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Hi, I posted the first few chapters of something that's turning novel length a couple of months ago, and its been lost in the ether/archives. I've returned to it, and writtern a new chapter and a half, and hopefully, will manage to be better about producing more without taking a couple of months to do so. Anyway...here's the first chapter (4312 words). ------------ The meadow was made of white flowers, single lines of red bisecting their soft petals, swaying gently in the breeze. Long thin stalks raised them to near waist high, giving their star shaped forms a motion as ethereal, as ghostly, as the air that moved it. Dan did not notice their delicate beauty. He was too busy running. He was bolting down the field, knees high. Sweat beaded down his forehead, mouth open and soundless, eyes panic wide. His feet tore apart the soft soil and churned the pale flowers under them. They were after him. He could hear them now. The rustling from multiple directions. The breathing, no, grunting, of different bodies running after him. He didn’t dare look back. So he ran like his life depended on it, because it did. His right foot went for the ground and missed. His face found it instead. He spit out dirt and blew out crushed flower petals with a shuddering breath. They scattered like ash. Goddamned flowers. His feet dug into the dirt, his hands pushing himself up. Sweat fell like damned rain, he had never been the athletic type. But he got himself up again and his legs churning. There, where the meadow ended, and a shadowed line of trees began, that was where he would get to. Because Dan might not be a lot of things, but there was one he definitely was. Even as he barreled down the field, it started up. The quiet voice in the back of his head, the one that whispered before a payoff, right before one thing or another would catch up to him and in a cold, considered voice, tell him precisely, perfectly, that it was time to get the hell OUT. He reached the end of the field and sprinted into the forest itself, a wall of green and shadows. He slammed right into it, and as he tripped over its never-ending number of ivy's and sharp bushes, the quiet voice whispered in the back of his head. How, exactly, did he get here again? There was no easing into, no build-up, just bam, his legs wind-milling and everything in full chase. His arms winded wildly, snapping the last of the vines. He caught himself on one of the thick trees infesting the forest, bunched close enough that all he saw between were slivers of dark. He then stood up and smacked his head against one of its drat branches. Goddamned trees! He didn’t have much time to rub his head. He heard the bushes rustle and ivy get snapped clean somewhere behind. He pushed against the bark and charged forward, the underbrush crashing at his heels. He had memories of running the table, carrying it when the hassle got too hot, cards in his front pocket, easy gig, doable alone. Past noon, bottle of tequila in his hands. There was a growl in the trees. Yelping, and howling. Branches shook. Dan was sprinting. Tree roots and long grass flashed under his feet. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. His chest shook, his breath deafening. The voice spoke up again. What else did you do? Finished the bottle for one thing. Walked with it, carrying it in a paper bag in front of him along the busy street. Until the perfect brand of ignorant, eyes somewhere else, fancy suit flapping, stepped right into him. The yelling began before the sound of glass breaking on concrete. A commotion, the other guy looking confused, Dan pressing his point, outraged. He looked away, looking at the police nearby. Dan raised a hand in defeat and walked away. And then thumbed through the wallet he had just picked with the other. Dan flashed his eyes back and forth, his head doing the same. In the shadows and leaves, twigs cracking, was quickly moving fur, ghost pale. Dan’s hair stood up, and he flinched, even as he ran, as he followed the track of another unseen growl on his other side, and saw in the dark and shrubbery, yellow fur and a brown mane. Things had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Where? He flickered through the day. Scoping out the stores, the ones that didn’t know him too well. The people behind the registers, the managers on hand, the customers scanning carefully for good deals. Those who could be pushed, those who could be pulled, those who wanted something big for something little. Dan’s skin was cold. He was about to lose his mind. His senses were on fire and he was running on adrenaline. His arms pumped as he crashed through the thicket, yelps and barks going off right behind him. His pace didn’t slow. His pace didn’t slow… And then The bar of course. Something upstream, with enough color to excite the 401(K) crowd. Stoke the fires a bit. The regular crowd was in the dark space. Coat jackets, plaid, white as all hell. Helped. It was a million times harder working on something when a person already had reason to look you over. The surer chance of that something being worth all the trouble didn’t hurt either. Sat in his regular spot, created after only a few sits, at the corner of the bar. Three seats down from a couple of girls, chattering on their barstools, glancing all the while around the bar, as if anyone would be listening. Dan felt a look his way, and ignored it. He heard the seat next to him settle. But he was already in mid-conversation. “-closed, yeah,” Dan said, leaning over the bar. “Just suddenly, just like that.” The man across the bar, tattooed and large, stood with his arms crossed. Dan didn’t even know his name, but he knew enough. Knew that he wouldn’t mind playing along, even if it was out of boredom. “Family owned, man,” Dan said. “Generations, maybe. Gone, just cause they couldn’t afford their rent.” “Dan-“ “All these people moving in,” Dan said. “Who could afford to live here anymore, really?” “Dan?” Dan turned then to the man sitting next to him. He wore a beanie and a sports coat, with a picture of a cartoon from the 80’s on his shirt that he could only vaguely remember. “I have it,” Jared said. “The money.” The bartender walked away then with the tiniest smirk. Dan frowned ostentatiously. “What?” he asked. “What are you talking about?” Jared leaned closer, excited, eager. Looking to brighten up his thirty-something, nice job having, economic security enjoying, beautiful brownstone living life. “You know,” he said, whispering. “The game. I got enough.” Dan rubbed his face. Even if he was a decade younger than this guy, he had a lot of mileage on his skinny frame, and he played it to the hilt. Other times he’d be polished down to the manicure, or geared for a construction job, dirt and all. Today he was acting the college student gone to seed, circled down the drain to an underground rife with grime and interesting stories. Every good act had a bit of truth, right? “What are you doing?” Dan asked, practically groaning. “Just stop, right there.” “Come on,” Jared said. “You’ve talked about it. I want in. The card game, we can do it.” Dan looked at him, really looked at him. Past the overwhelming self-confidence, the sure belief that whatever he stepped into, he would quick enough own it. Past the education and mask of professional assurance. To the pit, where his need gnawed, open to anyone willing to see it, begging so loudly. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Dan said, truthfully. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.” Jared smirked. “Its not rocket science,” he said. “I mean, its simple. Your partner ditched you. You need another guy. You’ve already seen me play, win. Signal me like before, but this time we’re playing with real money.” “Yeah?” Dan asked, creating tones of reluctant respect. The brotherhood now open, the gates of friendship swinging slowly wide. Jared’s voice got even lower. “If we’re going to do this,” he said. “We need to be serious. Real money. I’ve got 30 K.” Dan’s eyebrows rose. “Hell,” he said. “Yeah,” he said, then the mask of confidence slipped. “Mortgaged my house. I…I lost…I need this! You’ve got to let me in! Dani…the kids…” He grabbed Dan’s arm, as Dan started to lean back. This was too much. “You have to do this,” Jared said, pleading. “I…um…” Dan said. “Let me think about it.” Jared nodded and pressed something into his hand, his business card. “Good,” he said, then stood up, visibly relieved. “I’ve got to go, Dani’s waiting. Thanks, Reed.” Dan nodded, his eyes wide, then turned back to the bar as the door closed behind Jared. Jesus. His hands were tight on the card. The bartender came over, an eyebrow raised. After a deep moment, Dan crunched the card up and let it drop on the bar. “Think I’m gonna need to drink,” Dan said. “Like all of them. All of the drinks. But let’s start with your finest, cheapest whiskey.” The bartender picked up the bottle and as he poured it, Dan studied him. “You get tired of it, don’t you?” he asked. “Having to listen, take in other people’s worries?” The bartender shrugged. “It is what it is,” he said. Dan grabbed his glass and took a long sip. “It is,” he said, putting it down. “The same thing, everyday. It just seeps in, doesn’t it? The faces…” Dan shook his head, and slapped his hand on the bar, a sharp crack. “How ‘bout we switch it around?” Dan asked, plastering a grin. “You tell me about your crazy relationships and lovely parents, and I’ll be here, willing to listen…as long as the drinks keep coming.” And as the bartender smiled and began to talk, he let his hand rest on the bar. Right! The snapping of branches as he rushed through brambles, his arms over his head, echoed what was happening in his head. The memories locking in, the night being revealed. The stumble home, the world on a tilt. The edges fuzzing, the details. Through the door. The bed rearing. Fluff, white, swallowing everything. He broke free from the last of the brush, then stopped. A few feet away, the grass fell away, sloping sharply downwards. More forest stretched at the hill’s floor, and the hill opposite, deep and dense. He turned to the forest was now behind him, the solid wall of green and dark. Follow it through The growls were at their loudest. The brush moved and under the leaves Dan saw padded claws. Dan’s skin tingled, fear shooting through him. They had grown. He had to raise his head until it craned before he found them. Yellow eyes in the jungle, watching him. He stepped back, his ankle on nothing at all. And they seemed to grow still, as if they were fed by his fear. His nightmares. Think Dan blinked, smiling wildly. “I’m imagining this,” he said. “I’m asleep. This is not real!” There you are Dan heard something muffled. “What was that?” he asked, apparently to himself. “You’re gonna have to speak up, me.” There it was again, and Dan found himself looking upwards. He saw something in the thick foliage of the opposite hill. A man in green, leaning forward. His hands were cupped. “What?” Dan asked, calling out. “---- ----- ---- en!” said the long echo. “This isn’t real,” Dan said, yelling. “This is a dream!” The man, too far away to see clearly, pointed behind Dan. “Then you’re about to be eaten in it!” he said, yelling. Dan turned and saw it emerging. Where there had been multiple, there was now one. Its claws raked the earth, its shifting snout sniffing the air. Fur bristled, and scales shone. There were four legs, then three, then four again, muscles growing and rippling, even as Dan picked them out. His eyes settled on its face, and an understanding settled on him, the kind you get when you’re dreaming, when new, freakish folds in the rules of the universe seems as sensible as rain. The thing advancing on him changed as he thought, because he thought. What was bubbling in his head was given form, and now it wanted to kill him. As it reared up, then charged, Dan saw on its head, with its ring of circling teeth, tortured faces... Dan turned and only made a few steps before his foot caught a submerged tree root and he went falling, allowing him only a single, uncompleted thought. Goddamned nat- He flipped down the hill. He heard something sing above him before his head smacked against the dirt and grass, then his feet followed, the few branches in his way rushing to smash across him. This is a- The world tilted, the hill flattened out, the ground sped to meet him, he saw black, and then a blast of burning white flash. “…dream.” His forehead begged to explode outwards. His brain cavity rumbled, protesting what it had just suffered. All kinds of Jesus. He pushed his head up from sweat soaked now gray sheets, and turned in bed. “A painful one.” Dan pressed his palms over his eyes until the last of the sparks faded like blown ash. Then he opened them, staring at the water stained pane ceiling. “I didn’t say that to myself,” he said, pushing himself up, his feet swinging over the side of his plush bed. “Did I?” His feet rested on a wood panel floor. “No. You did not.” The wood floor, bare of anything but scuff marks, joined wood walls, bare of anything at all. Tight windows looked out onto a gray day, spewing honks and yells. In this closet of a space, his bed, with sheets small enough to tote in a hurry, was the only piece of furniture. The only thing standing other than a stool across from it where the stranger was sitting. The shoes were dark and shining. The man who wore them was extremely blond. From the cream-colored suit, with the top two buttons undone, showing near invisible chest hair, to his swept halo like hair, dimmed just barely enough to sit high on a middle-aged face that was still earnest and trustworthy enough to twitch the fingers of every grandma in a twenty block radius. Oh poo poo. The man gave a wide grin, showing off his deep dimples. “Quite the place you have,” he said. He turned and glanced at the toilet, sitting a few feet away. “Home-y.” Dan rubbed his neck, trying to hide the glance he shot the apartment’s door, also only a few feet away. “I think that’s the description they used,” he said. He looked at the man, who looked back pleasantly. “But no lease needed is what got me. Moving in and out made easy. That’s what I can do, you know. Just move on.” The man seemed to consider it for a moment, his head turning. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, his tone friendly. “That doesn’t seem too possible...” Dan took a long breath, and closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, the man was already by his small window, looking out. His eyes danced over the crummy street outside, the drunk yelling especially loud this morning, currents of sidewalk vomit pickable all the way up here. Another grin crept up his face. “Who was it?” Dan asked, sitting ram rod straight. “Who called it?” The man laughed in easy tones, still looking outside. “You sound so sure,” he said. “That it has been called.” His smile lines smoothed. “That you’re dead,” he said. Dan raised his hands, standing up from the bed. “Whoa,” he said, backing away slowly. “We’re just two people, having a conversation. From one guy…” Dan stretched out his hand, grasping the grimy handle of the door behind his back. “To other loving creepy guy,” he said, muttering. He pressed on it. “What do you think you’ll find out there,” he said, still staring outside. “That’ll be there, for someone like you?” “What?” Dan asked, doing his best to not have the drat thing click too loudly. “When you open that door,” he said. “And step out into that dirty hallway.” He turned then. “Do you think you will escape?” He moved away from the window, a step, then two, closer, his eyes bleeding sincerity. “Don’t you wish,” he said. “There might be a better way?” Dan’s grip on the handle lessened. A grin crept up his face. “You working me?” Dan asked. The man stood there, face impassive. Dan laughed. “You are!” he said. “You must of heard of one of my debts, from some place or other I don’t want to remember. And-and you decided to step in! Listen to me beg, and for some reason find your heart growing three times over. I mean,” Dan looked at the man. “You’re not just the guy with the gun. You’re smarter than that. So you step in, get overtaken by the angel of mercy, and I’m so grateful that I’ll give you anything just to get away. I mean…” Dan paused, thinking it. “It’s a bit more hardcore than I like to get. Guns…” he mimed a shiver, sticking a tongue out. “Not for me. But I admire the balls on it. It’d take a huge sack of them for this kind of thing. I’m impressed!” Another moment of thinking. “Chance-y, though. Coming in cold for the payoff…” Dan shook his head. “In my professional opinion, too risky.” The man maintained a slight smile as Dan had gone on. It hadn’t wavered an inch. Doubt started to filter back in. “Open that door, Daniel,” he said. “Tell me what you see.” Dan turned and put a hand, slow and cautious, on the handle. Something was settling over him. He pushed down and with a creak opened the door. Rust flaring like fire over pock-marked steel. A dank, dark pit leaking poison onto condensed filth and despair. He was staring at his apartment hallway. It settled in deep. He slowly closed his door, and saw a light filter through its hinges. With a shaking hand, he clicked it open again and swung. He fell onto his back as a great sucking white void howled just outside the door’s frame. The walls of the apartment seeped with glimmers of glowing ash. He understood. Over the roar and churning wind, Dan heard the stranger say, “There you are.” Dan sat at the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He released one hand, and used it to twist the skin of a forearm. There was pain there, but what did that mean? Nothing. “Daniel.” Dan raised his head, his fingers pulling at his eyelids as wide as they could go. Nothing. The stranger sat on the stool with a patient look on his face, his hands over his crossed legs. “You’re handling it well.” Dan slowly lowered his hands. “This..I’ve never been in any dream like this,” Dan said. “Its so detailed…so real…” He plucked at his sheets, pulling them close to his face. “I’m counting my thread count!” “Who knows how detailed are the worlds we drift into when we close our eyelids,” the stranger in the cream colored suit said. “How realistic they are, when those details are then lost with consciousness, no matter how hard we try to hold onto them.” “…I’m not counting a lot…” Dan said. “From creation to decay,” the stranger said, as if he were reciting something. “Like the bubbles on a river. Sparkling and bursting, then swept away.” “…I’m getting embarrassed here…” “Daniel?” Dan looked up, his grip on his sheets tight, just happy that there was something to cling to. On cue, a gear in the back of his head sputtered to life. A familiar pattern, a litany, started to materialize and he swam to it like it was the only lifeboat for miles. “Aren’t we missing the obvious?” the stranger asked, pleasantly. He smiled. “The massive possibilities?” He looked at the door, for all the world looking like the crummy door back in reality. He turned back to Dan. “You are awake in the dream. Tell me Daniel… when you are aware something is not real…what can you do with it?” People could call them all kinds of things. But what they described was simple enough: what steps does it take for a person to put their life in a stranger’s hands? There was the foundation work of course, the research, the plumbing for desperation, then the approach, being at the precise moment of time and place for someone to stumble to you. After that, there was the build-up, maintaining the mark’s interest at a high temperature. Showing what was possible. Dan looked at him and saw nothing there. After a bead, and a deep breath, he answered. “Anything,” he said. The stranger’s grin grew wider, flashing perfect teeth, he glanced at the door again. It swung open, and Dan jumped a foot. Past the doorframe was a night, he realized, once he could breathe again and sat back up. A starry one. He couldn’t see any earth. He might have screamed when he saw a huge shape drift somewhere beyond it, lit up like a skyscraper at night. As the goliath’s mass, pockmarked with square outlets of light, was halfway past the scope of the door’s view, it was joined by another, further in the distance. The distance between the two flying ships shivered, and faint echoes of what must be powerful blasts filtered into Dan’s apartment. Other bits of light, what Dan could guess were more human sized, flew from each of the ships, through the explosions, shooting off booms of their own, right at each other, creating a scene of chaos and pure energy. “A future,” the stranger said, appreciating it. “A war in floating space. Battles, and romance, every element of life exponentially charged.” He looked at Dan, who was looking at it all with one eyebrow raised. The man’s grin disappeared, and he nodded. The door closed. “Perhaps something more human scaled,” the stranger said. Then there was the hurry, the stress and pressure telling you that the opportunity was about to slip by. “Though I’m not sure,” the stranger said. “How long any of this might last. Who knows when a dream can end?” The door swung open, and dust swirled in its doorway. Dan was looking at a desert; stark and the only thing disturbing the sand dunes and far off mountains was a person in horseback, walking parallel to his view. “A lonesome world,” the stranger said. “Where only the true and tried can survive.” Dan ignored how the guy’s speech had changed, focusing on the rider. How he hunkered down against the winds, his horse’s head drooping low, his big size easy to pick out even in the distance, the constellation of edged weapons on his side and the animal’s saddle. At least the stranger picked up that he wasn’t exactly a fan of things that went pew. “Lonely you mean,” Dan said. “Not much there to play with.” The stranger nodded again, a gleam in his eye. “Then I might have something for you,” he said. “But one thing first.” And finally there was the last step. The all-in. Dropping the last of the mark’s doubt, making him commit, maybe even putting a little of yours in the pot. Leaving the player in total control, and leaving the other guy no other choice but to fall. “Its an idea close to my heart,” he said. “A wonderfully made thing. Letting others into it…might be against my own interests. But I like the look of you, your abilities. And I’m damned if I cannot say I’m not the curious kind. But first, I have to ask….” He leaned forward, serious. “What is it you want?” Dan closed his eyes and saw the world at a tilt. The air full of conversation and laughs, him on his barstool, the bartender across the way, half the bar joining in. A lot of fun, the drink in his hand. And his other hand, slowly moving across the wooden bar to where something crumpled still sat. Grabbing it and pulling it down, and smoothing it down... Dan opened his eyes. He looked at the other man’s sunny sheen, as revealing as a mirror, and saw reflected back what was so plain. Need, gaping wide. “To be the good guy,” he said. The stranger in the cream colored suit leaned back, his grin growing. The door swung out, showing a deep forest, a canopy lit with a bright sun. “Then step out,” he said. Dan stood on uncertain feet. “Into a new chance.” He started to walk, as the rays through the door filtered into the small room. “Where everything leading up absolutely does not matter.” The light grew stronger as he got closer to the door. He raised a hand to shade his eyes. “Into a place where you could do whatever you ever wanted,” he said, sounding farther away than he should be. A faint buzz started to filter in as well. “Be whoever you always wanted to be.” The rays of light were now an encompassing glow that blinded everything. It roared, a wash of unintelligible noise. Dan stood on the threshold. “In a golden afternoon that never sets.” As Dan stepped forward, he looked back. The room was not visible anymore, just faint lines disappearing in colorless light. But he picked one last thing, even as it was also disappearing. A wide smile made of pointy pearl teeth. “And never forget,” it said. “To have fun!” Everything disappeared in the pale white rush.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:17
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Here is the second chapter (3070 words). ---------------------- The voices burbled around him. They layered over each other. Even the landscape spoke to him. Foamy waves washed against jutting rocks, and were swept back into sea. Only a few of the waves, infantilized versions of themselves, floated into the protective cove. On its shallow beaches small forms swarmed, loading the wide-beamed and flat bottomed ships swaying at the docks with large chunks of stone ripped from the chalk-white mountains angling from the beach. The ships were buoyed by a slow moving current, coaxing them to release their lines and drift out of the mouth of the small bay, and towards the crashing surf. Night had descended. The sweating sailors strained to finish their tasks, lit by flickering torchlight. Hours had passed and their pace had not lessened. Dirt and perspiration clung to their skin, and they bent their heads to their tasks, pulling the pallets across the rocky sand. The men on the ships cinched their ties, readying themselves for sail the exact moment the job was done. Hardened men stood on those weathered decks, scars laced over their bodies, along with other wounds serving as decorations and grist for wild tales to be loudly recounted for any of the far flung corners of existence that they would find themselves washing up on. The nervousness was palpable. The men clustered, facing the beach, those not on the mast or rudder, their sweating hands on ropes and rigging, silently praying for the signal to set sail. It was a silence that reigned here, a void of conversation and cheer. The soft winds carried only muttered swears and quiet pleas. They leaned over the side, mutely urging the last of the pallets, ropes pulled by a handful of shirtless men, pulling the slabs of wood carrying the unearthly rock over bone white sands. Their eyes strayed past them, to the line of black and green, stringy knotted vines the only cleanly visible part of the dense jungle, their sway too pronounced to be accounted by the slight breeze. There were reflexive sounds of relief. The last of the pallets crossed the jungle’s boundary. Those pulling at its head came to the light, their heads down. There were more reflexive noises. Louder. Yells. The pullers, it could be seen now, trudging into the sands, the rear of the litter still obscured, had wounds painted over their naked torsos. Red, seeping. The rear of the pallet cleared the shadow and its gnashed surface was revealed by the torchlight, missing the heavy-set toughs meant to push it. It also was barren of its load, instead conveying streaks of wet blood, enough spilled to be visible from the distance of the water. The sails unfurled. The rigging set loose. The ships pointed to escape in split seconds of panic and instinctual communal action. But there were those who stood stock still at the ship’s railings, watching their compatriots drop to their knees as if a connecting thread had suddenly been cut. The bloody figures, their mouths black pits, raised their faces, revealing gouged gashes where their eyes had formerly rested. Then as the ships finally started to sail free, a sound escaped from their open