VIXEN - The Legend of the Five Totems

Chapter 21 - Retreat and Rampage

The Gored Ox's first night in Zambawana is a chaos-filled affair characterized by madness. Drunk with his newfound powers over the earth and the air, and channeling the might of his spiritual animal, he makes little distinction between good, bad, friend, foe, animate and inanimate. Freed from the confines of his own palace, General Maksai, the Gored Ox, races into the bright nighttime lights of his city.

The sound and motion of a truck bothers him, and he rages at it, dropping his head below the moving vehicle's undercarriage, and goring the truck's engine with his two massive horns. With a flick of the powerful muscles in his neck, the front of the truck lifts off the ground and tumbles to its side.

Maksai bellows a deep-throated scream of victory. Or is it a challenge? Were one to enter into the head of the creature and look at his primal thoughts, they might even find that to him, one is the same as the other.

To the terrified man getting out of the vehicle, the beast is a monster culled from his worst nightmares. It is a snorting mass of muscle and a thin coating of fur with glowing red eyes and a coruscating pattern set in a puckered scar just above his heart. Like any real beast, this thing is naked.

"Saints preserve us!" the driver says.

The cry catches the beast's attention. He turns toward the man and sniffs at him. With a snort of challenge, he dashes forward.

His horns gouge across the cab's underbelly, but the driver leaps clear. He lands badly and a shoot of agony numbs his arm at the shoulder.

Gasping in pain, the driver struggles to get to his feet. The movement is enough to call the beast's attention back down on him. Staggering forward, he tries to run, but is too slow. The beast grabs him by the throat with hands so large they partially cover his jaw.

"Please! Please! Spare me!"

The Ox blows out at him and a terrible chill splashes across the man's face.

"Please! I haven't done anything!"

"Nothing?" The Ox's voice is deep and terrible. "Just like this whole land. All my life, none have come to my aid."

The Ox turns and looks down the road. Farther up, and along this route, he knows that he has a rendezvous with destiny. The President of Zambesi, Omar Uwalujai, is no doubt resting comfortably in his bed.

"I think Uwalujai's time has come."

"Yes. I wanted the other guy," the terrified driver agrees as sweat seeps down his dark cheeks.

The Ox looks at this man and his sweating, terrified face. His smile shows thick teeth made for grinding roughage. He jerks his hand with the crunching of the man's jaw and neck, and drops the remains to the dirt.

"Uwalujai!" The Gored Ox screams. "I am coming for you!"

~

Cheetah jerks awake. From what she can tell, Dawn is still a ways off, and the last thing she wants is to get moving before she is ready. In the bed beside her, Barrera is tucked on his side, completely naked. She rolls her eyes at the sleeping man. It hasn't been the first time he has cozied up in the nude beside her. At least tonight, upon her reentry into bed following a very quick and successful infiltration of Maksai's compound to reacquire their things, he hasn't spooned her. Hyena has kept her distance, choosing the couch for her own. Her high pitched snores are irritating and oddly endearing.