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ziathewitch · 4 years

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Prâslea the Brave and the Golden Apples (Part 2)

[...]But the emperor, satisfied that he had touched the golden apples, did not want to know about the thieves. The son, though, was not convinced. He showed his father the trail of blood left behind by the thief and said he would look for him all over the world until he found him and and brought him to the emperor. And he spoke the very next day with his brothers and asked them to join him.

His brothers envied Prâslea because he had been more worthy than they had, and they sought an opportunity to get rid of him; that's why they were happy to join the quest. They prepared and set off.

So they followed the trail of blood and walked, and walked, until they came out into the wild emptiness. From there they walked a little more until they reached an abyss and the trail was lost. They searched around the chasm and they saw that the trail of blood was no longer advancing. It was then that they realized that the thieves must live in that abyss.

But how to get inside? They immediately got thick ropes, and the older brother was the first to go down.

"But," he said, "when I shake the rope, get me out."

And so it happened soon after. After the older brother, the middle one went down and he did the same as the first, only he dared go a little lower before shaking the rope.

"Now it's my turn to go into the abyss," said Prâslea, seeing that the older brothers were scared.

"When I shake the rope, lower me more, and after you see that the rope is not moving anymore, you stand guard. When you see that the rope moves again, that's when you pull it out."

And so, down went the youngest brother, and the more the rope moved, the more they lowered it, until they saw that the rope was no longer stretched, as it is when it has something hanging from its end. It was then that the brothers took counsel and said:

"Let us wait until we see if he succeeds, and wether or not he does, let us end him, to cleanse ourselves from one like him who brings shame upon us."

Prâslea reached the other realm, looked cautiously in all directions, and with great astonishment saw everything around him was different: the earth, the flowers, the trees. And all sorts of creatures were there. He was a little scared now, but, bracing himself, he walked along the road until he reached a palace that was completely and utterly made of brass. Seeing no human being to ask about this place, he entered the palace to see who lived there.

A beautiful girl greeted him at the door and said:

"Thank God I got to see another human in this land! How did you get here? These are the lands of three ogre brothers, who kidnapped us from our parents. We are three sisters and we are the daughters of an emperor from the human realm, where you come from."

He then briefly told her the story of the apples, how he wounded the thief and how he came after the trail of blood to the pit and so on, and he asked her what kind of beings those ogres were and if they were valiant. She then told him that each of the dragons had chosen one of the three sisters and they were being forced to take them as husbands. The girls keep resisting their sweet words, and they requested all sorts of difficult things as conditions for marriage, and the ogre brothers were doing the impossible to please them, fulfilling all their wishes.

"They are indeed strong", she added, "but with God's help you may be able to overcome them. But for now hide, I beg of you! Hide somewhere, don't let the him find you in his house, because he's dangerous and has the strenght of a lion. Now is the time when he comes home for lunch, and he has a habit of throwing his mace from a long distance. The mace knocks on the door, on the table, and hangs himself on the wall from that nail.

Before they could finish talking, there came a whistling sound, then a knocking on the door, then on the table, and the mace showed itself.

Prâslea took the mace and threw it back farther than the ogre had thrown it. And when it passed the ogre, the mace touched him on the shoulder.

The ogre, frightened, stood still and looked for the mace, went to pick it up, and walked home.

When he was at gate, he began to shout:

"Hmm... it smels of human flesh from the other realm!"

And seeing the young prince coming forward to face him, he added:

"What brings you here, human? Do you seek to leave your bones in this realm?"

"I came to catch the thieves who stole my father's golden apples."

"We are those thieves," said the ogre. "How should we fight? Do you prefer the mace, the sword, or should we wrestle?"

"Wrestling makes a fairer fight," replied Prâslea.

They began to fight, and they fought and fought, until the ogre shoved Prâslea in the ground up to the ankles. Prâsleâ then grabbed the ogre, and, throwing him, he shoved him in the groung up to his knees and cut off his head.

The girl, with tears in her eyes, thanked him for getting rid of the ogre, and begged him to have mercy on her sisters as well. After resting for a couple of days, he went to the middle sister, who lived in a silver palace. Here too he was received with joy. This girl also asked him to hide and he again refused. And again the mace came to hang itself on the wall, but this ogre had thrown it from a distsnce twice as large as his brother. Prâslea threw the mace a lot further back, hitting the the ogre on the head. And the ogre came home troubled, fought with Prâslea like his older brother had, and he also got himself killed.

The girl, after thanking him, askes him how to rescue her youngest sister as well.

"He is stronger than his brothers whom you have killed," said she, "but with God's help you might be able to best him, especially since he is still wounded from the blow you gave him with your arrow when he wanted to steal the apples."

Prâslea spent a week with the two girls, resting, then he set off for the third ogre.

Seeing the gold palace in which the youngest ogre lived, he pondered for a while, but then he gathered up his courage an went inside. When she saw him, the youngest princess begged him to save her from the ogre, especially since, according to her, he was tired of waiting and had decided to force her to be his wife as soon as he was well again. They had barely finished speaking, when the mace came knocking on the door and on the table, and hanging itself on the wall. Prâslea asked about the ogre's strenght and then threw the mace down for a distance three timea greater than before, hitting the ogre in the chest.

