Onward to Adventure: Chapter 13

Several days had passed in similar fashion as the first, sleeping during the day and moving under the cloak of night. The two rarely talked after that first day, spending sometimes hours with just their own thoughts.  The air grew gradually colder and colder. The animals they saw changed as well, they became animals the likes of which Brinvok had never seen before.

Suddenly, the snow began to fade to a hard volcanic rock.

“This must be the Far North,” Brinvok pondered “I had only heard legends of this place, the birthplace of the Guardians”

The air seemed to smell of evil, as if it oozed out of the ground, infecting anything that tried to grow there.  There was a massive volcano that loomed over the entire area, when the sun passed behind it the land had the appearance of night.  Brinvok thought back to the legend that his father used to tell him when it was time for bed.  The legends told that at one time many eons ago, the now massive volcano was once a tiny hill.  One day, the earth began to shake with such force that the hill split down the middle and out crawled the Guardians, beasts that devoured anything they could and ruled over the other beasts with an iron fist.  That was until man crawled from the caves and fought the Guardians back from whence they came.

Now Brinvok was faced with that very legend.  The volcano oozed not lava, but a thick black substance that reminded Brinvok of blood. When light reached the liquid, it did something that baffled Brinvok, the liquid retreated back into the volcano as the light seemed to chase it back up.  

“What is that stuff?” Brinvok asked the Baolab,

Startled, as he was not expecting Brinvok to speak replied “Oh um that? You will find out in due time”. This was followed by a series of low chuckles that never failed to run a chill down Brinvok’s back.

The creature placed Brinvok on the ground and pushed a large boulder out of the way which revealed the large maw of a cave, the Baolab motioned for Brinvok to walk in.  The Baolab followed behind Brinvok as he entered into the volcano.

Onward to Adventure: Chapter 12

It was now sunset and the Baolab began to stir, it let go of Brinvok in order to stretch itself out, its four arms flailing to and fro.  Brinvok dared not to run away, he knew that the beast would surely catch him and would probably do unimaginable things to him if he ran, so he stood up and too stretched out his limbs.  The Baolab looked down at Binvok and exclaimed,

“We must move soon, they grow impatient.”  It leaned down closer to Brinvok, he could feel its hot breath on his face as it said “They are dying to meet you,” and with a slight pause he said “Or perhaps you’ll be the one dying when you meet them,”  the Baolab said  with such malice that Brinvok could feel it seep out of his mouth and into his nostrils.  

The creature carefully grabbed Brinvok with its smaller set of arms and carried him like an infant, it glared down at him and said mockingly, “How funny is it that someone who is known for slaying what he deems as ‘monsters’ but now, they are in my arms like a small child.”  B

Brinvok retorted, “What do you mean? You are monsters, you slaughter those who have done nothing to you.  You chased us back into the caves we emerged from all those millennia ago.”  The anger leaked from his mouth as he said this.  The monster set his eyes on Brinvok and snarled back in a voice that shook Brinvok down to the core, “Humans are no different then are they? They hunt not just our kind but their own, now that is something that we would never do, we were here when your kind crawled out of the filth and slowly drove us to the corners of the earth.  How dare you, who is held against his will and surely going to die tell me about how your filthy race has a sense of morales.”

Brinvok was speechless, he felt that this monster was insane, that it was thinking some dogma nonsense that these monsters were somehow in the right in all this.  

“That could not be right could it?” He thought as he gazed into the night sky.  The spiraling nebula in the sky seemed to put Brinvok in some sort of cosmic peace.  He knew that no matter what happened to him on this ‘adventure’ that the nebula would still spin and the sun would rise the next day.  He became drowsy watching it spin and eventually through sheer exhaustion, he fell asleep as the Baolab walked further and further to his unknown destination.

Onward to Adventure: Chapter 11

Brinvok was left alone with his thoughts as the beast slept.  He watched as the sun’s journey through the sky, the sea of blue getting more blue with each hour that passed.  Birds began chirping and various animals awoke from their burrows in the forest.  Boars, wooly rhinoceros and mountain bison began  grazing in the field by the outcrop that had quickly become Brinvok’s prison.  Sometimes Brinvok dreamed of becoming an animal like those before him, they have no burdens, no cares and no concept of hatred.

“If I had to pick an animal, I would want to be a rhinoceros,” Brinvok said to himself, eyeballing the small herd of them in the field. “They are so big and strong, but they always seem so calm, well unless they get attacked”

Brinvok then began to think about the memories that the monster made him relive,

“Was it just to get a reaction? Or was there something more there?” A thousand questions like those flooded his mind. “I never think about those events, after a while I just stopped thinking about them.”  He then began thinking further “Maybe I have some unresolved emotions about those events, but what?”  Brinvok pondered this question for what felt like hours, thinking about what emotions he felt through both memories, guilt, anger, uselessness stood before him in his mind like stone monoliths.

