The Hogman's Homunculi and the Angelwing Massacre. VERY EARLY PREVIEW!
Trigger warning for alien genitalia
Hello all, just for shits and giggles I've decided to share the first chapter of the novel I’m working on. This is only lightly edited so it could well change a fair bit before release and is likely even more riddled with typos than my usual posts.
If there’s enough interest (unlikely) I might share a few subsequent chapters as well.
Also, This Burdened Clay is still 99p, but I’ll be bumping the price up in the next few days so get it while it’s cheap from whatever store you like.
Enjoy!
EDIT: Chapters two and three are now available here.
Chapter One: Interspecies Funeral Faux Pas
Another day, another funeral to which Prince Darov had bequeathed his royal presence. He was quite accustomed to the particulars by now: the bowed heads and shuffling feet; the murmured condolences; the gazes sliding away from awkward eye contact; the firing of the corpse from the neodymium boson cannon; the loved ones galloping after said corpse to tear it asunder and gobble it down, the outer brain saved for the family matriarch to spew into the maws of the younglings in a sort of cognitive soup.
Darov performed a squinting gurn as he stifled a yawn. And watched the dead Gliesan being respectfully but messily consumed by the nearest and dearest a few hundred yards away. Poor goose-headed bastard, he thought. Another victim of the fungal horror wreaking carnage upon the quadrupedal masters of the planet Lemuria. It bloomed in blue-green pustules on their bulbous, roasted goose-like heads. Humans were mercifully unaffected.
This was Darov’s third Gliesan funeral in as many weeks, and the novelty had waned. Even the baroque flesh totem was no longer a source of awe, although he noted with mild interest that this one included what looked like a few human eyeballs poking out here and there. Normally the Gliesans cobbled together a bespoke ceremonial totem for each funeral, but this one had just been left here from the last one. The flies were enjoying it.
Darov couldn’t complain too much, he supposed, for the meadow overlooking Honey Cliff Bay was as nice a spot as any for observing an alien corpse being torn to pieces and cannibalised. They were gathered in a sunny spot of flowers and long honeygrass, nestled between forest and the crumbling sea cliffs, and a marquee had been set up for the wake a little ways up the hill. Beyond the cliff’s edge, pterakites launched from their crags to spread their magnificent quad-wings and soar about on the updrafts.
The blood-drenched kin returned to the funeral, the adults wiping gore from their claws with the blank-eyed younglings following after in silence.[i] His Pungence the Exarch-Deacon resumed the alien liturgy and the human translator faithfully (as far as Darov knew) interpreted into High Denovian for the humans present.
Darov held a silk handkerchief to his nose and mouth, for the serenity of the locale was rather undermined by the stench. Gliesan pheromones, blood, offal, brains, turds, and Gods knew what else made for a ripe old mix. Not for the first time that day, he cursed his brother’s name. Josep should be here with aching calves for this foul spectacle. He was Prince Scion after all, heir to the Cartreffi throne, and was built for the oily schmoozing of royal duty. Darov was merely a spare, in case the goose-head fancier general was flattened by stampeding wild hogs or succumbed to elephantiasis of the bollocks. He tittered at the thought but disguised the titter as a cough under the beady glare of the Deacon.
His Pungence made further farting and chirruping noises, and the translator did her thing.
Chirrup plurp reeeee!
“He is become we and we are become he. His scent is our scent and our nostrils dilate at his passing.”
Burble burble.
“Neither his flesh nor his piquant bodily fluids shall know the torment of those who came before.”
Fart toot-toot gurgle toot.
“Not the torment of the Prophet ailing on the slopes of Mount Crag, nor the suffering of Yukiang the bird-whale crossing the abyss of space.”
And then something about the Aftermoon and freedom from subjugation which Darov didn’t really listen to, and so on and so on.
As the funeral rites entered (hopefully) the final stretch, many of the adult aliens stamped and snorted in a state of heightened emotion, while the younglings stood about gormlessly. One of the latter had a revolting string of something organic hanging limply from its mouth, the black eyes expressionless in the wrinkly, pre-Awakening head.[ii]
Darov leaned into the man next to him, nodded towards the youngling and smirked.
