Another Fine Mess (In Eight-Fangs)
Eroica / Lonhra Sequence Musefic
Rating: G for completely cryptic meta fanfiction silliness. Seriously, at some point in every writer’s life, they go a little mad and things like this pop out. Any writer who tells you otherwise is lying to you, or they just haven’t got there yet.
Disclaimer: Dorian and Klaus belong to Aoike. Any Marvel characters mentioned belong to , duh, Marvel. The rest of the fools belong to me…or at least I keep trying to tell them so. They aren’t buying it.
***
“This doesn’t match up. I have a bad feeling,” said Klaus as he looked from the elegant invitation in his hand to the decrepit warehouse door. The invitation was dark green handmade paper with a silvery scrawl of calligraphy. The door was old splintery wood, half off its hinges. A dim dusty space inside smelled of motor oil and acetone.
“Correct address,” said Dorian, grabbing the invitation. “Besides, it says Coyote and that damned Dionysiac archetype Inspiration won’t follow through this door. Something about professional courtesy. We’re fan fiction muses, not demigods. Do you want to see if Coyo can do a modern-day Burton Sleepy Hollow/Eroica crossover to go with that defunct television show? I thought I once heard her muttering about a bed-and- breakfast place in upstate New York, called ‘the Tree’.”
“Oh, hell. I’m not the one who faints, I’m not the one who faints—” Klaus swayed on his feet, then grabbed for the door. Which promptly fell backward into the warehouse, with a crash and a puff of dust.
A distant, cheerful howling echoed in the alleys behind the two men.
“I’m trying that door,” said Dorian, brandishing the invitation like a passport. “You coming, Major?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” Klaus muttered, and leapt through beside his thief.
*
There was no old warehouse on the other side of the door. Only a black void filled with icy winds. No ground under their feet, nothing to hold on to but each other, in the five heartbeats of passage…
Floor! Blessed, wondrous floor. Dorian fell and kissed it blindly, forgiving it for being so hard on impact.
A gabble of many strange languages assaulted them next.
Then, nearby, a female voice backed by a good set of lungs: “Sessov ar, Ket ulin! Yul adadhi jna siti bar ke Angliss, bar ke Doysha? That Terran translator online? Ah, good. No, according to the mangaka, they both know Twenty-Cee English. Hello! Gentlemen?”
The two men opened their eyes to see a pavement that looked and felt like milky-green jade inset with unknown writing and mathematical proofs in glittering white metal.
They looked up. The paving extended across the floor of a dark-walled room as big as a Boeing hangar and equally high. From various concentrations of writing on the floor, wavering sheets of white light leapt upward nine or ten feet. Oddly-dressed people charged through the discontinuities, and vanished. Or appeared to run out of them.
“Yes, yes, they’re portals,” said the same brisk female voice from before. “Now, if you don’t mind getting up and moving your lovely assets? C&C says we’ve got to clear the whole Gatefang floor for a spaceship made of some dark red metal I’ve never seen before, and I hope by the Sleeper’s Tits it isn’t another Dana Hidden Fleet relic. Up, up, and away with you. Ready for sightseeing? Maybe the Powers will let you remember it when they send you back.”
The two crouching men stared at the woman in front of them.
At least Dorian thought it was a woman. Humanoid, at any rate. Bipedal, though the arched, taloned feet hinted at an ancestry far different than simian. She was perhaps a meter and a quarter tall on tiptoe, sturdily-built with some decent muscle on heavy bones. No breasts. Dorian would have seen that, because all the little darling wore was a dark green kilt that fell to her knees. Her dark red hair fell in looped emerald-studded braids over her shoulders. Sleek dark red fur covered every other visible part of her body, except for her face and the palms of her hands. The skin there was cinnamon-colored. Her garnet eyes looked him over slyly, slid to Klaus, then widened. Her tall, fur-fringed ears twitched backward, matching her expression of put-upon annoyance.
“Are you from Camhathani human stock? A Round-Ear?” she asked Klaus. Dorian caught sight of four respectable fangs behind her full lips and strong overbite.
“I’m an Appropriated Personified Creative Meme,” said Klaus, drawing himself upright into a military at-rest stance.
“He’s a muse,” said Dorian. “So am I.”
“Sooo. There was no one in your family who wandered off for a few years, and came back with a green-eyed, black-furred mate?” she pressed.
“Not to my knowledge, Frau…”
“Call me ‘Tel’. Round-Ears like you can’t speak chords, so my real name just won’t work.” She looked at the Major again, shaking her head. “No wonder the Archivist likes you! Oh, I might have to tag along to see this,” she snorted at Klaus.
“See what?” Dorian and Klaus followed their guide away from the confusing welter of portals and arrivals, to a huge doorway opening out into—
“Blue trees?” said Klaus.
