three, because i could make far longer strides then the average bear with those stilts
3 Likes
“Where is Cordax?!”
“He’s right under you.”
5 Likes
No, I’m wondering how you had the time for 1. this and 2. drawing cordax so perfectly
he’s on his tiptoes that is amazing
somehow this random musing of yours is significantly better digital art than I’ve produced in the last year
this is a really tough choice
7 Likes
I can’t choose
they’re all too good
yes.
–
Chapter 5
–
The disgruntled ranch hand pushed himself up off my face with a cold hiss. “We’ve been spotted!” He bellowed at the rider in front. “I’d estimate…” He whirled around for a moment, eyeing the nothingness lying behind us, and then spun back around to scream in my face again. “Over twenty five!”
Oh, hi, by the way. In case you had forgotten, a bullet just ran into the back of the head of this Diero character, and he fell on my face. Incredibly rude of both him and the bullet, and both should be sat down and given a long lecture about proper etiquette around a guest of esteem such as myself. Whatever happened to proper parenting?
“We can’t expect my ammunition to hold them long!” Diero shouted above the wind. “You want me to bung 'em, just give the-”
“NO!” The incredibly sharp reply noised. “Not now, Diero! Use whatever means are at your disposal outside of that!” The strange flying bike took a sudden turn, and out of the dust I was able to decipher six silhouettes, all appearing to be humanoid in nature, making after the contraption propelling us along, all of them… Running?
Hm. Worse than running. Gaining.
“This’ll be stupid,” Diero spat through his teeth, turning away from me and standing up in his seat. “But I trust you not to do something evil or suspicious while my back is turned. Trust me, were this not a wednesday I would never consider the possibility.”
“Anything particular about wednesday?” I mumbled back, hardly expecting to be heard, but he immediately responded.
“Wednesday is unlucky bullet day.”
Reaching into his jacket, he whipped out two wicked revolvers, each stupidly long and stupidly reflective despite their darker finish and the fact that it was nighttime. I really wanted to punch him in the pit of the knee to stop this absurd display, but I didn’t like the prospect of a bullet tearing through my head.
Then Diero completely stopped moving, his leather jacket fluttering in the wind as the figures gained dangerously. The seat rotated slightly during the ride, but Diero’s stance didn’t change. It was as if he turned into a statue, so detached from the current situation was he. Goodness, if only I could do that and subsequently never think about Diero’s idiotic hat ever again.
One of the speeding figures had gone so far as to appear on my left without my noticing - stupid static cowboys distracting me so frequently - and followed it up with diving for the vehicle, causing it to tip slightly as it accounted for the weight of this assailant. I could do little with the massive weight across my lap, and so I struck at the figure in an attempt to separate him from the vehicle. He caught my hand in his mouth and shot pinpoint eyes at me a millisecond before his jaw snapped shut upon it.
In that brief period of time, I seemed to gain a greater understanding of the situation at hand. This figure, who was so rude as to attempt to separate my digits from my upper extremity, was not simply a figure in the dark speeding impossibly fast to close the distance with a moving vehicle which should be moving much faster than any bipedal being could bolt. The emaciated jaw, the sunken eyes, the exposed teeth, the cold, motionless skin…
It was Diero.
Or perhaps his cousin or something.
Unless there was time travel involved and this was a future Diero, freed from his fashion sense and determined to eliminate me? I sure hope this is not the case; my memory tells me people hate time travel showing up uninvited in stories.
If, however, this were a time travel story, and this figure was perhaps a past Diero, the possibility was soundly eliminated at the end of the aforementioned milisecond. We cannot be allowed to forget I was about to have my fingers bit off a moment ago, after all, and I must now confess I owe that many digits to Diero, for the moment that this figure chomped down a loud, rattling roar occurred a few inches from my face, the head of the second Diero jolted violently before the figure fell in a pile from the side of the vehicle, and the smoking barrel of the revolver introduced the smell of gunpowder and metal to my senses. The burning yes of Diero stared into the space where the figure was a moment ago, glancing at me but for a second before returning to the pose he was in not long before.
It was, at least for someone of my stature (that someone being me), an impressive sight. This leather-clad desperado would suddenly snap to a certain pose, arm outstretched, at the very moment that the gun would fire, and another one of the silhouetted figures would drop to the ground and kick up a cloud of debris. His aim was impeccable, each shot landing perfectly in the eye socket of each foe, and dropping one after another into the shadowed soil below. Something mildly concerning, however, was that none of these fiends appeared to be armed, and someone had to have fired the bullet that struck Diero on the head.
