Author: Wildbow

Go for the Throat – 23.d | Pale

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

She found Turdswallow sitting in front of a flickering gremlin-made screen displaying an event, above a wooden arrow pointing the way to the Tiny Meathole.  As if the crowd wasn’t sign enough.  Goblins of various sizes were funneling through the tunnels, self-sorting according to the size of the various openings.  There was already noise as the shit-stirrers stirred shit, noisemakers made noise, and some pre-event things were kicking off.

There wasn’t a lot going on at the outskirts.  The settlement got less settled past here, and the Warrens tunnels opened up into caverns.  Fleshmongled creations, wildlife, flora, fauna, sapient slime molds, and even tribes of human who’d worked their way down into the Midwarrens were out there.  The fighting pit drew people in, making this a last bastion.

This wasn’t a good vantage point to see, which was probably why Turdswallow was being left alone, here.  A full-bodied, foot-tall goblin sitting on the ledge just beneath the sign, a dark silhouette when the screen was bright, backlit from behind by the ambient glow when everything was dark.

He looked at her, then looked away, resentful.  With a snub of his hand, he rubbed blood away from a nostril.  He wouldn’t have been thrown into the Tiny Meathole.  That was a fighting pit for the smallest goblins, and Turdswallow was a foot high.  He’d been mugged, it looked like.  The last she’d seen him, he’d collected a lot of knickknacks, odds, and ends.

Now he had more wounds on him than he had scraps of clothing.

“Go ‘way,” he said, and speaking made blood start running out of his nostril again.

She had to remove her tongue stretcher before she could talk.

“Ya don’t want me to lick your wounds?” she asked.

“Inside’s worse than the outside,” he said, averting his eyes.  “Kicked me around.”

“Offer’s open,” she said.  “I’ll lick ’em all.”

He didn’t look at her.

She approached, and he pushed at her leg, almost pushing her off the sign.  It was a twenty foot drop to the rust-colored mud with old blood refusing to congeal or scab up, sitting in the valleys, and she wasn’t any taller than him, so the twenty foot drop was a lot.

She thought about going, then got settled next to him, sitting with her legs dangling.  She leaned over, head on his shoulder.

“Yer bad at listenin’.  Dumb,” he grumbled.  “All the pink and interestin’ bits that’re supposed to be inside your head’re stickin’ out of it instead.”

She smoothed her pink hair back some with the arm that wasn’t pressed up against him.

“Yeh, but I got you to do thinkin’ for me.”

He sighed.

The crowd cheered, audible even from a distance, lights and fireworks going off.  Screens around the fighting pit showed a very dynamic view of the Tiny Meathole, spiraling down from a view of the crowd down to the base floor, where numbered gates kept contestants out.

Two gates opened, and the contestants stumbled out.  Number 107 was mostly mouth, with brawny arms and legs.  Number 132 had hair long enough that it pooled around her feet, tripping her up, a lone bat wing at one shoulder, and very thin limbs.  Because so much of her was shrouded in her long hair, they’d used crayon to draw her number on one of her eyeballs, so she could barely see, eye watering, number visible when she managed to force it open.

Number 132 looked terrified, shown on a fifty-foot screen above the venue.  The pit was a straight shaft down, and the tunnels were sorted by size, leading to barred and chain-link gated windows that gave spectators a view of what was going on.  The higher one went, the bigger the spectators went, with a handful of goblins at the top who were large enough that, if they were here instead of there, they could’ve and might’ve reached up and plucked Turdswallow and her off the ledge below the sign and eaten them.

But towards the bottom were some of the ex-spectators.  Goblins who’d grown too large to be pushed down into the greased tunnels that would put them by a gate.  Ones who’d survived that, and were mean about it.

132 had barely even looked at her opponent.  She flinched away from the crowd and shouted something microphones didn’t pick up.

The fight wasn’t a fight.  A swift and brutal execution.  132 scrambled to get away, clawed hands and feet scraping at the side of the pit, and then her wing got torn out at the root, leaving the socket raw and open as a hole in her back.  She had even less fight in her after that.

Bubble watched without joy, thinking about how she’d fight the mouthy bastard if he was bigger.  Watching because 132 deserved to be recognized, even in her last moments.

She looked over and saw Turdswallow wasn’t even watching the screen.

She nibbled on his shoulder, and he looked at her, glanced at the screen, and finally looked away again, sighing.

“Do some thinkin’ for me?” Bubble asked.  She reached over and rubbed the top of his head, moving skin around.

“What would her name have been?” he asked.

“Who?”

He pointed at the screen without looking.

“Hmm.  Dunno.  There’s more where she came from.”

“What if we didn’t kill each other off?  What if every goblin got a name, found somethin’ to do, and then we got that more?” he asked.  “Could beat anyone.  All the courts.  Humans.”

“That’s some big thinking.  So big,” she said, bunching his scalp up at the tip-top of his head so it was all wrinkled.

“Would need the best warlord ever, y’think?” she asked.

He snorted.  Blood started flowing from his nose again, running down onto his broad belly.

She extended her tongue, and snaked it into his nostril, plugging it and stopping the bleeding.

“Not me,” he said, ignoring the tongue.  “No warlord, mebbe.”

She used a hand to move the tongue around so it went around the back of his head instead of across his face, tip going the long way around to reach the nostril.  She moved her head, so she could study his expression.

There were cheers and fireworks as another fight opened.  She ignored it, staring at Turdswallow.  He didn’t meet her eyes, didn’t look at the sign.

“This coming from Dee?” Bubble asked, a bit awkwardly, talking with her tongue extended.  She was thinking about one of the goblins from the home neigborhood.  “Little scrawny-ahhed, bat-nohed-”

She stopped, still annoyed.

“And don’t you tell her neither.  She’s already cracked out enough on all that human TV, she doesn’t need more wild ideas.”

Bubble grunted.

“She’s bigger than you and she’s younger, eh?”

“Ah bit.  Skinny.  Ah could break her.”

“Why?  Why will she get to be taller?  Why am I fat?”

“You shtanding there with your mouth open beneaf that mystery lard hole in tha tunnel near home might haf somethin’ to do wif it.”

“More than that.  ‘Member the kings comin’ through?”  He finally met her eyes as he asked it.

Practitioners.  They’d come through their Homewarrens to recruit.  Fuckin’ Pustlebottom had been wailing she didn’t get picked.

Bubblecum nodded.

“They don’t care.  They aren’t tryin’ to figure us out.  They don’t seem to know what makes one goblin bigger, one goblin spikier.  They come through an’ it’s all, you, you, not you, you’re not worth lookin’ at.  They get enough useful goblins, they move on.”

“Ah’m not smart enough to get my head around all that thinkin’,” she admitted.  “What does thith haf to do with that?”

“I got a nipple hair,” Turdswallow said, flicking one nipple.

“That haf even less to do with this or that.”

“And that fightin’ pit, some goblin made that shit, I’m positive.  Some goblin or goblins, they took the time to dig, to work through rock deep in mud, keep mud from flowin’ in, size the tunnels, get it all put together, bars on the big windows so nobody near the top can jump on through.  Who?  Who knows?  Could we ever know?”

She reached over, and plucked the nipple hair from his chest, simultaneously withdrawing her tongue from his nostril and into her mouth.

“Ow.”  He punched her in the arm.

She brandished the hair at him like it was a shiv.  She could talk more clearly now. “Make sense.  You’re not talkin’ like you’re good at thinkin’, you’re talking random.”

“It’s all the same shit,” Turdswallow told her, rubbing his nipple.  “How’s it all put together?  How are we put together?  Why?  What’s the fuckin’ point?”

“I like you being angry,” she said.

“It’s not fuckin’ anger,” he retorted, face screwed up.  He shook his head, sure doing a bad job of not looking angry.  His nose wasn’t bleeding, at least, even with the way his face was all scowly, his pushed-in non-nose all wrinkled.  “You asked yer questions, you got my nipple hair, have fun with it.”

She didn’t budge, still holding out the hair.

He was silent.  Sulking.

“Hey.  Explain better.”

She pushed his shoulder.  He ignored her.

“Yer smart enough to.  Explain.”

He scowled.

“Turdsy, hey.  Hey.  Heya.  Explain.”

He glared at her.

She tickled his cheek with the curly nipple hair.

He heaved out a sigh.

“Explain fer me.”

“Way I figure it, hair starts growin’ in, yer partway to bein’ grown.  Halfway, mebbe.  I’m halfway to grown, mebbe.”

Halfway to being grown.  He’d only end up two feet tall?

He sat there, sullen, blood crusted around his nose, more crusting on his stomach.  Ragged, all his stuff gone, figuring out he wouldn’t ever be big.

“You’ll be bigger than that,” she said.  She gave him a shake.  “Turdsy.  You’ll be bigger.”

“Goblins get stronger by pushin’ through.  Can’t get in a rut,” he said.  “Can’t be a victim, gotta figure out how to be mean an’…”

That expression again.  Scowly.

He looked up at the screen.

She rested her face against his shoulder, mouth smushed up against skin, looking up at his face.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

She remained where she was.

She could stare up at his face, as he stubbornly remained silent.  Like 132.  Hurt, defeated before anyone even started tearing him apart.

Well, he’d been beaten up and kicked around.  So… they’d started, at least.  But not a proper tearing apart.

She turned her head so her cheek was against his shoulder.  Her sharp teeth scraped the inside of her cheek as she talked, like that, but that was okay.  “I think… can I do some thinkin’?”

