by Walter Lazo
In The Realm of the Wolf
by
Walter Lazo
• • • • •
ISBN 978-1301731510
Copyright © 2013 Lazo Consumer Products, LLC.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Other Works From The Author
IN THE REALM OF THE WOLF
One
The Lord of Filth, Dread Marduel, stood upon his mountain, a structure so large it appeared capable of swallowing whole worlds, and gazed down on his domain, which stretched out in all directions, flat land in perpetuity, bordered only by his hateful rivals and their mountains within the Demon World. Marduel is the Wolf God, the Destroyer, the God of all-consuming Hate. He is a giant, built like a powerful man, with patches of coarse brown hair all over his body. His head is that of a mutilated wolf, as if hundreds of heads had been crushed together into the mold of only one. Marduel raised his head to the fire sky, the barrier that kept all mortal worlds safe from the ravages of demons, and saw the ashen peak of his terrible mountain, Izan—which in the ancient tongue means abomination—pushing into the burning sky. Soon all worlds would be open to him, he knew this, felt this in his rotting heart. He shifted his gaze downward, again, and saw his minions—terrible werewolves like emaciated bears—locked in eternal struggle with the servants of his hated rivals, those in his heart he saw as the Lesser Gods. They were all beneath him and forever would be, for his power came from everlasting hate, from rage and bitterness; and these streamed into him from all the worlds at once. They made him stronger; they made him greater; and with every act of malice his mountain grew. He hungrily waited for the day his mountain would grow past the fire sky, the day he would fulfill his self-appointed destiny and rule existence as perfect hate.
Two
Bart sat at a corner table, facing the bar’s entrance, nursing a beer, waiting for something he would rather avoid, but knowing that the inevitable had a bad habit of being inevitable. He felt down his left leg, and was comforted by the feel of sharp steel sheathed there. Anthony had given him the combat knife three weeks ago, after he had had his vision, that awful sight of fire and ashes. He called it a vision, but it was not really one; he had been there, really, in that other world, physically. He saw, touched, smelled, felt…it was indistinguishable from here, this reality, this dimension. Anthony had told him it was not Hell, not in the proper sense, how he understood the word, but another dimension, another physical world.
“I haven’t seen you here in a long time,” said a female voice, breaking the train of his thoughts.
He looked up. His throat constricted and he squeezed his glass. He had not expected to see her here, had not expected to see anyone from his former life, anyone he still cared about. “You cut your hair,” he said.
“You like?”
Was she baiting him? “Selena, even bald you would still be beautiful. Not too sure about the spikes, though.”
Selena laughed. He could hear a tinge of bitterness in her voice.
“The spikes are in vogue, for the moment,” she said. “But you never did care about fashion, did you?”
“They’re all mindless,” he said.
“Same old cheerful Barty.”
He smiled. So many thoughts went through his head, too many, about decisions and sacrifices.
“I’ve always liked your smile,” she said, and then blushed.
“Thank you,” he said, looking at the entrance once more, hoping to see Anthony and the others he would bring, trying to evade what he knew was coming. It had been two years since he left. He was surprised to find her so cordial.
“Why did you leave?” she asked the question he did not want to answer.
He sighed. He wanted to tell her the truth, always had, but she was modern, and he feared she would not understand. Still, though something completely alien to the current state of the country, he did believe speaking the truth was best, even if it did hurt. Overt sentimentality was keeping the species from maturing, he felt. If people did not develop the courage to face reality and chose instead to bury their heads in the sand, humanity was truly doomed. There is no future in this, he believed.
“I had to leave,” he said.
“Why did you have to leave without warning nor explanation? I thought we had something good together.”
He glanced at the door again.
“I discovered something,” he said.
“What could you have possibly discovered that was more important than what we had?”
He locked eyes with her, with those beautiful brown eyes that at one time had been his only truth.
“There’s more to life than loving and being loved,” he said.
“What’s more important than love?”
“Everything,” he said, his voice a mere whisper. “Love is the ultimate expression of vanity. It is the attempt to self-validate through another—a parasite emotion.”
Her eyes bulged, threatening to pop out of their sockets, and her countenance darkened.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“I opened my eyes.”
“You were better when they were closed.”
He laughed at that. God, he missed her. But this was just another trial, he knew it, or wanted to. “We get to thinking life is just a complacent animal reality, where survival for its own sake is the only goal—and a moral one, at that, replete with value judgments, as if dying were some sort of proof of one’s unworthiness. Survival of the fittest, we call this. And it’s bullshit. The best usually die early, and the mediocre—if not the outright rotten—often endure. People seem to believe that any yokel who breeds and manages to reach an old age is somehow superior to a Julius Caesar. Please. Would you like to know what opened my eyes? It was a question.”
“What question would that be?” she asked, placing her hands on his table, leaning in, and smiling in a queer way.
He took another quick look at the entrance.
“What does it mean to live a life worth living?” he said.
“Some people would say that getting married and having children are what make life worth living,” she said.
“Only for themselves, not for others,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“This world, which is passing, was built by people who valued something above their own personal gratification, more than their sex lives and their spawn, something they valued more than their very lives. This world was built not by survivors but by people willing to sacrifice everything. Yeah, all you need is love when somebody else has already done all the suffering, dying, and thinking for you.”
“Whoa,” said Selena. She looked around, saw a free chair near an adjacent table, pulled it towards herself, and sat down. “What are you drinking?”
“Just a beer.”
She snatched the glass from him, smelled it, and in one big gulp emptied it.
“Somebody’s been fucking with your head, Barty.”
Another smile passed through his face, a flitting mist which barely lasted an instant. “This modern tactic of attacking the speaker to avoid dealing with the idea saddens me. It’s cheap.”
“Sorry. You weren’t this sensitive before.”
“I’m really not; however, this tactic does worry me. This tendency. It makes me feel like we’re headed back to the Dark Ages.”
Selena snorted o
ut a humorless chuckle. “I do hear you. I get it. Sometimes it is a cheap strategy for avoiding confronting an idea at face value, and in that sense it should be avoided. But, Barty, what ideas penetrate into a person’s skull do require an explanation.”
“Ideas become important for a number of reasons.” Bart looked at the entrance, again. Then he swept his vision across and around the bar, searching for what he feared. The bar had barely changed. Its walls were still painted the same tacky yellow, the stools were the same old swivel type, a little older but unchanged. Seth was still the bartender, he saw. The damn place brought back so many memories, some good, some bad, mostly bittersweet.
“Ideas can in themselves alter a person,” he continued. “Ideas do have power. Instead of looking for the psychological mechanisms behind why people hold on to certain beliefs, it would be far more fruitful, I think, to examine what those beliefs are saying.”
“Only to an extent,” she said. She smoothed her dark green blouse. “Ideas have to appeal to people; they have to latch onto some emotion. That’s why some ideas last even when they’re completely wrong. I think they call it the