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The Other ShoeTicklish# The Other Shoe Baron Buggery von Cunninghamshire played the lead in the performance that night – a classic tragedy that thoroughly recounted the historical events surrounding the founding of the Order of the Twins. Across five densely packed acts, the play constructed and deployed a blistering satire on the most notorious sibling of Plutarch Gemini. Baron had not performed *The Terrible And Astonishing Betrayal Of The Sibling Whose Name Need Not Be Mentioned, Prologue: A Pestilent Mouse Is Caught In The Trap Sprung By Themself* since college. They were playing the titular Traitor Sibling, a role made famous by their most respected ancestor, the great Horseteeth Bumbo Fellatio. Baron had always been told, and had often repeated to others, that the role was in their blood. They certainly felt the power of heredity when they had their feet planted firmly on the stage, running hot under the signature beehive wig of the Royal House of Gemini. When they drank the poison and delivered the final, expiating soliloquy, they’d felt born to play the Traitor Sibling. It could even be that they were a reincarnation of that lost, tarnished soul. The soliloquy was written in alliterative verse and spanned the entirety of the final act. The speech laid out the core philosophy of the Order of the Twins and the rules by which an adherent should conduct one’s life and cultivate one’s conscience. Baron whispered the closing couplet and felt a terrific lightness, as if the recited prayer of repentance had washed away their own sins. They sank to their knees and, by slumping forward in death, gave their final bow to the audience. The performance was met with silence. The children did not applaud. Those that had remained gave, instead, only a glassy stare. Most of the group at the back were busy being cruel to a chicken. Tambourine, the most junior member of *The Esteemed and Wonderful Troupe of Players Touched by the Divinity* passed the velvet hat among the children. Few of them gave. As the audience drifted away, the hat was passed to Baron, still lying prostrate at the foot of the rickety forestage that folded out from the troupe’s wagon. Baron rose on their knees and inspected the hat. There was nothing in it except half a sausage. Tambourine tried their best to catch Baron’s eye, but Baron’s eye was not to be caught – Baron wanted to be alone so they could eat the sausage. Five hours of melodramatic treachery on an empty stomach could make a wretch of the strongest ringmaster, but Tambourine wasn’t having it. “No money!” Tambourine said to Baron’s wig, which was angled towards them, drawing a curtain between the two. “Tsh,” Baron tutted, “The requests for private performances will come rushing in. We staged the raciest version of the kidnap scene.” “They won’t,” snapped Tambourine. “Nobody was paying attention during the kidnapping, or during any of it, Baron.” Baron tipped their beehive up by a degree, revealing to Tambourine a sliver of painted eyelid and a speck of black pupil. “They only wanted Wazzer last time we played this crowd, which was two weeks ago, and only Wazzer again three weeks before that!” Baron hid their eye under the wig again and directed it to gaze once more at the sausage in the hat. A solution of white greasepaint and sweat from Baron’s face had spotted the sausage, like bird shit on a terracotta windowsill. Wazzer Quimpile Burgermeister was the Troupe’s brightest star, its highest earner, and Baron’s dearest love. Wazzer had left them quite recently and Baron had not yet allowed themself the time to process the enormity of the loss. Tambourine agitated the hat to demonstrate that it did not jangle. “We’ve bled them dry, Baron. We’re not even playing to adults any more, we’re just babysitting their brats. The whole of Taq-rot-Rut has dried up on us. While we’ve been going around in circles, they’ve seen everything we’ve got. We need to move on.” Baron put the sausage in their mouth without thinking, wig bobbing towards Tambourine as they chewed. Tambourine took the velvet hat before it was filled with white tears and stalked off into the evening to check the snares laid in the woods. --- Things had changed so much, so quickly for *The Esteemed and Wonderful Troupe of Players Touched by the Divinity.* Baron’s heritage aside, it was not a group that excelled at melodrama. Instead, the company specialised in breath-taking acrobatics punctuated by short, bawdy skits. Wazzer would work the crowd beautifully as principal player, always light on their feet and sensitive to the mood of the audience. Sometimes the audience craved wit, so Wazzer steered the Troupe towards an act that bristled with sharp jibes and close-up magic that befuddled. Other times, when the audience needed to dislodge their fears, Wazzer produced a wooden dummy which launched a blistering array of scatological poems. And when they needed to see order dissolve into chaos, Wazzer was a stern and stately compère that tried to marshall the others and magnificently failed. The troupe had a deep cache of talents and characters that ran on and off the stage to bedevil and delight Wazzer’s host character with quickfire songs, illusions and burlesco. Playing the antagonist to Wazzer, the host (and the other players as the mischievous servants), was Baron in full splendour. Whether Baron was playing in harmony or opposition to the antics of the others, they made everything sizzle with stunt after death-defying stunt. Baron bounced from tightropes to water barrels, from the roof of the wagon to the middle of the audience. Wazzer directed the thin plot of the shows towards a scenario where Baron was either an uninvited guest at a rich feast, a fickle diplomat who must be pleased, the final judge of the Earth or a demon to be banished but in every permutation Baron was *everywhere* — unlimited by space or gravity or the laws of nature. Baron’s flea-like jumps and stunning feats were the dazzling centrepiece of the act, beloved by every audience. Baron’s Trick brought the company renown, fame and riches. But then Baron lost their Trick – and so the renown, fame and riches were lost, too. When Baron had matriculated from the College of Players for the Order of the Twins in grand Opepis, they had been presented with their True Name, their True Face, and their Trick. Baron’s Trick had been a pair of shoes, comically large, and striped in marvellous enamel colours of azure and mustard. The shoes had been custom-made by the most celebrated artisans of Usilupus and marked Baron as being fit for the title of Ringmaster. When worn, Baron could jump many times their own height and land softly. Baron’s Trick allowed them to develop from a nimble acrobat into an astounding bounding dynamo. When Baron’s mentor bequeathed the travelling stage wagon to them, they founded a Troupe and their act became a sensation across ten Realms. Then came the night, two months before the troupe’s staging of The Betrayal. The wagon had been parked on a plain of volcanic glass close to the treeline of Heaven’s Woods of Fury. The woods were part of an ongoing project by the people of the neighbouring Realms of Taq-roq-Rut and Nuinnuin to push back at least some