“Would it matter if I said no?” he asked, not looking at her.

“Reason goblins don’t all stop fightin’, get together, and win, is we’re about the fight.  When you win you can’t keep fightin’.  If we took over everythin’, we’d be out of fight.”

“I don’t like fightin’,” he said, his voice a quiet croak, reluctant.  “I don’t like hurtin’, I don’t like mean.”

She pressed the front of her mouth into his shoulder again, not looking at his face anymore, digesting that.

“I’m out of fight.”

“You might only be halfway grown, you said, so what’re you sayin’, man?” Bubblecum mumbled into his shoulder.  “Out of fight?”

He turned his head, and she saw it.

She fell silent.

The crowd roared, fireworks going off.

Different tunnels were opening.  The pre-show was closing, and the Tiny Meathole was opening up to another event.

“I’m lame.  I tried to push out of my rut, I got beat, my stuff got taken.  I was goin’ to do somethin’ cool,” he said.

“Everythin’,” she told him.

He looked at her.

“Everythin’ you do is cool.  An’ sexy.  An’ smart.”

“You’re the only one who thinks that,” he said.  “An’ you’re brainless.”

“You don’t have any fight in you?” she asked.  “I’ve got fight in me enough for both of us, get us through.  I’m brainless?  You come up with the plan.”

He gave her a long look.  Mouth still pressed into his shoulder, she stuck out her tongue and licked the length of his arm.  She could taste the blood from his wounds.

“Yer not that brainless,” he said.  “Us being all about fight.  That was good.  Not sure it’s right, but it’s good.”

“Thank’yeh,” she mumbled.

“I’m a loser, I lost.”

“We’ll win.  We gotta win.  No fight in you?  That’s fine.  We’re an us.  An’ we’ll be a bigger us, okay?  We’ll get more peeps, we’ll get shits like 132, no matter how lame, we’ll name ’em.  You come up with an idea, we’ll make it happen.”

He sighed, but it was a different sort of sigh.  Relief, maybe.  Forcing himself to adjust.

“You’re my day one number one,” she told him.  “Day one, you were there.  First thing, day one, moment my eyes were clear of muck, you were my number one guy.”

“I’m not, not that-”

“Then-” she started, stopped.  “Then figure it out.  Whatever it is.  Kings are comin’ down here pickin’ goblins, missing somethin’ you think is important?  Figure it out.  You got something you want to be?  You want stuff?  Get stuff, figure out what to do with the stuff.  I’ll… I’m with you.  Let me be with you.  But figure it out, become that.”

He nodded.

He seemed to think for a bit, then he got to his feet.  She remained sitting.

He put a hand out, palm up.

She wanted to accept, but…

“You say you’re not mean but you’ve been mean,” she told him.  “An’ that’s okay.  You were a boy, I’m a girl, I’m clingy and shit.  But this?”  She held out the nipple hair.

“Get rid of that thing.”

“No.  No.  You’re halfway to grown.  Day like this?  I can take it.  But one day it’ll be me sittin’ around feelin’ sorry for myself.  Me bleeding out the nose hole.  Me that’s going to need to be dragged forward.  You can’t be mean then.  I won’t be able to stand it.  Not from my day one number one.”

He dropped his hand, then looked up at the screen.  Fireworks exploded in a line across the sky.  Gibberlings on the street squealed, babbling, rushing forward.

When he put the hand out again, it wasn’t with palm up, but palm sideways.  “No more mean, not at you, I might forget, but I’ll make it up to you if I do.  Remind me, if I’m not getting it.  How’s that?”

“Deal,” she answered.  She took it, clasping it, then holding onto it as she pulled herself to her feet, putting her arms around him to hug him in the process.

The screen was playing the next segment, where the mouthy goblin was strutting out onto stage, thrusting his lower body-slash-chin.  He’d been stark naked before but now wore a shiny black thong.  It was more obscene than being naked had been.

“I don’t want to see this shit,” Turdswallow said.

“Me neither.”

“Let’s go?”

“What are we doing?” she asked, hanging off his lovely solid body as he walked toward the ladder.  He was solid enough to drag her, like a tractor with a low top speed but a lot of torque.

“I figure somethin’ out, we’ll push.  See how much we can grow before our bodies catch up with us, what we can put together.  I want my stuff back.”

“I fight ’em?” she asked.

“They’re pretty big.”

“I’ll fight ’em,” she said.

“We’ll fight ’em.”

She was as happy as she’d been since day one.

Bubbleyum turned her head, watching as Anthem Tedd navigated the trees at the edge of no man’s land, so close to the boundary between natural trees and artificial suburbia that the sleeve of his right arm distorted, curling and getting pulled into tendrils before snapping back.  It was an effect that got less pronounced as the magic got stronger.  When it wasn’t fighting a tug of war elsewhere, it could hide itself as something seamless, being strategic about what it took.

The Girl by Candlelight stalked over houses, burning, wax flowing and pooling, and shingles ignited, wax flowed, little bowls with candles on them floating on the expanding lake around the spirit.  The spirit’s concern for the moment was Anthem.

There weren’t many Others who liked this environment, a town of white picket fences and shit.  The serpent sometimes poked out of the ghost dimension, but it was quick to leave.

Anthem came to stand beside her.  She gave him a sidelong glance, not turning her head, chewing her gum slowly.

Sir Toadswallow said, “Be good,” and she flicked her eyes left to look at him.

He wasn’t that far away.  He was wrangling their goblins.  Sockgnash from their old neighborhood was backing him, the lesser goblins of Kennet were milling around him, getting gunk and trinkets.  Her man of car salesman confidence, grease and gristle in fifty flavors, depending on where she licked.  The side of her mouth closest to him lifted in a smile.

The smile dropped away as she flicked her eyes the other direction and looked at Anthem with disdain and loathing.

This is the man who was going to bind you and put you in a book, Toadsy.

“One of Lucy’s instructors.  It’s been an interesting experience, trying to consult on her training, without being able to do violence in Kennet found or see the training elsewhere,” Anthem said.

“Did anyone ask?” she asked him.

“Ahem,” Sir Toadswallow cleared his throat, which he was very good at doing.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Bubbleyum said.  “We helped train the same kid.”

Branches stirred, brushing against clothing.  She could hear the rustle.

Miss, with the Ballerina in Blue following right behind her.

A bit fairy-ish, but the head being twisted around was a fun image, and every one of Bubbleyum’s senses was telling her that the Ballerina wasn’t to be messed with.

“Montague and the Turtle Queen are preparing for a concerted push against the Ordinary Family,” Miss informed them.  “Matthew has the shrine spirits, some denizens, and some goblins with him.”

“The goblins won’t be too useful,” Toadswallow said.  “The reason they’re there and not here is they think they can hide behind someone else and let him do all the work.”

“Want me to give ’em a bit of a twist of the arm?  Nipple?” Bubbleyum asked.

“No,” Miss said.  “This is an army of volunteers.  No need to twist nipples to get someone to the fight.”

Bubbleyum gave Toadswallow a glance.  He nodded.

Alright.  She’d listen to Miss on that, then.

“Five or ten minutes.  They’ll call me when it’s time, I’ll tell you, we make a concerted attack.  You can expect the Black Scalpel, technomancy Others, wraiths, the Ghoul King, and possibly the Girl by Candlelight to get in the way, and that’s without the Ordinary Family effect covering the way.”

“There was a ritual incarnate,” Toadswallow said.  “Like the Choir.”

“More or less dealt with by the girls, Zed, and Brie, then finished off by others.”

“Hm, good,” Toadswallow said.  He looked up at Bubbleyum.  “Just the one thing Making a field into a whole town we have to get across.”

“Up the hill to the school at the peak,” Anthem said.

“Not in the snow, at least,” Toadswallow said, smiling.

“We can’t go through the Warrens?” Bubbleyum asked.

He shook his head.  “Blocked.”

Bubbleyum used one of her tongues to stick a piece of gum behind one of her back teeth, then dug deep to pry another fist-sized wad out from behind another tooth.

She chewed, working the stiffness out.  For this piece, she was down to eight hundred and thirty-one pieces of gum, pried from under surfaces in a prison, retrieved, and worked into the wad, condensed down.  The goal was nine hundred and ninety nine, but making it past other milestones counted.  Distilled stress, nicotine, the spit and grit of people who had nothing better to do with their time than exercise, and boredom.  She chewed her way through it.  It laced the spit in her mouth, and the rest of her tilted to accommodate.

She could stand here with the snow blowing around her, the fight raging, and be bored.

She didn’t need the gum for that.  The gum took things to the next level and made her extra bored in the face of it all.

She watched with half lidded eyes as the Girl by Candlelight stalked past them, eyes blazing.  Watching them.

Anthem raised a hand, and beckoned for her to come.  A duelist’s taunt.

The spirit’s eyes burned brighter as she moved on, away, mouth moving like she was talking, communicating to someone or something.

The spirit didn’t want to fight them here.  Not where their strength was collected, where the forces on her side weren’t holding ground.

“Matthew should distract her,” Miss said.  “We’ve got people inside, they should be drawing attention and resources away, and we have more coming.  Hello, Grandfather.”

The Dog Tag came through the trees with some others backing him up.  “Horseman went inside and hasn’t signaled.  One of the gunshots that came out of there, felt like his.  I think they’ve been bound.”

“We’ll do our best to get them free,” Miss replied.

“I know.  I don’t like it though.”

