The Fatal Conflict (GBS2G7) (Round 4: The Huntsman's Garden)

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Kaja stood in front of the sand necropolis. The archway in front of him was made from tightly packed hard sand and was twice his height. The tunnel beyond sloped down into the sands; the blazing light of the sun illuminating precious little of the pitch black passage. Though he had shed his fear of the scourged in a shower of blood and body parts, Kaja could not help but feel a certain trepidation when confronted with the entrance to the necropolis itself. There was a difference between fighting a known finite number of scourged out in the sun and the sand… but down there in the dark and the death that awaited him, the prospect seemed like a very different animal indeed. The mere thought caused him to doubt his own experiences. What if it had all been a fluke? What if the scourged he had encountered were nothing more than scouting parties; as numerous as sand and about as terrifying as kittens compared to what awaited him.

For a minute he stood there at that cavernous maw, staring into the seemingly endless blackness, his mind running through the sequence of events that had led him to confront his greatest fear, and to do so with a modicum of confidence and a bloodied sword. Slowly, one disbelieving foot at a time, he stepped into the darkness and descended. One hand trailed along the jagged wall at his side as he did so, the other was upon the hilt of his blade. His feet felt awkward as he stumbled along the uneven floor. The sound of his apparatus gurgling its mixture through his body seemed to boom and echo in the claustrophobic emptiness. The tunnel twisted this way and that way and seemed to go on forever. His imagination seized hold of the panic and projected his fears on the encroaching darkness. Every now and again he thought he could hear something moving in the dark, something rotten almost upon him, ready to pounce, ready to put an end to this foolish endeavour. But, finally, deeper into the depths of the world than Kaja would have supposed to be possible, there was a light up ahead.

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Zom’s body was acting independently of his mind. It did not matter how much he willed his legs to stop shuffling forwards, they continued after the kid who had proclaimed Zom his ‘servant’ regardless of what he thought. If he really focused he could establish a modicum of restraint; an act that amounted to making his steps slow and stumbling, but even so, he didn’t really want to hang around in these caves anyway. Though he knew that it was a problem and one that he doubted was going to just go away by itself, part of him just wanted to go with it. It was easier to accept what was happening than fight against the inevitable.

He took a look around the caverns he was making his way through. Here and there were piles of white robes, the purpose of which was not clear until he saw a kid sleeping in one of the piles. Here and there were piles of bones, all of them child sized, all of them picked clean of flesh, nearby there was a dead body, a couple of days old by the smell of it. It was easy to see that the kid in question was dead; a not insubstantial amount of flesh was missing. At this point it occurred to Zom to wonder what exactly the children of this planet ate. He promptly wished he hadn’t. There was however something about these caves that bothered him more than the corpse and the black eyed children, and it was the walls. Every available inch of space had been utilised; carved into the shape of a thing. As soon as Zom happened to notice the multitude of carvings he knew what they were. The name seemed obvious; Ymirhoggr. It was not terrifying as such, how could it be? These images were crude and childish, unsurprising considering their sculptors. They were however deeply disconcerting. There was something about the wall of tentacled faces that made the hair on the back of Zom’s neck stand on end. They were rough but there was something there, a hint of something that was true, something that was awful; something that was real and close. He could practically feel it in the air.

Zom’s thoughts were interrupted by shouts of panic coming from further down the cave. He suddenly started running down a narrow passageway, a surprise to even himself. A couple of kids ran past him shepherding younger kids away from the source of the disturbance. After a moment the passage opened up into another cave; it lacked the makeshift beds and rotting corpse but the walls were covered with similar unsettling carvings. In the middle of the cave, a scarlet sword grasped in his hand stood Kaja. It took Zom a minute to realize that it was the alchemist; his posture was hunched, his arm was trembling. Those were not the most noticeable changes; he was splattered with blood, shards of broken glass from a shattered vial sticking in his chest that he didn’t seem to have noticed and his goggles had been pushed back onto his head revealing his cloudy ochre eyes. At his feet lay a pair of white robed kids, scarlet stains slowly spreading across the robes. One seemed to be dead already; the other was choking bad heavy bloody gasps of air. Standing warily back from the alchemist was a rough circle comprised of the oldest kids that Zom had seen since his arrival on this world. While they couldn’t have been described as well built they did manage to look tough, which was not easy considering half of them had really bad acne. A couple had visible scars and all of them gripped a brightly coloured piece of sharpened metal; likely plundered from one of the structures upon the surface.

“Well?” Kaja shouted at the kids. “Make your move, you vile monstrosities. What are you waiting for?” The alchemist’s eyes darted from side to side, frantically dancing from one kid to another. Momentarily his gaze alighted upon Zom and his expression flickered for a moment, a look of confusion crossing his face for a second. In that instant one of the teens sprung, plunging a sharpened length of bright blue metal into Kaja’s side. Kaja spun slamming his scarlet blade into the kid’s side and the other kids pounced.

The fight was short, Kaja was not an experienced swordsman, his swings were clumsy and easily dodged. A couple more of the teens’ makeshift blades punctured him but he didn’t seem terribly concerned about them, assuming he noticed at all. He managed to land a couple of hits upon the teenage mob, though they were glancing blows at best. The fight ended rather abruptly as one of the kids, quicker on the uptake than his fellows, swept Kaja’s legs out from beneath him. The alchemist landed flat upon his front with a sickening squelch. One of the kids, tall with shaggy blonde hair and a scar across his face, stood over the downed alchemist and lined his sharpened piece of bright green metal up with his neck.

“Wait!” It was the voice of the kid who had subjugated Zom with his blood magic. Zom had been so focused upon the battle that he had not noticed the curious expression on the kid’s face. The blonde haired kid, his sword raised over kaja’s neck, his foot planted on one of the hissing cylinders on his apparatus, turned to look at the other kid. In the tense silence Zom fretted; it cannot have gone unnoticed that the intruder had recognised him. He nervously wondered whether it would be his head next upon the chopping block. But nobody seemed to be paying him any attention. His ‘master’ strode past the blonde kid and knelt down next to Kaja’s head. He got a good handful of the alchemist’s hair and pulled his head up.

“He has been chosen by Ymirhoggr.” The kid said after a moment’s examination of Kaja’s darkening eyes. “Soon he will be one of us.”