21.
Rime the salt boy dropped down from the crawl of the above and swung gently upon his ticky tac net, sniffing for the freshening that meant this cozy had been sprung to danger, retaken by the rat boy toughs. He listened for any sound that was other, silencing his breath. Not even halting the gentle bobble of his swinging net as he hung down from the above in the near dark. Many were around, but far far down tube, in the rat haven mains. But none were here now. The outer of this cozy, its fronting on the corridor was behind a dipped bulking of swayed tube. Not safe. Pop open a failed cozy and maybe no air, just the cold of outer, freezing you to stone before you dropped there. It was a runner's chance.
Not safe made safe for this top runner to raid. If he were not caught and sliced. But he ran for his salt. His salt family needed provender. So into darkness he ran, ready to cast line to help find a usable cache. Slipping his near dark lizard eye mask on, he watched the green glow light up the cozy, bright as the corridor. Eagerly he cast about for treasure hidden within the dark. Slowly his net circled in the empty air with a gentle sway as Rime watched through the dark with the lizard eyes. Assured by the continued quiet broken only by his own slight breathing Rime secured his line to the walk above.
Swinging his ticky tac net, it stuck solid to the wall for a crawl to walk down. With his soft stockinged feet, double padded with cloth wraps, with the barest of touches he found the wall, feet outreaching to touchdown. Then sliding, whisperingly, easing down the wall, he crept down.
22.
“Don’t forget the ale,” said the dwarf with the cannon. “It’s not a proper dwarf burial unless the funeral barrel is full of ale.”
Dwarves firmly believed that they should be buried with so much ale in their funeral barrel, the dead dwarf would have to drink his own body-weight in ale just to make room in the barrel for his body.
23.
She stared out at him from in the midst of the night kept in that unforgiving casket. Glowing through the darkness her eyes were like two wounded jewels set adrift in stars. A white form floated towards him from far away into the night and cold kept locked in that dread chamber. From the sunlit warmth and green light of the forest he could not tell what came at him. Then he knew. A hand. She held out her hand towards him. Raised up. Someone drowning in the murk of black cold water seeking aid. The cold rolled out in sheets of mist into the forest. He now heard the lapping of the black waters against the casket doorway.
24.
I walked into Winslow House, and heard loud thumping and scraping noises. It didn’t sound like what teenagers were calling music these days, but I couldn’t be sure.
There in the entrance hall was the source of the noise. Ember was dancing, and the Tyrannosaur skeleton was following her every move. She was moonwalking, so I guessed Michael Jackson’s Thriller was playing through the wireless, noise cancelling headphones she was wearing.
25.
Of course, I had to do the whole super hero thing ass-about.
I’m a girl, discovered I had a kick ass super power. I started off in the suburbs, not too far from the big city. And now I’m hiding out on my grandfather’s farm. But he’s not here to teach me anything. He died in prison when I was just a kid.
Since he was a super villain, I probably shouldn’t learn anything from him anyways. Not that I needed to.
I didn’t save lives. What’s the opposite of saving lives? Oh, yeah. That.
26.
It was not the war he wanted. Rockets sheered off towards what would have been sunset if this world still had a sun. He waited in the blueIsh gloom that passed for twilight and dawn upon this wanderer, lost between stars. He looked out to the hills. You couldn't see the mechs from here, only the laser paths from their cannonades quake sights. Lacing lines of golden fire tracing destruction and death in their wake. The aegis of the new Empire. It was the last stand for the leftover defenders of this, their once home world. Left behind and forgotten. A forlorn hope left to casting the die of their future from the mausoleum of their birth cradle. The balcony of his once palace quaked again from the depth charges placed to confound their invaders. That was it then. The wall had fallen. There was only the thirty nine of the interior guard left now, barring himself and the Regent's heir that was his final charge. The God's all help them now.
Six billion strong before the war. They were all that was left.
A thousand centuries of civilization. This was all that was left.
27.
The woman pulled the boy back.
