If you keep extending the deadline, I'll keep procrastinating!
As it stands now I'm already planning to retire further west so that I can eke out a few more hours before the comps officially close.
Quest for Concord “Decay, destruction, ruin, and woe,” Carla Fae pronounced as she surveyed the devastation of the ruined city. Great skeletons of steel stood sentinel over the tumbled concrete and rust that made the whole terrain a treacherous web of danger.
“That's catchy,” Debbie Lee replied as she spat dust through the gap of her missing front teeth. “You gonna put that in your dairy book?”
Carla Fae shook her head. “I think it's Shakespeare. And it's a diary, not a dairy.”
Debbie Lee took a big swig of brown water. It might have been clear once, before she added a dram of whiskey to kill off the bacteria. But chances were it was brown from the start. “One forgotten word's as good as another,” she said.
There was a long moment of silence as the two women listened to the distant bleating of a motorcycle echoing through the desolation.
“There are still those of us who believe that there is much knowledge to be gleaned from the Olden Days,” Carla Fae said at last.
Debbie Lee waved her hand over the ruined landscape. “Yeah, looks like them folk had it all figured out.”
“Maybe older Olden Days,” Carla Fae conceded. “Before the Tyranny of Science, people believed in powerful beings that could raze the Earth and remake it again.”
Debbie Lee spat again. “I'm not interested in you running your mouth on about Gord.”
“It's
god, not Gord. And I'm not talking about some invisible man in the sky. I'm talking about the dragons.”
Debbie Lee rolled her eyes skyward but said nothing.
“Think about it,” Carla Fae continued. “The metal-faced wizard visits in the night. The king meets with his council and summons all his knights for a quest. The knights all charge off on their bikes into this nest of shrapnel and debris. There's something important going on here, and I think it has to do with dragons.”
“Why dragons?” Debbie Lee asked skeptically. “Why not something real, like sky spiders or zombie coyotes?”
“Because of the mark,” Carla Fae said simply. She remade the complicated design in the dust. Debbie Lee recognized the stick-boy kicking the ball next to the number five, above an A and an E, both with too many cross lines. The men had all painted it on to their shields before roaring off into the purple haze of dawn. “It means dragon in old take-out speak.”
“So what? The knights couldn't find shit if it was dangling from the ends of their noses. Remember that Grail fiasco?”
Carla Fae shook her head. “We both know the men folk are all just quish junkies and paste heads. That's why we have to do this.”
Debbie Lee looked sideways at her bookish friend. “You said we were raiding an abandoned hooch mart!”
“That was just to get you out of the brooding hall. I tell you, Dee-El, there's something to the legends, and the metal-faced wizard sure thought he was on to something this time. What do you say, old pal? Care to show the boys how questing should really be done?”
* * * * *
The purple glow of dawn receded into the dull green glow of their third day in the ruins. Debbie Lee rolled off the rusty springs that had provided her with a surprisingly comfortable night's sleep. She horked her morning loogie and wondered idly if she'd be lucky enough to find another pigeon to juice today. Carla Fae was carefully reading some graffiti prophecies by roach-glow in the deeper recessions of the underpass.
“What's that smell?” Debbie Lee asked as she approached, suddenly noticing an enticing waft.
“What? Oh, I couldn't sleep, so I rustled up some roadkill bacon.”
“Nice!”
Debbie Lee tucked happily into her breakfast while Carla Fae continued to study the wall.
“Well?” Debbie Lee asked, licking the last of the grease from her fingers and picking the hair from between her teeth.
“The text is damaged,” Carla Fae said absently, gesturing at the pock-marked wall. “But, I think it's indicating the presence of a dragon temple in a pavilion on a floating mountain.”
Debbie Lee knew most of her letters, but struggled to make any kind of sense out their infinite combinations. “It looks like the scribblings of a booze-mummed toddler.”
“Look here,” Carla Fae pointed. “It's stylized, but if you squint you can see the dragon symbol.”
Debbie Lee squinted real hard, but... wait. Now that it was pointed out to her, it did look an awful lot like the dragon symbol they'd been chasing. “Well, I'll be a floating brain-squid's mother. I do see it!”
“I'm just struggling with the floating mountain bit,” Carla Fae confided absently, deep in thought.
Debbie Lee scrunched up her eyes and let her own mind-gears spin. She was well aware that she was more the muscle in their partnership, but she did enjoy firing the odd neuron now and then. “Maybe we can see the mountain from up high on one of these steel towers?” she thought aloud.
Carla Fae shook her head. “No, they're too precarious. If we don't fall off, we're as likely to die in a collapse. And there's not a lot of cover up there if it starts raining sky spiders.”
“Good point,” Debbie Lee agreed. She picked her ass to help get her thinking juices flowing. “What if we went to the edge of the dust bowl? It's nice and open there-?”
Carla Fae snapped her fingers. “Debbie Lee, you are a nerd-lord! In ancient times the dust bowl was flooded by a great brine puddle. The floating mountain was probably a hill that stuck up out of the brine, appearing to float!”
Debbie Lee was getting excited, too. “So all we have to do is find a hill in the dust bowl with a monument on top! Well, that and cross the dust-bowl without being attacked by zombie yotes or sky spiders....”
Carla Fae frowned briefly, then brightened. “I think it's time we jacked a hog.”
Debbie Lee smiled back. Jacking was one of her strong points.
* * * * *
The two friends climbed the great stairs in front of the monument. Behind them stretched the parched barrens of the old brine bottom, and behind that loomed the stark skyline of the rusty ruins. To the west a cloud of sky spiders seethed menacingly in a growing wind that was beginning to churn up the dust.
