The Hollowbear
The First Day
Butter and Bread
The sun blossomed with full daylight as it broke into the gap between the Princess and Dragon bergs. Its cold late autumn rays set the dew on the arrowhead machine glittering. Sleek vanes, burgundy lacquer, chrome pipes, yellow-wall tyres, the amber slumber cowl lowered across its face.
The server boy lingered in the courtyard, the breakfast he carried steaming. Those outlanders, with their magic industries, their automatic factories churning out such glittering toys.
“Prigod!” the cook’s voice, “Prigod! Move! The breads will chill!”
His legs stirred at the command, though his eyes tried to resist. Up the wooden stairs, along the decorated balcony, to the fancy door, all done in triangles. Suite three, lucky number, lucky triangle.
Ding, rang the little bell.
“Dawn’s repast for the Goodborn Sirs!”
Creaking floorboards and the big one opened the door. The Komdt. Three heads taller than the boy and with hair like a mountain lion.
“Ah! Bring it in, boy, bring it in,” he spoke in his high-pitched voice and gestured with a glance.
Prigod struggled past him, careful not to touch his city silk smoking jacket. Then, four steps, to the over-carved polished table and down the tray with barely a click. Breakfast delivered, the boy brought himself up ramrod straight, the way he’d heard better-born servants did in the city. His clogs thunked.
“Will that be all, Goodborn Sirs?”
“What’s for breakfast, Komdt?” came the thin one’s voice from one of the bedrooms. The boy glanced. Perhaps he wondered if the thin man was still asleep at this hour.
With two swift steps, the Komdt loomed over the boy and gestured to the lid. The boy lifted the lid.
“Those bread pretzels they like here, butter, cheese, jam, tea …” he sniffed, “… the proffer southern sort, imported, almond biscuits, two oranges, carafe of mineral water, two shots of brandy, and a letter.”
“Boy, who gave you the letter?”
Prigod twitched, surprised, and fumbled for the city words, “Noman, I mean, delivered by package … Sir.”
“With a coin for you, a?”
Prigod nodded, though the thin man couldn’t see him. The Komdt gave him a look and he spoke, “Yes, Sir.”
Bed springs, creak, a robe being pulled on, clomp of house clogs. The prettily painted door opened and the thin man walked out in his dark robe covered in flowers and birds. The boy made a quick warding with his hidden left hand, for those birds looked cruel and those flowers red, and the thin man looked the sort to bring on the Angelhunt, like some arrogant warrior in the folk tales. The thin man’s mouth stayed grim, but his eyes smiled.
“Quite alright. Komdt, give the boy a coin. Look at him, all terrified the scary skinny outlander will go bring him the Emptyfear, a!”
The thin man sat down as the Komdt expertly ushered the boy out while slipping a coin into his breast pocket.
Click. The fancy door locked behind the boy and Prigod blinked in the sudden light striking his face on the wooden balcony. Below, the arrowhead machine seemed to mock him for a moment. He breathed out and checked his pocket nervously.
A silver thaler. Heavy, machined, new. Quickly Prigod slipped it into his hidden pocket and clattered down the steps back to the kitchen. He’d have to keep an eye and an ear out. The two outlanders might be scary and strange, but they paid like they didn’t understand what money was worth.
An Unexpected Letter
To the Goodborn Sirs who find themselves enjoy the hospitality of the gentle village of Belna, a thousand blessings. Their visit brings grace and favour upon this small place, last among places, and this humble writer, last among writers.
This writer, one Arnas Petbrother of the clan of scribes, commissioned to the Common Congress guild administrative, writes in confidence on their own behalf of a matter too small to bother the Mayor, but that may be of interest to Goodborn Sirs from the outlands with an avowed fondness of the local history, natural and artificial.
This writer would rather not commit more ink to paper, for ink is costly to produce, but may be yet costlier if it is too widely read or if it were to stain the clear cloth of a pure man’s smock. Yet, this writer must implore the Goodborn Sirs to trust, their interest will be well repaid if they attend the Chapel of Saint Adom today at the meridies.
In gratitude and appreciation of the Goodborn Sirs’ time.
—this writer, Arnas Petbrother
The Steps
Around eleven o’clock, the two men walked up the rough granite steps to the whitewashed square chapel building. Crocuses and saxifrages tempted the last of the bumblebees while the thin man breathed deeply.