“Lavender sky,” approved Dorian. “It’s only got one sun, at least. I think it’s setting.”
The little city that confronted them appeared charmingly ethnic, with its carved wooden houses, steeply-pitched roofs, and colorful banners whipping in a chilly breeze. Vaguely Russian by way of Middle-Earth, Dorian thought. Blue and turquoise-colored trees did indeed grow in containers alongside the raised sidewalks. The people bustling in the wooden-paved streets wore boots, pants, long coats of fur and brightly-embroidered cloth. They looked more human than Tel, but kept the fangs and whisker-fringed ears. Animals that looked like tall deer pulled carts or curvetted under skilled riders.
“Mein Gott! How do you say it?” whispered Klaus, looking up. “We are no longer in Kansas?”
“By the Goddess who is our endings and our beginnings,” whispered Dorian, and was silent for a minute.
Eight titanic black crystal towers leapt up in a loose ring around the city. Amber windows sparkled along their faceted flanks. Lines of drying laundry flapped against the glossy walls. Organic-looking arches and turrets flowered from the tapered, spiraling towers. The tallest and plainest edifice, bulking eastward against the violet twilight, seemed to rise almost a kilometer before ending in a tiny dome that still caught the last glare of sunset.
“This is the city of…oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter,” said Tel wearily. “Not if we can’t get the Archivist to pay some fucking attention.”
“Are you elves?” Dorian asked, reaching out curiously toward Tel’s ears. She shied sideways, those long fangs flashing in an instantly-checked snarl.
“Urk,” coughed Klaus, and elbowed Dorian.
“It’s all right,” Tel said, gentling. “Babies who don’t know better do that. And travelers. And lovers.” Her teeth glittered once more in a knowing grin. “Your transgression is forgiven, Lord Gloria. Don’t do it again.”
Dorian blushed. “Thank you. This is. Er, this is an amazing place. How old is your culture?”
“Theirs? Some eighty thousand of this planet’s years. My people have been here over a million years. Again, no point in giving you too many names or facts,” said Tel. “But do not call any of us an ‘elf’. The last traveler who made that mistake barely escaped with any ears at all.”
“This is going to be a hell of a Mary Sue tale,” said Klaus.
Tel gave a throaty chuckle. “Not exactly. We need your help.”
“How can we help you?” asked Dorian, looking around.
“We need you to convince the damn Archivist to stop messing with fan fiction, and get back to being ours. It would be bad enough with just you lot and the ones from the Silmarillion, but she’s apparently become fascinated with some other archetypes.”
Klaus looked thoughtful. “Which one is your writer? If it’s Coyote or Scifigrl, I’m not certain we can…”
“She is called Filigree.”
Both men stopped, and with one voice said: “Oh, hell.”
*
“Say ‘yes’,” the alien woman said. “Neither of you have anything to lose by trying.”
On a wooden-plank sidewalk, in the middle of a city a long way from the Earth they knew, the Major and his blond thief stared back at each other.
“I don’t want to get near her,” repeated Klaus.
Dorian shrugged. “I’d rather go be an annoying Aoike-muse, for any of the badly-drawn post-hiatus hetero manga, than have one more of Filigree’s overdone Greek-tragedy scripts shoved up my…”
They heard a tapping sound, and glanced down at Tel’s feet.
An eight-inch-long talon suddenly curved up where her big toe had been. Muscles jumped along the arch of her left foot, drumming its huge claw down again and again into the frost-hardened wood. Splinters flew away like chaff.
Easy as a shiver, the woman named Tel transformed from her feet upward. The body tilted forward, changed contours. The skull elongated, growing a sharp, dark-red horn halfway up the fanged muzzle. The kilt and beads somehow stayed exactly in place.
“Utahraptor?” said Dorian, leaning forward.
“Mit Pelz,” said Klaus, taking a step back.
“But very pretty fur,” said Dorian. “This shape suits you much better, Lady Tel.”
She shook her red-black fur from nose-to-plumed-tail, settling her beaded braids neatly along her withers. “Thank you, Lord Gloria.” Her voice was the same, but more: now spanning multiple octaves, and chorded in four distinct tones.
Dorian and Klaus looked back into earnest, unblinking garnet eyes.
“The Archivist is ours, Lord Gloria. And she does not shun us easily for the creations of others. You and the Major were her only serious fan interests for years. The disease will spread, if you do not sway her, reason with her, threaten her.”
“Why, when have you not been able to do so?” rumbled Klaus, gathering Dorian close against him.
“Because she is a creature of focus, and fond of you, but not so fond that she is currently obsessed with you. You must simply interrupt her pattern before she opens the doors any wider.”
“We could get killed. Again,” sulked Dorian.