The ogre, mad with rage, immediately returned home.

"Who dared to cross my borders and enter my house?"

"I do!" said Prâslea.

"Then," the ogre replied, "I'll punish you bitterly for your recklessness. You came here willingly, but you will not leave."

"With God's help," said Prâslea, "I will defeat you too."

They agreed to go straight to battle and they fought and fought for a whole summer's day until eve. Around noon they both turned into flames as they continued fighting.

A raven keept flying around them, croaking. Seeing the raven, the ogre said:

"Raven, oh, raven! Bring me some tallow in your claws and in return I will give you this carrion!"

"Raven, oh, raven," said Prâslea, "give me the tallow and in return I will give you three carrions."

"If only such luck should fall upon me," said the raven, "I would gladly give up my home for it!"

"I speak nothing but the truth," said Prâslea.

The raven, not wasting any time, brought tallow in his claws and dropped it over the flame that was the brave Prâslea, who thus gained more power.

Towards evening, after both had returned to their true form, the ogre said to the emperor's daughter, who had been watching them fighting:

"My beauty, bring me some water to cool off, and I promise we'll be married tomorrow."

"My little beauty," said Prâslea, "bring me water, and I promise to take you to our realm, and marry you there!"

"May God hear you, strong one, and fulfill your thought!" she replied.

And so, the emperor's daughter gave Prâslea water to drink and he gained more power. He then grabbed the ogre, lifted him up in the air, and when he threw him, he shoved him up to his knees in the ground. The ogre grabbed Prâslea and, throwing him, he shoved him up to his waist. Gathering all his strength, Prâslea grabbed the ogre and squezed him so hard he broke his bones, then threw him so hard he shoved him in the ground up to its neck. Then he cut off his head.

The girls gathered around in joy, and and embraced Prâslea, and kissed him.

"From now on you shall be our brother," they said.

To be continued...

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writeanapocalae · 5 years

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Inktober: Humiliation

Warnings for torture, gore, body horror, murder, and just lots of nasty stuff.

And in an instant, as all of the pain that had formed it, sliding in through its ever expanding nerve endings, it went still. The fire was put out, slick black ooze like coagulated blood slipping over its still muscles, sucking it down and down. It was in a tar pit, cooled and encapsulated in the icy pressure. It closed its eyes, for it was dead and going to wherever it was meant to go, which may have been Hell or Heaven or just the earth. It had no way of knowing. It could not remember what it had done in life, all of its actions a distant memory, buried behind so many layers that there was no point in trying to remember. What good would a memory do for it?

It did not remember how it had died or even how long it had been dead.

It did not know if that mattered.

It relished in the slick slide of the cold darkness, the thick ink that poured through it’s flesh to wrap around tendons and bones, to massage against the broken pieces of it, to sift and sit heavy in its insides, coating its insides. The darkness filled it veins and it became the liquid, feeling a connection to what it came from, down in the depths, down beneath the earth, part shadow and part nothingness. It felt most connected to the eyes that were watching it, buried beneath the black waves of sludge.

A hand reached down, yellow and wrapped in rubber, it was too large, too foreign, as it dug down through the grime. It pulled back trying to pull away from the hand, but it tangled in its hair easily, and tugged, a sharp sting of pain lancing through its scalp, reminding its nerves of what pain was. It wrapped its own hands around the yellow wrist, squeezed and tugged, but it would not release its hair. In fact, it dug in deeper, grabbed firmer, and it when it yanked its head followed. Slowly it was dragged out of the darkness, out of the safe cocoon of darkness. It sputtered as its head came free, lungs revolting against the foreign concept of air. It struggled, found itself heavy and weak from the wet of its home.

“Come now,” came the frustrated voice of the man that held it. “We’re not through with you yet.”

It could not see the man, it was blinded by the bright candlelight. It could not fight him either. It was dropped to the hard floor, feeling cold and exposed as it gurgled and spasmed, trying to breathe, to remember how.

It could hear and what it heard was so loud. It was as if each breath of its own was the shuddering of a building’s collapse. The sounds of the others in the room, those watching it, were far worse. It was a reminder that it was not alone, hearing them gasp and shriek, which felt like nails shoved into its soft brain, and someone vomit.

That hand was still in its hair and the man pulled on it until it was half standing, awkward and rolling, pitching, its feet unused to carrying anything as heavy as a body. “What a wretched thing you are? The voice hissed, “Something must have gone wrong, you’re not even whole. What are we supposed to do with this?”

It was tossed, forced to catch itself on its feeble legs or even weaker arms. It ended up catching itself on its arms, catching something hard and solid and flat. It cracked its eyes open, trying to see amongst the brightness. It was a table that it had caught itself on, covered in blood and candles and runes. It couldn’t make sense out of any of it. There were, attached to the legs and sitting on top, unlocked and waiting, four pairs of manacles, what wasn’t locked in place open and waiting.

