Blunderball

Try Some, Buy Some

Challenge #10*: David Bowie Day. Write a story that begins as hard fantasy and ends as space opera. It must include five different images taken from Bowie's song lyrics and the names of two bands in which he appeared. At least one of the characters must be iconic and the word count must correspond to the length of a track from the album Blackstar.

"Ew," said Girth Loinhammer, putting down his stein. "That is..."

"Yeah," agreed Sekhmet, hurriedly rubbing at her tongue. "It's...it's got an aftertaste."

"I don't understand the hype. It's big and it's bland."

"Yo, bartender!" Sekhmet snapped her fingers. "What sort of mead is this?"

"That, my good..." the bartender seemed a little thrown off by the fact that Sekhmet had the head of a lioness "...lady?"

"Was it the miniskirt that gave it away?"

"Yes, well. That is the finest mead that Urmaland has seen since the winter of 409, when levies imposed by the neighbouring Fiefdom of Kirik disrupted trade agreements that had facilitated the import of the king bees necessary to—"

"Aaaugh!" cried Sekhmet and Girth in unison.

"You can't do that!" said Sekhmet. "It's bad enough you're serving inferior mead—"

"I would only grudgingly get plastered on this!" Girth interjected, pouring a great quantity of the stuff through the slats of his full-face helmet.

"Yeah!" agreed Sekhmet. "The terrible mead's one thing, but now you're using it as an excuse to dump a whole load of worldbuilding on us."

"Yeah!"

The bartender gazed a gazely stare. "But...that's what happened. The economic developments that have prevented me from sourcing king bee mead are actually just a very small part of a wider proxy war between the Aramang Empire and—"

"Aaaugh!" cried Sekhmet and Girth again.

"Stop it!" Sekhmet banged her hands on the surface of the bar. "Just stop it!"

Girth set down his empty stein and waved a begauntleted finger in the air. "You can't, like, have your entire world dictated by rational cause and effect. You need..." He began to count on his fingers. "One, some orcs or zombies or peasants or something for people to punch; two, a big taverny thing for people to sit in when they're done with the punching; and thingy that comes after two, lots of lovely booze for them to guzzle while they're sitting."

The bartender sighed. "Obviously I'd like to make sure that all my customers are happy. I'm doing the best I can with the limited resources available to me in the current socio-economic climate."

"And that's great." Girth waved dismissively. "But maybe you discover a beer spring, or somebody invents an, I dunno, a booze-make-goodifier."

"Maybe a wizard summons up some demon bees and it turns out their honey's really good for mead," offered Sekhmet.

"I bet that would be spicy," said Girth.

"But those things don't exist!" cried the bartender, exasperated. "There's no such thing as wizards or beer springs or...I forget what the other one was. It's this or nothing!"

"Well, fine then!" said Sekhmet. "Come on, let's get back in our spaceship and go somewhere that knows how to properly exploit suspension of disbelief."

"Wait, what?" said the bartender.

"Yeah!" Girth slammed a couple of gold coins on the bar. "Sorry the money's a little warm. It just came out of a goat."

"Wait, what?" said the bartender, again.

Twenty minutes later, Girth and Sekhmet had taken the trip in their gemini spacecraft and were sitting in an artisan cocktail lounge on board Boozulon Five.

"This is good," said Sekhmet, holding up her blue, blue, electric blue cocktail. It was at least twice as fruity and refreshing as it was blue.

"Really good." Girth nodded, lifting a foot to examine the skull designs upon his shoes.

"What are the ingredients for this?" she asked a passing waiter.

"Nothing!" he beamed. "We've got a machine out back that converts matter directly from the hopes and dreams of everyone on board this station."

"Aaaugh!" cried Sekhmet and Girth in unison.

"That's so lame!"

"You're not even trying!"

"I would only grudgingly get plastered on this!"