mouths. A buzzing noise, picked up and echoed somewhere deep in the dark woods. A cacophony of overwhelming and indistinct noise. The forest shook with it, those who had made it to the ships would swear. And in those dark, abandoned places those who survived would cling to afterwards, where only the brave and foolish would venture into; they would profess one more bone deep assurance. The roar increased, the vibration of its scream felt by all those sailing, even as they reached the mouth of the cove. And as those waves of violence and chaos from an isle made of their nightmare bloomed, strong enough to delve into their bodies and shake their bones, imprinting deeply and forever, there was something left behind. A promise. That they would always return. And so, the speakers would say, reaching over and grabbing their listener’s hand with skeleton thin hands. So will you. The mountain chain they so hurriedly fled from loomed now in the distance, snaking from sight. Some of the tilting peaks were snow-capped, others bare of nothing but ragged stone. Some angled steeply, jutting almost parallel to the cracked earth, others rose like needles into billowing black clouds. Black rock and brown and gray and spottled green, smooth, scored, and jagged, the spires seemed to origin from vastly different spheres, collected together without thought, without coherence. They tumbled over each other, chaotic, over forgotten valleys strewn with ruins and relics of long lost rites. The range veered into the horizon until disappearing into a mist that obliterated all sight. There were structures atop them. They varied as well. Columns and huts. Marble facades and rusted tin. Scattered and weathered blocks of stone and ornate, dizzying feats of architecture crafted in spirals breaking both rules of order and sense. But it was only in one way that they truly differed from each other. Occupation. Rarely by anything as simple as breathing bodies. More often what could be detected was a presence, a howling wind shuddering elaborate halls. Black shadows collecting in corners. An elastic haunting, twinned to what they roamed through, which shifted in turn. Walls, ceilings, rooms, groaned, tiles and dust shaken loose, as they grinded into new forms, built to a plan not made by any single mind, but because of an indistinct urge, echoing through the misty mountain range. He splayed his fingers and let it drift through them. He felt the vibrations. The secret message. It traveled through the enveloping fog. Through the endless, damned mine shafts. Shivering through the blasted hillsides and the mud and the earth. It shook the few burnt and broken wooden planks rising out of the muck. The shades floating through the murk, and even now, their blank eyes gazing at him, the waves came pouring out of their open dark mouths. “You.” Moving from the dug hole where they slaved, cutting deep into the mountain, ferrying chunks of it to the surface world, part of a never-ending chain, a thread of it slivering up the mountain range through the open pit mansions, its ethereal residents, cruel managers, at the top of a grinding cycle, rolling outward, pulling inward from all the corners of this existence what was needed to continue. A Machine still running even in the absence of its Master. “Is there anyone that can find meaning in this?” Smog curdled along the dirt earth. In the fog, forms moved, given the shape of bodies. They mimicked life, trudging on stiff legs from the quarry holes to hole bitten wood burrows, eternity lived in an unremitting circle. An arrangement cemented at the moment of Creation. “This is gibberish!” “Beginning? AND eternity?!” “Was he talking about wooden boards?” They congregated around him now, the shades, attracted by his force. In the flat lands made of fog and wisp, bracketed by giant formations ridged like finger-bones reaching toward the void, they circled him. “Perspective,” he said. His name. “Nothing comes from nothing.” He needed his name. Possibility flickered around him in this wasteland. Worlds of it, strained into one strand. He saw the fire, and the sea, and the rocks caving in. “What is has always been,” he said, blinking. He chose one of the waves of possibilities, and saw through the shades’ eyes. His name. “What will be has always been.” There were flat fields and dirt roads. They stirred under the feet of the morning shift returning. Tired, worn out men and women, fragments of ore under their fingernails, trod back to their warm hearths. They walked down the unpaved main avenue, which was lined on either side by stoutly built stone and timber, their windows beaming out light, many of their owners sitting outside, loudly welcoming the miners. Some of the homes, shops, had their doors swung wide, inviting a trickle of the passing crowd in. One home, particularly large, with two smoking chimneys, invited much more than a trickle. Boisterous laughter and loud conversation floated out of its windows, along with the clink of many cups. Bathed in its spilled light were railing, and steps, and a back-space, benches set in the gravel, persons inlaid with dust sat over warming drinks. And just beyond them, at the edge of the light, those too young to enter the hall. For once they did not mind. For once, they had proper sport. The youths, gangly, their tunics rumpled and stained, circled a man derelict. The man’s tunic, an unrecognizable black, was stiff with filth. He stood on bowed knees, grime infested, dense hair coarse and thick with clod. His face, perhaps originally handsome, was riven by deprivation and outside occupation. He now stood almost stock still, his gaze between them. The young teenager who had been most aggressive spoke again. “See,” he said, looking to his friends. “There’s more poo poo in this rear end.” They laughed loudly, then glanced behind them. “What are you demons doing?!” They scattered like a flock of pigeons, limbs flashing, as a woman with a well-worn smock and a sure stride walked forward. Her etched brow furrowed as she stepped closer to the vagabond, stopping short. The viewpoint shifted. “Drift away, ghosts,” he said, muttering and looking away. “The heart dies. They are watching.” Lines marked her, and experience burrowed deep through. A hard life had brought her callused hands and a number of opportunities to encounter those whose minds had failed them. She took of his sudden changes of movements, the stillness, the breaking of gaze, the nonsense words. She brought up a hand, still not touching him. “Do you find yourself lost, dear?” she asked, gently. “Would you like a plate of something warm?” “A story,” he said, eyes closed. “Begins with a name.” She straightened, the keepsakes in her coiled gray hair jangling as she looked at the wide open lit door behind her. “Why don’t you come inside?” she asked. “The mountains,” he said, eyes still closed. “Do you see them?” She turned again, taking in the town, a tumble of homes centering around the large cross-walked underground pits. The denuded earth underlying the town, moving west to meet lapping Ocean. Greenery, short, and scattered grass sweeping in all other direction, meeting nothing but the horizon, in a completely flat landscape. A jingle. He stared at her then, with eyes intensely focused and showing too much interest. “The night,” he said. “There are monsters in the night.” “You should come in,” she said, but he was already walking past her, the ring in his ears. “You know where we are,” she said, calling out to his quickly retreating back. The thread had been cut, he realized, stumbling onto the street. The wounds were deep and seeping. He did not trust his mind. Bands of light shot through the air, conveying sound, echoing the one ringing in his head. An indistinct noise. He was screaming and laughing. He had delved deeply. A mist began to creep in. The fog rose, obscuring the homes and semblances of life. He stumbled, and fell, crumbling in an obscured corner. What if the thread recognized the pattern? The noise became a roar. The murk crawled over a flat landscape, whose edges began to rise. Blasted hills became dark mountains under a black sky. The waves attenuated, humming. Whispering. It called on him to return. Echoes. Of footsteps. A form moved through the enveloping smog. But unlike the other shades, percolating in the air, it gained definition. A wide man strolled through the curdling haze, accompanied by a pair of shadows. Dark patches of matter, made of sharp, stabbing edges. The man image himself, walked easily, in a rich geometrically patterned tunic, draped over with a toga made of silver and gold. Across the creeping solid vapor and scrolling walls of curling white, he stopped short. The beggar lifted his head and looked at the man’s cold, calculating eyes, and saw recognition. He looked at them, and through. The mind of a being used to the control of nations, invited to the counsel of manipulators of entire worlds, and newly anointed to be the new Master of the Creation Machine, considered him. He considered him with the familiarity gained in childhood. With the knowledge gained from the genesis of his present. With a lack of surprise, missing due to the fact he had always known they would meet here, in the future. His expression was stern, his resolve certain. “Kill him,” Quintus said. “Kill him now.” The shadows seeped forward as the beggar lowered his head, thankful that his deepest wish had been recognized. Then he raised it once again, his eyes opening and closing. The waves attenuated and he saw possibilities. He saw shades float forward. He saw jack-boots, worn by two men in severe military dress come closer. One last turn, and he saw two men in crimson tunics stitched with a small insignia of bundled sticks stand above him. They wore bristling helmets, and overlaid scale armor, a wide black belt studded with brass was wrapped around their waists. Their benefactor stood farther back along a deserted road lined with empty fields and darkened homes. The two warriors raised their axes. The dark mountains sang to him a song of remembrance. His eyes were open. He crossed the sea, and climbed their heights. He had seen what was beyond. He had travelled across. A darkness seeped from his sockets, now red gashes. His mouth was open, a black pit. He crossed the vales of possibility, and come back from the void. He had seen what was beyond. He had brought it back. There were screams. The warrior to his left was pulled off his feet into a growing shadow. Fountains of blood and scattered limbs poured out. The other warrior stumbled backwards, arms flung across his face, his eyes gone mad. His heart exploded out of his chest, as if in offering. Consecrated in blood, what had been the beggar moved forward. The gilded man still stood, but was stepping backwards, his eyes on what he had wrought. Emotions tore across his face. “You are malady,” he said. “Sickness, a rot in all He designed.” The air shivered, and tendrils of chaos and violence twisted the road. He had played in other’s minds, and found temporary relief. But he knew what he was. Quintus knew it. He knew his name. “The burning of cities,” Quintus said, his eyes fearful, searching. “Of peoples’, is nothing! To stop you!” Quintus’ eyes flashed, a light glinting in its whites. There was a new note in the noise, a dominating thrum. It echoed off the silent buildings and paved untouched road, echoing through them, because of them. Notes followed it, a melody, a refrain patterned after an ancient song, of order, of Creation. Quintus’ eyes poured light. His glowing mouth was open and the air began to burn. The short-grass bordering the town crinkled and smoldered. The road collapsed, its stones decaying to dust in jagged arcs. Teeth dug into Quintus’ exposed throat. The blood ran cleanly. The light dimmed in his eyes. “No,” he said. A portion of him leaked, a sliver. It danced across his tongue, scattered sparks released with his last breath. The street lit in a white flare. Smoke, obscuring. But here it swirled, momentarily revealing a burnt husk of a building. Then it solidified, stilling its percolation and turning into an all-encompassing gray heaviness. The night sky blinked into being and then was snuffed out before being born again, the reality underlying it shivering under the strain of the blast. In those cracks revealed, there was a stirring. A movement, a stretching in the space between the firmament. Coming down dripping was a blackness that changed as the world changed. Sitting in the optometrist’s chair, the world changing around you with every lens flash, but your sight being the only thing that stays the same. Alien, insect limbs moved from a non-existent ceiling, then fuzzed, becoming legs, then only a pair, walking to comprehensibility, settling at last in an arc onto the misty ground. They bent down to a haunch, as the beggar rested in front of a blasted wall, where Quintus sat up against the pock-marked surface. He watched him bleed. The mist retreated, revealing this world, and the scorch marks running through it, burning through a destroyed road and seared homes. Quintus stared back, coughing, red spittle bubbling on his lips. But he kept his gaze firm and did not look away. “I was given a name,” he said, looking at him. “But it is not my true name. What is my name? The one you gave me?” He had been known as Typhon, but on that day, as the sky and a bronze city burned around him, on a pile of stiffening bodies, in a wash of blood, he had been named again. Quintus worked his hosed teeth, and with all the effort he had, spit it out. “Death,” he said. And sighed, head falling forward. Flick Claws gripped tight, twisting a body in the haze. Flick In a metropolis, a body crumpled in front of shadows wielding guns blazing. Flick On a destroyed road of an isolated mining town, Quintus slumped as a sword burning with midnight fire twisted in his guts. “You see me,” Typhon said, releasing him. The man, decked in dirty black clothes, stood up slowly, reality shivering around him, maybe because of him, as if he acted as a juncture point for all the fissures running through it. The night swathed him, sweeping over his tall frame, his black skin submerging under it. The dark mountains rose behind him, responding to his call, the fog crawling across. A few burnt planks of wood the only thing visible in the foreground. Reality, creation, was a song, a collection of lines, of Words. A story. It spoke to him, sharing its unsaid desire. For continuance. And he could be called a beggar, because he could only ask for what he desired, to rest, when he finally ripped it apart. When story itself would die. At the moment of disappearance, his form vanishing, he turned, revealing a blood-soaked face. Dan’s face. “And I see you,” he said.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:23
