you seek to mock me?’

He wasn’t Loki, but he was doing a good impression.

At the moment it was Christopher who saved us. I don’t know what moved him. I don’t understand the brain that could do what he did next. But at that moment he not only saved us. He gave us a hit.

He stepped forward. He clenched his fist. His knees buckled, but he caught himself before he hit the floor. And in a loud voice edged with hysteria, he sang:

‘M-m-mine eyes have seen the glory of the… the mighty Viking lords, they are trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored. They have loosed the fateful lightning of their terrible swift swords, the Vikes are marching on!’

He went through the ‘glory, glory, hallelujah’ chorus with a few changes and then stopped suddenly.

The Norse kings were gaping. The crowd was silent. And then Olaf, his dark eyes ablaze, said, ‘What do you call this manner of poem?’

‘Um… a song?’ Christopher said in a soprano squeak.

‘A song! Give us more, give us another verse. Only start back at the beginning.’

‘There’s a second verse?’ Christopher asked me, his eyes desperate.

Starting at the beginning was easy enough, and Jalil, April, and I all joined in, more or less tunefully belting out the chorus, but how was Christopher going to come up with a second verse?

‘We jumped aboard our longboats and we sailed upon the seas, and we slaughtered all who fought us and we did just as we pleased, ‘cause we’re crazy Viking warriors and…and… ’

‘… and we never beg for peace,’ April jumped in.

‘The Vikes are marching on! Glory, glory, hallelujah!’ we all sang. ‘Lordy, how we’ll stick it to ya. Glory, glory, hallelujah, the Vikes are marching on!’
Pandemonium. Foot stomping, fist pounding, yelling, bellowing, roaring approval. Some of the drunker ones were trying to repeat the lyrics, struggling to catch the tune.

Christopher shot me a grin. ‘We own these guys.’

And that’s when the crowd parted and four massive trolls walked in.

At leas they liked the song. The trolls might be trouble,though.

* # ? May 11, 2023 03:03
  • Quote
Mazerunner
Apr 22, 2010

Good Hunter, what... what is this post?
I bet the trolls are the actual minstrels

* # ? May 11, 2023 10:11
  • Quote
Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys
Give 'em some Bach on your cd player.

e: for actual content, anyone else remember reading Marsden's Tomorrow series? I'd be interested to hear if it got any traction outside of Australia. It had that similar setup of teenagers thrown into danger and chaos, but with a military invasion as the cause rather than a dimensional rip. (Come to think of it, a lot of Australian animorphs fans definitely would have moved on to Tomorrow and felt very familiar with the teenage guerilla drama.) Anyway, the characters always felt incredibly real in a way Everworld's characters don't. But that could just be the nostalgia talking.

Tree Bucket fucked around with this message at 03:28 on May 12, 2023

* # ? May 12, 2023 00:57
  • Quote
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
This impromptu song stuck with me forever, I still remember these dumb lyrics better than the original ones

* # ? May 12, 2023 01:02
  • Quote
Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
[Chapter 20

quote:

‘Trouble,’ Jalil whispered.

Olaf curled his lip. ‘Well, my good trolls, what brings you here to a hall of men?’

This was apparently too subtle for the trolls. They stared blankly, confused. I looked for a way out. Reaching any exit would involve getting past a hundred armed Vikings.

Helpless. Trapped. Nothing we could do. I’d soared on hope, and now I was yanked back to reality. Four lame kids in a land of mad killers.

I saw the old man who’d done the sacrifice watching me. A glint of humor? Or at least curiosity?

‘Come, come, good trolls,’ King Olaf said again. ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’

The leader of the group comprehended this. ‘I am Gatch. We come from Great Loki.

He seeks four who… ’ He searched his memory, pig eyes rolling up. ‘Great Loki seeks four who were his guests and are lost.’

I had begun to think the Viking kings were at best primitive warriors and at worst drunken fools. But when I shot a fearful glance at the head table I saw a dozen very alert, very intelligent faces.

Remember that if you live, I told myself. Don’t underestimate these men.

Olaf considered the trolls while he calmly munched his slab of meat. ‘Great Loki has… lost his guests?’

He wasn’t calling the troll a liar. But he wasn’t even half fooled.

‘Yes, O mighty king,’ Gatch said, ducking his big rhino head.

‘Are you sure these guests did not escape?’

The troll answered hotly, ‘No one escapes Great Loki’s castle! It is guarded by loyal men and mighty trolls.’

Olaf nodded reasonably. ‘That is certainly true. Yes. Why, if Loki’s prisoners were ever to escape, Great Loki would look foolish, eh? And good friend troll, you are not calling Loki a fool, are you?’

All four trolls shook their heads. No. No, they sure weren’t calling Loki a fool. But they weren’t blind, either. They kept glancing at the four of us.

‘Those are Loki’s guests,’ the lead troll said defiantly.