part of the black glassy black desert of Tattoq. Tattoq’s earliest settlers had believed the forest to be a bestower of great gifts, but then had absent-mindedly logged it to nothing. The reforesting project had reached its third century; and the Heaven’s Woods had grown to be vast and formidable, a deep cloud of conifers and birch floating above the obsidian ground. It was late at night, so Baron was in their usual custom of sitting on the roof of the wagon reading by candlelight. They had learned early in life that they could not sleep after a performance, so over the years they had cultivated the habit of buying paper books of all sorts from every town they toured. When they finished a book they would creep about the town before sunrise and donate them to windowsills, granaries, empty tents and sleeping churches. Baron’s taste in books, like their taste in everything, was omnivorous. The Order of the Twins furnished their adherents with literacy in as many languages they could fit in their heads, so Baron’s only consistent reason for not devouring a book was if it was too heavy or had an unpleasant smell. On that night, the stars were reflected as blurry splotches in the obsidian glass of the plain, and Baron was reading a loose-leafed and very tedious book about demons. They’d never seen a demon. They were about to. Most of the troupe were away from the wagon attending their post-show duties with punters, but Tambourine had twisted an ankle during the show and was unable to work despite the many requests Baron had fielded for their attention. So when Baron began screaming about an evil bird, it was Tambourine who sprang to the aid of the Ringmaster. “We have to catch it!” yelled Baron half to Tambourine and half into the darkness, waving their arms about. Their bedclothes were scant and the night was cold. They were barefoot on the glass, which could be razor sharp in places. “What’s happened?” asked Tambourine, trying to rein in Baron’s arms and navigate them towards as dull a patch of ground as they could see in the dark. “It’s taken my shoes!” Baron gibbered through clenched teeth. The horror ran down Baron’s arm and entered Tambourine’s body like a jolt of electricity. The livelihood of everyone in the troupe relied on those shoes. They spent the moonless night running around the Heaven’s Woods of Fury searching for Baron’s shoes. When they found composure, Baron shared some details – the shoes had been snatched from inside the wagon by a flightless bird, possibly a parrot or lorikeet, that moved with unearthly speed. By the time the sun rose they had recruited the rest of the troupe into the search and won a thin victory - one shoe had been recovered, quite close to the wagon. It was no worse for wear. That daytime, Wazzer wandered the town to ask the locals if they had anything to share about a delinquent bird with a mischief for footwear. The locals of the town could not think of anything natural that fit the meagre description given, so the only conclusion that Baron could draw was that they had been robbed by a demon. They instructed the wagon to circle the edges of Heaven’s Wood, and they stopped at every town on its outskirts, from Guinpiuv to Klatlap, to tol-Gloylap, to tol-Qlamnel, then back. Baron would spend their sleepless nights setting snares for the demon bird while the troupe sang songs that asked for the return of what it had taken. While the songs were sad and beautiful, the demon did not respond to them and the snares caught only rabbits. The Troupe’s performances suffered immediately. Rehearsals with the single shoe were a disaster. Without the counterbalance of its partner, the shoe was dangerously unpredictable. Baron was nearly killed during an experiment in which the shoe was tied to their back. They tried building a rig of pulleys and ropes around the wagon in order to replicate some of their famous acts through mechanical means, but the result was limp, slow and more embarrassing than entertaining. So the troupe took to the stage with a modified act that swapped the superhuman antics for traditional acrobatics. While Baron was a skilled acrobat with a deep repertoire of truly impressive stunts, the audiences weren’t prepared to part with as many coins for an act that was merely impressive. The troupe had to get by with what it brought in from private performances, and the show was therefore altered to be more overtly titillating. This turn was fine with the players, since Baron organised their pay by the law of the Order, where the Ringmaster of the Troupe took fifty percent of the velvet hat but only a small portion of personal earnings. So with the take from the main act down, Baron shed weight over the weeks while they directed the wagon around the outskirts of Heaven’s Woods of Fury. The Troupe played at every settlement along the way. But then, one night after a diminished show in the tiny village of Saitau, Baron was combing the portion of the Heaven’s Woods that intruded upon the west of Nuinnuin. A whistle from a thumb-size reed pierced the cold air, an ominous call that the troupe had seldom heard. It was Tambourine’s first time using the panic signal. Two customers had overstepped their bounds during a private performance, and so Tambourine had escaped their house and wedged themselves in the privy, using their feet as a desperate barricade, and whistled away to bring the ringmaster to their aid. But the canopy of the woods scattered the sound, and Baron did not hear the call. It was fortunate, then, that Wazzer did. Wazzer had been working in the neighbouring wood house on the same quadrangle as Tambourine. They loped out from their customer’s chambers, rapped a signal of reassurance on the wall of the outside privy, and rounded on the two men who were standing, drunk and confused, at the door of their house. Wazzer, whose soul was as gentle as a moth’s wing, could be terrifying if the situation required it. They shouted the Law of the Twins to the offenders at the top of their booming voice, so half the village could hear it. “Any hand laid unduly upon a player sent by the Order of the Twins will be severed by the Order of Fury!” said Wazzer, radiating a rehearsed rage. The effect was only dampened a little by the fact that Wazzer was dressed in a dog costume, and was carrying their wooden dummy, which was itself dressed up as a rabbit. The ‘hare and hound’ act was one of their popular bits and the characters were often requested for the private performances. The offending customers did not believe that the Troupe was part of the Order of The Twins, because they knew that such groups had magic powers. They had decided that the troupe was fair game – an unlicensed outfit that should be grateful for the money. Wazzer’s hound costume did not allow for them to carry about their person their diploma, which bore their True Name, and neither could they present Tambourine’s Writ of Apprenticeship at that moment, so they broke with protocol and struck both of the men with the wooden puppet until the pair fled their own home. With Tambourine rescued from the privy, Wazzer’s next instinct was to rescue the rest of the Troupe, and they beat a hasty retreat into the night, leaving a coded message to Baron to meet them at the