Magic Murder Cube Marine

When people with big brains needed something heavy moved, they called someone like Francis to do it for them. He figured turnabout was fair play. Francis needed some thinking done, and he wasn't too proud to farm it out to someone more suited. But first, he had to figure out where all the mystery meat was coming from.

It started innocently enough, some random bacon appearing in the larder, sausages on the breakfast platters. At first he assumed Willow was responsible, so he was surprised when she thanked him for getting groceries.

What followed was a very tense round of questioning as it turned out nobody knew where the mystery meat had come from. Everyone was on edge about the possibility of accidental cannibalism until Jack sniffed the sausage and declared it was probably wild boar.

“It has a very distinctive taste, you know it when you eat it.” Jack explained as he helped himself to everyone else's uneaten sausages. His plate was piled high with the mysterious meat.

“I suppose it's a good thing you recognized it.” Francis said, feeling incredibly relieved that their skeletal servants weren't chopping up random strangers.

“Hmmm?” Jack looked up from his food innocently. “Oh, yeah. Totally.”

Willow’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have many wild boar where you're from?”

“Not as such, no.” Jack admitted. “These are wonderful sausages though.”

Francis felt the immediate need to derail that conversation before it went somewhere unpleasant. “Jack, once you’re done eating, can you help me track down the source?”

“Of course! I'd be more than happy to help out with that. Who knows, they might even have some bones for me to gnaw on.” The dust hound wagged his tail at the thought. “All these skeletons walking around are making me miss my chew toys.”

“Jack, no chewing on the servants.” Willow said sternly.

“I wasn't gonna.” He protested, in a voice that absolutely said otherwise. “Still though, very tempting, innit?”

“Come on.” Francis said, picking up the dust hound by the scruff of his neck. Jack was human sized, but might as well have been a sack of potatoes as far as the Marine was concerned. “Let's go before Willow turns you into something.”

Jack looked up in surprise at the large man holding him in the air. “She wouldn't.”

“Oh yes, she would.” Francis confirmed.

Willow nodded gleefully. “I absolutely would.”

***

“Your bird, she's a bit scary.” Jack remarked once they were out of earshot. He looked over his shoulder as if expecting the Death Cleric to magically appear behind him. “She has quite a presence, for someone so young.”

“That's because she's over five hundred years old.” Francis explained. “It's something that she doesn't like to talk about. People either don't believe her, or get weird.”

“I can sympathize.” Jack stopped at a massive gray stone cube standing on the edge of the garden, shaded and protected from the elements by a stone awning. There were five more exactly like it, lined up in a neat row. He gave it a good sniff and wagged his tail. “I think I've got something.”

The stone cubes were three meters tall and completely uniform. There were no seams or writing. Francis thought they seemed unnaturally perfect, like a manufactured stone. The Marine felt a dull ache as a long forgotten memory surfaced. He thought about a house north of Houston, with gray stone countertops and a swing set out back.

Francis shook off the old ghosts and got back to the task at hand. Now was not the time to think about what could have been. It never helped. “What do you make of it, Jack?” He asked.

“It smells like food, and magic.” The dust hound said. “The trail goes in one side, and comes out the other. Like they walked through it or something.”

“Weird.” Francis looked at the stone cube. “What else?”

Jack pointed towards the palace. “This trail smells like the kitchen. But the one on the other side smells like blood, meat, and fear.”

“That's fucking ominous. Let's see where it leads.” Francis sent Willow a mental message with their findings before they moved on. He had seen enough horror movies to know the importance of telling people where he was headed.

Francis was not about to stumble into a Texas Chainsaw Massacre type situation without backup. The only Texan allowed to run around with a chainsaw, covered in blood, was him. If he saw some weird eggs or tentacles he would nuke the site from orbit (or the nearest equivalent), just to be safe.

“It's probably a storage box.” Willow told him. “They keep food from spoiling until the kitchen servants pick it up. They're locked to prevent theft or tampering.”

“Oh! Like a walk-in cooler.” Francis replied. He relayed his findings to Jack.

“That makes sense. First in, first out and all that. It would explain why one trail smelled older.” He gave the air a good sniff and started walking towards the front gate.

The trail continued down the main road. Jack’s tail wagged under his purple robes as he walked. “This one probably leads to the butcher’s. I can't imagine it will be hard to find, if they're slaughtering animals on-site.”

This new information didn't do much to put Francis at ease. “Yeah, but who's doing the slaughtering?”

“Skeletons, probably.” Jack shrugged, as if the concept of a slaughter house full of undead creatures was completely normal and not incredibly frightening. “Same as everything else ‘round here. It's just another form of automation, if you think about it.”