“Gunfire inside the building suggests we’ve got people inside and they aren’t all bound, at least,” Miss said.

“Right.”

“Got some infiltrators inside, we’ve managed to get organized for a major push here… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t restless, though,” Anthem said.

“Yeah,” Grandfather replied, brusque.

Bubbleyum didn’t want to agree, because she didn’t like the man.  Instead, she focused her senses on what they were about to face.

“Another mentor of our student, hm?” Anthem asked.

“Hm?  You talking about Lucy?” Grandfather asked.

“You taught her things, right?”

“Guns.  Some.”

Grandfather clapped a hand on Bubbleyum’s shoulder as he came up to stand beside her.  She nodded.  She’d drank with the Dogs at the speakeasy and had gone on a patrol with them, the last time she was in town.  It had mostly been her getting information on Sir Toadswallow, the goblins, how things were really doing, and what needed to be done.

The Tags were pretty tolerable as non-goblin company went.  A little less fun, but there was less goblin bullshit, too, so it evened out.

Anthem’s bullshit kept spilling out of his mouth.  “…Tried to get my daughters on board with some concepts, but teenagers are going to be rebellious.”

Her nostrils flared.  She could smell gunpowder on Grandfather.

There was no gunpowder in the air coming across the ‘town’, or smoke from the Girl by Candlelight.  It was all swallowed up by that Other that crept across this area like a Warrens slime mold with a special intelligence driving it, twisting up everything into the appearance of a pretty little town.

She could smell something else, though.  It tickled her nose and left her feeling irritated.  Like she was snorting mints stolen from granny’s tin, but they were laced with antifreeze because granny really didn’t like the grandkids.

She wrinkled her nose and glanced at Toadswallow, a very specific expression of disgust on her face.  He nodded.

Yep.  It was bitch dust.  Winter flavored bitch dust.  One nearby, but the fact the town kept so many of the interesting smells out of the air let the subtler traces filter through.  A crowd, in shadow, in snow.  Bitches silently and constantly farting out bitch dust.

Lucy had wanted to learn how to fight and protect shit, going to anyone who’d teach her something.  And now that anyone good at fighting was collecting at this point, ready to drive toward the school like an ice pick through the nostril, it was an inadvertent reunion of all the different teachers.

The kid had come to Bubbleyum trained by one specific faerie, and she’d had no choice but to work around all the stuff she’d been told and trained: a balancing out of this, an answer to that, a challenge of whatever.

Fucking hell, if that muscled lump of bitch showed up here and it was a fucking reunion of all the different teachers…

Nah, it was more than that.  Those bitches.  The faerie, the unfair folk, the fancypants glitter huffers.  She had run into them often enough.  She knew how they operated, she knew how they cheated.

She leaned slightly forward to look past Grandfather’s chest to Toadswallow and the goblins he was prepping.  She ignored the ongoing conversation between Grandfather, the entirety of her focus consumed by the attention she gave him.  Silent communication.

He poured some of his goblin gunk into a bottle of booze, corked it, and threw it to her.  She caught it out of the air, just in front of a startled Grandfather’s face.  Her extended arm caught some of the blurring effect that had touched Anthem as he’d walked over.  The grit quieted it.

“I can appreciate a dry drink, but that’s not quite it,” Grandfather said.

“You want drinks!?” Biscuit could be heard.

Bubbleyum only had eyes for Toadswallow.  She circled past Grandfather, eyes locked to Sir Toadswallow’s.

He held out the bottle, and she took it, before bending over him, kissing him, tongues slipping inside his mouth, down his throat, and getting deep enough to become familiar with the start of his small intestine.  He’d had some alcohol to steady his nerves, and she could taste it.

The tip of her tongues took turns tracing the roof of his mouth as she withdrew them.

“Prisoner gum.  I can taste a bit of that Lantsman fellow.”

“Piece of prisoner gum, number five fifty-nine,” she said, chewing, holding the bottle.  She glanced to her right, at the sunny, snow-less town with its fences and puppies and total bullshit.

And, waiting, hidden… she wrinkled her nose.

“Yeh,” Toadswallow murmured.

Fractionally, she leaned that way.

Toadswallow dipped his head in a nod, she kept leaning, starting to walk- and Anthem had to fuckin’ ruin the moment by grabbing her upper arm on the far side.  Intercepting her.

“Wait,” he said.

She elbowed his hand away with the hand that held the bottle, and there was a puff of grit.  It dusted her and made Anthem cover his mouth with his forearm, hand still extended in her direction.

“You don’t know everythin’,” she told him.  “You lost to us.  You lost Toadswallow, then you lost to us again.  So be quiet and see if you can’t catch up.  I have my reasons.”

“If we coordinate,” Anthem said, “we’ll be stronger.  Miss?”

“I don’t need her permission,” Bubbleyum said.

Then she proved that by stepping forward.

Into that altered reality.  Into the town.  Trace dust on her helped her to change like she’d changed before.  With Sir Toadswallow’s counsel, she’d dressed herself up as a human.  Now she let that transformation start… just enough that she got some more length on her legs.  Length in her limbs.  A human’s height and proportions, but only that.  The rest of her remained very goblin.

The effect of this place pushed in at her.  The glamour around her pushed back.  That fight, push and pull, rolled off her like a heat shimmer on a summer day.

Toadswallow called them glitter ninnies, a way of sanitizing things for the kids he taught, when he’d been starting out.  The ninnies were there, waiting to swoop in, and if that was their game, she’d flip the board.

The effect pressed in around her.  The ground closed around her feet, like the pavement had a sponge-like give to it, and teeth were in there, finding their grip on her boots.

“Sock!  Ramjam!” she called out, one hand extended.

Sockgnash was big, bigger than any of the humans present in the gathering back in the trees.  She’d worked with him before.  He was a hulk of a goblin, heavy with muscle, so tough a chainsaw had given up before cutting through him, as evidenced by the fact it was still sticking out his back and shoulder.  He was confident, capable, funny, smarter than some might think a hulk like him would be, he was interested in her, and he had a cock like a horse, if horse cocks were also prehensile.

But he couldn’t measure up to Toadswallow on any of those fronts, so it had always been a firm no.

He was reliable, at least, when she needed a second set of hands, backup, a rescue waiting if she was going into a situation she might be bound.  She could say two words and he’d know what she wanted.  He picked Ramjam up by the skull.  With no wind-up, he thrust his arm forward and yeeted Ramjam through the air, toward her.

Flashing a brief jack-o-lantern smile, Ramjam became a warhammer, one curling horn winding around the head, the other pointing the same direction, but sticking out the back end behind it, weighted to be a clumsy weapon if wielded with one hand, easier to wield with two.

She let the dust flow from the bottle.  She caught the Ramhammer out of the air, twirled to let his momentum carry past her, and flexed her body to direct him with one hand, across the slats of a white picket fence.  Demolishing a solid six-foot length of it all.

The lightest bits of gunk came out of the bottle like smoke, mingling with the wood chips, dust, and uprooted dirt in the air.  Those particles became more gunk.  The ground got less grip on her as it had to content with the gunk.

It was like glamour.  They wouldn’t say that much to any goblins they were trying to get onboard, but it was like glamour and with attention, spectacle, and the right medium, you could spend some and end up with more than you’d put in.  Same deal here.

The unfair folk are watching.  This may be their first time seeing it this blatant.

Can you see, you giggling butterfly-fellators?

She’d talked this out with Toadswallow, in whispered conversations in places the Winter fae wouldn’t go.  The balances they had to strike, the way this challenge worked.

This was a gamble.  There was the chance the wrong clenched asshole would take issue.  Less with the Wild Hunt, who specifically enforced this shit, but still a gamble.

Would they come for her?  Changing targets from the faerie-turned-goddess?  That was problematic, especially with so many watching.  It would mean turning away from a target they’d negotiated and decided on.  Going scorched earth on her, Toadswallow, every participating goblin, every witness, everyone they’d interacted with. It would mean abandoning and taking away from another situation the Hunt had been called to, in a way that, given the scale of everything, would look worse.

It was a consequence of trying to appear perfect.  The distance from one hundred percent to ninety-nine point nine percent was huge compared to the distance between ninety percent and fifty percent.  What it asked for, what it took to do, and how fragile it was.

It left them one option.

She refocused, dramatic moment over, the dust settling around her, as she held her post-swing pose.

Ramjam’s bit of magic had made nails thrust their way up from the various bits of destroyed fence.

“Rammy,” she said.  “You’ve been practicin’ this, haven’t you?”

He couldn’t answer, but she could feel his shaft twitch.

“Toadsy coachin’ you?  Because that’s a fuckin’ good weapon trick for a goblin your size.  Doin’ us proud.”

She had to keep moving, to keep the effect from closing in.  The destroyed fence was already mending itself, debris sinking into lawn.  She twisted, full body, doing a near complete turn of her body before the head of the hammer scraped against the pavement, following after her.  She used the rotational force of her body to swing it, with the back of the hand that held the bottle pressing against the shaft helping to direct it.

“You like girls, right?  I can introduce you to some!”

She slammed the Ramhammer through more fence, and part of the gate.  A mailbox on a post out front went sailing, and she extended her tongue after it, momentarily grabbing the red flag thing on the side, to stop it from flying away, while leaving it airborne.  With full-body exertion, she ran forward to be beneath it as it tumbled mostly straight down.

“Girls’re great!” she shouted.  Ramjam’s line, delivered as she swung the Ramhammer at the mailbox.

