《The Goose, the golden egg and the end of the world》Chapter 10 - The corruption of John Lafferty
Advertisement
After returning home from the forest, the Goose noticed Dr Milichenko on a political round table on the BBC and subsequently looked him up online and watched a number of his videos of YouTube. Dr Milichenko possessed remarkable eloquence even when speaking in English, and his biting rejoinders never failed to render the person with whom he was sparring speechless, and for those reasons, along with his meteoric rise to international fame, the Goose came to suspect that Fyodor Milichenko had made contact with The Snake, an assessment The Goat agreed with.
Fyodor Milichenko had, with his prolific media appearances, become the de facto leader and spokesman of the REJOIN campaign, and if he had been adopted by the snake like the Goose suspected he had been then it meant that the Raven had ambitions that were global in scale, making it imperative that Robert and the Goose found the remaining guardians and added their energy to the blue egg. So far the Leviathan was the only other guardian whose location the Goose was relatively certain of. There were other guardians, like the snake, that were going to be hard to find because their influence didn't manifest physically, and others they wouldn't need to find because they would find their way to them. The Wolf was the guardian of earth and death and was the goat's spiritual counterpart. Robert asked the Goose to explain to him the nature of the connection between the Wolf and the Goat and the Goose explained to him that when things die they are absorbed by the earth and provide the nutrients for new life to emerge, hence the Goat and the Wolf's relationship as spiritual counterparts.
The Goose could feel that the Wolf had become cognizant of the goat's awakening and would be with them soon. The Wolf had the power to skip between dimensions, which is how it came to appear in Robert's living room one morning as if out of thin air. The Wolf was considerably larger than a normal Wolf and was black with red eyes and a white stripe running down its back. After recovering from the shock caused by the Wolf's sudden appearance, Robert retrieved the egg from upstairs and awakened the Wolf, which, after being awakened, took on the appearance of a regular wolf with grey fur and brown eyes.
Advertisement
A few days after the arrival of the Wolf, days that Jessie spent doting on the Wolf with the same love and affection that she gave to the goat, the Oracle paid another visit to Robert's house to inform them of further developments in the Raven's circle that she had become apprised of. She told them that she had been looking into some interesting financial transactions, specifically involving Prism Capital, that led her to believe that the Raven had made contact with the pig a long time ago, and she agreed with the Goose's belief that Dr Fyodor Milichenko was in some way affiliated with the snake. She also had some interesting news to share with them about The Church of the Golden Goose.
"I'm wondering what you make of John Lafferty and the Church of the Golden Goose and the way their opinions of you have changed over the course of the last few weeks?"
"I know nothing about that," the Goose answered.
"I was stunned when I first found out about it myself; here, look."
The Oracle withdrew her phone from her bag, brought up The Church of the Golden Goose's YouTube channel and hit play on one of their most recent videos. In the video John Lafferty is giving a lecture in which he's discussing new writings that the church had discovered that point to the Goose being feared as an agent of destruction and to the existence of a second divine bird, a Raven, that possessed all the strength that the Goose possessed and perhaps even more. The writings in question were found in ancient Aztec structures in Central America that depict the Goose requesting humans be sacrificed in its name before it intercedes to protect them from a great flood, and that, before the slaughter was to begin, the Raven appeared with news that there would be no flood. The lecture was accompanied by a slideshow of authentic looking images of hieroglyphs depicting the story than John Lafferty had just recounted.
"That is not true!" The Goose said angrily, "The rat had filled those people's heads with talk of impending doom and the need for human sacrifice and it was up to me and the Wolf to stop them, which we were able to do but only momentarily, the rat had been so thorough about convincing them of the need for human sacrifice that they started doing it anyway, and there was nothing that we could do to stop them."
Advertisement
"I sense the Raven's influence at work here," the oracle said.
"It wouldn't be the first time that someone has been seduced away from me by the Raven."
"Given how devoted Dr. Lafferty was to you the Raven must have offered him something really big to turn him."
"You're right, and I think it's important that we find out what the Raven offered him."
"You're not permitted to make contact with people that have entered the Raven's sphere."
"Which is why we'll get the information some other way."
"There's something else that we need to discuss."
The oracle went on to share with them her theory about the Raven wanting to start a war between Russia and Ukraine. The REJOIN referendum, according to the oracle, was being used as the chief mechanism for orchestrating the war, with Russia and pro-Russian bodies mounting an aggressive and sophisticated misinformation campaign to influence Ukrainian voters.
"We need the owl, we need to find the owl soon," the Goose said.
"What's the owl?" Jessie asked.
"The owl is the Guardian of knowledge," the Goose answered, "if it's a war of misinformation that we're dealing with then we need the Guardian of knowledge to help us fight that war."
"Where can we find it?" Robert asked.
"We have no idea," answered the Goose, "nobody's seen the owl since the library of Alexandria was burned to ground; it was there when the library was sacked and burned and it hasn't been seen since."
"How is the owl going to help? You can't disinfect people's minds just by telling the truth," Jessie said.
"As the Guardian of knowledge the owl possesses information that can't be obtained through conventional means of investigation," the oracle said, "that information could prove very powerful if revealed at the right moment."
"You mean like what Solomon does," Jessie said.
