Written & Illustrated by Aristide TWAIN Edited by Lupan EVEZAN
BEING A EXCLUSIVE CROSSOVER PREQUEL TO “AUTEUR'S ABECEDARIUM”, AS WELL AS A SEQUEL TO “GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE” and “A BETTER WORLD”, FEATURING THE COMMERCIALLY-LICENSED USE OF JACOB BLACK'S CREATION, “AUTEUR”, AND OF ARISTIDE TWAIN'S CREATIONS, THE COLLECTIVE OF THE RETCONNING CROCODILES. PUBLISHED BY ‘GOBLIN STUDIOS’ — JANUARY 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Dead men did not cry. Skeletons had no tears to shed. Therefore, he was not dead. Auteur would have taken comfort in that fact, had he not been crying at the time. His tears, of course, were rough and misshapen, for lack of habit; trails of reddish-black ichor descending down the beige slopes of his weathered skull. It was not even blood that Auteur cried, because he had none. Not anymore. He had been reduced to so very little. A tangle of blackened biodata, nothing more than a half-scribbled sketch, cowering inside a cage of bones that was itself in danger of giving out at any moment. His ribs were held together with tape and wishes of good luck; his spine, he’d put back together in the wrong order; his right femur was cracked. He could have upgraded himself months ago, of course, transferred his essence into a new body — but in his lessened state, with the history of his people in such tatters, he feared that if he gave up any more of his old identity, his frayed sense of self would vanish completely. Too late now, anyway. For a second time (or was it the twentieth? the two-thousandth? did it matter?) one of his cunning masterplans had fallen apart at the last moment, with disastrous consequences. He’d been so certain that the Noble-woman would choose a world of her own over the life of her alien guardian. And he was no fool; he’d done everything in his power, vandalised a sad and ancient thing, all to prevent her from walking back on her choice, even if she were to somehow change her mind. None of that had been enough. Somehow, the woman had put the timeline he’d so studiously unraveled back together again, and the gloriously murky parallel world he’d birthed from her regret had given out from under his feet. Her core memories had made it back to her original self, in the main timeline. His had not. After all, he had no body to go back to. He’d thrown himself into her world, creaking bones and all, and now he found himself trapped in the collapsing unreality, whose sole link to Auteur’s home-universe was now out of his reach. It hadn’t lasted long after that. First the stars had gone out, then the Sun and the Moon. The people had lost their shadows, then their eyes and voices; finally they had vanished completely. Now, the jagged silhouette of London’s skyline still stood, cut against a sky reddened by paradox, but the buildings barely more than illusion. Auteur knew that if he tried to walk into any one of those houses and skyscrapers, he would find them to be flat, twodimensional things, like theater backdrops. So, the ancient paradox-wright lay despondent in the now-empty street, crying. Crying tears of ink, which splattered on the gray asphalt. Even in the depths of despair, Auteur was nothing if not resourceful. Dying slowly, tearfully, alone, in the ruins of the oxbow timeline he’d engineered? As endings went, it was good — but it wasn’t great. He deserved better; he demanded better. Laboriously, Auteur dipped the tip of a bony finger into the pool of ink, and then turned around. The sidewalk faced him, gray and empty. An empty canvas, or a white page; however you preferred. He began writing. 2
Not in English, of course, nor in French, or Ancient Sidetic, or any other Earthly tongue. He wrote in forgotten alchemical symbols, in abstruse glyphs that began to turn and interlock like gears the moment he was done writing them. He had little time, and only a vague purpose in mind, so he wrote quickly and thoughtlessly, making several grammatical errors that he noticed but did not bother to correct. In the end, the meaning of his inscription, boiled down to something a linear being could grasp, was something like: ‘THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.’ There. That was his survival, and eventual return to the universe, ensured. Dread villains (and Auteur certainly liked to think of himself as a dread villain) simply did not stay permanently dead if they made those their purported last words. Now, even if he died here, whether it be three days or three millennia, his resurrection was guaranteed. He had only to wait. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to wait too long. ********* A pinpoint of awareness that had once been Auteur woke with a start, hearing wet, squelching footsteps, a rustling of robes—and words. “Well, well,” a sibilant, self-amused voice was saying, some distance way. “What have we here, boys?” “An oxbow world,” answered another, gruffer voice. Auteur heard a long sniff, and the voice continued: “Off-brand, by the smell of it. And rotting.” “Beetle dung,” a third visitor spat. “We’d have to flood the place to make it usable. D’you reckon it’s worth it, brothers?” “Destiny works in mysterious ways, my irascible sibling,” the first voice cautioned. “If we are here, now, it must be for a purpose. That purpose does not have to be the creation of a new bolthole, however. I would be inclined agree that this place is too far gone to be of much use to us. But look.” The other two gasped. Auteur heard footsteps coming closer and closer — he felt a clawed hand grab his and pull him up to his feet, even though his nerves were a distant memory. He opened his eyes. Before him were three semi-humanoid, reptilian figures with long crocodilian faces. Each was dressed in long, flowing silk robes with rich gold-thread patterns, and wore huge solid-gold shoulder pads that matched their golden fezzes. Their eyes glowed faintly in the timeless darkness of this fallen world. “Who…” he began, and his voice caught in his throat. He had a voice? …He had a throat? He looked down at himself and saw he had been restored completely; as he was before the Champion of Life had torn his skin away from him and left him a skeletal revenant. Feeling at his face, he realised even his gray mustache and goatee had been restored to him. 3
