Denies You Again

Renard reels as if slapped.

He checks again, but the word shines out from the white like a fat middle finger: ‘no’.

Hands trembling, Renard rips the paper apart and screeches. He shoves scraps of the page in his mouth, gnashes them, spits them out mindlessly, all while beating his fists on his furniture so ferociously he breaks his dining room table, as well as many shelves, doors, and chairs.

He yells inarticulately, and slams his forehead on the wall. The impact leaves a hole, soon joined by others, and by smears of blood. Renard wipes his forehead, sees the blood, and punches the wall. Though this displays some control, to say he is in any way calm is wrong. He grabs his horse’s saddle-mat, slaps it on her, fixes the reins, and leaves the city at full pace.

There is nowhere in particular Renard is aiming for. Rather, all that’s clear is what he’s not aiming for, as he avoids following any track that would bring him towards destinations he already knows, instead breaking from the roads and heading towards the wilds.

What did he think he deserved? Though his mind is voided with rage, this snickering voice of mockery rises into coherence from the shadows of his heart. What did he think he deserved? Who did he think he was, this whole time? Maybe the people of Sebilles could forgive and forget he was the Iron King’s stooge, but whatever fragments of God still reined and judged the souls of this world certainly hadn’t.

It’s grown late. He dismounts his horse, both it and himself very tired. He settles himself against a tree and sleeps.

When he wakes, it’s morning. He is in a dense, unfamiliar forest near to a little pond. It reminds Renard that he did not bring supplies except what was on his person and in his saddlebags — so he has no food and only one canteen of water. Renard contemplates this as he waters his horse at the pond.

Objectively, this is a bad situation, and to leave the forest would be rational. He sees no paths or indications of any exits, but this observation does not scare or even worry Renard. Rather, it’s a relief.

Because it feels to confirm, that the very first instinct he had, after killing the Iron King, was correct. Renard Cox had done all he possibly could or needed to do, and now he needed to end. But his binding to Kingslayer, as on the buffalo trails, has clarified that he cannot escape to any new life. The paper mache face the Queen has allowed for him is revolting, and his true heart rejected even the most sympathetic master he would find in Verdan. There are no alternative paths. That means the current true purpose of Renard Cox is to die.

By the will of the Demiurge, as were Pleione’s words.

Renard purses his lips, not scared or sad at the prospect, but resigned with cold understanding. He would rather not prolong the affair, but this feels like an awful place to leave Kingslayer. The blade does need to be found and Renard would rather not have his ghoul make its retrieval even more difficult.

Renard lightly holds Kingslayer, point down, to the dirt.

He hesitates. Immense sadness rushes over him at the sight of his horse. If he could trust in the reality of divine justice and so request any act of mercy, it would be to ask that this innocent animal doesn’t also die here because of him. But if he could ask that, then he would want to ask more — and run back into comfort, away from death.

He steels himself and expels a breath. He raises his hand from Kingslayer’s hilt, allowing the blade to fall to the ground. The direction the fallen sword points to, like a compass needle, shall tell his course, and orient him towards the spot to die and deposit Kingslayer. He hugs his horse’s neck, weeping, and sets into the thick, wild forest on foot, guiding his horse along by the reins.

Hours pass into nights into days.

Many times, Renard’s resolve weakens. Anger, fear, resentment, and sadness well up and intermittently burst, but whatever the emotion, all tell him to stop following Kingslayer and instead escape the forest. But whenever he searches for landmarks that could point him to safety, there are none. Indeed, as much as outside the forest as inside the forest, there is nothing to guide him except trust in where God may be pointing him, and acknowledgement that there is nothing else left for him.

He doesn’t really want to die. But he must. And that’s all there is to it.

The endlessness of the forest is disorienting and hypnotic. Multiple times he pauses, unsure of whether he’s going in the right direction, with impulse to let Kingslayer fall and redirect him. Once again, profound feelings of error and lostness settle upon Renard. He points Kingslayer to the dirt.

The sound of rushing water then crosses his ear. He pauses, feeling what he should do is ignore the sound and continue as he has been thus far, but the solid landmark and goal the sound represents fills him with precarious hope, far too tempting to resist. If this is a stream or a river, maybe he can let his poor, thirsty horse drink.

Renard sheaths Kingslayer and follows the sound. He breaks out of the treeline into a clearing at the foot of a mountain, with a river visible far below in a basin. Knowing better than to pursue it, he instead spots a trail up the mountain, and a waterfall further ahead flowing down its face into the river below. He decides he will water his horse at the waterfall.

Staring over the forest and the basin as he treks up the path, Renard considers. This trail was definitely man-made, cut into the side of the mountain, and though the thick weeds confirm it hasn’t been maintained, the toughness of the stony ground has kept it from being overgrown. Renard found edible plants and signs of boar in the woods, and though primitive, the combination of the food, the mountain, and the river would make this a decent place for an isolated commune to live. Indeed, peering down the river below, Renard glimpses signs of ruined buildings in the distance, along the riverbanks.

