One True Way That Monsters Are Vanquished

The beast descends from the sky like a long, slow pour of tar. White coils, shimmering faintly iridescent, spill and loop over each other with seductively smooth sinuousness, so bountiful that they soon roll off the island and into the lake. Bulges of the creature’s long form peek in and out of the water, always running in motion as if ever, ever, unfurling. Its head is curled like a taipan’s, but its posture is raised like a cobra’s. Running down the back of its neck is a patch of feathers, rather than scales, seemingly ornamental.

Its slit, silver, serpentine eyes brim with quiet contempt and intelligence.

Revealed is why Arsene is called ‘snake’ and ‘serpent’. Though most commonly encountered in a humanoid guise, its actual nature and appearance is exactly the one suggested by those words easily mistaken for insulting epithets, and not simply facts. Arsene is a snake.

And it is massive. The very motion of this creature’s length in the water is roiling the lake like an angry sea, and the sheer displacement its mass inflicted should have drowned the whole island. It is only the bizarre distortions of space that have contained the furious ocean. If this thing slithered on land, it would open canyons. If it struck at a mountain, it would tear away its peak. It holds its head higher than the spires of a castle, but it is simultaneously impossible to judge its exact size and length, for it always seems to be shifting, beyond the succinct and instinctual term of, ‘leviathan’.

Renard hucks a breath and steadies Kingslayer. How—

Renard’s body is torn in twain and strewn about the grass. His innards lay bare to the sky and his blood gushes messily onto the ground. It is a very strange vantage. The damage done to him so quickly, and so utterly, and yet without any warning or pain, makes it hard to even conceive what has happened— it feels less like he has been attacked than simply, degenerated into a… slug… thing… on account of being so slick with blood and so unable to lift himself.

Kingslayer remains in his grip, in his right hand, not that it does him good. Suddenly realising the direness of his state, Renard jolts to move — and cannot do more than flail. A long reel of lonely intestine links his legs to his torso, but other than that… he is dead! This is not a livable injury!

The serpent towering above him flicks its black tongue. Though it has no eyelids, it regards him as if squinting with hatred. It juts its head.

An incredible force like the weight of a water tower stamps Renard to the dirt. Renard wheezes. He cannot lift his limbs, or his head, or even expand his chest to breathe — he is being crushed as totally and thoroughly as a bug smushed under a thumb. With his exposed vital organs also crushed by this force, he should be totally dead. He cannot explain why he can feel the weight and the pressure of the insane squeeze, but still is not in pain.

Is it toying with him?

And what about Kingslayer! Renard tries to steady his grip on its hilt, but his fingers only squirm at air. Effects like these are the ones the blade is supposed to ward. Why is it doing nothing!?

Cheek pressed to the earth, grass poking into his eye, when he opens his mouth to yell, all that comes out is that agonal groan of a choking man: “aaaaaaggg,"

The pressure then twists. The weight compounds to unthinkable levels: “AAAAAAAAAAGH!"

“Stop!" yells Fidel, running out between Renard and the snake. “Stop! We can’t beat you… and we shouldn’t have tried in the first place. …When we knew from the start who you were." He raises the flower in his hands like an offering before God. “But this can stop here, and we can do this right… unless you’re really determined to have corpses to clean littered over your lawn."

‘Shouldn’t have tried in the first place’ — what on earth are you saying, Fidel! And corpses? Renard’s not out yet!

The pressure lightly lifts as the serpent falls silent and still. Its black tongue flicks in and out.

‘Is that what you want?’ It asks, gaze fixated on the flower.

Sweat beads on Fidel’s forehead. “It’s more a request, that I’m asking to you."

Thoom. The air splits apart in an explosion as the serpent flicks its tail. Though no part of this motion actually contacts Fidel, his body crunches and shoots across the yard as if directly slammed, and he hurtles like a cannon shot. He crashes into an invisible pane as solid as a brick wall, and all his bones scrunch and crack as his broken body smears down, like a slimy pile of trash, to the base of the bleeding tree.

Fidel!

Renard clutches Kingslayer’s hilt and bolts off of the ground. Like a resonant bell at the end of its peal, by a surge of passion and willpower, his body stabilises back into shape as though he had not been mutilated at all. If he sprints quickly enough, he may land a blow on the beast, while it is still distract—

The creature’s tail slides across the ground; an earthquake strikes, Renard stumbles to the next step of his sprint, and just as he grins at his quick adjustment, the flank of the beast bare before him, a wave of repulsive force peals out from the world like an expanding sun, and knocks Renard back to the edge of the island. A whirlwind of scenes follows, as he is cast into the water, dragged through cliff-faces to the sky, scattered over burning sands, impaled, crushed, brought before the beast’s face…

Renard extends Kingslayer out as far as he can.

