Stevie
Visitor
((This story is a sequel to The Lost Float.))
Yes It Goes On and On, My Friends
“The people seem to think it’s part of the parade. Just prop up the two you were able to move as if they are part of the scene. We’ll call for the miners and take care of this in the evening when the crowd has dispersed.”
Months had passed, the crowd had not dispersed, and King Blackthorn desperately longed for a chair.
He'd personally handed out reward after reward, trinket after trinket, but his reserves remained as full as ever. He didn't recall conjuring any perpetual gift bag spell, but apparently it was a strong one. Maybe Mythran had done it as he'd sauntered off with Sherry on his shoulder and a pan of cookies in his hand. Maybe Nystul had, thinking it an amusing prank to play on him.
Or, he thought darkly, perhaps Anon had, or even Minax herself. It would be a novel, if bizarre, way to keep him busy while she did… whatever it was she was doing in Shadowguard. By all reports, that seemed to be mostly taunting adventurers and running away. He wasn't even sure anymore why he'd ever considered her a threat at all.
But he was one of the most powerful mages in Sosaria, and he had a job to do. Several, in fact. In order to fulfill them all, he had been magically projecting himself wherever he was needed. His chamber. The governor council meetings. Sherry’s insufferable book club.
However, the strain was taking a toll. His performances had for the most part become… he shuddered to acknowledge… mechanical.
And he was beginning to see things he wasn't entirely sure were real:
Such as a very strange looking elf, most unlike those of Heartwood, hauling a hefty sack toward the park, followed soon by what looked to be artisans and crafters of all descriptions.
Such as people gleefully hauling enormous jawbones about. Never a full skull, never a rib or a tibia or a phylange… always just a lower jaw.
Such as the creature standing next to him.
It met his gaze levelly.
“Your highness,” it said, dipping its head respectfully.
Blackthorn blinked. He looked at the creature. It looked back.
“Ah… good day,” he finally said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
The creature did not smile per se, its mouth ill-suited to doing so, but amusement and clear intelligence sparkled in its dark but oddly iridescent eyes. Its eyes made Blackthorn think of mechanical lubricating oil, and again he shuddered.
“Indeed we have not. I am called…”
“All hail Lord GriefMASTA XxX! Thy bravery is known the realm over!” shouted a dishevelled parade-goer as an adventurer bedecked in hideously colored, mismatched armor suddenly blazed by on the back of what appeared to be an extremely large and oddly-proportioned tarantula.
Blackthorn stared at the adventurer.
“Strange days in the kingdom?” asked the creature sympathetically.
Blackthorn turned back to face the creature. He stared at it for a moment.
“Yes,” he replied. “Very.”
“I was passing near Britain and thought I’d swing by to ask about a book you wrote,” the creature said. It spoke with a peculiar, almost effete accent that Blackthorn could not quite place. “It’s quite old, I think, but I believe it to hold inaccuracies.”
Blackthorn frowned. “Is this about On the Diversity of Our Land? As I have reiterated at numerous Council meetings, my plea for tolerance and understanding of intelligences other than human does not mean I will condone or allow anyone or anything, regardless of species, to threaten the kingdom or its citizens…”
The creature shook its large head, and the front locks of its shock of silky multicolored mane swayed hypnotically back and forth around the single horn protruding from its forehead. “No, no, I refer to The Legend of the Rainbow Dasher.”
“Legend of… I beg your pardon?” Blackthorn asked incredulously.
“The Rainbow Dasher,” supplied the creature.
Blackthorn blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t know the book of which you…”
But he did, he realized mid-sentence. A commoner had approached him at a council meeting and asked him to sign one. He had amusedly obliged (the young woman had been ever so earnest and excited), though he was confident it was not his work.
Mostly confident. There were some stretches of time in his memory that were little more than blurry impressions of cold metal, sharp electricity, the pungent stench of oil and charred flesh. Pain and rage and dark magic and wicked technology. He was fairly certain he hadn’t been penning any oddly-titled fantastical tales during this time, but as a mage--a learned man of the arcane sciences--he had to concede he couldn’t completely eliminate the possibility, unlikely as it was.
“Ah, that. I believe it to be a forgery,” he hedged.
The creature could not frown, but a frown was somehow implied in its expression nonetheless.
“A forgery? If that is so, it is certainly not the only one currently in circulation.”
Another ostentatiously dressed adventurer thundered by, this one riding a near-exact simulacrum of the creature with which the king had found himself in conversation. Another exhausted-looking parade-goer snapped to frenzied, near-hysterical attention. “The virtues are strong with you Cherry Poppins! You have saved us this day!”
The creature looked at the king.
“I am beginning to suspect dark magics,” Blackthorn offered weakly.
The creature nodded slowly. “Those, too, seem to flow freely of late.”