Renard comes to the waterfall and lets his horse drink — a bridge spans over the water, man-made — as he considers further. That abandoned settlement must date to before the opening of Nix. He cannot see any paths or trails out of the basin, which is otherwise thick with forest, from this vantage. That is to say, the way out of this region, and the way people would travel to or from that settlement, would be over this mountain path — which means this path has a decent chance of leading back to civilisation.

Which means also, if he can get to the end of this trail, he can probably deposit his horse somewhere she’ll be found. Then, he just needs to find a good ledge off which he can throw Kingslayer, where it might also be found. Renard sips from his canteen, but as he goes to return its cap, snorts, pours out the water, and dumps the canteen off the cliff. His commitment to this course is cemented.

His horse is still drinking. Growing impatient, Renard strides forward to yank her back to the trail, when a profound unease clenches his chest, similar to the unease he felt while looking over the abandoned settlement. His horse’s ears swivel; something from beyond the waterfall’s froth is—

—A great rumble shakes the earth, and the face of the mountain explodes.

Barely in time to react, Renard shouts for his horse and shields his face with his arm from the waterfall’s spray. His horse panics in the chaos and sprints across the river, disappearing around a bend. Though Renard’s heart wavers with concern that she may lose her footing and tumble down the cliff, there is not really time for that, because looming in the air over him is a massive, black silhouette, which, Renard’s lagging brain hurriedly registers, is a colossal wormlike beast, with a mouth gaping like the head of a pipe.

Human hands and faces bubble beneath its rubbery skin, occasionally protruding as if trapped and desperate to push themselves out. Its mouthparts pucker and suck the air obscenely, and a membranous lip descends like a sheath to twitch and snuffle towards prey. It contracts upon itself, as if squeezed, and for a moment, the garden of humanoid statues under its skin is very defined.

This is obviously not a beast made by nature. It is a ghoul.

It has probably been here since the river was poisoned, which means that for over one hundred years, it has survived all encounters with those who would slay it. Renard draws Kingslayer with determination to fight, but also with acceptance that this is where he will die.

The worm crashes down. Renard barely sidesteps it and drives Kingslayer into its exposed flesh, latched on the ground as it is; but the worm’s rubbery exterior is so thick and pliant that Kingslayer struggles to pierce it. The worm detaches from the ground, rears back, and slams down again — this time, it does catch Renard.

The outer lip-sheath of the worm drapes around him like a tent, with the earth beneath him and the body of the worm, with its puckery pipe mouth, suspended overhead out of Kingslayer’s reach. A strange, thin, fibrous tongue descends; Renard grabs it and yanks. The worm thrashes in alarm, withdrawing its tongue into its body reflexively, and with it, bringing Renard.

The slimy innards of the ghoul are rapidly wilting, drying, and flaking into chalk — this cannot be normal. The worm thrashes more now, in greater panic, as Renard drives Kingslayer into the thing’s soft inner flesh to inflict as deep a wound as he can. The tip of Kingslayer tinks against something solid — the underside of the humanoid forms that cover the worm’s outer body. The worm spasms and writhes like a dying thing, in too much distress to remember Renard, as its body flexes outward and a great crack resounds. Like a salted snail, the inner flesh withers, as the robust mineralized corpses that had been sustaining the ghoul flip by Kingslayer’s enchantment into a talcum-like poison intolerable to it.

The worm falls feeble, then still, even as the flesh inside buzzes and withers. Renard spelunks out thing’s mouth at an untroubled pace, satisfied the thing won’t survive. Indeed, at the outer lip-tent, he sees the protruding silhouettes have shattered, and the worm is dead.

Renard waits, but nothing happens. A strange, indignant confusion falls over him in this silence. Without much else to do, he cuts a slit through the outer sheath and exits to the fresh air of the mountain. The worm sags sadly pathetic from this vantage, weepy and deflated.

Renard kneads his forehead and sits against the mountain. His gaze shifts between the worm’s corpse and the bright blue horizon, sun hung over the forest, still in disbelief.

What in the crickets was that! For how imposing the creature was, that barely felt like a fight. The most perilous part of that whole combat was if a boulder brained him or a spray from the waterfall whipped his eyes when the worm made its entrance. How on earth was that silly thing meant to beat him?

It was such a onesided battle that Renard cannot even trust it. He presses his ear against the cliff to hunt for rumbles of the monster’s kin that might burst out, ambush, and kill him. He searches his hands for infections, diseases, pox — none. There is not even any smell of stomach filth about him, just the white talcum powder he dusts out of his hair, harmless and scented faintly of soap.

Even Kingslayer is laughing. Stupid beast. No exhilaration or joy underlies this sentiment as with the Iron King’s defeat, but only the insulted frustration of being under-challenged.

Under-challenged? Against a ghoul that—…

The realisation dawns for Renard that perhaps he was not meant to die here. A ball lodges in his throat as he glances to the dead worm, his hand quivering angrily around Kingslayer’s sheath. The same loathing Renard felt when the perfect solution of Pleione’s rock came to him, is solidifying and rising again, this time, aimed at the sprawling blue heavens.

Of course I’m not letting you go, the world says. We agreed you’d make a good blade, and I’ll use you ‘till you shatter.