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And here's the last of the chapters I posted in the other thread (3091 words). ------------------------------- Dan’s eyes snapped open as he woke already trying to forget. He was staring at the underside of the twined together canopy of lustrous trees, their thick trunks shooting upwards in all directions, beams of light between. Before he could do anything else, a firm finger pressed against his mouth. “Shhh,” its owner said. “You’re thinking too loudly.” He looked at the bottom of a bristling jawline. A mop of curly black hair scanned past him. Dan sat up, a young guy with green threads kneeling next to him on a soft bed of grass. Around, more trees. Their branches swayed, waist high thrush spilling under them, more of the tall things leaning upwards on a varying slope of more grass, mossy stones, and giant roots crossing like lace work. It was all bathed in sunlight, showing no end to this forest. “Do you see?” the guy asked, softly. “Starting to hate that word,” Dan, not too loudly himself, before glancing sideways at him. He needed to be better at description, at picking up things. The guy wasn’t wearing threads for one thing, it was patches of leather and fur, with a tint towards the green. And he had something slung around his back, like a large holster, but it held only one arrow, awfully alone. But it was his hands that got Dan’s attention, long and callused fingers gripping a chipped wooden bow, an arrow resting on the string. Dan looked at his eyes, darting quickly between the trees ahead, intense browns above a face only a few shades lighter cut into sharp angles. He looked at the trees. The light cascading between them, filtering through leaves, turning into glittering sparks. There was a breeze, ruffling his torn up clothes, stupid loose shirt flapping. The branches swayed, moving sharply up and down. And just above the stirred grass, the light changed, shifting as he looked at it. Turning into a line, a shimmer of points, flashing an outline, a glimmer that steadily blew closer. Sometimes it was worth skipping a few steps. “What do we do?” Dan asked, one knee up, keeping his eyes on the crazy. The hair on the back of his neck were not only standing up, they had packed their bags and were hailing a cab. The guy, crouching and still, tensed but still somehow loose, ready, didn’t turn his head either. “What my father taught me for something like this,” he said. “An emergency…” He turned his head then, his eyes holding Dan’s. “Meditation,” he said. “Do you know it?” And skipping a few steps sometimes caused you to stumble. “What?!” He turned back to the light show of Dan’s nightmares. His face not changing, placid as all hell, as the light flickered between the trees, growing, expanding, tearing at shadows. “That would be too easy,” he said. Roots cracked under the weight of materializing feet, ridged claws stabbing outwards. “Little time for the deep concepts I think.” Rips shredded the tree trunks ahead in the wash of sunlight, bark peeling to the tune of grinding metal. “What do we do?!” Dan asked, standing up. The guy still knelt, but he slowly raised his bow. Two of the neck craning and thick trees bent, as the beams sparked in and out, and something hairy and impossibly large shimmered into being. “Breathe,” he said, pulling the string back. “Can you do that?” He rested the butt end of the arrow against his cheek. He could excel at it. Mainly because he was hyperventilating. “Eaaaasy,” he said, his voice a soothing blanket. “In and out. Focus. Root yourself in now.” Dan stepped back, as the drat thing gained definition. There was a blast of wind and vile stink as a howl shook the trees. “Who you are,” he said. “What you do.” Howls now, from a multi-limbed monster spouting heads and teeth as fast as Dan looked them. But in all the noise, he could somehow hear the strain of the bow string, pulled taut, in a grip strong and steady. “Repeat it to yourself,” he said. “See it. Ignore the turbulence. Look only at what will happen.” He had enough description. Dan had one foot pointing at the opposite direction, looking the same way. At the corner of his eye was the thing, scraping forward, a boiling brim of childhood terrors and half-remembered nature documentaries. The guy released his grip, the arrow snapping forward as he breathed out. The little sprig flew into the conglomeration of hair, and muscle, and teeth, and claws, and snapped. The thing stood on its mass of legs, and shrieked. It charged. Dan was bailing, legs pushing away, but he still lobbed the question. “And what’s that?!” he asked. The guy grabbed Dan’s shirt, pulling him forward. “Us running,” he said, sprinting into the shrubbery. “Quickly!” he said. He let go and zoomed ahead, his arms moving evenly, his legs loping smoothly through the green. Dan crashed behind him. Arms flailing and legs tripping over each other as a hurricane roared behind them. Drops of inch big spit flew past from behind, along with torn up dirt and shattered trees, spinning to Dan’s front, breaking apart, showering slivers. Dan ran through them as something wailed and hissed and screamed behind him. He was shaking, where was this guy?! A hill! Sloping sharp downwards. Dan skidded down the grass, and maintained his balance, picking up speed at its bottom towards a thatch of forest. The hill exploded behind him. Dan welcomed the shade. The leaves locking above him. The trees bunching together. Then he heard them break behind him in a cacophony of chaos and garbled chorus lines. In the darkness, he heard a voice. “Here!” The guy was twined around a tree branch, stretching a hand down. “Jump!” he said. And Dan practically flew as he felt the ground underneath him give way in a rush of claws and snapping teeth. A foot landed on a low branch and he leaped up again, and swung wildly in a grip that crushed his right hand. Dan’s shoulder felt like it was going to pop out, but that consideration vanished from his mind. The whirlwind was biting at his feet. He was getting pulled into an opening sonic hell. The guy looked down at him, beads of sweat dropping. “Look at me!” he said. Animals growls and concussive screams and ghost lamentations buffeted him. The entirety of the forest’s contents blasted past Dan in invisible waves of violence. “Look!” Children screaming and bones cracking and Ms. Rita yelling and older boys cackling Brown eyes held him. “This is your life, man!” he said, the tree branch he was on swaying, bending, in the middle of the tornado. The grip he had, his hand holding Dan’s, did not weaken. The rush of cars and the disappointment of youth and the waking up to another useless day and “You decide what it means! Who are you!” Dan stared back, his legs swept under the avalanche of fired emotions and demolishing thoughts. “Dan!” he said, screaming. “And what do you do, Dan?!” His fingers were twisted with his, this guy, leaning out of a tree, his legs starting to slip off it. He stared at him, and thought it. He let go. The tornado twisted him. He spun and fell. His eyes closed, he saw claws. He focused past them. The distractions, the fears, the random rear end thoughts. He thought past it, holding onto himself. He knew what he was. He opened his eyes as he softly landed in a dissipating bed of air. The leaves around him stirred, then stilled. The guy came plummeting down, landing loudly. “Cronus!” he said, sitting up, the widest smile in the world cracking his face in half. “I wasn’t sure that was going to work!” Around them were trees, and nature, and nothing else. The quiet hung. The guy shrugged happily when he saw Dan’s wide eyes. “My name is Alen, by the way,” he said. He stood up, wiping his pants. He looked around. “How about we leave here?” he asked. “Before you remember how much you hated the dark a babe?” They didn’t run away, per se, but a respectable pace was maintained. Though when they finally broke free, the last of those damned pillars of termites and freakish non-metal behind them, Dan kneeled on the waving field, thankful. He raised his head and breathed out. Alen plopped next to him. They looked at each other, took a moment, then bent over, cackling. Dan wiped his eyes. “Jeez,” he said. Alen stood up, and lowered a hand. The sun peaked through his hair. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the cabin.” Dan stood at the edge of a field of slouching grass, heavy ended enough to dip into lanky U’s. Green and spots of white spread in sweeping waves to meet tumbling rocks, diving out of sight. Beyond the field and rubble was a sliver of sea, glowing with the late afternoon light. And before the water was a wooden home, rising on the rising lip of the field. Dan followed Alen’s lead, walking behind through the high grass. What just happened squeezed out of the conversation, as Dan tried to deal. He looked his hand, begging it to stop shaking. He almost ran into Alen’s back, as he suddenly stopped. The house was right there. It had a nice flash-less front deck with wooden railings, polished clean, that faced both the sea and the dark forest back across the field. Sitting on the deck, reclining on a stool against a wall and next to the black square that led inside, was an old man, long wind-swept white hair, deep five o’clock shadow also teeming white, with a deep brow, intensely looking between his hands. He was using a sharp edged knife to finish whittling a wooden figure that flowed. A woman, standing proudly, arm stretched upwards, beseeching, other hand on a hip on a dress that seemed like it was moving, like it was touched by the breeze. Her face, not as detailed, looked upwards, at something far away. Past Alen’s tall shoulders, Dan could see the brow deepen, the pipe between his lips puffing angrily. “What is that,” Alen said. The man took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at it as if he saw something in it. He tossed it into the darkness. It crashed against unseen debris. “Kindling,” he said. He looked curiously at Dan. “Care to introduce your guest?” he asked, brightly. Alen stared at the pipe in his hand. “Where did you get that?” he asked. The man looked at it, and shrugged. He rested back on his stool and raised a trousered leg, ending at his calf, on a railing. His bare feet wiggled. “From one of your excursions,” he said. “Of course.” “We’re well out of that,” Alen said, quickly, like a shot. The man shrugged again. “Maybe you miscounted?” he asked. “You go on so many…” Alen’s shoulders tensed. It was this kind of set-up, then? Dan knew well enough to stay aways back, and was just about to do so in the physical sense when something small, pale and red slammed into Alen. Thin white arms scrabbled at Alen’s mid-section, as a small red-headed boy tried to take him down. Laughing, Alen spun him around. “His name,” the man said. “Alen.” Alen suspended the boy upside down, his arms flailing. His smile faded as he looked at him. “Dan,” he said. He looked at Dan. “Yes?” Dan nodded, watching as the man stood. “And as my son should have already mentioned,” he said. “Daidalos is mine. And that there is Jon.” Alen dropped Jon, who landed on his feet. The boy turned then, edging behind him, and stared at Dan. “He’ll warm up to you,” Daidalos said. “We’re not used to visitors.” He snapped his fingers. “Food! I’ll get you something!” He then walked into the shadowed doorway, and Dan heard more crashes intercut with swears. Alen rolled his eyes. “He is not going to find it,” he said. He looked down at Jon. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s head out back.” He pointed a finger at the house. “You’d better follow him. We’ll be inside in a minute.” They walked away, Alen ruffling Jon’s hair, as the kid looked back at Dan. “Before he gets too excited,” Alen said. Dan paused on the steps for a second, before heading in. It didn’t take long to find himself in trouble. The floorboards creaked as Dan danced, trying to avoid the discarded wood pieces, scattered across the hallway, along with what looked like broken china and discarded tools. He shuffled past a room with a view of the sea, obscured by tattered cloth, light filtering onto a disaster. Sheafs of thick paper were scattered over multiple desks and piled carelessly on a hard to see floor. Other bits of wood, harder to identify, joined them in a room packed with crafted furniture and other doodads, models of ships and miniature palaces, hung swords swooping scimitars, murals and rough paintings. On the opposite wall was a schematic of circles unfolding like a tree, small scribbled words at their centers. “Here, son!” Dan traveled down the well-worn hallway, more sketches slapped across its surfaces. Then he entered what might be a kitchen. It was hard to tell, with it submerged under the remains of a shipwreck. Without thinking, Dan pushed aside a clutch of weird looking potted plants, to uncover wooden cutlery. He picked it up, and looked around, helpless to figure out where exactly to put it. He turned at the clattering. The old man was throwing aside other pots, binded paper, and clutches of fur. “I know it is here somewhere,” he said. “It’s…alright,” Dan said, finally deciding to leave it on a teetering pile of animal skins and maybe black bread? He stepped closer, carefully. “I’m fine, really.” Dan glanced through the back door, which was wide open. Jon was running around, chasing after a chicken, held with others in a large pen. There were a couple of goats beyond them, and lots of plots of vegetables. Alen was stooping and standing, gathering something in a woven basket. “Not hungry?” the old man was bent over something. Thin arms, looking thinner in the loose shirt, moved hurriedly, his skinny and slightly hunched over back shifting. “I could swear it was here…” “No,” he said. “Really.” “Not hungry,” Daidalos said. “I suppose you would lose your appetite, straying in that forest.” “Yeah?” Dan asked, taking a beat. “I would.” There was an audible noise of pleasure. Daidalos turned around, holding aloft a small leather-skin pouch. “Forests are traditionally associated with the buried mind,” he said, thumbing though it. “Initiation, the uncontrolled.” The pipe was in one hand, and he happily grabbed what looked like tobacco from the skin with his other, and shoved some of the stuff in there. “Producing any number of good fruits,” he said. Then he looked up with blues verging on white, his affable face now still, giving Dan the distinct impression of being weighed to the exact pound. “And any number of dangers,” he said. “Dan, are you the former?” The man leaned forward. His voice became soft. “Or the latter?” “Well, this isn’t much but-“ Alen said, stepping inside holding aloft an egg. He stopped, looking at Dan and Daidalos. Daidalos smiled, and looked at the “kitchen” confusedly. “I tried to find something…but you know...” “I do,” Alen said. He sighed. “And I know you worry…” he put down the basket. “But I need to make another trip.” He frowned. “So you do not make one of your own.” Daidalos copied his expression. “You can’t mean…” he said. “There’s no need.” “Yes,” Alen said. “There is.” He looked down at Jon, whose head had been peeking inside. “Get the supplies, if you could.” Jon nodded and ran off, as if he was happy to do so. Daidalos jabbed a finger. “It is not safe,” he said. “You are aware of that!” “For you,” Alen said. He raised a hand. “I know, I know, but it needs doing all the same. I am going. You, Dan?” “Yeah?” “There’s a town, somewhat near-by, south,” Alen said. “I don’t know your story, and I won’t pry. But if you care for company,” he raised his eyebrows pointedly. “Or need it. You’re welcome to come along.” “That…” Dan said. “Sounds like a not too bad idea.” Alen nodded. “That settles it,” he said, and moved down the hallway, Daidalos following, raising his arms, arguing. But it didn’t seem to do much, as Dan hung back. He heard a thump from behind. Jon let go of the large knapsack, resting on the floor. Dan smiled at him. “They always like that?” he asked. “Oh…” Jon said. “Yes…” “Yeah, little man,” Dan said. “I can relate.” The voices carried down the hallway, at high volume. “But we get through it, don’t we?” He cocked an ear, tuning into the yelling. It was different than what he was used to. It was about actual concern. Jon looked down, as the two came storming back, Alen putting copper looking coins into a purse. Alen then bent down, ruffling Jon’s hair again. “-nly gotten more dangerous,” Daidalos said, gesturing wildly. “More than you can imagine!” “Aren’t you the perfect helper,” he said, with a smile. He stood up with the knapsack, other little sacks around his waist. “Ready to go, Dan?” Dan nodded, and they were walking out the door. Stepping back on the grass, Alen turned around. “Take care of Father,” he said, looking at Jon, his eyes above the railing. Daidalos stood next to him, his face still again, looking at Dan with an unreadable expression. Alen waved back at them, and they got going, Dan glancing one more time back at them, seeing them, the lived in home, the ocean crashing behind as a backdrop. “You have a nice thing there,” Dan said. Alen nodded, walking ahead. He then turned his head back, looking at the house, where they still stood, watching. “I love them,” he said. “But between you and me.” His expression became conspiratorial. “I could do with a break. A little bit of adventure. How does that sound to you, Dan?” Dan smiled. “That’s exactly what I was looking for,” he said. And beyond, the ocean crested, waves moving on the shore.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:35
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And this is the new chapter, which I've struggled with for months now, rewriting and rewriting it. Its weird, and kind of out there. I can't tell if its too much. So might as well let some internet strangers get a gander on it. And its a long one (about 6000 words). -------------------------------------------------- The beat in his head sounded like klaxons. It traveled down his shoulders and arms, and as he watched, shook the tips of his fingers. It spread through his feet, shaking the wooden floor underneath. Leon girded himself. He had naught but tunic and sandals. But he tred the boards boldly, wearing breastplate made of certainty, greaves made of confidence, a peaked helmet of dauntlessness, plumes of horse hair springing. He wore those pieces of armor proudly, gleaned from innumerable clashes, fights rich with the blood of brave men, but as he scanned this new battlefield, with its new and unprecedented danger, an unvoiced thought assembled in the back of his mind; that he would not be suffice to overcome it. Sitting, waiting, were the assemblage, eyes kind and others cold, but all with no patience, ready for what Leon was there to provide. A story. And the Lord of the Underworld would pull him into the fiery pits by the undersides of his bleeding eyelids if it suffered to be anything less than exhilarating. In this theater made of stained tables and cracked chairs, strewn clay cups and drops of spilled wine, his peers stood against the walls, those his age. A quarter of a century and less, they lounged watching with an air of assurance. In the midst of battle, the brutal furnace that cast men did not take months or weeks, but a few frantic seconds. They watched with dark and knowing eyes, eager and ready. Sitting and conversing were his targets. They were at ease, these elder men, catching up amongst themselves, heads huddled. No need to account for what was around them, so sure were they that its spoils would roll down to them. All except one, a large presence at the end of a table, looking on quietly. Leon began, seeing sand blow into the tavern. It swirled over frozen bodies, howling, and he listened to its flow, sweeping over a desert landscape ancient and foreboding. Sand dunes crested under a full moon, rising and falling without relief. The heat pressed down, and sweat poured from between his armor plates. According to legend these scorched leagues had been burned by the Gods, as warning, as boundary. As proving grounds, the sands a host to a thousand legends and a million tales. The gritty air was thick with the threat of madness, of wild magic, of impossibility made real and whole. The invading castle waited ahead. It reared in the distance, glowing. Fires coursed under its battlements. Its never-ending spires reached to the coal pitch heavens. Gusts of flame spurt from its open ports, spilling into the night air over its closed gates like bilious horns. The beat in his head, echoing off metal, matched the strikes of the horse’s hooves. The grip on his reins were only a fraction stronger than the one grinding his teeth together. More beats gathered in his mind, the imagined racing steps of a hundred more horses. There was a sundial in his mind, and the light was quickly slipping. He neared the walls. From its baleful fires came the hosted spirits. Their warped armor burned with reflected torch light. Behind them rose the castle, a city in motion. No ordinary fortress, no, simple ditches and barricade were not in evidence. A keep grown unimaginable, towers steeped into the distance. It was a labyrinth, a warren bristling with hidden defenses and traps, enough to stall an entire empire. It towered over a single man, as he tried to control a steed near insane with the smoking vapors of simmering infernal engines. His eyes were wide and his mouth slavering as the sound of clattering iron approached. It was strung together with leather, pulling tight enough to overlap the plates, giving an impression of scales. They were carefully polished, and thickly lacquered in red and black, in the colors of birth and death, the colors shining at the day the World Egg had cracked, and the Winged had been created, already dreaming. His own armor was chipped and notched, though it still shone deeply. It was the armor of the front advance and deep travel. The blood had been washed clean. In the wavering light, he could see the silk underneath their armor. It was a good deal more tattered and soiled than the day they had first worn it, their best clothes, the day they stood on the pearl piers, over the glittering jewel sea. Their best clothes worn, since it would be their last. Their lives serving as kindling as they swore their souls to the weighted cornices, groaning with the burden of order and death. Safety was given of employment and resource, in exchange for their own morality. The coral canyons jutting behind whispered their dying breeze. The two reavers approached, their horned masks craning as he stepped off the borrowed steed. Flecks of flame danced across their mouths, splayed like claws, as their painted eyes glanced at the empty saddle and bags, at the lack of flesh and gold. There were more of them standing at the iron barred gate. Their weapons, lean folded steel, lay near ready hands. But as Leon stepped forward, he took note of how they lined the side entrance, straying away from the gate itself, like bulls shying away from the rustle at the edge of the field. He gripped his two pronged spear in his hand. The flames reflected off its gleaming black surface. Some things would not be changed, discovery be damned. The first of the two spoke with a muffled voice as Leon stepped off the borrowed steed, holding its reins. “Good hunting?” he asked. Leon walked forward, tossing the reins into the air. He heard one of them catch it as he yelled past them. “There are too few here!” he said, jabbing a finger at them. He stepped past them, pointing to those standing unsure by the gate. He rounded back to the two as they followed in his imperious wake. “Too few!” he said. The blooming fires acting as canvas heated the outside of his purloined armor, even as he felt a matching heat flicker from its interior. He barely resisted from reaching over and pulling at their idiot mandibles. A blast of screams and screeching metal came from over the wall interrupted. Leon stopped short at the gate, and slammed a gloved fist across it. The men standing at each side glanced backwards and up, where red lit warriors stood sentry upon the first wall, leagues above. With torch and spear they pointed away from the gate, to the unseen north of the fortress. Even from this distance, the clash of weapon upon steel was clear. “They are here!” Leon said, as the bolt hole at eye level slid open. “The Elysians are coming!” He slammed his fist against the gate again, causing the nightmare mask to rear back. “Do your duty!” Leon said. “Before I have you lowered from servant to rogue!” From the edges of the tale, Leon heard the sound of appreciative chuckles. Iron barred door banged open and more of the warriors poured out. Slashing colors streamed, some plated in gold, others braided in silk, these quarrels, shot from another realm. Leon pushed them aside as they formed their lines outside, burrowing in. He pointed his spear at those remaining inside, another handful, huddling in a dark tight stone hall, lit by flickering torches, the bronze ornamentation on their helmets glowing. Plates moved in his direction. There was a grinding snap as he pushed the steel trap shut on confused men looked on as a crazed horse stampeded, dragging a man in heavy armor behind him. Leon moved forward. “Stay ready!” Leon said, walking in measured steps, eyeing these Bethel, and the open space at the end of the tunnel, under the first wall. The inside of his tightening helmet misted with his steady breath. Sweat dripped from its ludicrous eye-holes, as his eyes strained moving back and forth along its slits. The Bethel stiffened, their weapons ready for whatever might pour through the door. Leon marched along the rough walkway, even here patterned in sinuous curves, the bristling warriors too ready for whatever may pour through to pay attention to whatever already slipped in. There was some burbling in the distance, a sound that could only be described as subdued hooting. The eye-slit did not give much room to see, but Leon did see at the edge of his vision, one warrior turn, his demon mask following him as he walked past. He was at the outer courtyard, circling into the dark and flames. On its other side was a stout wall made in the manner of this people, carefully engineered, sloping, tilting upwards, buttressed by dirt and shallow wood. Like a bladed leaf in a thistle bush, it was only a reflection of a greater whole. The entire fort was built on