Confetti showered at Blackthorn’s feet, adding a fresh layer to the rained-upon, wind-strewn, partially decayed and compacted mess of several months’ worth of confetti littering the streets. He briefly wondered if a single tree still stood in Yew after the production and endless deployment of so much confetti.
They stood in companionable, if confused, silence for a moment.
“Did you know…” Blackthorn began with a gesture toward the creature’s doppelganger, then realized he was at a loss for a way to address the clearly intelligent creature’s near-twin being ridden like a common beast of burden. He also belatedly realized there was no reason to assume two similar looking creatures necessarily knew each other.
If the creature sensed his confusion, it did not remark upon it. “That is what I came to speak with you about,” it said.
“Please go on,” Blackthorn invited.
“According to this book, the authorship of which is attributed to you, there were--or at least, there were legends of--a species called the harlequin unicorn. The description of this unicorn matched my own.”
Blackthorn nodded slowly. He had quickly flipped through the book he’d signed, but he had not had enough time to properly read it. He waited for the creature to elaborate.
“Just as your book seems a forgery, so too do there seem to be forgeries of my very person being traded among your people. I do not believe them to be true unicorns, which were once revered spirits of--,” it paused. “It matters not. My concern is that the simple creatures being peddled and used like common horses among your people are being misrepresented and our history is being lost.”
King Blackthorn thought for a moment. “There have been unicorns used as such for quite some time. Until today I had not met one that spoke, or that seemed to harbor anything akin to an enlightened intellectual state.”
A man wearing nothing more than ill-fitting underwear and holding a fishing pole ran past on foot. “Make way for Lord JABBERWOK the courageous! A true Britannian hero!” shouted a parade-goer.
King and creature observed in subdued silence until the man was out of sight.
“Those are feral, corrupt shadows of us,” the creature finally continued. “Look at them some time. They are crudely rendered flesh, incomplete and ill-suited to their environment and the world at large. True unicorns are not so, and are as unique as your people clearly are,” the creature said. “I’ve no more in common with the one known as the Dread Horn than you do with Lord... Jabberwok.”
“The Dread Horn, yes, I have heard of him, but I would not expect to see him traveling through a Britannian city as you are.” Blackthorn said, declining to comment on the undressed man.
“Indeed. The giant mushrooms of the Twisted Weald have elevated his feral disposition to outright aggression. Even if he were a true unicorn, he would be most unpleasant. Especially if he were a true unicorn.”
Blackthorn nodded, hoping he looked regal and knowing but suspecting he looked as lost as he felt. He wondered briefly at the mushrooms that his waste collection officers traded for refuse and whether there was a correlation with the steady, undeniable decline of the quality of citizenry he observed in the city.
“Do you know where these copies of you are coming from?” Blackthorn asked.
The creature shook its head, its colorful mane undulating gracefully.
“I do not. Some manner of merchants, I suppose. Your name on the book is the only clue I have pursued thus far. It seemed the simplest place to begin.”
“I see. I regret that I cannot help you more. Certainly if there were intelligent beings traded among the kingdom I would put a stop to it, but I have seen no evidence of such, I know not of the origin of the book, and the private distribution of literature and livestock are not restricted or controlled by the crown.”
He thought for a moment. “Perhaps you might write your own book to get the correct story out. Maybe even conduct a book tour. I know someone with a book club who might be able to help you get the word out.”
“It is difficult to write without fingers,” the creature said. “Though I suppose I could hire a human scribe.”
“There are a number of out-of-work Trinsicians at the moment,” offered Blackthorn. “Perhaps you might check there for an acceptable individual. The city is under close guard at the moment due to recent events, but I would be pleased to send word to the new governor to expect you. Who shall I tell them is coming? You never told me your name.”
“Lasher,” the creature said. “The one and only.”
Blackthorn nodded.
More confetti shot at his feet. He looked down and scowled.
“I believe this parade has more than run its course,” Blackthorn said. He raised a hand and muttered some words of power, banishing the floats to the ethereal void.
“Actually, we seem to have a number of unemployed right here in Britain,” he said as the parade-goers looked around in confusion. “Perhaps you need not travel far.”
“Perhaps,” said Lasher. “Thank you for your time, King Blackthorn. And good luck with the cleanup.”
As the colorful unicorn walked away, Blackthorn looked around in dismay at his capital city. Confetti caked the streets, piled in the grass and at the bases of buildings, and floated in the castle moat. Decaying food debris from the parade-goers gave rise to a rancid odor in the air.
The parade-goers themselves, all filthy, disheveled, and exhausted from months of near-constant celebration, looked around in obvious bewilderment, blinking emptily at their surroundings as if they had never seen them before despite months of seeing little else.
They did not disperse.
