Jeff Mach's Blog, page 30

The Greater Death Spell

The Greater Death Spell is incredibly complex, requiring decades of study and tens of thousands of gold pieces.

Just kidding! We try to make you believe it’s really difficult because the Guild of Necromancers is, technically, legally liable if you wake up one morning to find row upon row of neatly-stacked corpses instead of, you know, the City that used to be there.

But in today’s magic-soaked world, all you need do is say “Death!” in a forceful, high-pitched voice. Falsetto will do.

Everyone within hearing range, except (usually!) you will fall over like cordwood after it’s first made the acquaintance of a hard-swung hatchet.

But don’t worry about it. Death is totally curable, at least as long as you cast a spell of Longterm Temporal Stasis. True, most practitioners below level 19 have no such ability can do such a thing, but they assure us that anyone they’ve thusly trapped have made no complaints at all, or, indeed, any other motions, through the entire time of the spell’s duration, which is approximately 2,000 years.

We’re pretty sure they’ll revive just fine after that, albeit they’ll owe a great deal of tax.

So yeah, ever since last night’s newspaper article, everybody knows how to make this spell. But don’t worry. Depopulation of most habitations has reached no greater than 110%, and we’re certain that the ability to slay anyone at will won’t affect anyone; or, more specifically, it won’t affect anyone who’s still alive next week, albeit we have no idea who in the world that would be.

So just remember, “Death, death, DEATH DEATH DEATH!” It’s powerful, it’s sorcerous, and it solves all of your problems, except loneliness, and let’s face it: we’re human, we can be lonely in the biggest crowd there is. It’s one of our superpowers. Mass necromantic destruction of our fragile human shells is, in comparison, pretty damn trivial, don’t you think?

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To Rum

Dearest Rum,

I know what it’s like to be the Villain, my friend.

Awful. And glorious. Yes.

Gin gets a lot of credit. There’s something 19th-century British about writers drinking gin; it’s almost as if we didn’t know gin was bad for you back, then, it was too civilized.

(Yet what’s REALLY civilized is single-malt Scotch, and if there’s anything more disreputable than a Scottish writer, I don’t know what that is. Read Robert Burns’ couplet on female sex organs, and then come back to me, rolling your eyes – but don’t you dare, darling, tell me I told you so. I know I told you and, as is normal, you didn’t listen.)

What really deserves the vilification? Single-malt Scotch. It’s classy. It’s strong as anything. It’s somewhat famous. And it will get you drunk – not like Everclear, which doesn’t intoxicate you, so much as it sneaks up on your non-dominant side and delivers a blow to your parietal lobe – but it’s effective.

But single-malt Scotch? You can get schnickered, then knackered, then fighty, then non-conscious, and it all looks classy until the point where you fall off your stool. And even that looks okay if you adjut your tie afterwards.

I can’t help it, though. Rum formed an alliance with Coke back when it was full of cocaine, and after that, how can we not drink a rum + dark soda without figuring we’re off taking an ancient stimulant which scarcely ever made people get into gunfights except every couple of hours back in the 19th century?

Why is the rum gone? Because I ain’t no liquor snob, that’s why.

Hail to thee, Rum. I don’t need a license or permit to put you into my system, yet I dare general anesthetic to do half your job.

You make me a Pirate King, and that’s slightly less evil than the demonic overlord of a vast and corrupt Empire seeking to take over the World.

So you’re a force for good, right?

By default, anyway.

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If You Wish To Anger The Gods…

all you really need do is bring humans some kind of light for when it’s dark.

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The Catskills Sky

Once in a while, it’s a good idea to just lie down on the soft grass and look straight up at the clear, reassuring firmament.

If there’s one thing that’s distinguished city folk from country folk for hundreds of years, it’s the fact that every other person in the City is a vampire, and you’ve been left out of the club for years; every single one of your neighbors has spent approximately 25% of their waking hours (and your neighbors maintain such a deep facade that you probably think they sleep at night, in beds,instead of during the day, in coffins infused with at least one shovelful of dirt from their original gravesites in Austria-Hungary)–

–yeah, approximately 25% of their waking hours, maybe more like 35%, thinking of nothing but your neck. That’s if there was only one thing, and admittedly, that would be a bit disconcerting; but honestly, there are two. Really, the fact that, back home, you are secretly but utterly surrounded by the living dead is frankly trivial. Don’t worry about it at all. It’s unimportant; in fact, you might as well just forget it. You’re almost certainly going to be dragged off by Goblins before tonight is done anyway, so there’s no serious concern about the bloodsuckers who await you when you return to your everyday life.

