Chapter 8
Pitkins and Donive were in Seihdun, a beautiful town in the northernmost area of Sodorf. They had a private mansion to themselves, and it was the perfect location for a couple of lovers to find both comfort and seclusion. Stepping outside of the spacious bedroom, one had an excellent view of the large, jagged mountains towards the north. Outside, a large, steaming pool of water offered relaxation, a fence surrounding it tall enough to allow privacy, yet short enough to not block the beautiful scenery surrounding this rustic locale. Neither Pitkins nor Donive had ever been so happy in all of their lives. They both felt like they had died and gone to Cixore.
Pitkins kissed Donive on her lips as they lay in bed, as happy as one would expect two lovers to be.
“Let’s go to the hot springs,” he said, his eyes playfully scanning her body.
“Sure,” she said. She giggled.
As they were going down the stairs, Pitkins saw something move . . . at least thought he did. Grabbing Donive gently but firmly by the back of her neck he whispered, “Get down,” into her ear.
She looked at him. This was no joke.
He went back up the stairs. He grabbed his sword and a small dagger and returned.
“Just in case,” he said, handing her the dagger with a grin, trying his best not to let his very real concern show in his tone.
Suddenly, Pitkins felt the slash of a sword against his back.
Pain. Big, oozing gobs of it. It shot back and forth across his back like an insane arrow caught in a perpetual ricochet. He could already feel the blood trickling down his back. Then, just as suddenly as the bleeding had started, it seemed to . . . stop? Perplexed, but no time to stop and think about it. He looked over his right shoulder and saw the black-cloaked figure prepare to slash him again. The attacker’s eyes were wild like a wolf’s. Pitkins quickly stepped forward with his left leg and kicked hard with his right foot.
WHOOSH!!! He could hear the air rushing out of the attacker’s lungs like air leaving a balloon that’s just been untied by a playful child. His sword dropped lifelessly to the ground like a branch from a rotting tree. Clank.
“Uhhh . . . hh . . . uhh,” was all the attacker could utter as his deflated lungs tried desperately to once again bring air into their owner’s body. He reached down to pick up his sword once again.
BAMM!!! Pitkins jumped into the air and crashed his knee into the attacker’s face, snapping his nose like a fortune cookie. The man doubled over, grabbing his nose in pain with both hands.
Pitkins grabbed the attacker’s head by the jawbone with both hands, pulled him forward, turned his back to the attacker while rotating the attacker’s head upward facing the ceiling, rested his neck over the back of his shoulder, squatted, then shot upwards while pulling down hard on the attacker’s head.
“Say HI to everyone in hell for me!”
CRACK!!! Vertebrae shattered like an icicle fallen onto a stone surface. Pitkins removed the black-cloaked figure’s mask. The man was blonde, handsome, and quite dead.
“Donive,” Pitkins said, “Check my back. I felt a slash, and for a split second I swear I felt blood trickling down it, but suddenly it stopped. I’ve been cut before, and no wound scabs that quickly.”
Donive examined the area. His shirt had definitely been cut through. Lifting it, she saw dried blood, but, no open wound, not even a scab. What she saw looked like a . . . welt. Like a mark left by a whip, not a sword. She looked at Pitkins and shrugged her shoulders. “There’s no bleeding.”
Over the next several days what had started out as romantic bliss began to turn into a nightmare. The welt became increasingly swollen, looking as if an exponentially expanding worm was inside it, gaining strength perhaps while eating Pitkins’s flesh. Donive was disturbed by the nightmares that were obviously plaguing Pitkins every night. Pitkins tried hard to keep their spirits high, but everyday he seemed worse. His eyes were bloodshot; he suffered from headaches. Pounding ones that felt like two knights were duking it out with maces inside his head. By the third day, things were so bad that Donive decided they had to leave. They would return to Sodorf and seek a doctor to examine the strange wound. If need be, they might even seek a master of Feiglushen, such as Kipsin, to see if perhaps Pitkins had been attacked with some sort of poison.
(but it couldn’t be that; surely not)
On horseback, it was a three-day ride to the City of Sodorf.
(dear Saixen, please protect him; PLEASE!)
The first night they stayed at an inn in a small town called Seisphen. Pitkins and Donive went to sleep. But Pitkins was not sleeping comfortably. His welt was continuing to swell—it was larger now than ever. The worm was now a garter snake, pulsating in cadence with the beat of his own galloping heart. Sweat pouring from glands all over his body. His pants and shirt soaked. He had a fever higher than most of the surrounding mountains. He tossed and turned. Donive was asleep, exhausted from the long ride on horseback.
