Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2010-01-10 03:55 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2010-01-10 03:55 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News - Castle Down, chapter 1
Title: Castle Down (1/6)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Jon/c!Stephen, Rob, Ed, Kristen, Larry/John-O
Warnings: Fantasy violence; slavery, past abuse; complete disregard for historical accuracy.
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. (Alas.)
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
This is a fantasy AU, which means the setting is vaguely Renaissance-y, plus magic. Featuring slave!"Stephen", protective!Jon, the wizard version of Wilmore-Oliver Investigates, an occasionally porous fourth wall, an evil plot, some unicorns, and a whole lot of magic gems.
As you might have guessed, it's ridiculously self-indulgent. Basically, I woke up one day and said to myself, "You know what I could use more of in my life? Magic slavefic. With lots of shiny things."
Decorative capitals are from Daily Drop Cap. Title is from a lovely Emilie Autumn song. For all the chapters, see here.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
a-da!" cried Corddry, emerging from a shack with a green glass bottle held triumphantly aloft in one hand. "This proves they abandoned this site in a hurry. They left the booze!"
"Oh, man, that's some vintage stuff right there," pronounced Helms, inspecting the trophy. "What do you say, Captain? Can we put the raid on hold and have a little victory celebration?"
"Stick to your orders, guys," replied Jon, scanning the horizon out of sheer nervous habit for the hundredth time.
"You're no fun," protested Corddry, though he didn't make a move on the bottle. "I can see your ring from here, and it isn't glowing at all."
"Exactly!" agreed Helms. "We won this one! Right?"
Jon didn't bother to look at the ring, inlaid with its handy sapphire that lit up when danger was imminent. The thing may have been standard military issue, but Old Man Stewart frequently shook his fist at people who relied on magic over their own common sense. "We won the battle, but there's still a war on," he said firmly. "If we get wasted now, there'll be an ambush while we're passed out, and we'll all wake up with Vulpine swords in our backs. Focus on finding the good stuff. We can take advantage later."
Corddry huffed a sigh, but Helms looked impressed. "That's some thinking, right there," he said. "No wonder you're the boss."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
hatever else you can say about it (and many people have), war makes for great business.
Obviously you can't fight one without weapons, armor, mounts, and a dozen different enchantments just to counter the standard ones your enemy will be packing. But after your army is equipped and sent out, it still behaves like any other consumer base. It needs food. Shelter. Medical care. Someone to do the washing.
Jon didn't know the history of this particular settlement. It might have been on the decline when the troops moved in, or it might have been thriving. Either way, when Vulpis had occupied it, the place had become an army town.
And now it was Her Majesty's property, and completely deserted except for Jon's soldiers picking over the remains.
They had some warning, he decided. We haven't met a soul. They had just enough time to get out, but not enough time to pack. Or maybe they had time but didn't know it, and decided not to take the risk.
While Corddry, Helms, and the others argued over whatever trinket they had found this time, or, more likely, who got the next bottle of wine, Jon headed for the largest of the little houses. The Vulpine commander would have commandeered no other. If anything of strategic importance had been left behind, Jon would find it there.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
blue flicker appeared in Jon's ring as he reached for the door handle. He pulled it open to release a cloud of smoke, thick with the smell of burned meat.
Slipping inside, he dropped to the floor, where the air was clear enough to see the flames licking their way out of the hearth—and the pitcher on the far side of the room, its handle inlaid with a small but well-polished ruby. Jon crawled across the sooty floor, lifted the pitcher from its shelf, and began to pour.
The flames hissed and sputtered in protest, but there was more than enough water contained by the holding spell to douse them all.
Once he had kicked the last sparks from the hearth and the charred remains of cupboards, Jon surveyed the scene with dismay. There was nothing useful left here but firewood.
At least the room had another door.
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
eyond the door lay a bedchamber, sparsely decorated but clean and neat.
The man in it was so still that Jon's eyes nearly passed over him.
He was no soldier, that was clear. Only a servant or a slave would be kneeling mutely beside the bed. Jon glanced at his ring, just in case; there was a faint spark in it, fading fast. No more than would have been triggered by the smoke.
The stranger didn't even move as Jon took a few steps closer. His bowed head obscured his features, but he had fluffy brown hair and a slight point to one of his ears. But only the one.
