“They have insulted the Queen! Kill them!”
The ogre guards, which had been slowly filling the room during Scammander’s hurling and cursing, were eager to demonstrate their loyalty to their newest ruler. The nearest ogre decided to attack the angry elf with his battle axe; as the axe shattered like cheap pottery around him, Scammander took the time to give the ogre the twin towers, complete with a pelvic thrust. I started running.
Scammander followed close behind, but I had no idea where I was going; we were back out in the streets, but it was so dark and the city was made entirely of black stone, so it was impossible to see where we were running. I could feel Scammander on my heels, and then I literally felt him on my back. A huge axe flew past me then skipped along the black stone sidewalk, throwing out small orange sparks, finally sliding down the street until it clanked against a small building and stopped. My legs turned to jelly and I tumbled down onto the pavement as another axe went sailing over me and shattered against the archway in front of me. Scammander went rolling nimbly over my head, popped back on his feet, and disappeared into the night. Scammander, the greatest wizard of all time, might have forgotten his magic, but he had not forgotten how to lie, steal, and abandon his friends in a time of need.
Another axe went dumbly through the air, only this time it wasn’t in my direction, or even close to me. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked back up the street. I saw the faint outline of a pack of guards, and could hear them huffing and snorting and grumbling. I ran away, and right into another roaming pack of ogres. Huge axe blades crashed beside me as I squeezed between the oversized oafs, bouncing off bellies, flailing between flesh-walls, ducking, twirling, and tip-toeing between the tremendous gauntlet of guts. I stiff armed the last one to push my way out of the pack: the flat of my palm pushed against his cheek, making his eye bulge as I shoved myself out into the open street. I flung my arms out behind me, and raised my head up to the starless sky and howled into the night as danger’s great gift, adrenaline, coursed through me.
I ran all night. I ran to ogres, I ran away from ogres, I ran into ogres, I ran ogres into ogres; I ran in circles, I ran to the main square, I ran through alleys, I ran back to the streets; I ran ogres out of breath and out of their minds, and then I ran them down. I hacked, slashed, gored, gouged, screamed, vomited, bashed, crushed, kicked, mauled, slit, pulled, strangled, cursed, spit, ripped, snapped, choked, smacked, mangled, gnawed, split, clawed, chewed, slapped—and then I stopped. The sun was out, and the stack of bodies in front of me was so high that it looked like the sun was resting on top of them, and that they were bleeding out into the sky, drenching the dawn in red.
A calm current of crimson was slowly rolling over the thick ebony stones under my feet, sliding down and collecting at the bottom gate. My hands were shaking and my muscles trembled and locked as I stiffly walked to the gate in a haze.
Ravens were sitting on my horns. I peered out of the gate: instead of dirt, there was water; instead of an open wasteland, there was dense foliage; instead of no one, there was Scammander. Some slick entrails and grizzle that was dangling on the hatchet blade slid off, collecting in a pile next to Scammander’s sandal.
“Are you finished?” he said, arching an eyebrow.
“No, I’m still alive,” I muttered, and leaned on my hatchet. It reeked. A couple of ravens fluttered off my horns, and some others shifted their feet and squawked, and looked down odiously at Scammander. “And where have you been all this time? Don’t you think your mother will find out we killed the wrong ogre?”
Scammander peered up at the ravens as he spoke. “I was trying to remember what I was thinking about at the bottom of that bottomless well, before you dropped in, and was trying to figure out which was more red: the morning sky or the streets in that city.” He paused, and looked at the wall. “And I’ve also been memorizing this wall.”
I looked at the huge obsidian wall, which stretched down the hill and out of sight, and which just last evening had been nude of any markings, only to see huge runes carved into it, highlighted by large splashes of blood.
“So you see, dear friend, I’ve been busy too.”
*
“There’s something you need to see,” Scammander said. He was whistling as we strode along the wall, looking at the runes highlighted by the glistening blood. It took us most of the day to get down to the end of the wall, where Scammander stopped and pointed. The final symbol on the wall was a crudely etched stick figure with horns, and in one hand a primitive set of scratches and lines formed a giant hatchet.
