Promised Misfortune WIP

 

It unfolded itself from the inside of the pod, limbering out on long legs and arms, thin torso and long neck; it wore a black and red pressure suit, skin-tight and ridged to accentuate its muscles, bulging at the crotch and shoulders; its face was predatory, small eyes and a large, demented grin full of wicked teeth, hair in a long, thin mane running from forehead to the back of the neck. It approached with a rhythm of mixed messages, fear and lust, death and delight, gently picking a mote of dust off one shoulder. “Gentlemen,” it said with a voice that beckoned and recoiled, “I have come to stay.”

“Tikon,” Hasin said; he was sweating, cold and heavy. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

The being called Tikon leaned against the wall, resting its head against a cabinet, and continued to smile. “Oh, dears, the pleasure is all mine. I heard about your endeavors, if you will, and thought to myself, oh, that is where I want to be.”

“We don't want, or need, your help.” Jah said, unaffacted by the hormonal influence the creature exhuded from every pore. “We can do this without your kind.”

Tikon's smile wavered, but did not falter. “Oh, really? A tazinik? Exemplary! This will be a delight,” it said, approaching again, idly scratching at its chest. “Your kind taste amazing.”

Jah bared his own teeth, short and black. “Slink towards death, incubus.”

Hasin closed his eyes and let out a deep, loud breath. “Stop. Both of you.”

Tikon stilled, and Jah blinked, slowly, and stood up straight.

“Tikon,” Hasin began, leveling a piercing gaze on it, “You are very gracious,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “but my companion is not wrong. We did not seek you out, nor would we. We would prefer it if you would leave.”

Tikon finally stopped smiling. “You are denying me?”

“I am.”

Tikon's smile exploded with ferocious glee. “Amazing! The strength of will required to, no, not worth speaking about. I am definitely not leaving without seeing this through to the end. In fact,” it stopped suddenly, its eyes darting to the counter, to the razor-sharp lightblade. Before even the quickest of them could react one hand snaked out and snatched up the blade, ignited it; it burst to life with a snap and a hiss, the three-inch blade of plasma providing enough light to horrifically illuminate its grinning visage from below. “I propose,” it began.

Jah grabbed Hasin and hauled him back just in time to realize the gesture was meaningless, as Tikon ran the blade along its own outstretched palm, raising a curl of smoke and a shallow gash of deep purple blood. “A bond!”

Hasin, Jah, and Uella stared as Tikon turned off the blade and extended its bleeding hand towards them. “With this melding of my life-blood with your flesh, I offer my life to yours until the end. As companions of the wound your lives are mine, to protect as I would my own; our goals unite, our joys and sorrows are one. We will forever live.”

Uella spoke for the first time since Hasin and Jah had known her, for the first time in over a month. “Are you completely insane or just mostly?” she asked.

Tikon took a step forward, grinning madly. “Oh, I am utterly bugfuck nuts, head over heels for you, my dears, my sweets, my loves!”

Hasin licked the sweat from his lips. The offer was incredibly endearing. “Do we dare?” he asked in a low tone, which only Jah heard. Jah stared hard at his captain.

“Don't. You. Fucking. Dare.”

Hasin's eyes locked with Jah's, though his face remained locked on Tikon's. “We accept,” he said, stepping forward as Jah and Uella, stunned, let him reach out and grasp Tikon's bleeding hand.

The pain was sudden, intense, and incredibly brief. With a searing heat the blood from Tikon's hand burned a matching scar into Hasin's own palm, though he neither yelled nor flinched. “The bond is done,” Tikon said.

Hasin stared down at his hand, watched the bubbling skin.

Tikon changed, subtly. “Lovely ship we have,” it said, looking around with a child-like wonder. “Kalish construction, unless I miss my guess?”

Uella sighed. “Kalish-ayela.”

Tikon blushed. “I apologize, dear love, with all the power in my heart. Of course, now I see it, now I see it, in the subtle lines of the bulkheads and the curves of the fixtures. Is she yours?”

