Chapter 29: Volume 1 - CH 4.7

“Rolf! Where are you? Rolf!”

“Brother!”

Across the rock-flooded chamber echoed Emilie’s and Felicia’s desperate calls. From the gangway, the girls emerged into the broken, byzantine scene, with the rest of the Owlcranes cautiously in tow. Their way was unhindered enough; fortunately, the gangway’s mouth was left unbarred by the cave-in.

“Rolf! Answer us! Please!”

Stones pressed against me from all over. My chest and diaphragm were constricted—I could not answer the girls’ pleas. For that, I must first crawl out of this cage of rubble. Finding myself laying upon my side, I roused my every sinew to push and part away the rocks.

“Rolf!” Emilie cried, spotting me as I slid out from my lifesaving canopy: a greatshield. Dented all over it was, but it well-withstood the pummeling rock-rain.

“Ey up, muscle-pate! Ye look the gormless turtle there, eh? Hidin’ under that greatshield from the rockfall an’ what not. Jammy ye found it here o’ all places!”

“It would appear even impious turtles are fit for the mercy of the fates. Indeed, this day sees their full smiles upon you, my silly swain. The catoblepas—it is swallowed. We have much to be thankful for.”

“Hah! The cave-in’s the work of his cunning, more like. Couching beneath the shield like that—I’ll bat not an eye if that, too, was writ in his schemes.”

The collective commentaries from the other Owlcranes. Back on my feet, I caught a glance of Gerd’s displeased demeanour. But his words had the right of it.

The sole survivor of the 15th Squad—by his account, it was in this very stope where he last encountered the catoblepas. With his greatshield did he survive its lethal charge—the same shield that had carried him past the hail of arrowfire at the drifts of the Erbelde. But the brunt of the beast’s attack proved too overwhelming, and it was here that the poor soldier parted with his dear protector.

Just as he had said, the slab of iron was waiting here all this time. I had found myself in his same predicament, but with his beloved shield did I defy a hail of a different sort.

Though, had I found myself under a boulder as enormous as the one squarely suffered by the catoblepas, that certainly would have been the end of me. That I stood here now, beholding the Owlcranes and my sister, was fortunate proof of the contrary. Sheila was on the mark: I had the fates to thank.

But just as I had the thought to do so, the hairs on my nape stood on end. Electricity ran through my senses—something, somewhere, wished to kill.

“Oh, Brother… your wounds. We must see to the—”

“Stay back!”

My thundering bark stayed Felicia in her approach. Right after came a rumble. Off in the distance, boulders rose.

From under them emerged the beast.

“Gwfaah…! Goufh…!” that bull-demon breathed, heatedly, heavily. Its eyes twitched across their every corner about before freezing in their seething stareーupon me.

And only me.

Nary a mind was paid to the others present, their faces affrighted. No, the catoblepas freed itself from its live burial and commenced another charge straight at its ungraced enemy.

Stones flew from the beast’s rampaging path. I joined them as I dived off to the side. The escape found me untouched and the behemá beleaguered by both its wounds and the sheer maze of obstacles barring its way—dulled now were its erstwhile violence and vigour.

But no advantage was gained: this was a stalemate, through and through. The other five here were champions of the 5th Order, and neither their combined assault nor a gigantic falling boulder were able to put an end to this beast. What then, could?

There was little time. I searched for an answer.

Off to the side, a mouth in the wall—another gangway leading out. Next to it, the bellows I had noted before.

“Rolf!” yelled Emilie.

“All of you, stay away!” I shot back. “I’m its mark—no one else!”

Time for Plan C.

I bolted off, only to be immediately paralysed by pain now striking my every nerve like lightning. Perhaps in being flooded in all this agony were the throbs of broken bones drowned out.

“Egh!” I winced furrowingly. No time to tarry and whimper. Death was coming.

I forced one foot forward after the other and gained speed down the gangway, all the while sensing behind me the frenzied behemá tearing down the same path.

“Gaufh! Haufh!” it fumed, the beastly breaths searing my back like sirocco winds. But I pressed on, whipped into a fevered pitch by a primal fear, one of being gruesomely gored from behind.

Pain nagged away even now, ever so audible in its screams throughout my body. And so I muffled them from my mind, focusing solely on flying down the darkened tunnel.

Water—if there is one dilemma that any and all mining ventures could name, underground water would be the first to be aired. Strike the wrong rock and the entire minery could be inundated if left unchecked. To deal with it, bellows are sent in to syphon the water away.

That one such contraption lay back in the caved-in stope meant that further ahead slept a wellspring. Or at least, I hoped so. But if true, then a sizable body of water must have built up in the course of these last four decades. That would be my next destination, and if the fates remained kind, the catoblepas would be a fool to this fact.

“Oufh—!” I yelped, stopping dead in my tracks. The gangway terminated—no more ground lay before me. There I stood, upon the edge of another cliff.

Before me sighed a shaft, like a great tower of shadow. Far down below was its sump, now as an abyss of black waters—just as I had predicted. While murky, I could yet glean that it spanned far and deep. A veritable lake, this was.