A grandmother had opened her door to see the commotion, and the mailbox embedded itself into the doorframe just beside her head.

Eight inch nails erupted out from the mailbox in every direction, like the opposite of one of those magic show things that had swords thrust into it.  Spearing granny through the head in five places.  The old woman went limp, the nails keeping her from falling, so she kind of dangled there.

Way more enthusiastic with the nails than they’d been before, and Ramjam definitely didn’t lack for enthusiasm.

“Yeah, you like that idea?” Bubbleyum asked, smiling.

The old woman’s face-skin tore as her weight pulled her down.  There was a small dog, red, raw, and twitching, curled up just beneath the skin.  It twitched, making small noises, before her body hit the steps and was folded into the space, disappearing.

The doorframe was slower to fix.

People were coming out of their houses now.  Others came from the end of the street, and around the hill.

It’s like a slime mold, she thought, again.  Natural defenses.  Got it.

“Sock!  Biscuit’s Blitz-Disc!”

He didn’t really aim at her, exactly.  The disc went flying toward the far side of the street, where people were running across their lawns.  It ricocheted off several heads without losing momentum.  Each impact, if Bubbleyum took the time to watch, produced a slow-motion effect, spit flying out of mouths, skin across head rippling, impacts audible as brain was jarred inside skull.

Biscuit could handle her shit, which was funny when a lot of her shit was being hard to handle.  She’d braced herself with metal around the rim.  That was good.

Bubbleyum whistled and threw the uncorked bottle of goblin gunk into the air.

“Ram and Biscuit, you’d better play-” Bubbleyum yelled, getting a two-handed grip on the Ramhammer.

The Biscuit blitz-disc bounced her way, the sticker on top showing Biscuit with her hands, stubby claws and all, over her eyes.

“-nice!”

Goblin gunk thick in the air as it was shed from the bottle, she slammed the Ramhammer into the Blitz-Disc.

They played nice.  There was an interpretation of one meeting the other where Biscuit didn’t survive it.  Splat.  In another interpretation, in this one, the Blitz-Disc was sent flying harder and faster than even Sockgnash could throw.

The plastic disc with its metal bolted and riveted around the perimeter slammed across the top of a woman’s head, taking the skin off from forehead to the back of the head like a bad toupee, clipped the side of someone else’s head, producing that slow motion impact, and then redirected, at an angle, into someone else’s mouth, where it broke teeth and disconnected jaw, lifting him off his feet with the force of it.

Nails erupted from the impact site.  The Blitz Disc became a dizzy Biscuit, who grabbed a nail in each hand and pulled it free from the ruin of the man’s face as she navigated in a dazed way around the other nails.

Biscuit hopped down from the man’s chest to the walkway between house and road, and immediately began to sink in.

She tossed the Ramhammer aside.  “Good man!  Stay close!”

The Ramhammer became Ramjam before he’d hit ground.  He smiled, huffing for breath.

“Doglick!  Here boy!”

Sockgnash had come out of the woods, wading across the trail of destruction Bubbleyum was trying to carve, and was close enough to be able to toss Doglick out.

Bubbleyum caught the goblin, holding forelimbs in one hand, back limbs in the other, and aimed him.  He barked.  “Weapon form!”

He became a modified crossbow, a lime green band with K-9 written on it wrapped around the handle, strung with a convoluted arrangement of extended tongue, the projectile a bear-trap at the end of the tongue.

“Good boy!  And get the toy!”

Biscuit, scraping nails against walkway to try to avoid sinking in, managed an “Aaaaaaaa!” as she saw Doglick aimed at her.

The weapon fired, the bear trap was sent flying, and Biscuit managed to become a disc in the last second before the metal teeth bit in.

I’m thinkin’ you’re glad you worked on that tweak, eh girl? Bubbleyum thought, yanking the weapon back.  Addin’ the metal like I told ya?

That sort of thing took work, like exercising every day, and Biscuit wasn’t the type to exercise every day.  But she’d listened, and it paid off now.

The tongue reeled in, and the Blitz-Disc was pulled in.  She tried to pull Biscuit free, and the teeth held on.

“Let it go.  Doglick, give me- Dog… do you want to be neutered?”

The people were getting close.  The injured were healing, the dead were being swallowed up by the landscape.

Couldn’t lose momentum.  She tossed the pairing of Doglick and Biscuit at Ramjam.  “Get ’em apart.”

“Can I smash ’em?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“I can smash his nuts!  Best neutering!  Dramatic!  Once, I smashed a fly, it made a splatter like, two feet wide!”

“Do whatever-”

The crossbow became Doglick, who let go of Biscuit.  Ramjam moved his hands so each was as far from the other as he could manage.

“-you want.”

“Aaa,” Biscuit gasped, wide eyed, legs and arms milling in the air like she was running in place.  Doglick just looked pleased with himself.  Or maybe he was trying to play innocent to avoid Ramjam’s attempt at making a bigger splash.

The people were coming.  Bubbleyum chewed her gum a few seconds, taking it in, then licked her lips.

Bubbleyum had extended her tongue a long time ago, then she’d bifurcated it, keeping the individual lengths of the split tongue separated with wraps and meat-patty poultices from a fleshmongler vendor at the outskirts of the Septic Wastes.  Letting it heal so each length was as wide as the original had been.  Then she’d done it a few more times.  She’d had to widen her throat with dilators, sometimes with biological help from Toadsy, sometimes with other things, so she’d be able to breathe while she kept her extra tongues down there while one was out and in use.

Which was all to say two things.  The first was that Toadsy had wanted to figure out what goblins were, and they’d been digging into that from two directions.  Toadsy had left her to go explore, figuring shit out.  She’d stayed, to dig deep into herself, and when she’d started to hit limits in the kind of clout she could throw around, she’d signed on with the patriarch of the Cavendar clan.  He let her see the magic items and tricks, work with the various war magic shit, so she could try to convert what she could into stuff she could do, sometimes cheating, sometimes just putting a goblin spin on it.  In exchange, she was a bit of an surprise card in the back pocket of a B-list combat practitioner family.  He even listened to her sometimes, when it came to strategy.

The second thing was that she had the ability to save Biscuit, but she was doing a lot of different things here.  This wasn’t just about stopping the Carmine Chucklefuck.  This wasn’t only about protecting what I’ve been building with my day one, number one man.  It wasn’t about Lucy, or winning some competition with other tutors and teachers, to prove her approach to a fight was the best.  It wasn’t even about showing up those twits who thought flocks of butterflies sprayed from their piss-holes.

She poured some of the bottle’s contents onto Ramjam.  “Bigger, harder.”

He became a weapon as she took hold of his horn and tossed him in Sockgnash’s direction.

Sockgnash caught the Ramhammer, which was twice the size it had been.

“Kittycough!”

The goblin that resembled a cat was clawing at a man’s face, chewing on his beard, fighting to avoid being absorbed into the man as the injuries healed up.  At the call, Kittycough pounced at Bubbleyum’s face.

She tore Kittycough in two, then felt the weapon settle in at her hands, which had her painted claws at each end already.  A series of plates like an arrangement of brass knuckles, set between each knuckle, with curved blades like a cat’s claw hooking forward.  Her one hand still held the bottle.

She met the incoming crowd.  People that looked scared, alarmed, who were trying to talk them down, even as the closed the distance, reaching out to reassure or something.

She used the Kittycuffs to slash at the reaching hands.  She saw glimpses of things beneath the surface that weren’t bones or meat.

“Bring it all down, Sock!” she called out.

“Sure,” Sockgnash grunted, before smashing a car with the goblin gunked Great Ramhammer.  He was big enough that he could hit the rear end of the car and the impact shattered headlights and bent the hood.

The car rolled over a few people, then the nails sprouted, catching people who’d reached out to stop it as its momentum had slowed.

She slashed a nine year old in the face with the Kittycuffs, tips raking bone, did a spin, still holding the bottle, and kicked through the goblin gunk.  A slash of her toe- the arc she cut through the cloud of gritty powder finished with her standing there with leg bent, knee near chest, a blade sticking out the front of her boot.

She kicked that blade into the crack where the claws had broken bone with far too much ease.  The crack in the bone spread and the kid’s head came apart.

Three corpses spilled out, and were quickly covered up by lawn and road.

She stomped that foot, breaking that blade, and creating dust.

The crowd, mindless, not even caring if they got hurt, pressed in.

She protected some of the smaller goblins, like Biscuit.

Hands grabbed her arm, and it bent at a right angle.  She felt flesh get sucked into the pleasant suburb, transforming into one more reaching hand that grabbed the stump where her arm now ended.  The palm of that hand drank in more of her arm, until it had absorbed everything up to the elbow.

She punched repeatedly with the Kittycuffs of her other arm, pulping flesh until she could back away.  Her arm came out in gory strings, and put itself back together.  Mostly.  The strength wasn’t there, and it was covered in small wounds.

Nah, it’s about solidarity.  Proving something to these guys.

That there’s a point.

Tying them into what we’re doing, with goblin gunk, figuring out goblins.  Figuring out a new Toadswallow way of doing things.  Giving them what they want, so they want more of it all.  So others get greedy and want in on it all.

“Biscuit,” she said.  “Hit me.”

“H-hit you?” the small voice came from near her feet.

“Whatcha got?  What’re you packing, when it comes to substances that deliver abuse?  Somethin’-”

A small and fluffy dog on a leash, a child behind it, got a grip on her leg.  She felt it reel her partway in.  A slash of the Kittycuffs opened the side of its face, and fingers reached out, gripping the edges of the wound.  An eye peered out, terror evident in how it wavered.