“Is he going to finish that, do you think?” he whispered. The stringy stuff disappeared into the youngling’s mouth with a pop, like a string of spaghetti. “Yep, there it goes. Waste not, want not.”
The man, a fellow called Muzowski, hissed at Darov. “Comport yourself with dignity, sir.”
Bloody humourless imperials.
Muzowski, Gods take him, looked radiant despite his sixtyish standardised years of age, as did most of the humans of the Imperial delegation. Some were from Trappist Prime itself, lawmakers, Imperial Secretaries of This or That, glorified administrators and whatnot, plus an assortment of generals, consuls, magnates and hangers-on from all corners of the empire. Half a dozen Gliesans sported ugly pustules around the arse-mouth,[iii] Darov noted, likely symptoms of the fungal plague. If it penetrated through to their inner brain or clogged the breathing spiracles they would be soundly buggered. Oh well.
Distracted by such idle thoughts, Darov forgot himself and yawned loudly.
Sudden quietude brought him to rude awareness like a bucket of icy water. Everyone glared his way.
His Pungence blurted something in Gliesan, shook his claws and flossed them in and out of their sheaths, as if preparing to slice something large into many pieces.
“May I continue?” the translator translated.
Darov cleared his throat and thrust up his chin. “You may.”
Though not prone to self-flagellation, Darov’s cheeks burned. Muzowski was right, Other take him. He—Darov—was representing his mother and the Royal House of Winwick. He let go a tiny nasal sigh and resolved to behave himself.
Ah not long now… should be a decent buffet afterwards, at least. Say what you like about the Gliesans, they lay on a good spread.
Judging from the agitation of the Gliesan mourners and the impassioned tone of the translator, the liturgy was reaching its climax. The Deacon raised his neck-arms[iv] to the cosmos and hooted like some kind of organic alarm system while the translator reeled off poignant verses on the nature of mortality and the hereafter. Aside from the translator’s, all the human mouths remained silent, eyes downcast, while the Gliesans jigged and stomped faster, faster, transported in their grief.
Amid all this, an aging female Gliesan dropped to the ground and thrashed about violently in the grass. Foam flecked her arse-mouth and her limbs contorted in spastic origami. To Darov’s confusion, the crowd utterly ignored the stricken alien’s obvious distress; a human general from Trappist-C merely stifled a wince as an errant claw lacerated his shin. Blood spotted his uniform trousers.
Darov strode forward, pushed aside Muzowski and a little Gliesan fawn and dropped down to one knee beside the ailing female. There were human gasps of astonishment all around.
Pampered imperials, Darov thought smugly, never seen a man of action before? Watch and learn.
“Stand back, all of you, the lady requires assistance.”
The victim’s head deepened to an alarming shade of lilac, then her whole body stilled and stiffened in apparent rigor mortis. Sunlight dazzled madly from the claws which were unsheathed and all catawampus, as if a mirror had been frozen midair in its moment of destruction. Her heart had surely given out.
Darov twisted the limbs out of his way—they were stiff and shape-retentive, like thick wires—and took a guess where her heart was. His equerry would know, would also know the basics of CPR probably, but Hissaq was not here.
No matter, a Prince does not hesitate.
The organ’s location would be analogous to a human’s, he figured, roughly between the front limbs. There was a pale line in the flesh there, he noted. A medical scar? Perhaps she had a known cardiac problem. He interlinked his fingers and took aim.
Darov pumped vigorously on the abdomen, suppressing his disgust at the clammy weirdness of the alien skin. He counted in his head to keep the rhythm: ONE miss a shitty, TWO miss a shitty, THREE miss a shitty. He considered performing mouth to mouth resuscitation but glanced at the yellow fluid trickling from the sphincter-like mouth and thought better of it. One can only do so much.
“Don’t you die on me, madam.” he crowed heroically yet cordially.
