hwango

And with an anticlimactic "poof," the loathsome hwango was once again banished to its prison of echoes and shadow, there to lurk and scheme and plot until the foolishness of mortals once again loosed it upon the world.

This sucks, but I've got nothing for this week. I had very few chances to brainstorm and/or write this weekend, and none of them produced anything. Honestly, I think I'm just too emotionally drained from the Intersection. The whole "find a partner thing" just...it's very upsetting for me. The actual collaborating is fine, but the process of acquiring a collaborator sucks. But I survived it the first week, and I liked what ended up with a for a story, and there was nothing exotic about the poll to make me worry that if I got voted out that I'd take some innocent bystander with me. I could breathe a sigh of relief afterwards that at least it was over, and maybe this would be fun again.

Alas, then we had to do it again immediately, and I was upset for the next three days. I think the only reason I managed to write anything at all for last week was the looming possibility that if I went down in flames I might be taking someone with me. And then yes, the poll _did_ turn out to be adding our scores together, and I stressed out the entire voting period that I'd managed to get rayaso eliminated because I didn't stick the landing on an ending for my story (or because it didn't measure up for some other reason, but from inside my own head the biggest issue with my entry for last week was that I thought the ending could have been stronger).

So, yeah. Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and voting and commenting all season! It's been really great to have so much support, and I'm so glad I could make people laugh in These Difficult Times. Sorry I just couldn't manage it this time.

They say you can't go home again, but if I lived my life according to what "they" say then I wouldn't have constructed a floating island fortress in the first place, so I didn't give their opinions much consideration. Instead, I just threw together a small stealth submarine and went to go visit. It had to be stealth because various governments don't want anyone (mostly each other) visiting the site, and it had to be a submarine because various governments had fired an awful lot of missiles at my floating island fortress until it didn't float anymore. Really, an excessive number of missiles. Like, enough missiles that it started to feel kind of personal.

I switched on some exterior lights as I approached the coordinates and braced myself for feelings of...regret? Failure? I don't know, I figured it would be upsetting. But as the wreck came into view my first thought was "Wow, that coral really moves in fast, doesn't it?" Then I wondered if maybe this was an atypical amount of coral to have grown in such a short span of time, and tried to remember if mutant doom coral had been one of the projects I'd been working on before all of my meticulous laboratory precautions got hit by missiles.

Regardless, it was kind of pretty. And...I think it helped. All the coral and seaweed and molluscs all over everything made it harder to see the scorch marks or the jagged edges where metal had been torn apart. It made the all the violence seem like something that had happened much longer ago than it really had.

On the other hand, it also made the place even less recognizable. It might have been hard enough trying to identify which twisted bit of wreckage had been a doom cannon and which bit had been part of a hive filled with mind control bees even without all the seawater and the enterprising marine life, but with them it was proving impossible. Why, if I doubted my calculations, I could even have wondered if maybe I was in the wrong place, and this was the sunken remains of some other floating island fortress.

But no, there was my logo stenciled onto the chest of a headless sentry robot. There was a crab lurking in the largest of the holes in its armor, and I waved to it, like you'd wave to someone sitting on their porch as you walked down the street in front of their house. That's when it really hit me that this really wasn't my home anymore. It belonged to the crabs now.

That was a weird feeling. I'd fought off all kinds of soldiers and secret agents to try to keep control of my island, but I surrendered without a fight to this tiny crab. I guess I'd realized there wasn't anything here worth fighting for. It's not like I'd expected to be able to salvage much, but it was still a tough moment for me. I guess you really can't go home again.

Or maybe crabs are just really scary. Maybe I'll make the new sentry robots crab-shaped.

Anyway, I guess I'll have to start from scratch. This time I'm thinking maybe I'll go for a flying island fortress. That sounds pretty awesome. And maybe people will say that crab-shaped sentry robots look out of place on an airship, but I think we've already established how much I care what "they" say.

Robot crabs it is.

