The Sylph Queen of Edenworld

CHAPTER 4 - CREATURE

In pitch darkness, he entered the Dead Fort.  This was no place for the living.  Father forbade it.  He only dare come here now as Father had not come back for four years now.  Besides, the bones here were different to the ones he flayed from the animals he killed.  He needed these bones to change, to evolve…to become the Creature he was supposed to be.   

        He wound his way through the dark corridors, the sound of crashing waves growing louder.  The air was stale and putrid.  It smelled like old death.  Turning a broken corner where a wall should be, he came onto a courtyard, cut in two from above.  The falling snow covered the half-moon shaped yard in a white blanket, but Creature could still see bones and rocks and old weapons poking through.  Excitement made his chest skip.  This was it.  Ignoring the broken metal weapons and pieces of jewelled armour, he made his way through the courtyard and examined the true jewels of this garden of death.  The bones.  The bones!  The wonderful bones! 

Some were bigger than his leg and thicker than his fist.  Some had horns that needed no flint to make knives.  Some were lithe and slender yet so dense he could not break them across his knee.  There were claws and teeth and talons all scattered about the scorched and broken rocks of the Fort.  There were too many treasures for just two hands to carry.  He would have to come back.    

  He paused not far from the sheer drop.  Reaching down, he gripped a twisted horn, half buried in debris and pulled it free.  A spine slithered out behind it, like a spiked serpent.  Placing it against a lump of rock, he withdrew his axe from his back and began hacking at the base of the neck.  Even with his strength, the task was tough.  By the time the skull was free of the spine, his axe was blunt and his shoulder aching, but oh, was it worth it.  He held his prize up before his head.  Yes.  Perfect. 

Something protruded from the earth where the skull had come from.  A bone, yes, but it looked painted, decorated.  He crouched down and carefully removed it.  It was slender and curved— narrow on one end and wide at the other.  This bone was pulled from a body long before the battle that had taken place here.   Inside was hollow, apart from lumps of dead earth inside.  He raised the narrow end to his lips and blew out the lumps of earth. 

A crude sound wailed from the end of the bone, shattering the silence.  Shock ceased his breath, but the released sound bounced back and forth off the broken walls of the fort, resounding again and again. 

A blow slammed hard into his temple, throwing him across the courtyard.  His skin tore against the jagged debris as he rolled across the ground, but he would not acknowledge pain, not yet. 

A guttural roar filled the courtyard as hooves fast approached.   Creature grabbed the hilt of a broken sword, scrambled upright and threw towards the sound.  The sword found its mark between two burning red eyes, sending a thick, hairy body crashing to the ground. 

He ignored the wetness trickling down his ear and scanned the courtyard for more danger, withdrawing his bone dagger.

'Creature, my boy.  What have I told you about this place?’ 

          Shock and adrenaline forced Creature’s hand.  He lashed out with the dagger towards the voice, before realising who it belonged to. 

          A gloved fist grabbed his wrist and twisted it almost to breaking point. 

          Creature twisted his body to stop his wrist from snapping, cowering beneath a furious Father.  Dread washed over him.  He had disobeyed Father.  Father would punish him.  

          ‘You were forbidden to come here, Creature.  I have spoken of the dangers that lay in wait.  Dare you so recklessly disobey me?’

          ‘Creature was just looking for….’ 

          ‘Silence!’ snapped Father furiously as he grabbed Creature by the throat and lifted him off the ground.  Creature could not breathe.  His throat blazed fire and his eyeballs felt like bursting, but he daren’t struggle.  He knew better than to argue against Fathers wrath.  Creature suspended from his grip, breathless and still. 

          ‘Creature…sorry…’ he struggled to say with burning breath.   

          ‘Not nearly as sorry as you will be.’ 

          Father released his grip, dropping him to the ground, choking.  The respite was short as Father grabbed a fist full of hair, wrenched him across the boneyard and suspended him over the dead beast with a sword between its eyes.  The smell was so foul, Creature almost vomited. 

          ‘This is what happens when Creature disobeys my orders!’ Father bellowed, before throwing him to the ground. 

          Creature cowered on all fours and watched in awe as Father lifted the beast up and cast it over the cliffs edge, down hundreds of feet to the crashing waves below. 

          ‘My orders are to keep you safe, Creature.  Disobey me again and you will ruin all that we have prepared for; all that you are destined for.  I would not deny you that.  Now come, my boy.  We will discuss an adequate and lasting punishment that will remind you never to disobey me again.  Then we will talk of plans.’

          ‘Yes, Father,’ he said obediently, crawling after Father on all fours.  ‘Father?’ 

          Father froze, not turning around.  ‘What?’

          ‘May I keep what I came for?  May I keep the skull?’

          Father looked over his shoulder at Creature’s prize.  ‘A fitting visage for a Creature.  You may keep it.  Now come.’

          Creature held the skull under one arm and crawled after Father, but jumped when after a few paces, Father stopped suddenly.  His head tilted in the air, this way and that. 

          ‘No.  It cannot be…  They are dead.  All dead.’

          ‘What cannot be, Father?’

          ‘I must leave at once, Creature.  But do not think you have escaped my wrath.  Wait for me in your cave.  I will return soon to administer a fitting punishment for your insolence.’  In the blink of an eye, Father was gone again. 

          Creature righted himself on his legs and walked the rest of the way towards his cave, wishing that the punishment Father would deliver would warrant a speedy healing and not leave him crippled for two months like the last one.