Something New

Howdy, Fellow Creautres. Hope all is good in the woods. 

 

Remember a few weeks back when I said I had some other things in the work? Well, turns out it’s a book.

 

No, not the Shadow of the Dragod that i mentioned, or Stone of the Scarred, or even a new Chilongua story. 

 

It’s a stand alone novel. One I wrote directly after I finished Shadow of the Dragon.

 

Did I mention I have a problem with staying put for too long? 

 

This one is set in a new world, and was a story I couldn’t help but write when the spark of its start came to me.

 

I’m using the working title called, Under a God Made Mountain, and would plop into the sub-genre of horror fantasy.  

 

It follows the tale of an orphan whose ticked off the local religion and has been caught and brought to a hole at the top of a sacred mountain along with five other criminals.  They’re promised that if they make it through, then they’ll come out rejuvenated. Cleansed. Unbroken. Stronger.  

 

And this is how it starts.

 

“The god hawk flapped its wings beneath his legs. Their beating sounded like a drum to a ritual that all men had danced since the dawn of eternity. And when it screeched… by the Maker, it was a noise that could make ears bleed.

Melk would have covered his own if his hands weren’t tied. If any sudden movements didn’t threaten to send him off the bird’s back to meet Hell early by way of the jagged slope he was certain they now flew over. 

He still had hope of avoiding it, at least a little longer. 

But there was fire in Hell, wasn’t there? Isn’t that what Lacort had told him once? He was so damn cold up so high. Hellfire sounded like a savior then. Maybe going to it wouldn’t be so bad after all…

The god hawk shrieked, killing his thoughts. The other birds within that forsaken flock answered somewhere nearby. Melk felt the Shepherd in front of him lean forward and whisper something to the god hawk. Melk’s stomach dropped as they descended.

“Is this it?’ said Melk, fighting for breath to speak.

Only a muted light penetrated his blindfold. His eyes told him nothing of the outside world only that it was day and the sun, a thing he would soon realize how much he had taken for granted, was free from the chains of clouds that bound it upon first taking off.

But the Shepherd didn’t answer him. Only the timid call of the wind did, a whisper compared to the wail of the beasts that flew through it. In it, Melk heard his answer.

“Yes. I’m so sorry, but yes.”

The god hawk’s talons crunched snow. Its wings shuddered beneath his feet as they closed. Heavy hands threw him from the saddle. For a brief second, he was weightless. The ground was an anomaly. Either something he would meet in moments or a destination further away, a painful gate that he would pass through in order to meet the life after. Hell or Mithland or whatever else.

He met powdery snow. Deep, new, and bitter. A demon’s bed. One that offered relief with a blanket of claws gnawing into his already frostbitten, naked skin.

The same hands that pushed him drew him up.

Other birds touched down. Talons bit into ice like the snap of hungry teeth. One shrieked so near and loud that it caused Melk to stumble. Only the Shepherd’s hand upon him saved him from returning to the snow.

Once his ears stopped ringing, voices followed.

“To the Maker’s narrow arse with you shits. You think this justice is going to bring you to paradise? This is Hell’s work. Not His.” It was ragged and old. As if it had spoken often and with purpose for a long, long time.

A new voice followed. This one crisper. Clearer. Soaked with a purpose too, but yet to have all the chances given by time to use it as much as the first. When it spoke, it ignored the first speaker as if it was nothing more than noise. A shrill wind. A swaying tree. A cricket in the weeds.   

  “O’ Maker, we stand before you, servants to your mission. O’ Maker, we bring before you the broken of your creations. The ill. The evil. The destitute. The wrong. The depraved. The misaligned.”

“Misaligned!” barked the first voice again. “I’ll misalign every last thread of you.”

“O’ Maker!” the newer voice kept speaking, “we stand beneath your light and ask that it reach the broken as they are given to the shadow. We ask that it guide them as they are delivered to the hands of your enemy. We ask that it bring them through its fingers. We ask that it brings them back whole.”

A wild wind howled. It ran across Melk like a pack of animals upon a desperate hunt, picking up the loose parts of his clothes like they were remnants of the dead left to scavenge. It sent his teeth chattering.

“Your Maker is judging,” argued the first voice. “He’s watching every last inch of you. And you know what he’s seen? Demons. Agents of evil.”

