The Land of Make Believe

by Michael Arnold

  Between the wild beasts and the Wolf-people (mostly the men) they had cut the group of thirty down to twenty and out of the twenty the Canine-man with the white hair was added to the dead Canine-people.

  “We have to keep fighting!” Scionna encouraged her son Auden who wanted to give himself over to the beast and the Wolf-people.

  “We have to win this war, son. Your father would be well pleased with you. Don’t give up, come on!” He heeded his mother’s suggestion. He aimed his dart gun and took out a wild beast.

  “Cam and I are going to take to the ground; there is much to be…”

  “No, No, that is an absolute no, Olen!” Whisk-pey interrupted harshly while using her new and improved sling-shot. “We stay together, me, you and, of course, Camden. Remember you said we do this together, remember?” Whisk-pey said with tears in her eyes as another one of her people was taken down by a Wolf’s spear.

  “Your people want their land back so much so, Whisk-pey, that they have taken to the ground. Die or live, I will fight alongside your people, to see this through,” Olen said.

  “And I will too!” Camden rejoined.

  “Whisk-pey, this is for you and your people, the way we take the city back is hand-to-hand combat on the ground,” Ento said.

  “Me and my people will handle the air, we will take care of as many beasts and Wolf-people as we can, Whisk-pey,” Gilma added.

  “Thank you. Okay, Olen, let’s do this!”

  Fenris was dazed but far from injured when Bodolf took a small chunk out of his shoulder. Blood poured out of the wound immediately. I have to kill him now while I have him down, Bodolf thought.

  With the sword aiming down at Fenris’s head he leaped in the air toward Fenris. On a knee and looking up, King Fenris rolled out of the way of the sword when he had only inched to recover. The sword jammed in the ground breaking a piece of the stone walkway.

  Losing his balance from the impact of the sword on the stone walkway, Bodolf fell to the ground along with his shield. Those that Bodolf believed would come came and before he could recover, four of King Fenris’s henchmen attacked him, leaving him with two knife wounds under his steel breast plate before King Fenris called them off.

  “Leave the rest for me. Today his life has been given unto me to take. There is war here, I know. I smell it on Bodolf. Go now and defend our city. I will put an end to this war shortly.” The four henchmen ran off. “I should have made sure you were dead before I cursed the Dark Forest,” King Fenris said, snatching off his burgundy robe.

  The pain was excruciating, and as bad as he wanted to hold his side, Bodolf attempted to use one arm as a shield to protect the coming onslaught from Fenris. Bodolf’s arm didn’t have any protection and King Fenris didn’t have any mercy. He raised his own sword and from the shoulder down Bodolf ceased to have a left arm.

  The pain was enormous, as shock struck Bodolf just as hard as King Fenris’s sword. For a second, King Fenris raised his sword to Bodolf’s head to cut it off then pulled it back. “An easy death would be too good for you. I want you to remember the choice you made in coming here thinking you will defeat me,” King Fenris yelled. “I want you to hear the yells and screams from you new friends as me and my people kill them.”

  “Why, why be such a man of anger and discord, Fenris? We were, we were…” He couldn’t get the words out from the blood that was getting caught in his throat.

  “You mean friends, Bodolf?”

  Bodolf didn’t answer instead he kept trying to get to his feet. “‘Were’ is the past tense, Bodolf. You will die and the fowls of the air will devour you, but to make sure that happens…” King Fenris pulled Bodolf up by his neck…. His feet wobbled as he tried to stand straight, and jammed his sword in Bodolf’s sternum and then yanked it out.

  “May the fowls of the air smell the death and blood. May they find you and seek you out just as you have sought me out, but not as you did fail in your desires to kill me. And when they find you may the hunger that fills their souls with indignation rise like the power of a new king that they may rip the flesh from your bones. When they see you powerless and dying body, may they have a merry feast – not one but all them that find you – may they eat you till death.”

