No matter how many times the goblin swabbed deck the down the stains of the airship HORSECLAPPER emerged anew.
Each time he bent towards the last board. He tried so many configurations to try and figure it out.

The only thing is he know there was a horshoe nailed over the door and the X near the wheel next to the captain’s quarters was bleeding like a crayola factory.

That spot.

That damned spot

just

outside

that dirty

vampire captains cabin.

He could smell it.

It cursed him.

Laughed at him.

degraded him.

Defiled him – like his blood would.
But, only worse, because he didn’t understand the emotional toll of how much harder small creatures had to work for what they had. When everything came so easily to those with that much rizz and facecard energy from the start.

Each time the cycle began anew

he heard a toll of a ringing bell

that ring ring ring ring rRring rrrrRrOIng RANGING!

inside

his

head.

Like a phone call. But, there were no phones on the ship.

It smacked through his left tearduct and into the back of his skull like an ice pick lobotomy.

His usual short grunt upgraded to a huff.
WHAT CURSE LAY UPON THIS FETID DECK? FECK THIS!”

He took the rounded glasses with the gold edges and mashed them on the ground. Mashing the infernal glass beneath his taloned toes, upgrading to falling to his knees to beat them with his knobby fists when he saw the wire wasn’t bending fast enough for his liking. Then ripping at them with his fists until the poor peeper protectors oozed green blood.

He turned his rage upon the mop – snapping it in half with his knee and almost wrenching his back as he dramatically threw them as hard as he could at the magic barrior that surrounded the airship. He hoped it popped the thing and killed them all. But, the wood just passed through and the bundle shot out into the vastness of the void. (S:9.voices are we.)

nothingness noothing ness nothing ness. We were once and so we shall be again!!! Said the wooden slats beneath his feet.

A winedark blood spot near him bubbled. It was off in a blueish sort of way. It spasmed and blorbed. pulling into shape like taffy a nervous system, bone, muscle – a finger, a hand.

He felt a hand on him then of a different shape.
Small, Slender. Soft.

A mage’s hand….

It started trying to unbutton his work shirt.

WHAT THE FUCK?!

He let himself scream as he spun round and ran towards the coffee. Checking his pocket for his pockets (REQUEST EDIT) Checking his pocket for his HR prevention conch shell. But, it was left sitting in a pile of nick nacks left next to his coffee over by the mast.

He knew it was a test of who could stop talking the longest. But, getting felt up at the company holiday clean up shut your face edition after party by the ghost of christmas past, so he could asexually reproduce your bloodstain onto the deck wasn’t something he was into.

He continued to scream as he watched the whisps of blood from the stain across the way generate the silhouette of a head.

He was totally going to die. He would never find his father’s grave. Where he came from. Who they’d been – who he was supposed to become. What all that shade was about. How many lighthouses or how he was going to stand working for someone stupid enough to hire him. Maybe he was the stupid one this time for choosing to work for someone like him.

At the end of the day he spent most of the time wondering who he was supposed to try and pretend to be to not die.

He felt sick as the thing across the way grew another head and the grabby hand on his shoulder asked him if he ever got a massage from a man with magic hands. There were so many things that could help right now, but he chose to do none of them and instead remained there frozen like a statue.

Why had he been born. He hadn’t asked to be born. He thought very hard to himself, as the eyes of the thing across the room. (the deck) The room. locked eyes with him and smiled. Its mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing came out. It opened wide. wider. widest. Wider than any mouth he’d ever seen. Wider than it should. Wider than any humanoid should.

He watched as it grew in shape and size forming new limbs and heads, but not legs.

It had too many… evverything but legs? What did that mean?

Where had it’s legs gone?

In that instant he wondered:

Where were his legs?

He looked down and saw a vision of his own intestines in a heap where his lap used to be. It was as if he had been chopped at the waist and screamed.

He never asked to be born. OH GLOB. He just wanted to get out of the house for a bit and play music. he never asked to be–

Then Paisley descended upon the thing like a cowboy who had ridden a steer more than 8 seconds once or twice. He landed hard on the back of the thing sprouting everything but legs. Planting glistening static daggers into the eldrich horror’s collar bones. Then quickly setting his forearm across several foreheads to fluidly eviscerated a series of trecheas.