Tel snorted derisively. “You’re muses. You’re effectively immortal.”
“There are worse things than death,” Klaus said, but a certain grim set to his jawline indicated he was plotting. “However. Hmmm. The attempt might be worth it.”
“Darling! You can’t be serious!” Dorian scolded.
Klaus cupped his hands around the thief’s face. “Abendstern, I would not have willingly told you this, because I knew it would sting you. You are not Filigree’s favorite chew-toy.”
Dorian blinked. “But I’m gorgeous, and she loves all beautiful things.”
“Things. She thinks of you as an artifact,” Klaus said bluntly. “A plot device. You are a foil, Eroica. It’s me she likes and torments. If I weren’t in the story, she’d just think of you as another silly flouncing blond 1970s disco queen beneath her notice.”
Dorian gasped. “That’s not true!”
“I’m afraid the Major’s right, Lord Gloria,” said Tel.
Klaus glared a challenge at the eight huge black towers ringing the little jewel-box of a city. “Filigree made this place and all its people?”
“She likes to think so.”
“I begin to see a pattern of escape.”
“You’ve nearly insulted me to death, and now you’re playing chess with a damn Writer?” Dorian squeaked, then noticed he was clutching Klaus’ arm in a stereotypical way. The thief jerked his hands away and stepped backwards, muttering un-aristocratic profanities.
“What are her weaknesses?” Klaus asked, giving Tel the sharp attention he bestowed upon rare equals.
“Hates ugliness. Shies from clumsy satire, ever since Sixth Grade and that make-your-own myth assignment, what a disaster that was. She’s a snob, too, can’t stand mediocrity, especially from herself.”
“Gut, gut,” said Klaus as the two of them began whispering strategy in earnest.
“Hmmph!” said Dorian, and walked over to an ornately-carved wooden bench beside a small garden. In the dimming dusk, the blue trees didn’t look so alien. Bronze lamps filtered golden light through the leaves. The scene reminded him of a Tiffany stained-glass window, all opaline colors and subtle darkness. He sniffed the perfumes of otherworldly flowers, and that made him wonder about the deeper chill in the air. Surely, flowers would not bloom in winter, even here…so this had to be spring or fall. Maybe even summer! A cold place. He began to understand why Tel had that sleek pelt, in either form. Even the moths that blundered and buzzed through the trees seemed luxuriantly-furred.
The night sky was different, too: nebulas flowed in visible clouds of purple and silver across a dome of vivid ultramarine, and the stars seemed brighter and closer. He could have read a book by the blue starlight alone. There seemed to be no moon at the moment.
Just when Dorian was beginning to shiver in earnest, velvet settled over his shoulders and swathed him in sudden warmth. That turned out to be a plain, soft dark cloak. The fabric seemed to move by itself, draping over his curly mane and tucking gently under his chin.
“Pureblooded Round-Ears were ever hothouse flowers, wilting at any chill. Better?” said a man’s deep baritone, in the same lightly-accented English Tel used.
“Oh, yes,” said Dorian, turning to thank his rescuer.
Standing, the man seemed shorter than Dorian’s full height, but bulkier. His clothes were unassuming gray and brown fabric quilted into a long coat and wide trousers over black boots. His hands were gauntleted to mid-forearm in fraying black leather gauntlets. A big black hammer hung from the left side of his belt.
Not one of Tel’s furry folk, though he bore the same long fringed ears and fangs as the other people in this strange city. He had a square, strong-jowled face with a hooked nose, a short brown beard, and long curling brown hair that would have been the envy of any Terran Renaissance aristocrat. Silvery-green eyes, without any hint of white schlera, scanned over the human muse.
He nodded at the two conspirators still on the sidewalk. “Don’t mind Istelian Girshanha, traveler. She’s anxious to get the Archivist back to work.”
“Filigree’s not a completely untalented hack,” Dorian admitted grudgingly. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be her primary characters, though. She must put you through merry hell.”
The newcomer laughed. Dorian decided he liked that thunderous chuckle, and the way it tickled his bones. “Oh, she’s not so bad. She says writing ‘Wagnerian histrionics’ is a little like listening to the blues when you’re already down. It’s a vaccination of sorts. She can be very loyal and accommodating. Would you like to meet her, while my wife and your husband are plotting mutiny?”
Dorian shivered again. “That wouldn’t be safe.”
“Safe? No place in any universe is completely ‘safe’. Do you know where you are?”
“Lady Tel wouldn’t say.”
“Wise of her. Very well, without the naming-of-names: you are at the very center of a story in which I play a few parts. Do you know what Inspiration is, to Coyote?”
Dorian nodded nervously.
“I mean more to Filigree.”
“What are you?”