  As the King spoke the curse over Bodolf, he walked toward the part of the city where the war was going on. Olen, Camden, and Whisk-pey were doing away with the Wolf-people with ease. Camden single-handedly killed a quite a few of the Wolf-people and some of the wild beasts.

  Olen and Whisk-pey didn’t stand by and watch as Camden suggested they did: “Take a break I will handle this.” They both acted liked they didn’t hear what Camden suggested and instead they continued the fight right beside him.

  “I need all of you to keep working or I will send every last one of you to the pit,” Amose heard the guard say, but he also heard screams and yells from what sounded like Wolf-people from behind the large stone wall that separated the front of the city from the stone lot. Not only Amose, but others that were in that stone lot working, heard the uncommon cries of people that weren’t their people. Amose looked toward the bar stone fixture that was his dwelling and he saw a battle. There, were his wife and a few of the Canine people who were part the twenty five who were overcoming the Wolf-people in there.

  Amose’s one eye grew as if it was pried open. It’s ten of us here working and only one of them. Even with only one eye I could take the guard, I am sure, but I am not sure that the others would be willing to follow my lead and fight back with me. I guess I will have to take my chances!

  And Amose did. The tool that is called a stone hammer, which was used to break stones into little pieces, Amose threw it at the guard. Not a precise hit but one that was good enough to do harm. The guard held his head not knowing what hit him suddenly.

  “Come on, if you want to get out of here, you have to follow my lead,” Amose yelled. Dazed and not able to regain his senses in time, the Canine-men mauled the guard to death. Amose and the others didn’t know exactly what was going on, but once Amose had seen his wife desperately fighting for her life, battling with her and his fellow Canine friends was all he could think of.

  The yelling of: “You all are going to The Arena, if you don’t stop!” sounded off in the back of them.

  “Come on, you have to keep running. Don’t look back at them,” Amose encourage his comrades. But there was another person living in each one of those slave Canine-people and that was the person of fear. Two of the men turned giving themselves up and freely believing that they would be caught and taken to The Arena.

  “You should have kept on running,” one of the Wolf people said.

  In Amose’s ears it sounded like a woman who spoke those chilling words, then again he wasn’t sure. But what he was sure of, without looking back to confirm, was that the people that were being killed in the back of him weren’t the Wolves but his own people.

  Amose’s group and the group that was fighting with his wife even put together weren’t enough to beat the numbers of the Wolf-people that came after them. Kalite, who never used a sword before, but who was willing to defend herself and her people, took the opportunity when it presented itself.

  “Do you think I would let a woman defeat me?” the Wolf-man said, walking faster and faster in Kalite’s direction, toting a knife. The sword shook in her hands. She was scared. She swung the sword as hard as she could. Minus half an arm, the guard kept coming, but fell short of his will to kill Kalite or anyone else, when he felt a sharp pain go from one side of his neck to the other then shortness of breath from his new open throat.

  There was a brief hug between Amose and Kalite.

  “What’s going on here?” Kalite asked.

  “We are taking our city back. Whisk-pey and her friend are leading us!”

  “Whisk-pey? Whisk-pey is here my baby is here?” Kalite asked.

  “Whisk-pey? Where is she?” Amose asked, bewildered. His focus switched from fighting to his daughter when suddenly
a group of the owl birds swooped in and made the fight fair when they grabbed up some of the Wolf-people and harshly threw them over the city wall.

  “There are a lot of them. We should try to make our way out of the city,” one of the Canine-people suggested.

  “No, I am not leaving here without my daughter.”

  “And I’m coming with you,” Kalite yelled.

  “Come on, fight with me, I have come to save my people. Let’s go,”

  Scionna yelled as she crossed paths with the Canine-people that had been working in the stone lots. Many followed, others didn’t; out of fear they stayed there working or perhaps they turned suddenly loyal to their enemies.

  The anger in King Fenris’s heart burned like a blazing fire. He roared with revenge at the core of his thoughts. “I want every one of them dead or I will kill you,” King Fenris said, informing a slew of his workers that came to him to tell him of the continuing battle. He watched but kept his fast, even steps with his army as the combination of wild beasts and Wolf-people gained the upper hand against the Canine-people.

