Needful Things.....

"Thunderclap?" King echoed, slightly bemused, "You do know that I haven't finished that next book, Creeping Shadow yet. Haven't even really gotten a good start....."

"But you at least know the general lay of the land?" Roland prods, "After all, you do seem to have a knack for that...and knowing about my business."

The last was said without heat, but King frowned all the same.

"Can I help it that when you dream of your life that I pick it up?" King snapped back at the Gunslinger, and then sighed.

"Generally speaking, Thunderclap isn't a place for the unprepared," the horror author said, "It is...or was up until Roland fixed things at the Dark Tower, a land of perpetual darkness. A land of the living dead, basically, who like to feed on the blood and flesh of the living. Bring garlic, basically. That and crosses!"

Roland and the others look at the cross that the old town folks had given him right before they'd gone into that urban combat zone to get to Blaine. Ka being what it was, Roland couldn't help but shudder a little bit as it became a bit clearer what might have happened.

Thanki-si. he said to himself, thanking the townsfolk for this cross, though now it wasn't a needful thing!

Brave as Roland was, he wanted nothing to do with the restless dead, as little as humanly possible. See, from what Roland had experienced and heard from in the past, vampires they were more like Varney than Yorga. Bad news. And even with time running correctly now on Mid-world, vampires were cagey and smart enough to know when to get into the crypt while the sun was out!

And....in the course of things of the fix of the Dark Tower....he and his travel companions....had been duplicated....and were still on route to Thunderclap....

Thunderclap might be safe during the daytime, but at night? Risky.

Roland wasn't....in the habit of needing to ask things of others....asking for help. As of yet....he found it.....difficult....to ask his new friends and family to perhaps do what they could to aid his "brothers".

In the course of things, after getting help for King, he was going to broach this subject with the Synizn who had that Crystallic....

That or maybe the TARDIS.....?

"Sort of like this one Rifts Worldbook, eh?" Inquirer said from the side, pointing to a coverpage filled with thousands of vampires outside of an Aztec pyramid, red of eye and looking very hungry as they seemed to stare at the viewer.

"Not....quiet that bad," King said after a beat or three.

Rifts Earth, as it turned out, was a reality.....

"Christ on crutch!" whispered Jake, not liking that picture at all.

"I'd like ta echo that, sugar." Susana Dean muttered, a bit of Detta Walker slipping into her speak just then.

Eddie Dean, taking one look at the picture, blinks and pretty much summed it up thusly.

"Those are the type that would be happy if you said 'Bite me!'" he said, "Crap, they'd do it, literally!"

King gives them a few more tidbits about Thunderclap. Before Jarlath sings off, the Doctor speaks.

"Before you go, I just felt that something of a 'heads up' as Betty would put it was in order," he says, smiling and holding Inquirer's hand, "Inquirer and I have decided to post wedding banners at the church here in Nantucket. It will take place soon after you get back."

Jarlath was quiet a moment, and then smiled.

"Got you," he said, "Congrats and we'll do some wedding gift shopping before returning, okay? See ya!"

With that, the connection is broken.

Several of the people present were staring at Inquirer and the Doctor.

"You have the same look like you did when Richard Pini joined in on that punning challenge with Fred the Manfox and Piers Anthony," Gilmuriel said from the side, "Remember, age appearance aside....is just that."

"And do you really want to get a young lady with the body which is actually a like war machine angry at you?" B'Elanna added pointedly.

She'd be burned if she'd let other people's hang-ups get in the way of her friends happiness!

And here I thought that the most interesting thing here would be Walker's trial and showing the Nantucketers how to correctly make smokeless gunpowder, Roland thinks to himself. Oh, they knew the formula and such, but not the means or know how to one major component pure enough. Roland called it something different, but he did now how to make this "nitroglycerine".

"Congratulations," Roland says sincerely, bowing.

Far be from him to try to impose human hangups on these two folks, who...when you get down to it, were not human.....

Back on Fred the Satyre's homeworld....

"Bring garlic, basically, if we ever go to Thunderclap," Jarlath summed it up.

Cederick and the others nodded, not liking that thought at all.

"Now....I must go off into the hills to summon my dragon," Dragon Synizn warned, "Do not seek me out or interrupt me, else I shan't be responsible for what my familiar may do when I'm interrupted! I shall control him from afar as....."

Moments later....

"Bring Princess Exotica back you cursed beast!!" shouted one of the few remaining soldiers who hadn't bugged out when the dragon fear had struck.

Out of hearing and sight, the dragon lands and places the still disheveled Exotica in front of Cederick and his band.

1. "Welcome," Fred the Satyre says, looking up at the startled princess, who has had a good look at Fred's face....

Add New Option

Go Back

View Forward Story Tree
View Back Story Tree