The Proving of Champions: Chapter 10
In which most people do not die, but Alexei begins to die a lot.
The slowly oscillating, sea-green glow of the moss made day and night indistinguishable. With time, the scent of damp earth, fragrant wood bark, and offal faded from awareness. Two soldiers, Esmond and Ogden, argued in low, raspy voices over how much time had passed. They attempted to lead regular exercise sessions. When Hereward was not participating in exercises with the soldiers and scouts, he and Terrel took shifts watching Daralis. They dripped wet rags into her open mouth to try to sustain her. One of the female scouts helped as well and fretted in sibilant whispers about how little Daralis was able to drink.
Alexei was unbothered by the endless dim light because the Deathless Faire did not have day or night. Immediately after the large fungus assembly, Terrel had conferred with Alexei over what little he had gleaned. The news that the mushroom folk seemed to want them to fight the tarrasque made the prisoners go silent. Captain Hereward prodded Esmond to start an exercise to keep the Thorgarick camp busy.
People from the Marble Halls are accustomed to great amounts of food and water, Alexei thought as he watched them at the trough after exercise. Voices in his head replied with memories, not from the Faire, of eating and drinking. Or, perhaps, I am accustomed to very little water? Alexei had settled into a few sips of water a day, and that already felt extravagant. He tried drinking twice as much water from the trough. The water felt strange and heavy in his stomach. It quieted the thirst he had grown used in his 99 fights in the market arena, but the water did not seem to nourish or rejuvenate his body in another way. His exercises and transformations were the same whether he stuck with his usual small sips or whether he drank by the mouthful.
Alexei mostly kept to himself. Initially, the frustrated Thorick men shouted insults at Alexei, calling him a murderer and monster. This stopped after Terrel gathered his people in a murmuring conversation. Alexei offered to keep watch during his first sleeping period with the camp. Much like Bernia, they proudly refused. So he watched Hereward take care of Daralis as she slept. When the men exercised, Alexei followed along from a distant corner. He folded one pair of arms behind his back as they did pushups. When the camp fell upon the meager food scraps dropped down from a chute in the ceiling, Alexei ate little. Others noticed his quiet consideration, and anger turned to acceptance of their fellow prisoner... but not friendship.
Daralis woke after two sleeping periods. She was weak and often clutched her head as though it pained her. Whatever she had to say, she whispered it to Terrel. Hereward helped her pace her drinking and eating so she would not feel any sicker. If she noticed Alexei's curious glances, she did not show it.
Just as the Thorgarick prisoners were settling into their routine, the portal of roots wriggled open, and a squad of mushroom people marched into the pen. Their conversation was astringent on the air.
"They are taking us to a clearing above," Alexei translated. "There, the one who copies will use the voice of thunder to call the tarasque."
After the pen and the tunnels, and even the shadows beneath the trees, the light in the meadow was blinding. The Thorick men and women shielded their eyes with their hands and looked at the knee-high grass as mushroom folk of brown and gray hues prodded them into the center of the clearing. Herewared cast a nervous, blinking glance at the sky. No winged creatures circled overhead in the bright blue. Yet.
Soon, the mushrooms seemed happy with the prisoners' position. They dropped the Thorgarick packs, several of which were ripped apart, at the feat of the men and women. One pale brown mushroom, five feet tall, stopped before Terrel. It waved its finger-like tendrils up and down in front of Terrel's body, stopping at his mouth. Suddenly, a space on the central stalk of the mushroom bulged and split. In the crevice, an elastic piece of mushroom stalk flopped and prodded at the new mouth experimentally. Its main stalk bulged outwards as if it had enormous lungs. The lungs kept bulging and expanding.
"Cover your ears!" Terrel shouted. Everyone, including Alexei, obeyed as a blast of deep, enormous thunder pealed the air from a few feet in front of the prisoners. Several of the soldiers were bowled over. It was a meaningless trumpeting sound, but it had the tenor and volume of Terrel's shout a few nights ago. Soldiers stumbled to their feet in the ringing, deafened silence. The mushrooms retreated to the edge of the clearing. The Thorgarick men and women spun, watching all directions frantically, unsure if their ears were so damaged they would fail to hear the tarasque coming.
Hereward began ordering the men to get their weapons from their packs and move into a circle. He used gestures and shoves. When the group was arranged in a protective circle around Terrel. Herereward attempted to heft Alber's sword. Despite his thick frame, his swings were awkward and slow. He discarded the oversized sword in favor of something lighter. Alexei, standing apart, pointed to the sword and held out his hand. When Herereward shook his head, Alexei pointed at his two right arms, flexing as they suddenly bulged with new muscle. Terrel interrupted, his enormous voice barely a faint whisper above the ringing in their ears.
"Alber's sword may be the only one large and heavy enough to pierce the tarrasque's hide!" Terrel shouted. "We have nothing to lose. Give it to him!"
