Nightworld (8)
Jul. 3rd, 2011 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolIt was dark, and cold, and Janosh couldn't move. He could wiggle his hands a bit, and he could breathe, but his limbs were imprisoned. The air he was breathing was stuffy and stale. Janosh struggled to remember where he was and why he was there. He started straining with his legs, trying to push his back against whatever was pinning him in place.
"Don't move," came Ispil's voice. "You'll bring the ice and the snow down on us."
Then Janosh remembered. He had rushed back into the ice cavern to rescue Ispil after the insane sorcerer had brought the roof down, but both he and Ispil had been caught in the resulting collapse. Ice and snow had buried the both of them alive. Ispil was still slung over Janosh's shoulder. There was some kind of air pocket in a void in front of Janosh, and both Janosh and Ispil had their faces in it; this alone helped explain why they were still alive.
"We need to do something, or we're going to suffocate in here," said Janosh.
"I know," said Ispil. He sounded more level-headed than usual, almost jovial. "We're going to die. I can see it. Did you know I can see the future?"
"No," said Janosh. He was suddenly keenly aware of the fact that he and Ispil were touching. Under other circumstances, Ispil would be planning to murder anybody who touched him.
"I can see images of the immediate future, clear as day. Sometimes I just feel them. Like, just before we came across the zombie mastodon, I felt needles stabbing into my brain. It's been my curse all my life."
"Oh," said Janosh. "What does death look like to you?"
"Oh, it's glorious," said Ispil, awestruck. "There's a very bright light, and I don't want to go to it, but then it comes for me and swallows me up, and I feel like I've been saved. Do you realize what this means, Janosh?"
"No," said Janosh, who was a lot more interested in figuring how he could dig for the surface instead of waiting for the afterlife.
"It means I'm not damned to an eternity of torment," said Ispil beatifically. "I've lived a bad life, because I've hated everything around me, but now I know that at the end, the world won't hate me back. There will be a place for me." Ispil sighed, and even patted Janosh's shoulder companionably. "The hate is just gone, Janosh. For once in my life, I don't hate everything."
Was Ispil crying? Janosh frowned. "Look," he said, "You may think we're going to die, but I think there's still a chance we can dig out of here. So if it's all the same to you…."
"Shhh!" hissed Ispil. "Did you hear that?"
Janosh listened. There was a scraping noise, insistent and continuous, coming from the direction Janosh judged was likely upward. Were they being rescued? Were the monsters digging them out to eat them? A thin shower of powdered ice rained down on Janosh's face, making him spit and blink.
"Here it comes!" cried Ispil beatifically. "Behold our eternal salvation!"
A blinding beam of light shone down on the both of them.
"Behold!" thundered Ispil.
Even with his eyes pressed shut, the overpowering brilliance of the light pierced Janosh's eyelids. He had to admit, that much radiance was a beautiful thing. Still, something was odd. There was plenty of light, but no sense of overwhelming peace. He was, in fact, still cold and stiff, and his leg was beginning to cramp. Janosh turned his face away from the light as best he could.
Something dropped onto his hair. It was ropy and had a number of stiff bristles on it; it felt like a hairbrush made out of soft dough. It scraped across the back of Janosh's head, and he was powerless to do anything about it. Then whatever it was groped along the front of his face. It smelled like honey and nail polish, and Janosh could feel the overpowering light coming through his nostrils and illuminating the inside of his skull.
"Oh yes," moaned Ispil. "I'm coming, Mummy and Daddy. I'm going to join you. I swear this time I'll play nicely, and we'll be a happy family all over again. Take me home!"
The odd object slithered off Janosh's face, and he felt it instead snake around his torso, grinding through the ice and snow to wrap itself around his waist. Then it began to pull upwards insistently. Powdery ice began to rain down, forcing Janosh to press his lips shut and hold his breath.
"Ow!" gasped Ispil. "Squeezing me, agents of the afterlife! Is this my torment before my everlasting peace? If so, I welcome it!" Then he said nothing more, because the upward pressure of Ispil and Janosh being pulled up squeezed all the air out of his lungs.