What in the world was he doing here?
"Are you crazy?" exclaimed Jon abruptly. (The man's head jerked upward, the first sign of life he had shown.) "That room was on fire! You could have burned to death! What are you doing just sitting here?"
The stranger just stared, eyes huge.
"You can talk," snapped Jon, irritated. His own magical abilities would have fit in a thimble with room to spare, but he could at least tell that this man was not a mute.
"Did Papa Bear send you?" asked the stranger.
He was speaking Vulpin, which took some effort to follow, but it took neither effort nor magic to hear the hope in his voice.
"I . . . was sent to get . . . things of value," replied Jon in his own careful Vulpin. "That includes you." It wasn't exactly a lie. It just neatly avoided the fact that he had no idea who 'Papa Bear' was.
The other man bowed his head again, but not quickly enough to hide his smile. "I was sitting here, sir, because Papa Bear told me not to get up. I can get up if you want me to."
"Yeah, you're probably pretty stiff," agreed Jon, before switching back: "How long do you sit there?"
The barest hesitation, then, confidently: "Six hours and twenty-one minutes, sir."
Jon let out a whistle of appreciation. "Get up, then!"
The stranger tried. Unsurprisingly, his legs wobbled beneath him. Jon was at his side in an instant, offering support, and was met again with that wide-eyed stare. If this man had any training in how to shield his feelings, he certainly wasn't using it: Jon could feel surprise and fear rolling off of him like a heavy fog off the sea.
"It's okay," he said. "You can lean on me . . . what's your name?"
"Stephen, sir."
"Stephen," repeated Jon. "It's okay, Stephen."
Stephen. A Vulpine name. This wasn't a foreign prisoner of war, then, fluke round ear or not. He was just a hapless native-born slave that had gotten left behind.
Well, technically, Stephen was now his foreign prisoner of war.
"Come on," he said gruffly. In his own language, he added, more than half to himself, "I think we could both use a strong drink."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
o," said Schaal, plonking herself down next to Jon at the fire, "if he was a slave, does that make him a POW, or spoils of war?"
"Neither," replied Jon, who had been thinking about little else for the entire ride. "He's a free man. Just because he was a slave in Vulpis doesn't mean we have to recognize it."
They had marched until it got dark, covering perhaps two-thirds of the distance to the Castle Central before they stopped to set up camp. Schaal, who pulled double duty as innocent young maiden fair and resident firebug, had sung so beautifully that the normally shy forest animals had come out of hiding to listen, then started the campfire on which to roast them for dinner.
"Bet he didn't exactly greet you as a liberator, though," she mused. "Have you tried the sparrow? It's delicious."
"I've had plenty, thanks. He hasn't tried to run away, so I hope he realizes he's better off with us."
As a precaution, Jon had tethered one of Stephen's hands to his mount at the beginning of the march. This seemed pretty silly in hindsight: not only had Stephen made no attempt to run, he hadn't said a word in protest, even when they had walked for several miles and he was beginning to stumble over his own feet. At last Jon had noticed, and convinced him to ride for a while.
"Maybe he's just tired. Or maybe he's biding his time, and planning to sneak off while it's dark." She glanced across the flames to where Stephen sat quietly on a log beside the bickering Corddry and Helms. Other soldiers were scattered around the campsite: taking care of the unicorns, laying out their bedrolls, finishing their dinners, keeping watch. "Although he won't get far if he doesn't eat anything."
"He hasn't eaten yet?"
"Haven't you been paying attention? I went to all that trouble to make this meal and he hasn't touched a bite."
"Well, why not?"
"I dunno," drawled Schaal. "Maybe he doesn't think he's allowed?"
"What kind of barbarians does he think we are?" grumbled Jon, heaving himself off of his own log. "Of course he's allowed to eat. We're not torturers. I'll be right back."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
an we do our dramatic foreshadowing bit, already?" demanded Oliver, flicking another handful of powder onto the fire. The puff of green smoke that resulted didn't actually mean anything; it was just more interesting than nothing. "What this story really needs right now is some foreshadowing."
Across the cavern, Wilmore cracked an eyelid. "Careful, John. The fourth wall's fragile around here."
