Event Fiction Februar: The Beast With Many Heads

[Kezz]

On a windy northern beach, amidst a riotously colored assortment of coral outcroppings and relics from the bottom of the sea, a pair of Merwart brothers sat on white sand and scanned the horizon.

One brother, Urglurg, older and more than a little smarter, cocked his great, melon-sized blue head and turned to address his brother, who was currently picking at a knobbly protrusion on his forehead, instead of watching the sea for the boxes that their patron arranged to have wash on shore regularly.

“Angry Grandfather says we must watch the tides for more man bodies now, too.”

His brother Gurglurg blinked wide yellow eyes, carefully considering this news. Higher thought and cause-and-effect was still a little new to these Merwarts, raised from the savagery of their Mosswart cousins by the intervention of one scholar with a potent, mind-expanding elixir…

Finally, after some visible effort, Gurglurg spoke. “Does this mean more mans want to speak with the Voice of the Deep Waters?” The Merwart community was used to seeing mutilated human corpses wash up on their beach, adventurers who had attempted to penetrate the mysteries of the island’s depths, or of the Dark Isle nearby… Sometimes the humans re-appeared near the Merwart settlement’s floating blue stone and went to recover metal and shiny objects from their own corpses. Sometimes these appearances inspired a moment of religious terror among the Merwarts until somebody, usually Urglurg, reminded them that this was the magic of the blue stone, and that Angry Grandfather had shown them the way of this, as well.

Urglurg nodded condescendingly, proud of his position as the oldest and wisest of Angry Grandfather’s brood, and the sole representative of their small colony that actually received messages from their patron and deity. “Angry Grandfather says that they are coming to the Voice of the Deep Waters to cleanse themselves. Or maybe they come to clean something that they carry. He says that it all has something to do with the tentacle demon of the mainland and the sky-islands he made to make war on the humans.”

Gurglurg sucked in his breath. “Sky-islands? Who puts islands in the sky? How are they held up?” For demonstration, he grabbed a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. “I am not the smartest of us, not so smart as you, but I know that ground is down and sky is up.”

Urglurg waved his fingers dramatically, mimicking the gestures he saw when their patron used his own magical powers. “Magic. Some humans can do those things, and the tentacle demon can too. In fact, Angry Grandfather says the tentacle demon made these sky-islands above the black, broken lands not that far from Angry Grandfather’s home. He says that more people can do more terrible things like this because…” He searched his memory for the right word. “Because of… ley lines. Where the magic of the world flows, like beer from a tap, as he said. You know, like that place in the jungle that gives you a headache when you go near.”

Gurglurg shivered. “The tentacle demon is scary. I hope he never comes to our island. This place is bad enough with the flying jaws and the landsharks and the dead mans. Angry Grandfather told me once that the tentacle demon even raised up one of our Mosswart cousins, on some stinky hot island far south of us. He made the Mosswart crazy and it tried to become king of all Mosswarts.” He paused. “He said that the tentacle demon put his eyes and voice inside the poor Mosswart, so he can always see what the Mosswart sees and talk inside the Mosswart’s head. Can you imagine if Angry Grandfather had been so cruel? I think we are lucky that Angry Grandfather found us, instead of the tentacle demon.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if the tentacle demon didn’t yell all the time like Angry Grandfather does. Sometimes Angry Grandfather seems like not a god to me,” Urglurg confessed. “Sometimes when he forgets things and we remind him, I think it is because he really forgot them, and not because he is testing our… limited mental faculties and recall,” he said, reciting the last words as he’d heard them.

Gurglurg looked a little scared by his older brother’s doubting words. His first impulse was to react in shock to Urglurg’s doubts. Then he realized he might agree with Urglurg, especially on the days when Angry Grandfather was particularly angry. He didn’t want to voice these doubts, though. And then thankfully, he was distracted by motion on the horizon. He peered out to sea and narrowed his eyes, and he saw a great brown crate bobbing on the waves, like Angry Grandfather had promised. “I see the box,” he told his brother, and they both stood up to stride into the surf and bring it in from the water.

Angry Grandfather told them that these deliveries of metal weapons and other objects sought by humans were because of his benevolence toward the Merwarts he’d raised up from their primitive existences. There was no reason to doubt Angry Grandfather – not with the deliveries coming regularly, as he promised…

As they came down the shore and got a better look at the box, they could see a dark shape clinging to it like a big tangled mass of seaweed. They could eventually tell that it was a human body, slumped over the box, floating towards them. The brothers clucked regretfully as they brought the box ashore with its additional cargo.

Setting the box aside for a moment, whose contents had long ceased to inspire wonder or surprise, they investigated the corpse. It was a human male in dark leather armor, with much darker hair and less wrinkly skin than their Angry Grandfather – though the salt water hadn’t done much for his face. His hand was gripped tightly around something – some kind of bar of mottled purplish metal, which tingled with power and gave out a faint red light, even visible under the noontime sun. Gurglurg sniffed it and recoiled. “Yech! It smells like the place in the jungle that gives me headaches!”

Urglurg sniffed it as well, and wrinkled his nose. He then tried to pry it out of the human’s cold, clenched hand. “Very heavy,” he muttered. The human’s grip, even in recent death, was unbreakable. “I wonder what this has to do with the tentacle demon.”

A voice came from behind them. “That’s corruption you smell, little fella. The ingot is tainted with the Living Darkness.” A shadow fell over the two brothers as they fussed with the corpse. It was the dead man, back to reclaim his corpse. His back was to the sun so they couldn’t see his face clearly, but they could tell it was him. They heard, but did not see, a blade being unsheathed. “Step away, friends. That ingot’s very important – to me, to my employers, to everyone on Dereth, and even your weird little colony. Young Kei told me what I had to do with it, and I’d hate to have to kill you two to get it to where it’s supposed to be purified. I’m sure your blood is not the blood I’m looking for.”