Janosh and Ispil erupted clear of the jumbled landscape of snow and ice chunks. Janosh found he could breathe again, but he could only open his eyes a crack because the world around him was so bright. He saw the ground drop away from him, then felt hot breath on his neck and heard a low, resonant lowing, and Janosh realized what had happened.
When the roof of the ice cavern had collapsed, the entire glacier had caved in, creating an enormous pothole in the ice-river with the starry sky exposed above it. Team Hotness, high on the wall of the cavern, were left looking out over this mess. Georgi had used his pipes to summon suncalves, and it was one of those luminous beasts who had dug Janosh and Ispil out of their ice-tomb with its feeding tentacles. Now, frolicking to the hyperactive, sometimes inaudible music of the Piper, a clutch of a half dozen of the lighter-than-air ruminants was rising away from the ruins of Vlad's intended invasion force.
"I'm glad we found you!" Georgi called from the clutches of another suncalf only a few feet away. "Fortunately Esmer had a pretty good bead on your position, and finding the Gune brothers only sharpened our guesswork. Then it was a matter of figuring out the right piping to ask the suncalves to dig in the ice until they found you. And here you are, still alive!"
"Did you hear that, Ispil?" Janosh called happily over his shoulder. "Looks like you misinterpreted what you saw. We're going to live!"
"…and, the hate is back," said Ispil darkly. "Quit touching me."
**
Georgi had the suncalves set them down at the foot of the glacier. There was a stand of balloon trees there, and the calves bawled and hooted at each other as they pierced the gas bladders and sucked up their contents with their feeding tentacles. The humans sat down to plan what to do next.
"Well, we accomplished what you wanted to do, Korvina," said Janosh. "We found out why the monsters were gathering, and we more or less know what they were planning to do. We also put a stop to Vlad's invasion scheme."
"For now," Korvina pointed out. "But it's only a matter of time before he does it again. He'll have to do it a different way, but I don't see Vlad quitting because of a setback."
"Worse," pointed out Esmer, "he'll be angry. Vlad will take out his anger on whoever he can reach. If it's not us, it'll be the people of Stuvitze. I'm not sure what we've really accomplished, except perhaps cost a lot of innocent villagers their lives."
They all digested this dismal interpretation of the situation. "We still don't know why Vlad planned this for now," said Georgi.
"I suppose we could go up there and ask him," said Esmer sarcastically.
"That's exactly what we should do," said Ispil. "We should go up there and drag him out of his coffin, and we should say TELL US EVERYTHING WE WANT TO KNOW OR WE WILL STAKE YOU, and then he'll tell us, and then we'll stake him anyway, and then we'll burn his castle, and then we'll throw people on the fire who annoy us."
Esmer grinned. "You know what I like about you, Ispil?" she asked.
"What?" said Ispil.
"Basically nothing."
"Messing with Vlad is bad mojo," said Bobo. "He runs the oxygen machine."
"That right, Bobo," said Hodo solemnly. "Only Vlad knows how it works. Why, it would take a couple of engineers to figure out how to make it go."
Korvina blinked. "That's a brilliant plan," she said.
"What plan?" asked Hodo innocently.
"Never mind," said Korvina disgustedly. "I have a brilliant plan!"
"Do tell," said Bobo, and he and Hodo leaned in closely.
"You're crazy," said Georgi. "We're going to storm Vlad's castle, kill him, assume control of the air and somehow fend off all the other monsters as well? This is a brilliant plan?"
"I don't know about brilliant," said Janosh slowly, "but it might be the only course of action available to us. I think once Vlad wakes up from his nap and realizes what's happened, he's going to turn off the oxygen again. I don't think he'll rest until he has us for his sport, either. So, maybe it's crazy to go right into the teeth of the vampire like this, but if we can catch him while he's still resting, maybe we have a tiny chance of success."
Esmer took Georgi's hand. "Let's do it," she said. "Let's all be heroes together, or die trying."
Georgi squeezed Esmer's gloved hand. "Either way," he whispered.
Korvina squinted up the ruined glacier which lay between them and Vlad's castle. "I don't relish climbing up that mess," she said.
"Why walk?" asked Georgi, reaching for his pipes. "And anyway, when it comes to hunting vampires, you Go Bright or you Go Home."