"King Solomon?" Robert asked.
"No, the blogger, he goes by the handle Solomon, he's always leaking high value information on his website, he's the one who blew the whistle on those fake bank charges at Wells Fargo and the chemicals used in fracking."
"Sounds promising, now we just have to figure out how to find him," the Goose said.
"Don't you have a connection with all of these animals that we can use to find them?" Jessie asked the Goose.
"That would make things far too easy, it's called a pilgrimage for a reason," the Goose responded.
"For now I think we should focus on the Raven and what its overall objectives are with it taking an interest in both US and Ukrainian politics," the Oracle suggested before leaving.
"I know the oracle said that you're not allowed to make contact with John Lafferty, but what if I spoke with him," Robert suggested to the Goose when they were having lunch in the kitchen after the oracle had left.
"I suppose there wouldn't be anything wrong with that, of course you'd have to avoid any mention of our relationship."
"That shouldn't be a problem, but shouldn't we expect him to be similarly guarded about his relationship with the Raven?"
"The feeling that I got from watching his latest public appearances is that he's struggling with a great amount of conflict, if you push the right buttons we should be able to get some answers from him."
Advertisement
Warrior’s Promise
Su Mo went from the pride of his clan to becoming the butt end of a joke in a matter of minutes. The former King of Mercenaries from Earth was reborn in the body of a boy in a foreign world and had used skills in his previous life to rise to the top among his peers, however, his previous training could only take him so far. The next step in this martial arts dominated world was to awaken one’s Martial Soul. The awakening ceremony ends in disaster for Su Mo as he awoke a Martial Soul of the lowest level. Such a prodigy is now considered worse than useless as his Martial Soul is far too weak! After becoming the embarrassment of the clan, he discovers that his Martial Soul has a unique property: it could level up! This unique martial soul could shake the heavens. It was at this time that Su Mo meets the love of his life but the situation quickly deteriorates when she is taken by one of the most powerful forces in the world. Su Mo must rise from the lowest of the low and reach the pinnacle of power in order to save the love of his live within five years or she will forever be out of his reach.
8 1099Far Strider
A college student finds himself transported into a strange land with burgeoning magical powers, and is taken in by Ned Stark. Will he sink or swim in this medieval society, and will he ever get home? ====================== OC-insert without knowledge of Game of Thrones, new planeswalker. Slow power ramp. Second crossover: Star Wars (around chapter 39). ======================= As a note, I started this as a speed writing challenge to myself. The challenge was successful, and I managed 100,000+ words (as well as some character sheets in excel and such) over 10.5 days. Then I had to stop and let my hands recover from their burgeoning carpal tunnel syndrome. The story currently stands at around 150,000 words (or ~550 RRL pages) over 54 chapters; expect a chapter a day until I've caught up with the backlog. The focus of this story was not quality writing, and that hasn't changed. I mostly use it as my semi-guilty "I need to write something, but am not focused enough to write something good" story. Expect self-indulgent writing in general, and a bit of OP (or, well, more than just a bit if we're being honest), especially later in the story as the protagonist matures into a more full-blown Planeswalker. But if you're looking for something with a power-ramping protagonist romping around the place, something you'd be a bit embarrassed to admit liking (I know I am) but like anyways (and come on, this is RRL, so that probably describes just about everyone here who actually has shame), then this may be a nice bit of mental junk food for you.
8 150Faceless Phantom
A man had given up his real life. He was one of many NEETs who wished to change their life. A new popular virtual reality game, Heallance, was released. He intended to become a new person inside the game. Thus, he promised to himself that he would never log out. And he was reborn as a player named Zeroth. Throwing his real life away, Zeroth's new life in artificial world has begun. Note: English is my third language, so my vocabulary is limited and my grammar may not be good. There's no proof reader too. Please leave any critics or advice for me. I'll try my best to improve. Well, I hope you will enjoy my story!
8 197How to Perform Magic and Influence Fae
David was your average college student turned paranormal investigator. Disconnected from normal society, he had given up the traditional friends and fun of college life in exchange for a devotion to researching, investigating, and eventually tracking down a real, live werewolf. David does not find exactly what he was looking for, but instead throws himself head first into the magical reality of his world. Unfortunately for him, he is not only exceptionally bad at magic, but also has a unique talent for finding his way into the very worst of magical situations.
8 134Crystal Heart
When a heart of flesh is not enough. My ancestors passed down a heart disease to my grandfather, who in turn passed it down to my father and to me. It's not really a disease that makes one sick, we just live shorter. This disease should, theoretically, die out since it shortens our lifespan. How it is alive to this day is beyond me. If I was a normal girl, I wouldn't care much for my faulty heart. I wouldn't even know I had one in the first place. But I am not a normal little girl, no. I do not aim for the simple or the easy life. I want to tread where no one has been before, and discover what the ebb of time has mercilessly washed into the darkest corners of our civilization. This is my adventure.
8 168Lethologica (an wdy au!)
After Austin gets kicked out of hell he gets sent somewhere and now has to deal with the bullshitery that it has.----I would say this is a magical au but there's nothing really magical about it (except for the fact some of the characters can just...Causally change outfits and stuff.) so it's literally just an stuck-in-another-world au.
8 160