 

At any rate, the other thing is, of course, the unbelievably clear night sky. There’s so much less light pollution here, so much less neon. There are fewer stores, too, except, obviously, for the kind which pop up like giant mushrooms, sell you things that don’t exist, and then return once again to the peculiar and unnamed places which spawn their uncanny ilk.

Yes, the real pleasure of the countryside, especially a place as beautiful as the Catskills, is the evening sky.

There’s nothing quite like the night sky over the Blackthorne. Just look at all of those pinpricks of glow against the inky curtain of eventide’s dark. How distant they are, and yet, how close they seem, as if, even from thousands or millions of light-years away, they were inching towards you, or perhaps you are inching towards them, being pulled up, away from the Earth, getting lighter and lighter as normal gravity reluctantly but helplessly releases its grip into forces no normal being could ever understand, pulling you into the spiralling constellations, so like hundreds and hundreds of teeth in a maw that spans the entire endless, hungry galaxy. What a marvelous morsel you are; how delicious your frail human body in gnashing jaws of the starlight!

With any luck, you’re dreaming, and you’ll be fine. If not, we hope you’ve enjoyed your tour, and that we were able to bring a little bit of happiness to your final few minutes on, or, indeed, anywhere near, the Earth.

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The Dragonic Feline

Once, there was an adorable little kitty cat which thought it was a Dragon.

Every morning, the kitty cat would sharpen his claws against a tree, just as if it were a real giant lizard!

Then the cat would get very fierce and run around the Kingdom, growling and pretending to spit fire.

After that, assuming the castle’s princesses had not taken shelter in the Wizard’s tower (and the Wizard was, sadly, often away on important missions of her own) – the cat would kidnap them and eat them.

What a silly cat!

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A Sea of Salt and Other Writerly Things

Once there was a writer who told sad tales, as full of painful salt as is the ever-brimming sodium sea.

(Granted, the sodium sea was one of the Creator’s worst ideas, as all the fish died, and though humans swimming in it were extremely buoyant, they were perpetually irritating their eyes, plus they were constantly bumping into dead salmon; the salmon could hardly live more than a few minutes in the cool briny hell-broth, but when has a bad idea ever stopped a salmon? For that matter, when has a bad idea ever stopped the Creator?)

And that, in fact, was the author’s secret. No-one could stop him from typing his worst ideas into temporary realities. In fact, sometimes people, out of perversity or poor taste or a simple mismatch between their universe and that of the writer, absolutely loved the writer’s works, and they lived on and on and on, despite having no artistic right to do so.

(For that was another of the writer’s great secrets: the work did not need any artistic right to exist. It might have benefitted from a little artistic justification; but who was to judge? Not the writer; he wisely left that to other people, preferably people whose taste was much, much worse than his own; not that his own taste was much of anything to write home about. Let me put it this way: you’d probably rather read one of his stories than eat one of his dead, oversalted salmon, but both would be considered acts of masochism, and masochism of the least-sexy kind imaginable.

But I digress.

But then again, why would it matter?

For I am that writer, and here is my tale, and if it goes nowhere really, gets nowhere near the secret heart of my muse

(don’t touch the heart of my muse; it may no longer belong to me, but it’s still a delicate thing, to be gifted only as she chooses, not bandied about like some sort of sorcerous artifact which serves to bestow ideas upon the under-endowed) –

if the story never really tells you what it means by the salt and the sea and the sad and the long-lost heart, at least this story knows those things are there and, in missing them, the story, the tale itself, is sad. Sad like its writer; sad like its salmon-haunted, foaming, fatal sea.

There it is: another story which sprang forth from the half-remembered beating of my muse’s heart, a heart I will never hear again. Be glad there might be a moment or two of laughter, a wry smile, a little joke at the creator’s expense; that’s all the memory of that sweet and long-gone organ which pumped blood through her veins. Without her, I have no blood; only salt. But it’s been enough to sustain me for one more night, one more short story, one more remembered beat of a love which is taking far, far too long to forget.

Goodnight, my wood-nymph, my tree-daughter, wherever you are.

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the well-made warlock

No witch would pick up broom this week,
save to commit savage murder on a cobweb or two.
perhaps create pre-genocide on that semisentient colony of dust
which has been gathering by the fireplace,
hoping for the ideological justification for Cindrealla.

Flying brooms, my darling, are not merely for tourists, but LAST year’s tourists;

and we all know that eye of newt gets you spacier than Wavy Gravy’s genuine all-Owlsley midnight special,

and shall we just forget about what happens to princes with toes of frog?

the fashionable, diabolical Warlock, flying aloft with the aid of fat whose rendering I recommend (as a kind soul) you not think about at all–will wear a nice suit and a silly costume, and look like all the rest of us five billion fools, keeping powers concealed for himself and himself alone.

