Jadugarr crashed into the frothing water below, small rocks cutting into his flesh as he rolled around in the powerful current. Once he had stabilized himself, he put a hand to the newly-opened gash in his left ear and set off down the river. He would have his quarry in sight soon enough...
After a time of swimming down the river, he came across a fork with one end leading northeast, and the other southwest.
He started to consider the options presented to him, when a moving shape caught his eye down the southwest fork. Even from this distance, Jadugarr could recognize the smooth and deadly movements of the pike as it picked up on the tremors Jadugarr was sending through the water. His choice of direction, it seemed, had already been chosen.
Jadugarr made his way towards the side of the river, when he noticed that there was no bank to climb up. He was in a ravine, carved out by the ageless flowing of this river. He was trapped inside the slick, wet walls of this river's course.
Alright then, he thought to himself, and then began to pump his massive legs through the water, taking him closer to the fish in an oddly graceful water-gallop. Jadugarr tightened the grip on his whip, and let the current help to push him closer to his prey...
After a long time spent chasing the errant pike through the water, there it was... The school.
A roiling mass of pikes and longnose gars were downriver just a short distance, crashing into each other in their bid to get away from the whip-slinging kentaur. Oh, you better swim, 'cause I'm not stopping by for a friendly chat..., Jadugarr thought to himself as a broad grin spread across his likewise broad face.
Brook lampreys broke off from the group and charged at Jadugarr in a desperate attempt to slow him down, but with skillful flicks of his whip they were left as torn carcasses, their blood welling up and following Jadugarr down the river, providing him with a dark cloud from which the horse-man galloped in front of, a harbinger of blood and death for all of fishkind. The school was in a frenzy now, pushing all the muscles in their cruel bodies to their hardest as the fishslayer charged on behind them, bubble belching forth from his mouth as he attempted to bellow his laugh underwater.
But the school continued to move along, outpacing their hoofed doom. Jadugarr let out a cry of fury, and then realized that the walls of water-smmothed rock were no longer about him. The river had let out into a plain, allowing him to use his superior running speed against the fish.
After a few, dreadful, pounding moments of pursuit as Jadugarr raced his dripping frame along the riverside, occasionally clambering up small hills as they presented themselves, Jadugarr saw his opportunity. He was ahead of the school now, although their lidless eyes had not yet picked up on that in their crazed rush to get away from him.
Thoughts of glorious bloodletting coursing through his mind, Jadugarr plunged into the river again.
The longnose gar that had been leading the fray struck out at Jadugarr, but soon found he was looking at his right eye floating downstream, and that his side had been torn open by the horse-man's vicious lashings.
At this, the school had immediately turned around and started back upstream, going just as fast as they had been going in the other direction. And so, Jadugarr, ever the vigilant hero (if somewhat full of meat between the ears), clambered back out onto dry land and charged after the school.
This odd ballet continued for some time, Jadugarr climbing out of the water, running north for a ways, jumping back into the water, and then finally emerging again to rush off in the other direction.
As the sun began to climb towards its zenith, the rays were bouncing off of a river that had been coated in a thick, slimy layer of fish blood. Jadugarr, a dark red color from head to haunches, strode proudly out of the river, shook some of the bloody water out of his mane, and then began walking again. There were some survivors, true. Those who were too fast or who had split off in a different direction from the rest of the crowd. But Jadugarr had the scent of pike entrails and gar vomit in his nostrils, and he knew that he had slain many of his cowardly foes.
But Jadugarr had seen that he would no longer gain vengeance from these puny creatures. His true quarry lay to the south, the gaping womb from which all fishkind were spawned. The sounds of the ocean had started to drift to him now, the raucous screeching of gulls and the thunder of crashing waves brought to him on cool currents that bore the slightest whiff of salt, as well as the promise of his true destiny.
.
.
It's not much, but it's what I've got. I need to find something that doesn't have that damned [BENIGN] tag on it. I'm tired of running after those damned fish...
[ March 16, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]
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Topic: Death and Glory! (Read 58252 times)