Chapter 10, Battle of Will
It was after a full day’s climb when the medicine man finally reached the great serpent's high cliff. Night was creeping up the slope behind him and would soon devour the peak. Eagle Flying Bye decided to rest until morning.
The clean air of the mountain turned sour and became tainted with irritation as brimstone and sulfur assaulted his nostrils. He knew if the legend was true that the great serpent, Uktena, awaited him over the next rise of jagged and rugged cliffs.
The elder medicine man sought shelter in the lea of a leafy tree for the night but could not sleep. He built a fire, toasted some wah^pe khalyapi, and made himself a pot of herbal tea.
All through the night the earth shook. Firelight flickered and cast shadows on the mountain side. An electric feel in the air made his hair stand on end. His mind mulled over the old legend, he considered going back home, but the reward was too great. So great it was worth the risk of life to carry on with his destiny.
For in the badlands, specifically, the great fissure of the Wiley serpent, it is said, lived a beautiful maiden…a maiden who never ages, a maiden who will bring immortality to the man who comes to her rescue. A maiden in whom all the beauty of creation resides…dressed in the white linens of a virginal princess…long creamy legs, pert rounded breasts…long flowing black hair, beauty of face, form and disposition. This was the doe that he had sent to the slaughter. But first there was the matter of the serpent to deal with.
Sun now drizzled around the edges of the badlands outlining the peak in halo light. His fear having vanished overnight… he was ready to face what comes next. A sip of courage from his goatskin…and munching on a few berries and nuts he set out for the fissure…he knew the serpent monster would be waiting for him he could hear him stirring deep in the abyss of the fissure....his bold footsteps became shaky. Indeed, by the time he had climbed to the crest, he was weak kneed and longingly looked back toward Dakota, toward home.....
Stepping out on the rise of land overlooking the deep abyss…he waited to hear the hiss of the slithering serpent… he was confronted with a vision, a giant, even for horned rattlesnake tales…a mound of scaly, undulating flesh all of 50 feet long , his horned head at least 3 feet across…and a tail that could wrap around a sweat lodge …fangs…the great medicine man stumbled backwards....The Lakota# healer chanted incantations to a full, blue moon in a tongue already ancient when the moon itself was born. As he chanted, he climbed, clinging perilously to a stone cliff-face 800 feet above a bed of jagged rock. Dark-slate night-clouds occasionally eclipsed the cold, reflecting orb, forcing the Shaman to pause until light returned. The palely illuminated stone, with its hellishly smooth surface, was testing even Eagle flying bye, most powerful of the Lakota warriors. His lithe, lean, well-muscled form quivered with exertion as he steadily, carefully rose, and he knew without the enchanted potion he had consumed earlier, the climb would have surpassed his physical limitations. 'No mere mortal could survive here,’ he thought. And from the ground the medicine man scarcely looked human.. Now the jutting tip of the final precipice marked the last, seemingly insurmountable obstacle of the arduous, thousand foot ascent. He hung precariously below it by his fingertips, weighing the task at hand. He quickly concluded it was physically impossible to traverse the three feet of angled rock barring his path. 'Fortunately, there is a more ethereal approach, beyond the physical.' No sooner was thought memory, than he began systematically closing his senses to standard reality; He shut down all sense of touch. Deep he retreated into the labyrinth of the mind, opening doors which led to other realms of existence...and communion with a dark, demonic presence… ‘Great Wakan Tanka protect me in this hour of total darkness,” he hoarsely began, “Great Wakan Tanka I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy- ‘Myself ' louder now, and higher pitched. Again and again he repeated the chant, voice growing progressively louder until a tortured, high-pitched shriek ended the ecstatic spell. The Shaman sensed an astral vortex, gleaming with dazzling, self-generated light in the liquid-black infinity inside his head. As he moved toward the portal it opened, and he became an ebony-wave flowing through into what must be Tohu and Bohu! Eagle flying bye, entered into the realm of perversion, corruption and putrefaction, encompassing the sum of it in his own soul, and shuddered not. After an interminable time, during which he communed with the living embodiment of dis-ease, the astral vortex suddenly re-appeared, and again the medicine man was liquid conscience, splashing forth as a wave of night where...he now stood atop the cliff, facing the precipice and staring at the full-moon in utter amazement. Exactly how he arrived was anyone’s guess. Absently, he noted the night-orb usually golden color now seemed a darker shade of pale yellow. Then his hypnotic gaze shifted, as he spied the entrance of an underground cave, which lay between his feet and the cliff's jutting tip. Around the portal, carved in natural rock, were carvings of perverse images; inhuman torture, human sacrifice, sexual perversion, wickedness as an art form... etched in the circumference, the serpent