  However, it didn’t make King Fenris any happier when he saw the destruction of a city that was now his, which he gradually built, come falling down. The sight brought hate greater than ever before inside him. He held his rod in front of him. In his sight were three Canine-people prevailing over his own Wolf-soldiers. The light on the end of that rod lit up.

  Chapter 22

  A blue blast came out of the end of that rod, striking just a few feet away from Olen, Camden and Whisk-pey. It killed the ten Wolf-men that the three were fighting. The fiery blue flame that caused the explosion also caused two of the large monument that housed the Canine-people to break and fall to the ground, putting a barrier between the coming Wolf-people and the three friends.

  Olen adjusted his glasses. In them he saw King Fenris draped with a steel arm that hid his fleshly arm and on his head was the steel helmet that contained the eerie feeling of death. Whisk-pey was stunned, but the hard iron boot that made contact with the stone rock made her get up. Neither her nor Olen didn’t recover well enough to react more rapidly than Camden.

  He ran and jumped at King Fenris. With the white steel glove, he made contact with Fenris who made perfect use of his headgear. The headgear didn’t budge but the fist to helmet impact rocked the Wolf-King. He stumbled back but held on to his rod.

  “You are the bad guy and the bad guy needs to be beaten,” Camden said.

  “Your voice sounds like that of a child. I don’t hesitate to kill children, you strange creature!” He grabbed Camden around his metal neck and held him up in the air. He dropped his rod and drew his sword from the holster on his back.

  By this time Whisk-pey was set up in a ready position to fire her new sling shot and stones she received from the Mountaineers.

  “Put him down, he is my friend,” Olen yelled as he walked toward King Fenris. Olen held his left arm out, in it was a ball of what resembled the clouds that he spoke to in The Dark Forest. Olen’s hand automatically moved forward like the stone in Whisk-pey’s sling-shot, the cloud shot out from Olen’s open palm.

  Not only was Olen drawn by surprise, but so was Whisk-pey. “I don’t know how I’ve done it, but hey I will take it!” Olen said giving her a hand signal to hold her fire. The cloud encompassed King Fenris, setting up a kind of blinding field across his face and preventing him from seeing anything. Suddenly he dropped Camden out of his grip as he laid on the ground gasping for air.

  “I have more from where that came from and my friend does too. You surrender. You and your people leave this place. And that’s without asking for that cool helmet, I could ask for that!” Olen said jokingly as he looked back at Whisk-pey. She shook her head and a smirk came across her lips.

  “You need to get behind the stone in back of you, Camden, just until you get your breath back!”

  “I don’t think, th…think…, I…, it’s coming back!” Camden replied. “Just get behind the stone and I will help you!”

  The fire power from the war caused more structures to fall, so much so that it boxed the four of them in.

  “Are you going to surrender, King Fenris?” Olen yelled.

  The fog like film that covered Fenris’s face began to thin out. Olen didn’t pay any attention to that, so when Fenris’s hand gripped his spear, what was to come next, Olen didn’t see it coming.

  “I surrender to no one but myself, Magician!”

  King Fenris, whose side faced Olen, brought the spear from his back and threw it in the air. It caught Olen through his breastplate. From the force that accompanied the throw, Olen and the spear went flying into one of the broken structure that hung down like a wall behind him.

  Camden regained his senses very quickly as Ento yelled out and Whisk-pey screamed.

  She fired a pre-loaded stone but missed. King Fenris fired back with his blue rod. Camden and Whisk-pey scattered. Whisk-pey gritted her teeth while she reloaded and fired again. “Take that!” This time she did a better job. She hit King Fenris in the leg. The boom from the stone not only staggered the king but left him to fall in the massive hole behind him.

  Camden ran at King Fenris who had yet to recuperate from his latest injury. Camden jumped into the hole and leveled King Fenris by thumping him right between the eyes, the momentum sending him backwards. He quickly ran to his friend Olen. Whisk-pey was already there. He had a smile on his face when he said, “Go, you two, and continue, continue to fight.”

  When Camden saw the blood he began to cry then he hugged Olen around his legs. “We can’t go we can’t leave you here, Olen, and you know that,” Whisk-pey yelled.

  “Well, I’m not much use anymore. I’ve done what I could do. I am just going to sleep forever, that’s all.”

  “No, that’s not true you are dying, Olen,” Camden flared.

  Olen struggled to swallow, his smile slowly fading. Both Camden and Whisk-pey lay themselves on Olen. “I see them, I see them…. They are coming. You must go now and fight. Camden, you will get back home and Whisk-pey you and your people will be okay,” he said.

  “No, we aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Please, you must go. If the two of you are my friends, you would go and help those who need help. Now get out of here!”

  Hesitant and reluctant to leave their friend to die, Whisk-pey and Camden moved out of there as more of the stone structure came down. On their run out of there they were joined by more of Whisk-pey’s people. They continued to fight but the more Camden, Whisk-pey and her people overcame the Wolf-people, the more the Wolf-people overcame them.

  “You take one end I will take the other,” Whisk-pey said as they stood back to back out numbered by two to ten Wolf-people.

  “What do we have here? A Canine-girl and strange kid,” one of the Wolf men said.

  “Don’t do anything. We want to stay alive, Camden,” Ento whispered.

  The Wolf-man pulled Camden’s head gear off along with his glove and threw them to the ground. “Either you surrender now or I will kill the both of you here,” the Wolf-man said.

  After they surrendered minutes later, Whisk-pey, for the first time since she left to go to earth, was reunited with her parents.

  “Mom, Dad!” she said, running to them. They joined Scionna and her son Auden along with the surviving Canine-people who were all bound by the ankles and wrists.

  “Bind them up,” one of the Wolf-men said. “Dad, oh, Dad, what happen to your eye?” Whisk-pey asked.

  “It happen in war, baby. But it’s so glad to see you are alive,” Amose said, looking at Camden strangely.

  “This is my friend Camden. He helped us fight today.”

  “I don’t want to die, Whisk-pey,” Camden whispered.

  “I don’t either, Camden.”

  It seemed like an eternity before, coming across one of the broken structures, bloody himself and holding the rod, was King Fenris. Some of the birds tried their luck at coming into the city to attack th
e Wolf-people but at that point it was no use, their numbers faced an unbeatable King Fenris until they just gave up, and those that didn’t die flew away.

  Whisk-pey looked around at the destruction and what she thought was to come. She looked at her family, thin, broken, and discouraged. Then she looked at her friend Camden who was young as Auden but was brave, way beyond his years. Then she thought of Olen, her friend, who had saved her life when her life was close to being sucked away.

  “He was incredible,” she whispered under her breath before the tears came again.

  “You Canine-people are disgraceful to life,” King Fenris said. “What makes you think you would overcome me and my men? How dare you defy my ruling? My orders to several of my men were to kill you, but since you survived, you will rebuild my city out of its ruins then I will watch with pleasure as my men dispose of you and the two humans that found their way here.”

  Camden, Whisk-pey and Auden held hands tight.

  “Release them from their bounds, and put them to work,” King Fenris yelled.

  “The Canine people will not be released from their bounds to work for you, evil dictator, but they will be free from their bounds to regain their land and live in freedom as they always have!”

  “Who amongst you speak disrespectfully? Come forth and may you die now for your rebellion,” King Fenris hollered, looking around at each Canine-person in turn.

  “It’s not any of them, King Fenris. Remember me, the Magician? No, I’m up here in the sky,” Olen said as King Fenris looked around. “You have four hundred men but I come with and army of six thousand warriors.” The clouds that shielded Olen dissipated. “They are called the Mountaineers and they are my friends!”

  The Canine-people began to scream in happiness. They looked up at all of the Mountaneers on black horses with black wings and shiny chrome plates in the middle of their foreheads.