Blackthorn sighed. He was going to need all the luck he could get.
Yes It Goes On and On, My Friends
“The people seem to think it’s part of the parade. Just prop up the two you were able to move as if they are part of the scene. We’ll call for the miners and take care of this in the evening when the crowd has dispersed.”
Months had passed, the crowd had not dispersed, and King Blackthorn desperately longed for a chair.
He'd personally handed out reward after reward, trinket after trinket, but his reserves remained as full as ever. He didn't recall conjuring any perpetual gift bag spell, but apparently it was a strong one. Maybe Mythran had done it as he'd sauntered off with Sherry on his shoulder and a pan of cookies in his hand. Maybe Nystul had, thinking it an amusing prank to play on him.
Or, he thought darkly, perhaps Anon had, or even Minax herself. It would be a novel, if bizarre, way to keep him busy while she did… whatever it was she was doing in Shadowguard. By all reports, that seemed to be mostly taunting adventurers and running away. He wasn't even sure anymore why he'd ever considered her a threat at all.
But he was one of the most powerful mages in Sosaria, and he had a job to do. Several, in fact. In order to fulfill them all, he had been magically projecting himself wherever he was needed. His chamber. The governor council meetings. Sherry’s insufferable book club.
However, the strain was taking a toll. His performances had for the most part become… he shuddered to acknowledge… mechanical.
And he was beginning to see things he wasn't entirely sure were real:
Such as a very strange looking elf, most unlike those of Heartwood, hauling a hefty sack toward the park, followed soon by what looked to be artisans and crafters of all descriptions.
Such as people gleefully hauling enormous jawbones about. Never a full skull, never a rib or a tibia or a phylange… always just a lower jaw.
Such as the creature standing next to him.
It met his gaze levelly.
“Your highness,” it said, dipping its head respectfully.
Blackthorn blinked. He looked at the creature. It looked back.
“Ah… good day,” he finally said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
The creature did not smile per se, its mouth ill-suited to doing so, but amusement and clear intelligence sparkled in its dark but oddly iridescent eyes. Its eyes made Blackthorn think of mechanical lubricating oil, and again he shuddered.
“Indeed we have not. I am called…”
“All hail Lord GriefMASTA XxX! Thy bravery is known the realm over!” shouted a dishevelled parade-goer as an adventurer bedecked in hideously colored, mismatched armor suddenly blazed by on the back of what appeared to be an extremely large and oddly-proportioned tarantula.
Blackthorn stared at the adventurer.
“Strange days in the kingdom?” asked the creature sympathetically.
Blackthorn turned back to face the creature. He stared at it for a moment.
“Yes,” he replied. “Very.”
“I was passing near Britain and thought I’d swing by to ask about a book you wrote,” the creature said. It spoke with a peculiar, almost effete accent that Blackthorn could not quite place. “It’s quite old, I think, but I believe it to hold inaccuracies.”
Blackthorn frowned. “Is this about On the Diversity of Our Land? As I have reiterated at numerous Council meetings, my plea for tolerance and understanding of intelligences other than human does not mean I will condone or allow anyone or anything, regardless of species, to threaten the kingdom or its citizens…”
The creature shook its large head, and the front locks of its shock of silky multicolored mane swayed hypnotically back and forth around the single horn protruding from its forehead. “No, no, I refer to The Legend of the Rainbow Dasher.”
“Legend of… I beg your pardon?” Blackthorn asked incredulously.
“The Rainbow Dasher,” supplied the creature.
Blackthorn blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t know the book of which you…”
But he did, he realized mid-sentence. A commoner had approached him at a council meeting and asked him to sign one. He had amusedly obliged (the young woman had been ever so earnest and excited), though he was confident it was not his work.
Mostly confident. There were some stretches of time in his memory that were little more than blurry impressions of cold metal, sharp electricity, the pungent stench of oil and charred flesh. Pain and rage and dark magic and wicked technology. He was fairly certain he hadn’t been penning any oddly-titled fantastical tales during this time, but as a mage--a learned man of the arcane sciences--he had to concede he couldn’t completely eliminate the possibility, unlikely as it was.
“Ah, that. I believe it to be a forgery,” he hedged.
The creature could not frown, but a frown was somehow implied in its expression nonetheless.
“A forgery? If that is so, it is certainly not the only one currently in circulation.”
Another ostentatiously dressed adventurer thundered by, this one riding a near-exact simulacrum of the creature with which the king had found himself in conversation. Another exhausted-looking parade-goer snapped to frenzied, near-hysterical attention. “The virtues are strong with you Cherry Poppins! You have saved us this day!”
The creature looked at the king.
“I am beginning to suspect dark magics,” Blackthorn offered weakly.
The creature nodded slowly. “Those, too, seem to flow freely of late.”
