Note: This was a challenge, especially in trying to find a lyric that did not resemble a video game too much. Really this is the last teaser till battle, and while I think I wander a bit here, its a nice way to get things going. I'll try not to leave you hanging too long for the next part.
Disc 2Track 12: N.E.S. by YTCracker
“Then pop those rats like a cyst.” The final lines of the letter drifted through Kendra’s fevered, failing mind. It lingered always on the edge of her dreams and thoughts, till blowing across, wiping all else away. Her music teacher had called such abrupt, starling thoughts resets. When they came, the best thing to do was start again. Reset yourself as she would say, and in the case of music, then start the song over.
That was what the lines were doing to her delirium. Resetting, so the long play of events could run through again.
He wrote:
“Once we rode to Thunder Sted, out where the wildflowers kiss the sky. I’ll keep that with me as I venture into the darkness, and pray someday I shall return there to you waiting at the door of my father’s old cabin.”
The words brought brief sweet memories of his strong, tan arms wet with sweat and with thousands of specks of green plastered up and down them from working out frustration on the fields of beans, barely and alfalfa. Whenever he was on the brink of going wild, he always ran to the fields where he let the rich soil of central Satar clot his wounds. He had escaped there for a month after the Reap Ball, slaving beside common folks, clearings fields and trying to forget her. He almost worked her out of his system, when she showed up at his father’s cabin in her blue-faded riding dress. The sun glowed orange like it only does in autumn as it started to depart the world for another day.
Once the lines passed through her head, the glimpse of happiness crumbled. She heard Eden’s mad laughter rumble from the fields that were barren. The sky opened and a pair of blazing red eyes glared down. Overruling all was the call. “Come.”
That forced her back into reality. To her bed and the numb pain coming from her left leg. More than anything she wanted to run, but knew she could not. Eden had more sure of that.
She thought it was light enough to read the letter one more time before Eden returned. Searching out with her hand, she found where the feather mattress met the bed rail. She had stuffed it there for safekeeping, so she thought.
Frantically scanning the length of the bed, she let out a wail. It was gone and she knew only one person could have taken it.
“I have lost him!” She wailed, not caring who heard. “I have lost him forever!”
* * *
A thousand things should have been going through Ewam’s mind, as he sat upon his steed in the field before Stra with the abonimation scattered in frenzied ranks howling, hissing and clawing at the ground before him. He should have been gauging range for the archer’s vollies and reinforcing flanks. Instead, he thought of Brashaw, the toothless rancher that managed Thunder Sted for his father and now for he and his brother.
Brashaw rose with the crops and lived among them with his flat-brim hat stained a dull brown, his denim trousers cuffed above pointed boots, and his eyes constantly slitted as if staring directly into a bright light at all times. The man’s hand were pocked with bilsters callused thrice times over. He spoke with a lazy, tired tongue from a mouth that did not have time to converse, and interspersed curses between words to make sure you knew it. It did not matter a wit that Ewam was a prince, nor later a king. As Brashaw saw it, kings and queens came and went, work never left and he had plenty of it to keep him occupied.
For months, once nearly a year, at a time, Brashaw became his father when Ewam stayed at Thunder Sted well outside of Omet. His true father, King Rudan of Satar, believed that lessons were taught and learned just as well in the fields as they were in the walls of Union Hall. When Ewam and Eden stayed at Thunder Sted, they stayed as workers, not as princes, and Brashaw never thought any different.
Ewam cherished the excursions to Thunder Sted. Only there was he devoid of lofty expectations and royal behavior. On the Sted, he was a worker expected to carry his share and that’s all that Ewam had ever wanted. Managing a kingdom did not interest him, and while leading an army came quite naturally, he preferred weeding a field. It was quiet, physical labor. Eden’s enthusiam for the Sted never equaled his brothers. Eden’s regal standard did not impress Brashaw. The man demanded Eden to slouch, to bend, to swear, to spit, anything, but Eden’s usual parade of chivalry and manners.