“What does it mean?” I said, amazed.
“It is some kind of prophecy, predicting the end of the ogre way of life with your arrival.” He paused for a moment and looked at me. “Actually, I drew that last one,” he said with a laugh.
WRAITHSSENTIMENT
“Kindness counts for nothing.”
Catullus
We were sprinting through the Rot when four little rusty nails crashed into the side of my face. I slipped a little, and then a huge rusty coffin stake slammed into my jaw. The force of the blow threw my right leg in front of my left. I stumbled, got another step in, then careened into the muck and sludge of the Rot. Scammander dove down next to me, throwing putrid grey water and mud all over me. He was using my body as a shield.
“Breathe, don’t speak,” he said, but only one was barely possible anyways. “It’s Coffin. He won’t be able to kill you, he’s an idiot.” It felt like I had a mountain stuck on the side of my face. “But it looks like he has gotten a lot better.” I could feel him moving around next to me. “I doubt he’s alone, so just wait here until I get back. I should be back before he musters the courage to come get a trophy.” Once again, Scammander vanished into the night.
Moments later, there was loud splashing and I twisted my neck up just enough to see a dancing skeleton in a death shroud with a massive crossbow kick swamp water on me. He began dancing in a circle around me, kicking cold water on me and splashing water everywhere as he continued to circle around. He was wearing a tattered, dark blue death shroud, and though the hood was up, I could still see an expressionless skull under it. His shroud ended just above his knees, which had little green lightning bolts twisting and crackling around them. After a couple more times around, he paused in front of me, and danced a little to the left, then a little to the right, splashing and kicking water in my face.
My hand leapt out of the Rot water and grabbed the crackling green lightning around Coffin’s knee joint. The enchanted electric hissed and snapped around both of us, blowing the brown nails out of my jaw. Coffin’s bolt thrower went off and sunk another huge rusted coffin stake into my arm, anchoring me into the mud and sending him hurdling backwards into the darkness. I doubt he can speak, but I know he can scream.
I listened.
Two splashes.
Scammander’s terrible healing spell was weaving my arm back together, slowly pushing the stake out of it. I’m not sure which was worse, getting shot or getting better. I grabbed the thick cold bolt and took quick, shallow inhales as I slid the huge stake out of my arm and erupted out of the water. Black water raced down my face and splashed onto my shoulders, then tumbled down my chest and back into the swamp like a waterfall. I was lightheaded and numb, chest heaving as I stumbled through the Rot with the rusty stake in front of me.
Then I saw him floating on the surface of the black water, rolling with the lazy waves, shroud spread out around him. My foot got caught in his shroud, and I fell on him. Bones and black water enveloped me as the stake crashed through his skull and pierced his hood, pinning the shroud to the mud below. I thrust myself up in a fit, throwing water and bones off me, then fell again and locked my jaw, crawling away through the soupy shallow water. Exhausted and only a short distance away, I stopped and pulled my knees into my chest and slowly rocked back and forth, alone in the cold dismal swamp. In the best of all possible worlds Coffin would have killed me, but since this was the worst of all possible worlds
, I accidentally killed Coffin, when all I really wanted to do was to ask him to drive his stake through my chest.
*
I sighed and looked over at Coffin’s remains. Bits and pieces of the grey skull began to surface around the floating skeleton bones, which were slowly drifting away from each other.
The Rot was what we had decided to call the ogre swamp, which had mysteriously flourished since Dorian hadn’t been playing his flute. Deep greens mixed with heavy shadows since the foliage was so thick it blocked out any light. Small mossy isles dotted the swampscape, which was otherwise stuffed with trees growing out of the black water. I was still watching the bones all slowly float away and listening to the chorus of frogs, when my gaze led me to Scammander, who was holding Coffin’s arm.
“What’s that stench?” I said, falling back into the water.
Scammander looked at me, steadily. “Your seared skin mixing with the putrid Rot water; be thankful it’s dark and not limpid lake water, you look bad.” He grimaced a little and waved Coffin’s arm in front of his face. “You look like Death himself was killing you as slowly as possible, and then got distracted and quit at the very end.”
I snorted into the water. I liked this place better as a barren desert.
Scammander began looking down at his feet, and then looked over his shoulder. “Where is the skull?” he said as he tossed the arm away. “I’d like to make some heady rheuminations.”
“Did you find them?” I said, looking up at him.
“Who?”
“The others. You said Coffin wasn’t alone.”
“Oh, no, there was no one else, so I dropped the ale off with the goblins.”
“Greatest wizard of all time,” I sighed as I sat up in the swamp and stretched. Everything hurt so much.
“Well what else did you want me to do, cast a healing spell on Coffin?”
“Tell me about Coffin while I catch my breath,” I wheezed. “And any other enchantments you’ve got working on you that you might have forgotten.” I paused. “Except for the disappearing magic, I know about that stuff. But immunity to fire and axes—those are nice.” I paused again. “Actually, this healing spell—”
“It’s a minor regeneration spell; you’ll be thankful to know you can still die.”
I shook my head and wiped my face. “Honestly Scammander I think you are a curse, and you keep me alive with this awful healing spell to teach me what I already know: that life is miserable.” I stared off into the swamp’s thick shadows for a moment before continuing. “I thought you lost your magical knowledge.”
“I did, but I remembered this one in the vale. That’s why I was so happy.” He looked at me questioningly. “You were smiling just as much as I was, so what made you so jubilant?”
“Oh, I was just happy to see the unicorns,” I said, lurching back in the water.
“Well, anyways, Coffin is from the Henchmen—‘the world’s second best guild of assassins,’” he chuckled.
“So who’s number one?”
“Oh that’s just their sardonic slogan. There is no great guild of assassins or some secret society of killers,” he grinned again as he leaned closer. “They all want to be famous,” he whispered.
“What a bunch of merry murderers,” I said sitting up again. My temples were pounding. “Why can’t you get shot at for a change?”
“Henchmen specialize, and Coffin’s specialization is Vendetta.”
“Was,” I muttered. “And I don’t really care who has a vendetta with me, I have one with everyone anyways.”
“Oh, isn’t it obvious? Don’t you remember what you did recently?”
“Kill, just as I have been doing for my entire life.” That was a lie, but I had been doing a lot of it lately.
“They must not have mattered much,” Scammander began.
“Nothing matters much,” I said. He nodded in agreement, like I had uttered an irrefutable axiom.
“Well, think about who you have been killing lately.” He grinned.
“I really, really would have liked to kill the literary genius.” I sighed and rubbed my jaw. “Only one of your ‘errant scions’—”
“Exactly. One of those lascivious sprites must have been in love with dear Quillian, and put the hit out on you.” I wondered if we were going back to the vale.
“Coffin,” I coughed.
“Oh yes, Coffin. Coffin was married, and his wife and her lover killed him. They cut out his tongue so no one could hear him, threw him in a coffin, and buried him alive. He banged on the lid of the coffin for so long and so loud that the King of the Dead, the Lich King, came to him in the moment of his death. The Lich King offered to pass him to his side, into the land of the dead, so that Coffin might live a little longer; the terms, however, were that Coffin would be able to kill anyone he wanted, except for his betraying wife and her lover. Coffin was baffled, and wished he had died, but the King of the Dead said that he had given Coffin one of the best deals out of all who were undead, and that in time, Coffin would come to understand.
“Coffin, a carefree, gentle, and truly happy person, fond of naps and strawberries, learned to become a sleepless murderer. The Lich King gave him that huge bolt thrower, forged from the thick wood of his own deathbox, along with rusty nails and stakes from countless graveyards. Like all undead, he does not need sleep or food, and feels neither cold nor heat—but the Lich King let him keep the sensations of joy and sadness, which, before this gift, only the King of the Dead was allowed to possess. So, finally, he gives Coffin the Midnight Shroud of the Dead, and Coffin is freed from the tomb, and is given the ‘dead’s eyes’ or bleached vision, where everything is seen bathed in eternal moonlight.
“He sets to work, to kill his wife and her lover—what can the King of the Dead do to stop him? He’s already dead. He finds them one night, full of mirth, dining together with their young child. The meal is finished, and he can see them laughing at the table, through the window. Coffin is overcome with grief, and tries to shoot himself; the girl he truly loved truly loves another, and Coffin would rather be dead than what he is. But the bolt won’t fire, so he writhes in agony. What to do? He aims first at his wife, but it won’t shoot; he aims at the lover, and it still won’t shoot. He aims at the child, who still has chocolate frosting on his cheek, and the aim is true, but perhaps without love. The great coffin stake shatters the window, sending shards all over—just like the child’s skull.
“It is said that Coffin leapt through the broken window to gloat about his revenge, but since he couldn’t talk, since they had cut his tongue out, he mocked them with a dance on their table and kicked their plates against the wall, and then back out the window, into the night.
“His wife died shortly after, a combination of frayed sanity and shattered love. Her lover, who could not live without her, hung himself in their bedroom, right over the child’s cradle. Coffin’s revenge was complete, and he now understood the Lich King’s offering. Some say that Coffin cried, some say it was the happiest day of his life, and that every year on the day he died you could see him dancing across the top of their headstones.”
Coffin’s shroud had been softly brushing my leg as the sluggish swells rolled around my calves. I pulled it out of the water as I stood up, and wrung it out. I looked at it, then threw it over my head. The robe was damp and uncomfortable, and stretched past my knees all the way down to my ankles. Maybe Coffin was taller than I thought. I flipped the hood up and some slender strings of water rolled down my brow, while a few loose bone chips fell out and skipped off my snout.
“Most people have to wait a life time to get one of those, you cheat,” Scammander said.
“Guess I’m learning a few things from you,” I said from under my hood. “Better watch out for me once I learn some magic.”
“Murdering with magic isn’t nearly as rewarding as murdering through traditional means, so you would have little use for it, my wraithy cow. Though it does seem to frighten one’s contemporaries.” H
e looked at me intently. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble with that.”
“How much farther? A good run will dry this thing out.”
“I have no idea where we are,” he scoffed, offended at the suggestion that he should know something like that.
My shoulders slumped. “And why should you, greatest wizard—”
The world screamed, and my stomach came roaring through my lips and nose as a thin glowing line stretched into a large blue circle.
“Can you learn to make one where I don’t have to puke every time?” I said, wiping my mouth. I wondered how many times he could tear the fabric of the world before it was ripped to pieces, and the hope that it would be with the next one was the only thing that helped me endure the nausea.
“Guess we are close enough,” he said, surprised. “Good thing you have your hood up. You may have to take your prize,” he said with a sinister scowl.
“Scammander,” I said, “I’m not ready to kill your mother.—I—I don’t think I could do it.”
“You can’t,” he said. “I’ve already tried.” My face froze. “A couple hundred times.”
*
We were back in the immaculate, tranquil marble palace, and folded neatly on the small blue marble bench was a black shirt with a note on it. I read the note: “The one thing faster than thought is rumor, which claims there is a new king of the ogres. I have left Brock’s shirt, since that is all there is left of his legend. The pants decayed years ago. Electra Faewind.”
I took the shirt in my hand, and lowered my head for a moment. I sighed—it was the kind of sigh that sounds like the long, weary winds of eternity, and slowly tied Brock Highkeep’s black shirt around my left elbow. I clenched my fist and raised my head as I spoke to my heart in the silence: I have no gods, so I must avenge myself. Scammander was already trotting down the hall with its vaulted ceilings, sandals echoing as he crossed the turquoise tile towards the soft glow at the end. We stopped at the end of the great hall in front of a commodious room filled with the magical gates.
Splatterism: The Tragic Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse Page 5