“I'd rather not. I don't think I'd enjoy it.” Francis said, leaving the moral and philosophical implications of skeletons chopping living creatures into sausage for someone else. “But I definitely want to know where the meat is coming from.”

“That is a mystery, innit?” Jack stopped at one of the fountains by the side of the main road. Water cascaded down from an outlet concealed in a carving of a skeleton holding a jug. He sniffed it before taking a sip. “Tastes pretty fresh, like spring water.”

“Maybe let that tap run for a while, those were off last time I checked.” Francis cautioned. “Who knows what sentiment has built up over the last few hundred years.”

They walked in silence for a minute. Finally, Jack spoke up. “Not to be a total arsehole, but the word you wanted was ‘sediment’.”

“Oh, thanks for letting me know.” Francis said, his brow furrowing. “What's the difference?”

“Sediment is the stuff at the bottom of a river. Sentiment is a feeling or attitude about something.” Jack explained, not unkindly. “I figured you would want to know.”

“Yeah, I fuck words up all the time. Like ‘quiche’. I saw one on the menu at a restaurant once and called it a ‘quickie’. I thought they were supposed to be a quick breakfast food or something. The waitress was a little surprised.” Francis laughed at the embarrassing memory.

The dust hound chuckled. “What happened next?”

“I married her.” Francis said, realizing the old memory had worked its way to the surface in spite of him.

Jack stopped and looked at his new friend. “What happened?”

Francis figured it was his own fault for bringing up the subject. He couldn't be mad at Jack for asking. “She loved me, but I loved being a Marine more. So, I re-enlisted, and she divorced me.” He grimaced. “I can't really blame her, it's not like I was around much.”

Jack knew from the dark cloud that had settled over the Marine there was more to the story. There always was. But it wasn't the time or the place.

The dust hound looked around and swiveled an ear to listen. “I’ve got something.” He pointed a finger down at the city below. “Now, what do you make of that?”

Hundreds of skeletons walked the streets of Brexis. Some were carrying crates or pushing brooms. But it was the one dragging a wild pig by the ankle that caught the Marine’s attention.

“Do you think the pig wandered into the city looking for food? Or did Mr. Skeleton go hunting?” Francis asked.

“Interesting question.” Jack cocked his head to the side as he watched the skeleton drag the dead animal down the street. “My money, if I had any, would be on the pig wandering in. If we're keeping with the idea of automation, I can't imagine they would let the workers wander out of bounds. Though, to hedge my bets, I'd say there might be a staging area outside the city.”

They kept watch from above as the skeleton worked its way through the city. It was made of white bone instead of gold like the palace servants. Francis figured that meant it was less specialized and valuable. Or perhaps, the gold was a security measure to distinguish the palace servants from the common workers.

Congratulations! Necromancy has leveled up! (2/10)

Francis started to connect the dots and realized that the city was waking up because of him. Zed didn't eat, or use any of the city’s other services. So, one by one they had gone dormant, laying in wait until they were needed.

Sleeping in the palace had caused the servants to prepare breakfast. They were out of meat, so the servants requested more. Which had in turn triggered a Rube Goldberg machine of sorts, waking support systems through the entire city.

The skeletons were essentially robots, following instructions given centuries earlier. Francis was willing to bet there was a button inside the gray stone storage box for the servants to press when they ran out of something, or took the last of it. He explained this all to Jack, who began to look concerned.

“Well, that's not good,” the dust hound said. He watched the activity down below while he thought. “It's almost like a giant computer.”

“Say again? I can't imagine a computer made of corpses.”

“I can.” Jack growled. “We have something similar where I come from. If this is when I think it is, I wouldn't be surprised if they found their way here.”

Francis scratched his head. “You aren't making much sense, amigo.”

“I'm beginning to think this place is sort of like a funnel. All of time goes in one end and meets here, on the other side.” Jack saw the look of complete bafflement on the Marine’s face and sighed.

“We're at the end of time.” He explained, grossly simplifying a complex idea to the point where it fell apart scientifically. “If every universe was a banana, this place would be the stem where the bunch met.”

“Oh, well why didn't you say so?” Francis could understand that. Bananas weren't exactly complicated fruits. “Yeah, that's kinda what I figured, what with us being from different times and all.”

The dust hound raised an eyebrow and looked at Francis like a pig who had started speaking in Latin. “You did?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I thought it was the present. But you're from the future, which probably feels like the present to you. So I figured that we were probably way further down the road than either of us thought.” Francis shifted awkwardly. “I just didn't talk about it because I didn't wanna embarrass myself. Science isn't exactly my thing.”

Jack could appreciate the simplicity of Francis' logic. “Well, broadly speaking, you are right. I think. Though who made this place or why is still a mystery.”

“Like the meat.” Francis said, doubling down.

“Like the meat.” Jack agreed.