And to punctuate the chaos, Renard is again slammed to the ground. He gasps at the impact. Kingslayer tumbles out of his grip. But an audacious grin splits his face as he peeks up to see—

—no line of night stars seeping out of the beast’s breast. What should have been a vital blow is instead just nothing. Kingslayer did not even graze it on the way down. Inside his skin, all of Renard trembles. Wait, wait…

The serpent reels back as if shocked. Even though he did not hit, the very fact he tried… a long, pregnant second holds, steeped in affronted disgust.

Sweat and blood teem from Renard’s face. Every breath heaves through his whole body, his vision both blotted with black and seared white with vertigo, but fixated sure on the snake. He again takes Kingslayer. His legs collapse from under him when he tries to stand, so he must drag himself on his breast on the dirt. The beast’s weak point… it is probably that nape with those feathers…

‘I hate you so much.’ The beast’s voice weaves in his mind. ‘He always gives you everything, but you’re never satisfied. Even now, and even here… you’re always reaching, and reaching, and reaching for more things to take.’

Its mouth opens wide in a hiss.

‘There’s barely anything left that you haven’t messed up! Why can’t you let there be even one place where it’s okay to hate you? Because you’re gross, and you’re selfish, and you’re dumb and you’re super disgusting. You’re not so great or important that you’re going to make anyone happy. All you actually do is make everything worse and everyone sad, just by showing up, because you’re like a bunch of big icky worms!’

A snake calling man like a worm — funny. Renard would laugh, if his head weren’t so heavy and his throat weren’t raw with harsh breath. Stroke by laborious stroke, he lugs his body forth in a clumsy army crawl.

‘I don’t wish you were dead!’ Its neck feathers fan out in distress. ‘I wish you never existed! I wish he never thought of you!’

The thing is just raving to the moon now. It is not even looking at Renard.

Good… let it have its tantrum, and let Renard draw close…

And yet…

…

Though he must be going forward, it only feels like he is growing more distant from the scene…

‘I bet he gave you ten thousand miracles!’ Arsene shrieks as if crying. ‘I bet he’s giving you hundreds, even now! Even though you hurt him! Even though you’re mean and greedy and useless…’

Panic jolts Renard. No, no, no! The image of the snake, thumping its coils petulantly against the ground, plays out on a horizon at size smaller than Renard’s fingernail — and though he can feel the tremors kicking beneath him, the scene is yet only shrinking further away like he is slowly sliding off a cliff. No! Scrambling for purchase, sheer willpower again forces Renard through the distortion, and the gap closes a mile.

The garden immediately slips away again as if falling. Renard redoubles, scrambling, flailing, vigorous with all the will he can muster. He may be paddling like a drowning man, but there must be hope for the shore.

‘…I bet to him, you’re like a precious doll…’ The serpent’s mad shrieking falls still. ‘…because he’s so wonderful, he’d love even something like you.’

As if breaking out of a tunnel of wind, Renard heaves himself one final stroke forward. The turbulence of the spacial distortion ends, and there he is, bloodsoaked, belly-down, bleeding, upon on the island and gazing up before the towering white serpent. Though its size has not shifted, the creature does not feel as colossal as it has been. Perhaps because it is no longer fighting.

Its coils smoothly recede from the water and come up onto land. The raging ocean settles again into a smooth lake, pristine as glass. In the way that serpents do, it curls loosely upon itself, its manner contemplative as its tongue flickers out. It watches Renard.

Renard, who grips a handful of grass and wrenches himself mindlessly forward, panting, face red as a furnace, Kingslayer dragging in his other hand.

But the creature is unconcerned. Though an obscure thing to tell, if serpents can have dreams, this one is surely engrossed in one now. As plain as the vision of the healed Sebilles, a mist closes over its mind as thick as the one that formerly bolstered Fidel. And indeed, following the serpent’s gaze, there the boy lays slumped at the base of the tree. His mouth is agog, his eyes are glazed, and his body is utterly broken by a concussion that has killed him or rendered him dumb. Dark muck gushing from the tree cakes him like mud, such that even if the blow did not kill him, the suffocation assuredly would. It encases him like resin, to mummify him as a statue permanently locked in a visage of terror and dying.

The flower lays uselessly on the ground, aside his limp fingers.

Arsene coils back in slow dawning horror.

‘He wouldn’t make me have to get along with you if I didn’t want to,’ it frantically says as if assuring itself. Its tail slams the ground, splitting Renard in half from his nose to his gut, but its focus remains distracted on Fidel. ‘So how come you had to be such terrible emissaries? You came here talking about crazy nonsense and you were so obnoxious and you weren’t nice at all and you hurt Leah and tried to beat me up and... why did you do that! Why are you so stupid that you had to make me so mad?’

BECAUSE YOU WOULD NOT HAVE LISTENED.

BECAUSE EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, YOU WERE BEGGING FOR OUR FAILURE. BECAUSE BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION, YOU HATE THAT WE EXIST.