a rising mound, at whose center lay the glistening jewel. The castle. And town. Its overshadowing towers, roofs rising like horns, stacking atop each other, out of sight and without number, one and the same. Leon's boots rang loudly as he walked to the thickened inner wall. Squads of Bethel sprinted past. More manned the outer wall up high, peering through slits with sharp arrow and bow. Eyes ever-present outward. And the squads, the troops of clattering warriors, stopping well short of one portion of the inner wall, a sheer face where bamboo spikes protruded, stirred softly by an ill chill. Dangling on their creeping eaves were markers of warning and foreboding: palm shaped amulets, centered around a bleeding eye. Leon made his way through, careful to not be pricked by the swinging limbs, to another door hidden in its nest. His fist met it, quickly. There was a swing of a grate, and eyes peered out, this time bracketed by flames. Leon heard footstep from behind. “Idiots!” he said. “They are coming through!” In that far off shore, Leon heard other sounds. And in Leon's present state, he could only barely catch its whispered mutter. “His balls….worlds circle them…” Leon heard gears move, as the iron bound gate lifted, one of many ringing the inner gate, designed to bottle-neck, and pepper invaders with fletchlings with leisurely ease. Some led to paved courtyards, others to oasis of delicate green fenced by palisade. This gate opened into an inferno. A burning ridge. Men barely clad in leather stoked great fires on the other side of the great archway. The flames bit back, crackling loudly, twining upwards, licks twirling into the night sky. It poured out of large stone circles, the visible sight of the kami. Its emanation was warded over by Mako, the woman priestesses in red hakama and white coat, kneeling in front of the pit, their eyes white and useless, their mouths whispering. The flames, embers of a conflagration at the beginning of history, roared in response. The next sound from the distance was easier to hear. “Barbarian nonsense!” And to that far off shore, Leon shouted his answer. It is what they believe. And what you have seen! He continued. The air was scorched with heat, fires that sparked everywhere he looked. It burned through his teeth, and sought succor in his lungs. Leon stood under the small of haven of stone and mortar provided by the entrance’s archway, seeking to still himself. High and solidly tethered above was a statue of bronze, one with indistinct features, but its wings were easy to see, as were its scythe, held in one hand, and the metal form, small in its other hand, of a babe held by its leg above the open fires. The infant was detailed, the limbs constricted because of the flames, the mouth open, as if in laughter. He felt the cool bite of steel press against his back. He breathed out, relieved, and turned. Leon felt the heat bubbling on his skin. Standing before was the one from before, the one who had noticed. The gate firmly shut behind him, twisted under a wave of distorted air. His oh so fearsome armor and mask seemed smaller here, as he craned at the madness, trying to make some sense of it. “You have seconds,” Leon said. “Not minutes.” “What?” came the expected question. Fed by his uncertainty, the sword pushed deeper into Leon’s torso. Leon did his best to not look back at the fiery engines. “Look above,” Leon said. “At the heights of the wall.” The conscript, his clothes under his untested armor tinged with dirt, looked upwards at the walls ringing the valley. More conscripts stood atop it, those picked for the duty, like kindling to warm the hearth. They wore armor as he, and stood ready, bows out, arrows already gracing its strings. Pointed inward. Their eyes were blinded, shaded by the icons of the palm. “Their time is limited,” Leon said. “Their stations, but it does no good. This place will burn them to crisps. We might both survive this....” Leon felt the heat, but there was something new gathering. A weight that pulled and threatened. “Who...” the Bethel warrior said, his weapon shaking. “What is this?! Your helm...” From its corners, Leon saw colors congregate. There was no time. It was here, moving against the fires. Waiting and watching the two of them, no doubt entertained. The crackle of the flames grew louder. Its tenders, those in the black aprons, raised twisted fingers as they flared. “Take off your helm!” the weapon grew more steady. A plan had formed, and blast if it was actually his. The obscured became visible. The Euminide stood behind Leon. The cast of its shadow washed over him. The other man did not seem to notice it, his eyes desperate on Leon’s, and he thought it wise to follow his wishes. He removed his helm and held it under his arm, his hands bare. “This is not the norm,” Leon said. “We are climbing up the riverbank, brother. I can be as simple as I am able, but it would be quicker for you to answer. Do you not feel it? The action building in your blood? Can you see it?” Flecks of flame scorched the underside of the archway. “Can you not see him?” Leon dared to turn his head slightly. The Euminide's shining armor was wilder and more ornate than those outside, and it grew entirely over the skin. Loudly brilliant, brimming green, and swallowing black and red, the face mask crossbarred with serpents and blood trails, it was the eyes, possessed and wild, and hands, callused, gripping cruel twisted reflecting metal, half staff, half a curling wreath of barbed points, that were the only visible signs of humanity. That, and the cruel tilt to its head, enjoying, as the cat does, batting its prey. “In your muster,” Leon said. “Before, working on the farm, do tell me if you have seen,” Leon turned more fully, staring at its fanatic eyes, fully displaying his curiosity, “anything like this one?” The sound of shifting iron turned his head back. He had taken his mask off, this young one, eyes blinking, his face riven. Youth and inexperience, vying with fear and confusion. “No, I suppose not,” Leon said. Whispers and crackling fires almost swallowed his words. “You have the misfortune to have slipped into one of the sinkholes of the world. A man’s life is a straight line, from birth to death, filled with fighting and laying, depending on one’s luck and the gods say.” He looked at the Euminide. “You do not strike me as a lucky man.” It did not say anything, the eyes on Leon. And to him, the fires blazed through them, whatever had inhabited them long disappeared in the forge by the flame. A mythic midnight killer. A cypher for this blazing speeding section of Hades. “But in a hundred year span,” Leon said. “Your fathers father, an ancestor of your clan, whoever, might stumble…” Leon looked past the thing now, at the roaring fires, raging against all reason. The blind caretakers, stabbing into it with forked spears, raised their heads, cried with tongue-less mouths. “Onto what lies beneath,” Leon said, the moment nigh. “Dreams and nightmares.” A bloom of the furnace’s heat, and he could see across the pit of stone, fire spouts, and shimmering curls to a sunken darkness. Forms moved amidst it. “Underlying all,” Leon said. “You and I, yes. This fort, in its heart. All actions, moment by moment.” Skeletons stumbled out of the dark. They were clothed in skin, but barely. They were nude of all else, dignity and memory long evaporated. Beside them were the fires, and the shimmers riding it. Smoke and ash bubbling along the heat. It spiked and curled, solid as granite, melting into mist. “The madness that acts as explanation,” Leon said, keeping his vision steady. “For what you have expected. That above, uses below. That they grow stronger as the other grows weaker.” The thickened air was shepherding the prisoners. It traveled with a malevolence that was easily visible. Strips of white rode in their highest wafts, of a now forming body, bodies bearing limbs. Ashen fragments swimming, but always in a pointed column, head-like. Ashen fragments shaped like a pale forehead, then sunken chalk eyes, flowing and churning. “They feed on us, brother,” Leon said. “Where would the fox be without the hare? They would not be lacking our sweat, and running, and fear.” Leon saw the prisoners, all impossibly thin, except for one. Near the head of the grim procession, long stringy dirty brown hair obscuring the face, swinging slightly as the line stopped near a burning ditch, its flames shooting brighter. One of the smoke specters flowed forward on newly formed thickened legs, reaching with solidifying fingers, its mammoth hands hovering over bodies small under their shadow. “We do not have much time, brother,” Leon said. He turned away from the Euminide to the fresh recruit. “But there is still time-“ The lad’s face had changed. Had smoothed, like a field of snow in the bright day. There was no confliction to be found there. Only conviction. Leon glanced back. The gray warden passed the first of the line, a frail, shivering creature. It drew close to the long haired man, waiting silently. “Separate yourself,” he said. “From their pull.” The man's sword was steady in his two hands, and it pressed deeper. “You look like one of us,” he said. “You act as it...” “They will blanket you,” Leon said. “To fit their tale. Do not surrender so easily.” The Euminide craned its head over him now, impatience radiated. Leon sweated as he pushed it backwards. The man's eyes were narrow, and they burrowed deeply. “But you are not of us!” he said. Leon's eyes darted back. The warden grasped his arm in curling plumes, with enough strength to easily pull him out of the line. “Listen to my words,” Leon said. “And we may salvage this.” However, Leon felt a pull of his own. This was not by anything as small as physical force, no. It burned his skin as Leon turned his head. The young man was not staring at him. His eyes were on him, yes, pupils reflecting the fires. But his glance was now through him, at something unseen. Wide and unseeing. Leon was now not simply a man. He was a symbol, of a thing ill and internal. He had fallen from guidance. It was lost. There was a single word breathed in a whisper. “Hanjian.” Traitor, Leon was surprised to remember. Beyond the giant, the warden held him over the flaring fires, his feet spinning. The Maki, with their blood robes spread on the seat of the rim leaned forward, white dead hair covering their visages, except for mouths, open in expectation. Leon was in the stuff of metaphor. He felt the warrior strike, as sure as he knew that a suddenly empowered man attacks that which is suddenly so small. The blur of steel came amid a plume of hate and heat, sweeping to the head and face. Leon danced along it. He bent his head and hip, and let it stab past, and then swung and bent to one knee as he heard a howling tear from behind. He turned his head upwards in time to see an immense bronze wreath slam past and turn the warrior, in a blast of air and shower of stone, to paste and mist against the splintering archway. Leon leapt backwards, as it drove itself to where he had stood. The Euminide towered above him, a jagged rent in its armor. “Not much luck at all,” he said, his spear in his hands and spinning. “So let us test what is left.” The Euminide charged forward in a spray of fire. Though it was silent, excepting for the gust of wind from its pierced shell, it moved like a maddened bull, the ground torn under its wild swings. Its sharp eaves passed Leon's head as he stepped back in time. It sped into the pillars of flame and returned blazing. Leon raised his spear but bent low to let it pass. He turned his head. The warden had him over the burning pyre, his feet swinging over it. “Petronius!” Leon said. Petronius, still in the grip of the spectral monster, looked at him, then back at the human shaped villainous smoke. And legs swinging, struck both of them at the floating specks of white mimicking human life. Leon found his attention diverted. The bronze spade bore down on his spear, and snapped it like it had never been. Leon jumped back once again, pieces of the gouged stone floor embedding in his exposed skin. The blow had cut a portion of his haft off, but as he twirled it in his fingers, he realized that even thus, it would make do. The bronze weapon swung into the fires once more, giving Leon moments. The smoking monster was losing coherence, and it stumbled back, taking both it and Petronius into the fires. Petronius burst from its weakening grip, legs again swinging. To its back, mimicking flowing black armor, solidified to fulfill its dark task. Petronius pushed off it, and whatever living life entombed in the shroud, swamped by the inky black, fell into the flame, smoke consigned to the fire, and there was a blast of heat and light. The floor ripped into ribbons. The unseen force that lay at the castle's foundations, through its splendid walls, that pushed it forward, seeding it with the urge to establish itself in virgin land, now poured forth. It resembled the surrounding inferno, but with the nightmare power of not only sending timber alight, but spirit itself. The Euminide stood astride it, its bronze weapon hoisted high. Which it threw with finality, sure that there was no escape. The broiling heat slipped between the greaves of his armor’s back, bubbling the skin. Leon jumped forward, the blow shivering his bones, and swung his spear with all his might at the wreath, just as it began to rise from the hole it had created. The unreal weapon sped to the fires and through, haloed in fire. And with a sharp jab of his broken haft, Leon hit the staff near the coiled hands of the wheezing armor, until the staff turned inward in its flight, stabbing the Euminide right where ghostly ozone streamed from its open abdomen. Leon rolled