Uella blushed, herself. “Yes.”

Jah finally managed to close his mouth. “I cannot fucking believe what I just witnessed. Did we really are you actually this thing is an incubus! A parasite! It's basically a walking, talking disease!”

Hasin took his turn to sigh. “It is our newest crew-member. Tikon, meet Jah, and Uella,” he said, gesturing to the others, “and welcome to the Promised Misfortune.”

Tikon had already taken a seat at a crash-couch and was spinning in it joyously. “Charmed!”

Uella Sin-Abajel was hip deep in heat-dispersing muck, her head completely engulfed by an opening in the engine block allowing access to the literal beating heart of the Promised Misfortune; with deft movements she removed and reattached various hoses and conduits in various configurations, occasionally breathing deep, drawing in the scents of the soul of her creation, and making adjustments. Finally, with one last heavy breath, she determined she had done the best she could given the circumstances, twisted one last lock into place, and withdrew from the cavity.

Hasin was watching her, up on the catwalk above the engine compartment; he couldn't stand the heat down below, already he was sweating uncomfortably. “When you're done~” he began, stopping short when he heard her squeal and bash her head on the engine block.

Uella groaned, rubbing the rapidly growing bruise adding a hint of color to her pale, tattoo'd head “Warn me, next time,” she said, looking up at her captain with a combination of barely-concealed pain and anger.

Hasin smiled sheepishly, fighting back a snicker. “Sorry, La.”

Uella stomped up and out of the thermal mud, waiting at the top of the stairs to let the majority of it drip from her skin and back into the pool below. “S'okay, cap,” she replied, the anger dead in the pit of her stomach, replaced by embarrassment for her perceived loss of control. “What do you need?”

“After you get cleaned up, please come up to the bridge; Tikon's found something in their scans of the planet and they want a second opinion.”

Uella looked up at Hasin, raised an eyebrow. “What would I see that you or they can't?”

“They say it's kalish, whatever it is.”

Uella stood under the steaming flow of water, letting it wash the remainder of the thermal mud off and down the drain; she hated losing even a few drops of the precious stuff, but knew it was necessary for maintaining the living environment for the others. If it had been just her, as it had been for the past few thousand years, she wouldn't have bothered; in fact, the shower itself likely would never have been installed, nor the modifications to the ram scoop to filter oxygen and hydrogen from the aether and atom-smash it into water.

While she let the water flow over her skin she gazed her inner eye back on the last two months, normally a blink in time to her, but so full of events, changes, growth: the arrival of Hasin and his offer, Misfortune's urging that she accept it, the additions of Jah and Tikon. Tikon. Tikon. Tikon.

Uella's body blushed as she thought about the parasite creature, the being of pure lust-rage that was so enamored with them and their quest, that knew so much about kalish. It was comfortable and distressing all at once. Misfortune assured her that she was not being affected by it's pheromone drives, that these emotions were real, hers; this knowledge did not help. Uella leaned her forehead against the cool wall of the shower and let out a deep, ugly sob. So much had changed, so many emotions, so much to endure. She wished for the simpler times, when it was just her and the Misfortune, moving ever towards the end of time.

Jah leaned back into his couch, eyes closed, ears perked back, and listened. Every sound for meters assaulted his auditory senses: Uella bathing, Tikon tick-ticking away on the console, Hasin shifting his weight. Jah blocked each sound out, one after another, until all he could hear was the background drone of the Misfortune itself, then he blocked that out as well. Pure silence. Blissful silence.

He reached out and flicked a lever on the device beside him, and the silence was slowly filled with a new noise, a light, flitting sound produced only by a select few masters on an instrument that took hundreds of years to learn to play, let alone play with such skill. Jah listened, deeply, to the sound, then took up his own naudiron, the neck held in one hand, the bow in another, a third supporting the base of the instrument and fourth beginning to manipulate the keys along the body; as he prepared to draw the bow across the strings he breathed in deep, held it long and hard.

