In Huck's Hands

Bonus chapter: FLAY THE HERETIC! part 1

Lo'Ref Itched his soil-covered nose with the nubbed digit that he lost at some distant juncture in his blurred remembrance. He did not yearn for its presence, gnawing at the scarred fringes to alleviate the tension of the massacre he had just witnessed in astonishment.

The tarnished remains of the SandHounds lay before him. Every last one, besides the strongest of the mercantile banditry regiment, was roasted to grey-cindered bone by the tempest called upon by the exile turned Crimson Monarch, HuckleBerry Vasca.

He pushed through the glass particles and toppled tawny sands of the dune that had erupted into a molten outburst due to the injection of cyan plasma energy that had barreled its way into it. The lowered Oasis that the squatting SandHounds battled him over was like a profane glass mural, the only evidence the man who Lo'Ref believed to be human was so much more.

As he crouched to position his hand on the smoking remains of the leader of the Hounds, Lo'Ref lingered. Smelling the suffering emanating from the crispy bones. This man had caused him to become a murderer himself in order to safeguard what little he had as a vagabond. His round Buritian features now looked foreign, contorted in a flashed frame of torment that was experienced just before becoming slated for extinction from the sky.

"P-Please...Please, help me." Lo'Ref saw who had caused the fight between King Vasca and the Band of merchants, Beo, speaking to him. It baffled him. Lo'Ref saw King Vasca crush his lifeless hand back into a shallow grave, watched as the King smiled after nearly being chopped in half by Beo's axe. There was no feasible way that the suffocating half-buried man was still living, let alone pleading for aid from Lo'Ref.

Lo'Ref wanted to articulate, but nothing came from his arid brown lips. The time spent among the sands only documenting journals and constructing lethal snares took a massive toll on his psyche. "P-please, I-I'm so...Thirsty." Beo struggled in his predominantly concealed state, cringing his face at either the dismay of his family's genocide or the genuine pain he most likely felt.

The wind ululated as the two stared at each other, Lo'Ref made a gesture with his hand toward the carcasses littered near the warrior before him. He wanted to ask why this had happened, his throat gurgled and croaked but still no phrases came out. Lo'Ref put his hand to the scar just above his Adam's Apple.

He remembered Beo, the brutish fellow was one of the more ferocious components of the clan. The last month alone he watched Beo and his father hide behind the rocky outcrops in wait for passersby. Lo'Ref knew little of their Doigan-mixed nomadic culture but knew that it was not good business for them to butcher most of their customer base in what was essentially Noman's land.

The moan from Beo forced him to race behind a rust-colored boulder as his feet nearly gave out from his fatigue. His eyes fell back onto the now squawking man just when his brown eyes began to glow a feverish green that was unlike anything Lo'Ref had ever seen besides the King's cyan-glowing hand markings.

"I'LL KILL HIM, FUCKING VASCAN HYENA!" Beo's voice changed, the pleading tones turned into a vibrating bass that shook the teeth of Lo'Ref with each cadence. "I WAS SO CLOSE...FUCKING HUMAN'S. USELESS." Lo'Ref couldn't imply what truly was transpiring.

The dread overtook him as he fell to his knees in silent prayer to the Vascan diety Dhira. He begged the god of conflagration to sanctify his soul in what he thought were his final moments, to protect his younger siblings from harm, and to usher him into the superheated fires of deliverance once he left the mortal realm.

"You, you didn't help this worthless sack of shit...Why?" Lo'Ref heard Beo chuckle as he wriggled fruitlessly in his sandy crypt. "SPEAK WORM!" The entity's outrage was palpable, black veins now pulsing under the dark brown skin of Beo's body.