Clown Wyrm - 12. Chapter 12 - Journey

The clowns spent the night at Norjia and the Mechanic’s home, and the four rose together with the sun. They enjoyed a very satisfying breakfast and packed the cart for their long trip, but before leaving on the journey, Norjia and the Mechanic brought Mercury and Periwinkle to see the High Regent of Mysticism.

The city streets were quiet as the four of them walked along. Only a few other folks were out and about, getting coffees or heading to work.

“The regent lives right around this corner,” Norjia informed the two clowns, but as they rounded it, the sound of a river began to rise.

The powerful flow cut through the town a few streets ahead of them, and Mercury recognized a bridge that spanned it.

“That’s the river we fell into!” she declared, grabbing Periwinkle’s wrist.

Norjia turned to the clowns. “You’re right.”

They gave her a sheepish look, but there was no wrath in her words, or in her eyes. Over the previous night spent together, Mercury and Periwinkle had impressed Norjia with their intentions to slay R’Kathlug and overthrow the king, and whatever animosity she had felt was now replaced with a burgeoning friendship.

“The keep is over the bridge and down that path,” Norjia continued, “but we’re headed this way.” She pointed the opposite direction.

One block away from the water, they entered the front garden of a large manor. They stepped up to its door, and Norjia knocked.

“Hello?!” called out a man’s voice from around the side of the building.

“Aeonial!” Norjia yelled back, and she waved the others in the direction of the man, who popped out into the sunshine.

A parrot was perched on his shoulder. “Norjia, Mechanic, and their two friends, hello!”

“Good morning, regent,” the Mechanic replied. “These fine folks are Mercury and Periwinkle.”

“More than a pleasure to make your acquaintances,” he declared. He looked at the bird on his shoulder. “Say hello to our guests, Goldfish.”

It did not say anything, but Mercury said, “Hi,” as the parrot began to nibble at a tuft of the regent’s hair. “Your bird’s name is Goldfish? That’s hilarious! Does he talk?”

“Not even a little,” Norjia answered, and everyone laughed.

“To what do we owe the honor of this lovely visit,” the regent asked with a beaming grin.

Norjia nodded to Mercury, and the man focused on her.

“Yes, my dear?”

Mercury glanced at Periwinkle, “Do you think that you and Goldfish could tell us a little about the capital?”

The High Regent of Mysticism chuckled. “Goldfish would love to tell you all about it! Now, what do you want to know?”

Mercury’s next words startled the man. “I want to kill R’Kathlug.”

He looked shocked, but his words were encouraging. “What a noble goal! I don’t know if it can be done, but I’ll help you. Wow,” he continued, and he repeated her words, “kill R’Kathlug. So much would change,” he added. “So much in the world would change.” He focused on Mercury. “What do you need to know?”

“Is there a way to the dragon? How do I get to it?”

The High Regent of Mysticism screwed up his face in thought. “I… I don’t know. The only way down I’m aware of is through a passageway in the throne room. I can picture the door, because I’ve been in the king’s presence before, but getting in there isn’t possible without an invitation.”

“Okay,” Mercury replied, “at least there’s a door and a way down. Do you have any idea how I might kill it?”

“Well, I know it’s alive, so I suppose there must be a way for it to die, but I’ve never seen it myself. And yes there’s a door, but it is inaccessible. The wyrm is only ever seen by the king.”

“Does he really sacrifice people to it?” Periwinkle asked.

“Oh yes he does, and I suppose the victims get to see R’Kathlug for a second before they’re phagialized.”

Mercury and Periwinkle were confused, and she said, “Sorry, what happens to them?”

Norjia chuckled. “Yeah, Aeonial, what on earth did you just say?”

“Right, right,” he replied, and his bird let out a squawk, “I meant eaten, but R’Kathlug’s mouth isn’t a normal mouth. It’s a razor-filled buccopharyngeal sphincter that it uses to bleed out its victims before devouring their drained husks.”