“-somethin’ you haven’t been able to convince someone else to try!”

“From below!”

Biscuit tossed it up, a syringe, and Bubbleyum caught it.

“How mad will Toadsy be with you after I’m done with this?” Bubbleyum asked.

“Mad-ish.  You can handle it!”

“Addictive?”

“Nah!  Unless you get addicted to power!  It’s goblin-ified krokodil and goblin-ified PCP!  Grunge and violence so intense the dudes in Kennet below got cold feet when I told them stories!”

Would I get addicted to power? she thought.

I’m addicted to licking Toads.  Power was never the point.  Maybe that’s why I’m a bit different from your average middle-tier goblin.

Bubbleyum stabbed herself in the thigh, pressing the syringe down.

It hit her veins hot.

“Croc on a rocket!” Biscuit cheered.  She was wide eyed, smiling, a kid on Christmas.

The meat inside Bubbleyum began to churn and boil.  She continued fighting, clawing, punching.

“Biscuit’s running!” Sockgnash called out.  “I think that means all of you need to get running!”

Bubbleyum smiled, and then the smile kept going- out to the sides of her jaw, down her shoulders, down her body-

Then she opened her mouth, with the jaw now being somewhere around her hips.  Everything from her lower face to there was lower jaw.  The back half of her was upper jaw.  Steam came out the gaps, while bloody drool flowed out the lower portions.  The drool sizzled as it hit the road, bits of it igniting.

Sockgnash was getting goblins to fall back, putting himself between them and her.  Bubbleyum chewed gum with most of her body, now, bracing herself against the change.

The heat in her veins reached her brain, heating up her thoughts to something feverish-

Bubbleyum roared, and then she faced the mob.

Training gave Lucy the ability to move how and where she needed to.  The trick was in the layers of logic.  What did she need to do, what would she pull on, if she moved here, where did she need to be a bit after that?

Multiplied by three, then by five, or seven, or nine.

Goblin fox, loaded with tricks.

Fae fox, pretty, sleek, and graceful.

Warrior fox, dog tags at her neck.

More, inconsistent, as she lit fires and fanned the flames with her own movements, stirring up the resulting smoke into fox shapes that could bite.

One could get stabbed, or hit with a bat, or worse, but if she could generate enough spectacle, prepare in advance, and leave room for things to happen in ways others could see, she could replace what was lost.  Play it off as a trick, smoke peeling away from one of the temporary foxes to reveal something fae, or a goblin fox with a leering fanged smile.

She’d been refining this for a while.  Verona could cover a lot of ground in terms of different practices.  Avery could cover a lot of ground in terms of running around, going places.  Lucy had turned her focus to this, by and large.  Something she was developing herself, that she could refine.  Everything she learned was considered in terms of how it could fold into this, play into this.

Principles in hand to hand combat applied both to herself–

She slipped out of fox form as all three foxes came under concerted attack, becoming Lucy again.  She tossed spell cards, clearing some space.  Then she split again.  Lunging.

–and to the fighting styles of the foxes.

Could a trick be put into a goblin fox?  Could a fae fox hold a curse, to be transmitted into flesh with a bite?

She drew focus away with two of the foxes, her thoughts split into three awarenesses.  The Fox with the dog tags around its neck tended to hold the line, be less interesting.  Sturdier, guarding the ‘door’.

Enough that some goons thought they could make a break for it.

She shed the guise of the Warrior fox, weapon ring on her finger.  She had a lighter she’d gotten from Louise.

The weapon ring tended to draw its own conclusions, but she’d been using it for a while, learning the ins and outs, and putting a lot of herself into it.  Her Self.

It meant that she could hold it one way and have it become a spear.

Holding it another, it was a small handgun-sized flamethrower, spitting burning oil.  Puddles of the stuff, some intensifying as they touched flames she’d ignited with her spell cards.  She ducked low, then threw a canister at a group of people who were rushing around the flame, all clustered in one spot.

The flash from the canister made the group have to shield their eyes.  A minor effect that made them stop for a second, then press on with more confidence.

But the flash had been from a spell card she’d put on the empty tomato soup can hours ago, when she’d been stocking up for tonight.

The contents of the can were goblin firecrackers, including one of Bluntmunch’s assblasters, that produced a bass shockwave that was amplified by the diagram on the base of the can, drawn at the same time she’d glued on the spell card.  Her earring made her better at using sound, so that helped.

They wanted to come at her as a group, outnumbering her.  She could predict that, use it.  The group being gathered pretty much on the can, around it, it meant the shockwave got a good number of them, producing a ripple that jarred not bone, but sphincter.

Emptying bowels into underwear and pants.

She adjusted her grip on the lighter, letting go of it for a moment, then seizing it again, weapon ring clinking against the metal case of the fancy old lighter.  A different extension of her arm, position of hand, like how Guilherme had taught her to make a spear.

It followed suit, becoming a length of metal with the same light etching as the lighter case, that basket weave of metal that guarded the lighter flame now part of the section that connected spearhead to shaft.  Flame flickered within, and dripped out.

When she swung the spear through the air, its point whipping within a foot or so of faces, the flame roaring around the spearhead with the rush of oxygen the people who were already reeling from the assblaster fell into one another, or fell on snow or cold brick walking path with their saturated asses.

A good way of driving the point home without having to stab them.

There would be no glory for them tonight.

The Oldbodies were hanging back, encouraging others.  Only three of the wicked old men and women remained from the other night, but the ones who were still around were nasty.  Lucy had seen one of them fight- a cursewright.  One, now that she thought about it, who might’ve retrieved the thorn in the flesh from the Family Man.

Who was back there, waiting, smiling.

The Oldbodies had some people under them.  Some had been twisted up by the knot and maybe by Oldbody practices.  There were little kids with wrinkles and white hair like they’d been prematurely aged.  Knotting or some Oldbody alchemy?  She couldn’t begin to guess.

But they had little tricks.  One wrinkled little boy, when kicked back, opened his mouth and let out a fog that read to her Sight as very malevolent.  A little girl, when she landed and skinned her aged palms, had more fog ooze out of the wounds.

One more thing to factor in.

Some had been stained by exposure to the Abyss, but were still here, and hadn’t turned on Maricica when the nail was removed.  After a few false steps with them, she’d settled on a loose rule, that they would come at her harder than expected, and take twice the punishment before backing off.  She could adjust expectations depending on the severity of the staining.

Others were adherents of Bloody Glory.  Many had the three diagonal, parallel cuts at their lips, and wore crimson.

One moved her arms, gesturing like she was spelling something out in sign language, with sweeping arm movements to accompany it.

The flames parted.  Lucy suddenly had another flank to consider.

Lucy as the Goblin fox went low, sliding on wet ground, while the Warrior Fox vaulted over, to fill that gap.

Some people saw that the Warrior Fox had abandoned her post at the opening near the monument and made a break for it.  Foxes made of smoke and shadow pounced at them.  Good for a single bite, sinking into calf or into arm, to pull someone off balance, but they were fragile.  They exploded into clouds of smoke or dispersed darkness when weapons or fists were swung at them.

Speaking of explosions, Lucy thought.  The Goblin Fox let itself die.

It had its own gas inside it.  The gas touched the flame that had been parted, and it caught fire, exploding.  The explosion undid the parting, filling that gap again.

Lucy worked to create another, feeding it one of the items from her dwindling supply.  Sending it after the ones who’d broken through.

Momentum mattered here.  Momentum and goblin glamour together meant that when the goblin fox was created, and she wasn’t keeping count of what she’d used, and her enemies certainly weren’t, the count could favor her.  She was pretty sure, in retrospect, that she’d been out of gas bladders, but the goblin fox had had one.

Holding her ground mattered.  She stood so the forces that wanted to flow out of Kennet below and into Kennet above were blocked in a way by her.  She was the barrier.  And by stepping further into Kennet below, pushing the attacking forces back, she was symbolic.

She could represent a pushback, tell the spirits how to flow.  She could reduce the severity of how Kennet below was bulging into Kennet above and Kennet found.

She could also represent claim.  The unspoken claim that Kennet below was contained.  That there was a distinction, a hard and enforced line between the two.  She could take away from the Carmine Exile’s claim over the space by removing his people.

She’d called on the Sable and the things she’d established while meeting with him to stop Charles from transitioning power out of Kennet below and its people.  But just the statement wasn’t enough.  Not when others were pushing back and arguing against her.

The mundane items Avery was working on would help lock stuff down.  The three points of Kennet, like they’d had for the founding, would help as well.

But if she couldn’t hold this point, then it wouldn’t count for pushback, claim, or defining this space as a key point of Kennet.

People were slipping by.

Three versions of herself going all out weren’t enough to stop the occasional kid from sneaking by, or hurdling over flame.  The shadow foxes could slow them or get in the way, but they weren’t stopping them.

Each one that got through to wreak havoc on the other side undermined her efforts, risking Kennet as a whole.

Lucy roared, biting deep into one woman’s shoulder, then, not willing to spare the effort or time to turn around, split the fox’s skin and leaped out of its back to swipe at a guy’s chest with the combat knife, which bought her space to draw a weapon with the weapon ring.

She fought to re-establish her spot, blocking the door.

Someone shouted a racial slur at her.  She didn’t flinch.

Someone else screamed that they’d rape her once they got their hands on her.

She tuned it out.