The question earned Dorian a sidelong smile. “Her oldest, her best. Not a lover, and never quite a son. We are old friends and working acquaintances. At the moment, I am a blacksmith.”
“Oh, la,” said Dorian with a snort, though the man’s wide shoulders could have come from smith-work. “And I’m an Inland Revenue auditor. No secrets from fellow muses? You’re not even like the rest of these people.”
“Such sharp eyes you have, honey-sweet. Without me, she’d still be writing terrible Star Wars and Silmarillion fanfic novels. No matter how distracted she is with other tricksters and mastersmiths, she’ll listen to me.”
“Good enough,” said Dorian, and accepted the handclasp that hauled him effortlessly to his feet.
*
Dorian had expected a dank crypt filled with souvenirs of research on serial killers and forensic examinations. He wasn’t prepared for this vast, sunlit room arrayed in a matrix of sturdy tables. Some tables had bolts of fabric or skeins of glittering beads flung over them. Some sported half-finished carpentry projects or small shop-tools. Some were covered in drifts of scribbled-on paper, maps, sketches, and stacks of small ornate books that glinted like jewels themselves. Dorian thought he saw a pottery wheel in one corner, and the stacked ribs of fragile silk kites piled up on another. A few tables were empty. Others were shrouded in portable milky plastic curtains. The smell of lemongrass and ozone lingered in the air.
“Helat een!” shouted the blacksmith, as he threaded between the tables toward a fountaining cloud of sparks over a section of firebrick tiles.
“Helat gala,” said a human woman almost as short as Tel. She didn’t turn around, and Dorian realized the sparks came from the butane torch she played against a clay crucible. “Tdajuur, Senhal, ne sai…” she seemed to command, her free arm gesturing them forward.
Not them, just the blacksmith. Dorian realized she didn’t know he was here at all. He preferred to keep it that way.
But she didn’t look like a sadistic maniac. Just a short, plump woman with grayed bronze hair pinned back in shaggy tangles. She wore sooty denim overalls and an acid-pitted Rush ‘Moving Pictures’ T-shirt, and her shop boots were so covered in paint Dorian couldn’t tell the original color.
The blacksmith leaned forward and shut off the torch at the tank regulator. “Visitor!” he yelled in English.
“Fuckitall, unless you have some really good coffee, not now…” she snarled and turned, brandishing the still red-hot torch tip.
The blacksmith pulled back. “But look what I brought you. Archivist, this is a version of Dorian Red Gloria. Lord Gloria, this is the slightly-unhinged entity we call Archivist. Filigree, to you.”
“Hullo,” squeaked Dorian.
“No coffee? Huh.” Her brown eyes widened, as brain caught up to vision. “Dorian? What the hell? Look, as soon as I get this art stuff outta the way, I promise I’ll get back to finishing ‘Worth A Thousand Words’ and ‘Spirits of Fire’. Well, after I get Moro and Val and Cam and Eridan and Sfassa and Ral and Benian settled down…”
“No, that’s quite all right, take your time,” Dorian said, trying not to shudder. Her soft face was almost deceptively sweet. Neighborly, even.
Then the brown eyes turned sharp, as their owner glanced back at the blacksmith. “Is Klaus here, too?”
The blacksmith nodded.
An inner demon woke behind the woman’s ordinary features. Just a hint of a one-sided smile distorted her lips, as she looked at the blacksmith. “Let me guess. Tel found him first? Do we have a mutiny?”
“I thought it best to let them entertain themselves for a while. There will be no longterm unpleasantness, so long as you agree to at least hear their grievances,” said the blacksmith, falling into step beside the Archivist.
“I’ll give ‘em grievances. I haven’t been tormenting either of them much lately.”
“Therein lies the problem.” The blacksmith set one strong hand on the woman’s shoulder, halting her.
“Et tu?” she mocked up at him, but didn’t pull away.
“I tear out my heart for you every four or five thousand years. I have made doors for dark lords and dragonmasters, closeted spies and improbable thieves,” he said softly. “I will even tolerate a few more tricksters…they’d keep Tel on her lovely sharp toes. But I swear by Fountain I will hammer this part of the universe down to slag and ash, before I share more of it with Anthony Goddamned Stark!”
For one awful moment, Dorian thought a monster might wake in front of him. Then the Archivist’s laughter burst out, and she leaned on her blacksmith, her shoulders shaking.
“You’re still so cute when you’re jealous,” she said, snickering. “But you’re right, that won’t work out well for anyone. Ah. Come along, Dorian, we’ve a mutiny to head off.”
Some mad impulse made Dorian say, “If I help, do I still have to wear a dress for half of ‘Worth’?”
“You’re wearing the fucking sari, Dorian,” she said without looking back. “Pray I don’t alter the deal any further.”