The sound was excruciating to Tikon, but its face betrayed nothing. These were its blood, now, they were not family, they were Tikon as much as it was Tikon. Their idiosyncrasies were Tikon. That Jah enjoyed playing the horror-device, that Uella waded through the heat-mud for hours on end, that Hiran Hasin refused to stop sweating, all were Tikon. It knew this was for the best, that these facets of Tikon would lead it to the promised prize, and that though they were strange and sometimes hostile they were still amazing and delightful, just like Tikon. It would kill for them, would die for them, would celebrate victories and defeats with the same lustful gusto. And it loved-hated every moment of it.

It knew Uella would love what it had found, would be as excited as it was to learn more about the kalish vessel on the planet below, to plumb its depths and acquire new material for the Misfortune; it knew that Jah would relish the opportunity to hunt, to eat real meat he caught with his own arms, and to sleep under the forest canopy for even one night; Hasin, Hasin would love to see everyone happy and enjoying their quest.

And Tikon? Tikon would share their joy until it turned to sorrow. Forever.

Hasin watched Tikon with guarded trepidation; the parasite was bonded to him, and as far as he could tell not just not a threat, but a tremendous asset. That didn't make it any less terrifying, sometimes, especially with their history, although Tikon betrayed no recollection of what happened all those years ago. For not the first time Hasin wondered if Tikon was not the same Tikon. His attempts to research it further were always stymied by blocks on the data, heavy wards against prying eyes learning too much about the incubus species. Every time he discovered a new way to wiggle more information out of the database he only obtained more questions, more concerns.

He knew that Uella was in love with the incubus, though what he knew about kalish said she should be incapable of that emotion. Jah was angered by it, enraged they existed in the same universe, terrified of the outcome of conflict between them. Misfortune loved it as much as Uella, though in different, deeper ways, much like it loved all of them.

Hasin's thoughts were interruped by Uella stepping onto the bridge, taking in the view of the planet below.

“Hey, Tik,” she said, taking the seat beside Tikon and turning to look at the screen before it. “What'd you find?”

Tikon turned its smiling gaze onto her. “You're gonna love it, dearest, I promise.”

Zelda knock-off villain

Bulan is ancient, probably older than the universe; she, along with the rest of her people, was imprisoned by another ancient race for learning too much about the old races, the old technology, and older magic.

Now she's back, and she's pissed off. She's taken the guise of a newly-sentient AI and is using the people of the only habitable world left in the universe to perform an ancient spell to send herself back to her original timeline to punish the other race.

She's nuts, not just from a human perspective but in the grand scheme of things; her ritual won't do anything except blow up the planet.

Enzeron outline/concept

The War to end all Wars happened. Some scientist invented nanorobotics and used it as a weapon. It was a good weapon.

Too good.

Nanorobots were used by every side to great effect, and it got so bad the world council decided to outlaw them, mostly because any weapon that could turn an entire enemy army into a fine pink paste, then make horrible cyborg warriors from said paste, maybe didn't need to be used.

The that came from them trying to outlaw nanorobots was worse than the actual war they were invented to end, and the world ended up in a weird reverse techno-renaissance where most people distrust any technology more sophisticated than a clock and anyone who knows how to maintain robots/electronics is held with equal amounts of awe and contempt.

Enter our protagonists, Zyla and Crayl, the former a veteran of both of the aformentioned wars, the latter a staunch pacifist and anti-war protestor. They're also both very good mechanics/engineers, Zyla specializing in software, electronics, and (secretly) nanomachinery, Crayl specializing in mechanical engineering and robotics. Together they operate a mobile repair business, traveling across the country and providing expert repair/maintenance for people. Zyla owns the bus they travel in, which has been converted into a caravan-style mobile home for the two of them. Crayl owns a MULE (Multi-Use Labor Environment) he named Kilimanjaro. Most of the money they make is used to keep the bus, and themselves, going.