That was laying it on the table. Showdown time. I tensed up, searching for a sword I might grab. The babble of voices was dead still. Olaf whispered his next statement.

‘These are my minstrels,’ Olaf said.

‘They… they have the same faces as Great Loki’s guests.’

‘Are you calling me a liar, friend troll?’ Olaf smiled as he said it. But even the trolls weren’t dumb enough to buy the smile. If Olaf so much as raised a finger, an awful lot of swords and an awful lot of axes were going to start flying. The trolls knew it.

‘Great king… ’ the troll leader began, then ran out of words.

Olaf stood up. He was a large man, even by Viking standards. I won’t say he could have wrestled one of the trolls, but he’d have given it a shot. ‘All men know why we are gathered here,’ he announced in a loud, politician’s voice. ‘We gather here to go a- Viking, as our fathers did, as their fathers did, even in the generations of the Old World before the gods brought forth Everworld. And as all our fathers before, we will take to the sea in our ship and visit terror on our foes!’

Lots of foot stomping, then total silence again.

‘Only this time, we go for a new purpose. To collect the ransom demanded by Loki. An impossible ransom to collect, were we not carrying a mighty weapon!’

Everyone but us must have known what the weapon was because Olaf might as well have been introducing Michael Jordan to a Chicago boosters club. The place went nuts.

Olaf weighed the applause, let it go on for a while, then continued. ‘Then we will pay the ransom to Loki so that he may release from unjust captivity the All-Father himself, Odin One-Eye.’

I saw Jalil’s eyebrows go up.

So, I thought. These weren’t Loki’s men at all. Or at least not all of them.

‘I, Olaf, who some call Olaf Ironfoot because my own natural foot was eaten by a dragon—a dragon who will never more trouble a peaceful village—’
lots of murmuring and approval, sort of a collective ‘You got that right.’ Dragon killing was approved of by all, except possibly the trolls, who may have gotten Olaf’s underlying message of ‘Look, I killed a dragon, so don’t mess with me.’
‘
I, Olaf Ironfoot, have said that I will lead the expedition, and I have sworn to pay the ransom demanded by Loki.’ He leaned down over the table, going face-to-face with the troll. ‘Go to your master Loki and tell him this: He needs us to destroy the sunworshipers who ally themselves with the Hetwan. And this we will do. But I am not Loki’s vassal. And I will not be questioned by his foul creatures.’

The trolls hestitated. But not for long.

‘Loki’s guests are not here,’ Gatch said.

Olaf held his hands out placatingly, the genial host again. ‘Exactly what I’ve been telling you.’

The trolls walked away, shoved a few guys just to act tough, and disappeared. The room breathed again. I breathed again.

‘Hetwan,’ Jalil whispered to me.

‘Yeah. I heard.’ At least one Hetwan had been with Loki. And it sounded as if that creepy alien spoke for the head Hetwan. Things were going on here that were over my head. Not my concern. My concern was simple: Keep Olaf happy. Olaf happy meant me alive.

‘Now give us a song again!’ Ironfoot commanded. ‘More verses!’

We sang. I’d have sung anything for the big Viking.

it seems to me that insulting Loki like that isn't necessarily a good idea.

* # ? May 12, 2023 04:07
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Remalle
Feb 12, 2020


 So I was beginning to think this is a world created by the gods to preserve the Old Ways of life and by extension their own worship, but that doesn't exactly explain the presence of aliens. I do appreciate that there's enough worldbuilding established now that I can have more of a sense of what's going on than "hey, it's Loki, I kinda know his deal." Makes it easier to get invested in the story.

* # ? May 12, 2023 17:45
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Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Chapter 21

quote:

We sang the “Battle Hymn of the Vikings” about twenty more times till the whole drunken, reeling assembly was singing along with us. Then April sang “Killing Me Softly” again, and it was a mass weepathon. Burly, violent men just boo-hooing and letting the tears run down without shame.

This was not a bunch of guys worried about acting tough.

They started tossing us slabs of meat: goat, horse, I don’t know what they were. We at the meat, even April, and quaffed water, to the vast amusement of all. We expanded it into a whole routine. We’d lift bowls of beer up like we were going to take a drink and then pause… and the whole Viking host would hang there, poised, ready… then we’d turn up our noses and grab the water instead.

Jerry Seinfeld on his best night has never cracked up an audience like we did with our water-drinking routine. The women and slaves would come crowding in to watch.

‘We’re a hit!’ Christopher said. ‘If these guys had cable we’d be getting our own HBO special by the end of the week.’

The Vikings partied till what had to be three a.m. But by then slaves were patiently disentangling heaps of passed-out bodies, then hauling them off on stretchers. The great hall reeked of stale beer, vomit, urine, wood smoke, tobacco smoke, meat, and sweat.

We were passing out from exhaustion by the time Olaf himself finally slumped facedown on the table, signaling the end of the party. They carried the big black Viking off on a section of the table.

