Left It To Fester

With a ferocious scream like a burst kettle, the ground lurches, the air bursts, and swept on the tide of a ferocious torrent, Renard’s spine slams against a post. The world behind his closed eyelids flashes white. Pain rips through his beaten back. Submerged in thrashing, frothing water, its current more swift and massive than even the harshest of flash-flood rapids, Renard barely has the presence of mind to know that he is presently pinned against a column of bark — except for one arm, dangling free in the overpowering tide, holding Kingslayer, the current only an inch from ripping it from his yet failing grip.

No! Screaming inside himself, Renard’s heart races quicker than lightning. He strains for leverage against the tree — but his body is not moving. Far beyond the basic strength of the current, Renard realises in horror, the frigidity of this water is so unfathomably absolute, it has sapped the vitality from his very flesh and marrow, so that despite the incredible heat and panic burning circuits through him internally, he can only stay cold, posed, and still.

Except for the arm that holds Kingslayer, whose blade shudders tremendously, as if about to snap from its own frenzied vibration. Submerged in this water, its enchantment is plainly working in overdrive, stressed as it has never been before — but Renard will never doubt Kingslayer’s might or power. It is always a trustworthy thing.

The water crashing over Kingslayer is, so blessing of blessings, comfortably warm. Straining his digits to the utmost, Renard forces his hand closed around the hilt with as vicelike a grip he can manage, and heaves his arm forward against the ruthless current. His biceps scream, veins begging to pop, bulging up his from fingers to his temples, and his neck is a heaping of cord. The water is so strong that fighting it feels like wrestling a mammoth, that it will amputate his shoulder from its socket as easily as a child tears off the arm of a paper doll, but by a miracle of unremitting adrenaline and force of will, Renard draws the blade flat to his chest, where the water will not steal it, but only pins it to him more surely.

Kingslayer buzzes. The water warms. Though his heart kicks with joy, there can be no celebration. Having been submerged underwater all this while, his eyes clenched shut, mouth clamped shut, and having inhaled nothing as urgently as he holds for dear life, his chest kicks and strains with agony, begging for air. It is already a testament to his incredible physical control that he has not taken in poison, but if he gasps, it is over.

Calm as he can manage as his throat bucks, Renard throws his free hand up and drags himself up the tree. His head breaks out of the water — every instinct commands: breathe! — but he forces himself yet to hold. Only once secured as high as he can get, hanging himself out of the water by a branch, and only after tilting his head down and shaking off the worst flowing trails that still stick to his skin, does he finally indulge in a breath.

Restricting himself to just that careful gasp, droplets of water trickling yet down his face, he squints to survey the scene.

Two immediate things catch his attention.

First is the anomaly. Those ephemeral, shimmering tiles have solidified into a pale rainbow of chalky squares, which have separated and dilated. Within the oval they now form is a visible tear, and though Renard has only a glimpse before the image fades, he sees within that tear a vision of somewhere else — a lakeside with black sky, gnarled trees, and the silhouetted peaks of tents — so real that, if he tread forward, he would find himself in that place. The deadened tiles then putter inert completely, clattering against each other like decorations of a mobile and falling, like shells, into the rushing water below. A stationary mass is left in the centre of where they hung — Renard is too distracted to inspect this further.

For the second pressing thing is Fidel. Safe upon the elevated ledge from the rushing water, he is nonetheless scowling with anger as he faces his own threat. Trailing out from where the rift once was is a strange mass of slime, seeping itself along with air towards him, with five distinct long tendrils. Though initially appearing like some five-pointed star, the longer Renard squints, the more the impression solidifies that there is something distantly familiar about this shape. The moment too urgent to contemplate further, Renard realises this shape feels familiar because it is humanoid. It is as though the ghost of a man has been horribly stretched and all his limbs have become these whipping, boneless, melting taffy masses.

The man-slime is snotlike, watery and mucoid, containing many interspersed flecks of crimson that glow, shift, bloom, and wither in fractal patterns — an image comes to Renard’s mind of tiny plants in an airy ocean. There is again an odd familiarity to this sight, though how so is beyond Renard.

This slimy man-effigy sweeps up towards Fidel, as if to engulf him in its trailing appendages. It is a strangely still and sober moment, watching this monster bear down on the boy. There is no panic, there is no guilt. There is only the simple, factual acknowledgement in his heart that it is impossible for Renard to intervene quickly enough, and that he should not bother worrying about issues he cannot change.

Screaming with furious indignation as the man-slime’s arm lashes up to crash upon him, Fidel rips his full satchel off his shoulder and tosses it at the slime. Direct hit. Cans and bottles go whirling through the air and lodge solidly into what should be the thing’s face, while the satchel and its weightier contents land in its torso. Though seemingly a desperate and fruitless gesture, it garners immediate and shocking results: these objects seem to absorb, or rather soak in the slime, the shape of which flags, heavier and now anchored to these objects, and comes sagging to the ground.

