The Day I Played with Fire

"The Day I Played with Fire"

a short story

Gary Baker, February 2014

The rain was soft, much softer than I expected it to be as I lay there, blood dribbling down across my gaping eyelids, wondering if this was success that I was finally feeling.

It started days ago. Too many, if you ask me, but for relevancy I'll keep it to a minimum. I want to say it began all suddenly and out of the blue, but in all reality it didn't. I had seen this coming for weeks, months -- hell, I'd seen this coming years ago, not that I had ever admitted it right out. I did cry out for help, though, don't get me wrong. I didn't let fate take me lightly. My shoulders had been increasingly white over the last few weeks, and neither the hype nor the meds did anything to alleviate as much.

Three days back I was at work, sitting in on a meeting with my boss as I geared up for a promotion of sorts.

"Craig," she said, with that all-too-familiar scowl of approval set upon her cheeks, "don't forget that you represent us, this store, when you go there." She sat back in her black leather office chair, waving her gilded pen like a baton between her dexterous right-hand fingers, and crossed her leg like a stereotypical cubicle boss. She was the kind of boss people would search for years to work under, not sexy and thus not someone people rumored about as having slept around to get to where she was. She was competent, and that showed through her every demeanor, whether it was her loose-fitting pin-stripe slacks, or her semi-mustache that appeared every time she'd been up late trying to reconfigure something that would increase sales.

She was talking about my transfer. It was purported to be something to help me ease into the higher-ups, almost like a stepping stone that no one else was willing to bat an eye at me with. I was lucky to have her as my superior, much more so to have her be willing to take this big of a risk on my development. If I failed, she would forever be marred by her mistake in vouching for me, and she made that clear from the get-go. Almost a 'no pressure, but if you don't succeed you won't be ruining just your own life' kind of moment.

But really: no pressure.

Things changed from there. As I worked the next day at the store I was transferring to, I met the new bosses that I would be under for the next segment of my career, and found out I wasn't as perfect as I had been talked about.

"Look, kid," the new superior pointedly stood when there where seats to be sat in, "we don't just need someone to fill the shoes of someone for a while, we need a good. Hard. Worker." He turned to the door, then and led the way to my new abode, a place where the hardware and the good old nuts and bolts of the store could be found. With a wave of his hands, he indicated the spread of my new domain, "this isn't just some department of yours," he wavered on obedience training as though I were some mutt out of the pound. "This isn't even your new home. It's our backbone, and if it doesn't move right, neither does the rest of our little contraption. You got me?" Suddenly he smiled, all eager-to-please and beaming with delight, "but I trust you'll do the right thing, don't you worry."

It took me an hour to learn the new way of things, even though I was doing anything but the job I was transferred to do, and by the time my lunch hit I was ready to call it a day. I eagerly pushed into the oddly-circular room where I had placed my bag and tore into my lunch: a mere toasted bagel with Skippy and strawberry Weston jam, as I ate the words of my latest book as well. It was then that my phone buzzed. At first I ignored it, thinking it anything but important, and dove back into the other world just pages beneath my nose.

The hero was valiantly staggering through a dark, murky hallway, where the bestial juggernaut golemn had laid it's final trap. My heart was racing as I followed him, seeking answers in the authors tone, knowing something bad was about to happen and yet not able to tell Lord Graedel what I thought it might be. The hallway was obliviously dark, the sewer water fogging the scene as he tread deeper and deeper. He gripped the hilt of his sword when he heard a noise -- and my phone buzzed again, shattering the illusion.

It buzzed a second time, and then a third, and finally a fourth, before settling into peaceful calmness again as I reached for my second bite of an awkward bagel PB&J. Something was up, and it set me on edge, though I hadn't the slightest as to why. So I flipped open my phone, saw the six missed messages, and felt that electric jolt of anxiety that normally accompanied the fear that someone had died, or was dying and needed to talk to me of all people to say their last words via text or some shit like that.

What I got, instead, was something way out of left field: "Craig, the bank called", "wtf is wrong with you? can't you pay one godam bill?!", "this is ruining our credit you dumbfk!!!!"

I didn't even have the capacity to read the rest, nor to acknowledge the bad spelling like the English major that I was deep inside. It felt like I was having a heart attack. My veins had turned to ice, my heart into a rave-like beat sped up via Garage Band or Music Pro or some software like that, and my breathing reflected that of a dead mouse. Finally I un-clenched my throat and inhaled as if I'd been under water for ten minutes, and clatteringly dropped my escape to the table. My world was over. I was going to die.

