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[SirHoneyBadger]

There is no effect. There is no axe.

See the muscles bunch in his back and shoulders. On the emaciated frame they are grotesque, transformative. The clean sweat in tiny rivulets makes it's way down his back, muddying, running slow. He hasn't been eating much, lately, and not only because there isn't much to eat.

'Round and round the tree he strains, pushing, pressing, probing imaginary weakness.
It's the work of an hour-then two hours-then six.

There is no effect. The tree takes no notice.

See the hands, those gnarled brown roots, grip the bloated trunk-find purchase in bark smoother than they are. Those hands are immense. Too long fingers, thick yellowed claws. The bones in them protest at too many hours of groaning effort.

The tree is young, strong. Younger than the hands who's efforts go unnoticed as the skin enveloping them begins to slide and blister. It's been a long time since they have done the work of this season, with no tools, no crew; every hand in this place is needed for it's own task.

Spring has arrived: a barren spring where survival hangs on constant grinding effort, 16 hour days. 

The trunk disappears within them, a betrayed lover's svelte throat; but as though from no effort, there is no effect.

As well to wrestle a river.

See the eyes now.
They are as green as the thought of a forest, yet they burn; a forest consumed.

A conviction lies within them that they have never known. It is not that most of the food is gone now. It is not the desire for acceptance among this new, yet welcoming place, a place he might live and even call home. Nor is it a desire to prove himself to himself, or to the memory of a father and mother, both of which let go of this world long ago--let go of their own personal trees, in their own personal ways, and were turning even as dry leaves do, to dust.   

In these past weeks; at the worst possible time for both himself and for everyone depending on him, he'd felt his day-to-day passions begin to seep away, felt desires, fears, flowing into the rock of this place as though by osmosis, until his heart had room for a singular need. Existence had become a distraction for him. He found himself living in a world built of buzzing flies, of shadows and reflections of what had once been real. It was though he had died, and now a single tendril of light begins to dance on the pyre surrounding his living corpse.

There is only the Sword.

The Tree shudders for the first time.
Cracks deep within itself.

He stops, then pauses to breathe and to stretch a little, clumsily. Moving to the opposite side, he gathers himself, gathering the weird fire inside of him, and imagines that there is no tree. For him there is only the sword. Straining again, gripping hard with knuckles like beaten iron, he pushes with legs of wire, lungs and heart pounding like bellows, and the hammer of a forge, but no forge hotter than the fire within him. A little air escapes his mouth, and again he pushes, with his body but with his thought more than his body.


It is a long, long time.

But less time.

 
The tree cracks again, and bends this time, so slightly, but that he can feel it in his hands and in his heart. His boots, soles worn bare, slide a little in the dirt. He stops and clutches the tree gratefully. He will kill this living thing, a young straight tree that may otherwise live for centuries, and plant things around it, and perhaps kill them to, or their children, or the children of other beings, that he and others like him may survive.

And it doesn't matter.

There is a cycle to shit. To dirt, to death, and to that which is dead. Rotten, dis-integrated, gone...but not really, not ever. The dirt on his shoes, and the salt that drips into his eyes, are proof of that. Proof of change, but proof also of eternity.

He shifts his grip, stares for a moment into the dying sun. Tears mingle with sweat, traveling down the wasted landscape of his face like streams to the sea.
The Sword is a weapon. A tool for the slaughter of thinking beings, yet dreamt up by a gardener who has never yet lifted a hand in real anger, who's heart has never known raw hatred for anything. What is there to hate in his life? The sky for not raining enough on the land he cultivates?
It always rains somewhere, sometime.
Tiny creatures plaguing the plants he gently tends? Mustn't they eat too?
Perhaps a bad boss, someday, somewhere. No boss has a reach longer than the road, and no bad boss need last longer than a single job.

His father did what was in his nature.
His mother really lived only while he did. Following him to another world that he'd always occupied was only a continuation of what she was.
Both had given what they had to give, and stepped aside.

The sword was a killing thought, a killing tool. A dream of fire, steel, gushing blood. It's glories would lay on the ruined fields of thousands of dying farmers.
But the sword was part of the cycle, too. Death was a thing that the farmer understands as well as life. All life is born from death, and can only find a place to grow because of the sacrifice of previous generations. The blood of farmers, kings, and little biting things would shed to defend the fields, maintain the peace, to make room for the next spring's growth.