Confident and quick, Fidel darts out of the thing’s shadow just as it collapses upon where he stood. Renard glimpses just enough to see the slime-effigy now sinking into the dirt, withered as if miserably melting, and Fidel standing above it, wary enough to keep far enough back that it will not surprise him with any sudden attacks, but staring down at it with vicious and victorious contempt.

That cold factual surrender of this boy vanishes from Renard’s chest instantly. As Renard closes his eyes, conscious to shake his face dry of those yet-trailing droplets, what bubbles in its place is the excited warmth of joy and amazement. This boy’s instinct and nerve, to fight and win, are both extremely good.

Sparing himself only this thought, Renard heaves to pull himself into the boughs of the tree—

You’re so annoying. A voice, smooth and whispery, cuts into his thoughts.

Like he were a fruit, an invisible force then plucks Renard from the tree and tosses him through the air. It is an odd sensation — while he has no visual bearings on what has happened, the motion feels simultaneously as if he has been lobbed like a toy ball from a hand, and like the entire world has knifed sideways so that Renard would fall parallel to the earth, the gravity hoisting him along smoothly.

Renard lands, mildly tumbling, upon only vaguely moist earth. While plainly not a kind gesture, an instinctive sense comes over Renard that neither he nor Fidel are in danger, as the noise of the thrashing rapids eases calm. Squinting up, he has been deposited upon the ledge beside Fidel, whose impression of the situation is apparently the opposite of Renard’s. Tensed to fight, he holds his sickle, his attention locked elsewhere even as he glances down at Renard.

Renard towels his face dry on Fidel’s shirt and gestures him down. Though uneasy, Fidel heeds the order and steps back, his shoulders and grip untensing.

In the middle of the clearing, where the anomalous rift once was, there now hangs the upper torso of a man. Extending from the air like the figurehead of a ship, the sight is unnerving, grotesque, and bizarre, his midsection severed perfectly and innards exposed, but not falling or trailing out of their place inside the man’s chest cavity. The back of his head oozes with pus. He is posed as if shielding himself, and his face is blank.

The man is dead. No wisp of vitality radiates in these preserved remains, sitting motionless as a gargoyle. By the ashy blue skin, Renard intuits this is the grim fossil hinted by the ‘tip’ of that lump, which pressed open the rift. But even for the great impression the sight of this body leaves, it is not the most vital thing here.

Standing upon the dead man’s shoulders is a second figure. Short in stature, with arms crossed, its slit-pupiled eye stares down at Fidel and Renard, watching them coolly. There is a cherubic air to this entity, its gender hard to place, but inhumanity attested by the fine, shimmering iridescence of its hair and skin, twinkling like a snake’s scales. It wears a green bandanna around its neck, a cute adornment more fitting a loyal and beloved dog, but the fabric at the knot shifts in a strange illusion, as if there were two images of this creature superimposed on each other, fading and overlapping in which is more prominent, with a purposeful twitch, of broken, withered wings unfurling.

Renard’s dumbfoundedness dissolves the instant it clicks, what exactly this creature’s identity is.

A tornado of incredible rage and hatred crashes over Renard’s mind and rips control of his body out from under him. It is strange, knowing he is acting insensibly but having no means to stop it, as he howls like a barbarian, fluidly draws Kingslayer, and charges for the precipice of the ledge, as if to run in a straight line over the air and plunge a death blow into the creature.

He is a bull, that monster is the capote. Nothing else in the world exists except trampling, slashing, mincing, destroying this horrible, horrible thing…

But something is wrong. His knees buckle; he crashes face-first into the ground. He is not roaring or howling so much as gagging and choking, moss pressing in to his eye and cheek. But these hindrances do not matter. Renard throws his arm forward, shuddering against the forest floor like a seizing worm, dragging himself inch by inch forward, closer towards that fixed image, of the serpent, staring at him so dispassionately out of the corner of its eye.

That whispered voice cuts again into his mind: stupid.

Nausea spikes through Renard’s blood. Blackness blots his vision. He gasps, throat convulsing, the air too thick and heavy to breathe. The heat and adrenaline coursing through his body, Renard realises abruptly, is now not actually from anger, but from panic, as every nerve screams he is dying.

How!? He dimly thinks. Straining to heft up his arm, he sees. He is not holding Kingslayer.

Dread drops cold in his gut. Stupid. The meaning of this word, spoken frankly but layered with tenors, comes clear. You’re not in a state to fight me. Even trying to was a horrible choice. You wouldn’t have won. But now you’re going to kill yourself before I even touch you. And I wasn’t even going to touch you. But you’re still going to let me win. On your own. By me doing nothing. Because you are stupid.

And everything you’ve lived for, and everything about you, that made you even try that, is stupid.