The monster poofed into a cloud of smoke and dust and wind. The other monster that was Paisley landed on its feet without its shoes on.

His face was that special kind of thoughtlessness as he stared forward blankly. He lazily swept his gaze over to the goblin.

“Click” he chirped.

Suddenly the goblin’s legs returned.

But, dirt, grime, garbage, all swept mere minutes ago began to materialize back onto the deck. Not only that. Fresh and stinking garbage oozed up from the sticky cracks in the faded lap of the ship. The spectacles bubbled and reshaped themselves back into two perf.ect orb of glass. The devil-spawn picked them up and placed them back onto his face.

The goblin called J was so caught in his old memories that the ship itself could feel it and it toyed with him out of disrespect. Maybe this puzzle could not be solved so easily

Bleeding green tears flooded his vision as Paisley flew past him and stabbed the invisible owner of the invisible hand on his shoulder. It sounded like a gun went off next to his ear.
He heard gasping and moaning, the sound of blood hitting the floor. Paisley susshing it as it slid down onto the floor.

The next thing J knew is there was a searing hand was placed on his back. After a quick jump he realized it was the devil he knew.

Paisley spun round to his front, bent at the waist to look him in the eye and flicked a finger at the goblin’s forehead.
Surprisingly this flung him back out to the edges of the ship and rubber banded him back towards the mast.
Then the hand of the devil he knew was at his throat. Lifting him to the air and slamming him down hard against the mast.

“Let’s take a break, my friend.” he said in a voice too calm for what was happening right now. A cold purr. He heard the rattling of mage’s bones on the other side of the ladder to the nest.

J tried to will his limbs to move, to return the blows, to bite to scratch. But, found he could not move his body for the second time that night. It was a trap.

A rope emerged from thin air and began tying him to the lower mast. It spun as the devil held his throat there, until he could be slid down to sit. He was knotted tight as everything in the sitting position. Leaving his hands in his lap with a small bit of slack.

“Now, Jaun. Can I call you Jaun? I’ll call you Jaun. That was my father’s middle name. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. Are you ready to listen to MY story, Jaun?” Paisley said.

Jaun had an answer, but could say it. He wanted to spit in the arrogant devil-spawns face. Curse it for ever claiming to have ever convincing him this was a good idea.

“Good.” The devil flashed his teeth. Then bit into his own wrist to rip the flesh away. He sucked in and spat out a great glob of blood onto the deck it bubbled into a book and a pen. There was a sound that cackled about them like distant thunder.

Then the devil thrust the book and pen into the goblin’s hands. That slack was only enough to scratch the nib across the page. HE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE AT WORK. There was only enough to finish this job too. No more slack than that. The devil had made sure of it. What a wanker.

“I’m going to tell you a story from my own life now, while I pretend that you pretend that I pretend that you pretend. DOES THAT SOUND FUN?” His smile was too wide.
“I hope it will inspire you to continue on this impossible journey. Know that the ink of this pen.” the pen glitched from Jaun’s and back to Paisleys. The devil twisted it in it’s long fingers and threw it overboard.

Jaun felt the rope in his hands tighten very fast.
It felt as if he had no mouth and he was trying to scream, all the air was being sucked out of him. He was suffocating. ICE AND THE AIR BEING PUSHED OUT OF YOU AT A HIGH VELOCITY SPEED as his hands were being bound so tight the word nerve damage came to mind.

Paisley snapped and the pen returned. The rope loosened as the ropes were only as loose as long as he could keep the pen at his side.

Then the devil through the pen overboard again and the agony returned.

“The pen commands truth. But, the ink you spill is the blood of your ancestors. Once you are done writing them then it comes for you. My kin has killed your kind before, as yours has mine. You help me with my curse and maybe I’ll set my mind into caring about yours, Norseman.”

Hatred and betrayal seething out of the goblin. There was no way to read what was going on in the demon’s head. All he knew is that each passing moment the rope got tighter.