YOU CURSED US THAT NOT A ONE OF US WOULD KNOW THE HEAVEN MADE FOR US BY YOUR MASTER, BUT WANTED US TO BE DRIBBLING MONSTERS LIKE YOU!

THAT IS WHY I DO NOT CURRY TO YOU! DO YOU NOW REGRET TRYING TO TRICK FIDEL FROM HIS WISH? WELL BEAST, YOU THREW HIM AWAY, AND I AM NOT SPOTLESS LIKE HIM!

If his tongue could be his blade, he would stab it into that beast’s belly right now!

Handful by handful, Renard drags himself forward, his body stitching back together. The grass and earth below him bubbles and congeals from a pastoral garden to the sludge of a bog, but this is not a purposeful attack. Steeped in its own misery, everything around the snake melts and rots. The sky darkens. Shingles fall from the cottage, its facade cut through with borer. The snake looks about, here, there, panicked for some place to run.

But even this last fragment of Eden has been corrupted. Not even the serpent’s own home can avoid such degeneration, once the nightmare in its mind seeps even to this sanctum. And it is so natural a fall that it is not even karmic. All the horror wrought by this creature its an effusion of its own nature; these effects on the physical are as corresponding mirrors to the effects of its thoughts, which are saturated beyond what is breathable with overwhelming fear and self-hatred. It the opposite of the sun, this dense black core that sucks in the light, but then reflects it back out, dimmer.

Its gaze locks on the doorway to the cottage, the door itself leaning ajar off its hinges. The serpent tenses up as if to dive inside through the portal — as it would do what it did before with all of Nix, and flee from its own hurricane by hiding in the eye.

Wretch! Not as Renard breathes!

Just as the serpent’s great body slithers to dash away, Renard heaves the final heave — and plunges Kingslayer into its flank.

The blade connects, the flesh perforates, a dull and familiar ‘shulk’ rattles up Renard’s shoulder.

Exhaustion sweeps over Renard, but even as he slumps against those white scales, his grin is one of victory.

To such a powerful creature, such a blow must be only a pinprick.

Even so, it slows, and stills. The sludge consuming the yard stabilises beneath Renard’s knees. Though incomparable to what this place was before, a momentary sanctity closes again on this nightmare, asserting that even in the core of Nix, even amid the thickest of evil, even through the deadliest of errors, something can be hallowed.

And in that moment, all strength gushes out of Renard like a river breaking its bank. Torrential in that flowing rapid is the rage of those Pilamines, the pain of the Iron King, old scars on Renard’s heart that only now are being vindicated, for they rage over the snake like the waves of a tsunami. His muscles peter out like a riverbed. The rush of success is dizzying. Even as his sweaty brow pastes slimily against the serpent’s flank, for he has not even the energy to raise his head, the grin does not leave his face.

Total satisfaction.

It beams from his core out of his skin like the rays of the sun. In the sickly languor of peace and contentment, as a cat sprawls in a puddle of light, all tension washes out of his body. Indeed, he would like to fall slack and just lay here — indefinitely.

And yes, this is not his limit. Without doubt, he could struggle and butcher this enemy more.

But there is no point.

He has done what he wanted. He’s won.

The stable ground beneath him disappears as the serpent slithers away, dredging muck over its scales. Renard’s cheek lands softly in the sludge. Drawn as an echo of the snake’s winding motion, a string of nebulae stream into the air from the tiny wound on its belly, delicate and beautiful. Renard’s jaw softens into a gentle smile. Even if this creature tries to forget, it will truthfully always remember.

That there is no depth from which exaltation is impossible. When huddled at the base of that tree, or coiled up on its bed, by the sheer fact his determination prevailed, by the sheer fact he was able to touch Arsene, it will always, best always, be forced to remember.

For the first time since its forging, Renard releases his grip on Kingslayer. Already half-buried in mud, it hardly needs to fall. Yet in the absence of the weight of that dark iron, dragging always on his hand or his hip for so many years, the breeze of liberation does come with bittersweetness. Is he committing a sin against this old blade, that jitters in his mind so anxiously at the prospect of parting?

No, for it is hardly an untested whelp, but a magnificent veteran quite sheathed in a glory of its own. It will doubtless come into the possession of a new man to wield it, and to that man it will doubtless be a curse. But as it has been with Renard, that curse will be one that lifts the man far into consequence, and far above where he ever could have reached on his own merits.

Renard releases a sigh. Kingslayer’s jitters too, settle, into a nod of resolution, that it is indeed ready for more than Renard. The squelching of muck and sludge peals under the trailing coils of the snake. His back relaxes; his purpose will be punctuated here by his point’s finality. Knowing what he has seeded, a pit of pride glows in his chest, its warmth a comforting blanket for what will be a long sleep.

Crowned over a soft smile, Renard’s eyelids droop—