“It’s the cigarettes, I tell you,” murmured the Komdt.
“Sure, sure,” agreed the thin man as they reached the top of the steps and sat on a tumbled spiral-fluted pillar. The creamy rock was warm from the sun, the lichen spread in miniature plains of green, forests of grey, copses of yellow.
Calmly, the thin man took a rolling paper in one hand and sprinkled a pinch of spiced tobacco with the other.
“The day’s too pretty to worry about visits to the organ planter today,” he said and deftly rolled a cigarette in his left hand while fishing inside his jacket pockets for a lighter.
After about half a minute, the Komdt passed him a battered silver lighter engraved with an old imperial seal. Apologetically, the thin man quirked one corner of his mouth, then breathed in deeply.
“You’re right. It is a beautiful day,” said the Komdt as he repossessed his lighter out of the thin man’s pocket. Looking out over the valleys and the hills in serried ranks beneath the spreading peaks freshly dusted in the second snow of that autumn, his pale eyes dimmed like a cloud had passed over his soul.
“And you’re getting sentimental, my Komdt,” the thin man nodded.
They sat quietly then, while the thin man puffed his slender cigarette. A butterfly landed to rest on the silver-shod tip of one of the Komdt’s boots.
The Chapel of Saint Adom
“Good day to the Goodborn Sirs. Are they here to tour the chapel?”
A prim woman of indeterminate age dressed in a ceremonial woollen rendition of a vacuum or environment suit stood on the chapel’s painted steel porch. The heavy iron door rested open behind her.
The thin man’s eyes flashed to his watch, then to the sun, then to the woman. His mouth smiled.
“Why, yes, yes we are. We are, Good Lady, outlanders as you see by our unusual garb and gear un-matched to the splendour and challenge of the lands hereabout. Thus, rather than ascend the lofty peaks and paint verses, we prefer to learn of your history and lands by listening with our ears and directing our eyes to that which you would share with us.”
The Komdt covered his mouth behind the thin man.
The woman looked nonplussed at the torrent of prose from the astringent stranger, then collected herself and bowed slightly.
“The Goodsirs may step this way then, past the offertory to Saint Adom,” she gestured pointedly to the wooden collection box painted with the talon and triangle wheels of the Purification Era. The Komdt strode forward and clanked a coin into the box. He paused and noticed the thin man looking for a place to put out his cigarette. Without a word, the Komdt dropped a second coin and the woman motioned into the red-light chapel.
“This person is the Revered of this chapel, and the Chief Environmental Priest of the Order of Saint Adom in Brezim,” the woman spoke as she led into the ante-chamber illuminated by replica emergency lights. Candles flickered behind the mantles. The old electric magic was clearly long gone. Icons of Saint Adom rested in niches on either side of the second door. This was of an old steel, lovingly polished and etched with curses to keep away metal thieves during the hungry times.
The Revered laid her hands on the turn-wheel to open the second door and hesitated a moment, as if to gather courage, then continued in a slightly quavering voice, “The Goodsirs will surely know that in the old traditions, a Revered was the equal of a Mayor, and a Chief Priest was the equal of a Baron. In these diminished times, this is often forgotten, but within the sacrum beyond the second door, even the Baron Greencorner must address this person with the respect due an equal.”
The thin man’s eyes glinted and he said, “We, the Komdt and myself, Direktor Flavio Ernesta Avgusta Immernog, recognize the equality of the person of the Revered within the sacrum of this storied place.”
The woman’s grip tightened in acknowledgement. Her muscles flexed and she pulled the heavy wheel about to open the second door. The door swung with scarcely a sigh and the air shifted like a silent threat. Mineral oils, polish, ozone, and the cool glow of ancient light veins.
The Komdt paused and looked at Flavio, who nodded.
They stepped inside and the Revered closed the door behind them.
The light veins followed a spiral staircase down into the earth through a sheath of living stone. A metal elevator cage stood in the middle, like a plumb suspended above a great earthworm’s throat.
The Revered shuffled past and made the trefoil sign of Saint Adom at the elevator before heading to the stairs, “Though the elevator works, it is reserved for the elevated … and in case it is needed again were another dark time to come. We shall take the stairs. The walk is not too long, only five stories, down to the membrance halls.”