nearest Sheriff’s outpost. --- The Order of Fury’s Sheriff for the Tattoq region was headquartered in the old barracks built on top of the ruins above the Waterfall of Fury. His name was Iikaan Nishki-Aminkii and he had waited a handful of impatient days for Baron to rendezvous with the Troupe. Nishki-Aminkii had already been to Saitau to investigate Tambourine’s complaint. He had laid his hand, bearing his famous golden ring, upon the persons that had offended Tambourine and had returned to await Baron’s arrival. In the Sheriff’s opinion, events were badly out of control. The ancient symbiosis between the Orders of Fury and The Twins relied on the adherents of the latter to provide culture, art and levity for both, and to tour about the world, gathering intelligence and practising spycraft. In return, the Order of Fury protected the fragile initiates of the Twins in the form of swift, overwhelming and unambiguous justice. The certainty of this vengeance, and the zeal in which the Order of Fury preferred to administer it, had cemented the idea among people that the strange bands of folk that the Order of the Twins threw off into the world were always to be treated as honoured guests. So effective was this invisible aegis that Baron’s troupe had never had to interact with a Sheriff of Fury before. When a bedraggled Baron at last staggered over to the barracks at the Waterfall of Fury, Iikaan Nishki-Aminkii was ready to give the shivering Ringmaster some very stern words indeed. He was appalled that Baron had abandoned their troupe, and told Baron that the loss of the shoe, their sacred Trick that marked them as the best in their graduating year, would be reported to the Order of the Twins back in Usilupus. Baron said very little during the Sheriff’s remonstrance. The Sheriff had let Tambourine’s attackers off with a single touch and a warning, as Wazzer’s assault upon the men had clouded the issue and so spared them the full weight of justice. The village of Saitau was to be blacklisted by both Orders. It would not again know the joy of The Twins or be protected by the might of Fury. Throughout this, Baron quietly signalled agreement with nods while thinking of food and trying not to look at the Sheriff's dreadful ring. But the Sheriff did not lay his hand upon Baron, and when released they rejoined the Troupe in the barracks with a quiet greeting. They avoided a conversation with Wazzer by pretending to sleep. --- The Troupe limped on to complete the circle of towns around Heaven’s Woods. Baron made it clear that nobody was under any obligation to accept private performances, and Wazzer offered to share the take from their own work with those who were now reluctant among strangers. Baron wore their shame like a lead overcoat. They spent their savings on large dinners for the troupe, until all the savings were gone. They avoided Wazzer at all costs, until Wazzer found them in the woods one night. Baron was checking if the snares they’d set had caught the demon, or at least something they could cook. Wazzer told Baron that they were leaving the troupe. Wazzer was going to go to Zhuzh, on the East coast where the weather was warmer and the pickings were plentiful, to rejoin their old troupe. Wazzer had hoped to convince Baron into following, to steer the whole wagon to Zhuzh. Together they would face whatever punishment the Order decided for losing the shoe and join the waiting list for a new Trick. Baron could not be moved by heartbreak. They said they would find the shoe very soon, and shuffled deeper into the woods. In the morning, Wazzer was gone. They left a pool of money, their costumes and the wooden puppet. It was holding a wax tablet, and scratched into the tablet was a set of dates and places where Wazzer’s old troupe would be likely to play. The money went towards a refit for the troupe’s show. Baron would move on from the high-energy stunts and treat the people of Taq-roq-Rut and Nuinnuin to the classics. Baron resumed the role of principal player they had gladly abandoned years ago. The troupe was uneasy performing the vintage tragedies, comedies and dance forms which they hadn’t practised in years but Baron, now stick-thin, was well past the point where they could be reasoned with. The wagon continued its circuit around Heaven’s Wood. Each night the velvet hat returned less and less with each performance. Eventually, half a sausage felt like a resounding success. --- In the two months that had passed between losing their Trick and the performance of *The Terrible And Astonishing Betrayal Of The Sibling Whose Name Need Not Be Mentioned, Prologue: A Pestilent Mouse Is Caught In The Trap Sprung By Themself*, Baron’s habit of searching Heaven’s Woods had become increasingly abstracted. At first, they had been systematic and crafty, attempting to outwit the thieving bird by leaving riddles and clues that would lead them into a trap. Then they had morphed their methods into that of the huntsman, carefully cataloguing every spoor and scent they found in the dirt. By the time they wandered out under the dark canopy in the streaked facepaint and beehive wig of the Traitor Sibling, their method was to find somewhere to sit and have a good cry. On that night they found a soft wet patch by a brook and stared into the silvery water. The image of their gaunt, now-unfamiliar face appeared on its surface like a ruined moon. They supposed their life was over. Baron’s misery was split in two by an almighty thunderclap. They splashed into the brook as they scrambled to their feet, now soaked. Before they knew it, the thunder was followed by a string of encores that rang their brain and hollowed out their skull. Baron covered their ears with the meagre straws of their fingers and ran to escape the source of the noise, knowing it was futile – the core of the Earth had become a cacophonous bell, and there was surely no escaping it. The direction they chose took them directly towards the source of the noise, which they then tripped over. This silenced the thunder and blessed the mud with a broad white streak from their face. By Baron’s feet was a small rabbit. It had one leg caught in a snare and was using the other to thump the ground. The harmless timpani of the rabbit’s foot was almost inaudible after the cacophony that Baron had survived. They watched the poor creature struggle, its feet made suddenly useless by the cruelty of an indifferent world. Baron realised at once that they simply did not have the steel to kill and eat the thing. They contemplated going to find Tambourine, who probably did have that steel, when they saw the necklace. It was just beside the rabbit. The thin haze of moonlight that reached the ground reflected off of its metal clasp. Baron moved over to it on hands and knees and scooped it into a trembling hand. The thunder returned, slightly less loud and more distant, as if coming from above the trees. The booms sounded perfectly in time with their racing pulse. They dropped the necklace and the thunder stopped. Baron licked their lips, which tasted of greasepaint and sausage. They helped the rabbit escape from the snare. --- Privacy did not play a large part in the life of a travelling player. They lived, always, in public. The wagon that was the