It is a long, long time.
But less time than before.
The tree groans, wounded deep within itself.

The roots are losing their grip, even as his fingers tighten their stranglehold. It won't be long now. He sees the sword, but sees it against a green field. No plough, or spade, or scythe; yet no less a tool of the fields. They will need defending, even in this place of seeming kindness, seeming emptiness. The others have told him something of winter here. Of the time he'd just missed before his arrival, and why he should be grateful that his road to this place had been so very long. The sword could find a use here, could be a part of the cycle.

It's the only thing he has to hold on to, as everything else within him burns so brightly away. 

A popping is heard, deep within the tree. A long moan heard as the soil shifts and fingers/branches shiver.

He turns away from the setting sun gathering purple clouds in the darkening sky. Removing his hands from the tree, he spits on them and rubs them together, feeling the soggy leather flesh slide together, bright with pain. A distant feeling, like that cold night wind he hasn't noticed. He will plant hops here, he decides absently. Incorporate the trunk into the trellis.
"Less a crime to do murder-with need-than to waste with need." He repeats the mantra by rote, a saying his mother drummed into him over decades.

Even as he says the words, he knows what a lie they are for him.
To forge the Sword, he would burn the mountains down. To quench it, he'd boil the seas.

Boil his own living blood to steam and ash. Sheath it in his marrow-bones. 
 

For a final time, he grips the tree. Shoving hard but carelessly now, with a final certainty, swatting another fly,

Cracking, lurching, uprooting...
Bursting from the earth in a sudden shower of red mud...

He stumbles in the direction of the tree, panting. Fresh earth has exploded from the roots of the fallen adversary. Little particles fall down his shoulders, down his back.


Closing his eyes, he wipes muddy sweat from his eyes, carefully, slowly. Blinking. It's the youngest of seventeen trees he's taken down in this area. Two fully grown crabapple trees in the middle of the biggest field had needed the full participation of everyone. Felling the second one ruined the only axe the had between them: a copper headed hatchet Morion cut down from a broken battleaxe that had once been forged by the group's metalsmith--before that dwarf's skull was smashed to pink paste by one of the terrible things born of the cold and the darkness of last winter.

Suddenly, none of the other efforts of springtime were anything like this.

The perfectly straight trunk lies forgotten on the ground, but suddenly he can feel it again, held in his hands, alive and growing. 




He blinks again.


There is something there, under where the tree was.

Something there... A stone?

The rocks around here are light in color: pale yellows and oranges, pale gray. Whatever this is, he sees it as smooth and very dark despite the obscurement of the soil. Starting to drop to the ground, Mat'tock catches himself with a chuckle that sounds much closer to a groan. He's been out here for hours, and his back is screaming, nevermind his knees. Pain doesn't matter much these days, but injury is still a concern, today still anyway.

A few short steps puts his walking-stick, leaned against an ancient, half shattered wall, within reach. He holds it not unlike the tree, and slowly slides down to the ground. It's undignified, ridiculous, but it saves pulled muscles and wrenched tendons.

Everything is stiff and clumsy.

He hasn't had a drink in far, far too long.

Ignoring the violence going on in his knees, brushing the cool mealy soil away from whatever is there...The dirt falls easily away, revealing the face of a smooth black boulder, uncharacteristic of any of the rocks he'd seen around here. Crawling across the muddying ground, he retrieves his waterskin. A few drops of water-all that's left-wash away a portion of the muck.

Crimson, like heart-flesh, with streaks of orange, dried blood. A feel more like metal, and...melted?

Tiny congealed pockmarks stare out at him like the hollowed sockets of a dead man's eyes.
 
Digging excitedly, he first finds the circumference, then uncovers a hole through the center of the rock, right through the center of which, the sapling's taproot had bizarrely found a path. Beyond exhausted, he strains to shift the rock, to no avail.


More will have to wait for the others, for the distant red dawn, but he somehow knows it's what he's been looking for, without ever looking.

See the stone. See the Sword within it.

