Onnd and Sann sat up slightly, their intense eyes widening as they observed more keenly from afar. Blaiput and the purple-lipped girl hurled an assortment of insults and abuse in a variety of languages at Kai, as Shen and the preacher continued casting theirs at each other and the rest of the hydra’s unsated serpents continued their hunt for heads. Blaiput spied one of his beloved skulls reeling over the stone. He leapt to it and grabbed it; as he landed, his foot twisted over and into the hydra’s coiled tether, and as it lurched away, the rope slithered and wound tight around his leg, wrenching him over and dragging him off bellowing in terror as he clutched his icy head. The girl’s lips turned bright red again; she screeched in helpless panic and ran after Blaiput for no particular reason. Limbs and organs sagged and shredded over shattered glass, thawing and flattening onto the paving. One of the hydra’s hind legs stomped down inches from Blaiput’s face as it dragged him along, flattening another exposed brain on the ground and splattering it all over him.
“You fools!” cried the preacher, watching his beast escape, “You anger the mighty Marklar — from Marklar!”
“Fools? FooOOOOOLLLSSS?!!!!” bellowed Shen like a gravelly tempest, “USSSS?! YOUU grecknous lothal — YOUUU!!!! You lose control of your...your...and....” Shen started shaking his head, as though stung by a thought; his colours cooled, his hair calmed. “Control. You need...I need...I need to get control of...oh...oh, I’m most frightfully sorry.” He looked around, quietly confused, as though having just woken. Without a word his eyes followed the hydra dragging Blaiput through the chaotic panic in the forum, followed by the girl, then, with his polite demeanour and accent restored, he spoke discreetly to the preacher, “This situation does seem somewhat precarious...if you do not mind me saying.”
“Pagan!” bellowed the preacher, “Don’t try to fool me again with your changing tones!”
Shen look at him timidly, silently, then pulled at his scruffy trousers, which were too short and shabby to match the pomp of his green coat.
“I am often too impulsive, it is true,” said Shen sheepishly, “I am fully aware of this side of me. Fully.” With an awkward contortion of his neck, he noticed the three loosed buttons under his chin; he idly refastened one as he continued, “However, my good man, let us discuss this matter in a mature and balanced manner, if you will allow.”
The preacher looked away in disgust and shouted across the forum at the top of his voice, “Marklar, return!!!”
The hydra suddenly slid to a halt and thrust its massive body around as it lunged after an errant head beneath its feet, casting Blaiput up and out into the cold air, whipping the thawing skull from his grasp away and over into a seemingly endless arc towards the café where Onnd and Sann sat; it landed with a disgustingly flat squelch in the lap of a lady who had been a model of decorous composure not a heartbeat earlier. Now she leapt up in a spectacular scream of perfect shrillness, and almost burst straight out of her seemly laces. The soggy head, which was now as flat as a disc of dough, slid and flopped to the ground. She scuttled away as fast as her pencil skirt would allow, deserting her panic-stricken child at the table — the child who had been staring at Onnd and Sann some moments ago, and who was now at a loss as to which oddly shaped head she should stare helplessly at. The diminutive waiter waddled up, smiled at the child compassionately, then checked the table for payment.
As Kai gradually emerged from his venomous stupor, his grin began to waver as he witnessed the repercussions of his furious impulse, the growing waves of chaos.
“Come,” continued Shen, “We can discuss this calmly and perhaps avoid unnecessary injuries, or even deaths! Nothing good can come from a death...”
“Silence, Heathen!” yelled the incensed preacher, “Ephaïl sacrificed Himself countless times to reveal the truth of our salvation!”
“Well, this is a somewhat...contentious point,” muttered Shen to himself as he fumbled with the the next button, before continuing kindly to the preacher, “Firstly, however, may I suggest that you exercise your...considerable authority over the beast — the ‘Marklar’, if you will — in order to save and protect us all.”
Terrified citizens fled in all directions from the hydra, which was now in a wild rampage tearing itself in all directions to consume every soggy head and limp body part that was not fully accounted for, with the hapless Blaiput and the mindless red-lipped girl in tow. The preacher glared at Shen in fury, then screeched desperately over at the oblivious hydra again.