swallowing its own tail as the height of demonic lust. Still Eagle Flying Bye shuddered not, for he was cold, frozen to normal human emotions. He would not let the vision disturb his quest. Far on the dark road he already traveled; visual torture, performed in dark gullies surrounded by warped, distorted demons... he was gaining powers while growing forever apart by tasting the forbidden fruit of other dimensions. Without hesitation, the medicine man slipped through the opening, fear a wild beast, he learned to cage a long time ago. He descended on broken shards, lashing out at unseen Incubi as they tried to weaken his very resolve. In a rough hewn tunnel, which was cut out of solid, stalagmites, the limestone reflected opaque, olive light which radiated from great, rounded columns descending from the stone ceiling. Almost immediately, the Shaman felt a hot, incessant breeze blowing fetid in his face. Like the entranceway, the walls were worked with the most sordid of engravings. Eagerly past them went the Eagle, drawn inexorably deeper by his vision quest. Closer, closer, closer...to attaining great power while destroying ultimate sin.
The stairway abruptly ended, giving way to a small, circular room, still hewn from the same underground drip-stone, the inner sanctum. Between Shaman and opening, protruding seamlessly from the center floor, lay a small, circular altar hewn from a cave pearl. Its sides were etched with further hieroglyphics from the same demonic-possessed serpent as before, and a small, polished-sable stone marked its center, contrasting with the main-stone. The ebony circle was so perfectly joined with the rock it seemed it had always been there. A small, round bowl made of Ivory, about the size of an eagle’s egg, was centered therein. The thin tracing of some rough, emerald-hued, fluorescent material delineated the circumference of the depression, which itself was a part of the ebony circle. The Shaman stepped to the beveled pedestal carved from a stalagmite, left hand slipping into a fold at the hip of his leather breechclout. From the pocket he pulled a small, turquoise urn, in which blood-red powder was stored. Setting his jeweled hollow bone on the stone, he quickly but carefully emptied the contents of the urn into the bowl. 'Now' thought the Shaman 'comes the battle.' Dropping to his knees, the medicine man began expertly drawing strange, arcane symbols in the hellish air, one with each of the fingers of his hands. The crimson powder, which consisted of the dried blood of a sacred white buffalo mixed with Yerba Santa and sage, suddenly burst into phosphorus flame. Eagle Flying Bye raised his arms above him; his palms spread wide in invocation and began chanting. He had spent years and risked much, probing and perfecting this shamanic spell which now contorted his classic Lakota features in ecstasy as it opened the seal to the realm of Uktena. Simultaneously, the smell of putrefied flesh permeated the air. From his knees the Shaman fell unconscious to the floor, swooning in a violent, unrelenting stupor. Then the smoke was sucked like a vacuum into the small ivory bowl.
Eagle Flying Bye awoke with a start from a short, night
mare-haunted sleep. He was on his side, in a fetal position and completely disoriented. Rising with some difficulty to his knees, he surveyed new and terrible surroundings. Finally, the Shaman shuddered. For unlike the other distorted places he had been, this was horror children of God were never supposed to witness! The very structure and geometry of the place was literally inconceivable, the medicine man recoiled, shaken by the maddening effect. With super human effort and steel-like resolve, the Shaman focused both inward and out, fighting off the feeling of vertigo, seeking a clue to the entrance he knew must be there. His trained mind sensed an opening, or what might be an opening, so perplexing was its nature. Momentarily he purposely blurred his vision; he scanned the spot where he thought the gateway should be. Slowly his vision re-focused and in it, there was a familiar shape! The same white, polished-Ivory stone bowl which was centered in the rock niche he so recently departed. Instinctively, he knew the stone to be the Door. A sudden awareness of the hellish, fetid odor which had followed him brought cognizance, 'There are realms within realms, within planes, within dimensions, without end, without limits...' he chanted in a trancelike state, calling upon his prowess to again transcend the finite world. Still on his knees, the Shaman took a thin, razor-edged dagger from his sash and sliced deep into his left wrist, slitting flesh and causing blood to well and drip from the gaping wound. Standing, he squeezed his fist until blood dripped into the tiny, bowl of the familiar circular altar, filling the bowl before spending the rest on the maddening, serpentine rocks, as he ejaculated his life’s seed. The home stretch of this long, dark journey was now at hand. Again Eagle flying bye retreated, via transmutation, to the liquid-black infinity of his essence. There, he became a solid black ball, falling through an astral vortex which lay below him, descending deep, deeper, and deepest into the pressure-filled depths of an abyss. The enormous compression crushed him incessantly, rendering a tighter, denser mass, which dropped through a long stretch of actual intestines; he was shooting through the bowels of hell….