Hours must have went by as it was now late afternoon and the sun was on the verge of setting, the herbivores that he had previously watched earlier were now gone and what was now in the field made him shake with rage, hunters.  Brinvok believed that hunting animals that had done nothing wrong for sport was wrong.  Brinvok only hunted monsters that intentionally harmed mankind such as Trolls and Uluruggs that were common in the mountainous areas.  These hunters had their bows drawn and were ready to shoot into the woods, Brinvok was about to call out for help when suddenly he heard the distinct “shooom” of the arrow flying through the air and the “shunk” of it hitting the meaty target.  A wooly rhinoceros charged through the bushes and into the clearing at its attackers who dodged its charge and shot a few more arrows into it until it fell to the ground.  One of the hunters withdrew his sword and carved its head off.  They left the body there for the flies.

“Such a waste,” Brinvok thought “They left so much more they could use rather than taking that head for a trophy.”  Brinvok now knew that he never wanted to be an animal, for while he faces monsters like the one holding him captive, he felt that man was worse sometimes.

Onward to Adventure: Chapter 10

As the fire engulfed Brinvok he heard a thumping, it sounded as if it were coming from everywhere, getting louder and louder as if the whole world were vibrating with this now deafening thumping sound.  Suddenly he awoke, the thumping sound ended up being the footsteps of the Baolab thudding on the ground, his whole world was turned upside down.  He then realized he was upside down, he was flung over its shoulder and saw the burning remnants of the city in the distance.  He began to try to wriggle free of the beast who has him held by the legs, the beast noticed Brinvok stirring and said,

“At least the baby awakes, do you like the view back there? Don’t be upset, there's no one there to be sad for.”

“You killed them all? How could you do that?”

“You give me too much credit, a few did run, but those who did not flee, who were paralyzed by terror or tried to fight the inevitable, yes did perish.”

“I will destroy you, your group have done nothing but terrorize us.”

“Us, terrorize you?” The Baolab said with bitterness that Brinvok could taste. “Ever since your kind crawled out of the caves we have been driven to the farthest corners of the earth, and now that we are finally returning the favor, we are the villains?”

The city grew dimmer and dimmer as the beast carried him farther and farther away,  he also noticed that they were not going in the direction of civilization, they were going farther and farther away.

Soon dawn began to break and he could tell that the Baolab, being a nocturnal animal was growing fatigued, the beast found a cliff that overhung a just enough to shield the beast from the rising sun, the beast released Brinvok and clutched him in its tail as it went to sleep.  

Brinvok looked around frantically for his axe, which was not on his back, he noticed that it was clutched in the beast’s second pair of arms, there was no way he could reach it without climbing out of its grasp,  he stretched as far as he could until it felt as though his upper body would separate from his lower half, he could only get close enough to touch the hilt.  Brinvok felt hopeless and it seemed as though there was no way out of being stuck with this creature until it took him wherever it was taking him.

Onward to Adventure Chapter 9

Brinvok stood there, motionless as a flock of birds erupted from the trees where his mother fell.  The only sound that he heard was the flapping of the monster’s wings mixed with the ringing in his ears as his extremities went cold, she was gone, he knew this was just a memory but it felt so real, it was as if this were the present. The Qucsceradeinos lowered itself to the ground and stood before Brinvok, it brought its massive head down to Brinvok’s level, its hot breath made him sweat.  The beast stunk of smoke and decay, a smell that was so distinct that it too ingrained itself in his memory.

Brinvok now felt fear, one of the only times in his life that he had ever felt totally helpless.  This time was different however, it was more than a helplessness, it was the feeling of complete failure, he had failed his father, wherever he went, he failed himself but he failed his mother the most.  She was gone and if he had not run off into town then maybe he could have saved her.  After standing there for what seemed like centuries the Qucsceradeinos finally spoke.

“I have waited for this moment Brinvok, or should I say Brinny?”

“How do you know my name creatan?”

“You underestimate the knowledge and power of a Guardian?  We sense when great heros are rising, generally our timing is a little more precise.  I was planning on you being here earlier, then maybe, just maybe, your mother would have been saved”  After saying that, the beast let out a low laugh that sounded like pure evil.  “ Anyways, now that you are here…. I believe it is time for you to join her, we wouldn’t want you getting any stronger would we?”

With that the Qucsceradeinos swung its tail at Brinvok and hit him with a force he never felt before.  It sent him toppling into the forest and right into a tree. He heard the clinking sound of the Qucsceradeinos rubbing its claws together, sparks flew from them and landed among the dry leaves on the forest floor, the leaves ignited and soon enough the forest was ablaze.  As Brinvok’s vision faded to black the beast said in a foreboding voice,

“This is the end for you”