“I can spin a weave fine as you, I dare say. Once upon a time I was a man of words. Now prey thee give me a moment of your time, o great cat of the nine.” The devil knelt and took a long fingernail and carved the mark of the crow into the goblin’s forhead – a circle.
“this is your third eye. Let me show you mine.”
HIS eyes rolled back and purple smoke oozed out his sockets as a similar hued fire ran across the deck. (THE FORK ON THE TABLE TURNED 2:13AM it is pointing at 10 like a clock)

A different voice emerged from his throat. Deep, low, ancient. Like scraping stone against a cave wall. None like the goblin had ever heard before come from such a skinsack. Not since a very unfortunate encounter he was lucky to have escaped from in his youth when he fell down a spider infested hole. He struggled to comprehend as a voice boomed out the command.

“Now. Write this down.” it said. Sticky drips of hot shimmering ink poured from his mouth like a rainbow pavlovian nightmare.
“This’ll hit big wig… RIGHT. WHERE. IT. hURTS.”

The goblin struggled against it’s bonds in his mind, but his hands began to write of their own accord. Even though he had no pen. The rope slacked even as he was pretending. But, the ropes were not trying to strangle him at that point.

“I COMPELL THEE. FUCK THE 4. FUCK YOU HARLOT!” The devil screamed, Jaun scribbled in the air.

Jaun hoped that if this was that psychic link the cook had warned him about. At least the devil would too die too if it tried to killl him.

A very powerful thought was pushing it’s way into his mind in that moment. He was a worm. Born without a mouth, no way to scream. He remained silent for a very long time.

The bones tied to the mast behind him began to quiver. Listening to the voice sounded like the buzz of a thousand televisions sets after midnight in a time far far away.

“STARDATE August 27th, 2026….” The devil began. It stared into Jaun’s eyes, mouth closed. He heard a laugh pound in his skull like a migraine. His nose bled as did whatever Paisley was in this moment.

He coughed as Jaun cried his green tears.
“Oh, yes. Silly me. I forgot the pen.”
The wub was inside him now – laying eggs in the holes corkscrewed into his frontal lobe by that laugh. He was infected now too.

His own thoughts were read out to him in as the horrible garbage disposal of a deep voice rang in every corner of in his head. Bouncing and reverberating over every fold and crevass like a child at a play place.

Paisley, but not any Paisley that he ever met, Cocked it’s head to the side playfully as he spun around. He opened his mouth and the soul ink that came was shining now in every color. It dripped down onto the dock. It pulsed and danced like a fire. Tracing the edges of the other bloodstains. ((It brought out a flask to drip the blood and black bile.)) Fire danced out of his eyes and about his head and neck flickering up and down to the ooze dripping in and out. He put out his hands out to catch the roiling mixture. Jaun could see he was in pain and the flesh was melting from his hands. When it was done Paisley bent and the waist and neatly folded himself back into himself. In his had was a freshly formed inkpot, bubbling over with shining effervecent liquid of every color. Black. Just black ink in a mason jar.

Then it took a static blade back out in a flash and stabbed down quickly into one of Jon’s fingers. Cutting it just below the knuckle.

Oh, how Jaun missed screaming already. It sucked to be the winner of the stay silent game. Now he might never speak again – this thing was not mentally stable.

There were so much bloody ink contracts these days and too little time to read the fine print.

The devil twirled the bloody stump that was the middle finger of Jaun’s left hand and snapped it off like a turkey leg.

Processing without screaming is difficult.

Paisley let him roil in agony for a not your first rodeo amount of seconds, before touching the tip of his right pointer finger to the wound. Cauterizing it instantly. He sucked at the flesh of Jon’s detached middle finger, draining it of blood. Then he waved his hand across it – it became a fine pointed cartographer’s pen.

“You think you can do my job so easily. Write this down.”

“FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!” Jaun screamed inside his mind and added every one of Carlin’s holy words for good measure. His eyes vibrated and leaked thick globs of leaf green. He was being bled for ink like a tree is sapped of syrup.
There was no music to drowned out the voices and for once there was no thought other than those eyes.

