The TwiceBorn

The Ruler of Twice

"When love is not madness it is not love"--Pedro Calderon de la Barca

    They tumbled out of the forest, a disjointed mass of dead fur and rotted flesh.  Sar saw that he hadn't heard one beast but several.  All of them, five in total, slid to a stop like gawky pups.  Sar was overpowered by a revulsion so thick it coated the back of his throat like acid.  His stomach lurched and he heaved a ropy mixture of saliva and water into the grass.

A slow,  heavy pulse thudded in his head as he wiped his mouth.   And, suddenly, he was no longer afraid.  It was as if he'd vomited his fear up along with whatever else had been in his stomach. It left him with a feeling of...what?  He frowned into the grass, puzzled.  Insulted. Yes, that was it.  It was a word used for lighter fare but it fit the moment as he stared at the scene before him.

Perhaps chinks opened up in the UnderRealms, which enabled little devils to climb up into the light, hand over fist.  And maybe all the Old Gentlemen sat Below and played cards and used souls for chips, yes, it was possible, and it frightened him. But this.  This was an abomination.  It awakened a sense of outrage he hadn't known he possessed.  These had been made and that insulted him. Their presence did a stomping shuck and jive all over his sense of propriety.

Molded like grotesque sculpture and fashioned into unnatural objects, something had wanted them this way.  He could accept The Twiceborn and all of her snakebit following but not this.  This was nothing more than a freakish reconstruction of what had once been harmless.

He watched them, a faint curl on his upper lip, as they stumbled about the clearing.  "They used to be dogs," He thought feverishly.  "Pets. Someone's pets." 

One of them whined and took a tentative step towards him.  Sar saw that its nails were enormously long and thin, caked with dirt from running through the woods.  "No,not long" He realized, with fresh horror.  The skin had peeled back like wood shavings,and it gave the nails the illusion of length.  The thing teetered back and forth, and watched him through a spongy tissue that filled its eye sockets, and panted.  It's peeling, black tongue bobbed in its mouth.  It whined again, a soulless noise that held all the ability to drive him mad.

The others paced back and forth, tails tight against their stomachs.  Their organs were visible through transparent flesh.  Urine squirted from between their back legs,  and burned the grass black. The clearing filled with a sour smell like death left too long in the sun.  Sar clamped a hand over his mouth and swallowed thickly.

A large cur stepped forward, doddering on its rotted pads, and strolled towards The Twiceborn.  It possessed all the air of an old campaigner and Sar stifled a crazy cackle.  Top dog.  Even an unholy mess like this needs a leader.  He pushed a hand hard against his mouth.  

He saw it had been a hound at one time, long legs and lop ears and it stood taller than the rest.  Its short fur had flaked away long ago and white tissue filled its eye sockets like tiny clusters of poisonous mushrooms.  Yet there was a black flicker in their spongy depths, a glitter of dumb, mad intelligence.  Below its chest, like a tumor, was another head.  It bowed forward, eyes pasted shut with dirt and mucus, and its long nose was nothing but a red horror.  Worn away by the constant drag against the ground.

"My god, my god, my god..."  Sar's mind rambled but his lips, thin and tight, remained shut.

The dog-thing swung around and looked at him as if it had read his thoughts and the second head dragged the ground in a long whisper.  The animal's strange eyes gleamed as it sized him up. It began to pant in the summer heat.  Long ropes of pasty saliva ran from its jaws like melted wax and its tongue lolled out, long and obscenely red.  The tongue slithered down, and coiled languidly around the other head.