Dimly, he realised the gasps (and toots and gurgles) of surprise from around him had morphed into a noise more indicative of disapproval
Outrage, perhaps.
Fury, even.
Shadows of encroaching members of the crowd fell upon him, and a rising heat on the skin of his neck spoke to a vague but growing disquiet. He frowned and his monobrow tilted down over the bridge of his nose, like a board chopped in half by a martial artist. But he pressed on, literally, over and over.
The patient juddered. The pale line on her abdomen yawned open and ejaculated forceful squirts of a jellylike substance directly into Darov’s face and all over his royal tunic. It was thick, grotesquely sweet and sticky. Some of it went in his mouth.
Darov barely had time to gag before human hands and Gliesan paws were heaving him away and thrusting him to the ground, leaving him sprawled in the grass with curses despoiling the air all around. Delicate leaves of honeygrass rippled prettily in the breeze and tickled his earlobes.
A Gliesan, a massive male, loomed over Darov with his claws unsheathed. For a moment the two of them formed a surreal tableau; the six limbed alien monster looming over the handsome prince. It dawned on Darov that there was a substantial possibility that within the next few seconds he would be cleaved in two or eviscerated. Perhaps both. Before this realisation could mature into outright terror the seizure victim came to life with a tortured bellow, scrambled to her feet, and galloped away across the meadow and into the sombre woods. A couple more Gliesans followed.
The affronted crowd calmed somewhat and the Deacon burbled quietly, head buried in his paws. The translator copied the gesture. “Oh, the shame of it, the shame of it,” she said, with feeling.
Darov clambered to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster and dabbed his silk handkerchief at the gluey stuff on his face. He stared about, utterly bewildered. All eyes were on him.
“What?” he demanded.
The Gliesans watched him and stood very, very still. Darov vaguely understood this to be a bad thing when it came to Gliesans for they were, evolutionarily speaking, ambush predators. In the eyes of the sons and daughters of Old Earth, he saw undisguised loathing.
Led by the Deacon, the crowd huddled together and held a conference to which Darov was, quite clearly, not invited. The prince waited in a state of haughty impatience coloured with an unfamiliar taint of fear, and for a moment wondered if he could simply walk away. Just leave. He remained where he was, however, waiting for the protracted debate to conclude. Occasionally a bulbous alien head or hairy human one turned momentarily in his direction before returning to the huddle.
Eventually the translator broke from the group and spoke to a space some distance to Darov’s left, while referring to him in the third person. “The prince has committed a grotesque violation, the seriousness of which cannot be undone nor forgotten. However, in recognition of his cognitive retardation, he may join the festival of mournful consumption, providing he remains silent and consumes his victuals alone.”
Flies buzzed around the flesh totem and Darov focussed on the noise. It seemed to swell in his mind to a white-noise crescendo which blocked out all thought. There was a comfort in it.
The crowd dispersed and drifted away in silence towards the marquee up the hill.
Muzowski lingered a distance behind the crowd and with a resigned jerk of the chin, gestured for Darov to follow.
“Well,” Darov said as he caught up, “that was, erm…that was…yes. Say, Muzowski, may I ask you something…your name is Muzowski isn’t it? You’re a soldierly type, are you not?”
“Not quite, sir, I am a prison governor by trade. I oversee Vengeance Incorporated, the empire’s largest network of penal asteroids.”
“Oh, how interesting,” Darov replied, slipping into the and what do you do? mode of royal interlocution. “And what, pray, are penile asteroids?”
“Penal, sir, as in a place for people who cannot be trusted in civilised company.”
“I see,” Darov said, though he did not see, and he wondered if he was being made fun of. “Very good, very good. Now, much to my bafflement, I seem to have caused something of a ruckus just now, my good fellow. If you were to enlighten me as to the exact provenance of said indiscretion—which I assure was unintended, its visceral severity notwithstanding—I would consider myself in your debt.”
Muzowski sighed, stepped ahead of Darov and turned to face him, stopping the prince in his tracks. He raised a finger in the air for each morsel of knowledge he imparted.