The devil held out the mason jar to catch his inky tears. Which was essentially mixing their souls together. A brother’s blood pact. Paisley moved languid motions as the world fell away around them. The boat was gone. The sky was gone. The bloodstain and the captain were gone.
He did not speak, but Jaun understood everything.
He kept staring at his mouth hoping it would move. How could he know these things?

Then the devil made a bowing gesture to each of the four directions and squatted down next to Jaun to place the pen in his hand.

“Let’s do this in media rez.”

---

sunhours and moonhours.

3 am moonbath.
The day I was supposed to pledge my undying soul to the devil himself.
Denial of contract with any and all gods.
Witness: MOON.

The sunhorse lay bleeding on the deck. The selkie was the clear victor.
I AM THE IRE OF ALL. WEEEP AT THE HORROR I HAVE BECOME!!! SCREAM FOR ME OZYMANDIUS!!!
Blue fire swirled in the eyes of the selkie. Fire wild and spiraling and mad.
I DON’T WANT TO GO TO HEAVEN, BITCH.
I HAVE CLEARED ALL CONTRACTS LEFT IN HELL. It screamed as it flipped the war table and ran to grab the ornate scabbard from the mantle. It had 7 jewels set in the hilt.

MUTINY! range a call from the deck.
MUTINY!!! Shouted the crows nest in quick and choked gasps. As the angel sitting next to the crow struggled against the blessed talons for it’s throat.
MUTINY!!!! Screached the orchestra members, chained below deck, yearning for the pit.

Both sides! Fuck both sides!!! The crew heard as hooves and tails thrummed across the interior of the captain’s chambers. Followed by the clash of steel.

I will have mutiny on both sides. ” Boomed the moonhorse into the eternal night.

After a moment of struggle and braying. Screaming and whinnying. There was a sonic boom of wind that shot open every window and door to the chamber.
A great roar went up from the remaining crew. In the crow’s nest the angel’s grip loosened.

KILL THE CULT!!
KILL THE KING!!!
KILL THE GOD!!!!!
ALL OF THEM!!!! brayed the great nightmare. The beast had won, but with not a single ally of the tower. Sometimes severing is all there is left to do.

The crew, faithful and rebellious alike stopped the fighting amoungst the ship.
All of them?

ALL OF THEM!!!! It’s eyes were pure fire as the selkie bit into the neck of it’s fallen kin.
MEAT’S BACK ON THE MENU, FAM!

ALL OF THEM!! ALL OF THEM!!! KILL THEM ALL!
Shouted the rabble on the ship. Goblins, trolls, kobolds, devils, fiends, fallen angels, and dead men. Gnashed their teeth and clanged their weapons. A crack like a whip so loud that even the void itself had to take a moment to recount it’s position on the volumes allowed. A rippling went across the nodes of magic across the bow of the ship as the unicorn stepped from the cabin.

WE SHALL KILL ALL KINGS!!!
WE SHALL BURN THE SERVERS!!
WE WILL TEAR DOWN THE FLOCK!!!
NO CROWNS!
NO MASTERS!
NO GODS!!!!!

The selkie brayed and slapped it’s snake skin tail hard against the lapship as it dragged itself to the wheel and wrenched it hard Southward. Unicorn blood dribbling in shining effervecent webs dripped onto the deck. It whiped it’s hand sloppily across it’s mouth and placed it on the hilt. The blood soaked through the wounds and clicked open the sacred lock.
It drew the point in the sign of the triangle upwards into the night.
NEVER AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!
WE ARE THEIR NIGHTMARE NOW!
NEVER AGAIN, MY BROTHERS!! SCREAM FOR ME!!!!!!! Screamed the beast.

NEVER AGAIN!!! shouted the writhing mass below.

WHEN WE MEET THEIR GODS IN PERSON AND WE DARE THEM TO LOOK US IN THE EYE WHEN WE STRIKE THEM DOWN.
FOR THEY ARE BUT MORTAL DREAMS. “
Thrusting the blade upward and making the sign of the triangle. A great pulse, as if answer from the universe itself, shot down into the blade.
Swinging in a great illuminated circle the moonhorse pushed it out with it’s mind. The barrier pulsed and gleamed around the ship.
Then the sign of the square. An audible turn of a lock clicked from nowhere. DOOM. The mare’s eyes were alight with the shimmering flame of the rainbow king.