Finold studied the furnishings of the chancellor's office - the furniture, the windows, the lamps, the books. They were not particularly interesting or elegant - elegance was something reserved for the Emperor's throne room, where the goal was to impress. Conversely, the chancellor's office was simply a place where work was done. The only reason Finold was devoting so much attention to the rather mundane features of the office was that it distracted him a little from the terrible awkward silence, and it meant that he didn't have to look at the chancellor's grimace of disapproval. Finally, the chancellor spoke.

"Finold, I understand that you have asked for a new assignment."

Finold did not answer, since it was not really a question.

"I am not certain that giving you a new assignment is a sensible course of action. Many of us are concerned that you are simply not well suited to a life in diplomacy."

"You're wrong!" Finold objected, too loudly and with too much force, as if the words themselves weren't damning enough. The chancellor raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, I'm sure that I can do better, sir," Finold said.

"We can certainly agree that there is ample room for improvement."

Finold squirmed in his chair.

"How long were you ambassador to Xalta?" the chancellor asked, as if he didnt' know.

"Three months," replied Finold.

"And your tenure there ended because?"

"The Xaltans burned down the embassy," Finold said.

"Finold, Xalta is so tropical and humid that you can practically drown walking down the street. It rains almost every day of the year. Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to to burn down a building in Xalta?"

Finold squirmed some more.

"Following your time in Xalta, you were ambassador to Blüt for two months. Remind me why you came home from Blüt?"

"They declared war on us. But no battles were actually fought before we straightened things out, so no harm done, right?"

"Finold, no battles were fought because Blüt was still trying to figure out how to manage their army because they had spent the previous two hundred years as a nation of pacifists and had to construct a military from scratch."

"Well then, we'd probably have beaten them if it had come to actual fighting!" said Finold. The chancellor resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to bury his face in his hands and weep. Instead, he decided to just get it over with.

"Against my recommendations, the Emperor has agreed to give you another chance. You will be going to Tygius."

Finold knew enough about the chancellor to know that he was not joking, and yet could not stop himself.

"You're joking!" he said. The chancellor just shook his head slightly in disbelief. "I mean, surely you can't be serious, sir."

"What makes you say that?" the chancellor asked.

"But," Finold said, "Everyone in Tygius was turned to stone by that curse! There haven't been any people there for decades! No one goes there!" The chancellor did not contradict him. "It's cursed!" Finold reiterated.

"And yet," the chancellor said, "we still maintain an embassy there, in case the curse is ever lifted."

"Uncle is sending me to be ambassador to a cursed country populated by statues?!" Finold said.

"Finold, we have talked about this before - during official business please refer to the Emperor as 'Emperor' or 'His Majesty' - not 'Uncle.'"

"Sorry, Dad," said Finold. "I mean, Chancellor."

"And you will actually be the Assistant Ambassador."

"Assistant Ambassador to a cursed country populated by statues?!" cried Finold.

"Yes, you will be assisting the current ambassador, Voldur," said the chancellor.

"I have to work for my brother?!"

What the -? What are you children doing here? I thought you only came to visit me when you were bored and desperate, or just didn't want to do your chores, but there's a festival in town right now. Surely that should be a suitable distraction for all of you. No, I don't go to such things. All that awful dancing and loud music. That reminds me of a story, actually.

Once upon a time there was a faerie named Paraselene Whisperkith who loved music. Or, more accurately, he loved crafting musical instruments. Or, even more accurately, he loved crafting enchanted musical instruments that did terrible things. Many of them could even kill people, and I don't mean in the conventional way that you can simply bludgeon someone to death with a tuba.

Among the most awful and famous of his creations were a special set of instruments that were each a different color of the rainbow. The Ochre Barrage was a drum made from the heart of a thundercloud that could shake your bones into dust. The Verdigris Cacophony was a bell made from the copper heart of a fallen star that could melt your...you know, I don't like to coddle you children, but it really was quite dreadful, and I don't think you need that image running around in your fragile young minds. Let us just skip to the Ultraviolet Xylophone, which...actually, upon further consideration, let us not dwell on any of these any longer. Except for the Vermilion Cascade, since that's integral to our story.

The Vermilion Cascade was a harp made out of blood, and it could stop your heart.