The shaman re-entered the physical...on a glowing ebony shoreline, before an ocean of warm, thick claret, its alkaline smell overpowering. The visible sky was the ivory stone, with no apparent light-source or ending. Out in the distance, luminous giants were swimming in hot hemoglobin. Now and then one of the translucent monsters would leap free of the viscous, red ocean, revealing it's gleaming, rounded body and squirming tail which were huge even at this distance. The medicine man recognized his own semen, romping in the dark red sea, and thought, 'everything is relative....’ For a long moment he stood frozen, shocked by the disturbing symmetry of the scene. Gradually he became aware as one of the rollicking multitudes was now swimming toward him, closing vast distances effortlessly. Closer and closer it glided, looming larger and larger ...striking real fear in the medicine man as it approached him. Blood lapped the shoreline, against his feet, then knees, then groin as the huge sperm swam close, displacing tons of liquid before it. The true immensity of the creature was finally apparent. It towered over the Medicine Man, its head wide as a subway train, and taller than a telephone pole. The close gleam of translucent flesh was blinding, as he tried to make out the features visible on its luminous face…..
He was frozen to the ground as he watched two eyes appear just above a gaping mouth with a flickering forked tongue…
"Human, what are you doing near my mountain…have you come to satisfy my taste for red men's flesh?"
"You can speak?" the great medicine man stammered...
"Well, you don't see anyone else around here?" he replied.
"Do you get many visitors up here, Uktena?" He remembered to pronounce his name clearly even if he was full of fear.
"I have no time for chit chat human," it replied…"I see you know the game, calling me by name, what brings you to this place?"
"Huh! Oh, yes you're the great serpent, Uktena, and you possess the great crystal, Ulun'suti."
"Now enough of these chit chat!” He hissed, “…why are you here? Tell me before you become my breakfast snack."
"Why, there is only one reason for me to be here," whispered Eagle Flying Bye…"I'm here to rescue the fair maiden that lives in your cave, the doe that I personally sent to you."
Flicking his forked tongue the mighty snake hissed…in what must have been its idea of laughter…flame shot across the clearing to where he stood, his clothing flashed and was gone, and every, let me say this again….every hair on his body became thousands of crispy critters and vanished…without burning his skin. In fact, other than the missing hair…he had no burns on his flesh....
"I suppose now you're going to eat me?" Eagle flying bye commented.
"Eat you? I don't eat meat, I eat the green life of the earth…it ferments in my belly and fuels my fire. But now tell me, why do you think you are worthy to see the princess? Where is your army, your armor? I don't even see a knife, let alone a sword or spear, how do you assume to fight me?" The great serpent, Uktena hissed.
"Sir Snake, I am but a poor red man without many possessions. I had hoped that my ability to speak reason would convince you that I am worthy to complete my quest. I am a man of peace." The wise medicine man announced.
"Good grief boy, I feel sorry for you, I am here to do battle for this fair maiden, what say you?"
"My father died when I was young and I was raised by my mother and her sisters…" his voice trailed off.
"Well then I truly do feel sorry for you little human…because I'm going to let you pass. You may enter the fissure and take back your doe...." granted the great serpent.
"Just like that, I can enter? No song and dance about being worthy? No great feats of strength or courage?"
"Little human, even though you have brought no weapons as you stand before me naked, it is easy for me to discern that you are amply endowed with all the… …attributes you are going to need…in fact, you are exceptionally well armed for what you are about to face…Now pass me and enter the cave before I change my mind."
"But, but I have no clothes…………………………"