“Yikes,” Mercury replied, “sounds disgusting.”

The High Regent of Mysticism shrugged. “An image of its mouth is on the royal seal and on Armonian money, so we’re pretty used to its appearance.” He pulled out his wallet and removed a bill to show the two clowns. “That’s it.” He was pointing at one corner with four concentric circles surrounding a multi-pointed star.

Mercury glanced at Norjia and back at the regent. “And is Aeonial your name?”

He smiled. “It is, but you can just call me regent since that’s easier for most people.”

“Can you tell us how the royals get their magic from the dragon?” Periwinkle asked.

“I actually can’t,” the regent replied, shaking his head. “They’ve always kept it a secret, but I’ve heard people say behind the king’s back that it’s something horrible.”

Mercury leaned close to Periwinkle and whispered, “You were totally right; the dragon shits magic.” He snickered as she said aloud, “Are there any minor entrances into the castle, like for servants or deliveries?”

The regent raised his eyebrows. “There are, but each is heavily guarded. They’re not a good option.” He looked at Norjia and the Mechanic, and then back at the clowns again. “I wish you both all the luck in the world with achieving your goal, but I don’t know how you’re supposed to accomplish it. If you’re able to kill the dragon and stop the flow of magic, those in power could be overthrown. You are doing almighty work.”

The parrot hopped onto the top of his head, and it continued over to the man’s other shoulder. It let out another screech.

“Goldfish agrees,” Norjia stated with a smirk.

“Wish I had more information for you,” the regent said with an apologetic smile.

Mercury grinned and ventured, “Don’t suppose you want to join us, do you?”

“Sorry, friends,” he replied with a chuckle, “but I have obligations here and in the neighboring towns.”

Norjia placed her hand on Mercury’s shoulder. “Aeonial is needed here. The responsibilities of the High Regent of Mysticism include overseeing the holy men.”

Periwinkle perked up at her words. “I learned about them last night from the woodland jesters! They collect food once a month for people who don’t have enough to eat, right?”

“That’s correct,” the regent confirmed, “the monthly Djishra is an important part of my service to the community.”

Mercury grinned. “So then you’re already being rebellious, and I love it!”

The regent’s brow furrowed, and he stated, “There’s something else we should discuss.” He took a breath and said, “Since R’Kathlug’s magic is required for every birth, and since our master geneticists require the dragon’s magic to perform their gene-craft, killing the wyrm will alter the way humans are born.”

“What does that mean?” the Mechanic asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” the regent replied. “We’ve been born by magic for thousands of years.” He then smiled warmly at Mercury. “I don’t know what’ll happen, but the world will be better without the dragon, in the hands of us humans again. I have to believe the world before we were ruled by the beast was better than this one. I think your actions will pave the way for the coming of the pure one. I hope you’re able to do it,” the regent added. “I hope you can kill R’Kathlug.”

After their brief visit with the High Regent of Mysticism, the wives brought the clowns back to their home. They had already given Candi her breakfast, and before they left, they gave her a few handfuls of hearty grain and four sugar cubes. They hitched the cart to the horse, and Candi pulled it out onto the streets that led out of Lithia.

Mercury, Periwinkle, and the Mechanic sat in the back, and Norjia was up front at the reins. The wheels and bed of the cart were wood with posts at its four corners; the walls and top were fabric to keep it light enough for the horse to pull without much trouble, and the front and back were rolled up so the breeze could blow through.

Mercury leaned forward and asked, “Norjia, how did you become a knight?”

