Eysin: The Giggling Curtain | Ch. 20 - CCC Eesian Garbage Collector
Scrap Punk and Sea Horror: Eesian trash gremlins are collecting crap to build something huge in the Cotton Candy Cloud. The whaling mission escalates. The curious bell begins to toll.
An hour slips by in bruised quiet.
The remaining fleets—Vinu’s disciplined Constellation whalers tight around Rubaiyat, Bratka’s rogue privateers holding further out with Atlas’ captured Kraken in tow, drift wary around the cotton-candy cloud.
A distant pink-white lie hanging low over the water.
Capricorn heals nearby—walls knitting slow pink pulses, no one aboard yet.
Arkion, Atlas, and Alexander stand at Rubaiyat’s rail.
Eyes on the cloud. Syncing what crews remain after the corrupted tore through like sharks through a net. Clarity access.
Pisces has vanished beneath the mist—submerged in dead water no grapple or harpoon can pierce.
Conversation trails off into the salt wind.
High above the CCC-Anomaly, the last drone swarms spiral into a living hurricane—
then pour downward like silver rain,
swallowed whole.
Silence.
Then—gremlins.
They rise from the water—drowned sailors who never learned they were dead:
porcelain-white,
violet-cracked eyes,
hand-sized scavengers in tattered admiral coats of barnacle and rust.
Rusted cutlasses forged from old drone blades glint in tiny fists.
They board with ghostly grace,
whispering fragments of ancient shanties
in tongues long sunk.
“Yo ho… remember us… remember us…”
Chaos ripples across the fleets.
Zerkers stomp, smash, sweep them overboard.
Gremlins shatter—
reform denser, faster—
scuttling back toward the cloud with stolen marbles, armrings, zerk shards clutched like plunder for the waking beast.
Below the surface—
in the unnatural calm of this hunted stretch of sea,
graveyard of three centuries’ wars for the Sampo’s shadow—
tonnes of ancient scrap rise in violet glow:
warped hull plates from forgotten battles,
shattered drones wearing faces of long-dead captains,
war graves swimming up like iron filings to the magnet of grief.
A cursed armada waking for one last voyage.
Cassius starts humming an old sea shanty.
Gremlins pause mid-scuttle, tiny boots tapping involuntary time to “Yo ho… remember us…” before shattering into dust.
20.1 – The Cannons and the Capture
Vinu spots the charge first—
Sampo’s crown cannons glowing red suns,
aimed dead at the CCC.
The fleet tenses—
Constellation whalers tightening their defensive circle around Rubaiyat,
Bratka’s rogue privateers holding further out with Atlas’ captured Kraken in tow,
ready to flank or feast.
First volley streaks down.
Impacts bloom inside the cloud—
no destruction.
Growth.
The pink-white mist swells,
energetic,
hungry.
Gremlins on every deck double speed—
more violent,
biting,
prying at zerk seams,
stealing marbles,
dragging scrap toward the water.
Porcelain faces cracking wider grins.
Chaos ripples across the fleets.
On Rubaiyat’s foredeck,
Valen and Alexander fight back-to-back—
her kantele strings leaching into the deck planks,
releasing a low, thrumming shockwave
tuned to Eesian frequencies.
Gremlins and scrap jolt upward like startled birds,
repelled in a perfect circle around her—
zerks only tingling at the joints.
Alexander’s red ball ricochets through the air,
dusting five gremlins into violet smoke
while he quotes Baudelaire between breaths.
Furious, flirtatious duet—she saves his neck, he saves hers, both pretending not to notice.
Arkion and Morris football corrupted critters off rails they pass from ship to ship—
projectiles screaming with exaggerated cartoon faces,
terrified mid-flight.
Vinu turns to Bartel—
voice calm suggestion across the din.
“Could use someone to catch those shots before they feed her more.”
Bartel nods—
already moving.
White condensers flare.
On a Constellation corvette,
Sylrissa’s rope-darts sing—
whipping violet ghosts off the rail,
trying to reach Bartel’s side
only to watch him flare white and bolt upward toward the cloud.
She doesn’t get to say goodbye.