The second voice hushed in tone. “May the Maker follow thee and keep thee. May the maker follow thee into the realm of the Animal and save thee from its shadow.” 

Rustling nearby. A god hawk shrieked. Another answered.

“No! You’ll not send me down there! You’ll not. I ain’t done nothing wrong, you fucking doves! No—”

It was gone. Something swallowed the voice whole.

Tightness befell Melk’s throat. He felt so cold. The sun on the other side of his blindfold must have belonged to a different sky, another world. It was doing nothing. “Is this it?”

The Shepherd holding him only tightened his grip.

“May the Maker follow thee and keep thee…” the other voice said.

A struggle. A minor dispute before that voice too was eaten by something. 

Melk swallowed. This is it. 

“May the Maker follow thee into the realm of the Animal and save thee from its shadow.”

“Please. I beg of you.” A new voice. “Please—” 

Gone too. 

Melk stepped backwards, but no further. The Shepherd clenched tighter and he leaned towards him like he was a fire. Why wasn’t the blasted sun doing its job? He tilted his head back, in hopes that he could glimpse it beneath the blindfold, but only saw the dark cloth.

“May the Maker follow thee and keep thee. May the Maker follow thee into the realm of the Animal and save thee from its shadow.” The voice stopped. “Your eyes, brother.”

More rustling. A deep breath. An exhale of new prayer from a new mouth. “Maker be my eyes. Maker be my hand. Maker be my—AHHHH!”

Sizzling and popping. A fire blossoming somewhere nearby. Bringing to boil such an awful noise that even the god hawks mewed and shied from it. 

But then it too was consumed.

Boots touched snow again. A presence came before Melk. He could feel it there. Inches away. Something stretching over him like a casket soon to be sealed. What little light the sun threw to him was batted aside by shadow. 

“May the Maker follow thee and keep thee.”

His blindfold was torn free. Suddenly the brightness of the world was too much. The snow. The clouds. The pristine feathers of the god hawks. The purity of the Shepherd’s robes. The bone-white mask of the figure before him, featureless, a polished spade save for two holes that gave entrance to the colorless eyes that stared back at Melk. Unblinking.

“May the Maker follow thee into the realm of the Animal and save thee from its shadow.”

The figure stepped aside. Behind it, the toothless mouth of a giant. A shadowy maw, one that sucked away every ounce of brightness that was offered to it by that grey day. An endless gut where all light went to be devoured and digested, turned into something else.

Suddenly, two sets of hands were pushing him towards it.

“Wait!” Melk fought, but he was already too close.

The strength of the mouth had him. He went into that greedy, insatiable black, helplessly. A rodent to a lion.

With hands bound he could grab onto nothing, so he reached with his eyes, hoping to find something he could latch onto. And there it was.

The great farce overhead.

A ceiling of clouds, stone-grey like a castle wall meant to keep him from the queen they were erected to serve behind them. 

The sun.

I t wasn’t there. It had never been. Only a lone torch planted in the snow flaring with holy light by the hand of a Shepherd. The hand of his deliverer.

He fell. The false light flickering like a gesture meant to mark him for a different god, and the mouth accepted him, its tongue of darkness rising up to meet him.

And just as the shadows went to consume him. The clouds cracked. A fault formed in the sky’s fortress. A strand of golden light curled out from between, dropping like a thread.

Melk reached, fighting to meet it. Praying to see it. His eyes widened. The fear he felt clenching his chest, broke. He was suspended there in that flight into the darkness, certain that the world was giving him the time needed for him to watch it unfurl itself to him.

But the clouds corrected themselves, their flaw found, and the flaxen string was severed like a finger beneath a guillotine, its light dying and shriveling up there like a scorched weed.

Then suddenly Melk was falling again, slipping into the juices of the shadows. 

The Shepherds’ faces, peering in after him, left. The holy light vanished. The clouds and the sky that held them, gone too.

The darkness had him in its mouth, and it swallowed him whole.”

 

It hasn’t been edited or anything yet (so forgive what I’m sure is a litany of grammatical errors), and I still need to do a pretty solid pass on it prior to it moving into other hands. But for now, hopefully it gives you a taste.

 

I’ll try to share more when I can, but for now, just know it’s coming.

 

‘Til next time,

 

Stay slick.

 

-Jeff