"Don't worry, Ispil," said Janosh kindly, "this time you can have your own tentacle."
"I don't want it touching me either," growled the psychotic.
"Don't move," came Ispil's voice. "You'll bring the ice and the snow down on us."
Then Janosh remembered. He had rushed back into the ice cavern to rescue Ispil after the insane sorcerer had brought the roof down, but both he and Ispil had been caught in the resulting collapse. Ice and snow had buried the both of them alive. Ispil was still slung over Janosh's shoulder. There was some kind of air pocket in a void in front of Janosh, and both Janosh and Ispil had their faces in it; this alone helped explain why they were still alive.
"We need to do something, or we're going to suffocate in here," said Janosh.
"I know," said Ispil. He sounded more level-headed than usual, almost jovial. "We're going to die. I can see it. Did you know I can see the future?"
"No," said Janosh. He was suddenly keenly aware of the fact that he and Ispil were touching. Under other circumstances, Ispil would be planning to murder anybody who touched him.
"I can see images of the immediate future, clear as day. Sometimes I just feel them. Like, just before we came across the zombie mastodon, I felt needles stabbing into my brain. It's been my curse all my life."
"Oh," said Janosh. "What does death look like to you?"
"Oh, it's glorious," said Ispil, awestruck. "There's a very bright light, and I don't want to go to it, but then it comes for me and swallows me up, and I feel like I've been saved. Do you realize what this means, Janosh?"
"No," said Janosh, who was a lot more interested in figuring how he could dig for the surface instead of waiting for the afterlife.
"It means I'm not damned to an eternity of torment," said Ispil beatifically. "I've lived a bad life, because I've hated everything around me, but now I know that at the end, the world won't hate me back. There will be a place for me." Ispil sighed, and even patted Janosh's shoulder companionably. "The hate is just gone, Janosh. For once in my life, I don't hate everything."
Was Ispil crying? Janosh frowned. "Look," he said, "You may think we're going to die, but I think there's still a chance we can dig out of here. So if it's all the same to you…."
"Shhh!" hissed Ispil. "Did you hear that?"
Janosh listened. There was a scraping noise, insistent and continuous, coming from the direction Janosh judged was likely upward. Were they being rescued? Were the monsters digging them out to eat them? A thin shower of powdered ice rained down on Janosh's face, making him spit and blink.
"Here it comes!" cried Ispil beatifically. "Behold our eternal salvation!"
A blinding beam of light shone down on the both of them.
"Behold!" thundered Ispil.
Even with his eyes pressed shut, the overpowering brilliance of the light pierced Janosh's eyelids. He had to admit, that much radiance was a beautiful thing. Still, something was odd. There was plenty of light, but no sense of overwhelming peace. He was, in fact, still cold and stiff, and his leg was beginning to cramp. Janosh turned his face away from the light as best he could.
Something dropped onto his hair. It was ropy and had a number of stiff bristles on it; it felt like a hairbrush made out of soft dough. It scraped across the back of Janosh's head, and he was powerless to do anything about it. Then whatever it was groped along the front of his face. It smelled like honey and nail polish, and Janosh could feel the overpowering light coming through his nostrils and illuminating the inside of his skull.
"Oh yes," moaned Ispil. "I'm coming, Mummy and Daddy. I'm going to join you. I swear this time I'll play nicely, and we'll be a happy family all over again. Take me home!"
The odd object slithered off Janosh's face, and he felt it instead snake around his torso, grinding through the ice and snow to wrap itself around his waist. Then it began to pull upwards insistently. Powdery ice began to rain down, forcing Janosh to press his lips shut and hold his breath.
"Ow!" gasped Ispil. "Squeezing me, agents of the afterlife! Is this my torment before my everlasting peace? If so, I welcome it!" Then he said nothing more, because the upward pressure of Ispil and Janosh being pulled up squeezed all the air out of his lungs.
Janosh and Ispil erupted clear of the jumbled landscape of snow and ice chunks. Janosh found he could breathe again, but he could only open his eyes a crack because the world around him was so bright. He saw the ground drop away from him, then felt hot breath on his neck and heard a low, resonant lowing, and Janosh realized what had happened.