Confetti showered at Blackthorn’s feet, adding a fresh layer to the rained-upon, wind-strewn, partially decayed and compacted mess of several months’ worth of confetti littering the streets. He briefly wondered if a single tree still stood in Yew after the production and endless deployment of so much confetti.
They stood in companionable, if confused, silence for a moment.
“Did you know…” Blackthorn began with a gesture toward the creature’s doppelganger, then realized he was at a loss for a way to address the clearly intelligent creature’s near-twin being ridden like a common beast of burden. He also belatedly realized there was no reason to assume two similar looking creatures necessarily knew each other.
If the creature sensed his confusion, it did not remark upon it. “That is what I came to speak with you about,” it said.
“Please go on,” Blackthorn invited.
“According to this book, the authorship of which is attributed to you, there were--or at least, there were legends of--a species called the harlequin unicorn. The description of this unicorn matched my own.”
Blackthorn nodded slowly. He had quickly flipped through the book he’d signed, but he had not had enough time to properly read it. He waited for the creature to elaborate.
“Just as your book seems a forgery, so too do there seem to be forgeries of my very person being traded among your people. I do not believe them to be true unicorns, which were once revered spirits of--,” it paused. “It matters not. My concern is that the simple creatures being peddled and used like common horses among your people are being misrepresented and our history is being lost.”
King Blackthorn thought for a moment. “There have been unicorns used as such for quite some time. Until today I had not met one that spoke, or that seemed to harbor anything akin to an enlightened intellectual state.”
A man wearing nothing more than ill-fitting underwear and holding a fishing pole ran past on foot. “Make way for Lord JABBERWOK the courageous! A true Britannian hero!” shouted a parade-goer.
King and creature observed in subdued silence until the man was out of sight.
“Those are feral, corrupt shadows of us,” the creature finally continued. “Look at them some time. They are crudely rendered flesh, incomplete and ill-suited to their environment and the world at large. True unicorns are not so, and are as unique as your people clearly are,” the creature said. “I’ve no more in common with the one known as the Dread Horn than you do with Lord... Jabberwok.”
“The Dread Horn, yes, I have heard of him, but I would not expect to see him traveling through a Britannian city as you are.” Blackthorn said, declining to comment on the undressed man.
“Indeed. The giant mushrooms of the Twisted Weald have elevated his feral disposition to outright aggression. Even if he were a true unicorn, he would be most unpleasant. Especially if he were a true unicorn.”
Blackthorn nodded, hoping he looked regal and knowing but suspecting he looked as lost as he felt. He wondered briefly at the mushrooms that his waste collection officers traded for refuse and whether there was a correlation with the steady, undeniable decline of the quality of citizenry he observed in the city.
“Do you know where these copies of you are coming from?” Blackthorn asked.
The creature shook its head, its colorful mane undulating gracefully.
“I do not. Some manner of merchants, I suppose. Your name on the book is the only clue I have pursued thus far. It seemed the simplest place to begin.”
“I see. I regret that I cannot help you more. Certainly if there were intelligent beings traded among the kingdom I would put a stop to it, but I have seen no evidence of such, I know not of the origin of the book, and the private distribution of literature and livestock are not restricted or controlled by the crown.”
He thought for a moment. “Perhaps you might write your own book to get the correct story out. Maybe even conduct a book tour. I know someone with a book club who might be able to help you get the word out.”
“It is difficult to write without fingers,” the creature said. “Though I suppose I could hire a human scribe.”
“There are a number of out-of-work Trinsicians at the moment,” offered Blackthorn. “Perhaps you might check there for an acceptable individual. The city is under close guard at the moment due to recent events, but I would be pleased to send word to the new governor to expect you. Who shall I tell them is coming? You never told me your name.”
“Lasher,” the creature said. “The one and only.”
Blackthorn nodded.
More confetti shot at his feet. He looked down and scowled.
“I believe this parade has more than run its course,” Blackthorn said. He raised a hand and muttered some words of power, banishing the floats to the ethereal void.
“Actually, we seem to have a number of unemployed right here in Britain,” he said as the parade-goers looked around in confusion. “Perhaps you need not travel far.”
“Perhaps,” said Lasher. “Thank you for your time, King Blackthorn. And good luck with the cleanup.”
As the colorful unicorn walked away, Blackthorn looked around in dismay at his capital city. Confetti caked the streets, piled in the grass and at the bases of buildings, and floated in the castle moat. Decaying food debris from the parade-goers gave rise to a rancid odor in the air.
The parade-goers themselves, all filthy, disheveled, and exhausted from months of near-constant celebration, looked around in obvious bewilderment, blinking emptily at their surroundings as if they had never seen them before despite months of seeing little else.
They did not disperse.
Blackthorn sighed. He was going to need all the luck he could get.
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