Slowly, Hereward picked the sword up with both hands and extended it to Alexei. After a moment, the skin on Alexei's gray arms rippled with muscle; he gripped the sword into two hands and wobbled as he gave a few experimental thrusts. Hereward could not restrain a smirk as the creature from the Deathless Faire almost tipped over. Next, Alexei tried to use four arms on the handle, even shrinking the hands for a better fit. Swinging a single sword with four sets of arms was clumsy and limited his range of motion. He grew a second pair of legs to stabilize and counter-balance himself, but he was unused to extra feet and tripped over them. After a few moments of rippling shape changes, Alexei settled on holding the sword in two opposite hands, balancing himself with grotesquely muscled abs and two pillar-like legs. His bottom pair of arms stretched out to the sides or bent back to help him balance.
The men, now armed, began to turn towards the mushroom folk still peeking through the undergrowth at the end of the clearing. They had been defeated by the fungus creatures once before. However, they remembered Fleta's account of a beast hundreds of feet tall. Better to rush an enemy a hundred times smaller, no matter their strange abilities.
Just as they began to level weapons towards the mushrooms, a large, crow-feathered boar with talons for feet bounded into the clearing toward the circle of soldiers. Soldiers facing the beast stepped back and spun their deaf comrades around towards the beast. Before the boar could rampage through them, however, a mushroom charged and vaulted onto the beast. The mushroom's finger-like tendrils stretched and slithered through the air into the boar's ears. The boar squealed—a distant, muted sound to Alexei and Terrel's people. Before it had gone ten more yards, the avian boar collapsed onto its side in a cloud of grass and dust. Mushrooms sprouted from its eyes and mouth and then exploded across the rest of its body. The fungus creature, who had jumped aside as the boar collapsed, dragged the large beast out of the clearing.
The Thorgarick circle hesitated, unsure of how to fight a fungus creature that could rot a 1,000-pound creature from the inside in seconds. Alexei tried a few experiment swings with his sword, glancing at the mushroom folk and around the clearing.
Whatever plan they were concocting was soon forgotten. The ground began to tremble.
Fleta and Bertram led the Valcots, along with the two Koratuk and Undora survivors, through the gloomy valleys of thorny roots that surrounded the gate. The Valcots were tired from fighting off three more beasts, and there was a darkness to their expression and voices after the horrible report of the Undora camp. Their faces softened, however, when they saw Fleta dash back to the camp after scouting and give the all-clear sign
Bertram showed an uncharacteristic quiet softness around the survivors. He said spoke little beyond organizing the scouts. He walked ahead of the survivors, but he paused occasionally to ask if they needed a rest, his narrow face folded with concern. The Koratuk shook his head no while the Undora stared blankly.
Fleta forced herself to run a wide circuit around the camp, paying attention to tracks or subtle changes in the volume of jungle noises. The gate was so close, and it was all she could do not to leave the Valcots and run for the gate. Bernia had been alone for over two days. If she was still alive, Fleta would throw herself at Bernia's feet and beg forgiveness for forgetting her. She would beg the forgiveness of Bernia that should could not beg of Shaw.
However, she had made a promise to protect the Valcots. She threw her worries into her running and focused on keeping the people she was with safe. The maze of roots, seemingly so short before, felt endless. Fleta ran a dozen circuits around the Valcots until Bertram told her to slow down, she was starting to make people anxious. She tried taking deep, slow breaths as she walked with them for a minute. They were so close, just one more circuit, and she'd practically be at the gate. She launched herself into one last circle.
The first sign of Bernia was blood spilled across the roots. Fleta's stomach felt hollow and empty, and her throat tightened at the sight of all the blood. She forced herself to pay closer attention. Maybe two to four trails of blood dotted the area, fanning out from a narrow ravine of thorns. At least one of the trails looked like more blood than she thought the human body contained, the gore drying as it had spurted across roots and dripped down into the inky cracks between them. Bernia was clearly attacked, but she had acquitted herself honorably.
The ravine was to the side of a broader descent towards the gate; its very narrowness would have prevented many beasts from entering. The only over-sized creatures that could reach it would have to be snakes, insects, or long-bodied rodents or reptiles. The claw marks in the ravine suggested that at least one or two of the latter had made it in. In the Jungle, though, it might have been clawed snakes or insects. There, at the end of the ravine, where the concentration of claw marks was densest, Fleta saw a barricade of roots and rough beams of branches, carefully lashed together by their protrusions on the inside. No vine lashings were exposed to the outside and the claws of invading beasts. A scattering of broken branches and vines suggested this was not the first iteration of the barricade.
"Bernia?" Fleta asked softly. Her heart rose as she heard a shuffle. "It's Fleta. I've brought the Valcots. And others."
"Fleta?" Bernia wrestled with lashings from behind the barricade. There was no door or easy opening. "Is Terrel there? The rest of the Thorgarick camp? Did the Gate creature find you?" After a minute, four beams of the barricade fell away, and Bernia appeared. The Thorgarick soldier was much bandaged, and she carried a spear with an improvised tip made from a giant thorn.
