Fishwhacked: Reign of the Walrus Witch

Chapter 11

"Uh, hi, excuse me, lad," Yawp said in crude Mineraladish as soon as he saw other living things in the quiet suburb on the outskirts of Detrite. He clambered over the fence and into the playground where a handful of mineralads were throwing lit sticks of a volatile powder at each other. The stick detonated, and the mineralad holding it was thrown against the wall. He stood up, chuckling and dusting the loose fragments off himself onto the ground. Another mineralad marked a spot on the scoreboard. Yawp walked into the center of the field. "Hail! Hello."

The mineralads stared at him in silence. The one next to the box of explosives slowly picked out another and snapped his fingers, causing a spark that lit the fuse.

"Look, if you could stop playing your game for a minute and held me get to the queen's palace. I am tremendously lost, I don't even know how I got here without taking the minecart," Yawp attempted to tell them. The Drownvalish Mineraladish dialect wasn't covered by his studies at New Asymptote University, and the mineralad children looked amused. The explosive stick was thrown at him. Yawp snatched it out of the air and looked at it for a moment before tossing it back. "Please don't do that."

The mineralads said something to each other too quickly for Yawp to pick up, then began passing it around as the fuse was eaten away. It came back to Yawp, and he hurled it out of the playground and into a big crack in the ground. A few moments later, it exploded, sending a rumbling echo throughout the area.

"I told you," Yawp complained. He began to walk away but was stopped by another rumble, this one louder. The mineralads' expressions, represented only by the subtle variations in their gem brightness, flickered into worry. Yawp looked back at them. "So that's just other mineralads playing the same game somewhere else, right?"

The mineralad sitting near the box of bombs shook his head. There was another, louder rumble. The mineralad spoke slowly.

Yawp understood the basic gist. "All morning, sounds like that. But not that loud. Queen worried about earthquakes. We're not supposed to be playing Boom Stick. Don't tell on us."

The crevice that Yawp had cast the boom stick into cracked and split open wider. Rifts spread along the floor and walls and the rumbling was accompanied by rocks of various sizes falling loose. Yawp jumped back to avoid falling into the abyss. He peered over the edge and into the darkness in time to get a hefty fist of crystal in his face. The mineralad children fled.

Yawp's vision was a kaleidoscope of painful colors, but he unslung his hammer with the muscle memory of someone who had done it hundreds of thousands of times before. He felt the rumbling grow louder and the vibrations made it difficult for him to keep his footing. When his vision returned, a hulking mass of grey crystal had just finished pulling itself out of the rift in the ground. It stood eye level with Yawp, twisting and grasping with its numerous arms. A faint orange glow was coming from its innards, and it focused on Yawp, scanning his body. Yawp dug his fingers into the grip of his hammer and growled. The beast then turned around and stomped towards the center of Detrite.

"Hey!" Yawp shouted. "Hey, come back!"

* * *

Ebb dreamt. She dreamt of helping her father with the garden, but the garden was also the castle, and her father turned into her childhood dental Milliner. She also dreamt of vegetablokes and mineralads, but they spoke to her in backwards song. Mostly, she dreamt about fish. The sound of stone being wrenched apart woke her up.

Ebb stumbled to her feet and saw Omno in the bowl. As she picked him up by the tail, she noticed the mineralad guard, with a gaping black rift in his chest. The mineralad looked down at it as it oozed muddy mineralad blood, and then fell limp. Behind the mineralad stood a man draped in black. His bony fingers were wrapped around the tail of a charred, hardened fish, its head stained with mud.