Zyla is on the run from the ANC, the Anti-Nano Concord, a multi-governmental organization charged with finding every last nanoscientist and nanoengineer and bringing them to justice for their role in the war. Crayl is on the run from his daughter, Ysmi, CEO of Palzacrawn, one of the companies which made out like bandits during the war by developing both nanorobots and then traditional robotics after the shift. Ysmi blames her dad for the death of her mother, Pondit; he was partially responsible.

Zyla is headstrong, brave, loyal, deathly afraid of being alone, and prone to alcoholism and depression. Crayl is also headstrong, brave, loyal, deathly afraid of being alone, and has a very weak immune system and almost always has either the flu or extreme seasonal allergies. They are more alike than either would like to ever admit.

Zyla is in her late 30s, about 6'2 and is a very muscular 200+ pounds. She has nanorobots in her blood keeping her fit, but her body runs through calories much quicker than average and she has to eat six or seven times a day to keep up. Her left arm is a robotic prosthesis, installed before she became a nanoscientist, which was designed to look like her original arm but chrome, down to her wedding ring. She's dark-skinned, wide-faced, hazel eyes, and usually keeps her hair in a short mohawk or pixie cut and dyed whatever color she can find for cheap. She has two military tattoos, one on each shoulder, one of her former platoon (The Blighted 209th) and the other her rank (Leftenant), a tattoo on her back of two moons rising over an alien landscape, and numerous facial piercings.

Crayl is in his mid-40s, about 5'3 and a flabby 180+ pounds. He has chrome lenses for eyes and his tear-ducts have been rerouted to his bladder. He shaves his head but wears his beard long and tied off, despite his age it's still dark, dark brown. His nose is prominent and large. He has a bull-ring style cock piercing and an ornate montage of tattoos running up his arm and along one shoulder depicting the progress of Dante and Beatrice through heaven.

Zyla's bus used to be a cross-country travel deal for hauling 30-ish people, until she got her hands on it and turned it into a mobile home/workshop. It was originally designed just to hold herself and her equipment, but once Crayl came along for the ride they modified things to keep them both comfortable. It wasn't too hard, she lives light and he lives almost lighter. The living space part of the bus is mostly a couple of beds, a kitchen, bathroom, and a few level surfaces for tables. The workshop is the real hard-core part of the bus, lots of tools, racks, spare parts, diagnostics equipment, etcetera. The back-end of the bus can open to allow larger projects to enter/leave the workshop, or to act as a sort-of sales floor/business space. They have added their own decorative touches to the interior, mostly art projects they've collected or made themselves, and they've wired the whole bus for sound so they can listen to their music (Crayl likes noise, math, and ambient environmental music, Zyla likes lyric-heavy hip-hop and traditional folk music from her home country).

Crayl's MULE was, for a long time, his only friend. It has a rudimentary AI that behaves like a living dog, albeit one that doubles as a mobile computer system.

Fenkirk Malvado

Concept: magic works on conceptualized faith, knowledge mixed with belief; you have to understand the spell, and then you can cast it if your will is strong enough to force it into reality. The words and motions to bring a spell out are focuses and crutches, not the spell itself; it doesn't really matter what you say or how you move your hands, just that you know what you're trying to do and you have conviction.

Fen is considered a scholar of esoteric magic, he crafts his own spells from the world around him as he needs them, and his movements and words are based on whatever he needs to keep his will focused; for example, his version of High Umbervuld's Emotional Turmoil spell, which causes the target to instantly, and sometimes painfully, realize the damage their actions are causing to the world around them, is performed with a simple movement of his staff and the words "Bolivar Trask".

Yes. All of Fen's spells are references to comics: for Oppen Moon's Shape-Shift he moves his hand over his own faces and says "Raven Darkhölme" while visualizing what he wants to become. For the more monstrous Oppen Moon's Beastly Form, he hunches down on all fours and says "Phillip McCoy".

Some of his peers feel his obsession with comics shows a lack of understanding of the seriousness of magic, though others believe that the fact that he can perform complex rites and wizardry while boiling down the main verbal and physical components to a simple memetic show a deep connection with both himself and the spells.