“I...you see I simply wish,” stuttered Shen as he stepped back in growing fear, “That is to say, it is my sincere hope that together we can resolve this matter. I mean, this could very soon get quite out of...”
A disgusting squelch punctuated his thought. He looked down to see his foot on top of a glittering white glove, from which the putrid juice of dissolving digits oozed out. Shen’s face crinkled into a green mosaic of repulsion as he muttered, “Exactly.”
The hydra ground to a stop, shovelling up cobbles with its hefty hooves, and its seven serpent necks writhed around in search of food. Blaiput crashed abruptly into its stocky hind legs, and the girl’s lips turned pale lilac as she fell over Blaiput and under the hydra. All that remained of the frozen body parts were macabre puddles of gore about the forum. The hydra turned back to find the preacher, as both Blaiput and the girl tried to scramble away. The beast’s squirming necks gradually wavered into focus as fourteen soulless eyes aimed straight at Shen’s shining head. Shen swallowed nervously at the unwelcome attention, and blushed bright blue in stiffening fear. Kai also felt the hydra’s focus; his grin was gone.
“My...what a hideous beast,” muttered Shen nervously.
“Pagan fool!” wailed the preacher, “You disrespect the Marklar! You disrespect the Elúcian Way!”
“Well, with all due respect, my good man,” stammered Shen, without taking his icy eyes from the hydra, which had begun shuffling towards him, again dragging along the luckless Blaiput. Shen’s nervous fingers groped about his neck for the last undone button, “You seem to be the one clinging to a false prophet. We do have a certain responsibility to those who look to us.”
The hydra looked towards its owner for guidance as it hesitantly made its way towards the irresistibly bright Shen, but the preacher was too distracted to notice it approaching.
“Don’t you lecture me about responsibility, heathen! My focus is always on those who need me.”
The unnoticed hydra quickened its pace into a trot towards the luminously flustered Shen. Blaiput bounced over the paving, still fast in the tether, as the girl flapped around in a helpless fluster behind him. Kai’s eyes widened in alarm; he stepped over to Shen and pulled at his arm to try to take him out of the beast’s path.
“Oh my!” spluttered Shen, oblivious to Kai’s attempts, his shaking hands clutching onto the last button, which was half inside the hole, “Oh my indeed! My good...good man! I most certainly must contest your subjective view; however, perhaps we should first...”
“Subjective view?! Ephaïl is Truth, you ignorant pagan, you ludicrous heap of fluxing light!”
All at once, Shen stopped shaking and stood deathly still. His colours cooled. His eyes flicked coldly to the preacher and he glowered in breathless silence. His fingers calmly pushed the top button into place over his throat. Kai held his breath as he stared at Shen in bated confusion — then, in a shiver of realisation, he stepped back. From ice, Shen flared up into impossibly bright scarlet. The three top buttons of his coat exploded out again from his blazing neck, and his hair erupted into fire as he lunged towards the preacher.
“Pagan? Ignorant PAGAN?!” came his swell of fury blazing into a new accent, “YOU impostor!!! YOU slithe!!!!! YOUUU utter FAKE!!!!!!! How long have I been listening to your inane, empty DRIVEL?!! My ear is not a toilet, you lothlous FOOOL!!!!!!”
The preacher retreated in bewilderment. His followers looked at each other hesitantly. Onnd and Sann observed quietly from afar with increasingly intense eyes as the hydra pressed on towards the fiery Shen.
“Spew your ancient ‘wisdom’ all you wish into vapid, callow ears — they’ll pay your paltry price — but KEEP YOUR INSIPID LUNACY FAR FROM ME!” Seemingly fearless, he pointed straight at the approaching hydra, “Now...your pet! DO SOMETHING, you SUCTHUL IMBECILE!!!”
Kai moved again to Shen, trying to pull him from danger. Shen snapped round; his crystalline forehead wrinkled into a scarlet frown. The preacher took a deep breath and turned back to his followers.
“Do not worry! Do not fret, my children! This is but a test. Ephaïl is Truth! Exclaim!”