transport, stage and home of the *The Esteemed and Wonderful Troupe of Players* was only used for sleeping on the coldest nights. The players lodged in the houses of townsfolk, or were grouped together in an empty hall or Order-house if one was available. Otherwise, they camped under the sky with their bedrolls nestled close to each other. Baron had discovered privacy only recently, on their nights in the woods, so it was to the woods that they took Wazzer’s dummy with them to help unlock the potential of the Trick that the Heavens had sent to them. It was a fairly tight fit when worn. The embellishment sat close to the larynx, and was a rectangle of flexible material quite similar to leather. Punched into that were square holes, hemmed with gold, threaded through which were wires that felt very much like the whiskers of a cat. The embellishment would amplify the sound made by anything pressed against it. The level of amplification was determined by the arrangement of wires looped through the holes of the leather-like rectangle. The necklace had made thunder out of a rabbit’s thumping foot. It had also thrown the sound of that thunder away from its origin, projecting it directly at Baron’s head. The sound of Baron’s pulse had been thrown up into the sky. Secluded under the blanket of the forest, Baron sat the puppet on a fallen trunk and used the necklace to make it talk. “Hello Baron,” said the puppet. Its voice was too quiet and seemed to come from within the trunk. Baron pulled the necklace loose. “Hello little fellow, are you behaving yourself?” murmured Baron as they fiddled with the wires. “Of course I am! It’s you we ought to be worried about! He he he!” said the puppet. Its voice originated from about the right distance but had a strange echo to it. “You don’t need to worry about me, I know what I’m doing,” said Baron, feeling for the wire that might modulate the echo. “NO YOU DON’T!” boomed the puppet from ten metres away. Birds burst from the trees. Baron cursed and reset the wires. “You’ve been driven mad, nobody trusts you,” said the puppet. That was the right volume but the distance was too close. “Tambourine trusts me,” said Baron. “No they don’t, they rely on you to approve their graduation,” said the puppet. “Reliance is a form of trust,” said Baron, fine-tuning. “No it isn’t! When is Wazzer coming back?” that was good - it sounded just as though the voice was coming from the puppet’s mouth. Was there a way to make the mouth move? “Wazzer will come back when we put on a show worthy of them,” said Baron, looking for a stick. “Well this show is terrible,” said the puppet. The character of the voice was becoming clearer - a stuffy, upper-class critic, with an Eastern accent. Not quite Zhuzh, but close. “Oh no it isn’t,” said Baron. “Oh yes it is!” said the puppet, its mouth moving in time as Baron pushed the stick against its jaw. This was something. Baron emerged from the woods with an effervescent energy, holding the puppet on their shoulders as they practically skipped up to the wagon. The players all drifted towards them, curious about this change in mood. “Baron, are we putting on *Treachery* tonight?” asked Tambourine. There had been an argument among the troupe about this. There was the faction that had gotten dressed and made-up in the hope that the work they had put into learning the lines and blocking of the infamously wordy classic would be used again. Tambourine had joined the other faction, which had bet on Baron changing course again due to the diminishing state of their mind and so not bothered to prepare for anything in particular. “*Treachery* is retired,” said Baron. They handed the dummy to Tambourine and took several large steps backward. “Today we’ll make a new show,” said the dummy. Tambourine looked at the dummy, tilting it around in their hands to examine it for clues. “Why does it sound like Wazzer?” they asked. “Be a dear, Tambourine, and fetch the ropes,” said Baron as they snatched the dummy back. --- The town of Klatlap, which had paid the price of half a sausage to see a rare performance of the timeless story of the Traitor Sibling, was shortly thereafter the host to something entirely new. *The Wronged Players That Were Robbed Of All Dignity* opened as a matinee under an overcast sky to an audience of three goats, a bemused shepherd, the ever-hopeful members of Wazzer’s fan club, and an unattended baby. But sitting before that genuine audience was a false one, made up of half of the players from the troupe. This false audience was led by Tambourine, and was there to be vocally critical of what was happening on the stage. What was happening on the stage was an accelerated version of the company’s act after Baron had lost their Trick. Baron was flung slowly about on ropes while the cast tried gamely to run through their routines. The false audience panned it, and distracted Baron so much that they tumbled over during a stunt and cracked their head against the water barrel. The others on stage appeared to break character and rushed to Baron’s aid. The false audience jeered, and encouraged the real audience to jeer along with them. This drew in people from the outskirts of the stage to join the audience, so they could see what all the jeering was about. Baron laid quite still. Then Tambourine stood up, and told the crowd that the play was no good, and that these players were frauds. The players tried to defend themselves above the rising noise, and shouted protests that their magical Trick had been stolen from them, but this only enraged the fake crowd all the more. They mobbed the stage to confront the players, and very quickly this escalated to wrestling, where many items of clothes were removed. The real audience grew, luring in young men and women by their passions. The fighting on-stage became so pitched that some members of the audience considered whether they should intervene. The voices of players past whispered in the ears of the audience. The disembodied moans testified to a thousand sad fates – the starvings, the exposure. They drank poison after bad reviews, they were hanged by a hysterical mob. They hobbled on after a career-ending injury until their hearts gave out. All for want of love, all for want of applause, and grinding toil and uncounted hours devoted to their craft were all completely forgotten after their passing. People in the audience wheeled around to look for the source of the voices to find only the faces of each other. They had been confused, then baited, enraged and titillated - and now they were frightened. A voice from the crowd cried out that someone ought to call the Sheriff. That seemed like an excellent idea. And the Sheriff was there before anyone could react. He hurtled in overhead, suspended by a pulley, on a length of rope leading towards the stage. This Sheriff was about two and a half feet tall, and wore the traditional robes of the Order of Fury. As he ziplined towards the stage, he yelled at everyone to stop moving, to stop fighting, to listen up, and then he dropped from the rope, bounced with tremendous force from the stage and somersaulted into a cunning arrangement of wires that kept him held upright, standing on the water barrel, facing the audience, and directly below Baron. Baron