It took deep breaths, controlled as if I'd had an asthma attack like when I was a kid, and took serious forces to bring myself back to reality. I told myself that everything was going to be okay, that my life wasn't over, and that I was surely the butt of some douche-bag joke played by... no, wait, they wouldn't joke with me, they never had and probably never would.

The panic then returned and took another series of moments to bring back under control. No amount of alcohol could solve this for me, and besides that I was midway through the toughest day I had had at work in ages. I wasn't just there to work, I was there to make an impression. But fuck whomever expected me to be calm in a time like this: my life was ending and I had to get away.

I tried the book again, but couldn't concentrate. I tried force-feeding the remainder of my breakfast, lunch and dinner, all one meal of a bagel with peanut butter and etc, but found my appetite gone and my diseased stomach a turbulent organ of chaos at that point. So I threw the rest away and clocked back in.

The next few hours went by as though slowed down by the hand of some sick deity trying to mess with my head more than had already been messed with. Minutes felt like hours and hours like days, until, finally, I found the seat of my hatchback and sighed so loud I may as well have moaned with ecstasy. In seconds I had thumbed the radio onto full and had the engine turning over, when I overheard the news of impending rain.

Normally this would have been a bad thing for me, not being one to enjoy it full-on like the rest of those I worked with, but this time I relished the idea for some sick reason that I had yet to decipher. So I drove home with the odd music of a lonesome oldies station playing as my backdrop to a dreary, dark night, which only further brought my mood into the shitstorm of what was to come. I felt the sorrow of a blues singer who'd lost his lover to a doctor in Manhattan, I felt the regret of a country singer who'd left home to see the world only to find out he left his best girl behind, and actually felt the pain of a man playing the harmonica to the beat of jazz flutes and percussion as he sang melodious tunes of a girl who'd died on her way to meet up with him where he'd planned on proposing.

By the time I got home to my apartment I was practically bawling but, choosing to 'be a man', instead held it in and grit my teeth against what should have been otherwise expressed right then and there.

I made my way to the door, just then, and entered into a dark living room where I quickly found a note from my best friend, roommate and lover of over ten years, claiming: "hun, please stop avoiding my parents, they are just trying to help you. They didn't mean to type it the way that they did, and are sorry for that. Please talk to me tomorrow when you get home." She had then penned in with another color of ink at what seemed last minute due to her handwriting "PS: please be quiet coming in, I work at four a.m. and I know how you stumble around at night when you aren't thinking. Love ya!"

Yeah, right. So I bedded down on the couch, heart racing once again, and eased into sleep as fluidly as green branches might catch on fire.

The next day came like the last in that I learned more about where it was I would be staying for the next segment and also more ridicule by those with whom I would be working. Lunch came without the everlasting throes of fear induced by malicious texts, which were so sarcastically missed, and I found refuge in knowing that my hero somehow survived his plight by expecting the beast to be in the shadows instead of the murky, glowy sewage, and had thrown himself into harms way to avoid the worst of it all. He was wounded to hell and back, though, and walked away dripping neon waste with more than just a few scrapes as he limped back into the light of day again, valiant and heroic as ever before, knowing he had vanquished the worst of his problems while down in the deep.

The rain then started at just about the same time that a customer was telling me how bad I was at my job, all because I refused to take a clearly fraudulent return. She didn't rest there, either: no, she claimed I was a 'hell-hole of a human being' and that I have been should be ashamed of even existing.

So I smiled and told her with a straight face that I was; and I meant it. She was right. I had no reason to argue with her about returning a brand our company had never carried, nor about how our company would not allow returns into cash without the receipt nor tag being present. I was a pitiful human being. I failed on bills, I avoided stressing situations, I was heavily taxed when thinking about any sort of finance, and fuck it all I was a man, treating a woman with anything other than complete reverie.

"You're right: I should be hanged," I told her in my own mind, and walked off without saying a single real word edgewise, much to my dismay. The day then passed by as quickly as ever, until the closing supervisor came in and relieved me of duty so I could thankfully head home in pouring down rain.

I bit my lip as I phased into my car, not even aware of the water that had already drenched me in the fifty feet I had walked to get there, and felt the metallic blood well up onto my tongue. Then my phone buzzed again.

I didn't even have to read it, as the next two came in one after the other from the same "You Know Who" name. Apparently I had changed both her parents names to the same nuance as each other, though I knew not when. What then threw me was when the phone began to ring that incessant "carry on my way-yward so-ooon, there'll be peace whe-n you are go-oone" and I was not in the mood for Styx at all just then.

"Yeah?" I answered.