Now, when you have a passion for making things, you can sometimes end up making more of those things than you have space in which to keep them, and then you need to come up with a way to get rid of them. Paraselene was not the sort of faerie who would sully himself with something so beneath his station as an occupation, and so he did not wish to do something so crass as to sell his creations. This was fortunate, as there was not a large customer base for evil musical instruments in the first place. Now and then he did manage to trade one to another faerie, often for something equally terrible, and a few he managed to give away, in spite of the fact that everyone with any sense knows that one should never, ever accept a gift from a faerie. In this way, Paraselene's creations slowly trickled out into the world, sometimes changing hands many times. Due to the nature of his creations, they most frequently changed hands via inheritance laws or the collection of evidence at a crime scene. The suffering that resulted from all of this delighted Paraselene, but it also vexed him when one of his creations would end up in the possession of someone who he felt was not worthy to possess it.

The Vermilion Cascade had blazed a trail of suffering and misfortune through several powerful faeries, then through several less significant persons, all the way down to a drunken pixie who lost it in a card game to an ordinary human woodcutter named Hoskuld. Hoskuld, for his part, was not terribly pleased to have won such an obviously evil thing. It as clearly too valuable to throw away, but he found himself unable to find anyone interested in purchasing it, as the market for such things was, as we have already established, very small. And so Hoskuld kept the Vermilion Cascade locked in a box in a shed several feet away from his cottage.

For Paraselene, this was intolerable, and when he learned of the situation he used a tuba made from a piece of the sky to bludgeon to death the bearer of such foul news, then immediately set forth to retrieve his harp.

At about the same time, the whereabouts of the Vermilion Cascade became known to another interested party. I've told you plenty of stories about wicked, evil, loathsome faeries, but I don't want you to get the wrong impression - there are plenty of horrible people in the world who are not faeries. Among those horrible people was a king by the name of Ulfufroth. Many kings are horrible. I think there's just something about having the authority to cut off someone's head if they displease you that turns people a bit funny. Ulfrufroth thought that the best thing about being a king was being able to kill people when they displeased him. He was not a nice man.

Ulfufroth also loved music. Or, more accurately, he loved collecting rare and valuable musical instruments. Or, even more accurately, he loved collecting rare and valuable evil musical instruments so he could have people killed with them when they displeased him, because turning someone inside out by playing a banjo at them was so much flashier and more impressive than just hacking off their head. At this point in our story, Ulfufroth already possessed the Banjo of Inversion, the Devouring Harmonium, the Dire Accordion, the Infernal Glockenspiel, and the Hyperdimensional Theramin, which was not actually evil, but when it was about to be played improperly the people who were about to hear it would often go insane, so it was in his collection as a sort of honorable mention.

When Ulfufroth learned that there was some lowly woodcutter living in his kingdom who possessed a magical faerie harp made out of blood he immediately sent for his carriage. Ordinarily, a king would send minions out on this sort of errand, but recently a large number of Ulfufroth's minions had displeased him, and as a result his Infernal Glockenspiel had been played so much that he found himself a bit low on minions. Also, the entire castle now stank of brimstone, and he could do with the fresh air.

As you've probably guessed, Paraselene and King Ulfufroth both arrived at Hoskuld's cottage at the same time.

To a faerie like Paraselene, all humans looked pretty much alike, and even the most splendidly accoutered human was still a shabby, grubby thing compared to his own magnificence. Similarly, to King Ulfufroth, pretty much everyone who wasn't wearing a crown tended to get lumped together in a category of "lesser people." Paraselene didn't know that woodcutters seldom ride about in carriages attended by footmen and armed guards. You might think that Ulfufroth would realize that woodcutters seldom ride perfectly white deer with antlers made of glass, but the truth was that this was his first time out of the castle in several years, and he had very little idea what ordinary people did other than turn inside when you played your special banjo at them.

All of which is to say that both of them assumed that the other was the woodcutter. They immediately started making demands of each other and getting outraged at the temerity of the other, and things escalated quickly, and by the time Hoskuld got back to his cottage carrying an armload of firewood several people had been turned into toads and pigs and there was substantial and widespread evidence that a certain banjo had been played. There was a notable absence of survivors who could explain what had happened.