"Oh, go back to sleep," sighed Oliver. "And it's Featherwick."
He paced across the floor, onyx-black and worn smooth as glass by hundreds of years of such pacing (or possibly by a polishing spell twenty years ago, but Oliver preferred the more interesting explanation), to tap a bank of amethysts with a tiny hammer. These particular gems never had any particularly interesting harmonics, but at least they were pretty.
One of the notes soured.
Grimacing, Oliver shook the off-key ring from his head and shuffled around the amethysts. Had to be a crack somewhere, or maybe one of them had got dislodged. All he had to do was find the flaw.
He gave the crystals another experimental tap...
...and a jangling cacophony of very very wrong with the world screamed through his bones.
"Larry!" yelped Oliver: quite unnecessarily, as he stumbled back straight into Wilmore's waiting arms. The normally placid man looked ashen; both of them cringed instinctively away from the fading echo of the noise.
"Man, I sure hope that wasn't anything we did," muttered Wilmore at last, in the closest approximation of drollery he could manage at that moment. "Or else Her Majesty is going to be very, very not amused."
♢ ♘ ♢ ☯ ♢ ♘ ♢
oonlight, cool and blue, filtered through the flap of the tent. Stephen stared at the dust motes floating in the shaft of air just beyond his nose.
It wasn't his place to question why Papa Bear had given him away. It just wasn't. But why couldn't it have been to someone a little more...statuesque? Papa Bear himself was massive, majestic, not to be trifled with. This man was probably half his height. Even if he did have a full head of hair.
Focus on the positive, Stephen ordered himself. The man had hair; that was a plus. So was the fact that he had fed Stephen promptly. And the fact that he addressed Stephen in the right language. Stephen hadn't picked up a thing from the conversations around him all day; he had bitten his tongue to stop from shouting: You're in Vulpis. Speak Vulpin!
The man had also made Stephen ride his unicorn for a while, a fact which Stephen was unsure whether to chalk up as a plus or a minus. After all, proper leaders didn't share the marks of their status with their pets. What kind of crazy mixed-up world would you get if you didn't keep even that much semblance of order?
On the other hand, his feet had been awfully sore. And the unicorn's name was Rainbow.
Stephen decided to count it as a plus.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Jon/c!Stephen, Rob, Ed, Kristen, Larry/John-O
Warnings: Fantasy violence; slavery, past abuse; complete disregard for historical accuracy.
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. (Alas.)
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
This is a fantasy AU, which means the setting is vaguely Renaissance-y, plus magic. Featuring slave!"Stephen", protective!Jon, the wizard version of Wilmore-Oliver Investigates, an occasionally porous fourth wall, an evil plot, some unicorns, and a whole lot of magic gems.
As you might have guessed, it's ridiculously self-indulgent. Basically, I woke up one day and said to myself, "You know what I could use more of in my life? Magic slavefic. With lots of shiny things."
Decorative capitals are from Daily Drop Cap. Title is from a lovely Emilie Autumn song. For all the chapters, see here.
a-da!" cried Corddry, emerging from a shack with a green glass bottle held triumphantly aloft in one hand. "This proves they abandoned this site in a hurry. They left the booze!""Oh, man, that's some vintage stuff right there," pronounced Helms, inspecting the trophy. "What do you say, Captain? Can we put the raid on hold and have a little victory celebration?"
"Stick to your orders, guys," replied Jon, scanning the horizon out of sheer nervous habit for the hundredth time.
"You're no fun," protested Corddry, though he didn't make a move on the bottle. "I can see your ring from here, and it isn't glowing at all."
"Exactly!" agreed Helms. "We won this one! Right?"
Jon didn't bother to look at the ring, inlaid with its handy sapphire that lit up when danger was imminent. The thing may have been standard military issue, but Old Man Stewart frequently shook his fist at people who relied on magic over their own common sense. "We won the battle, but there's still a war on," he said firmly. "If we get wasted now, there'll be an ambush while we're passed out, and we'll all wake up with Vulpine swords in our backs. Focus on finding the good stuff. We can take advantage later."