Just watches him go—cool, proud, heart kicking once in quiet ache.
Everyone watches the twin orbiting lights lock around the pink fluffball.
Red suns drawn in—
swallowed clean.
Seconds pass.
Bartel’s voice, calm over NSS:
“It grappled me… there’s a body coming through here, and it’s holding a harpoon—keeps growing.”
Eysin’s breath catches.
Her weapon.
She crosses her fingers—
hard.
Bartel again:
“It… stopped growing. For now.”
The cloud pulses—heavier now.
Its own gravity tugging at loose scrap, at gremlins, at the very water beneath the hulls.
Ships creak.
Crew brace.
The real whale has surfaced.
Alexander brings Valen, Lily and their entourage to the brifge—breathless.
Vinu glances over, astrolabe pausing in his fingers.
A slow, knowing smile.
“Heh heh… what happened to your lip, mon fils?”
Alexander freezes mid-step—half-defensive, half-amused.
Touches the split lip, winces. A small, bitter smile.
“Wrong girl. Right reason.”
Vinu’s laugh is low, warm, a little sad.
“Always the poet.”
Alexander bows with a flourish. “Always your fault.”
20.2 – The Kiss and the Dive
Arkion finds Eysin amid the gremlin cleanup. She’s on her way to the bridge. He’s on his way to follow Bartel with the six remaining Baltikons ready to jump.
The deck is slick with violet dust,
crew still stomping the last stubborn porcelain scavengers into smoke.
No words at first.
He cups her face.
Kisses her like the first time, times ago—salt and goodbye.
Her grip tightens on his rags, her eyes become sudden waterfalls, “the Voice.”
Arkion stills, “What does it say?”
She cries another breath—Raises her crossed fingers between them. Her voice climbs. Her laughter climbs:
“Ho’oponopono!! I’ve even got my fingers crossed for you.”
A gentle forehead-butt—kisses the spot, looks into her eyes.
One word with a warm smile,
“Eysin.”
Then kisses her knuckles over the crossed fingers.
And a Yahu between the little kisses.
They look into each other’s eyes once more,
One word, with a warm smile,
“Arkion.”
Hands fall away.
He turns to the rail.
Eyes on the distant pink-white cloud.
Morris steps beside him. Five more Baltikons ready to launch off the rails on other ships.
Arkion exhales sharp—half-laugh. Half-cry.
He is supposed to address them, but forgot how to speak.
Morris speaks, instead. To the Baltikons and whoever else was listening in on their channel.
“Ride the pull. Let the trash carry us in.
Inside it’ll be intense—level twelve hundred rush, no brakes.
Bartel and the Blindside.
Try not to puke on each other.”
No one laughs.
They thump their chest, once, in unison. Their eyes light up red, blue, green, yellow—to each their own favourite colour.
“YA-HU!”
They step on the rails, and dive off.
Harpoons—loose.
The whale waits.
20.3 – Going Inside the CCC-Anomaly
This is the launch.
The seven stepping off—
zerks locking onto the rising graveyard stream like cursed privateers finally boarding the ghost ship they’ve chased forever.
The pull is fast as they figure how to run on it.
Running up the archive’s own gravity and the floating trash—like running down—-on rubble—the concentrated despair of 300,000 years slamming into them like a tidal wave of stored capacity.
Each zerk flares gold.
Eyes bleeding soft auroras.
No fighting it.
They ride it.
Any gravity becomes irrelevant.
They zap in with trails thunder following.
20.4 – Inside CCC
Thick, metallic pink-white mist closes around them like warm breath from a dying god.
Gremlins swarm the glowing intruders—tiny boarding parties with violet-cracked eyes, rusted cutlasses flashing.
They land on an island of trash, building up, sculpting itself out of old Eesian scrap pieces, billions of drones—The entire Swarm family hovering above the Baltics must have flown in there. Building into something.
On the rim of the island, seven trash giants rise—fifteen-meter homunculi stitched from Pisces rot, Swarm drones and sea-floor graves.
Figureheads with screaming mouths, barnacle eyes glowing violet, rusted cutlasses the length of masts.
A Talos per Baltikon—matched as if the cloud read their deepest wounds and built mirrors from the bones.