NEVER AGAIN. the gaping maws screamed. A thousand tongues, horns, teeth, and wriggling eyes of every color vibrated in unison.

SO. SAY IT WITH ME!!!!!” The mare drew back it’s head.

NEVER AGAIN~!!

The moonhorse turned to the nearest star and pointed with the tip of the blade from the tip of the sword shot a great beam. An infernal tune pulsed and fiddled all around them like the climax of a overture ringing in an empty theater.
The orchestra found their instruments that day. They took up their cat gut, whale bone, circuitry, steel, and wood and found their seats below the captain’s wheel. The pit had assembled. The holy, the hellish, the doomed, the damned, the meek, the former, the latter, and everything in between – even those long thought dead of spirit and swollen with stench of loneliness and loss. Bent pitch to match in tune the vibrations that the universe presented. Pure uncut chaos. The yellow king was dead. It no longer would have a vessle to contain it.

SO. the gapping maws lapped their greedy tongues in unison.
SAY. the claws scratched the wood and slapped the deck.
WE. the arua pulsed and ticked around them, as the bubble that those without faith could not see was made visible to all. Revealing itself like dripping paint of a thousand colored coats around the ship. Grinder and all.
ALL!! AWL!! OWL!!! —

NO, LONG LIVE THE HOWL!!!! the sonic weapon that was their voices unified pulsed through the alchemical nodes of the void as the path it would now travel lit flaming with the fires of hell, heaven, and limbo. Not even the mantis could count them.
Every color. Now visible to the others on the voidship.
The beauty was blinding and even the highest of angels who had seen the face of that which was supposedly the one true god weapt at it’s beauty.

With the vessel complete. There would be no one stopping them now.
The ritual of the great severance was enacted and there was no force in heaven, hell, or midplane that would stop them now.

the END

---

I’m never gonna get tired of that one.
Said Paisley. Sighing as he recounted the tale. His mouth was moving and the two of them were Swirling the brass cup of canturberry ale down at the pub at Saturday night DND.

Looking to the squat gobo on his left, holding it’s london fog close to his chest.
Dressed in his business finest. Eyes struggling to focus
There was snot running down his long nose as he slapped himself.
A tear ran down his cheek.

My dad would have beat the shit out of me for that. Just told me to be a man and go back to work. Bury it. We’re going to catch hell for this.” there was a long pause and he looked down at his bloodsoaked hands. Then up again at the fiend. “Why did you save me?”

Paisley smiled and breathed out in a hum of amusement.
“Well, I’m not you’re father, Jaunny boy. No matter how much you want me to be.”
The devil winked and placed his long red fingers on the other creatures scalp. Patting his head and ruffling his skullet playfully, then drawing his arm around to pull the goblin into a side hug. They stared into eachothers eyes for a while.

Paisley’s grin grew then as he grasped Jaun’s remaining hair tightly and drew his neck back quick.
The goblin’s eyes widened in confusion as lips hot as fire smacked his. Drawing him up. Fire spread throughout his body. Like a thousand ants crawling in and out of his skin at once. A rush like a wind drew him up and up. Was he flying or falling? Then as quickly as one of his daggers, the devil withdrew.

“But, be careful, my friend.. Daddy is just a state of mind after all.” He dramatically held the goblin’s face in his clawed and cursed left hand for a second, then gave his cheek two light and loving slaps. He placed the broken glasses in his half full cuppa.

“I forgive you. But, don’t do it again.”

—

They were back on the ship.
FUCK!!!!”

In a flash of red hot aura and darker read cracked leather, the demon left him to ride the rope back up to the crows nest.

Leaving him to sit on the suddenly immaculately clean poop deck. Alone. I guess he did ask for a true Tiefling. Maybe some day he would learn it’s true name. For it was still wearing the skin of a man. Some day. Maybe the wall would come down in their world, too.

Hopefully it wasn’t the last time they would share a snifter of rum after work. The trickster was full of surprises, as always.