Ewam had not seen Brashaw since assuming the throne after his father’s passing all those years ago. While the man’s grizzled, ghastly face sometimes touched Ewam’s mind, it was the first thing that came to mind when they arrived upon the field and viewed their enemies. It was his face as it had been that first trip to stay at the Sted.
The dry heat all the years ago had both Ewam and Eden’s heads aching. They were young, perhaps eight or nine years of age, and working thier first true day on the cracked, arid field of maize. Brashaw had them carrying buckets of water to the fields from a sad little creek that ran nearby. The twins, near exhausted had stopped and plopped in the soft bed of the creek and there they stayed splashing and giggling while the rest of the hands worked hard. When Brashaw got wind of it, he was down to the creek quicker than one could ever thought a man his age could manage.
“You cullys,” He growled the best he could without teeth and both boys bolted up from the water. “You cullys to me! Days burning up crops, youse buggers arn burnin’ my britches and I’ll burn you’se.”
Half of what Brashaw said was lost to most hearing him, but the point was across. The twins rushed to him, pale and shaking. As they climbed the bank, slipping as the dust turned to mud under their feet, they noticed for the first time movement within the slender weeds.
“The crops need fed, my cullys,” Brashaw spit without meaning to and the saliva hung from his chin. He had a shake that Ewam noticed when they met, but had forgot about till then. The man was solid, but frail and he shook steadily, especially in the hands. “Can’t feed blessed crops posion. Stay out of the water, cullys.”
With unnatural speed, the man bent and snatched his hand into the weeds pulling out a rat that neither boy had even seen. The rat squirmed in his hands whose grasp, Ewam knew, was like a blacksmith’s vise.
“Pop the rats, cullys,” Brashaw sneered. “They poison the waters, my cullys. Pop’em like pussing bumps on your arses.”
Brashaw squeezed tigthier till the rat’s squirming ceased and then tossed it to the ground.
“Gets to work.” Brashaw walked away.
Clouds hung above Stra and a foul stench wafted in his nose when the air shifted from that direction. The force before him was perhaps only five hundred strong although the numbers were hard to gauge. There were no real soldiers. Only the beasts, no two alike, and all like nothing Ewam had ever seen. One that he could make out stood upright like a man, but with the furry legs of a bear and huge paws to match, and his chest was bare and his face was one half man, one half boar including a huge tusk that prutuded out from its jaw. Others had four, six and perhaps even eight legs and ranged in size from no bigger than a field mouse to the girth of an elephant.
“They are called the Children, my lord,” Banik whispered into his ear. “Offspring of Salama, no doubt. Although, the smaller ones may be children of the Elder Dinar, they too span evil critters.”
“We’ll pop them like rats,” Ewam said thinking of his old mentor. As he did, two riders garbed in black robes on beasts that resembled horses save for the legs that were thick like tree trunks and mouths that gleamed with sharp teeth cantered to the front of the beast army.
“Those be Elder Dinar,” Banik said. “My blood runs cold sure of it.”
“Only two,” Ewam replied. “Is that all they think it’ll take.”
Without a moments pause, Banik answered and Ewam’s own blood froze.
“It rarely takes more than one, my lord,” Banik said. “Keep a close watch, they attack from places we can’t even see.”
One of the Dinar brought a horn to where its lips no doubt were under the dark hood and blew. A high-pitch squeel sounded out, the beast army within a moment formed flawless, bloodthirsty ranks. Many of Ewam’s force clasped at their ears, one man only a few feet away fell to his knees with a stream of blood running from his nose. After a moment, he toppled over and started convulsing.
The Dinar, who did not blow the horn, pointed toward Ewam’s force once after the sound came to an end. The Children sprang forward, some of them actually jumped twenty or maybe even thirty feet with one leap. The howling and hissing picked up.
Ewam lifted up his fist, the calvary came to the front his lines. Far behind, he heard the sound of five thousand bows being strung at once. One final time, Brashaw’s face and voice came to his mind. “Pop’em like pussing bumps on your arses.”
Pumping his fist three times into the air, he gave out his battle cry.
“For Satar! For the Light! For all of man!” Dropping his fist, he reached for Kekur, touched it once before thrusting his hand up one more time. “No mercy!”
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