back, and sat up, just as the chaos fires rippled into the spectre’s revealed carapace. Leon sat, not being able to help but watch. The Euminide was blooming. Its armor was growing, the colors twining through it becoming bolder and louder, escaping its metal confines. Its helmet grew horns, twisting, alive, as the mouth ripped open and fire roared through. A glance away and Leon was pulled away. He ran through the tumult, stone floor rising and falling, spouts of flame billowing wildly. He sprinted, and threw his arm back, and even as he slipped on the shifting ground, launched it forward. The two pronged black spear ripped through the white patches in the cumulous figure hoisting high a sword made of black brush strokes larger than Petronius, who crouched under its shadow. Even before the thing began to collapse, Petronius was running, diving as arrows bounded at his feet. Leon slid next to him. “Wait, brother,” Leon heard. “You forget the arm.” Ah yes. The blood mist previously known as the Bethel warrior was not the only thing to erupt from the shaking archway. Spinning, whole except for a bludgeoned end, was a bloody arm, moving through the air like a missile. It only gained import as the bright shade burned behind Leon, his spear recently fled from his grip, as two warriors of the castle came sprinting towards him through the spurting flames, their swords ready to strike. It gained import as Leon noticed it laying at his feet, palm raised. It gained import as he saw beyond the warriors gaining close, at Petronius, dashing without cover from aerial ambush. As he saw the bloodied bow, entirely intact, clasped in its dead fingers. Leon seized it, and worked at breaking open the death grip hounding it, as the killers came from the periphery, their demon masks bare, blindfolds printed with blood palms hiding their sight. Though they moved smoothly, one on either side, mere puppets strung to murder. With an oath, Leon threw the damned thing at the one nearest. His compatriot, taken aback as he watched the man struggle with an extra arm, turned back just as Leon grabbed the protruding guard of his mask with one hand, steadying the other on his chest plate. Still swearing, Leon pulled upwards with one hard jerk, hearing the crack, as the other finally came forward, the arm still clutching its precious wares, flung away as he heard the imagined thrums of pulled back bows from on high. Leon buried his fist into the space between crest and mouth guard. A stumble back into flames reaching out eagerly, screams emerging from a column of fire roaring approvingly. The red and white plates twisted in the flames, growing in size, in complexity, brilliant colors bursting, before the armor and the flesh underneath was punctured by the swallowing inferno. Leon ran, hearing the actual crack of hitting arrows hitting the stone floor behind him as he fled. He dove, and rolled onto his feet, three hands at the ready. Another crack, and dead fingers broke in half. He threw the freed bow into the air, and Petronius caught it, himself diving. He had a clutch of recovered arrows in one hand, and before he had come to a still, he had let them all fly. Three arrows sped through the air, and met three bodies that came tumbling down the walls and into the valley like the first drops of dew on land fallow from a dry summer. Leon's approval roared in his ears. Zero now. His fingers still trembled from his stay, but he touched them as he counted. The heat burned his knee and scorched the tips of his fingers, but the calculation was simple. Petronius did not see any more stray arrows lying on the heating flagstones. What he did see: a series of pits lit with some sort of fuel, hugged by derelicts in dirty robes. Passing them and between the torches were more of the fanatics. They had never spoken to him and were likely to never do so, as they came striding forward, their swords high, like this. Two, four, eight, a dozen. “Then,” Petronius said, turning to an unarmed Leon. “What next?” That is, if he were there. Petronius heard another roar. Leon's feet shifted, as it struggled for balance on the shoulders of the shadow beast. One of the hazy arms reached backwards to him, as the other still pulled at the stuck spear, as Leon whooped. “Let me help you!” he said. He pulled the spear out in one motion, and stabbed it back in with another. Wispy fingers attempted to stop him, but they were becoming see through, as Leon stabbed the pale patches floating in the head. They scattered with every strike, until the thing fell to its bubbling knees. A missile shot next to Petronius' ear. One. Leon tumbled off the dissipation as the recovered arrow finished it, turned it into black and white dust. Petronius plucked his empty bowstring as he scanned his heights; perhaps luck would shine in this hole and someone else would try their best to murder them. Leon's smile tore his face in two. His eyes shone, and his voice boomed, as his hair waved on the heated wafts of the fires. “Glorious!” Leon said, hoisting the two pronged spear. “What a story this will make!” Two, four, six. “A story supposes that someone will be able to tell it,” Petronius said. “Have you looked behind you?” Farther along the fire lit den were six more, shadows coming out of the darkness, hoisting their own weapons. The men ran ahead of them, drawing ever closer. “Oh,” Leon said. He took a moment. “I did not see that.” The laughter was loud now. Leon grinned. Imagine the scene, brothers. The flaring fires bursting from holes dug straight to Hades, the shadows descending, the rush of men mad enough to tie themselves to shackles they know as gods. The Maki tore at their clothes in front of flames blowing huge swathes of color, howling and rending. They screamed as well, the fire animating them as much as the stone and mortar around them. It burned out of their mouths, igniting through their eyes. They reared their heads, ecstatic. Another note to the horror chorus. “The she spiders?” Leon asked, the blaze even hotter against his skin, men's lives acting only as a wick, to burn it ever brighter. Petronius' shook his head, his eyes busy and sharp, scanning the inferno, waves of heat and forms circulating around. “”The banshees of Sherok?” Leon asked. “The Aginor Col-” He felt a wash of heat, as the Maki's clothes crinkled, finally surrendering, waving arms emerging from columns of fire. “I admit this is not dancing under the grapes,” Leon said, keeping his spear ready, set in a relaxed pose, its tips jutting out. The air crackled and scorched, flutes of fire in the distance, inconceivable lights behind. The ground shuddered. “But the prize! And you are the one with the blue eyes...” “I found it,” he said, sounding very serious, grasping his bow in both hands, moving back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Piles of it, much good it'll do.” Leon grinned wider. “Did I not tell you?” he asked. Their feet circled as they looked outward. Smoke condensed, chaos unleashed, and a clutch of men in leather aprons stood, at a loss, as the armed men sped past them. “This entire day is made of gold.” There was another wash of heat. Leon turned his head in time to see the burning Euminide emerge from from the flames. Its face, riven with devouring flames, howled. As if stuck in mire, Leon brought up his stalwart spear to meet the descending bronze wreath, warped and dripping, in the knowledge that it would be too late. The Euminide's head howled, and spun, as its screamed with a tongue of fire on an arc falling right into the fires. Its body collapsed as a great hammer dug into its neck, spewing a foul miasma. Leon's eyes turned upwards, to the ramparts, in time to see gauntleted feet slip pull out of sight. To the storm of gathering swords, Leon yelled. “Did you not hear me?!” he asked. “You are too few!” What those torched souls might have answered was swallowed by the gushing of blood. And Leon knew that the time for reaping glory alone had ended, for it was his honor to do naught but bask in its reflections, brothers. Strabocles of the Iron Hammer wrenched his terrible mallet from the form of the disappated spirit as Polios came forward,spinning his blades, in a shower of crimson and mashing steel. Strabocles, the brown bald boulder of a man, looked into the mystic deep emanating from the open neck, and gargling deeply, spat into it, as Polios pushed forward into the squad of Bethel warriors. Behind Strabocles was the remains of the gate, torn asunder, and a path made of demolished bodies. He seemed unconcerned as the crash of a troop, generations bred for combat, spun in panic in the face of barely waist high swirl of violence wielding shining sword and dirk cutting with no pattern. A herd of ill-trained goat fuckers if one asked me. The whirlwind was finally stilled with the sharp clang of opposing swords, bending back the curved blades. Vibrating, pushing against the clutch of demon clad warriors, Polios of the Golden Claws, the gray hood over his bald head shaken free, bared his teeth. He looked at the three of them. “You pair of spavined mules mean to help?” he asked. Before the two younger men could move, arrows rained down. They hit exposed limbs and surprised faces, as the Bethel were punctured by the falling missiles. Patronius then stood on his toes. “Well?!” he asked. The stokers had been watching all the while, the leather aproned wraiths holding each other in terror. They now turned as snarls and yells came from the billowing fire. Skinnied limbs shot out and weathered feet ran and met them, and the furious interned rendered them apart. The flood of fleeing men came upon the squad of injured Bethel and gave them no mercy, tearing into them, before running to the open gate. Memis, now sitting on the ramparts, his knife bloody, gave them cover, shooting with his never missed arrows, him and his squad. I'd like to think I'd have the same chance, a little bit of blood to soothe the soul. The man from the frozen steppes watched all this with a cool eye, and the never ending Bethel coming forward, and the shadow figures coming ever closer. “Those,” he said, looking at the coming shades wielding shards of black ink. “Those ones we can hit?” “Yes,” Leon said, the taste of metal in his mouth. He had somewhere earned it, and now savored it. “Thank any of the gods,” Polios said, standing beside them. “I do hate the ones you don't.” Polios twirled his weapons. “I do believe I am getting nostalgic Strabo.” There was level look given by Strabocles, and Polios sighed. “Fine,” he said. He looked upwards. “Come on then!” Down came warriors of virtue, flashing spears and shield. Amphibatron came flying down with his double blades onto the largest spectre. Am I to be worried about fog now? Where there was one tale, now there were many, shouted out with ardor. -An arrow stuck in him! He didn't even notice! -I noticed it when you pulled it out you -One head -Two heads -Three heads hit into the fire! Arms were interlocked now, beer spilling, as the Children belted out with full throats. The barriers had fallen, and the young mixed with the old. Polios was slamming a table, Memis and others laughing around it, Amphibatron looking on. Isocles, with a pleased nod at those much younger than he loosening, had already made his leave. In fact, of those elders that had been sitting at the fore, only Hephaestus sat at his original station. He looked at Leon. “It’s enough, I suppose,” he said. “But you do have a gift for extending a thing past interesting.” With that, he was out and gone from the shaking room. Leon felt himself shaking, a creased hand dug into his shoulder. Strabocles looked down at him. He nodded. “It’s just enough,” Strabocles said, and left, leaving Leon smiling. This is what you like, isn’t it? -The fires and the ground, both going mad, yes?! I swear -Yes -I could not hear a thing. Something was screaming -Mad. The ground -The ground was tilting! And Memis points outward. He yells This tripe? -The castle was waking up! And escaping the bounds of the earth, on a bed of fire! May you be stuffed on it. A sweep of reality, of illusionary depth. Leon looked on, smiling. But it was shrinking, for he thought he heard something else. A voice barely heard. It is coming. For all you. A barely heard whisper in the vaulting limbs and merry shouting. He could almost see it. You will know it when it does. You will have no choice. Leon stepped forward, and did not. He joined the happy throng, Petronius clapping him on the back. And you and everything you think is already dead.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:01