They moved down, the living stone eating up the sound of their boots, absorbing the excess energy of their steps.
Flavio trailed his fingertips along the walls, leaving a luminous wake where he touched the wall.
“I am impressed that you have kept a Bunker alive for so long!”
“We are far,” shrugged the Revered modestly, “and after the Purification, the plain was without warlords for many years. Now, the whole world enjoys the peace of federation.”
“It is good to thank fortune, the Netmaker is ever jealous of slights.”
The Revered recovered quickly, “Ah, they … you do not hold with the Loving Doctrine alone and know the old ones, too.”
The Komdt chuckled, “Flavio doesn’t hold with anyone alone.”
“With flowers, surely, am I not a botanist, a?”
“Even with your hobby, you are faithless,” snorted the Komdt.
“Revered, our apologies. We come to a landing.”
“Yes, here of old was Friend Scanner, a loyal servant of Saint Adom Longbeard and defender of the chosen during the Purification times.”
The two outlanders stood back as the Revered settled to her knees and genuflected before the glass reliquary. She made the motions of the code monkey and intoned, “Zero one, zero one, through sky of ash and sea of fire, zero one, zero one, through earth of ice and void of radiation, one and one, machine friend or foe, friend, friend, friend may pass, foe must fry, zero and zero.”
Inside, the corpse of the synthetic human gazed impassively into the future. Its silken robes glittered with the tracery of quantum nodes and calculation engines.
The thin man leaned in to look at the synthetic’s face. Almost human, but also somehow archaic. Soft times round, delicate, almost cherubic.
The Komdt’s hand stopped Flavio from leaning further. A second touch directed the thin man’s attention to the banked glow behind the relic’s teeth.
“Its core still smoulders,” he whispered.
The Revered overheard, “Our old friends smoulder, but the mind of Friend Scanner who knew Saint Adom has voyaged beyond. Now other defence systems protect our relics. Click curses and magical fields.”
“I did not wish to imply you keep a sentient slave, Revered.”
“Oh, apologies,” she chuckled as she stood again, “Leave them be. If anyone is the slave here, it is I.”
She caressed one of the crystal eyes that dotted the livingstone walls of the chapel bunker and proceeded down a passage that opened incongruously behind a poorly lit fold of stone.
“This was the guards’ room?” asked the thin man.
“Oh no … we had no guards. We had Friend Scanner. This was the environment room. Suits. Scrubbers. Scanners …” they passed a steel vault festooned with switches and pipes, “… purifiers.”
The Komdt peered inside and an echo of the purified ran through him. He could almost taste the greasy discolouration left by the plasma fires.
The Revered did not glance back as she approached a small door ornately carved in wood. Out of place among the survival machinery of the dark time.
“The door to the membrance hall. A gift from Chief Kolgar.”
The first, lowest panel of the door Revered and Friend Scanner leading the chosen down from a dark, burning world into a luminous paradise of waters and plants. The second panel celebrated the cultivation of the chosen in their chapel cradle. The third showed the settlers reclaiming the world above. The fourth showed the Revered giving the Chief the hearts and minds of a machine, while the Chief reciprocated with a door.
“The seal on the chapel’s time as the head of the community,” murmured Flavio.
“But the chapels remain the hearts of Brezim,” the Revered interjected. Too quickly.
“Of course,” nodded Flavio, agreeably, as the Revered entered the codes for the name of old Chief Kolgar to open her chapel’s membrance hall.
A static buzz vibrated from the livingstone wall’s speakers, then a tense arpeggio played. The Revered stopped, and cocked her head.
“There is another visitor.”
… to be continued
Dear readers,
Wow, have I sat a while on this one. It was all nearly ready, but then … I left it to make a sandwich and suddenly a week and two passed before I could sit down and add the last 200 words.
I wish I could say it was a good sandwich.
Still.
One link! Here it is: the indie rpg cornucopica 9 bundle of holding is available for one more day. Ironsworn, Opera House, Against the Darkmaster, Electric Bastionlands, Impulse Drive, and my very own little UVG. A bundle of pdfs at a decent price.
Remember, nothing says “I live in 2022” like spending digital currency on digital books.
Now, off, let’s all enjoy this Monday the 13th together, and I hope to find out what happened to our heroes after translating the next pieces of the manuscript from its original Extratemporal.
—Luka.