Shadows of Elysium: The Laughing King

Chapter 14: The Code: Duty

Jasper came to with a flare in his vision, the kind you get from sitting up too fast or staring at a T.V. too long. Tree-bark pointed his knobby hand to the fire, "one more Jasper. You of all people should know what happened here."

The flames started anew. The voices started in before the humble wooden hut could be etched into existence by the flames.

A shrill and ragged scream pierced the firey veil first. An unrelenting release of breath that left the screamer sweating and exhausted.

"It's going to be alright, I'm not leaving your side."

"Hang in there. You're doing great."

"I fucking know I am!!"

"Alright, now breathe."

"There's blood! Is there supposed to be blood!?" The husband clutched his wife's hand harder.

"Shut up Randall! There was blood when you came out," the would be grandma chastised her son for adding stress to the situation.

After an agonizing amount of contractions Wirra finally gave birth. The doctor Harriot held a crying baby up to the dim candle light of the families hut, "It's a girl."

The nurse, Harriet, handed the girl over to her exhausted mother, "It looks like she has a minor mutation. I know people who live comfortable lives with worse versions of the same thing," the baby had a mouth that curled up in a wide smirk on one side and one eye with a heavily swollen pupil.

Harriot leaned in to the grandma as the parents fawned over their new person, "If she starts having headaches in her teens there are salves that can clear it right up."

"Hi Joy, I'm your mommy. Smile for your daddy," the dad took the baby Joy and cradled her with a two handed arm.

Harriot took her time cleaning up, happy to see to the baby Joy and make sure her new mom would get rest and eat. Then she stepped outside and breathed a fresh breath of bittersweet ocean breeze. It could have been untainted oxygen strait from the other side of the walls for how she felt. Sometimes this job was rewarding. The Wagon-Cleric straightened a spiked mace at her hip (it had come in handy a time or two).

She tied a small hog up to pull a wagon adorned with neatly labeled elixirs in canteens and powders in leather pouches, both hanging from the sides. Jars containing medicinal items fit snuggly in crevices atop the cart. If she were to pull them out, quite a few would glow from tiny multi-colored slugs with slimy wings.

Each slug had a clear or white streak running through them no matter their primary color.

The blue sanitizing slug, the red heating slug, the green one for drawing out toxins or the yellow for anesthesia. It didn't matter. They all floated in jars of chemicals. Color ebbed into the fluid surrounding their wings to give the jars a glow of their respective color.

Other less flashy types of medicine like mushrooms to treat radiation poison, thunderbird feathers to chew for a variety of reasons, wurm acid, powdered bark, powdered viper teeth, and all manner of other powders found their home in porcelain and iron containers. Harriot called them cookie jars, just not in front of people... spirits forbid anyone ate from them.

Speaking of eating, her lunch break was sausage on wheat and a bottle of grog. Drinking while on the job may sound bad to some city slicker outside of the walls, but a measure of whiskey was required to chase out the grit and germs of wasteland water. Besides, the next stop was her last, and Smiley was a good friend.

The bustling marketplace where she picked up daily rations was on the way to the second floor lift. Most of the streets were lit by the occasional lantern with a handful of flame-flys, but the marketplace was lit far better.

Two large tanks of dragon-slugs, glowing fish, and various elemental eels (possibly radioactive) stood fifteen feet from floor to roof on each side of the big lift up. Every now and then, a glass cylinder of the same height containing hundreds of glow-flys each stood between buildings and stalls.

Harriet walked side by side with the hog, Cachexia (Chex for short), onto a crowded lift full of people going about their jobs or shopping and trading around. Once the lift was full, a four armed man pulled a crank and slowly raised the group to the next floor.

It was much of the same style as the marketplace below, except with less trading stands and more walk-in stores. The contents of these stores were slightly more bookish, antiques were of higher quality and weapons more militant.

The library sat between two gardens on the side of the town closest to the sea. Fruit trees, berry bushes, and medicinal plants alike all reached happily to the ocean breeze. Salt water was more than nourishing for the rugged survivors and beautiful desert flowers. A half dozen collaborations of metal made up benches around the garden paths and against the library walls. It was a two story building that was slightly smaller than most houses on this middle-class floor.

Chex dragged the cart through an exceptionally average door near one corner of the building. They pulled in past the podium with it's logbook and over what was the only fully carpeted floor in the village. Chex parked in a corner by a bookcase neatly stacked with scrolls and another crammed with ragtag folders and loose pages. Despite the chaos, all of them seemed to be cared for as if they were precious metal. Chex was much more interested in happily snorting over the food bowl near that corner.

Directly beside them at a desk overlooking the gulf was her patient, Smiley. He smiled ear to ear at Harriet, not a hyperbole. It was quite unnerving to most people, but Harriet had grown up with the man and had become fond of the mutation. His massive pupils were terrifyingly alien to others, but she saw them for the puppy dog awe that they were full of.

Smiley winced at the pain of his unfolding mouth and brought hands up to the side of his head.

Harriet poured out a measure of the fluid from a green slug's jar and mixed in Wurm acid to make a balm, "don't go around hunting small wurms and slugs to make this. You've gotta treat the slug right, or it's just acid on your face." Smiley was already vigorously massaging the mixture into his temples.

A loud cracking noise came from his skull as it loosened at the corners to better fit his massive eyes. His forehead bulging at the seems. He slouched down in his chair and, for a moment, seemed to have passed out, "You're a blue spirit, Harriot."

"Anything to see that smile."

Before she could make it to the cozy lounge chairs in a corner to sit with a three-tailed cat, Smiley spoke up, "Hey, I've got something I want to show you."