Corddry huffed a sigh, but Helms looked impressed. "That's some thinking, right there," he said. "No wonder you're the boss."
hatever else you can say about it (and many people have), war makes for great business.Obviously you can't fight one without weapons, armor, mounts, and a dozen different enchantments just to counter the standard ones your enemy will be packing. But after your army is equipped and sent out, it still behaves like any other consumer base. It needs food. Shelter. Medical care. Someone to do the washing.
Jon didn't know the history of this particular settlement. It might have been on the decline when the troops moved in, or it might have been thriving. Either way, when Vulpis had occupied it, the place had become an army town.
And now it was Her Majesty's property, and completely deserted except for Jon's soldiers picking over the remains.
They had some warning, he decided. We haven't met a soul. They had just enough time to get out, but not enough time to pack. Or maybe they had time but didn't know it, and decided not to take the risk.
While Corddry, Helms, and the others argued over whatever trinket they had found this time, or, more likely, who got the next bottle of wine, Jon headed for the largest of the little houses. The Vulpine commander would have commandeered no other. If anything of strategic importance had been left behind, Jon would find it there.
blue flicker appeared in Jon's ring as he reached for the door handle. He pulled it open to release a cloud of smoke, thick with the smell of burned meat.Slipping inside, he dropped to the floor, where the air was clear enough to see the flames licking their way out of the hearth—and the pitcher on the far side of the room, its handle inlaid with a small but well-polished ruby. Jon crawled across the sooty floor, lifted the pitcher from its shelf, and began to pour.
The flames hissed and sputtered in protest, but there was more than enough water contained by the holding spell to douse them all.
Once he had kicked the last sparks from the hearth and the charred remains of cupboards, Jon surveyed the scene with dismay. There was nothing useful left here but firewood.
At least the room had another door.
eyond the door lay a bedchamber, sparsely decorated but clean and neat.The man in it was so still that Jon's eyes nearly passed over him.
He was no soldier, that was clear. Only a servant or a slave would be kneeling mutely beside the bed. Jon glanced at his ring, just in case; there was a faint spark in it, fading fast. No more than would have been triggered by the smoke.
The stranger didn't even move as Jon took a few steps closer. His bowed head obscured his features, but he had fluffy brown hair and a slight point to one of his ears. But only the one.
What in the world was he doing here?
"Are you crazy?" exclaimed Jon abruptly. (The man's head jerked upward, the first sign of life he had shown.) "That room was on fire! You could have burned to death! What are you doing just sitting here?"
The stranger just stared, eyes huge.
"You can talk," snapped Jon, irritated. His own magical abilities would have fit in a thimble with room to spare, but he could at least tell that this man was not a mute.
"Did Papa Bear send you?" asked the stranger.
He was speaking Vulpin, which took some effort to follow, but it took neither effort nor magic to hear the hope in his voice.
"I . . . was sent to get . . . things of value," replied Jon in his own careful Vulpin. "That includes you." It wasn't exactly a lie. It just neatly avoided the fact that he had no idea who 'Papa Bear' was.
The other man bowed his head again, but not quickly enough to hide his smile. "I was sitting here, sir, because Papa Bear told me not to get up. I can get up if you want me to."
"Yeah, you're probably pretty stiff," agreed Jon, before switching back: "How long do you sit there?"
The barest hesitation, then, confidently: "Six hours and twenty-one minutes, sir."
Jon let out a whistle of appreciation. "Get up, then!"
The stranger tried. Unsurprisingly, his legs wobbled beneath him. Jon was at his side in an instant, offering support, and was met again with that wide-eyed stare. If this man had any training in how to shield his feelings, he certainly wasn't using it: Jon could feel surprise and fear rolling off of him like a heavy fog off the sea.
"It's okay," he said. "You can lean on me . . . what's your name?"
"Stephen, sir."
"Stephen," repeated Jon. "It's okay, Stephen."
Stephen. A Vulpine name. This wasn't a foreign prisoner of war, then, fluke round ear or not. He was just a hapless native-born slave that had gotten left behind.
Well, technically, Stephen was now his foreign prisoner of war.
"Come on," he said gruffly. In his own language, he added, more than half to himself, "I think we could both use a strong drink."
o," said Schaal, plonking herself down next to Jon at the fire, "if he was a slave, does that make him a POW, or spoils of war?""Neither," replied Jon, who had been thinking about little else for the entire ride. "He's a free man. Just because he was a slave in Vulpis doesn't mean we have to recognize it."