Debbie Lee spat an impressive fourteen-footer downwind. “Storms brewin',” she said.
Carla Fae was entranced by the carved stone decoration of the ancients that towered above them. “Storms are but a symptom,” she replied absently. “They spawn from a far greater evil unleashed by the hubris of the ancients.”
“Er....?” Debbie Lee responded.
Carla Fae shook her head and smiled. “Perhaps the dragons can help us?”
“I reckon we're about to find out.”
Together they climbed the remaining steps and passed over a great serpentine seal carved into the floor stones. Even Debbie Lee could decipher the unmistakable pattern of the dragon's mark. The building itself seemed to moan, and then the floor vibrated perceptibly.
“So... what exactly
is a dragon?” Debbie Lee asked with an affected calmness.
“Heh, how silly of me not to share. I've read a lot of conflicting accounts, but there are some basic similarities. They are powerful armoured beasts, capable of flight and making fire out of thin air.”
“Huh,” Debbie Lee sniffed. “Kinda like men, then.”
Carla Fae furrowed her brow pensively. “Some accounts mention great wisdom,” she said at length.
“Ah,” was all Debbie Lee replied.
“...But others stress the qualities of greed and gluttony.”
Debbie Lee arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. A sudden clap of thunder made them both jump.
“They are extremely long-lived,” Carla Fae continued in a quavering voice. “And they have impeccable memories. They will remember the Olden Days, and the many eras before that. They will remember what brought the desolation upon the Earth. In their great wisdom, they might even know how to-”
They both froze in place as a fell shadow swooped over them, but in the merest blink it had vanished as suddenly as it had come.
“Uh.... So what do we do when we meet a dragon?” Debbie Lee asked.
Carla Fae opened her mouth to respond when suddenly a much louder clap of thunder crashed through the interior of the monument. The ground lurched sideways and they both lost their footing.
Debbie Lee was the first back up on her feet. “See-Fay!” she hissed, straining her senses to detect the direction of the attack. “What do we do now?”
But Carla Fae just lay on the ground, the most peaceful look glazed over her face.
“Oh shit,” Debbie Lee muttered to herself. Then there was another clap of thunder. Almost instinctively she leapt, the sideways lurch of the ground this time sliding her unconscious friend to rest against the statue of an ugly serpent, but she herself landed safely on the ground once it had steadied once more.
“Impressive...” a booming voice echoed.
Debbie Lee squinted through the gloom in all directions, but she could not detect the source of the voice. “Er.... Thanks,” was all she could manage.
Two glowing eyes appeared against the blackness of the high ceiling, and they slowly grew until a monstrously huge face of a bearded lizard resolved out of the gloom. “Hmmmm.... Brave and skilled, and yet also well mannered?” it rumbled. “What is become of men at the end of days?”
Debbie Lee did not quite know what to make of the giant talking beast. Her bladder had already made up its mind and had completely surrendered, but something inside her mind screamed at her not to follow suit. So, despite shaking inside worse than the floor had just moments ago, Debbie Lee drew herself up her full height and replied: “the men are a bunch of cunt-faced idiots!”
Great. A quest to the death to find salvation for the world, and that's what comes spilling out of her word hole? Inwardly she kicked herself, but was careful to keep her eyes locked on the dragon's.
To her great surprise, the beast reared its head in laughter. The building shook, and she couldn't help glancing at her unconscious friend to make sure that no further misfortune had befallen her.
“Too true,” the dragon boomed. Then a guileful expression crossed its face. “I suppose you know better?”
Debbie Lee considered this. She figured it was mostly true, but in her experience it had never paid to play up one's smarts. Better to be underestimated and surprise, rather than come across as arrogant and disappoint. “Me, I don't know nothing.”
The dragon blinked, then lowered its head again, thankfully to a less threatening distance. “Humble as well... Tell me, are there any noble qualities that you do not possess?”
“Er... I'm ok with no bull.”
At this the dragon laughed once more. “Tell me, my straight-talking fellow, what is it that you are trying to achieve in your quest?”
“Uh.....” Debbie Lee stalled. “Well, see the thing is, my friend was kind of in charge of most of the figuring on this trip. I think.... I think she wanted to know how we could go about fixin' up this shit hole. Or something like that.”
The dragon stared at her for many long moments. “Quite,” was all he said. In a flash he struck with his tail, shattering the statue looming over Carla Fae's body, sending debris flying back away from her, but leaving a shiny orb floating in the air just above. On the backswing the dragon caught the orb with his tail and brought it with impossible speed up to Debbie Lee's face. “There is something you will want to see, then.”
Debbie Lee stepped back despite herself. “Uh, no. I'm afraid I'm not very smart when it comes to figurin' and such.”
The dragon's head lurched forward so that it was eye to eye with her. “That is precisely why it must you,” he rumbled, and then his tail slowly brought the glowing orb back between them.
The orb seemed to open into the yawning chasm of history, and suddenly the nature of the world was perfectly clear to her.
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Sorry!
First place goes to JudasFm for her Blade Runner-esque tale of flawed clones escaping from flawed humans. I was a little confused by a weak introduction of the fifth member of the party (Astra), but in the end I was able to piece it all together. Your notes on the broader story make me intrigued to read further as well! I liked how all of your characters were so distinct from each other physically and personality-wise, although I suppose that's also why their alliance crumbled so easily.... It's like a rogue mutant clone just can't catch any breaks, right?
Second place goes to Sinitrena, which hopefully results in some sort of fraternal twin scenario since otherwise the second place sperm is sadly redundant. I for one would be interested in at least a synopsis of your lost work....
Great minds think alike, I suppose. 