Pitkins talking in his sleep. “No! No! Nooooo!” he kept repeating. He could see an aerial view of the provinces of Sodorf, and he was traveling north. A face flashing intermittently. The face of a tall, old man. Then he saw the man’s body. He stood over six feet tall. A pair of pince-nez perched on top of his long, crooked nose. His hair was silver, long, and curled towards the ends like a scorpion’s tail. Suddenly, the eyes behind these funny-looking glasses turned dark red like bottomless pools of blood.
“Pitkins,” the face said in a low, ominous voice.
“Yes?”
The eyes continued to glow red, but inside his eyes there began to emerge a swirling, spinning pattern; he felt himself being drawn.
“Come to me,” the voice said.
“Where are you?”
“North, far north. I will show you the way.”
“But what do you want of me?” Pitkins asked.
Then the face disappeared. He was flying. Flying high above the tallest trees of Sodorf, the tops of which looked like shrub bushes from this height.
(I’ll die if I fall)
It was nighttime, but the moon was full, and he could see the mountains, valleys, and streams. Suddenly, his vision became telescopic. He could see things happening down on the ground far, far below him. Predatory animals lurking about, seeking an easy kill. Wolves prowling the meadow; their howls sent a chill down his spine like a vibrating tremor along a long piece of steel. Snakes slithering around in the darkness. An anacobra killing a bear. The bear slashed at the anacobra with its claws as the snake’s coils worked their way around the ambushed bear like ropes of death and did manage to cause some damage to the dreadful snake, but then the snake sank its fangs into the bear, and the bear began losing its strength from the poison, while the snake continued tightening its coils around the bear’s body, squeezing the life right out of it.
Falling. He could no longer fly; he was headed right towards a pack of wolves he had seen just a moment ago following the tracks of a pregnant doe. He hit the ground with a thud. The wolves eyed him bloodthirstily. They were hungry. They had not been successful in their hunt and were desperate for flesh. Animal flesh was what they had been looking for, but human flesh would do. It would do just fine. Pitkins reached for his sword. Gone. He reached for the dagger he kept in his boot. Gone. He didn’t have any boots. Nor a shirt. He was completely naked other than his undergarments; he had no weapons. The wolves began forming a circle around him.
(what a way to go down)
He got into a fighting stance, prepared to take out with his bare hands as many wolves as he possibly could, but then a sharp pain went shooting through his back. The welt was swelling now. It wasn’t really a garter snake. It was an anacobra. And it was growing. Waves of pain went shooting through his back like randomly thrown darts. Suddenly, he saw the old man’s face again.
“You should not question me, but
simply OBEY me,” he heard the voice say.
As he heard the word “OBEY” being uttered, he felt the swelling in his back wound increase drastically, as if the voice itself had some sort of remote control over it. Pitkins felt all of his energy draining like water out of a punctured canteen as the pain became more and more unbearable. And as his energy ebbed away, his courage also began to forsake him.
“COME to me, and your pain shall cease.”
Now everything was switching back and forth between the wolves and the face of the old man, in slow motion. The wolves began to simultaneously charge him, their movements intermittent with the appearance of the ghastly face of this old man. Deafening silence. Time stopped following its conventional rules. It was stopping and starting jerkily like a heavy load of wood being pulled uphill by a team of oxen. His wound continued swelling. He had suffered wounds before, but this was unlike anything he had ever suffered. The pain consumed his very soul.
“AGHHH!!” he screamed, breaking away from his usual stoicism. “Tell me what I have to do!” he screamed, surrendering himself to forces he had never felt before, forces that made him feel like an ant trying to resist a swirling whirlpool in a violent sea. The wolves were gone.
“Wake up,” the voice said, “and go to your window.”
He awoke. His back was killing him. He reached his hand behind him, and he could tell that the wound had enlarged greatly.
(soon it’ll be a full-sized anacobra)
Suddenly, he saw the face of the old man again.
“Go towards the window,” the voice said.
He turned and looked at Donive. She was sleeping, but tossing and turning restlessly. The pain shot through his back again; he had never before thought death such a better alternative to living.
“Come towards the window,” said the voice again.
It was impatient, authoritarian. He looked out the window. The moon was full, just like in his dream. A whirring sound. Total blackness.