Its hands were bare. It looked from them up its arms, down its chest. It was more than nude. It had no skin at all. Instead it had bones that looked like charred wood, black and flaking, and white tendons spiraling around them. Pulsing and shifting around them were thick black tendrils, not acting as muscles, not reacting like muscles, but taking their place. It was a constantly shifting, dark thing. No wonder they were having such a hard time looking at it.

It turned on them. They were all wearing yellow suits and yellow gloves, their faces hidden behind bucket-like masks. Hazmat suits, part of its lizard brain woke up to remind it. There were more runes on the suits, painted in red, and a large black horseshoe with a diagonal line through it.

That was a symbol that it knew, one that it would never forget.

Umbra.

There was a woman on the floor, not wearing that mask, she must have taken it off to vomit at its sight. Now she was seizing, blood spilling out from her exposed orifices, others in full suits, holding her down. Just being around it would kill them. That made it smile. It wasn’t a short death. It was suffering and it was cold and it was relentless. It was what Umbra deserved.

The man that had ripped it away from its comfortable death was rumbling, the words of some sticky spell groaning under his breath. It was like wood splintering and it felt small and humble in its wake. It could not move. It could do nothing. The flames burned brighter. It was shoved closer to the table by the man’s arms, as he kept reciting, lifting and moving until it was laying on the table. It was humiliated by its own inadequacy as it was bound, hands and feet to the hardwood.

“How dare you try to escape us,” the man growled in its ear. It turned its head away. Everything was so loud. “You really thought that a little thing like dying was going to get you away from us? After all of the resources we put into you? Into making you what you are?”

It shook its head. It wanted to be away. It didn’t know what the man was talking about. It didn’t know what it was. Out of the corner of its eye they could see one of those holding the woman down draw a knife and slit her throat, see the blood spray out of her before another started to collect it with a roll of plastic bags.

It hadn’t spoken for so long. When it tried it just came out like water through dirt, most of it left behind to make a thick mud. “P-pleease.”

The man had no pity. Even though he was human he seemed to have absolutely nothing humane in him. His hand slipped down its chin and down to it’s chest, where he started to dig. He slid the squirming darkness out of the way of its ashy ribs and shoved through the bones. The sound of them cracking and sloughing apart was almost as painful of them turning to dust. Its back arched as it screamed, no sound coming out of it, just so much salty air.

He grabbed its heart, lifting it out of the broken nest of ribs, and another, shorter man in a hazmat suit came to it, holding out a bag of the woman’s blood. The heart was a dry desiccated thing, twisted and shaped like a conch shell, including the deep groove down one side. It was hardly half the size it should have been.

He dropped the heart into the bag and it slumped. It felt like the heart was still in there, not beating, not keeping it alive, but the size was there, made of something far heavier. It felt like there was a mass of lead ore inside of it.

“Once we get you dressed, your going back to your room,” the man said, and he was running his hand along its scalp. Before, he had dragged it up by its hair, now it seemed it didn’t have any at all. “And you’re going to have to work hard to get in our good graces again. How much do you think you can take from Umbra before we ask for something back? Well, we’re asking for all of it back now. With interest.”

It turned its head, seeing how the woman was now still and very much dead. It envied her. She could not feel pain as they cut long strips of skin off of her, more bags catching more blood.

The hand was on its jaw now, its attention wrenched back as he forced it to look at him. “We lost months of progress because of you! And we had to lose even more to get you back. Don’t forget that we own you.”

It snarled at him, or it tried to. It was hard to move with the hand so steady on it, and it was hard to move when the muscles were moving on their own accord.

The bags of blood were poured onto it, made to soak into the scales in its bones, making it feel wet and heavy and like it was drowning. If it had lungs it did not know but there was an ache in them, as if they were just kicked back into gear. The skin was wrapped around it too, forcing the squirming to tighten so the tendrils were pressed tight against its bones. The skin turned black when it touched it, as if soaking up the disease that it carried.

More words were said, not in the language that the eyes in the darkness had known but something else, something that sounded newer, somehow. It hadn’t even realized that it had been spoken to in the cradle of death.

By the time they were done, it was shivering, the cold no longer comforting but too real, and its body felt too physical for comfort. It was unbound and, now defeated and terrified, realizing that it had no escape, no idea what they wanted from it, it let them do as they wished. They flipped it onto its back and the man, who must have been in charged, pulled out a small blade. It screeched as the knife plunged into its back, into the bandaged of black flesh, as he carved the terrible symbol of their organization into it as deep as possible.

It would not try to escape the way that it had. Death was no longer considered safe. Someone had to carry it to its ‘room’ which was nothing more than a glass cell where they could watch it from all sides and then dump it inside. It did not remember why it had tried to escape but now it understood why.

It wouldn’t try to escape. There would be no need to escape. It would walk out of here easily. It just had to kill them all first.

#whumptober2019 #no. 25 #my writing #girch #monster of the week

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