“Juste ciel,” he swore. “What in the — who — how long have I been…?” “We have no way of knowing for sure,” said the first Crocodile. “But centuries, no doubt.” “We are the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles,” said the second Crocodile. “We have restored you to life,” said the third and final Crocodile, “but it’s a temporary measure. A parlour trick. We simply regressed your body back to a randomly-chosen point of your earlier timestream — but you cannot linger in this state too long, or your mind will start to regress also, and your whole intervening lifetime will be retconned away.” “Hah! That would be unacceptable,” Auteur snarled, greatly enjoying the feeling of once again possessing facial muscles with which to snarl. “As we said, we fully expected you to think so, Lord Auteur” the Crocodile replied conversationally. “So, you have a little under a thousand words to make your choice.” “My choice?” he repeated with a frown of his newly-recovered bushy eyebrows. “No, wait. Scratch that. Did you just say a thousand words?” The reptile gave him an unnerving, toothy smile. “Then you are — well — connoisseurs! You understand… my ways,” Auteur said, both excited and slightly worried. He was used to knowing more about the fundamental nature of reality than everybody else. It was a feeling he quite enjoyed, thank you very much. “And you know me. Have we met before?” “Oh, yes. Once we learned that your home continuum had entered its temporal Wilderness Years,” the raspy-voiced Crocodile explained smugly, “we would have been remiss not to pay it a call. Such warfare. So many retcons. So much flotsam and jetsam of history for us to pick apart!” “You were at the Auction,” Auteur guessed. Then, he blinked. “But — no. You weren’t. You weren’t!” “We were, until we weren’t,” the second Crocodile said evasively. “We had no wish to be drawn in your Third Universe’s endless time-warmongering. So, it was necessary to exercise a measure of caution.” “Unilateral erasure on such a scale? A retcon of this magnitude, just for security?! What are you?” “That, my bone-headed friend, is not a question you have enough leverage to even think about asking,” the first Crocodile hissed, leaning in towards Auteur, who, even now that he could once more stand straight, was two heads shorter than the reptile. “And you have more pressing concerns than our nature, you old dead thing. We have a proposition, and you have a very short span of time in which to hear it out, let alone accept it.” “Speak your piece, then.” “Well. Are you familiar with… the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids?” asked the third, more acrimonious Retconning Crocodile. 4
Auteur shook his head to the effect that he had not, even as he snickered at the name. “Oh, you may laugh,” said the first Crocodile, “but they are not a faction to be trifled with. They are a small congregation of sapient androids, native to the Prime Universe, and based in a permanent pocket dimension called the Cupid Homeworld. Most of the Cupids are, themselves, inconsequential fools. But their Creator was a genius. In your terms — if the lovechild of Urizen and Nikola Tesla had pursued a double career in robotics and biodata-manipulation.” “It is as though their story and identity are nailed down to the very floor of the Multiverse,” the second Crocodile raged. “For years we’ve been trying to uproot them or subvert them, to no avail. Their narrative gravity is too strong even for us.” Auteur smiled smugly. “But you think mine could outweigh theirs? That my genius might be key to doing away with those pests? I’m flattered.” “Not yours, as such,” the second Crocodile chortled. “Or, at least, not just yours. But that of your universe. You were a Lord of the Third Universe, once, a Sun Builder — however disgraced you are now. A living sprocket in its celestial machinery. Whereas we, poor souls, before we settled the Time Sewers, we were born in the Prime Universe, quite like the Cupids themselves. We think that, perhaps, the weight of a parallel narrative logic may unseat the blasted cherubs, even though we, being, ultimately, a part of their circle, keep falling short.” “Of course… nothing beats the power of a big-name guest star,” Auteur nodded. “So what must I do?” “Anything you please,” said the third Crocodile. “Corrupt them. Slay them.” “Exterminate them,” the second Crocodile offered. “But above all else,” the first Crocodile picked up, “you must defeat them.” “Oh! Merveilleux! Stupendous.” Auteur rubbed his hands together maliciously. “With such wide parameters, I should have no trouble fulfilling your little wish. Destroy a civilisation? Infiltrate its narrative and rewrite it to converge on an all-encompassing apocalypse? I’ve done it before. I’do it to while away the time, even while I was imprisoned in that old tower of mine!” “And that is when you will have done it,” the first Crocodile said with a knowing grin. “By our analysis, that was when you were at your most iconic; when your narrative was at its strongest. If we are to entrust you with this mission, we must have you at your best. So, we will regress you again, back to the Spire.” “…Now wait a minute—!” Auteur interrupted, not particularly fancying the thought of being imprisoned all over again. “Only temporary, of course,” the reptile added. “The conditions will be the same as your current resurrection; you will only have a short window of time in which to perform your set task. We suggest you write something simple, to the point. If you can do that.” Auteur made a face. “Brevity? Pfah. Pfah, pfah, pfah. It’s hardly my style.” The three Crocodiles glared at him. 5
