Excerpt : Stories From the Cosmos
I have a brand new little duo that I'm pretty stoked to start developing. They originate from my original world but, by virtue of their abilities, could technically end up anywhere. I've got their designs but used a base to refine them, so I'll post art of them later once I've had a little more practice with them!
For now, here's the needed info just for clarity:
Shel: An ancient god, born from the explosion that brought reality into tangible existence. Currently, he's a big fan of multiple arms and posses two sets, four total.
Baz: In essence, a minor god of sorts, created by Shel to be a space traveling companion during his ventures across the cosmos. Through some crossing of wires during her creation, she can't form words, but can understand them, and her mind was bonded to Shel's. He can hear her thoughts, though she cannot hear his.
Below the cut is the ~2.7k word short story I wrote for them of a scene idea I had. Enjoy!
This planet was lush, but..motionless. Like something was missing in it. Some spark, some little piece that made it all come together. It functioned, but that was it.
“Like something went wrong.” Shel added with a furrow of his brow. His jaw was set hard and he seemed to be sensing something she couldn’t.
“There’s..I don’t know how to describe it. The magic is wrong here. Like it was broken in some way. Or disrupted.”
We could keep going.
“No, I want to see what’s going on here. If there’s life here that needs help, I’d feel awful passing them by just because we felt a little weirded out.” He took a breath and clapped one set of his hands together. “Put those thoughts aside then, let’s treat this like any other venture.”
Baz nodded but swallowed hard. She couldn’t feel the magic disruption he was talking about. But she could feel something wrong with it. Like it was buzzing. Like it was angry.
They came down on a coastline of an unmoving ocean. It was the clearest spot they could see, the rest of this landmass was blanketed in an unbroken canopy of dull green. As Shel set his lower arms on his hips and looked into the treeline, Baz kicked a stone into the water. It didn’t ripple. Just sank a few inches back into the sand. She shivered at the uncanny sight. Nope, not here. She didn’t want to be here.
“Just a quick look around, that’s all we need. Just to see what’s going on. If there isn’t anything here then we’ll go, okay? Promise.” He looked to her and smiled, but she couldn’t return the expression. She just turned away, staring back at the stone. He sighed behind her and she heard his footsteps retreating.
“Wait here then, I won’t be long. I’ll come get you in a bit.”
And with that he was out of sight, fading from earshot into the thick foliage. She heaved a nervous breath and plopped down on the sand. Despite being in the sun, it was oddly cool here. Not in a seasonal kind of way, but like the sun itself wasn’t very warm at all. She pulled her legs up, setting her chin on her knees. There were no birds in the sky. No clouds either, she noticed, but it still had a gray filter to it. Like the blue wasn’t as blue as it should be. Same with the ocean. Everything here felt..washed out. Like the whole planet was slowly fading. Something rustled behind her. Shel?
No response. Another rustle and she turned over her shoulder. She couldn’t see far into the treeline. The trunks were thick and they blended into each other as the dim sunlight was quickly blocked by their canopies. She didn’t see anyone, nor any movement. But she knew she heard it. Shel wouldn’t sneak up on her, so what had she heard?
Then, a voice. “Drop.”
A lot happened in a few seconds.
Baz had been hit before. They’d been to planets with no people, only creatures. Creatures that could wield magic and used it with all the grace of a wild animal. They’d been to planets where they scared someone with their arrival, or met hostile people who didn’t care for strangers, whoever they were. Being attacked wasn’t novel.
But whatever this spell was, it crippled her. She was already sitting down but the sheer force of it had her dropping to her side. It felt like a spear was shot through her chest, but she didn’t see anything. Just felt an exponentially rising heat inside of her. A deep burning that drew an anguished scream that made her throat hurt. Fighting the pain she pushed up on one hand and aimed her other forwards.
But the instant Baz had eyes on the fucker, her vision went black.
Before she saw where she was, she felt it. A stickiness that uncomfortably suctioned her already tight fitting clothes to her. The humidity was accompanied by a near unbearable warmth and as Baz came to she became aware of beads of sweat rolling down her face and back. Her eyes felt heavy and, like a pendulum coming down from the top of its arc, fell shut again when she tried to open them. Baz gritted her teeth and growled in her throat. There was little she hated more than a lack of control. And this numb, heavy feeling of her body was beyond aggravating.