Desperation

It was cold. Very cold. Janek's breath came in long, steamy plumes that wisped up and away, threatening to give away his position to the three Spangelend mercenaries, covered head to toe in armor and snow-white winter gear, crunching their way through the snow. A snap of a twig, the flutter of wings, and everything stopped.

Janek held his breath. The mercenaries stopped dead, slowly sweeping the landscape rifles-first. A bird suddenly darted from the brush, and though one of them snapped their attention to it, they did not fire.

Too professional for that shit, Janek thought. The silence gave him a chance to orient himself, picking up the minutae of the sounds of the world around him, hearing the breathing of the three, the heartbeat of a squirrel nearby, then the snow being crushed underfoot as they continued to advance. They were off his trail just enough that they would pass him, he figured, though one was just far enough from the others, probably scanning their rear, that they might notice his hiding place if he waited too long.

His now snow-covered pistol, a rough steel beast of a revolver with an octagonal barrel, was already cocked and ready to fire, but he had to wait for the right moment or they would catch him between shots, and sitting as he was, legs splayed out before him, solid on his butt in the snow, he didn't have much in the way of options in moving silently.

Janek suppressed a sigh. Life had taken a very unfortunate turn in the last few months, dragging him from assignment to assignment, each leading his employer, step by step, closer to their goal, their goal which he had destroyed in a fit of insight at the last moment. The orb was dangerous in anyone's hands, stealing it would have just prolonged the inevitable. He had put two rounds into the thing and it exploded, immediately, spraying the room in shrapnel; he had gotten the worst of it, really, leaving him alive but mangled. His boss died immediately, the lucky bastard, as had Zeke and Polly, who didn't deserve their fate but hadn't seen the danger of the orb.

Janek resisted the urge to rub at his muzzle, a network of scar tissue now, as the mercenaries closed the gap. Finally the first one walked past the rocks he sat behind, sweeping before him but not turning. The second one came into view and turned to check behind the rocks.

Janek slid to the side, hitting the ground hard, and fired twice in rapid succession, the first round hitting low, landing flat on the armor of the second merc, the other one clipping the top of their helmet and snapping their head back. Janek shifted his weight to roll to the side and fired a third time, taking the merc square in the neck and killing them just as the point-man turned and sprayed fire in the general direction of the shots; one round hit the snow by Janek's head, while another made solid contact with his thigh. Janek took a fourth shot while kicking off the rock, propelling himself away from the incoming fire; his bullet was true, taking the point-man in the face, shattering his jaw and dropping him instantly.

Before he could react the third soldier, who had come around the far side, fired, narrowly missing Janek's head but not his shoulder, the bullet passing through and into the ground; Janek rolled with the impact, shoving the fresh wound into the snow to bring his pistol to bear and firing the last two rounds, both taking the remaining merc in the chest, knocking him flat onto the ground. Janek's leg refused to do as it was told but he pushed it on anyway, kneeing himself up off the ground and lunging at the prone merc before they could get up.

When it was over Janek pushed himself off the dead merc's chest, the blood on his teeth and fur stark contrast to the white around them. He finally allowed himself a deep, wracking breath, the pain coming to the forefront, and the suppressed sigh came out.

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Janek Orz, born ∄24,957, 37 years old. Created at the Tal Mayloth facility in Nevostok, genetically derived from human and European lynx stock, raised at the facility and highly educated to act as a bodyguard and covert agent for one Shigeharu Ko, a business mogul with a penchant for collecting rare artifacts by stealing them from other people. Ko also bought two other products of the facility, Ezekiel Marin, black rhino, and Pollyanna Firth, water vole, as a package deal; the three of them had no choice in the matter. The fact that Ko treated them like people and not property was a blessing, not the norm.

Normally quiet and outwardly friendly, Janek is prone to violence when stressed, lashing out when pushed; he spends a lot of his free-time in introspective meditation, which is just starting to help. He tends to trust easily, though recent events have caused him to begin to see/suspect treachery where none exists.

Just a little bit of world.