“…Then again,” he hurried to add, rubbing at his beard ostentatiously, “maybe a, let’s say, literary challenge, wouldn’t be entirely without artistic merit. Hm. Let me see; something slight, yet fundamental… something to pull away at every thread of these Cupids’ history… ha-ha! What would you say to an Abecedarium?” “We would say we made the right choice in approaching you,” one Crocodile grinned, and offered a clawed hand. “And that we hope this means we have an agreement.” Auteur nearly accepted the hand, but then withdrew his own back into the folds of his cloak. “Minute papillon,” he snapped. “You have yet to tell me how you plan to uphold your end of the bargain. I must live again in earnest by the time our business is concluded. Otherwise, I see no reason to bother with any of it. Is that understood?” “Don’t worry,” the Crocodile leered. “While you labour in the Shadow Spire, we three shall return to the Sewers and organise a greater working of our own. You shall have your resurrection.” “Swear so,” Auteur demanded. The Crocodiles’ eyed narrowed and they seemed to loom taller over his elderly, human-like frame. Yet he stood firm. “Swear it!” he shouted. “Swear to me, nom d’un chien! And swear it by something that matters.” “…Very well,” the lead Retconning Crocodile finally relented, offering his hand to Auteur once again. “We hereby swear, by our own canonicity, that we will fulfill our end of the bargain.” “That’s better,” Auteur said with a foxy grin, and shook the reptile’s hand. ********* Auteur wake up a second time, as disoriented as before, though feeling significantly more physical. He closed his eyes (good! he had eyes, that was something) and took a deep breath. He could now recall, however dimly, new windows into his own past. Of course, it was a bit of a jumble. Now, he could remember taking time away from an arduous chase in an arctic wasteland, to find himself bargaining with the Retconning Crocodiles about things he should not have known yet. They’d given him a mission, to do with the Cupids, which he’d fulfilled immediately afterwards — otherwise known as several decades later, during his long years imprisonment. But none of that mattered; very few of Auteur’s memories were ever in the right order. Never mind when he was, then. Where was he? And what physical form was he wearing? He looked down at his fingers. Skeletal, yes, and yellowed by time, but no longer brittle and cracked. He flexed them; his few remaining tendons were in perfect working order. Even the pain was gone. Rolling up his right sleeve, he confirmed that his shadow-skin had been returned to him, once more coiled around his arms, and indeed, he could feel it around his torso, his legs — keeping everything in its proper place. Hanging from his neck like an especially gaudy necklace was his old grimoire, and, patting one of his pockets, he recognised the familiar shape of his favourite quill. He felt complete. 6
Evidently, the Collective did not do things halfway. If they had been around, he would have felt compelled to thank them, but he could not feel their presence anywhere near. Which was probably for the better; it was always easier to owe something to people when they kept out of your way. Where was he, anyway? Auteur looked around for a sign, a familiar landmark, a discarded helmet — something. Then he looked up. Red skies looked back at him. It couldn’t be — could it? Bringing him back was one thing. But he doubted the Crocodiles’ power extended as far as — and anyway, that had never been a part of their agreement, had it? Faithfully keeping their side of the bargain was one thing, but why should they go out of their way to help him? From what Auteur had seen of the arrogant lizards, it seemed far more likely they’d try to cheat him somehow. So. Again. Where was he? As his new eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw — a long, empty street, the road flanked on either side by rows of jagged, paper-thin buildings. At his feet were a drying puddle of black blood and — and a set of very familiar glyphs. ‘THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING,’ they proclaimed. In the bottom right corner, a smaller scrawl had been added in a different hand, using not his own, hard-earned ink, but a shimmering emerald paint that was the exact same colour as the Retconning Crocodiles’ scales. GOTCHA, the glyphs said, approximately. AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! Auteur screamed.
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This exclusive crossover short story from the worlds of “Doctor Who” and “The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids” was Written & Illustrated by Aristide Twain, & Edited by Lupan Evezan, for the “Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids” Official Website. It was originally released on the 1st of January, 2021.
THE MANY FACES OF AUTEUR: The cover of this memoir depicts what is believed to be the thirteenth reincarnation of Auteur, contemplating some of his life choices while trapped in the partially-scuttled Oxbow Timeline that some scholars are already calling the ‘Sanctum of the Heretic’. This version of Auteur was played on television by [Redacted] in the BBC television series F[Redacted] P[Redacted] between 2067 and 7898, except in 6267's 200th Anniversary Special, where the Right Venerable Sir David Bradley, Res., portrayed him thanks to a rubber mask.