Shadows of Elysium: The Laughing King

Chapter 13: The Code: Honor

Jasper took a seat by the old tree man and handed him a frosty mug. Twiggy fingers wrapped around the cup, but amber-yellow eyes never left the fireplace. Jasper turned to see what was so special about the little cooking fire of no more than four logs.

The logs periodically crackle with lightning streaks of red, yellow, and blue. They pulsed ash white and charcoal black. No matter how long you looked, there was no making out the age of the burning wood.

Each tongue of flame seemed to hold something akin to a spirit within. Scenes of lives lived and faces alight with emotions in every wave of red. With every flame seen, two more took its place until the fire grew into a raging inferno in the eyes of the beholder. The dancing blaze consumed everything for a brief eternity, a timeless trance.

From the wall of fire came a vision of a tower given life by the destructive force around. The wooden beams shaped by the flames as if it were burning in reverse. The walls painted in red that then darkened into wood and two figures took shape in the watchtower.

A couple of silhouettes talked soundlessly before one left to follow the flames across a bridge. By the time the figure had crossed and left down a ladder, his features had come into full view.

He had long grey hair and an under-bite of three canine teeth curled over the top lip. He wore a bow at his back, a machete at the hip, and called himself Grias. Grias had been a scout for as long as anyone could remember having a job. This meant being the first to see the hunters and the prey in the treacherous forests and searing hot deserts. Sussing out the dangers of the wastes for his kinfolk had been no easy life, but it was the only one rewarding enough to live.

As proof of this, Grias had been the scout to track the King's Hunt for three eclipses in a row. The King's Hunt took place any time a scout found beasts so large, plentiful, or dangerous that Old Three-Eyes himself came down from the throne to assist.

There had been the Thunderbird nest of the same bird that had tried to pluck a young Three-eyes from his throne. He had been carried off far enough that a new King was all but chosen. Ironically, the king came swimming from out of the gulf with one of the beast's eyes (some still call him four-eyes). Grias took its other eye with an arrow on the day of the King's Hunt.

The next hunt was a group of hogs big enough to tear the village to the ground if they had chosen to travel only a mile south. That had been a memorable battle, but even more so was the feast. Better than either was the idea to domesticate the surviving hogs.

Lastly but certainly not least, there was that accursed wurm swarm. Grias hadn't so much tracked them as he had been cornered in the jungle for five days.

As the spirits mind wandered, so did the flames. They burned away the sandy walk to the woods Grias had been approaching. The conflagration traced the corners of the scene and seemed to implode into the scouts mind from which it spread back out to form a new land.

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Grias ran from the forest and out into the desert, bits of ground puffing up and snaking out like groundhog trails. His stand was made on an outcropping of rock in the sand. Tiny volcanos of dirt erupted all around the rock, and small wurms sprang from the holes. Small still being the size of large dogs. Three at a time, Grias's machete cut them in half, and they either writhed on the ground with finality or burrowed back to the earth only in smaller pieces.

They came by the dozens, though, and try as he might to slash defensively the wurms broke through. Some latched on long enough to rip a chunk of meat free and slither away to eat in privacy. More disturbing, however, some hung on by their teeth and thrashed the cord of muscle that makes up their entire anatomy in an attempt to burrow into flesh. The more Grias focused on pulling them out, the less he focused on machete swings. Chunks of bloody meat soon littered the rock.

Just when all hope seemed lost, a Royal Guard in rusty scrap armor burst from the jungle and took to the swarm with double-edged steel. The seasoned warrior made quick work of the beasts by sweeping the ground with his blade. Occasionally, he would stand upright to deflect a springing wurm, but they soon began to flee.

The ground rippled and cracked. The phenomena emanating at the guard's feet. In the midst of the fighting, he didn't notice until a massive pillar of muscle shot from the ground and engulfed the warrior.

Before its tail-end could even leave the ground, a javelin had arced into the wurms open maw. King Three-Eyes stood at the edge of the forest with another javelin at the ready. His timing was impeccable as a lesser man would have thrown wild in fright. Three-Eyes would only strike when the wurm's mouth angled toward the tree line.

The rest of the Royal Guard scrambled out of the woods after their King and met the sight with varied reactions. Some of the more hardened or brash warriors leapt to battle with ragtag blades and cleavers. Many still green or cautious men froze or drew ranged weapons.

"Keep near the trees!!" Three-eyes shouted, sure his men would get trampled by the beast and knowing only the smaller wurms could maneuver the trees above ground and their roots below. The five-hundred yard long Wurm coiled up like a snake lumbering over the tallest trees in the forest with its teeth-filled maw aimed at the line of soldiers and hunters.

In that miniscule moment of frozen time, it seemed to contemplate its next move even as two men bit into it with blades, and several more fired upon it with bows and guns alike. It uncoiled a heartbeat later, sending the blades-men sprawling and trampling two others before crashing into a tree. Leaves and twigs rained down for a moment.

Grias continued slashing away at the smaller wurms who were invigorated by their leaders arrival, but he was also emboldened by his King and the vigor with which he swung his sword nearly knocked his own feet from the ground.

A couple of warriors stood shakily from their prone positions, and one even jumped on the big wurm's back. Extremely deep red painted the axe-wielder as he put cracks in the wurm's carapace. It began to coil up again and swung its tail in a large arc. Grias felt the beasts strike stir his hair as it passed overhead and heard the axe-man get flung into the treeline out of sight.

Of the other men on the frontline, only the King backstepped successfully. The King briefly locked shocked eyes with Grias and then put a javelin through the fresh crack in the great wurm's armor. The weapon spiraled out the other side and into a tree.

A sword tip punched its way out of the wurm, nearly giving Grias a tracheotomy. Once recovered from suprize the old scout slid his blade in between the segments of carapace (the only place softer than iron) and began sawing until the Guard leapt out of the slit and landed on his feet in a waterslide of acid.

Only a sigh came from the melting human frame before it capsized into the puddle. The wurm reared up to face the sky and shivered (if such a thing could shiver). The hunter became the prey as it made ready to flee only to be peppered with a hail of bullets, arrows, and thrown weapons.

The cuts and cracks widened enough to tilt the beast over backwards. A human comparison would be bending over from a broken back, but wurm's have no back. It hit the ground with a shriek and a futile attempt to curl up around the wound in a kind of fetal position that only opened the wound up more.

"He died a warrior," Grias said of the acid drenched skeleton of his savior.

"That he did, and the tribe will eat because of him," said the King.

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The fire fades out of Grias's memory and back to him in the woods. Perhaps some small part of him knew, or maybe he could smell it. Nothing smelled quite like dead wurm. A dribble of acid onto his shoulder leathers caused him to look up. Draped over the branches above was the carcass of a fifty foot wurm. It had been sawn in half and opened up so that the ribs point toward the ground.

"What could..."

His words faded into a gasp at a small part of the sight. Suspended within the carcass, as if a vampire floating in sleep, was a jet black shade with arms crossed over its chest.

The shadows spread forth like wings. The only light came from the two moons in its eyes and the silver of the monster's grin. Stars entering the corners of the darkness turned to embers, and embers to flames, and the vision burned away for good.