was still playing dead, and able to operate the dummy’s mouth with a length of wire. The Sheriff puppet ordered the crowd to disperse, and the players mixed up in the melee acted then as crowd control, guiding the real audience to a position where they could best see the puppet. The Sheriff told everyone that this Troupe, *The Esteemed Players,* really did lose their Trick, but that they were magical nonetheless. These players deserved coins that would keep them going, as did all players. If the crowd was to persist in this bad behaviour then the wrath of the Sheriff would come down upon them all. At this cue, the water barrel exploded. It was full of the inedible molasses that was used to depict blood. The stage blood covered everything and splashed the front rows of the audience. The puppet was blasted back behind the backdrop. Tambourine, who had donned a wig and coat during the distracting explosion sequence, now moved through the audience with the velvet hat. There was a rabbit riding along in the hat, chewing on a piece of hard melon. When Tambourine stopped to urge people to drop a coin in the hat, the rabbit said ‘thank you,’ and ‘bless you,’ to the people who contributed. When the hat was filled, the players rose to bow. Even Baron rose, to show that they were unharmed and grateful. Then came the showstopper - Baron told everyone that their kindness was like the shining sun, and they gestured grandly at the cloudy sky with one hand on their throat. This got a laugh, and then a gasp, for then the clouds did part. A perfect circle of blue sky had formed around the sun. As the sunlight shone, the voices of the ghost players returned. They said they were satisfied, and would now be reincarnated as well-fed pigs. The troupe retreated behind the wagon, and the applause went on and on and on. --- In the morning the wagon set out East, away from the Heaven’s Woods of Fury. There would be stops along the way, enough to replenish the coffers, sharpen the act and put some meat back on Baron’s bones. Baron spent the nights composing the dozens of apologetic ballards they wanted to sing to Wazzer. As dawn broke, they would stand on top of the wagon and send the songs out towards where they fancied Zhuzh might be. Would Wazzer hear the sweet words as they woke in that far-off land? Baron was not one to calculate the odds, but knew that inevitable things eventually had to happen. And after that they would take Tambourine to Usilupus for this year’s graduation. If Baron had anything to say about it, they would be awarded a Trick of their own. *The Wronged Players That Were Robbed Of All Dignity* became a new classic and the necklace that Baron wore became one of the most treasured objects held by the Order of the Twins, though the path it travelled down the years had many more turns to it, but the tale of those turns is yet to be told.
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Brother, You Are Not WelcomeTicklish# Brother, You Are Not Welcome The Sheriff followed the tracks into town. Wherever he went, people moved away from him. If they were alone, they ran. If they were in groups, they dispersed. When he looked inside the yurts, all were empty. His law carried no power in Sonton, but his voice did. **“WE SAW THE SMOKE,”** he said to a beekeeper up on the hill. She had been building a shelter against the wind. The force of the Sheriff’s voice knocked over a stack of hives. The clay pipes broke when they fell at the beekeeper’s feet. She did not look at the Sheriff and did not answer him. She ducked her head low and disappeared behind the ridge. The Sheriff stood alone and twisted a lock of his long hair between his fingertip and thumb. The Order of Fury had tolerated this tiny Republic for a generation. It had spread in all directions out of Mlunplin, taking in refugees from the entire island, until much of the Realm of Ponmom was outside of the Order’s influence. The Republic wanted to be ignored by the Order, and the Order was content to ignore it. But then the Brothers had seen the chimneys, and then the Worm, and knew that it was past time to bring the Republic to heel. The Sheriff returned to his battleforged camel and filled her feedbag. He fastened her ear protectors and adjusted his necklace. He turned his voice up as loud as he would dare it to go. He walked to the spot he perceived to be the nucleus of the village of Sonton: a circle of chopped stumps attached around an iron stove. He spoke. **“I HOLD A WARRANT FROM THE ORDER. I WILL INSPECT THE IRON WORM.”** --- There were hundreds of Free Republics that clung like lichen to the edges of the world. They filled up its cracks, floated off shore or burrowed underground. They were made of many shapes and ideas, but all had this in common: they stood where the Orders did not. The Free Republic of Ponmon was one of the more strident. The Sheriff’s voice created currents that threw up dust. When the echoes faded and the dust settled, Ouma Tau appeared. She had been tanning a yak hide so was covered in grime. The Sheriff had never seen a face so wrinkled. “In a man’s greeting lies his character,” said Ouma. “You are a shameless pig. A nuisance. You have upset the bees.” The Sheriff touched his necklace. He spread his voice only a little further than his throat could project. “I would say the same about the greeting given to me by the people of Sonton. I saw no Banner to welcome me to your House.” “There is no Banner here. There is no House, just people.” said Ouma. “Those people have not answered my salutation, they have turned away from me,” said the Sheriff. The old woman laughed as if she had heard something obvious. “The people cannot see a guest that is carrying Calamities!” she said, pointing a mocking finger at the Sheriff. “The chain around your throat, your armour, your bludgeon. Even your camel, I think!” she waved in the direction of the beast, who was still chewing her way through her feedbag. “Calamities, we can do without. There are calamities everywhere in the world, but not here. We have no Order so we have no Calamities. This keeps fortune on our side. Surrender yours, or leave.” The Sheriff recognised the tone of authority. “You are the leader here?” he asked, his voice lowered a notch in respect. “I tan the hides, I split the hives, I spoil the children,” Ouma said, gazing abstractedly at the hills. The Sheriff spat. His patience was exhausted. “But you are lying,” he said, marching past the old woman. “You have the Worm.” She thought about this for a moment. “The Worm is not a Calamity,” she called, and walked after him. He was surprised at how quickly she matched his pace. He was heading downhill towards the valley. “You don’t have the expertise to identify one. They can take many guises,” he snarled. “The Worm is not one,” she repeated. Their walk had gathered some attention. The Sheriff saw men appear at the tops of the cliffs. He measured the distances, turned up his voice, and spoke three words at each of them. The words ballooned inside their bodies. They doubled over with pain and fell, gasping, to their knees. “You are so frightened by my grandchildren that you’ve hurt them,” chuckled Ouma. “How great and powerful your magic is!” The Sheriff turned to her and spoke another word: **“STOP.”