Hoskuld was so badly unhinged by the grotesque sight that confronted him that he immediately abandoned his job as a woodcutter and taught himself to play the harp. The Vermilion Cascade stopped his heart and left him a cold, unfeeling man who played music not for the joy of music, but simply as a way to earn a meal. He rode away on the fey deer and for the rest of his days roamed the land as a rather ghoulish and otherworldly wandering minstrel.

The lesson to be learned here is that for faeries the rainbow extends all the way into ultraviolet. That, and many musicians have dark and troubling pasts, and a career in the music industry can wither your heart and drain you of your humanity if you aren't careful.

Now, I really think you children should be going. It sounds like there's still time for you to catch some of the festival. I can hear a drum that sounds like thunder and...I can't quite place that one. Something with strings, I think.

Attention: Board of Library Trustees

As you know, public libraries are in dire peril. As more and more people get their media online, libraries are increasingly becoming seen as superfluous. We have expanded both our online offerings and range of physical materials that can be checked out of the library, but our circulation numbers continue to drop. Radical change is needed if we are to save libraries as we know them.

Thus, I propose that the entire Nonfiction department be renamed "The Vault of Forbidden Knowledge."

Access to the Vault will be severely restricted, requiring a valid photo ID, swearing an oath of secrecy, and a pressing a bloody thumb print onto a scroll. By making the books as difficult and arduous as possible to obtain, we will make them far more interesting to patrons.

The Fiction section should, correspondingly, be renamed simply "LIES." All library staff will be encouraged to add to a list of books that we recommend patrons avoid, and should vigorously denounce the possibility that anything written in any of them ever happened or could possibly be of interest to anyone.

I also recommend that we file requests to have our library's physical location stripped from all major online services that supply maps and driving directions.

Finally, approximately seventy-five percent of all materials should be temporarily removed from the shelves, and then large signs should be posted throughout the library letting patrons know that, due to shortages, patrons will be strictly limited to no more than twenty items per patron. "NO EXCEPTIONS."

I believe that these measures will all contribute to a significant increase in the use of all library materials and services.

Also, all of this will hopefully help to camouflage the real Forbidden Knowledge, and thereby delay the escape of the Devouring Oblique from its prison in the Lemniscate of Ennui and the inevitable destruction of our world by at least a few years.

Well hello, children. I was just enjoying the comfortable shade to be found under this bridge. No, that's not my abandoned fishing pole next to the stream, and of course I'm not hiding under here. What kind of disagreeable monster would I be to try to hide from such delightful and persistent children? Hmm...monsters who hide under bridges...that reminds me of a story.

Once upon a time there was a fearsome troll who lurked under a crumbling stone bridge that passed over an evil river. The troll's name was Floopthorp, the bridge's name was Municipal Project 51C, and the river's name was the Stranglesnare. I think it's safe to say that two of them were envious of the third one's name, but alas, not everyone can have parents who are civil engineers.

Municipal Project 51C was not a particularly pretty bridge when it was new, and it had become even less so as it fell into disrepair. Many trolls would have been scandalized to live under such an ugly and poorly maintained bridge, but not Floopthorp. All Floopthorp cared about was that the Stranglesnare was an incredibly malevolent river and that Municipal Project 51C was the only bridge across it for leagues in either direction. How far is a league? Far enough that people were willing to cross over Municipal Project 51C rather than take a detour to an alternate route.

The Stranglesnare was an awful river. Rivers are a lot like people - they can be good or evil, can be calm or tumultuous, are made mostly of water, and usually contain at least one skeleton. The Stranglesnare was cruel, turbulent, very wet, and contained rather more skeletons than was typical for a river of its size. It took perverse glee in drowning people who were unfortunate enough to end up in its waters, and it applied extra effort to overturning ferries and sinking boats that were set upon its surface. It also screamed a lot in places where it tumbled over rocks - places where a more polite river would have contented itself with a civilized low roar.