You might meet him some night; there are a million dark alleys; he’s worked to make sure.

I’m certain you’ll have a lot to talk about.

Briefly.

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A Haunted Walking Tour: Bigfoot

If you’d like to believe that Bigfoot is every bit as afraid of you as you are of him, feel perfectly free. Who’ll stop you? Certainly not Bigfoot. As he stretches slowly in your direction, you have just that one moment of exquisite fear when you consider that his lazy, languid half-turn is the prelude to some sort of unbelievably rapid and horrifying action.

Good luck with that. And enjoy! It’s helpful for the cardiovascular system for you to hit the occasional moment of your heart seeing if it can, in fact, pound its way through your chest via sheer force of delicious panic. But most likely, it won’t kill you. And if it does, hopefully you have some companions with you, because it’s just unkind to leave a rare sentient crtyptozoological beast to clean up your messes. I mean, it’s a very human thing to do, admittedly; it’s little-known, but trolls eventually abandoned bridges because they were tired of having city trash landing, with neither ceremony nor apology, upon their heads.

But Bigfoot isn’t about to come at you. He might spill his drink; how barbaric!

I’d recommend taking a few dozen pictures. Oh, sure, none of them will come out; if there’s anything you learn about photographing the unexplained, it’s that no camera, film or digital or holographic or whatever comes next, wants to embarrass all the principles of science by every taking a decent shot of something you’re not supposed to understand.

However, the kindly refraction of light will, with its own internal puckishness, make sure that every photo you take is as ridiculous as possible. You, with your arm, inextricably, around a fur rug. You, for reasons unknown, taking a picture against some sort of poorly-mounted bearskin. You, smiling knowingly, as a mess of hair and fangs waits patiently behind you. You know; whatever Disbelief can do to make your life harder it’ll do.

And now Bigfoot’s inviting you in. For glass of the official house drink: beer with hairballs.

Bottom’s up, my friend!

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Death Spells

I. Not unsurprisingly, the very placement of the “Death Spells” spoke quite eloquently to the Sorcerer’s Guild being an outmoded, nearly powerless organization. No-one would put them so close to the very front of the library, half-shielded from the view of the not-so-vigilant librarian. If they had any potency left, they’d be locked away. Who leaves weapons of mass destruction where they’re easily accessed? Either those who no longer care, or those who realize that there’s no power left.

Or both, of course.

II. Not that Alembric was particularly complaining. His Master senile, his classes dull beyond the ability of even most potent words to describe, he was biding his time until he could find out something halfway useful. Tradition and age-old practice be damned; he just wanted a few things he could use when he finally left in full disguest.

III. Stealing even the most complicated-looking librum wasn’t hard. The librarian had to be at the very edge of whatever age sucks even a powerful mage dry; assuming there were any powerful mages left. Alembric hadn’t needed to even run out of the building.

IV. Still, he was at least a tad cautious. He carefully caught and assembled a few mice; start with something small, easy, and lacking in life force, and go from there, eh?

V. When they found his much-gnawed body, some of the less-experienced mages looked away. The rest started on impassively. “You know, a death-spell takes extraordinary coordination. Fire it off without focus and thought, and it will simply come back you to bite you.” said old man Cheronko. He grinned, briefly. “…although, really, it’s the rats who do the majority of the actual biting.”

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Nonce Upon A Time

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller who could not help but begin everything with “once upon a time”.

This would not be so much of a problem if he were wholly content to let each cessation be a commentary of perpetual bliss, as tradition demanded. He was not the first, or the thousandth, or the hundred thousandth thousandth, to question the form and function of the fairytale; but his stories were oddly unsettling. They ended on strange and uncertain notes, without surety. No matter how conventional the rest of the tale, the ending always rendered all things peculiar.

“Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess who had adventures and got married and lived in that uncertain matter so common to us, our tiny species, adrift on a small island of sentience in an uncaring ocean of thoughtless Cosmos.”

People didn’t like it.

“Thus it was that a simple peasant boy came to be the fiercest and finest warrior the land had ever known. And he was greatly favored throughout the land. But this also meant that, when the Unknown Thing from beyond the stars made its sallow and sickly way to the surface of Earth, it was he, that warrior, who was sent forth to face it; and what happened next is for too awful to be spoken aloud.”

It would have been bad enough if that writer had stuck to fairytales; but eventually, it became obvious that he was writing about Reality, the true Reality, the world we all inhabit, and our unease at uncertainty is merely the reactive horror of simple primates attempting to make their way in a Universe whose howling hostilities drag at the soul until all is murk and gloom, and so it was, and so shall it be, and there is no escape, for there is nowhere to escape to.

 

 

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