A nearly sober Thorolf came to collect us. He marched us out of the town and into the forest.

It was a forest from a Grimms’ fairy tale. A forest of black trees and blacker shadows.

Distant wolves howled, plaintive. Nearer, sometimes so close I felt I could reach out and touch them, glittering eyes blinked, watched us, considered us, lusted after the marrow in our bones.

Thorolf seemed unafraid. But he kept a firm grip on his ax, and once raised it from his shoulder, feeling the weight, sending the message.

‘Nothing like a ten-mile hike on no sleep,’ Jalil grumbled.

‘Where are we going, Thorolf?’ April asked, her voice raspy from singing and from breathing smoke.

‘You are to stay on my farm till the fleet departs tomorrow if the wind is fair,’ he said. ‘Olaf Ironfoot said you were to be well cared for.’

‘Guess he’s a music lover,’ I mumbled.

Thorolf smiled. ‘Ironfoot loves a good entertainment, it is true. But still more, he loves to show all men that he is not Loki’s vassal.’

So. Olaf knew full well that we were the ones Loki was looking for. And in sheltering us he was jabbing a finger in Loki’s eye.

‘An extra bargaining chip,’ Jalil said. ‘Loki’s demanded some kind of ransom for releasing Odin. Olaf doesn’t trust him. Figures if it gets down to hard bargaining he can throw us on the pile as a sweetener.’

That killed some of my affection for Olaf.

Thorolf looked at Jalil with troubled eyes. The thought had not occurred to him. But now that Jalil had mentioned it, Thorol wasn’t exactly laughing it off.

‘The ways of kings and chieftains may be different from those of ordinary freemen,’ Thorolf allowed.

We marched on, tensed for a sudden attack, expecting to turn the next curve and find our way blocked by Fenrir himself. We were on something that might have been called a road, but it was dirt and narrow, with the forest beginning abruptly on either side.

Looking up, I could see occasional hints of gray, dawn sky overhead. But I was so bleary, so far past exhaustion, that I wasn’t doing much sightseeing.

At some point Thorolf led us off the road, along a much less traveled path. Here the forest gentled down into white-trunked birches, with open spaces and even pale, ghostly flowers.

After another interminable walk, we emerged very suddenly into the open, into earliest morning sunlight and green and blue.

A long, gentle, sloping field opened before us. It was covered in grass so green it\ seemed unreal. A rocky, snow-streaked peak loomed above in the distance. The sky was deep blue, fresh with morning sunlight.

We saw a farm, although at first we didn’t notice it. It seemed to be a single building added to many times, expanded in all directions. The walls were low and dark, with few windows. The roof was covered in the same brillian grass that covered the slope.

A fenced enclosure contained a single horse. Along the slope, in various little patches of white fluff, were grazing sheep.

The sunlight work me up—a little, at least. I noticed Thorolf taking in every detail, the sharp landowner checking to see that all was well.

As we approached, Gudrun Man-Beater appeared in a doorway. I guess it was the front door, although concepts of front and back seemed iffy on this building.

She laughed on seeing her husband with the four of us.

‘I have guests,’ Thorolf said, grabbing his wife and giving her a ferocious hug.

‘I have eyes,’ Gudrun said. ‘I see them. They can stay with the cows. Are you hungry?’ This last directed at us.

‘No, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Just tired.’

‘It is tiring work, entertaining kings,’ Gudrun said.

‘And more tiring still, escaping Loki’s castle,’ Thorolf said.

Gudrun blanched. Her lip trembled and she glanced away in a particular direction.

Toward Loki’s castle.

‘They are under Olaf Ironfoot’s protection,’ Thorolf explained.

‘Yes, but are we?’ Gudrun said darkly. ‘When Ironfoot has taken you and the othermen away, we will still be here. With Loki’s creatures and priests and evil men everywhere.’

She looked darkly at us. We were not exactly welcome guests. But that didn’t stop her from shoving a small loaf of bread off on each of us and detailing a yawning slave girl to show us to an empty cow stall.

It was a musky place, but clean. The cows were being milked by an old woman who muttered to herself as she yanked the udders. She didn’t look up as we passed by. The slave girl showed us the stall. Hay. I hit it facedown and was asleep before I could take a second breath.

‘When it happens, David, will you save me?’ a voice whispered.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But sleep. First, sleep.’

When I woke the electric red numbers on my bedside clock said 3:21 a.m.

So, Jalil explains the trap there in, Gudrun explains the problem their coming has caused the vikings, and David is back home.

* # ? May 13, 2023 03:28
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# ? May 3, 2024 15:58
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QuickbreathFinisher
Sep 28, 2008

by reading this post you have agreed to form a gay socialist micronation.
`
Been quiet in this thread but I really love the writing in this chapter. extremely evocative. can't wait to see where this goes

* # ? May 13, 2023 05:07
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