The Mechanic chuckled as Norjia answered. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a knight. The earliest birthday I can remember was my fifth. I had asked for a toy sword and shield, and I wanted a Warrior Welley doll. It was this lady-figurine that came with a beautiful gown, a tiara, and glittery shoes, but she also came with a full suit of armor and a set of weapons. I really wanted a Warrior Welley, but instead, my mother got me my very own full set of adjustable armor, breastplate, helmet, shoulder and shin guards, gauntlets, and of course, a sword and a shield.” Norjia’s voice sounded bright and enthusiastic as she relived the memory. “The whole set had straps so it could be expanded as I grew, and it accommodated young me for almost five years. I loved it. I couldn’t believe my mother had gotten it for me. I was still five when I began apprenticing under a weapons expert; I was nine when I needed a larger set of armor, and I’ve been full-grown since fourteen, which is when I got my first custom set. My teacher trained me in multiple sword art styles. I’m well-versed in staff and spear art. I am an expert markswoman with bow and arrows, slingshot, and javelin. My teacher instilled in me the importance of blacksmithing, and its own special art form. I took the title of knight at seventeen, and I was initiated into the Order of the Althraxion. By twenty-four, I had achieved my Thirteenth Degree, and at twenty-eight, I began a new chapter of the order.”

Mercury and Periwinkle were riveted, and the Mechanic was grinning with pride. “Norjia is something else, isn’t she?”

“And sorry you had to see me kill Tagoo,” Norjia added to the clowns.

Mercury and Periwinkle both suddenly remembered details from when they first arrived.

“The green knight!”

“Correct, he became possessive of me and violent. I retaliated.”

“And you proved to be far more skilled than him,” the Mechanic stated. She leaned toward the two clowns. “Tagoo was Norjia’s lover.”

“Wait a second,” Mercury said, “you two ladies are married, but Norjia, you had a separate lover who was a man, and that was okay with you?”

“Of course she did, and of course it was,” the Mechanic replied. “Norjia wants to be a mother,” she added with a chuckle. “We found Tagoo and hoped he’d work out, but the two of them were denied the privilege of having their genetics passed on by the master geneticists.” The Mechanic leaned toward the two clowns and whispered, “It was Tagoo’s fault.”

Norjia nodded. “Dizriolith is right.”

“Hang on a second, you called her that same thing yesterday,” Periwinkle stated. “What is it?”

The Mechanic laughed. “That’s my name, but you can just call me Mechanic. Most other folks do.”

“And how’d you get the nickname?” Mercury asked.

“Dizriolith led a hunting expedition in a remote part of the world a few years ago,” Norjia stated.

“Not hunting for animals,” the Mechanic quickly added. “And it was almost a decade ago.”

“Has it really been ten years?” Norjia asked in reply.

The Mechanic shrugged. “Our most recent trip was our ninth annual. So anyway, on that first trip,” she continued, “we did end up bringing home quite a few animals, but getting them wasn’t our purpose for going.”

The two clowns were intrigued, and Periwinkle asked, “So if not animals, what were you hunting?”

“Hunters.”

Mercury and Periwinkle looked at each other and then back at the Mechanic as she continued.

“My shop specializes in finding homes for rescued and rehabilitated animals. I’d grown up hearing about poachers, and eventually I assembled a team. We headed to a vast wilderness full of abundant flora and fauna, which makes it a target. There are laws in place to protect the wildlife, but…”

“Poachers gonna poach,” Mercury stated. “How’d you stop them?”

“The hunters we hunt don’t use bows and arrows or spears to kill their prey, and they aren’t hunting the animals for food. They’re hunting them to make a profit, and they’re cruel. They kill many, and live animals are imprisoned and kept in horrid conditions before resale.”

“But how do they hunt,” Mercury asked, “if they aren’t using bows and arrows and spears?” The two clowns had not seen a single person with any kind of firearm since arriving, and neither could think of any other way to kill an animal.

The Mechanic looked very serious. “They use something called life-syphons, or lyphons. Most people don’t know what they are. Lyphons are projectiles fired from slingshots or reconfigured crossbows. They are customized specialty weapons that almost no one has access to.”

“How do they work?” Mercury asked.

“Life-syphons do exactly what their name claims,” the Mechanic continued. “Imagine an explosion…” She paused. “No, better yet, imagine an implosion.” She then checked in with the two clowns. “You know the difference, right? An explosion is energy expanding out, and an implosion is energy crushing in.”

