MARKIE
by Arsellos Vastroad
Behold! Borne on the back of this vagabond, the ballad of a bite-size bard who bested both brawn and brains with her brilliance and bravado. In unvarying Valeria, we set our scene: a savvy scamp so scaly sings daily a sonnet, nay! a symphony! of stolen salted succulence. A ham hock hastily heisted from a foe most ferocious by our precocious poetess. A tale told time and time again to a tavern of titillated tipplers and teetotalers, but not due to devotion or desire but by dastardly underhanded design. For a clandestine clan of scholars had cast a crippling hex upon our hitherto unhindered hamlet: an evil eye ensuring each evening an erasure of events ensued. This treacherous troupe trimmed the tapestry of time short and sewed its seams into a limited loop, cementing the sorry civilians of this mountainy municipality within a ceaseless cycle of one certain Saturday. The activity of the day rewound routinely, starting at the same spot each sunrise, with the citizens none the wiser. Our little lizard lady lived, and joked and japed, but generated not a jot of new narrative, performing her previous production in perpetuity. Not a soul entered or exited the airy area with the exception of the eggheaded enchanters. Valeria had virtually vanished, woefully wiped from the world, missed in the mists of memory.
Until finally, one fine Friday, a few fellows from afar found the concealed community, having been captivated by a coin emblazoned with the emblem of the enchanters. Either lad’s lost loved one had left them a link to the logo, spurring their search for the sigil’s source. These men, a merciful medic and a contrite cleric, trickled into the Yik Yak Inn to quickly quaff a quart. Meanwhile, the clever kobold conveyed their cured meat report. The stale seventeen-year-old story of a deli dalliance was due to receive its regular round of remuneration, yet this day the yarn yielded a yaw in the universe! Into the bard’s bucket bonnet bounced a boon: a doubloon festooned with said portent of doom. Its owner? Unknown. But it was the very occurence of the ominous ocular orb that our outsiders had awaited. Summoned by serendipitous circumstances, this set of sirs swayed the storyteller to set off with them to unspool the secret of the symbol.
Cobbling together clues like half-finished shoes, our kobold’s crew pursued a cottage with a view. Connected to the cleric’s companion (a chap called Calderos), the decrepit cabin concealed a secret subterranean underpass to the seat of the city’s sultan: Castle Valerian. Yet upon exiting from the overgrown ornamental orchard, the adventurers arrived at not a vivacious villa but an abandoned atrium. Choking back dust in the quiet corridors to the king’s court, an ancient atrocity unveiled itself. Scores of screamless skeletons were strewn throughout the silent estate like shriveled seeds, save for a shambling shrieking spook who spewed caustic sludge. The trio tackled the tendrilled terror, attacking its tender torso with their tapered tools. A groveling trick from our garrulous grandstander gave her surgeon sidekick a surge of power to quickly stick the demonic tick.
Ever ascending, our intrepid investigators evaded eerie attacks from velocitous Valerian vases and sopping spirits. Ever thwarted by a door? They defeat them by the score. Got a box that’s buggy and blocked? Give ‘em a minute, and that loot’s unlocked. Using unmatched intelligence and inspiring insight, our entertainer and her armed amigos skirted strength-sapping shadows and ventured from Victor Valeria’s vestry to the vault of the villain’s volumes: a leviathan library. Leafing through long-lost letters and salvaged scrawlings, they stitched together a saga of opposing opinions within splintering sects, a catastrophic coup, and the temporal entrapment of the tiny town. Intervention (demonic or divine) implored our ingenious improviser to infiltrate the enchanters’ entombed inner sanctum in the pit of the palace. She hied hence with her heroic helpers.
Dozens of doors dared not defy our dear Draconic daredevil as she sped headlong, descending to the desolate dungeon. Though no bumbling babes, the party’s previous perils paled in comparison to the present predicament. At the terminus of the tunnel lay a pink pulsating problem: a behemoth brain broader than a barn that throbbed and thrummed atop a titanic altar. An awful amalgamation, the enchanters’ experiment gone awry, and also an answer! for the otherworldly observer who guided our good guys to this gruesome site sought this inexplicable ingredient (however illogical) in an incantation to reverse the curse. This monstrous mind is to be delivered to the bard’s bodiless buddy via a dream. The doctor and the deist duo drew daggers and axes and assailed the atrocity’s assistants: a team of tentacled thought-sucker triplets. In the combat, the star-crossed kobold succumbed to a potent paralysis from a phantasmic poison puncture, placing them on death’s doorstep. The frosty fingers of fatality clutched at her collar.
But did she die? Hell fucking no!
Many others might have meekly mambled in this moment, but the storyteller’s spirit was unsnuffable. The fearless physician dashed to the downed dramatist, delivering a handful of healing as the spellcasting soldier battered the brainy brood and held them at bay. With a final flurry of verbal fury, the now upright troubadour threw threats that tore the chittering cranial creatures to tatters. A triumph!
Weak but awake, the wily warriors went to work to move the amorphous mind mound to the rim of the room. Grasping the gross gray matter, the fanged female fell into a dreamy doze, drifting through dimensions to rendezvous with destiny. In this limbo, their liminal lifeline illuminated the options to unblock the time lock: “What will be your wish? To break the bond that traps your town and live as their hero sans renown? Or escape this evil loop alone to lead a life that’s all your own?” Not missing a moment, the mighty miss made her move. With oversized organ in arms, she unsealed the city’s fate, ripping free the seam of the temporal tapestry. In a glow of searing sunlight, the brain bubbled, scorched, shriveled, shrank, and vanished, along with our virtuous vixen. Her bosom brothers stood shocked and silent, bereft and befuddled.
Valerian is now a visible village, no longer the victim of a vain voodoo. Voyagers visit the valley and value its vibrant vitality. The day comes and goes, the river ebbs and flows, the vine withers and grows, and it is all thanks to her. ‘But what of our valorous vaudevillian?’ I hear you cry. ‘She vamoosed? Verily?’ The truth, like this beer, is not always clear. Some say she made it back to the Yik Yak, some say she made tracks with a traveler’s pack, and there are even some who are convinced that she writes MY material. But, personally, I think that she has taken up a new residency, crafting dreams for the slumbering gods.
To tie up this tale, a toast!:
Raise your glass to this glorious lass wherever she may be,
and in your dreams, I pray you see her name on the marquee.