[Doomshifter]

Ooh, mysterious! What could be this strange red rock, I wonder? A rock most wonderful, it must be... Either that, or it's just a red rock. I've seen a story with a really weird twist like that. The main character obsesses over this amulet that he had carried with him since he was a child. It turns out it was actually just a fancy trinket. Nothing special. He's devastated.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Ohhhh... good idea!

[Heron TSG]

Awesome writing. You made it sound as if he was grinding away the trunk with his bare hands. (which is pretty dwarven)

[SirHoneyBadger]

Awesome writing. You made it sound as if he was grinding away the trunk with his bare hands. (which is pretty dwarven)

Pushing it over by slowly breaking the roots on all sides. I've actually done that before, so the story takes from personal experience.

[Hawkfrost]

Back where I come from, we use a hacksaw.



'Nayway. I could see this when it is finished being a published book, with a big, hairy, bloody dwarf on the front cover giving a look that boils down to "Want some of this?"

[SirHoneyBadger]

I am a hacksaw.


Here's another installation.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Every morning, the sun shines down on the face of the nine mountains. 

See the face of RingingDeep:

Newborn light glints off a chisel-shaped peak, casting a sundial shadow over immense terraced fields and gardens, which stretch out and down more than 300 fertile acres. A series of small quarreys lie in shadow to the far west. All is surrounded by once-mighty stone fortifications, most of which are now completely overgrown.

The wild forest beyond these ruins grows closer every day.

Stark gray fades to softer blue as the sheer eastern cliff drops more than a thousand feet onto scrub-covered hills. The villagers of Strong Mouflons have raised sheep on these hills for almost a hundred years, hunting grouse and other game for longer than that.

They know these mountains as an ancient place from which terror sometimes comes.

A narrow path winds down the side of the peak, in the direction of the village below. The shadows cast in the morning light transform the shape into a dreaming dragon.

Strangers have settled on the mountain again.

It's not the first time, although these have lasted longer than any others in recent memory. The village is poor, and the rich copper nuggets the strangers use to trade with are a welcomed boon, but the elders of the village remember dark times, and terrible whispers from their youth. They know that less remain among the strangers than went up last fall.

There are always less.   


Bardolom finds him before the rays of the sun.

There is no awareness. Nothing but the Stone.

See the huddled figure sprawling in the dirt.   
Lips cracked and bleeding, he mutters wordlessly through clenched jaw. Sweat and mud have painted his face into a garish rictus mask, made more grotesque by the raw fevered eyes.

His hands are worse.

See his treasured walking stick in splinters.
Bloody splinters.
 
He's been out here all night, using it as a digging tool. Jamming it into the frozen earth, scraping away the hard clay and surrounding stones, since before sunset.

Bardolom is grateful the dried blood obscures the ribboned flesh. Grateful the madness atleast kept the man working, kept him alive through the cold spring night.

It's bigger than it seemed, the stone: a squashed red cylindar three feet across and atleast as deep, with a narrow hole drilled almost perfectly through the center. Redder now for all the blood.

It looks natural, to Bardolom's eye, but he's never seen anything like it before.

He's seen all of this before, though, many times.
He knows it'll soon end in either life or death, maybe death for all of them.


It takes both Baromek and Tolbrek to drag him away.

"I needs to find my learnor'd brother. Brings to tha Monarch with t'is one... Bad or good, we'll sees it through, but be carefullest -- 'e's a dangerous now to self and to all. "

Mat'tock only lets go of the walking stick's remains after trying to stab Tolbrek, and only unwillingly.
The black eye he'll have in the morning is a mercy.
 
It brings with it the only sleep he may find.

[Heron TSG]

I like how it seems as if the story continued while you were gone.

(ex: Mat'tock went insane suddenly)

[skaltum]

epic 

[SirHoneyBadger]

The Monarch's children were sent off to Shal'e'ish's quarters for the duration. It was too risky for them to stay here.

The tiny figure huddled in the nest of blankets on the Monarch's bed didn't look dangerous. Unconscious still, fever ate at his flesh until he seemed nothing but a bundle of twisted sticks. They'd boiled dusty bones, scraps of dried meat, and not a little leather, into a thin stock. Every hour or two, the Monarch carefully plied the figure with a few spoonfuls of the broth. Mat'tock--whatever was left of him--drank, automatically, never waking.

