Chapter 8: Chapter Eight – Fangland

Going south, Calamitous found a narrow winding pass over the Black Mountains. When he stood upon one of their craggy peaks, he paused and gazed out upon the land beyond. His long tangled locks and his tattered swathe both fluttered about in the cold wind. His garment’s once brilliant colors could no longer be seen, for the woven cloth was now faded and filthy.

From the jagged spine of the ridge, Calamitous looked upon a great empty plain of bare gray dirt that stretched out beyond the mountains. He was sure that the Tree of Deepshadows had not yet reached this far, but still, the land was desolate. It was an easy guess to the cause: the Dragons must have scorched all the land with their fiery breath.

With a miserable sigh, he came down out of the Black Mountains and entered the slightly warmer land. As he passed through it, he left footprints in the slate-colored dust. Thus, after another day of walking, Calamitous came to the abrupt cliffs of a large number of narrow plateaus.

The plateaus looked more like giant weathered pillars of dark-gray stone. Here and there, wisps of cloud, smoke, or both floated up around these massive rough stone shafts.

Gazing up with awe, Calamitous almost forgot his pain and suffering as he passed through the narrow canyons that separated these gigantic natural columns.

They reminded the gray-Ancient of the Wormtongue’s jagged teeth. “It’s as though enormous fangs were piercing upward through the dust of the land,” he mumbled to himself. “I will call this place Fangland.”

While he walked, he suddenly noticed a strange hissing sound. After only a few seconds, the noise stopped. Then, when a few minutes had passed, the sound came again to his ears.

Calamitous was afraid that a Dragon was producing the odd hissing, but at the same time, something about the noise caused him to think otherwise. Overcome with curiosity, he cautiously followed the sound.

He heard the noise once more, but after a few seconds, the sound died away again. In that same moment, he came around and saw a large crystal-clear pool. Steam was rising from the water, and there were turbulent ripples disturbing its surface. Yet, even as he watched, the ripples seemed to be calming as if someone had just thrown a great stone into the pool moments before it came into his view.

Suddenly, Calamitous realized that even though the land was cold, there was no ice covering the small pond. However, there was a thick coating of ice on all the rocks and charred trees that surrounded the pool, and great columns of ice hung down from the nearby pillars of stone.

Calamitous stood wondering why there was ice all around the pond but none on it, when, in the deepest part of the pool, the steaming surface began to slowly bulge upward in a huge bubble until finally, with a great hissing and whooshing sound, the bubble exploded and steaming water shot high into the air spraying all the rocks and cliffs around the pool.

The gray-Ancient had never seen a geyser before. He moved closer and reached out to touch the water, but his frostbitten and benumbed fingers could not feel its heat, so he plunged more of his hand down only to find, with great pain, that it was far too hot.

Moving away from that pool, he found places where the water had collected in smaller secondary ponds which produced less steam. These were more bearable, and so in this way, he finally found one that was comfortably warm.

Desperately thirsty, he cupped his hands, scooped up some water, and took a drink. The water had a strong sulfurous taste, but other than that, it sufficiently quenched his thirst and eased his suffering some small amount by warming his insides.

After a few more handfuls, he returned to exploring this strange land. Thus, it was not long until he came to an area where the ground was covered in dark-gray mud. The charcoal-colored clay had dried to the point that it was riddled with cracks. However, here and there, he saw puffs of steam rising out of small pits. When he came closer to investigate, he found that there was wet mud within, and the dark-gray clay bubbled like a boiling pot.

Calamitous went a little further and found boiling pits of tar. Going on from there, he next found more geysers. Some of these belched forth water constantly while others went off from time to time. Unlike the first, some of these spewed up out of natural chimneys made of mud and other minerals that were deposited by the vomiting geysers. Beyond these, he found even more mud-pots of bubbling gray clay, pits of boiling black tar, and even a few pools of flaming lava.

All the water that the earth belched forth, when it had time enough to cool, became frozen into strange formations of ice. Thus, it seemed that the whole land was both cooking under his feet and freezing all around him. It was truly a land of extremes – a land of fire and ice.

Even after seeing all this, Calamitous still had found no place to rest, but then, finally, his strange gray and black eyes fell upon a site that presented a spark of hope. At the base of one of the natural pillars of rock, he spied the arched opening of a huge cave.

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To his weary soul, it looked like the perfect place to sleep, for he had gone many days without any. However, as he neared the wide mouth of the cavern, he paused and nervously took note of the blackened bones that littered the ground in front of the opening. It was clear that the creatures had been devoured by an inferno of flames.

“Is there a Dragon now hiding within?” the question echoed fearfully within the mind of Calamitous.

Cautiously, he entered and quickly found that it was considerably warmer inside. Beyond the arched mouth of the cavern, the chamber opened up into a large space with a high ceiling and a smooth dirt floor.

“This is as good a place as any to make my new home,” he thought with a sigh of relief, and so he started to collapse onto a flat boulder that, to his tired soul, looked as good as a bed. However, before he could find rest, a dark form shifted within the back of the cavern, and two glowing golden eyes peered at him from the shadows.

“Who’s there?” Calamitous asked with a slight tremble in his voice. “Who are you?!?”

In response to his question, a huge golden-maned Lion limped out of the darkness. Blood oozed from a terrible wound in his side.

In form, he was much like any other lion, save that he was as large as a horse, had shimmering golden fur, his two eyes glowed with a golden light, and he could speak in the Common-tongue of men.

The massive cat purred menacingly and then spoke. “Who am I?!?” There was a tenor of disbelief in his question. “You barge into my den, and then have the nerve to ask who I am?!? Since it is you who are the intruder, perhaps it is you who should be answering that question. Besides, I'm quite sure I smell the decay of Shadows within you,” the Lion growled in a deep rumbling voice. “After those villainous Dragons set ablaze my lands and reduced my pride to smoldering bones, I have but one desire left in me; one singular purpose in my heart: to devour all the enemies of the great High-King.”

Apprehensively, Calamitous drew out the obsidian blade, but because there was no strength left in him, he could not hold up the heavy stone sword to point it at the beast. Instead, he was forced to allow the tip to rest in the dust.

“I do not wish to kill you,” he mumbled with little confidence.

The great Lion purred again. “I smell no blood upon your blade, gray-one, so you shall either be my last meal, or I shall be the first to give drink to your sword. One or the other, I am at my end, for in my struggle to kill the Dragon who attacked my lands, I have been undone,” the great cat groaned.

Feeling sorry for the enormous beast, Calamitous started to say something, but the Lion interrupted with a ferocious roar.

“Enough talk, let us end this!”

And with that, the great cat leapt forward. His gaping jaws were opened wide. His white fangs gleamed like four long daggers.

The gray-Ancient stumbled backward. He struggled to lift up Wrath-bringer.

At the last, the huge cat fell upon Calamitous with great force, and then all went black.

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