** Ouma crumbled like a log burned through. She coughed and coughed. The Sheriff tried to explain himself. “I have seen the smoke of the Worm, I have heard its cries. You people claim to forsake the magic but every time you crawl back to it like a dog at the back door.” Ouma said nothing, the wind was gone from her. She shook her head, and even this somehow had a hectoring tone to the Sheriff. “Since you are now making use of magic, your land must respect the authority of the Order. Without our guidance, you will misuse it. People will be hurt, and killed. We have seen it happen again and again." He gathered himself. “Cover your ears, grandmother,” he said to her and then, to everyone: **“THIS HOUSE IS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE ORDER OF FURY. WE WILL SEND A BROTHER WITH A BANNER, AND WE WILL BUILD AN ABBEY FOR HIM. YOU WILL FEED HIM AND RESPECT HIS WISHES, FOR THEY ARE THE WISHES OF THE ORDER. ANY ACT AGAINST YOUR BROTHER WILL BE AN ACT AGAINST THE ORDER.”** The Sheriff’s hair settled again around his shoulders. His pulse was racing from the exertion. He had no doubt that the people of Sonton had heard his voice. Since they had heard it, they were now subject to the law. He helped Ouma Tau to her feet. “It will be for the best,” he said, with his plain voice. “Our Brother and our Banner will stand guard against others who would use the Relics to conquer you. You won’t have to be afraid of outsiders.” “You should be afraid of us,” said Ouma, her face a deep scowl. The Sheriff looked at the old woman, barely standing. He looked at her grandchildren that had tried to attack him, who were staggering off to hide again. He looked around at the frightened faces peering out from behind trees and yurts. He allowed the old woman her pride. He held her small brown hand in his. “Please show me the Worm,” he asked. She led him towards the coast, into the valley. This is where he had seen the smoke rise. The mage from his office had heard the breathing come from within the mountain. He wondered how the people had caught the Worm and how they controlled it. In the valley was a well-worn path leading towards the entrance of a coal mine cut into the cliff face. The mines in Sonton provided coal for much of the Realm. The Republics were especially reliant on it as a source of heat and fuel. They walked on the path, overshadowed by the cliffs. The Sheriff could smell the sea air. “We’ve already had one,” muttered Ouma Tau. “What was that, grandmother?” asked the Sheriff. She had been quiet and pliant now that she knew what his voice could do. He had been easy on her - sometimes he had been forced to use it lethally. He could rupture lungs and make brains into jelly. “When I was a girl, we had a Brother. He lived just there, in a fine abbey. The tallest building for miles.” ” she pointed at an indistinguishable scrap of land. “When we decided we wanted no part in the Order, he went over the cliff, just there.” It was clear enough what she was pointing at then. The Sheriff gave a short, ugly laugh. There was much to doubt about the story, and he admired the old woman for her spirit. He knew what the repercussions would be for a House that killed its attendant Brother. Even one Advocate of the Order could lay this Realm to waste. The leaders would be culled with the cattle. The crops and the dwellings burned. He estimated that he could do all of that here, single-handedly, in an afternoon. He whistled as the entrance to the mine loomed closer. He could hear something coming from within. “That is the breathing of the Worm?” the Sheriff asked. Ouma Tau nodded. He activated his breastplate, which shone a bright beam ahead of him. He entered the mine and Ouma Tau lagged behind. The breathing was short and deep. The Sheriff had not heard anything quite like it. His suspicions about the Worm were confirmed - it was a massive beast. Had it been made artificially large by a Relic, or was it a demon of an unknown nature? Had the people here captured it somehow, or were they in its thrall? His spirit sang. He looked back at the entrance to the mine, where the frightened silhouettes of villagers swam. He was not afraid so he pressed on. His voice could tame any monster. The larger the foe, the more pressure he could exert on its innards. He adjusted his necklace to a suitable power for a stunning blow. The breathing was deafening. The beam from his chestplate caught a moment of movement. A blurred set of pikes, attached to a whirling mass, chopping as if held by runners. The Sheriff had all of half a second to inspect the Worm before it hit him. His armour took the brunt of the impact but its beam was extinguished. The Sheriff was carried backwards by the blow and the Worm ran along with him. He discovered that he was being held by the sleeve of his coat. The sleeve tugged and then dragged him along with the Worm as it galloped towards the mine’s entrance. The incessant panting of its lungs filled his head. A rectangle of daylight ran towards him, and he calculated the unearthly speed at which the Worm was lunging out of its lair. He worked to free his sleeve and the Worm took hold of his hair in jealousy. It pulled with a leaden millstone grasp. The Sheriff found his footing along the floor of the mine and brought his knife up with his free hand. He tore back his sleeve and cut free his hair. The Worm ran ahead still clutching his hair in its claws. He ran behind it to slow his momentum and keep from falling. The Worm punched into the light and the Sheriff sprinted to catch it. He had the span of a few footsteps to try and make sense of the Iron Worm’s nature. It was indeed made of iron, but the idea of it being a beast fell short. It had no head to speak of, and where he had expected to see the clattering legs of a centipede there were small wheels. It was segmented, but in the same way a series of wagons were hitched together. As he saw it speed into the distance he saw that the Iron Worm was trailing behind it many containers of coal. He stood at the opening of the mine and adjusted his necklace. His confusion hardened to anger. A contraption for hauling coal had nearly taken his scalp. He would slay this beast that was never a beast with one almighty shout. Two men in veils appeared at his left side and threw a heavy clay pipe at him. It glanced off his side and broke on the ground. The two men were already in a run when the Sheriff turned to them. Another pair, carrying another pipe, appeared at his right side. He saw the ambush and inhaled, ready to strike them both dead for this childishness. The clay pipes were the housings of a beehive. The pipe that had broken at the Sheriff’s feet had released thousands of angry bees into the air. So when the Sheriff inhaled, a bee was sucked into the upper part of his trachea. The bee panicked and stung the inside of his throat. The Sheriff coughed, which sent a thunderclap into the cliffside and crushed the bee. He choked on the bee’s carcass as her sisters fell upon him with vengeance. One of the veiled men who had thrown the pipe moved through the cloud of bees and removed the Sheriff’s necklace. The Sheriff was quite helpless and entering anaphylaxis. He was sure to hurt someone while coughing and spluttering with such a powerful voice. The necklace was taken to Ouma Tau, who was standing a safe distance away. When the Sheriff was dead and the bees had settled down they collected his body, along with his breastplate. Ouma Tau led them to the top of the cliff and they threw the entire collection of things into the sea. The Sheriff’s camel, they let go. She was relieved of her saddlebags and harness and allowed to wander wherever she wished. --- The Iron Worm went on its way out of Sonton. It pulled its train of coal to Mlonpon, then on to the Mlunplin. With each delivery, the Realm of Ponmom became a little less dependent on the Order for heat and light and food. The tracks that the Worm dug in the ground were arteries that carried the life blood of the Free Republic.