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So this is the final chapter I think I am going to post, and just work on this on my own. But I think it further fleshes out what I'm trying to do with the book as a whole. (2,600 words) ----------------------------------- It tasted wet. They had taken a hard left at the sea, but fat chance leaving it behind. It had chased after them, thinning and narrowing into little rivers and streams, bubbling between mossy banks thick with hanging mist. Popping above the gray were tiny explosions of yellow, maybe daffodils, growing all over their sides and beyond. Bubbling waters flowing under floes of mist acting like a curtain rod for a deep forest dells away, treetops reaching over the murk. Dan’s sandals dipped into the lush green, his toes tickled by stray points of grass. He took a deep breath and didn’t cough. Nature. He shifted his canvas bag, and looked back. Alen was finally coming up the hill. “Speedy one, aren’t you,” he said, muttering, as he crested the hill. Dan shrugged. Twenty something years of no walking gives you a well of stamina, he guessed, waiting to be tapped. “We getting close?” Dan asked. “Surely,” he said, his hand cupped over his eyes, staring toward the moving fluff and bolts of green. “Though I have never seen it like this. Never seen it without seeing it.” “Alrighty,” Dan said. He stepped off and met the mushy lawn growing down-hill. “Closer look?” He slipped a bit but caught himself, slaloming down to the bend, Alen slushing behind him. He slopped up again, and down, the land buoying the same way, up and down. It was all bends and little valleys, some of them sinking his feet in unseen water covered by mist at their floors. It was at one of them, Dan trying to splash out of it, Alen leaning forward, grabbing his hand and pulling upwards, that he spoke. Maybe it was the silence, hanging as heavy as the humid air. Dan was leaning over, breathing in gasps, as Alen started to head down another hill. Then he paused, turning his head. “Might I ask,” Alen said. “How you ended up where you were?” Dan didn't pause at all. “I don't know,” he said. “Truly?” he asked, eyebrows rising. “It's...its all fuzzy,” Dan said, tenderly touching the back of his head. “How I got there. In the forest.” Alen nodded. “And nothing before?” “It's all hard to remember,” Dan said. “Just painful...what happened there?! What was that thing?!” Alen tilted his head. “I...am not sure.” He turned his head back to the forest. Dan heard the mush of wet grass as he headed down the hill. “Just ahead,” he said. “It is not exactly straight forward.” They walked in a straight enough direction, until the misty trees were close enough to see their broad leaves, shadow and fog hiding anything beyond them. Between where they stood, on an incline just above, was a snug settlement, between the hills, and just before the forest, rising on its other side. Chimneys, small from here, spiraled smoke, before they were swallowed by the thick vapor that had eaten whatever they rested on. They were silent as they descended into Innsmouth. Right? Anytime time now guppy faced fishermen should pop up. But so far there was only the mush of their steps on the sloping grass. Once in a while the flowing mist would reveal a patch of dirt, bricks of stone. But to Dan's eyes it was like they were heading down into a weak reflection of the gray overcast above, slow moving white that stopped his vision. Dan's neck prickled, but his feet sped up. drat dropping temperature. The ground stopped sloping and they were in the thick. Dan reached out a hand and let it stream through his fingers. Alen walked past, disappearing into it. Dan followed his shadow. The fading steps. Once in a while the mist would swirl, revealing a portion of pocked wall made of haphazardly stacked stones, leaning along. And once in a while there would be a woosh, and Dan would see pebbles thrown on a dirt patch. But all he could hear was silence now, and he should have figured why, before he plowed into Alen's back. “Here,” he said, and moved his arm towards a now revealed musty plank of wood with a knob fixed in it. Alen rapped his fingers on it lightly. Tendrils of white steam flit by. A faint redness colored it. The door had slipped open, spilling light that was weak and unsteady. It was only open a sliver, and blocking a large part of it was a dark head and a beady eye. “What?” a scratchy voice asked. Dan felt something hit the top of his head. He looked up in time for a fat droplet of water to splash against his forehead. Sigh. “Alen,” Alen said. “Son of Jon? We have been journeying for some days.” The eye narrowed. “For days…” Alen said, then looked at Dan. Was that confusion? The door slammed shut. It was unmistakable now, like the rain now coming down from the lead sky. “Doesn’t seem to like you,” Dan said. “It does not matter!” Alen said. “We’re travelers, and in need of shelter! What is wrong here?!” Dan shrugged. “Doesn’t seem too strange to me…” “Then I do not know where you hail from,” Alen said. “Because it is nowhere I know.” Dan shrugged, and smiled a little. “Maybe,” he said. “But I’ve got an idea.” Dan knocked this time, and he did it with certainty. Authority. Eventually, the door opened. Dan could almost smell the fear filtering out of it. He imagined what it looked like from the other side, two young men a little rough from a long walk. Alen’s outraged face, but still polite enough to keep it bottled up. What was the play? Dan’s face leaned into the frame, but not aggressively. His eyes locked in, but it wasn’t accusing or anything. No, it positively radiated sympathy. “I am not sure we can help,” Dan said. “But we can try.” There was a pause. “Leave!” the man said in a weedy voice. “That is all the help I need!” The door began to close, but a hell of a lot more slowly this time. Dan nodded and started to turn away. Then he Columbo’d it. “They are onto you, sir,” Dan said. “I scarce think you have much time, much time at all.” The door stopped just short of closing. “I…I do not know you…” said the man. Dan nodded, his eyebrows concerned. And he waited. The need was so easy to see. “But…but…” the door inched open. “Hells…does it matter?!” The door swung open, and Dan saw his retreating back. Dan followed, and after a second, Alen did too. Like there was much to walk to. This was a room, not a house. A home spun chair, natty table, a fireplace full of dying embers, and nothing much else. The man, now revealed to be short and with a face that was creased as his tossed animal skins, dingy even in the half light. Alen stood uncomfortably by them as the man collapsed onto the chair. It groaned as he brought his hands to his face, the fringes of white hair he still had trailing over his dirty fingers. Dan stood next to him, against the dirt wall. “It is all too late now. She’s gone,” the man said. “I can at least muster the little custom and decency I have left…even now…” He lowered his fingers. “I do not care who sent you,” he said, his eyes intent on Dan’s, who now mirrored as best he could the fear and sadness he saw in there. “Your part, if you have any hope of good tidings, is to find yourself very far from here.” He nodded. “But if shelter you seek, I will not send you out this night. That little I can do.” He slammed his fists onto the table, making Alen react. Dan just nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Cronus!” the man said, and stood up. He moved to the door, and jabbed a skeletal finger at them. “Stay here!” he said. “If you value anything in yourselves.” And with that, the door slammed behind him. Alen and Dan looked at each other. “Well that was normal,” Dan said. “What were you doing?!” Alen asked. Dan shrugged. “Not much,” he said. “I guess that is the point.” He moved to the animal skins, touching it with a sandal. Super gross. “All that!” Alen said. “How did you know?” “I didn’t,” Dan said, then pointed at the door. “But he didn’t know that.” Dan nudged the skins for some reason. “Most people are just dying to tell you a story, if they see you’re listening.” “That man is in deep straits,” Alen said. His concern was real, from what Dan could tell. “And he practically begged us to join him there,” Dan said. Dan walked over to the door, and opened it a smidge. It was getting dark now, rain sprinkling freely through the fog. “We cannot just sit idle…” Alen said. Dan tilted his head. “That’s doesn’t sound exactly exciting…” Dan said, still looking outside. Then he looked at Alen, and couldn’t help but smile. Their sandals squelched in the mud. The raindrops were falling in force. Their steps and its slapping were the only sounds now. But now, with the dark, there was sparks of light. Little orange spheres in the mist, blocked off by squat walls of absence. Homes, they had to be. Alen plunged ahead. Like always, he moved smoothly, this outdoor steam room just another place for him to bound forward through, looking positively sure he’d find the exit. Then he stopped. “There,” he said, and pointed at a slant, upwards. Where the mist bowl found an upper rim, and its streams filtered into the black surface of trees ringing it. There was the firelight again, little pinpricks, but not bracketed in something. A trail of them moved forward, retreating into the dark. “Let’s go,” Dan said, and they followed it. They weren’t quick about it though. Dan at least wasn’t. Turns out that mist doesn’t cancel out uneven ground, isolated roots, and the occasional sharp bush. But eventually, eventually, they found themselves in the forest, bare branches stooping through the fog. Through the haze and bark was the trail again, burning like torches now. It was getting easier to see now. The fog thinned against the night, the branches growing, and the flames floated through them. More come in from the periphery, joining them, as the mist flowed by. They joined, and stopped. A field of them. Alen’s arm pulled him into a bush. Dan felt a finger press against his lips. From where they had been standing, Dan heard steps. Through the thistles he saw robes float by. And Dan’s skin prickled, as a hum vibrated through the underbrush. “What is the deal with forests?” Dan whispered, before Alen shushed, his worried face close to his. Beyond it, Dan saw bare feet slip by, sandwiched between the canvas clothing. The field cleared a way for the last of them arriving. Orange light bathed the place, a meadow, a circle between the trees. Night had properly descended now, and so it was mostly shadow beyond that field. The mist was still hanging around, just above the ground. Everyone standing in the field wore robes with hoods, hiding their faces. All except for a girl with long dark hair spilling over her own white robe, who carried her torch forward with purpose. The others just stood and watched, until Dan saw something at the edge of the field. One of them starting forward, then stopping, being pulled into line by another silent monk. Everyone else seemed to ignore it, and kept up that noise, the humming. A single note, multiplied. Nothing strange here. Nope. The crowd gave way, until she broke through the front ranks, standing in front of the darkness, wisps of white curdling through it. Then she kneeled in front of it. The volume grew, its base slipping behind Dan’s skin. The woman hadn’t moved though, her head down in front of the gathering mists and darkness. Maybe it was time to go? The space was still there, the row opened up separating the sounding monks, and that woman crouched at its end. Dan tensed, his hands becoming fist. Over their cowled heads, shining under the slivers of moonlight, traveling across the front of the mob, straight to her, was something shining gold. It took a second for Dan to recognize it. It was a blade. A goddamn golden sickle. The crowd started to fill the gap. What was he doing? He wasn't in the bush anymore. There was a blur of gray, and he was there, grabbing an arm, and pulling. It was resistant, but he didn't care. His feet churned, and he left that whole drat mess behind. The forest closed all around. The hum hadn't stopped behind him, hadn't even missed a beat. So he kept on moving, trying not to think. The denuded trees hung over them, the night blocking everything else, except for the creeping gray. It followed him, its curls trailing his steps and shining his path. His head was pounding. His breathing shook his entire body. At the corner of his eyes, he saw images spawned from his mind. Points, movement, shapes, objects rushing, all coming from the fog he couldn't escape. Faces. Leaves and branches cracked under his feet. A face, never leaving the corner of his vision, but never seen head on. Blank inlets near its top, a peaked center. The jaw a v that opened to the dark, and teeth, that shone like the light off a blade. “What are you doing?!!” Dan stumbled to a stop. The woman in white ripped her arm from his shaking fingers. Her face was twisted in fear. Dan looked behind but only saw blank mist and shrouded trees surrounding them. No sound of chasing footsteps. No torchlight. “I think…I think we’re alright,” Dan said. “No!” the woman said, a foot shorter than he was, and in his face. “We are not!” Dan looked down at her. “The Word,” she said. “The rites, my entire life, it led up to this! I’ve prepared for so long…to finally give it away…and you ruin it all!” “….what?” Dan asked. “Someone was about to murder you, lady!” A look of confusion crossed her face. Then a look of understanding swamped it. She reached into the ink black and pulled down something bushy. Yeah, it was a bush she was holding, and she held it right under his nose. “This is the only thing that was meant to be cut tonight!” she said. Dan took a moment. “Mistletoe…?” he asked. She threw it onto his feet. “The most important night of my life!” she said, her eyes tearing up. “My wedding! You charged in and ruined it! What do you have to say?! What are you doing?!” Dan took another moment. “Saving you?” Dan asked. Dan’s vision exploded into stars. He was down. It felt like he was being electrocuted, and didn’t even have the luck of death ending it. He rolled in the green, moans escaping his lips, as he saw bare feet fly away. He also saw, in his rare moments not face down mewling into the grass, Alen drop from the nearest tree, guffawing. “Right in there!” Alen said, rolling himself. “Right in the testicles!” Dan would have swore, if he wasn’t too busy trying to breath through the pain. Alen stood up, and wiped his trousers. “Are you well enough?” he said, trying to wipe away his grin and failing. He pulled up the sagging Dan. Dan just winced. “Can…we just go?” Dan asked, his voice a croak. Alen nodded, his face turned carefully away, and slung Dan’s arm around his shoulder. Then they hobbled away into the night.
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Jul 25, 2014 20:31
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