Ignam took one final deep breath and opened his eyes, taking in the grand, coal-black tree before him; as a sapling, all those years ago, it had been easy to bring in and plant on the small, artificial hill; now, removing it from the globe of transparisteel would be nearly impossible. Its purple and blue leaves swayed gently in the breeze, ocassionally dropping off and falling to the blue grass, or into the light pink water; autumn was coming, as it had been for the past six-hundred years. It was always nearly autumn, thanks to the climate control system of his ship.

Ignam stood, his joints aching from prolonged sitting, three distinct cracks letting him know he wasn't getting any younger as he unfurled his legs and stood at full height. He bowed to the tree, lowering himself with his forehead nearly to the floor, then stood straight and turned. He took the short path to the rest of his ship, walking down a smooth, stone-studded tunnel and into the ship proper, where the remnants of his dead homeworld gave way to tubular hallways with off-white walls and dark-colored tapestries draped at irregular intervals. He came to his office, a modest library of antique paper and modern plastic books and tablets, with its desk of the same wood as the tree in the atrium, the chair padded in deep red; on the table sat a modern interpretation of an ancient writing device, the keys designed to embed plastic sheets with letters.

He sat at his desk, leaned back, and sighed. Back to work, he thought, his fingers dancing over the keys.

"A little before dawn, just as the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, the two lovers dozed beneath the tree they had stumbled upon in the night..."

CYBABERDS

“Sika; aloft!”

The falcon surged upward, propelled by the sudden thrust of my arm, and climbed rapidly on her own strength for the first time since the surgery; I watched her rise, my optics keeping track of her trajectory and speed. At the rate she was going she would lose strength long before she got back to me.

“Sika! Return!”

The bird turned to look at me, but did not change course; she continued to climb, wings beating faster and faster. Stubborn thing. But... she did have to learn. Her new wings were only a few grams heavier than her original ones, but still, for a hollow-boned creature out of shape and soaring with brand-new prosthesis she had to discover on her own that things would not be the same. Not at first, anyway.

So I followed her. She couldn't get too far, at least; based on the projections she probably didn't have more than five more minutes of flight before she wouldn't be able to keep herself airborne and would have to come down to land, assuming she didn't ignore all of her body's warnings and...

Oh, hell. The thought only just occurred to me, that something might have been wrong. The wings could be beating on their own, stuck in an endless loop, or their feedback systems could be sending confusing signals, like she didn't realize her body was wearing out. “Bijay?” I said, breaking into a jog. “Are you getting anything weird from Sika's metrics?”

“No, nothing out of the ordinary; she's a little tired, but the wings are performing well.” Bijay responded from the lab.

“What about their feedback reports? Everything look good?”

“Give me a moment... yes, everything's fine. Is something wrong?”

“I don't know, yet,” I replied. “She's not responding to commands and she's continuing to climb. I'm going after her.”

“Lauren,” Bijay said, chiding me. “She's been grounded for two months, sedated several times in the past week alone, and suddenly given total freedom. Did you honestly expect her to come back to you when called?”

I slowed, watching Sika gently descend to a tree near the edge of the wood, and land heavily in the branches. I zoomed in on her, watching her chest rise and fall rapidly; she was very tired, but otherwise looked fine. “Fair point, Beej. She's landed.”

“I'm pulling the telemetry data from her wings, I'll take a look at it and run it by Arjun. We can look it over when you two get back.”

“If I can get her to come down.”

“Offer her a squirrel, she loves squirrels.”

I sat in the grass and watched the sun fall on the horizon while Sika, long talons stamped down on a red squirrel I had tagged, side-eyed me and took delicate nibbles.

“You're right to want to roam,” I said, watching her eat. “But you should've realized you weren't up to the task.”

Sika swallowed her bite, cocked her head to the side, and squaked at me.

“I'm not blaming you for trying, mind,” I replied. “But you really should have known better.”

Sika took another bite, and together we sat, girl and her bird, as the sun set.


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The above was based on a writing prompt provided by @artofmatk.

Pigfucker...