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Fallen CavernTicklish# Fallen Cavern The ants were making words again. Avanesh watched them crawl across the basalt of the cave and, with wretched slowness, assemble their horrid yellow bodies into the letters of a message. “Just ignore them!” bellowed Bahadur from the darkness. He was down there somewhere, pressing his own body against the walls, systematically touching the tips of his fingers to each square inch of every edge and surface of the neat, cubical columns containing them both. Avanesh had slept twice since the ambush, which was his only way to measure time inside the hellish tomb that had swallowed them. He hadn’t observed Bahadur sleep at all – Bahadur had been doing nothing but diligently inspecting the cavern ever since he’d heroically sealed their only exit. Bahadur stepped into Avanesh’s torch light. He was naked except for his crown, wrapped, as ever, around his forehead. He was utterly filthy, as if every particle of dirt trapped in with them had been smeared across his broad body, caked with unending sweat. His eyes were bright as swans on a lake at midnight, and they dipped down to Avanesh, sitting where he had left him on the cavern floor. “So, what did the ants say?” he asked, almost jovial. Avanesh swept the torchlight over to the tiny blackened balls that the ants had become, though it would have been impossible for Bahadur to see them. “You said to ignore the words, so I burned them,” Avanesh said. The close heat made it difficult for him to summon even the strength to speak, but Bahadur responded with an actual roar of laughter. What a luxurious way to spend their air and their energy. “That will teach them not to write you love letters,” Bahadur replied, smiling. “But I’ve got one of my own for you. It says: Avanesh, I hope this finds you well. I have some good news!” Avanesh stared at Bahadur, a towering heap of impossible muck and muscle standing above him. He recognised this tone of delivery and tensed against the inevitable but good-natured dashing of his hopes. “Turns out you were right all along. This part of the Deep Mountain *is* full of adamantine. My clever crown has sniffed out a seam of it big enough to choke the sea.” He tapped his crown with a swollen, sensitive finger and it chimed prettily. “When we find a way out, we’ll come back here with the men to dig it all up and we can retire early to the Glistening Crests. Much love, Bahds.” He laughed again and rolled back into the stifling dark to resume his search for whatever sign of escape he hoped his Crown would turn up. Avanesh remained quite still in his damp little patch of ruined clothing. He wondered at which point, exactly, that Bahadur’s plan to go surveying for adamantine in the Realm of Vitriol had become *his* plan, but he accepted that was how it was going to be remembered between them now that Bahadur had changed history with a simple statement. He was never sure when Bahadur was deferring credit or deflecting blame. Avanesh brought his eyes back to the streak of soot on the cave wall. A new battalion of ants was marshalling their forces to create a further message. He knew he wouldn’t ignore it, as he hadn’t ignored the last one. If he closed his eyes, he could see every squirming letter of it as if it was still there on the wall. ##### “WE ONLY WANT THE CROWN. ##### KILL HIM AND WE WILL RELEASE YOU, AVANESH” --- He didn’t know how the mage was making this happen. He thought he had seen a mage of some sort in the brief altercation at the cave’s mouth. She had been surrounded by a flash of colour, something reflective on her chest, a certain twirling of wind at her face. All he knew for sure was that he’d hit someone very hard, hard enough to break their helm, but then was knocked down. Then he had some missing time, not much, but he had been lying on his back when he saw Bahadur, daubed with blood, raise his grandmother’s sword and bring the roof down. That mage must still be lurking out there, carefully organising the ants through sixteen feet of collapsed rock. And the ants continued to crawl. There was something sickening in how the message resolved itself, how what was a seething mass of insects one moment was a clear thought in the next. Avanesh considered whether the mage was controlling the ants or controlling him. This interest in the craft of the thing was enough motivation to move Avanesh towards the wall, pluck an ant from it and inspect it closely. His demonhide gloves jolted internally as the ant made contact with the palm of his hand. A faint ringing in his mind called up something about the potential the insect had as *material.* As an experiment, he groped around for an ant that had not been press-ganged into the forming of words and held it for a moment by one of its long, spindly legs. This unconscripted ant made him aware of the leathery chitin of its hide, the tinting of metal possible through a certain concentration of the formic acid it held in its convoluted poison glands. It wasn’t a strong feeling. How much could one possibly build out of an ant? But the messenger ants from the wall gave him the sense of songs, of persuasion, of thought projected. They were possessed of a different sort of material, the material of language. He retreated to his nest of rags opposite the wall. While it was possible for a mage to influence a mind at a distance, Avanesh’s gloves could not be fooled or befuddled or swayed. The only control the mage had over him was from the words on the wall. He braced himself for the next message. ##### “HE DOOMED YOU BOTH.” _ The heat of the Earth seemed to flare more intensely within Avanesh’s face for an instant. Brave, fearless Bahadur hadn’t thought much of the risks of trespassing, of robbing precious metals from under the noses of people who would take that as no small slight. He never knew what it meant to feel invincible, but being with Bahadur had allowed him to inhale those vapours from time to time. ##### “BUT WE WILL RESCUE YOU.” _ He remembered feeling confident, before his first sleep, that the crown would find a way out for them. Bahadur could train it to see the gas mixture of fresh air, or the green of a leaf, and then it was a matter of homing in on the signal. But this optimism fell in time with Bahadur’s ever deeper plumbs of the cavern. If his sword hadn’t been buried under the rocks, then maybe they could have broken through to another passageway. Without it, they were forced to