As such, a bridge was your surest and safest way across the Stranglesnare, even if that bridge was little more than a collection of loose stones that were too lazy to actually fall apart. And yes, even if that bridge also had a troll lurking under it, which of course this one did, as I mentioned previously.

Lurking under bridges is, of course, one of the more traditional careers for a troll, and Floopthorp had always wanted to carry on that proud tradition. His parents had hoped he'd follow in their footsteps and become a civil engineer like they were, but he had his heart set on bridge lurking and could not be swayed. He was happy to find Municipal Project 51C uninhabited, and had moved right in.

Whenever someone approached his bridge, Floopthorp used a complex matrix of variables to determine how to proceed, factoring in the subject's apparent wealth, threat potential, size, probable deliciousness, and whether or not they were a goat. All goats were immediately devoured, regardless or how wealthy they might appear. Other travelers were charged a toll, or eaten, or thrown into the murderous river as Floopthorp saw fit. However, nothing in this system accounted for the possibility of another troll trying to cross Floopthorp's bridge, and so when another troll tried to cross his bridge he was left uncertain about how to proceed. Floopthorp was trying to figure out if it would be rude to ask another troll to pay his way across or if he should just let the other troll cross for free, when the other troll, whose name was Glyptocroft by the way, explained that he didn't wish to cross - he wanted to lurk under Floopthorp's bridge.

Floopthorp was aghast. Trolls never challenged each other for bridgeship. The very idea was barbaric. Trolls were ordinarily very polite about patiently waiting for another troll to die or move on before even considering taking over a bridge for themselves. Floopthorp was torn between outrage and horror before Glyptocroft hastily explained that he didn't want to replace Floopthorp - he had his own bridge in a nearby county that was currently being minded by an ogre friend of his. No, Glyptocroft just wanted to lurk there for an hour or so as a tourist.

This idea was somehow even more unsettling than fighting for bridgeship of Municipal Project 51C. Trolls are very solitary creatures, and it was unheard of for two of them to lurk under a bridge at once. But Floopthorp had to admit to himself that he wasn't entirely sure why the idea seemed so terribly wrong, and reluctantly agreed to let Glyptocroft lurk with him for a bit.

Well, Municipal Project 51C was so excited by the novelty of being lurked under by not one but two trolls that it quivered in delight. Alas, it really was badly in need of maintenance, and this quivering caused it to collapse. Trolls are very resilient creatures, and Glyptocroft and Floopthorp survived having several large pieces of stone fall on them. However, the Stranglesnare was positively outraged to have so many rocks dropped into it at once, and immediately flooded its banks and swept away the remains of the bridge and both of the trolls, and none of them were ever seen again.

The lesson to be learned here is that tourism is a destructive industry that can lead to deadly ecological catastrophes. That, and if you encounter someone lurking under a bridge you should leave them alone unless you want to risk being drowned.

Now, I should probably be getting home. But you children are welcome to stay here and enjoy the water.

Attend, humans! The grotesque meat engines that are your bodies require nourishment in order to function! Some portion of that nourishment could be provided by baked foodstuffs. This weekend we will be exchanging baked foodstuffs for local currency at the embassy/church/foothold we have recently secured in your vicinity. Some of those foodstuffs could become the foodstuffs that you consume for nourishment, after the proper transaction has been executed. This profits us both! Breads! Muffins! Memories of your childhood harvested from the vaults of your mind and then augmented by baking powder and the application of heat and time! All will be available to help perpetuate your existence. Visit us this weekend at our stronghold/community center/panopticon and be a part of this glorious alliance between our objectives and your body's ceaseless need for replenishment.

Mommy gave me a very important job today - I'm supposed to make friends with some monsters. Only Mommy said I musn't call them that, because it's rude, but I think if you have that many extra eyes or antlers or a skull that's always on fire or something then you really can’t blame people for calling you a monster. But Mommy says I need to be extra polite and nice to them even if they don't seem like they deserve it because of Diplomacy.