Someone hurled a molotov cocktail her way.  Bottle and flaming rag, bright in the evening.

She turned the lighter into a gun, shooting the bottle while it was at the apex of its arc.  Glass and flame exploded out, raining down around them all.

She turned, saw the Family Man’s grin, and, feeling very little at all, aimed and popped off a shot from the lighter-gun.

Right to the face.  He staggered back, and was caught by some of the cultists of Bloody Glory.  Maricica’s worshipers.  His worshipers too, maybe.

The shot had been right at the point where the corner of the eye met the nose.  Bottom of the brain, from the angle.  He slumped.  People caught him so he couldn’t fall.

The hole in his face closed, skin pinching around it like a clenched butthole.

Then it relaxed, smoothing out, and there was no damage.

The man smiled.  Muscles moved across his body like fat, broad worms beneath skin, exploring configurations.  A smudge of his finger wiped away the blood.

He approached.

Bubbleyum’s body was a thing of its own, a predator seeking prey, with her consciousness watching as a separate, disconnected thing that was slowly getting more strength.

The others worked around it.  Some of the smaller goblins were even having fun with it, it seemed.

Cherrypop ran screaming across the street.  She tore after her.  Another movement, she changed course, tearing past a car, biting it in half along the way.

Biscuit in Blitz-Disc form hurtled through the air.  She chased.

Through a crowd.

The destruction wasn’t healing.  Montague and the Turtle Queen were pressuring the town elsewhere.

The crowd stayed still, trying not to provoke, but by taking no action, they lost claim to this space.  The goblins and Dog Tags were free to move around.

She turned her focus to the crowd, studying her enemy, who she assumed she’d be able to go after, in a bit, when she had more control, and her body went after them, chasing, biting, and tearing them apart.

She turned her focus to Guilherme, who had made an appearance, and her body lunged at him.

He blocked her open mouth with a spear shaft.  She extended her multiple tongues, wrapping around different parts of his body-

Yucky glitter.

-and he fended her off, twirling the spear, and pushed her aside.

“You’re almost as much a problem for our side as you are for theirs, like that,” he said.

She turned her attention to their side, and felt her body go that way.

I have control.

It was a loose control.  She could direct focus, but not the details.

She cackled and roared as she hurled herself at more of the people.  Tearing up the neighborhood.

The Dog Tags were fighting the Black Scalpel.  The Girl by Candlelight was elsewhere, judging by the flames.  Distracted by Matthew Moss.

More and more, this place was proving to be eggshell thin.  And beneath the eggshells were bodies, bloody, broken, dead, and dying, reaching out, fighting, grabbing.

She crashed through the eggshell, scattering gore.  Forging a path toward the Blue Heron.

Bodies began to animate.  Hairs all up and down her body twitched, as if the temperature had changed.  It hadn’t.

Echoes.  Wraiths.

Flowing into the gore, finding vessels.

Vessels rose up.

Break stuff, and it became living zombies, wrecked and torn flesh animated by things that couldn’t be bitten or stabbed.

Leave stuff alone, and it healed, and the longer it healed, the faster it healed, ramping up.

Breaking stuff was easier.

“The best cut is surgical,” Guilherme said, walking forward, sword resting against shoulder.  “Deft, just enough energy expended to dispatch your foe.”

She made cuts as unsurgical as she could.

He annoyed her, and annoyance grabbed at her attention.  Attention and her attacking something went hand in hand.

She lunged at him again.  A woman Dog Tag ran between her and the Faerie.  She changed course, chasing.

Until she saw juicier prey.

She tore into the mess of wraith-animated flesh.

“It’s an echo of a practitioner or something!” Grandfather hollered.  “It’s working practice!”

“Wraith, not echo, but you’re learning, friend,” Guilherme said.

“Trying.”

It was working practice.

She started to lunge for the wraith, but stumbled, falling.

Her body had split almost in two, to become a giant set of crocodilian jaws, and now the jaws were closing, the corners of the mouth moving upward, up her ribs, front of the shoulder, collarbone, neck, then the corners of her mouth.

Pain gripped her.

“Was it good!?” Biscuit piped up.

Her head pounded.

“It’ll fuck you up, but it lets you fuck other things up worse!  It’s so cool!  I finally got to see it!”

A mean part of her wanted to go after Biscuit, silencing her.

But other parts of her won out.

The technomancy Other swept over the area.  Shadows became television static, and television static sorted black to black and white to white, with faces lunging out of the static like hungry sharks out of water.

Bubbleyum leaped out of the way of one, before one ‘shark’ could emerge and bite her.  Human teeth instead of shark ones.  Somehow more menacing.

The sky was beginning to take on that static effect as well, deepening shadows, letting the static spread further.

“Butty!” she called out.  “Bangnut!”

The two goblins came running.

They had enough trust in her.  She owed that to Toadswallow.

“Open!” she ordered Butty.

He opened his mouth without a moment’s hesitation.

“In,” she ordered Bangnut.

Bangnut did hesitate.

“And Butty is not to swallow.  You have-”

The static in the sky swelled, black sorting to black, white to white, and a white face with white eyes and pus leaking out the tear ducts loomed, reaching down.

While they were distracted, the wraith drew out echoes in a circle around it, setting them to spinning around it.  The ragged ends of echoes were connected together, until they formed a wreath, the speed of the orbit increasing second by second.

The wraith pointed, and the wreath went from stationary, spinning, to flying out at two hundred kilometers an hour, smashing into gore.

Gore connecting to gore.  Echoes connected to echoes, animating flesh that melded and crammed in together with other flesh.

Guilherme confronted it.

The Dog Tags were emptying guns at the face, which was a hundred feet across, sticking out of the static like a face surfacing from water, but down, instead of up.  Dipping down toward them, mouth opening wide, more pus in the mouth.

Butty closed his mouth around Bangnut, cheeks bulging.

She grabbed Butty by the back of the too-tight cowboy underpants he wore, and ran toward Sockgnash.

Pus dripped down from the eyes and extended tongue of the face.  It hit ground and caved in a house.  White static consumed the house, and more faces began to bulge out, emerging from that static, speaking a foreign language.

“Sock!” she shouted.  She let go of Butty and let his obscenely smooth body coast on the uneven road the last twenty or so feet to where Sockgnash was.  “Moonkiller wedgie!”

Sockgnash bent down to get ahold of Butty’s underwear.

She took advantage of him being bent down to grab hold of the chainsaw.

She hauled back on the starter.  Revving it up.

The chainsaw’s chain threaded through flesh and vein, running through Sockgnash’s entire body.  When she revved it up, she kicked him to another tier of strength.

She revved him up again, hitting a switch.

Third tier.

Butty grinned at her, held by the front and back of his underpants by a chainsaw powered strongman of a goblin, who was frothing at the mouth as the chainsaw’s added horsepower churned through him, multiplying his already intense natural strength.

“M-m-m-m-mmmm-m-oou—ouut-” Sockgnash’s lower jaw chattered and jittered, spitting out more forth than words.  His eyes had gone entirely white.

“Nostril.”

“M-m-mmm-mmay-mmmaaaayyy-”

The face reached them.

“Now!”

“-yyyyking- iii- iiii-”

The pus hit ground around them.  Faces sprouted.

“iiii–iitttttttt-haaaaa-haaaarrrrr-”

“Gob damn it, Sock!” she shouted.  She kicked him in between the shoulder blades.

Bits of the wraith-animated gore snaked past Guilherme, toward them, barring the escape route she’d been keeping an eye on.

Different gum.  She had different varieties, different types.  The prisoner gum was one.  Some she was nowhere near nine hundred and ninety nine pieces.  Others she was close.

This one… close.

She’d passed nine hundred with the gum collected from annoying people.  As a multiple of three, it was a good one.

It wasn’t stiff like the prisoner’s gum was.  Looser, messier, and it didn’t take much to get a good chew started.

The giant head’s lower teeth scraped at road and grass.  Glitchy stuff took over what it scooped up.

She took a deep breath and blew.  The bubble reached a four foot diameter in a moment.

She shielded the most important parts of Sockgnash and his chainsaw with her body, and let it pop.

Gum exploded out to coat the white-eyed techno thingies, ground, and the wraith’s interconnected mess of gore.  It even stuck to parts of the giant head.

Tying them up, buying her time, and giving her a bit of claim.

“Making it harder!” Sockgnash screamed.  The chainsaw had run down slightly.  “My aim’s-”

“Throw!”

“Not that good!”

Probably striking a good balance of power and control, at least.

Sock did a two-handed skyward toss of Butty, gripping and using underwear because it had more traction than the rest of the goblin, lobbing him straight into the giant head’s nostril.

Butty was smooth and lubed to the point he could slide with little friction on gravel.  So he slid into the face’s nostril and kept going.  And kept going.

To the back of the nose, down the throat, down into stomach, and all the way through that tunnel.

Or whatever that Other had in the way of insides.

A delivery vehicle for Bangnut.  Because whatever was on the far side… it would probably have tech as part of it.

The head had stopped biting and its forehead rested on ground.  Static kept creeping around them.

The wraith-stuff tore free of gum.

The Dog Tags were firing, hacking with machetes and knives.  Anthem had his gun.  Guilherme was facing the largest part of the wraith thing’s creation, cutting down limbs often enough it couldn’t reach very far past him.

And the neighborhood was losing steadily more ground as goblins rampaged.

She chewed on her gum.  Tongues with enough strength to break fingers pushed the excessively stiff gum out of her mouth, so she could blow a small, tight bubble.