“We had to run from the other one, the spell did nothing to it. We’re lucky we got this one.” She stopped struggling against her own body and went still, listening intently to the conversation her mind tuned into. It was coming closer and she tried again to open her eyes.
She got a glimpse of the room this time. It was incredibly dark, but she made out a light coming closer off to her left. There was a light source above her too, from the wall she was leaning against. It was dim, but looked natural. A window?
“So what are we gonna do with it? The big one I mean.”
“I have no idea. We talked about it for a bit but we’ve never really found one of these things that didn’t go down before. It’s new territory. For now, we just gotta hide from it. It didn’t seem too happy we got its lackey here.”
There were two voices and they stopped a short ways in front of her. She tried moving an arm again, immediately ready to fire off a spell. But her fingers barely moved with the attempt and she growled again.
“Oh, it’s awake.” One of the voices said. Then it laughed. “You’re not going to break the paralysis. But we won’t cast anything else on you if you tell us why your partner didn’t go down like you did.”
Okay, so Shel was still out there. Baz didn’t know if he could hear her, but he was evidently far enough that she couldn’t hear him. She tried clearing her thoughts of the anger that was building, trying to project a helpful thought to wherever he was. I’m underground maybe, in a dark building. It’s hot and humid, there’s two people here. I can’t move.
“You should be able to talk just fine. Unless you can’t do that. Would be a fuckin’ shame, then you’ve got no bargaining chip.” The same person said, a smile evident in their voice. The smugness had her grinding her teeth together and mentally slamming her fist against the wall. Baz wished she could decast the translation spell. Shel insisted they always have it going, and to his credit it was helpful far more often than it wasn’t. But her head was pounding now from every word she was hearing out of this rat bastard’s mouth. Who the fuck were they, calling her and Shel ‘it’? Why did they shoot her down? What the fuck was this planet?!
“Well, I’ve got better things to do. Like I said before, it’s paralysed so all you need to do is stay here and call someone if that spell starts to wear off. Someone’ll come get you when we’ve figured out a plan for the other one.”
“Got it.”
A set of footsteps walked away and Baz heard a creak, like someone sitting in a chair. A few moments later, she heard small, dull scraping. It took her a few seconds to pick it apart as the sound of a knife through wood.
“It’s really weird how long it’s been since we’ve found any of you. You two are different looking too. I wonder if something changed.” The remaining person in the room spoke. They spoke quieter, but that softness did nothing for Baz. They, by virtue of being connected to that other fucker, grated on her ears.
“Hm..your energy is rising. Are you trying to break the spell? We’ve been refining that for centuries, it isn’t worth the effort. You’ll just black out trying.”
Fuck, what was this spell? Baz had been hurt before, seriously hurt. But nothing could ever hold her down. And nothing at all could lay a finger on Shel. That was part of the fun of exploring these worlds. There was no physical danger to it, no threat of death and a small threat of damage. They could go anywhere they wanted, see anything they wanted. Every world was their oyster.
So what the fuck was happening now?
“Can you talk? You made noise before. Your kind have always been able to talk. It’s weird if you can’t. Assuming you’re not just refusing, it would be another new thing.” They paused, scraped at the wood in their hands, then continued. “People have been talking about the energy changing. Like something upset it. I dunno about that, but maybe something shifted it. I guess we don’t really know how it works, just that it does. But if it’s been a while since we found new one of you’s, and you both are different, maybe the rumours are true in some way.”
What in the everloving fuck was this person going on about?! Energy? Other people like her? Are there other gods on this world. Or, judging by the way these people were talking, had there once been? It sounded more and more like they were gone for some reason, and more and more like it was the fault of these people.
Baz took in a sharp breath through her nose and tried to fight again. They were right, it felt like she about to pass out. The strain of trying to move even the smallest amount had lights flashing in the darkness of her closed eyes. Her stomach cramped and she tried to not let her breathing pick up pace. She wanted to scream. Just start screaming, hoping Shel was somewhere nearby. But that isn’t how she did things. She didn’t give up, she didn’t give in. And she refused to let these lowlife scumbags break her perfect streak.
“You know,” they started to talk again and the fury that noise sent through her was enough to fuel another attempt to move. “I don’t really think you things are all that bad. Not in the malicious sense. You’re like pests, and that’s not your fault. Just how nature decided things should go. It’s a shame you’ve got such awareness, it makes pest control feel more personal and cruel.”