"Alexei did find me," Fleta said. "But he and Terrel's group were taken by the Jungle. Shaw... I can't find any trace of him, but he was in the path of the tarasque. The others I brought with the Valcotts are the sole surviving Koratuk and Undora. No sign of the Baltir camp."
Bernia's grim face fell into sadness. She fought her disappointment, meeting Fleta's eyes and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Thanks for coming back for me. There was no movement from the gate."
Fleta felt the tears welling up. "I'm so sorry we left you alone. I'm sorry I didn't return faster."
Bernia took a deep breath. "Don't worry about me, Fleta. I got by okay. We're okay. We'll figure out what to do next."
As the Valcots caught up, Fleta, Bertram, Lorens, and Bernia discussed where to pitch camp. The ravine was too narrow for all the Valcots to camp in it. They briefly considered spreading out in small groups, each with their own ravine. Bernia's miraculous survival was proof of how defensible these spiky crevices could be. In the end, though, Bertram and Lorens decided that having to travel between ravines to coordinate would make people vulnerable. They hoisted themselves upwards to make a traditional camp in the branches, half the soldiers setting up their small ballistae at strategic points and then climbing down to discuss what sort of ground defense or traps they could muster.
Lorens ordered the other soldiers to attend to Bernia, the Undora, and the Koratuk. Fleta was surprised to discover that Lorens was, in fact, their captain. Bertram had given the orders during traveling, with advice from scouts, and Lorens invited no deference beyond a quick nod and obedience in the Valcot camp.
"You're the captain?" Fleta asked.
"Of this expedition," Lorens replied and shrugged. "Aside from our general, who is a lazy and underused man, we don't really stand on military rank. The chain of command is assigned for each excursion. Some people get assigned more often than others... but after this trip, I'm just one of the soldiers."
"Huh," Fleta said. A wordless shout cracked through the jungle before Fleta could think of another question. A voice she knew: the High Skald. Fleta immediately dropped her pack to the netting of the camp—and then stopped. Bertram stumbled over from his tent which was still half-assembled in the hands of two frozen soldiers.
"My people!" Fleta turned to Bertram. "They need me. Can you protect the camp here?"
"I will make sure the camp is safe. Go with honor."
Fleta was on the ground running when the roar of the tarasque answered Terrel's call.
The world quaked, and something in the air bulged. The world trembled again, and a claw almost as large as a castle ripped itself into the clearing from somewhere else. To the deafened soldiers, just regaining hearing, the sounds were comically soft when compared to the horrendous shaking of the clearing. The shaking and the giant claw felt like something happening to someone else, far away. The ground, the trees, and even the sky shook as a second claw ripped away from the first. Between them, a maw the size of a large ship emerged, and the tarasque tore its way into the space of the clearing. The Thorgarick men scattered to the far side of the large meadow as the tarasque began to fill it up.
The tarasque was as tall as many of the gigantic trees of the Jungle. Its broad snout housed teeth the size of trees back in the Marble Halls. Its eyes were glaring orange, and its skin was green with large scaly bumps half the height of a man. The base of its skull was a mane of spikey ridges, On the back, the scales stretched into interlocking plates that formed a shell. The monster had six claws, currently standing on the hindmost and counterbalancing with a thick, serpentine tail that rolled out into the jungle, smashing branches.
The Thorgarick men stood petrified in terror. At the edge of the clearing, the mushroom folk began to retreat. The movement caught the eye of the tarasque. It turned and fell onto its feet, unsettling the ground again. Its tail lifted and whipped through the jungle, in between trees, and swept several of the unfortunate creatures onto a long, flicking tongue. Even the grinding of scales as it swallowed echoed and filled the forest. When it was done, it lifted its head and hissed a deep green cloud that hung over the clearing. The stench was overwhelming and dizzying.
And Alexei understood the scent of the cloud. It was a single word in the language of the mushroom people, and it meant rage against the world and against oneself. It was rage textured with hate, anger, pain, fear, regret, guilt, and self-loathing. At that moment, Alexei understood the creature. Somehow, he knew that the tarasque had not been born the same monster it had become. It was the monstrous creation of others. Just as Alexei was.
The gladiator from the Deathless Faire waved the stunned Thorgarick crowd backward and approached the tarasque in an arena of giant trees. Alexei was an ant compared to the behemoth tarasque, but he raised Alber's sword in arms bulging with muscles and veins and charged forward. A claw the size of the castle fell towards him. There was no dodging it. Alexei and everything around him was driven ten feet into the earth by the impact. The claw lifted, and bodies rained from the paw into the crater. Some of the bodies disappeared mid-air. One of the bodies climbed out of the pit and charged, sword in hand. The tarasque stepped on Alexei again.
A.N. Sorensen
A.N. Sorensen