I swivelled around and locked eyes with the beast as it rampaged down the gangway. Wrath writhed through its every sinew. The wounded catoblepas, now but a creature bent upon the kill, set its course straight for me.

Standing firm, I peered through the thick dark to discern the behemá’s features once more.

The thing was but a mass of muscle and bones. Clearly an illusion, for how else could blades merely bounce off its hide, and hammers and falling boulders scarcely slow its cruel career? Nay, it should certainly be a specimen of steel, elephantine and insurmountable.

And that was precisely why it would not swim.

Neither could the “hippo”, waterborne critter of the southern lands as it is. No, any creature, even with lungs of its own, would sink if heavy enough—the same should hold true for the beast before me.

“Come… This race is run, my friend!”

I tempered my resolve, gulped down all the air my torso would allow, and bent low to readiness.

The catoblepas and I, how battered and bruised we were. This would be the last exchange between us, the end of our game of cat-and-mouse. One final, fierce moment.

Ten passūs.

Five passūs.

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One!

I leapt backwards, right before contact could be made. My hands rushed up to catch the incoming horns, keeping them from running me through.

“Eaagh!” I groaned behind clenched teeth. My arms trembled against the sheer shock of having absorbed the catoblepas’ charge—though injured, my foe’s fury fueled the attack plenty enough. Pain once again rattled my entire body; I felt as though my flesh had begun to unravel at its every seam.

There we fell once again, together, through the shadowy shaft. I had avoided death by goring, but now another predicament loomed.

My back pierced the water. Thunder slammed against my eardrums.

Then, all was muffled.

Behind the curtain of bubbles, man and beast melted into the watery black.

Within it, our battle was broken. From the hulking horns were my hands freed. Confusion arrested my wits, but they found purchase soon enough. I squinted, scouring the turbid dark for the beast.

There it was—right beside me.

Then, softly, it sank.

I was right. The thing could not float. Not with an ungainly body like that. Something went right at last. Relief began to set in.

But the fates were conspiring.

Only a fool would fall for relief’s feint upon so cruel a place as a battlefield. The catoblepas had till now walked through mountains and valleys of corpses of its own making. Certainly many amongst those dead were taken by the same relief before their own ends. Delicious opportunities, they must have been.

And the beast was not about to let another go unseized.

“Bwafh…!”

Precious air plumed from my mouth.

Sharp pain erupted from my left ankle.

Giant teeth were eating into my leg.

The catoblepas funnelled the last of its strength into its maw, all in a bid to share a grave with its final foe.

Down.

Down.

Down, into the deep I drifted, pulled along by spite incarnate. But my leg was yet whole—the beast was soundly spent, its maw firm but mild in its bite. Were it any other day, just a mere twitch of its jaw would have torn off a man’s limbs like wet paper.

But that was all well and fine for the beast.

There was no need to tear aught. Not anymore. Pulling me down sufficed. A piece of paper is just as doomed at the dark bottom of a flooded sump, after all.

Ye shall savour naught a scrap o’ vict’ry.

By my shadow I’ll shut out the sun o’er all your future days, I will.

Your days, and only yours.

I spied such thoughts in the beast’s eyes, vindictive ruminations that were as kindling to the conflagrations in its scarlet stare.

Eyes by whose fell light stabbed the darkness.

Eyes that craved murder, committed through any and all means.

Eyes that would shoot horror and hysteria into the faint of heart.

Eyes portending so much calamity—

—gored through with a shard of ore.

“Vfwagh…!?” frothed forth the final breath from the beastly lungs, freeing my leg from the bite of the slacking maw. The ghostly sun in its eye was shut out by the silvered stone, a souvenir I had availed myself during my dazed planning.

Thus did the now half-eyed beast drift quietly into the deep. Yet the other half’s gaze remained unbroken upon me, still and intent. I stared back, watching as the beast was swallowed up by the abyss.

The thing had dealt death to droves of our knightly number. No doubt it was our nemesis. Yet it was we who had encroached upon its dwelling. To curse it was foul duplicity and blatant bigotry.

Nay. I admired its heart instead. Curiously so.

The heart of the defiant, fixed upon the battle at hand, one fought to the end of all ends. No matter the manner of the moment, that behemá struggled on and on. With every bone and sinew and thought in its mind and body tasked to the fight, it failed in only one respect: to, at any point, relent before its last moment.

What look had I upon my face, I wonder?

The face of an ungraced, a man ever at odds with his fellow men. A man that has now come to revere not his brethren, but a beast.

What was the look upon the face of such a man, witnessing that same vaunted creature vanishing beyond the verge of all knowing?

As if the thought to do so had just occurred to me, I began my swim back up, leaving the lifeless empty below.

────　Notes　────

Passus

(plural: passūs) A unit of measure used by the ancient Romans, taken from the length of a pace (2 steps). 1 metre is equal to 0.6757 of a passus. A passus, therefore, can be roughly equated to 1 and a half metres.

Sump

In mining, the very bottom of a vertical shaft. A pit in which collects waste material, and at times, drainage water.

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