Although unconscious and unresponsive, it was obvious that he was experiencing horrific dreams.

Even in sleep, if the endless series of nightmares could be called 'sleep', he never stopped moving. Twisting his body into positions of agony, one after the other, no sound escaped his lips save for the faintest rasps of breath. Occasionally, even those would stop, and the Monarch would use the polished blade of his dining knife to guage his patient's breathing.

The shiner on Mat'tock's left eye had already healed preternaturally quickly. Rapid healing was a known trait of the condition Mat'tock was undergoing, even as his body showed more and more of the skeleton beneath. It saved his hands, and three frostbitten toes. The hands remained ghastly, but none of the tendons had been severed. Infection still would have likely destroyed much of the use in them, but even covered in thick layers of mud and blood, the deep cuts remained clean, and were beginning to knit.

His hands were bound in gauze of wool which had been boiled in the last of the honey, wild tansy, and the seemingly neverending liquor from Morion's tiny flask. The wool came from the same blanket Baromek had loaned Mat'tock a few weeks ago.

Stubs of broken tallow candles smoked and guttered in ancient stone sconces. Chrysoberyl, the Monarch, sat quietly in a crude-looking chair of logs bound with hemp. It wasn't much of a throne, he'd long ago wryly noted, but a handful of pebbles and several days' work had rendered the seat splinter-free, and a good deal more comfortable than the exquisite alabaster sculpture he'd briefly ruled a Nation from.

A small book on his lap lay forgotten, as thoughts drifted back to those distant times. The volume, bound in faded green dyed leather, was a rare and valuable treatise on alchemy, and one of his most prized remaining possessions. It was an heirloom of his time in the Arena, smuggled into the Iron Bowl by a prisoner Chrys had treated through a difficult pregnancy. Having saved the child, the woman had gifted Chrys the book. 

It was a time long before the Arena that he went to now, though.

He'd forgiven his older brother's ambitions long ago. Chrys's father, King Jadeite, named Chrys heir on his deathbed, the reverse of what was expected. The reasons for the decision were only guessed at, but rumors that poison played a part in the king' demise-that the plot had been too late discovered by the King, and then covered up-reached Chrys's ears shortly after the funeral. Chrys wasn't sure of any truth in the rumor. They weren't a close family-the stresses and confines of ruling precluded much familiarity, even among blood kin-but his brother had always been dependable, stoic even. Seemed the loyal type, and seemed to feel real affection for their father, atleast as much as their father could be loved, considering the situation.

Their father might have believed it, though. The horrid wasting disease that ultimately claimed his life-if it was a disease-had put the older man in a deep depression. Chrys could understand the desire for revenge against such a thing. To fight back, even against shadow and rumors, no matter who was harmed. 

The earthquake had a hand in it. Shortly before the King's death, several buildings collapsed, including an aboveground temple complex that doubled as a public forum and administration building, and over 20 deaths were reported. Some of those with connections to the court. It wouldn't have been hard to use the disaster as an excuse to get rid of any inconvenient assassins.

Chrys had never really believed in a conspiracy, in his heart of hearts. That hadn't stopped the accusation, or the sentence of banishment for his brother and his pregnant wife. Hadn't stopped the execution of seven nobles with inconvenient political views. Two of them had been good friends of his father, protected until his death, and well-known to Chrys since childhood.

All of them were termed "necessary evils" by his advisors, but none of that mattered in the end.
The Circle of Mothers--the most powerful political faction in the Kingdom--backed his brother, instead. They carried with them most of the army, and many of the guilds. Many felt that the earthquake, and the King's disease, were signs of the Gods' displeasure. Something else Chrys didn't believe in, but was nonetheless affected by.

Chrys and his children barely escaped on a fast merchant ship that twice had to fight off his brother's forces. Again, nature played a part. A storm as sudden as the earthquake came up and swept them far off course, leaving them stranded without enough food or water for days..