hunt for an exit that could not be found. ##### “OPPORTUNITIES COME BUT DO NOT LINGER” _ That was a surprise. Avanesh had assumed their attackers had been of Vitriol, since theirs was the territory on which they were prospecting. But here was a line straight out of a sermon from the Order of Power. They had even less of a right to be here than he did, owing to recent events. So why had they been there? ##### “YOU ARE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US ##### MASTER CRAFTSMAN OF PERFECTION” _ Avanesh allowed a flicker of pride to light the space under his ribs. So their work had been noticed. Quite far afield. Bahadur had sourced the finest materials for Avanesh to forge into tools of exquisite manufacture, and at some point the Order of Power had been made aware. He tried to recall the fragmented details of the ambush. Had it been an attack or a heavily negotiated recruitment drive? He thought about what the Order of Power could do with Bahadur's crown. With their resources they could turn the world inside out. All that was buried and hidden would be brought to light, where it could be seen and studied. The useless would be transformed into the useful. ##### “WHEN WE SEE YOUR CAPTOR’S PULSE STOP WE WILL PULL YOU OUT.” _ Avanesh wondered about the truthfulness of the messages. He didn’t know what powers the mage had at her command, or if she had confederates with her now. He entertained a thought, then crawled forward and grabbed a handful of ants out of the word “WILL.” They were unusually still in his cupped fist. He focused on his gloves and searched for a sense of what he could make out of the word. He was surprised to discover that the word was solid, it was dependable. He scooped up the ants making other words, finally coming round to “CAPTOR,” which made his heart sink lower than he thought it could go. He slumped to the rough floor. The words were true. It was clear from the point of view of an outsider that Bahadur had been the first to strike the delegation from the Order, had imprisoned them behind the rocks and was going to kill him while frittering away their few remaining minutes on a futile search for nothing. He remained almost motionless until the ants skittered from his hand and returned to the wall. ##### “WE HAVE MADE THE DECISION EASIER FOR YOU.” _ Avanesh let that thought run up and down his overheated mind. The message dissolved and its constituents went about their usual ant business. The distribution of pain and numbness in Avanesh’s body, as well as the scattering of debris from his final torch, told him he had been watching these messages slowly form and fade for hours. He gradually became aware that Bahadur was calling to him. “Come here and look at what we’ve found!” Avanesh unfolded his body, massaged out the pain and groped about in the fading light for his maul. He told himself that he needed it as a crutch for his unsteady legs, but mostly he was trying to think of how hard decisions could be made easier. He didn’t have to stumble much of a distance towards Bahadur’s booms before he heard the water. Bahadur was bathing in a thin trickle falling from the roof of the cave. The accumulated muck of the underground was streaming from his body, leaving rivulets of his umber flesh to reflect the torchlight. Avanesh smelled brine and iodine. That was seawater coming in. As he leaned heavily on his maul and watched Bahadur clean himself, he saw the trickle become a stream, and then a flow. “It’s a bit less warm than we are, and that’s refreshment in my book,” he beamed. “Cool off and you’ll get your strength back.” Bahadur moved out of the water, his bare feet slapping on the stones. “Come now, cause we haven’t long before the entire Vibrian comes down on us.” Avanesh froze. The mage had started a flood. They no longer had the luxury of waiting for the air to run out or to die of thirst. A torturous, abstract death had been replaced by a very sudden and very material one. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He felt the mist and doom and dark of the atmosphere that submerged him. He felt the rising water and the dead end before them. He felt Bahadur’s hidden panic and his own hidden fury. He felt the way out and he felt the opportunity. He stepped towards the shower and then spun towards Bahadur. His maul made contact with Bahadur’s crown and it fell from his head. It fluttered and gasped on the wet floor, spraying Avanesh’s shins as it tried to tie itself into knots. He had dropped the torch and stared wide-eyed into the dark where Bahadur had been. Then he felt gentle pressure on his forearms and Bahadur’s breath falling on his face as they sank together to the ground. Sat face to face with Bahadur, Avanesh twisted his weapon hand free, raised the maul again and closed his eyes. And Bahadur brought Avanesh’s empty hand up to his face, so Avanesh could again understand the material he was working with. It was flesh and blood and thought and love. There was hope he could use and help he could take. “The water, the water made it easier to focus,” whispered Bahadur. “I found a crack in the ceiling, Avvie.” Avanesh dropped the maul. His mouth opened in a silent, dry yelp of anguish. “You could wriggle through, and find help maybe,” slurred Bahadur. Avanesh allowed himself to be led a short distance in the darkness, to be lifted, and pushed. His hands found a sharp edge in the rock and, as he felt its interior, his gloves told him how to turn this passage into his escape. Suddenly his feet were dangling. Bahadur had sat down again with a small splash. The pale light from his crown cast a formless shadow of Bahadur, a blot of ink to punctuate their time together. He was saying something, but Avanesh could not hear him over the rushing of water. He pulled himself up. The rocks pinned him tightly and scoured his skin. Opportunities come but do not linger. The water rose and rose and rose. --- #### Report from Area of Interest 1854 (Fallen Cavern) #### by Procurer Sayadaw to the Judge of the Reliquary of Power. _ Our will was diverted. Agent Kader is injured. Removing her to the infirmary in Kezkiisch. Crown of Interest remains to be recovered in this Area of Interest. Demonhide gloves of Interest remain in possession of Avanesh Tipanis Angle, at large in Realm 2889 (‘Nuiknaauiena’) A long sword of Extreme Interest has been identified in this Area of Interest. Request for permission to redouble will towards this Area of Interest, with related request for necessary resources. The will of Power be done. ---
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polysart 553: moon night mega cityTicklish![](https://polys.art/images/553.png) we stole the moon from some sappy wet world then locked it in our sky a prisoner who sets the mood - by [@ticklishart](https://twitter.com/ticklishart) --- - moon night by [@to_tal_ly](https://twitter.com/to_tal_ly) - mega city by [@BrainDraind](https://twitter.com/BrainDraind) - [polys.art](https://polys.art/) by [@joaoabrantis](https://twitter.com/joaoabrantis) ---
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Genesis Scrolls PaintedAddress: delegate call to non-co`DAddress: delegate call to non-co`DAddress: low-level delegate call failedAddress: low-level delegate call failed