When the roof of the ice cavern had collapsed, the entire glacier had caved in, creating an enormous pothole in the ice-river with the starry sky exposed above it. Team Hotness, high on the wall of the cavern, were left looking out over this mess. Georgi had used his pipes to summon suncalves, and it was one of those luminous beasts who had dug Janosh and Ispil out of their ice-tomb with its feeding tentacles. Now, frolicking to the hyperactive, sometimes inaudible music of the Piper, a clutch of a half dozen of the lighter-than-air ruminants was rising away from the ruins of Vlad's intended invasion force.
"I'm glad we found you!" Georgi called from the clutches of another suncalf only a few feet away. "Fortunately Esmer had a pretty good bead on your position, and finding the Gune brothers only sharpened our guesswork. Then it was a matter of figuring out the right piping to ask the suncalves to dig in the ice until they found you. And here you are, still alive!"
"Did you hear that, Ispil?" Janosh called happily over his shoulder. "Looks like you misinterpreted what you saw. We're going to live!"
"…and, the hate is back," said Ispil darkly. "Quit touching me."
**
Georgi had the suncalves set them down at the foot of the glacier. There was a stand of balloon trees there, and the calves bawled and hooted at each other as they pierced the gas bladders and sucked up their contents with their feeding tentacles. The humans sat down to plan what to do next.
"Well, we accomplished what you wanted to do, Korvina," said Janosh. "We found out why the monsters were gathering, and we more or less know what they were planning to do. We also put a stop to Vlad's invasion scheme."
"For now," Korvina pointed out. "But it's only a matter of time before he does it again. He'll have to do it a different way, but I don't see Vlad quitting because of a setback."
"Worse," pointed out Esmer, "he'll be angry. Vlad will take out his anger on whoever he can reach. If it's not us, it'll be the people of Stuvitze. I'm not sure what we've really accomplished, except perhaps cost a lot of innocent villagers their lives."
They all digested this dismal interpretation of the situation. "We still don't know why Vlad planned this for now," said Georgi.
"I suppose we could go up there and ask him," said Esmer sarcastically.
"That's exactly what we should do," said Ispil. "We should go up there and drag him out of his coffin, and we should say TELL US EVERYTHING WE WANT TO KNOW OR WE WILL STAKE YOU, and then he'll tell us, and then we'll stake him anyway, and then we'll burn his castle, and then we'll throw people on the fire who annoy us."
Esmer grinned. "You know what I like about you, Ispil?" she asked.
"What?" said Ispil.
"Basically nothing."
"Messing with Vlad is bad mojo," said Bobo. "He runs the oxygen machine."
"That right, Bobo," said Hodo solemnly. "Only Vlad knows how it works. Why, it would take a couple of engineers to figure out how to make it go."
Korvina blinked. "That's a brilliant plan," she said.
"What plan?" asked Hodo innocently.
"Never mind," said Korvina disgustedly. "I have a brilliant plan!"
"Do tell," said Bobo, and he and Hodo leaned in closely.
"You're crazy," said Georgi. "We're going to storm Vlad's castle, kill him, assume control of the air and somehow fend off all the other monsters as well? This is a brilliant plan?"
"I don't know about brilliant," said Janosh slowly, "but it might be the only course of action available to us. I think once Vlad wakes up from his nap and realizes what's happened, he's going to turn off the oxygen again. I don't think he'll rest until he has us for his sport, either. So, maybe it's crazy to go right into the teeth of the vampire like this, but if we can catch him while he's still resting, maybe we have a tiny chance of success."
Esmer took Georgi's hand. "Let's do it," she said. "Let's all be heroes together, or die trying."
Georgi squeezed Esmer's gloved hand. "Either way," he whispered.
Korvina squinted up the ruined glacier which lay between them and Vlad's castle. "I don't relish climbing up that mess," she said.
"Why walk?" asked Georgi, reaching for his pipes. "And anyway, when it comes to hunting vampires, you Go Bright or you Go Home."
"Don't worry, Ispil," said Janosh kindly, "this time you can have your own tentacle."
"I don't want it touching me either," growled the psychotic.