I don't know what's supposed to be so great about Diplomacy. Diplomacy keeps Mommy very busy and means we have to dress up in uncomfortable clothes and go to boring parties with boring people. Even though making friends with monsters sounds scary it also sounds like it will be way more fun than those stupid parties.

Mommy says that I don't need to be scared, because these particular monsters never hurt children, which sounds like a funny sort of monster to me. I guess they like crazy people too, but mom says anyone crazy enough for them to like isn't someone we want talking to them for us. So I guess that leaves me.

Some of Mommy's advisors (an advisor is a kind of friend that you don't like very much and argue with all the time) shouted at her that sending me was “reckless and irresponsible,” but Mommy just got real quiet and put on her scary face (which is way scarier than any old flaming skull) and told them not to shout at her in front of her daughter. Then they had this hushed conversation I don’t think I was supposed to be able to hear about borders and crops and soldiers and something called “casualty projections” and I guess everyone agreed that I should go be nice to the monsters and see if I can get them to like us and stop turning farms into sand and eating the farmers.

***

Well, I met with the monsters, and Mommy was right - they were super nice to me. They asked all kinds of questions about me and where we live and if I had any secrets. I answered all of the questions that I knew the answers to, but I told them I didn’t have any secrets and even if I did I couldn’t tell them or they wouldn’t be secrets anymore. I don’t think monsters are very smart.

I didn’t really find out much about the monsters. We met in that spooky circle of rocks at the edge of the forest, so I didn’t get to see where the monsters live and whether their houses are really made from bones like stories say they are. I think they probably aren’t, because a house made of bones would be cold and drafty and rain would probably leak in the through the roof all the time. Especially the monsters with flaming skulls for heads wouldn’t want rain leaking in on them all the time, right?

***

I’ve been meeting with the monsters for a couple of weeks now. They seem really nice, even though they do look kind of scary and sometimes they act funny and say things that don’t really make a lot of sense to me. I explained to them about how upsetting it is the stuff that they do to our farmers and farms and stuff, and how we need food and how they shouldn’t eat people. I think I didn’t do a very good job at first because they didn’t seem to understand, but I think they get it now, and Mommy says that nothing bad has happened for a while and that I’m doing a really good job and that she’s proud of me.

Oh, and the last time I saw them, the monsters gave me a present! They said if I bury it in the garden in the courtyard it will grow into a magical tree with flowers that look like glass. That sounds pretty.

***

The garden in the courtyard is on fire, and the flames are funny colors and won’t go out no matter how much water people thrown on them.

I don’t think that was really a present.

I don't think those monsters are really my friends.

Good evening. I am speaking to you tonight to address the recent allegations that I have "gone mad with power." I want to assure you that I have not.

Did I deploy a giant robot to chase after some bank robbers? Yes, I did. They were armed and dangerous, and we have a zero tolerance policy against crime in this city.

Did I deploy a giant robot to deal with a rabid raccoon? Yes, I did. Rabies is no joke. Even in this modern age of medical miracles, rabies can be fatal if it is not treated promptly, and that treatment is extremely painful and unpleasant. Swift, decisive action was clearly necessary.

Did I deploy a giant robot when someone parked in my personal parking space? Yes, I did. That parking space is clearly marked, and there were plenty of open spaces in the secondary lot. I know for a fact that there were, because I had to park there when I discovered that someone had taken my space, and then I had to walk all the way to my office from that lot in the rain just because SOMEONE decided that they didn't have to follow the rules and could park in a space CLEARLY RESERVED FOR SOMEONE ELSE. Well, they won't make that mistake again, once they either buy a new car or manage to get their old one back from the moon somehow.

My fellow citizens, our city is extremely fortunate to have a resource like Ultrabot at our disposal. Not using that resource and letting it just sit in its secret underground bunker gathering dust is a waste of taxpayer dollars. If you were in my position, I have no doubt that you would not hesitate to press that magnificent red button and send hundreds of tons of metal screaming across the sky to do your bidding. And you would always keep that button close at hand.

Always.

I look forward to completing the remaining 723 days of my two-year term as your mayor without further aspersions being cast upon my character. Thank you.