They had marched until it got dark, covering perhaps two-thirds of the distance to the Castle Central before they stopped to set up camp. Schaal, who pulled double duty as innocent young maiden fair and resident firebug, had sung so beautifully that the normally shy forest animals had come out of hiding to listen, then started the campfire on which to roast them for dinner.
"Bet he didn't exactly greet you as a liberator, though," she mused. "Have you tried the sparrow? It's delicious."
"I've had plenty, thanks. He hasn't tried to run away, so I hope he realizes he's better off with us."
As a precaution, Jon had tethered one of Stephen's hands to his mount at the beginning of the march. This seemed pretty silly in hindsight: not only had Stephen made no attempt to run, he hadn't said a word in protest, even when they had walked for several miles and he was beginning to stumble over his own feet. At last Jon had noticed, and convinced him to ride for a while.
"Maybe he's just tired. Or maybe he's biding his time, and planning to sneak off while it's dark." She glanced across the flames to where Stephen sat quietly on a log beside the bickering Corddry and Helms. Other soldiers were scattered around the campsite: taking care of the unicorns, laying out their bedrolls, finishing their dinners, keeping watch. "Although he won't get far if he doesn't eat anything."
"He hasn't eaten yet?"
"Haven't you been paying attention? I went to all that trouble to make this meal and he hasn't touched a bite."
"Well, why not?"
"I dunno," drawled Schaal. "Maybe he doesn't think he's allowed?"
"What kind of barbarians does he think we are?" grumbled Jon, heaving himself off of his own log. "Of course he's allowed to eat. We're not torturers. I'll be right back."
an we do our dramatic foreshadowing bit, already?" demanded Oliver, flicking another handful of powder onto the fire. The puff of green smoke that resulted didn't actually mean anything; it was just more interesting than nothing. "What this story really needs right now is some foreshadowing."Across the cavern, Wilmore cracked an eyelid. "Careful, John. The fourth wall's fragile around here."
"Oh, go back to sleep," sighed Oliver. "And it's Featherwick."
He paced across the floor, onyx-black and worn smooth as glass by hundreds of years of such pacing (or possibly by a polishing spell twenty years ago, but Oliver preferred the more interesting explanation), to tap a bank of amethysts with a tiny hammer. These particular gems never had any particularly interesting harmonics, but at least they were pretty.
One of the notes soured.
Grimacing, Oliver shook the off-key ring from his head and shuffled around the amethysts. Had to be a crack somewhere, or maybe one of them had got dislodged. All he had to do was find the flaw.
He gave the crystals another experimental tap...
...and a jangling cacophony of very very wrong with the world screamed through his bones.
"Larry!" yelped Oliver: quite unnecessarily, as he stumbled back straight into Wilmore's waiting arms. The normally placid man looked ashen; both of them cringed instinctively away from the fading echo of the noise.
"Man, I sure hope that wasn't anything we did," muttered Wilmore at last, in the closest approximation of drollery he could manage at that moment. "Or else Her Majesty is going to be very, very not amused."
oonlight, cool and blue, filtered through the flap of the tent. Stephen stared at the dust motes floating in the shaft of air just beyond his nose.It wasn't his place to question why Papa Bear had given him away. It just wasn't. But why couldn't it have been to someone a little more...statuesque? Papa Bear himself was massive, majestic, not to be trifled with. This man was probably half his height. Even if he did have a full head of hair.
Focus on the positive, Stephen ordered himself. The man had hair; that was a plus. So was the fact that he had fed Stephen promptly. And the fact that he addressed Stephen in the right language. Stephen hadn't picked up a thing from the conversations around him all day; he had bitten his tongue to stop from shouting: You're in Vulpis. Speak Vulpin!
The man had also made Stephen ride his unicorn for a while, a fact which Stephen was unsure whether to chalk up as a plus or a minus. After all, proper leaders didn't share the marks of their status with their pets. What kind of crazy mixed-up world would you get if you didn't keep even that much semblance of order?
On the other hand, his feet had been awfully sore. And the unicorn's name was Rainbow.
Stephen decided to count it as a plus.