Rasque, Tarasque: Chapter 2 (Free with Sign Up)

The jostling awoke Fleta several times, but her groggy mind sank back into sleep. She remained in a rolling, murmuring sleep until the crack of a branch jolted her into alertness.

Fleta was still cradled in the arms of the creature from the gate. Its torso swayed, elongated from the waist, snake-like. Its blank face hummed as it rocked her. Behind that torso, was another, more elongated torso with innumerable pairs of arms that were boxing a giant centipede. The centipede chewed through a branch the Gate man was holding, and it spat the branch away. Then, the centipede lunged for the Gate man’s head. Catching the mandibles with strained arms of grotesquely rippling muscle, the Gate man reached for a broken branch with a lower arm, and he began to pass it upwards in a dizzying wave of limbs. Crack, the Gate man struck the centipede. Crack! Crack!

The centipede trumpeted, but then it curled into a ball and rolled away on softly crackling dead leaves. The torso holding Fleta continued to rock her and croon while the second, centipede-fighting torso melted into the one holding Fleta. She pushed away, and the arms eased her to the soft ground.

“Um,” Fleta said. “Um… thanks? Let’s get moving. I think that cursed insect trumpeted to call other monsters.”

“Welcome,” replied the creature as they hurried through the underbrush. They ran quickly—for the Gate man, slow for Fleta—as quietly as their panting and the susurrus of fronds would allow. The Gate man’s breath turned from panting to wheezing, so Fleta stopped under the awning of a large, gray mushroom.

“How long was I asleep?” Fleta asked.

“You slept…” the Gate man gasped, “For 5 beasts.”

“You mean attacks?”

“No,” replied the Gate man, his hands on his knees for support as he gulped for air, his upper arms perched on the elbows of the lower. “Three attacks, two scared away.”

“Oh, thanks,” Fleta said.

“Yes.” They both stared at each other for a while. The Gate man’s eye twitched. One mouth frowned, and the other smiled.

“Do you have any water?” Fleta asked. ”I’m parched.”

“I have not had water for a very long time.”

“Okay, so step one, find water. How far back to the Gate?”

“The what?”

“The wooden arch with the thorns.”

“Oh, the arch,” the creature paused. “About 5 beasts.”

“What about miles? Or hours?”

“Hmm. Miles. Hours. Did not measure.”

“You have no clue how far away from the arch we are?” Fleta palmed her forehead and turned away, pacing. “That’s the only way out! Did you at least travel straight from the arch?”

“No,” replied the gateman softly. “I went around trees.”

Fleta groaned. Even her own, admittedly terrible preparation, had included some basics like leaving marks, measuring distances, and using a compass so she wouldn’t get lost. The Gate man appeared astonishingly ignorant and unconcerned. If only her tutors, or the High Skald, could have met this thing from the realm of the Blind Eye. They had repeated how incompetent Fleta was: she didn’t focus, she did too many things at once, she didn’t sit still, she missed details. This creature from the Gate, however, made her look like a seasoned scout. For a moment, just by contrast, Fleta felt a little more like the champion everyone had expected her to be.

“You are not a waykeeper?” The creature broke her reverie. “Is not problem. We have been at arch. We will return with a thought.”

“I don’t know where you’re from, but it doesn’t work like that around here.” Rising worry cleared her still sleep-fogged head. “Look, the arch is somewhere on a line roughly from the sun at dawn to a particular mountain peak. That much my books did tell me. We’ll find the nearest river, get some water, wait until dawn, find our line, and try to figure out where we are on it.” Fleta paced as she spoke. “Oh, and try to figure out how to open the gate.” Fleta paused. “You don’t have a key, do you?”

“Key?” The Gate man shrugged.

“How did you get through the Gate… the arch?”

“Arch was glowing. I stepped through.”

“Ugh,” Fleta sighed. “Let’s just find water.”

Fleta sped up the tree. While the Gate man could stretch to reach convenient handholds and footholds, he wasn’t much faster than an average person. His various limbs appeared strong and athletic, but his climbing was clumsy, picking awkward holds or attempting to shift his weight without testing first. He slipped many times, although he quickly grew new arms to catch himself on ridges of bark or patches of parasitic ferns. After a couple of minutes, however, his technique transformed. He pivoted more easily to keep his weight on the outside of the foot, and he swung his feet and hips to give him extra reach without having to stretch his arms like a roll of clay. He even found paths that Fleta had failed to notice. Again, the Gate man was more than he appeared.

Fleta was unsure whether she should stay with this man… or thing. His ignorance was at best a handicap and possibly some kind of inscrutable ruse. Fleta knew nothing about who he was or even the realm he came from. He was profoundly unsettling.

On the other hand, he hadn’t eaten Fleta, and he had kept her from being eaten while she slept. Fleta couldn’t afford to leave him until she returned home as a victorious champion, ran away to who knows where, or at least found some reliable shelter in the Jungle.