He dug the knife in deeper. There was still something in this tin. All right McTavish.. You hit dinner. He hunkered down and set to scraping every particle from the rusted can, consuming the contents with a fiercesome savagery, dust and all, that belayed the too skinny woman and half starved boy from gainsaying him his share. The boy started crying, clutching his belly, though he looked to be too old to cry. At least Outside he was. But the boy's hunger had sapped away his pride. The unbidden thought came to McTavish that Connor would be around this boy's age if Jenna had made it through the gate. .Staring at them with a half growl, He took The giant knife and hacked of a section of a Walker's leg. kicking together some of the still burning frac shells that had downed the lander, he threw the walker leg on the fire, and looking at the woman, nodded to it with his chin. Her and the boy scurried to their cooking dinner. McTavish cut two more sections of walker and through them into the firepit. They were welcome to the meat from the grasshopper-like alien draft beasts. He couldn't eat those things with their amber meat oozing out green blood. Tasted like licking a battery terminus, acidic. But the woman and the boy didn't even cook the things long. Green vicious jelly dripping from between their fingers as they bit into the flesh.
McTavish returned to his tin of what seemed beef retrieving it from where he had carefully set it upon a scorched upturned lizard jump helmet among the scattered lizard squad's bodies.
As he ate the almost rancid meat from the can, he noticed one of the bodies twitching. Walking over he nudged it onto its back with his boot.There was only the normal stench common to these half lizards. Funny. This one hadn't soiled itself in the death spasms. It was almost as if it were still...
The Lizard swung up from the dust roaring, recovering from the mini coma the shock shell had sent it into. Ruddy serpent brain! Couldn't even ruddy well die like it was supposed to! McTavish thought even as he roared against the thing himself, hauling up and swinging out with a long metal leg of the lander craft using it as a club on the lizard trying to distract it from the now screaming woman and boy that its red prey eyes had fixed upon. "Run, Lady!" He shouted, wailing away with his metal club for all he was worth, but all his strength defeated by the lizard's steel-like hide,"Run!"
The woman and boy scrambled away, taking the scorched sticks of walker meat with them as they jumped down into one of the many crawl pits the human survivers had tunneled under the rock outcropings Outside. That wouldn't stop old Snakehead here from digging up the whole human sub colony and ravening upon it.
28.
Just as well, Fineas thought, watching abjectedly his one leftover well and truly overused teabag slowly decide to release a pale tinge of amber ribbon in pale imitation of an excuse of good black tea. His magic had become so unstable he was liable to humiliate himself and destroy any remaining respect or cachet he had left as a wizard by accidentally conjuring up actual fish eating barking breathing seals instead of customs duty paid paper seals. Again. For the fourth time. Fineas sighed. Taking his tea flavoured water out into his tiny garden filled with unearthly herbs entwined around the rusting wrought iron of his Wizarding pillar, the free rotating Mage fire spindle atop gently swinging around back and fore, wandering as aimlessly as himself, as there having not been any sort of Mage energy of note for it to focus upon in months. There simply wasn't any free drifting magical energy anywheres since the great rupture in Outer Dolores-Magia had torn magic from the earth and air. Thus ushering in a golden opportunity for the waiting mechanos and gear and cog jockeys and at the same time instantaneously causing unemployment for every practicing wizard seven leagues around. He thought he had been lucky as he had a tiny inborn mage ability that in theory would have carried him through an event like the rupture. How was he to know that without practicing upon his inborn ability with some regularity not only was he a bit rusty, he was essentially (Oh the shame of It! ) spell-locked.
29.
The radio was silent again today so Juniper Tuesday rode the cow into town. It was market day and Flossie's milk was in high demand. So fresh, sweet, thick and a rich golden shade, as all purple cow milk will have, and Flossie was the only purple cow for leagues.
The deepings, the hollows roads and walks wounded on the land from old tracks of magic gone etched into the earth.
30.
Harold knew that alchemy, like most magic, had practitioners who were careful, and practitioners who were dead. Or wished they were. But even careful alchemists could die.
Alchemy came with no guarantees. No warranties. And no manatees. But that was because manatees made rather poor alchemists, as they were constantly swimming in their ingredients while trying to mix them.
Alchemists who used themselves as mixing spoons were not being careful.
This might explain why most manatees were not alchemists. Most manatees were, in fact, necromancers.
It's always the cute and cuddly ones and, I cannot stress this enough, the innocent-looking ones, who can’t wait to get their grabby hands on your Dark Arts.