Okay, that was it! Time to die! Baz’s heart was thudding against her chest and she choked down the sickening feeling rising up her throat. She wasn’t moving, not yet, but the willpower she was exerting to try to was sending her into a tailspin. She was growing rapidly dizzier and she felt her thoughts clouding and nearly gave in to the urge to fall unconscious.
NO! She wasn’t going under, not again. These self important, murderous pieces of shit weren’t catching her off guard again. She wouldn’t be held captive here, she wouldn’t be made to sit here and listen to how little worth they thought she had. She was going to get up, she was going to break this stupid fucking spell, she-
“What the hell?!”
Last words. Her ears rang as the explosion reverberated off the stone walls of the small room. She saw a small, unfinished wooden carving bounce across the floor, rolling through the bloody mess she’d blasted across the ground. Pest control my ass.
Quickly, she scanned the room to weigh her options. She wasn’t locked up, surprisingly. She had been envisioning a cage around her, but in reality she had just been propped against a wall. She smirked to herself and glanced at the upturned chair. Too much faith in your perfect spell, sucker.
She heard voices and running footsteps and spun around to the wall she had been lying against. There was a window above her. Or, more accurately, a wide cut in the stone that led directly outside. It was ground level and looked to be sunset judging by the rapidly fading light. Not having any desire to run deeper into whatever this place was, Baz grabbed a hold of the edge of the opening and heaved her way up, pulling herself through the gap she was barely small enough to fit through. She heard shouts of anger and disbelief behind her but was able to get to her feet and stumble back from the opening just as a spell was blasted towards her.
She was more than done here, they were leaving. She looked around but saw only more jungle in every direction, and no indication of being anywhere near an ocean. The voices were fading, running off down one of the two hallways she saw. She had no clue how far the exit of this bunker was from that room, so with a pivot on her heel Baz took off into the brush and thought as she ran.
She still didn’t hear Shel. If they were far from the coastline there was no telling where he had gone looking for her. Or where he’d gone after the encounter he seemed to have with those cocksuckers. So, with few other options, she aimed her palm skyward and fired off a bright flare from her palm. With a hissing whiz it rocketed twenty, fifty, a hundred feet above the treeline and exploded into a shower of multicoloured sparks. He just needed to get close enough to hear her, and then they could get the fuck off this miserable planet.
Baz had gotten distance on them, but she was still close enough to hear a group of people pursuing her. And it sounded like far more than just a couple of them this time. She tore through the foliage, not even noticing the end of her gloves being ripped away over her clawed nails. From the sky, to her side, she heard a wind picking up. Then as it got closer, understood it to not be wind but rather the sound of something falling through the sky. And a moment later, some thirty feet to her right, something massive crashed into the forest.
Baz skidded to a halt, digging her heels into the muddy earth of the forest floor, and spun her body to face that direction. She grinned devilishly and broke off in a dead sprint. Before her vision even registered she was flying into another person, spun in a circle in their tight embrace. She cackled with laughter and buried her face in the crook of Shel’s neck. He laughed with her, though his fell away before hers in a heavy sigh. He leaned back enough to look at her, one of his upper hands cupping the side of her face.
“Baz I am so sorry. I don’t know where they took you from the beach but by the time I got back you weren’t there. I couldn’t hear you, I had no clue where they’d gone with you. They were determined to take me down to but they got a nasty surprise with that attempt.” He snorted a laugh and she matched him. It was okay, she was never mad at him. But she was tired of this bullshit planet already. Honestly, she couldn’t care less what was going on here. They’d made it clear they weren’t in any desperate need of help and she saw no reason to stick around.
At the sound of encroaching voices and rustling underbrush, Shel nodded. “Agreed. Your call was the right one all along, who’d’ve guessed.”
And with a tightening of his grip around her, Shel threw down a spell that surrounded them in a thick, semi-opaque bubble. On its underside he set a mark that burned itself into the outer shell. With a cocked brow he looked at her. He didn’t need to put the question into words. She grabbed a tight hold of the edge of his jacket and nodded, and at her mark he twisted his wrist and uncapped the spell that burned away the forest floor beneath them in an instant. In moments they were sailing away, up and up through the stratosphere and out of the pull of the planet.