The group muttered in embarrassed uncertainty, “Ephaïl is...Truth?”
“Idiots!!!” spluttered Shen as he spun back round to them, almost wrenching Kai off his feet, “Idicimes!” He turned back to Kai, and saw the hydra just as it launched into its final hunting gallop throwing Blaiput into the air. The girl screamed past ruby lips and Shen’s colours bled away at once leaving him a pallid sheet of shock — his mouth hung open as the monster swelled and rose and towered right in front of him.
“So...very...sorry,” whispered Shen in ice.
A ravenous serpent head lashed out at the paralysed Shen. Kai wrenched at Shen’s arm and pulled him over and down just as the hydra’s head smacked into the ground beside them with a tremendous crash, cracking open the stone paving — its eyes went blank and the neck fell limp. The other heads reeled in a daze, and the girl pulled Blaiput to his feet, as he tried to free himself from the rope.
Shen screamed to life and wrestled with Kai on the paving. He pulled up his coat-sleeves and frantically checked his glowing, textured skin. The sun blazed through the clouds — only Shen’s clothes cast a shadow; where his skin was bare, there was no sign of him on the ground. The hydra began to drag itself out of its daze; Kai saw and scrambled away, dragging Shen with him, who was glowing noticeably relieved. The hydra saw Shen’s glinting head and made for him again, dragging its own unconscious neck along on the ground. One of its clumsy hooves trampled down on the head, and it screeched back to life, furiously biting back at its own leg, pulling Blaiput off his feet again and back into the fray. The leg kicked back at the serpent, missing Blaiput’s face by a breath, and in a rage the serpent grabbed a huge chunk of the broken paving in its jaws, whipped itself back up and around and cast the stone at its sibling ophidian heads. The stone tore past Kai and Shen, a hair from their faces, and shot into an unstoppable, bouncing, crashing path over the forum towards the café where Onnd and Sann sat in silent observation. Smaller fragments started crumbling off as it went, flying off in all directions.
Onnd and Sann, watching the commotion in the forum, saw the slab of rock hurtling towards them. Sann looked to Onnd. Onnd looked back to Kai, unperturbed, and nodded almost imperceptibly. In one fluid gesture, Sann flicked her wrists and her meshed half-gloves bonded onto her long, white palms; she took her staff and leapt up. The last few courageous patrons of the café screamed and fled from their tables. The waiter, with one eye on the approaching rock while forcing a quivering smile of reassurance, waddled quickly around the tables collecting credits. Alert and dutiful, Sann towered above him, and as the first few fragments flew towards them, Sann whipped her staff around with graceful ease, flicking each and every one of the tiny projectiles down and off and safely into the ground. The waiter gulped a sigh of relief, then scurried off.
The huge slab of paving was streaking in. Sann’s intense eyes drank in every movement, every detail of the careening silver stone as it made straight for her master Onnd, who sat observing — not the stone, but Kai. Sann breathed deeply, slowly, and whipped around her staff to angle it precisely at the incoming stone, and as it hit, the staff pierced a tiny groove along the centre of the stone’s edge. She simply held the staff, no impulse made, but nature’s power surged and in a crackling spark of friction the stone shattered into countless shards. At once Sann leapt up and through a silent halo in the air, her staff a blur of effortless agile grace, she flicked and flipped and curled and crooked the fragments into dust, and as quickly as she had leapt her nimble, cloth-bound feet returned firmly, quietly upon the grey; unchanged she stood, the ground awash with pewter pebbles as silver powder lighted by her feet.
Completely unaware of this display, Kai and Shen scrambled away over the stone as the hydra lurched after them. Blaiput ground along behind. The girl screamed. The preacher yelled. His followers dispersed. Shen looked round just as another of the hideous serpent heads struck. Kai tried to pull him away, but Shen raised an arm without a thought to protect his head. The fangs pierced his meshed skin, and he erupted into a shriek of terror.
“My skin! Save my SKIIIN!!!!”
And as the fangs withdrew, Shen’s light gushed out, his essence, soul and life engulfing and igniting the serpent head in a hissing wail of fire.
Next chapter — Sanctus
Sunday 28 November 2010
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