Mercury and Periwinkle nodded as the Mechanic continued.

“When a lyphon impacts with a target, it bursts, but not with an explosion. A lyphon’s energy is like a black hole that sucks life forces from living beings. There are three primary sizes. Small ones kill rodents or birds, and they can put a person into a coma or even cause death. Medium ones are the most common and are strong enough to take out deer or wolves, and they can be brutal to humans. Large lyphons are the least common. They can kill an elephant, and a single one can take out multiple people at once. The reason poachers like lyphons so much is that they absorb life force without damaging the flesh. An animal killed by a lyphon with have no outward signs of what caused its death, and poachers can fetch a higher price.”

“And you use them against poachers?” Mercury asked.

“We do,” the Mechanic replied with a hint of pride in her voice.

“But hun,” Norjia interjected to her wife, “none of that answers Mercury’s original question.”

The Mechanic was suddenly worried, and she looked between the three others. “Mercury, what was your original question? I can’t remember.”

Mercury’s brow furrowed. “I actually can’t remember what I asked either,” she admitted, and she snorted a laugh at herself.

Norjia smiled. “You asked how Dizriolith got the nickname Mechanic.”

“Oh yeah,” Mercury said with another laugh. “How did you get your nickname? With a name like Mechanic, I definitely didn’t expect you to own a pet store.”

The Mechanic chuckled. “It was our first time to those wild lands. The people call it Whistriola. Our local contacts there had a difficult time pronouncing Dizriolith, but they started calling me maekaihnyk on the first day. I saved a venomous cervid that had become tangled in a trap. The animal is called a kanyk, and the word for rescue in their language is maekaih. They put it together as maekaihnyk, and it sounded to my team like they were calling me mechanic.” She laughed. “They picked it up too, and it wasn’t until years later that I realized I had completely misunderstood and inevitably misspelled what they were calling me.” She grinned fondly and shook her head at herself as she went on, “Kanyks have three tails, and each of them have bony spines at the ends that carry their venom.”

“Sounds like stingray tails,” Periwinkle whispered to Mercury.

“But doesn’t cervid mean deer?” she added as the Mechanic continued.

“This almost never happens, but the kanyk’s antlers had become entangled in a bunch of netting that the locals use to snare ground foul that they eat. The tails were flailing around, and it’s a good thing they don’t get tangled often, because the poor things usually need to be killed in order to keep the people safe from their venom.” The Mechanic looked at her wife. “But we had a specialty weighted blanket with us that helps Norjia to relax and stay calm. Well I managed to toss it over all three of the kanyk’s tails, and we laid a wide plank of wood on top of the blanket to hold the animal’s body still while I cut the nets. As soon as it was free, we removed the wood, and I got ahold of the blanket. The kanyk slipped out from under it and raced off into the brush, and we were very happy to see it disappear safely into the forest. No one had been stabbed by its tails, and it was gone, but a little of its venom was on the blanket, and it got onto my forearm. It burned up my skin, and one of the local healers treated my arm. She gave me the name maekaihnyk.”

“Norjia?” Periwinkle said in a quieter voice than he intended. It was the first time he spoke her name, and he was still feeling a degree of trepidation with the woman who had so brutally punched him in the guts.

She turned with a small smile and not a hint of the threat he feared. “Yes?”

“Were you there on that first trip?”

“I was, and we were all calling Dizriolith Mechanic by the time we got back home to Lithia. I’m one of the only people who still calls her Dizriolith.”

“The nickname stuck,” the Mechanic said with a laugh.

Mercury was still curious about the poachers. “So how do you use the life-syphons against the hunters?”