They roar cracked, choral shanties—
“Remember us…
remember us…”
Talos… Vinu’s voice rings through Clarity.
Talos is the mythic echo for these trash-golems:
slow, relentless, territorial, throwing literal pieces of the past—war graves, drone husks, shattered hulls—at anyone trying to disturb the sacred wound they’re guarding.
It’s like the collective trauma of three hundred thousand years grew legs, woke up cranky, and decided “no visitors today, fuck off with your redemption arcs.”
Objective clear:
Separate Bartel and the Blindside from the self-extracting structure—both somewhere up the mound, hidden in pink mist—And who knows how high, how impossible.
They try. Clashing with the Taloi—trash versus laser beams.
But useless, they just keep getting new parts from the island itself.
Arkion reaches closest to the Blindside by trapping the Talos, walking past—only to have the Talos in the trap flow back into the island and rise right ahead of him.
Then he tackles it over, and before the Talos contacted land—it suspends in the air—Arkion has created a magnetic bubble around the giant, not letting it touch the “floor”.
He rushes upwards to one of the peaks—Blindside, right in size for the giant trying to follow him behind, suspended in a bubble.
Arkion reaches the HARPOON, reaches for it—but a plasma sheath around the harpoon repels, burning even through his zerk.
He pulls back, scorched.
*
Morris takes his giant head-on—plasma dash, shoulder-check—caves the figurehead’s skull.
Shards explode.
The giant staggers.
The entire island wobbles at the center and sends waves out.
Bartel’s voice over NSS, breathless but excited:
“Did you see that? When Morris dropped his, the whole thing shuddered.”
“Blindside is untouchable.” Arkion—voice tight, amber already flickering across his shoulders as the rush pushes him toward Canary-mode to get a better look over the nature of this thing.
“It’s guarding the harpoon, we must find a way to knock it off her. Bartel, you better get your full shields on. It’s a Melter type, it will use your condensers to change form. Just let it happen.”
One giant down clean—the central body sagged.
Two—it lists dangerously.
Gremlins shriek, redoubling, trying to drag debris back into the tear.
Bartel reports:
“The body is getting some legs now.”
20.5 – Canary Above the Egg
Outside, more cannon blasts streak from the Sampo—red suns screaming down.
Bartel’s condensers catch them clean—white lightning forking every vein, holding the surge like a man holding his own heart outside his chest.
Vinu watches from Rubaiyat’s rail, astrolabe still in hand, eyes on Arkion appearing, hovering just above the cloud—amber glow intensifying.
Vinu’s voice—quiet recognition, a trace of sorrow:
“A spectacular night. A night of yazatas clashing… extraordinary servants of the order.”
Arkion’s voice over Clarity—dry, self-mocking, but steady:
“Switching to root access mode. Mind the bells.”
He rises higher—stops dead above the cloud.
Thumps his chest once.
Amber dust dances.
Not enough.
Thumps again—
zerk fractures,
spidering cracks glowing golden-sun.
What the hell are you doing?
He hears her in his head.
And she hears:
Just changing gears. It will be all right :)
Vision whites out.
Recovers—
eyes blue,
steady.
Thumps once more.
Heart stops.
Suit ignites full amber—
beacon-bright.
A serene orb of amber light hanging in the sky—an unblinking eye of mercy and war, ringed by slow-orbiting cinnamon.
Arkion mutters to himself, “Dā’ā lāzēm?”
A pleasant, clear sonar toll tintinnabulates—
gentle,
questioning,
almost curious.
TOLL.
Each toll a soft inquiry sent into the cloud:
Is this necessary?
Back on the ship where he left her, the vision appears to Eysin in full.
Just another miracle.
Tears crush like violent waterfalls out of her googly eyes. Snort!
“Get out!”
Eysin shouts, it like a howl, stretching hands towards the sky, “how fantasticooooool!?”
TOLL.
A howl starts all across the fleets and whalers.
Inside, Morris shoots at Blindside—
almost knocks it free.
Giant leg erupts—
kicks him out—clean.
Trash giants collapse inward to feed, complete the rising body.