The bubble popped with a percussive sound like a gunshot in volume and snappiness.

Scattered debris rolled away from her in the wake of that pop.  Small bits of glamour broke.  The static retreated.  The edges of the illusion that was barely holding this fake suburb together and the weakest of the wraith-animated bits of flesh all broke down.  Not completely, not in a rolling way that would shatter it all.

But it helped bring things to a standstill.

Helped to finalize the retreat of the sunny neighborhood effect.  Helped to drive the technomancy Other away- as did the damage Bangnut and Butty were apparently doing behind the scenes.  One of the Other’s eyes had turned from white static to black, like a television that had been turned off.

One of the things she’d modified from a Cavendar book.  It had been a clap in a book she’d found interesting, that talked about titans, and the elemental practitioners who tried to emulate them, becoming huge.  Pillars of elemental power packing serious fat, height, and muscle, with shit like the clap to take control of a scene.

The Winter Fae were still out there, still hidden.  Maybe hidden in the layers of this messed up eggshell-thin town.

One of them was here.  Guilherme.

“Don’t look at me,” Guilherme said.  “You wasted enough of my time with that transformation, earlier.”

She started to say something, and then Grandfather stepped forward.  Between them.  Given the difference in height, he stood closer to her than to the Fae.

“Did Miss tell you to do that?  Get between us?” she asked, smacking the gum between fanged teeth.

“No comment.”

Other Dog Tags stood around the ruined, gore-strewn neighborhood, with its shattered facades and the people walking down the sidewalk, half-shattered clown cars packed with corpses of people and animals, leaving whole piles of living, dying, and dead bodies to one side as they hobbled away, acting like it was an ordinary day in the fucking neighborhood.

The wraith started to move more carcasses, sending more echoes out.

Momentum, again.

Anthem, a bit behind the rest of the group, covered in blood, fired his gun.  It hit the wraith lord, and a magic circle expanded out from the impact site.

The wraith moved, and the circle moved with it, slowly.  With the resistance the magic circle made around the wraith, it was like a person with a ball and chain attached to them.  A metal ball, not the fleshy sort.

Two more shots did substantial damage to the wraith.

Bubbleyum broke into a run.

She was doing many things at once.  Proving something, inspiring goblins, showing up the fae, going after the Carmine Chucklefuck, helping Sir Toadswallow save what they’d been putting together.

The bottle had broken, but Sockgnash was right on her heels, and he had more gunk.

She motioned, and he threw a brown paper bag at her.  Gunk inside.  Good.

Others were inside the school, a bunch of complicated and problematic individuals.  Now if they could get up that hill, get inside, they could start doing stuff.  Like killing off a few key people.  Rescuing Horseman and whoever else.

As if to answer that thought, the blood goddess descended from the sky, landing on the roof of a stately little house.  Naked and soaked in blood.

The entire eggshell-thin suburban area began to change under her sway.  Paint darkened, then started to bleed.  The gore began to liquefy.

She was naked, but the blood ran thick enough over and around her that it covered her chest.  She seemed like she should be blind, with the blood that covered the upper half of her face, but managed just fine.

The house she was sitting on began to break down.  Not because of weight, but because of weight.  She held her position without dropping an inch as the building shattered into a thousand bloody pieces of wood, siding, shingle, and other things, which broke down further, into slivers and shards, pointed pieces of wood, individual nails, and triangles of shingle.

A bloody wound in her chest hadn’t closed.  She reached long fingers up to it, and reached inside.

Anthem shot his gun.  The flesh at her wrist was punctured, the surrounding flesh tearing, breaking, as if the bullet had been followed immediately after by an invisible truck crashing full speed into the impact site.

It put itself back together as fast as it had broken.

“Blood, conflict, power,” she said.  Each word felt like it was… Bubbleyum didn’t know.  Changing the weather?

The sun wasn’t shining anymore.  The smoke from the fighting had already touched the sky, but now things were taking on more darkness.  Smoke being encouraged to become cloud.

Maricica found what she was after, and fished a human out of the hole in her chest.  Allegedly where the nail had been.  A man, partially clothed, broken.

The blood that flowed down and around her was thick enough that when she dropped him, he hit a slope and slid a few feet.

Bubbleyum wasn’t that good at recognizing humans as distinct from one another.  Especially when the guy was covered in blood.  Usually it was fashion and other stuff that helped them stand out.

“Musser,” Anthem said.

“I found him trying to rally his old allies.  We had an encounter.  He was once stronger than you, Anthem,” she told him.

“Debatable.”

“Fact.”

Bubbleyum looked around.  Every surface was bleeding now.

The neighborhood retreated, ceding ground to the goddess.  Redoubling its strength as it pushed back against the Turtle Queen and Montague.  Things held their shape, mostly, but as blood and flesh, quavering, congealing.

As it congealed, it shifted, settling, so fenceposts were small spires, or spines.  Houses were altars.  The things that were left behind, from corpse to debris, it levitated into the air, the sharpest or most menacing ends pointing at them.

A segment of blood-streaked bone went flying, spearing Grandfather.  A bit of wood so soaked through with blood it was crimson caught Bubbleyum in the stomach.

She felt the Goddess reach through that projectile, into her.

Twisting that wood inside her, to tear and do internal damage.

Bubbleyum doubled over.

More and more, the individual segments of levitated bits of debris became a hail.  Anthem and Guilherme could fend it off.  Goblins could take cover.  Dog Tags took the hits and endured it, returning fire.

Ground increasingly became slick with blood.

One of the Dog Tags, rushing forward, grenade in hand, had a foot go into a pool of blood and drop a foot.  She threw the grenade aside, because she couldn’t get the distance she wanted.

“The trouble with mercenaries is they follow the money,” the blood goddess told them, her voice carrying across the scene.  Nails and splinters of wood hit bloody buildings and road with enough force the blood splashed up in six foot high splatters.  “When someone comes along with more money, you lose your army.”

The overcast clouds began to rain blood.

“The same applies if you rule with fear or power.  Isn’t that right, Musser?  And if I’m scarier and more powerful than you are?”

She used a finger to lift up his head.

Blood running off of her face dripped onto his.  Some hit his open mouth.

He barely reacted, except to try to turn his face away.  When she moved her finger from beneath his chin, his head lolled, and he coughed, spitting down toward the ground.

The Goddess had company.

Shit.  Musser was the one with a mess of familiars.

Familiars who were backed by others.  The Black Scalpel had returned.  Again.

The Wraith King had broken free of binding.

Bubbleyum huddled behind cover, trying to think.

A nail stabbed its way through what might’ve been a car, that was now a lump of clotting blood.  She was thrown face-first into the blood that pooled on the road, covering ninety-five percent of it all.  It had nailed her in the upper arm, tearing away a quarter-pound of flesh.

She had the goblin gunk.

She brought her fist up to her mouth, and she kissed her pinky finger, which currently and always had Toadswallow’s first nipple hair tied around it.

Anthem was shouting something to Musser, trying to rally him.

“Goddess,” Bubbleyum said.

“Mmm,” Maricica made a sound, and it felt like it carried out to Bubbleyum specifically.

“You stopped being a faerie.  Good for you.  Except you’ve still got it wrong.  You still don’t get it.”

“I thought you might offer a prayer, and surrender,” Maricica murmured, and she was big and powerful enough the quiet words filled the area as far around her as anyone could see.  Like they’d be heard if hands were clapped to ears.

“You want to hurt me?  I grew up with hurt,” Bubbleyum said.  She got her feet around her, and she left cover.

The hail focused more in her direction.  That focus meant she could try to avoid some.

She used the gunk.  Goblin glamour.  Toadswallow’s work.  Blurring the edges, deflecting.  Bloody rain pelted her from above.  Splinters and nails grazed her, cutting her at edges.

“Tricky little human town?  I’ve been navigating unfriendly human shit for all my life!”

She ran forward.

Musser’s familiars stepped in her way.

“And the blood shit?  The gore, the darkness, all of this!?  You think it’s fancy!?  You think it’s cool!?” Bubbleyum’s voice reached the levels of being a screech.

She dropped down into a slide, Butty style.  Coasting on blood.

Into the space beneath what might’ve been a car.  Where the undercarriage hadn’t quite dissolved into more blood.

She could use glamour, cheat things.  Erupt out of a space nearby.

Past the Musser minions, closing in on the Goddess.

“That’s what the Warrens are you ex-faerie bitch!”

Maricica moved a hand.

And the blood that soaked everything and hid the street beneath an inch-deep layer became a tidal wave.

Bubbleyum was able to hurdle it, but the wake of it still dragged her off course.

It didn’t matter, really.

Toadswallow had a way of thinking big.  Big picture, figuring out how things like goblins and the unfair folk fit together.

They’d talked strategy, for how the goblin glamour stuff would go.  How the fae might react.  Toads’ brains and her strategy.

Communicated in a glance when she’d decided not to wait for everyone to group up.

Her being out here, first in line?  When they’d set out a mission?

They couldn’t let her be the last.  The goblin glamour was an unknown, and there was a very real risk that she could deliver the final blow.

Which she couldn’t.  But they didn’t know that for sure.

The blood and residual illusions of the town broke up.  Cold swept in.

The Wild Hunt of Winter revealed itself.

Bubbleyum turned her back on the goddess, letting them do the dirty work.  She’d privately take the credit.

She faced the minions that had belonged to Musser, and the Black Scalpel.

Guilherme plunged from the sky to stab the latter through the chest.