“The same way they use them against animals,” the Mechanic replied. “On that first mission, when we started hunting the hunters, we began by using traditional hunting methods. We had learned that a group of poachers was headed out to hunt rhognios, which are a type of great ape with iridescent fur. Their coats are highly sought after and prized by the nobles. The poachers were tracking the apes, and we were tracking them; we found them as they found the rhognios. The poachers had no idea they were being stalked, and we only had our hunting bows and a few spears, but when our missiles hit their marks, the wilds became filled with screams, and no apes were killed that day. The hunters managed to fight back against us before we had taken all of them out, and they managed to fire two of their lyphons. One hit a local man in the chest and killed him instantly, and the other hit the foot of one of our team members. He was in a coma for over a month, and he died without ever waking up, but we had stopped that group of poachers and instilled a new and terrible fear in the hearts of others the world over. Much fewer of them are willing to venture into the wilds, knowing they might become prey themselves, and knowing we might be out there. We collected those first poacher’s remaining lyphons, and our engineer managed to replicate their design and build us our own stock of them to use against future poachers.”

“You’re speaking as if this is a regular thing you do,” Periwinkle pointed out.

“It is,” the Mechanic replied. “I lead a group once a year.”

“Whoa,” Mercury exclaimed, “you’re a serious badass.”

The two wives laughed.

Mercury was suddenly struck by an idea. “Could a lyphon take out R’Kathlug?”

The Mechanic looked doubtful. “People say the dragon is larger than the entire palace that sits at the top of the old volcano. If that’s true, I don’t think lyphons will have much of an impact on it.”

“How the hell are we supposed to kill it?” Mercury huffed.

Norjia steered Candi and the cart along an old path, and Mercury and Periwinkle could tell that it led in the direction of a forest in the distance.

“Are we going in there?” Mercury asked.

“We are indeed,” the Mechanic replied. “The road we’re on connects to the very western edge of the new King’s Road, and it cuts through the forest. This older road goes the long way around and takes weeks, but the highway is a new direct shot straight to where we’re headed. Can you see the sign?” The Mechanic pointed past her wife, and Mercury and Periwinkle noticed a small square at the edge of the tree line. “That’s the start of the King’s Road.”

“Have you traveled on it yet?” Periwinkle asked.

“This’ll be our first trip,” Norjia replied. “A lot of people opposed the building of the King’s Road, and I think lots of folks are boycotting the use of it. I doubt we’ll see many travelers.”

The Mechanic nodded. “Yeah, it’s going to be a far faster trip to the capital than the old path around the forest would have been.”

“How come there isn’t another Grunnel?” Mercury asked.

“The Grunnel’s designer used to live in Tingedale,” Norjia answered. “It’s a prototype line, and it proved to be too expensive and too difficult to be worth building all over Armonia.”

“So it’s the only one of its kind,” her wife concluded.

“Too bad,” Periwinkle replied, “it was a nice way to travel.”

In less than an hour, the dark woods loomed before them, and the sign was readable. It had two lines. The top read Western Gate of the Great King’s Road, and the bottom read Fairforn Forest. The entrance led straight into the trees, and the older path curved and followed the perimeter of the dense woods.

Norjia guided Candi right into the trees. Freshly-hewn stumps lined the sides of the road, but the path itself was cleared and flat, and the horse pulled the cart with ease.

“Well, I guess it is nice,” the Mechanic conceded.

The new King’s Road was wide enough that the trees on either side did not shade its middle, and the morning sun shined down upon the travelers. They discussed matters of a more trivial nature, or napped to pass the day away, and Norjia was proved correct; they came across no one. Eventually that first day crept toward its end, and the group found a spot to stop for the night. The two wives set up camp and built a fire. They prepared a dinner of meatballs with beans, and the four slept under the stars.

The travelers awoke the next morning and enjoyed a cold breakfast of smoked sausage and hard-boiled eggs. They repacked their sleeping rolls, fed Candi, and climbed back into the cart.

There was more talk about things of little importance as they started their second leg of the journey, but as the sun climbed above the travelers, Periwinkle asked a question that led to a conversation that was confusing for each of them.