“Number one, sir: the old female was not unwell. She was experiencing the aedoo, the Gliesan grief seizure, a natural and, in point of fact, sacred state of being in Gliesan culture.” Another of Muzowski’s fingers popped up. “Two: even if she had been sick, there exists throughout the Gliesan Dominion a strict proscription against medical intervention of any kind. It is taboo, haram, verboten, call it what you will.
“Three: even if factors one and two were not the case, you missed her heart entirely. Gliesan hearts are located between the rear legs and slightly to the right. You were pounding away upon the Gliesan’s genital opening, and the stimulation caused her to disgorge what was probably, given her age, her last batch of egg-spawn. The last of her finite store of precious gametes. The sheer sacrilege of what you have done is difficult to fathom. Oh, and number four—”
Here another of Muzowski’s fingers popped up, and it would not have seemed unfitting if the unfurling of the digit were accompanied by a crack of thunder. “The insulted Gliesan is the great-aunt of the Lemurian Governor himself. Political ramifications must surely follow. It’s a wonder you were not torn apart on the spot.”
“I see,” Darov croaked, and he did see.
Muzowski turned and walked away, and Darov trotted to keep up.
“Far be it for me to lecture the rulers of backwater, forgive me, outlying planets,” Muzowski said over his shoulder, “but perhaps it would be wise to leave this kind of thing to Prince Josep, while Her Majesty is engaged with improving the lives of all humans of Lemuria. Josep is a natural diplomat, I am told.”
“Mmm,” Darov said.
“Your skills perhaps lie in the humbler, but no less important matters of state. Opening new blacksmith workshops, for instance, or bestowing trinkets of gratitude upon charitably inclined peasants.”
Darov bristled but could not disagree. Not for the first time that day, he wished his equerry, Hissaq, could have stood in for him somehow. Even Hissaq’s lumpy little hog wrangling friend Tavian wouldn’t have made such a hash of things.
He stumbled on a little divot and stopped, watching Muzowski’s pert little form dwindle away up the hill and disappear into the shining white marquee to join the others. Finally alone, he released a long, slow breath from his puffed cheeks and allowed his chin to descend towards his chest. His sword and shield—the refinement and cool detachment of royalty—had failed him.
A thought consumed him, a silent plea. If he had had the ability to do so, he would have sent the plea through the aether directly into the minds of all the Gliesans of Lemuria, to the Gliesan Dominion entire, and to the austere rulers of the Trappist empire. Just leave us alone. Leave us to our hogs and turnips. We were happy enough.
He pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulders as a chill breeze kicked up. And above the darkening woods hung three moons in syzygy, and the waters of Lemuria swelled in their sympathy.
Footnotes
[i] Unlike the adult form, Gliesan younglings are essentially automata, lacking emotion and what philosophers of Old Earth called ‘qualia,’ the experience of being alive. A Gliesan only gains full sentience and a personality upon his or her Awakening. This is a complex process which happens during adolescence, involving the symbiotic union of two distinct species. See next endnote.
[ii] Gliesan young have wrinkly little heads and bulbous black eyes, whereas adults have tiny black eyes and big bulbous heads. The transformation is known as the Awakening and occurs as follows: adolescent pheromones attract the attention of floating, gossamer-like creatures called aetherbells, which populate the skies of every planet colonised by the Gliesans. An aetherbell lands and envelopes the Gliesan’s cranium, gradually hardening and forming anatomical connections with the host, until it is effectively a new head for the Gliesan. It is from this point that the Gliesan develops the outer brain and with it, emotion and personality.
[iii] During the Awakening, the aetherbell’s anus becomes the Gliesan’s new mouth. The original mouthparts transmigrate down the throat and morph to become a powerful crushing tool, allowing adult Gliesan’s to consume almost anything.
[iv] Very roughly speaking, Gliesans resemble the llamas of Old Earth, except they are hairless and have two arms protruding from the neck. The neck-arms terminate in four fearsome, retractable claws.
Ok, this was really funny!