The last strength exits Renard’s body as his face slumps to the dirt, mentally defeated. The panic pressing at all angles of his mind is now indeed familiar; it is the same powerlessness he felt before Verdan. But even for the sirens blaring, and the frustrated hatred boiling impotently away at the back of his skull, his mind holds impeccably lucid, that this encounter in front of him is an important one to heed. Every snippet of data he can get from this beast now, he needs.

The creature — Arsene, the root of this world’s rot — regards him and Fidel yet. Its eye shifts smoothly from Fidel, who it apparently judges as no one important, to Renard. The stare holds, one, two… and the creature relaxes, seeming greatly relieved that Renard has understood its fundamentally non-hostile approach enough to stop fighting.

By the way the creature shimmers in and out, in the same ephemeral way of the anomaly, Renard’s mind catches up to his gut with the realisation that he and Fidel are only seeing a projection. The creature is not truly here. He can intuit that the real Arsene would be vastly more powerful just by its presence. Its decision to address them in this fashion is a merciful, and perhaps noncommittal gesture.

Its crossed arms loosen somewhat, and it nods shortly, as if convincing itself to an agreement.

Fidel, still uneasy but sensing no attack, drags Renard away from the edge of the ledge. He sits him against a nearby tree, where, with a vague jerk of the head, Renard commands him to fetch Kingslayer, which lays on the sod only some feet away. Every muscle inside him burns with fatigue. How he lost Kingslayer is clear to him. Exhausted after fighting the current, and impassioned with blind fury, he overtaxed his body and simply dropped the blade.

It was a monumentally stupid mistake, moreso just plain buffoonery. A punchline of a bardic jester, so audacious it would become common myth, earning the children’s curious oohs and aahs of ‘but really? Could that happen? How?’.

Renard’s attention is pulled from Fidel, as exhaustion too strikes Arsene. Perched still upon the gargoyle-corpse, the creature’s shoulders slump and its posture wholly deflates. The voice that weaves into Renard’s mind this time is not chiding or snide so much as purely miserable: Just leave me alone.

Incandescent rage sears Renard’s mind sheer white.

Youuuuu demon! Renard wishes he had the strength to scream, jaw clenched, eyes and neck bulging in reignited fury, but body too weak to do anything more than seize against the tree. If he could leap through dimensions and bite this thing’s head from its shoulders! Leave you alone!? Leave you alone! The evils you’ve weaved, the souls you have ruined, the rot you have given us, the wars between men, the loss of our father, the death in the water, and the phenomenon that we should die at all — but we are the foul, and we must leave you alone! We do not know you! We can not reach you! So how dare you!? While you slink through your pit weeping as if you are some poor, battered dove!!

But for how Renard’s mouth froths with rabid conniption, Arsene’s gaze has already turned away. Like a mirage shimmering out of view, between one wrathful convulsion and the next, the image of Arsene vanishes as if it was never there at all.

Renard could howl all the curses in the world, but the only thing to hear them now would be the chilled forest air.

Strangling a scream in his throat, Renard punches the ground. Flecks of battered mud squelch under the moss and spatter across his arm. And he would punch it again, and again, and again, pulp the earth like a rotten peach, were it not for Fidel, toting Kingslayer, who approaches him with wide, fearful eyes.

It is not Renard’s anger that has troubled the boy; he is simply rattled by the encounter. The rage recedes shockingly quickly as instinctive awareness of what he must do comes to him. Renard wrenches on a smile, accepts the sword, and thanks the boy.

Fidel nods distractedly, staring still over the clearing.

“The trouble is passed," Renard assures him, a sliver of strength returning to his muscles with the retrieval of Kingslayer. He holds to rest only a moment, breathing yet ragged and body still aching, before hefting himself up to the ledge to join Fidel. Though he does spare a glance to the spot where the snot-man dissolved, there is no mark or indication of anything peculiar there; it has indeed passed.

“Was that a ghoul?" Fidel murmurs, as if not daring to draw attention to himself by speaking louder than the water gently tinkling below, gaze shifting laggardly to Renard.

Renard purses his lips. With an absent-minded nod, unsure what to tell the boy, the words that rumble out his throat are, “yes, it’s like one."

Fidel falls silent. He does not need to know the specifics. Adrenaline tempers away as the two of them breathe this pause, the information for each slowly digesting.

But the more the peace of their safety veils itself over Renard, the more forcefully his heart hammers below. It is not a fight or flight warning or a sign of nearby danger; this vice of a fist that twists his heart into a hard pit is a far more delicate horror, of a spectator’s objectivity calmly assessing his place in the last five minutes; how a waylaid traveller sprints without pause through a wicked thunderstorm towards the distant lantern-light of a sole, roadside inn, but only in the clarity of the day afterward can see the path he took, the unseen river behind, and the utter, sheer coincidence that his route that night aligned with the bridge.

He came very, very close, today, to never returning to Colette.