In its death throes, the Black Scalpel moved to throw its weapon.

She lashed out with her tongue-

“Don’t hold it!” Grandfather hollered.

Striking it, instead of grabbing it.  Sending it flying.  Embedding into a distant tree, deep enough it would be hard to pull out.

Then she turned her full attention to Musser’s minions.

The Family Man twisted, mutating, muscles parting to give him two arms on the one side for a moment, so he could both avoid the thrust of a spear that was meant to leave his arm useless and strike out at her at the same time.

He caught her across the face, scratching deep.  She slid on icy ground.

The Family Man smiled, pacing.  His people were a mob behind him.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“Happens,” she answered.

“Would you look at that?  The curse was lifted.  You made me faint at the sight of it, and now… it stirs the heart.  I’ll give you the curse back, well before we’re done.”

He swatted at her ear, grabbing for her implement with a bare hand, arm reaching a bit too far for his dimensions.  She parried the hit.

Anywhere she cut, he closed flesh around it.  Not healing, just putting the injury away.

“It’s up to you where I push the thorn in, to give it to you with the curse attached.  To drain your magic and leave you weak in word and bloodlust.  Belly?  Face?  Eye?  Thigh?  Or an existing hole?  Into an ear, until the world goes quiet?”

He was good at finding weaknesses.

“That cut on your face might scar.  Lovely.  I will give you so many more.  Until it stops being sadism and starts becoming art.”

“Try,” she answered.

He moved a hand, and she moved her weapon to be ready-

A shout behind her made her turn her head.

Someone was creeping up on her.  Someone who made no noise at all.  No practice, just Undercity weirdness.

She got her weapon up in time to keep cord from being pulled tight against her throat.

The Family Man came for her, thorn in hand, reaching, jabbing for the side of her head, her ear.

She transformed her weapon, then brought it up as a knife, cutting the cord.  The silent man grabbed her hair, and she used glamour to become a fox-

The Family Man kicked her, hard enough to shatter the glamour.

She picked herself up.

Spell papers-

Someone in the crowd threw something.  She stopped it, saw the Family Man reach out, parried the reaching hand, cutting it.

And one of the Oldbodies’ old little kids came running at her, puffy-faced.

She kicked them away, being careful about footing, careful that the Oldbodies had treated so many of their people to have gas or alchemy or something else inside them.  She had to stop the kid but couldn’t stop the kid when the kid was close.

Another grab from the Family Man.  Thorn jabbing her way.  Toward her chest.

Kick the kid away.

Find footing.

The silent person darted in, cutting at her hand.  She turned her hand just in time, and the cord was severed.

Spell cards were scattered into the wind.  She hurried to find footing, to go from being against this wind and the constant pressure that was trying to push a collapsing undercity into Kennet above to being with it, shaping it.

Guiding papers.

They touched ground and people all around her, and erupted into fire, into ice, into electric shocks and flares of light.  Above all, they erupted into smoke.

The silent man came for her, through the smoke, but it was hers.  She’d spent almost all of her glamour on this area, and the metaphorical seeds had been planted.

So smoke became a fox that had fur with the color and twistiness of smoke, baring teeth, seizing hand.

A gesture bid another to lunge out of smoke.  The kid came running at her and tripped over it.  She was already backing well out of the way when the kid fell hard enough that skin ruptured.

Gas billowed out in a huge cloud.  The silent man, standing in the area of the gas, opened his mouth in a scream that made no noise.  His skin blistered and sloughed off.

She had no elemental spell cards, now.  Cards were still going off here and there.

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

She heard it.

Tiny hairs all over her body stood up.  She was attuned enough to the wind to feel it change.

She turned her head, looking back through the passage that led between Kennet above and Kennet below, looking for the voice that had shouted for a warning.

Oakham, bloody, clearly injured, a huge cut on her arm, stood there, over the seven people who’d slipped through.

She’d held the ground Lucy hadn’t been able to.

“Did you protect the toad?” Lucy asked.

“Seriously?  That’s what you ask?”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.  Of course.  Warm and safe.”

“Good.”

“Is it the answer to this whole mess?  Toad as the key-?”

Melissa’s question went unfinished, because the Family Man acted.

She’d wanted him to.

Her ear was facing him, he’d identified a weak spot- probably because she had the earring and he knew about her implement being focused around sound and hearing.  He wanted to hurt her in that way.

Sadism, after all.

But she’d been secretly keeping an eye out for it, she could fend off the hand and the thorn.

The way he worked, he stretched, extending, pulling back.

So she let him extend.  And when he pulled back, she went with him, kicking off with her boots on glamoured ground, fingernails catching his forearm.

With her weapon in her right hand, she created a stiletto dagger.  A knife-length blade with a width like a rapier.

His focus was on her.  The fact she was making what he had to feel was a grave mistake, getting into arm’s reach.  Getting up close to him, where he had friends all around.

But her name had been called three times by her friends.  And they’d put together what they were putting together.

The timing was more or less right.

Verona kicked off the ritual to help secure Kennet above.  Avery had the mundane items.  Lucy was holding the third of the locations.

A shift of power, a shift of balances, a reassertion of claim and domain.

He felt it.  It helped to distract him, as she speared the thorn with the stiletto blade, and used the fact he was pulling her in to get the momentum to drive it in.  Sideways-ish, but in.

He staggered back, a fresh hole in his chest.

“Second time, let the curses be twice as strong.  You brought it on yourself.”

He made a wailing sound, eyes going wild.  He couldn’t stand blood anymore.

Lucy backed up.

Back to the opening.

She scanned the crowd.

Two of the Oldbodies.  Adherents of Bloody Glory…

Bogeymen?  They’d removed the nail…

He stood there, in the crowd.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” the Family Man roared.

“No,” Charles agreed.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked.

She watched as the wound in the Family Man’s chest bled.

The thorn was pushed out by the blood.

“It was a duel, implicitly.  Outside factors interrupted it,” he said.  “Third time’s a charm, I suppose.”

“I did that fair and square!  No.  Bullshit!”

He had a dark look in his eyes as he looked at her.  “Take it up with a judge.”

“I fucking am!  Bull!”

“Your points have been considered and your appeal is denied.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?” he asked, without humor in his voice, still with that darkness behind the eyes.

She shook her head.

The Family Man stood, picking up the thorn.

More Others were emerging.

He’s making every kind of dangerous Other, now.

“Carry on,” the Carmine said, before disappearing.

Bubbleyum had to retreat.  She was hurt, she’d spent too much of what she’d had, and as Biscuit had said, the transformation did fuck her up.

The Wild Hunt speared Maricica with invisible blades.  Blood ran down the length of each one, Fae holding the weapons.

Guilherme had one but hadn’t used it yet.

“You did good.”

“Toadsy,” Bubbleyum said, turning to find him at the rear, with other wounded.  The Ballerina was fighting some kids in a trenchcoat, bowling them over, splitting them up.  Then they’d hop back together.  The Dog Tags were out of ammo and were using blades.

“I’ve got potions.  They’ll fuck you up in different ways, but we can get you fixed.”

“How’s this for a chink in the armor and a way forward?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” Toadswallow answered.  “But you did good either way.”

“You don’t think we got this?

“I think there’s too many other factors.  Miss says others are coming in.”

“Others?”

“Practitioner families.  The Horror family.  Goblins.”

Bubbleyum narrowed her eyes.

“Not her.  But goblins.  Elementals.  He has the ability to decide what sprouts up, what manifests, and he’s saying yes to them all, giving them…”

Toadswallow went quiet.

She turned, following his gaze.

The Carmine Exile stood at Maricica’s chest, feet on either side of the hole the nail had been in, that Musser had been pulled out of.

“You stay my blade?” Guilherme asked.  He was ready to impale her.

“Maricica,” Charles said.  “I give you the option of becoming my agent.  It is the prerogative of Judges to have any being, human, Other, or practitioner, become their servant, to help them in carrying out their duties.”

The smile was visible beneath the blood that flowed down Maricica’s face.  “I agree.”

“Then by the Seal, you are mine, you are protected, removed from all events, all prior bindings, all prior curses.  I spend my power, let us restore you, so you can do what is necessary as an agent of the Carmine Throne.”

The Winter Fae released her.

Bubbleyum put a claw on Toadswallow’s shoulder, gripping it tight.  He put his claw over hers.

Maricica straightened.  Injuries the Winter Fae had inflicted were healed.  She stood straighter.

“I empower you with extra strength and capabilities… much needs to be done.”

“Of course.”

The air changed, pressure increasing in a way it did in the deepest Warren tunnels.  Nearest the greatest and oldest goblins and goblin-adjacent things.

The sky above them had gone from daylight to overcast and now clouds were breaking up to be a uniform crimson, studded with black stars, directly above her.

The pool of blood beneath her expanded to nearly double.

“Carmine Exile,” Maricica said.  “I ask your leave to abandon my position as agent in your service.”

“Unusual but not without precedent.  I consider your service worthy enough.  I will grant it.”

“And she keeps the power you granted her in her brief stay in office?” Guilherme asked.

“Also not without precedent,” the Carmine Exile said.

Dark and bloody Others were coming out of the darkness, to join the ranks of those who served the Goddess.

Bubbleyum tensed.  She silently took the healing potion Sir Toadswallow handed her.

“How many others will receive this opportunity to be your agent, however brief?” Toadswallow asked, raising his voice.

More were coming from behind them.

“Enough,” the Carmine Exile answered.

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter