The Land: Predators

by Aleron Kong

  “It took a few hours of torture to make her do it, but cutting off someone’s hands and tits, then rubbing the stumps with salt will make them agree to anything! After that, it was so much easier. I had some more fun with her first, but then I just cut her head off. I got seven points that time, man.”

  He sighed happily, “I had to wait a week that time for her to come back, but also got to see it for the first time, as did the gnolls. This rent appeared in the middle of the tribe, and you could see pure Chaos energy through it. When she fell through and landed at my feet, the gnolls thought I had summoned her back with some kind of powerful magic. It really cemented my control over the tribe, let me tell you. This world is full of superstitious savages, man,” he told Richter, shaking his head.

  “We went through the same dance again. ‘No, no, please don’t.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Please, I’m begging you!’ Blah blah blah. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed by her performance. The point is, and this is you learning a little something about me, I always loved history. That’s why I decided to be a little creative that time. I crucified her.” As with every other atrocity Heman had admitted to, he just sounded a bit gleeful as he talked about it. “I had always been curious about it, you see. It never sat right with me that literally everyone on Earth had heard about crucifixion, they talked about it in churches around the world, but no one had done it in centuries! Now you might be asking why this matters, so I’ll give you a little backstory.

  “Back home, I was, shall we say, in the information-gathering business. In the course of my duties and in service to my government, I’d seen people killed in all manner of ways, but even I had never seen a crucifixion. One summer I even filled out a request, in triplicate, asking my superior if I could do it, just once. I told him it would really make people fear our security services. We would get ‘medieval’ as your homies used to say,” Heman joked with an evil smile on his face. He shook his head a few seconds later. “Can you believe that he refused my request? He even called me an animal. Can you believe that? Me!”

  “After I murdered him, I asked his replacement if I could do it on another prisoner, and he called me an animal too!” Heman sighed heavily, “I can admit that I’m a bit headstrong, but even I will listen. Seeing as how they both said the same thing, I figured maybe they were right. I’m a big enough man to admit that sometimes my zeal for exploration and learning can get the best of me. I let it go.

  “I never stopped being curious though. I mean, if it was a good enough way to kill Jesus, it should be good enough for anyone, right?” he declared, shaking his finger in the air. “Just seemed a little disrespectful to not keep up the tradition, and I’m all about tradition. When life presented me with this gorgeous woman, who I could not only crucify but then interview about the experience afterwards… well, it just seemed like a match made in heaven!

  “I had the gnolls get to work building the cross. Finding that much wood underground was not too easy, let me tell you, but we got it built then got her up there. There was a complication at first. I’d had the gnolls nail her to the cross, but she was able to rip her hand free. She almost died from the blood loss.” Heman rolled his eyes, “It was insanely annoying. After I got her healed, we tied her up and that worked much better. When we finally got it right, I waited to see what would happen. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited.”

  Heman shook his head in bemusement, “I definitely figured out why people don’t crucify anymore. It takes forever and it is so boring! True, she screamed her head off when her shoulder finally dislocated, but she lost consciousness from pain not too long after that. Richter,” he placed a hand on his captive’s shoulder in commiseration, “it was a total letdown. I couldn’t even wait till the end. I just sliced her open and let her guts fall to the floor.”

  He shook his head in remembrance, but then he smiled. “Don’t worry, man. There’s a happy ending to this story. I got twenty Chaos Points that time! The rewards are doubled when you kill them a final time.” He was almost giddy as he related the experience.

  Richter sat there, wrapped in pain and listening to the disgusting confessions. All he could do was seethe and watch the timer on his paralysis debuff count down, second by second. The whole time he had listened to Heman prattle on, he had prayed and begged for time to move faster, but he knew the other chaos seed wouldn’t allow that. He couldn’t even use the Shadow Ring as helpless as he was. Heman was going to kill him, but Hisako had told him that the monsters of the Shadow Realm might corrupt his very soul. Richter didn’t know why Heman was playing with him before the end, but he had no doubt that the end was coming.

  Heman sighed again, but it was a sigh of contentment, “I was, of course, upset that my toy was gone, but I adopted a new policy towards the prisoners that the gnolls brought in. I had them kept in separate cages and pretended to be one of them until I could be sure they weren’t chaos seeds. I was disappointed again and again, but one day, it happened! I found another one. This time, he was a beastkin. Some sort of mole. Extremely ugly, but apparently there are entire tribes of the disgusting creatures living underground.

  “Once I identified him, all it took was a little bit of theatre to have him bind his spawn point to the camp. I convinced him that I had befriended some of the gnolls and that they would let us out if we proved our loyalty by fighting for them. It wasn’t the best story I had ever come up with, but I had the gnolls torture a few prisoners to death in front of him. That little show really put the man’s choices into perspective. He was happy to do and try anything that would keep that from happening to him.” Heman chuckled at his own cleverness.

  “After he agreed to fight, I convinced him to bind his spawn point to the gnolls’ village so that we could find each other if the ‘worst’ happened. After all,” his voice changed to one of absolute sincerity, “we’re all in this together.” He kept his earnest expression for a second, before he started laughing. The sound was thick with malice.

  “After that, it was party time again! I found out Arvin, that was his name by the way, had already died once before. I was so happy to find out that, just like the elf bitch, every time he was reborn he brought more Chaos Points back with him. It also took longer for him to come back each time, but it was worth the wait. He had five lives total, and ended up netting me forty points. God, each time was better than last! He was a bit… off that last time, but it didn’t change the high!

  “After poor old Arvin went bye-bye, I was actually planning to leave the gnoll tribe. No other chaos seeds had shown up for a month, and daddy needed his medicine,” he finished with a laugh. “Then the goblins attacked. I’ll admit I was a bit bothered by that at first, but it wasn’t hard to be taken prisoner rather than be killed. All I had to do was slaughter most of the slaves and then hide with the few that were left. They were all new and didn’t know anything about me. The goblins were so irritated that fifty of the slaves were dead that they almost had no choice but to take the four of us that were left alive. After I was put with their other captives, I realized what an opportunity I’d been given. I talked to everyone and used my abilities to make them love me. It only took two weeks before I found my next chaos seed!

  “I don’t remember his name, but he’d clearly had a hard time of it. When I bashed the back of his head in with a rock he gave me fourteen points, and it was his last life. You know, I haven’t really been able to find any pattern in the total number of lives each of us is given, but I suppose that might just be implied in the name. Chaos seed, am I right?”

  Heman kept prattling on for a bit, before once more picking up the water skin. The throbbing burn in Richter’s jaw turned into a supernova when he grabbed Richter’s jaw again. He forced more poison down his captive’s throat, increasing the paralysis timer by more than five minutes this time. Richter lost consciousness and was reawakened to the sensation of being slapped.

  Richter’s head was clouded for a few moments, but he thought he heard Heman mutter something like,
“…taking forever.”

  Heman looked at him with a resigned expression, then he reached into the cubby again and drew out a dagger housed in a simple steel sheath. Turning back to Richter, he said, “Might as well finish my story. Like I was saying, I was having a great time murdering any chaos seed I could find, all after learning their spawn points, of course. I even made enough friends that I got them to camp those positions and bring me anyone that respawned. I gained over three hundred and fifty Chaos Points and had a grand time doing it!”

  “I also spent some time gaining the trust of my goblin captors, but I was moved from place to place every few weeks so I never gained enough relationship ranks to actually take over and escape. Not that I really wanted to. It certainly didn’t help that my relationship with every goblin started in the red, usually at enmity or loathing. It was taking me weeks to even get to a neutral rank.”

  He shook his head, “As great as getting all those Chaos Points was, I found out that I hated mining. I mean I really hate it. You have no idea how many blisters I got swinging a pick at a wall of fucking rock.” He sighed, “It was very frustrating. At least it was, until they took me to that hidden valley. They had us digging in that one place for more than a month. I had no idea why, but I was extremely happy that I was finally able to make serious relationship headway with one of the goblin slave masters.

  “I tell you Richter, when they finally took me down that tunnel and showed me the Chaotic Shard… my life changed. Did yours?” Richter couldn’t answer, of course, and he wouldn’t have given Heman the satisfaction if he could, but in his heart, he knew the answer was yes. The Chaotic Shard was the most beautiful and wondrous thing he’d seen in either of his two lives.

  “You don’t need to say anything, I know you felt the same way,” Heman told him. For the first time, there was no mockery or humor in his tone. Instead, his voice was tight with controlled emotion. “I saw that wonder, that piece of the divine, and knew it was my destiny to claim it. I just needed a few more days to increase my relationship with the goblins until they would let me venture down the hall to touch it. After all those nights spent in darkness, after the beatings and stench and pain and death, I had not only found my purpose, but it was within my grasp!”

  He looked at Richter with an expression of utter hate and righteous indignation, “And you,” the word lay thick on his tongue like the coarsest sand, “stole it from me.”

  In that moment of hate, the unstable chaos seed almost killed Richter. He held the dagger in his hand high above his head, ready to strike and end his victim’s life. He stood there for long moments, staring down with righteous indignation, before regaining control of himself. His hand lowered and he squatted down so he could look directly into Richter’s ruined eyes.

  Heman’s words came fast and clipped, like he was listing to irrefutable proof of Richter’s sins, “I know you claimed the shard, though you never admitted it. I’m almost positive that there are no other chaos seeds in your village, and the few that were in the valley with me had already been dealt with. I don’t know what protected it, but I do know several goblins and one troll died trying to get close. It could only have been another chaos seed that took the shard. It could only have been you! You stole from me, Lord Richter, and for that I’m going to do more than just kill you. I am going to take as many of your lives as I can!”

  Heman looked around, remarking, “I had hoped it would have happened already, but I suppose alive or dead, you can serve the same purpose. Before I kill you, I will give you a thank you, a warning and a gift. The thank you is for giving me access to the Sea of Chaos. Even though you did it by being selfish and stealing my birthright, you still ushered in the new Age. Our age. The Age of Chaos.

  “It helped me understand part of my purpose. It let me finally use my Chaos Points. That is how I got that wonderful paralysis poison and how I bought my hidden cupboard that I saw you were so impressed with. It’s also how I got this dagger.” Richter heard the sound of a blade clearing a sheath.

  *Master? Master? Master!* she screamed to him. The relief in her voice at having been able to reestablish contact was stark and profound. Ever since reaching Psi Bond level three, they could sense if one another was in danger, but he couldn’t give her any information until she had flown close enough for them to communicate. Now that she had, he could send her images. His Traveler’s map allowed him to have a minimap in the corner of his vision and she could access the same information he could. A mental replay of his morning was all she needed to hone in on his general position.

  She processed the information and promised him, *I’m coming, master. I’m coming. Just hold on!* Her voice was thick with sadness and broiling with anger, but all Richter felt was pain, joy and a resigned sadness. Alma had come, but in his heart, Richter feared she had found him too late. Heman had unsheathed his blade and the death stroke couldn’t be far away.

  Heman knelt down, and rested a hand on Richter’s shoulder. Blinded and helpless, he could just imagine his tormentor bracing with his left, while a blade hung poised to plunge into his heart with the man’s right. When Heman spoke again, his voice was soft, even reverent, “In these last moments, perhaps your last moments in The Land or any world, I will give you the warning I promised. If you are reborn, do not follow me. I am not killing you with just any blade; this is a Chaotic dagger that will claim this life and one more rebirth if you have one to spare.

  “I have never met another chaos seed who had more than five lives. I know you have already died twice so if you’re lucky, and it seems that you are, then you will be reborn, but it could very well be your final life. You should be reborn in less than a month if you are, and you can live that life however you see fit. That is my gift to you.

  “Stay in your shitty forest village, and I will leave you alone. If you come after me though, if I ever see your ugly, black face again, I will snatch away whatever life you have left. I will end you.”

  Richter felt Heman’s weight shift, and he knew that in a bare second, the Chaos blade would enter his body and maybe sever his mortal coil for the last time. His body calmed in acceptance of what was to come, and in that moment, he heard the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

  *Master! I am here! I-aaaiiiieee,* her words devolved into a scream of pure pain.

  In that moment, Richter heard the worst sound he'd ever heard.

  Through her eyes, he finally learned what the zzzt sound had been after he had first been poisoned. He saw a being made of lightning attacking his familiar. She dropped to the ground and was raked by claws of pure energy. Only her 50% resistance to Air creatures and attacks kept the damage from being almost instantly fatal. Then he heard Heman laugh.

  “At last,” he laughed. “At last! This is what I’ve been waiting for. I had no intention of letting your little dragon chase me through the forest.” He gave an order and the lightning demon... for that was what it was, a minor demon summoned by a scroll he had purchased from the Sea of Chaos... stopped its attack.

  Alma lay on the ground, one wing half-severed and blood leaking from her body. Richter cried out to her with his mind, but all she could manage was a weak, *master…*

  Heman leered at Richter, “I am so happy she finally made her way here. I desperately wanted you to know that she was dead before I killed you.” Even with his jaw fractured, Richter managed a strained, rage-filled groan.

  “What?” Heman asked, mocking him. “Did you think that I was a cartoon villain that just couldn’t bring himself to kill you until I revealed my entire backstory and evil plan? No, you fool! You were bait! You see, my little minion,” he gestured to the lightning demon, “can’t travel far from where it was summoned, and I didn’t like my chances of making it through the forest with your flying rat hunting me. I just had to hope that after I used the scroll, she would come to your rescue if I dragged this out long enough.”

  He walked over to Alma and stomped down on the dying dragonling’s remaining wing. Her de
licate bones crunched, and she screamed, a sound Richter had never heard her make before. He willed his body to move! He had to reach her! He couldn’t let her be killed!

  The Universe didn’t care about what he “had” to do. All he could do was lay on the ground impotently, unable to rise.

  “You see,” the other chaos seed continued happily, “now I not only don’t have to worry about this fucking thing hunting me down, but I have the opportunity to teach you a real lesson. I know that in stories, men are always driven to seek revenge for the death of a wife or a child. In the real world though, that just isn’t how it works. On Earth, I ordered the deaths of many wives. Many children. And what I found is that if you wound a man not just in his body, but in his soul, then you can break him. That pain, that hurt, cuts so deep that he cannot face it. That is how you break a man. That is how I am going to break you.

  “Remember this moment, Lord Richter, because if you ever come after me, I will kill everyone you have ever loved in this world. I will use my abilities to raise armies. I will slaughter every man and woman in your village and I will blind every child before selling them into slavery. I will burn the very heart out of you.” His voice was deadly with intent. “Like so.”

  Through Alma’s eyes, he saw Heman inhale to give an order to the lightning demon. An order that would end Alma’s life. Richter did the only thing he could think to do. He retreated into his mindscape. The time shift gave him seconds to think. Seconds that he could do nothing with except call out to Alma in pain and fear for her life.