They were finally captured by iguanaman pirates on the coast of a desert island. The ship's crew, among them a dozen loyal soldiers, were ambushed and slaughtered while pulling the ship close to a seemingly empty shore.  Chrys, his children, and Carbuncle-for over 30 years the captain of the Royal Bodyguard, and a fine general besides-escaped into the sparse jungle, but were quickly captured like animals in fishnets, then thrown into the hold. The remainder of the voyage was spent in manacles, with the constant threat of Chrys's children ending up on the menu to keep the two adults in line, until finally they were sold into the depths of the Iron Bowl. Things got worse after that. He'd nearly lost his family, many times. Carbuncle saved them all a dozen times over. That, and the simple fact of their novelty.

The Masters of the Arena were canny enough to know that separation from their father would likely mean death for the young boy and girl. Chrys-an exotic-was a big draw, and better three attractions than one. For their popularity, they recieved special treatment, better food. That made existence slightly more tolerable, but did nothing to stop the jealous knives of other prisoners in the darkness, the threat of which even his young son hadn't been immune to, or the more obvious hazards of the arena above. For that, there was always Carbuncle.

The Monarch, being of royalty, had been taught the use of weapons, and how to command soldiers, from a very early age. That training served him well in the Arena, but Carbuncle taught him to survive in the lightless city below the Bowl. How to let go of honor, of pride. To lie, steal, to kill in the dark, from behind.  Whatever he needed to do, to survive, to keep his kids, and even Carbuncle, alive.

Chrysoberyl's education in medical matters became the key to his freedom. One of the Arena Masters' own sons contracted cholera, which began to spread among the other workers and prisoners. Chrys treated the epidemic with yogurt and rehydration regimens, and the grateful Master arranged their freedom. Tol-Brek had been one of the cured prisoners, and the two became friends. Tol-Brek was himself soon let go, and sent for the Monarch shortly after the first disasterous attempt to reclaim 'RingingDeeps'.

Upon reflection, for all the petty savageness he'd committed, all the evils he'd performed for the sake of entertainment, the Monarch felt that he was a better man now than he'd ever been as a King. Whether his brother was guilty or not, whether he even believed in that guilt, King Chrysoberyl would have done anything, sacrifice anyone-and had-to hold onto a throne he'd never truly wanted.

As a man, as a survivor, Chrys lived for the sake of his family, and he was far closer to them than he'd been to his own father, the distant king. Or to his wife, a beautiful woman he still loved as the mother of his children, but whom he'd never really gotten to know. He'd never known his own mother. Duty fulfilled, and with the King's blessing, she returned to her own country after Chrys's brother was born. The young princes were given over to the care of a series of nannies and tutors, presented to their father only occasionally, and then usually because one or the other had gotten in some kind of boyish trouble.

Chrys didn't want that for his own kids. He'd found a home here, a place far away from the necessity of distance. He'd do whatever he could to keep his children close, safe, and hopefully comfortable.

On the cot before him, deep in dreams and nightmares, lay the key to either survival or destruction. There wasn't time to find anyone else with his skills, and if they didn't get enough food to last the winter, none of them had anywhere else to go. Whatever Mat'tock saw in his mind's eye would have to be realized, and soon.

The rhythmic breathing guttered and stopped again. Carefully setting the half-forgotten book on the small cluttered table next to his chair--there wasn't a shelf in reaching distance--and picking up the little eating-knife, the once-was-Monarch bent close to the figure.

Whispers. Barely discernable, but they sounded like real words.

The Monarch pressed his ear close to the dying man's mouth.

"...Steel...steel...strong...bright...shining...gems...gems...orange...fire...red...jewel...blood...jewel...bone...white...ivory...tooth...tooth..." Words indeed, they went on and on in the croaking whisper.

Chrys quickly gathered a nearby quill and an inkwell. No vellum to write on, anywhere... His little girl Amethyst liked to draw, and sometimes she'd wander off with his writing tools. She must have taken the few pages he had left, when she went with Shal'e'ish. Hurriedly, he grabbed the set-aside book, and began to write across the precious pages.


 

[Heron TSG]

This is amazing. I never really pictured what a crazed artifact-maker would act like until you showed me in gruesome detail.

[skaltum]

KABUMP!

[SirHoneyBadger]

Don't worry: I know what I want to write, I just haven't had time to write it.

[skaltum]

BUMP! its been a month (