And then to my utmost disappointment I found out the source of the first attack. Diero ejected the shells from his revolvers directly next to my head, flying past him towards the shadowy foe which approached. I will never forget that silhouette as long as I live, so engrained in my memory is the impression it left.
Eight arms slowly traveled around a center point, almost spiraling in their configuration like some sort of mesmerizing illustration. Underneath was such a cloud of dust produced that I determined it could only be caused by a number of those strange skeleton men running at the top of their speed, carrying this freakish figure above them. At the sight of him Diero snapped back around to face the silver speedster, his jaw clenched, hissing through his teeth like a kettle about to boil.
The silver figure took one look back, and with what seemed at the time like sorrowful regret, spoke in a tone which cut above the tumult of our endeavor like the knife of a surgeon during an appendix removal.
“Dream: WHIRLING IRON!”
With a sinister hiss Diero’s eyes burst with blue flame erupting from the sockets and spilling out like blowtorches, as the man himself leaned back and bellowed at the night air, his shout seeming to echo into the void. Both pistols suddenly had a blue flame at their barrel, and he began to spin them both around his fingers. Then, he picked up speed, and picked it up again, and again, and continued to gain acceleration until they were two blazing blue wheels of fire circling his hands.
He turned back to his perdu malefactor in time to intercept a hail of lead with such speed that I could only assume it was coming from an automatic firearm. However, his revolvers were, um, revolving with such speed that every shot simply flew off. Was it the blue flames about them that caused this to occur? Or was speed the only factor here?
Shot after shot was sent careening into the dust as the figure approached, almost at arms’ length from the back of our vehicle. The flashes of gunfire told me that this was not an automatic weapon, but single-shot firearms being fired repeatedly in place with extremely impressive speed, each one held in the many hands of this ominous entity, who shifted his arms around like an octopus, cycling each weapon effortlessly and efficiently. The flashes also revealed the solid, hateful eyes of the attacked, filled a solid red and completely devoid of any emotion other than pure, unfiltered malice.
Seeing as the distance from assailant to target was slimming so dramatically, it would not be long before this figure could fire off a secondary shot and tag either myself or the driver. Seeming to sense this, Diero suddenly whipped one of his flaming revolvers directly at the group of stony skeletons racing underneath the creature, carving through them like butter and sending their host crashing into the ground, instantly losing him in the process.
Diero watched in satisfaction as the party immediately slipped into the darkness before realizing that he was now down to a pitiful three revolvers and began verbally pronouncing his remonstrance to the concept. The poor man; how on earth was he going to survive with so little?
I, however, was happy to see none of the other figures had bothered to continue the chase. Whatever lied ahead was hopefully going to be strange skeletal statue thing Diero cousin free, and I could add that descriptor to my list of dietary exclusions, right alongside horrible fashion sense and stupid hats.
Stupid Diero and his stupid hat. I really hate it.
–
11 Likes
I now have an answer.
Good Guy, six cats, two sticks, AND Cordax!
He is everything at once. Of course Cordax is on the bottom.
7 Likes
As opposed to the frozen no.
4 Likes
wait so I’m holding up two sticks with goodguy on them and goodguy is balancing six cats on his head?
3 Likes
What do I hear speedrun music.
Why do I hear megalovania
5 Likes
this exists
6 Likes
Any order is fine as long as you’re doing the heavy lifting
no comment.
3 Likes
I eat his stupid hat.
7 Likes
that doesn’t mean no…
2 Likes
thank you for your service
4 Likes
interesting story so far ghiddy. even though i should probably read book of ramblings and book of logic first…
1 Like
Okay, I take that back.
Not only did you not kill Diero, but you certainly made him literally the coolest thing in this book thus far… well, I guess this gives me a chance to include him in my book cover in the end, so that’s exciting!
And, since chapter five is primarily action-packed, I don’t really have that many theories regarding it.
So, I think that Diero and the Diero lookalikes from this chapter are connected to Eilrach in one way or another, but I don’t have anything too specific yet.
I also have another theory, but I won’t disclose it for now, because I think that the world isn’t ready for it. And if I do share it, Ghid will certainly want so steal my kneecaps, which isn’t good because I like my kneecaps.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention this fella:
I have no idea who this is or if they are anyone at all…
At first I thought that this was Cronk, but since he had six arms in The Book of Logic and is undeniably dead at this point in the story (or maybe not, we don’t know how BoL is related to anything yet), that’s probably not him.
Oh and Chronicler would want to eat the party instead of trying to shoot them, so that’s certainly not him.
Yeah, you should definitely read the Book of Dreams before you read the Book of Dreams
7 Likes
Yeah you should read BoR and BoL first
1 Like
Dang
i fixed the mistake now don’t worry
2 Likes