"Craig," came the voice of her father, the husband of my co-signer, "just the man I was wanting to talk to." I wanted to say 'no shit, that's why you called me' and thus felt like a complete ass for even thinking that. The rain on my rooftop drowned out the sounds of birds that would have lightened my mood just then, and so I felt myself dropping even further as the man went on. "Look," he said, suddenly all serious, "we need to figure out what's going on with that loan of yours." Of course it was my loan when it came down to me needing to start paying it off, despite my financial inability right then, whereas it was always our loan when they told others about how they had helped me go abroad all those years ago.

"Yeah, I know, I've been trying to contact the bank," I lied, "but unfortunately I keep working hours where I start before the bank opens and I get out after they close." I gave a pause to let that sink in. Realistically I had worked those hours, but only for the last couple of days. In all reality I had no excuse for leaving it unpaid, despite the heart-race that it gave me whenever I so much as thought of it. "I can call their regional hotline, if you'd like?"

He sighed audibly, making it obvious that I was the male organ out of the two of us. It wasn't as if I didn't already feel that way, but hearing the aura of someone who absolutely despises you kind of puts an extrasensory damper on things that becomes hellishly hard to describe. "No -- just," he sighed again, angry with me as had become the usual, "go in when you have a chance. You remember how long it took to sort this all out when you had to call them after the college lost your records. We don't want that again." He grumbled to someone in the background, and came back with the sound of his fingers coming off the microphone. "I trust you'll get this sorted out, Craig. Talk to you later," and abruptly hung up.

I wanted to die right then, and it felt like I was -- with how heavy my heartbeat had become, still sitting in the parking lot of my new workplace, with more water heaving onto my car than a typical car wash could have done for twice the usual pay. I hated everything. I was avoiding bills that affected more than just myself, I was too wet-behind-the-ears for the job I hadn't even fully transferred into, I had been called out on being the worst of human beings in all of existence, was avoiding the dentist where I could get my two root canals taken care of all because I had a fear of the sounds their tools make, and had found myself locked in a steel box on wheels...

...while rain slicked the roads.

In an instant, I knew what had to be done.

It was a good fifteen mile ride before I chose the place I would do it at, all with the ruse of making it appear like a normal accident. So I hit eighty, my usual 'I'm in a hurry' speed, as I came upon my exit, and gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, my breath coming in nonexistent inhales and my heart making one long hum in my chest.

Then the guardrail hit the front bumper.

Temporary Hiatus

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am in no way pleased to announce that Stories by Baker is going on a temporary hiatus due to a lack of internet access at my place of living.

This does not mean that I will stop writing, at all, but that I will be posting when and if I can for the time being and will continue on my regular schedule from the point at which I am able to receive consistent wifi again. I am very much displeased with this end to such a display of chaos, but I assure you all that I will come back with a vengeance. This is not the end of Stories, nor will it ever be.

I merely ask that you be patient and accept the untimely posting for the time being.

Wishing you the best of regards,
Gary Baker
Founder, Stories by Baker

The Attack

“The Attack”

a short story

Gary Baker, January 2014

(my first-written story of the new year)

“So,” lead inspector, Chiff Mason mumbled through lips pursed around a basic ballpoint pen, “judging by the spray,” he traced the gore with imaginary lines that led either way along the mountain trail, “we can safely say this was no ordinary attack…

The growl came from behind him with the snap of a twig and Barson spun around to find himself face to face with a massive wild cat. It’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight, it’s hide wet with the recent rainfall that had collected upon the shrubs, and it’s bared fangs shone like silver daggers in the night.

“There was no escaping this,” Mason declared, “he knew that much from the start.”

Suddenly the beast shot forward with intense speed, leaving Barson just enough time to stumble to the side and escape instant death with a long tear across his left shoulder, his backpack torn open in the same blow. He rolled through the trailside grass and came to his feet even as the beast came at him again, this time with a vengeance.

Again Barson moved out of the way, but was again hindered by his pack.

“So he dropped the remaining strap from his right shoulder,” the inspector continued, following the boot prints and the now-dry, blood-soaked mud. The suited man stopped beside the shredded external frame laying on it’s side in the trail as though left by a careless child at play. “But it was here,” he nodded at a sudden change in the direction of the bootprints, “that Mr. Barson chose to fight back.”

The pack crackled as the porcelain of his camping bowl shattered within and yet Barson couldn’t think anything of it. He had no time. Nevertheless the hunting knife was in his hand in the blink of an eye, the sheath discarded into the dark, and the golden glow of the mountain lion’s eyes was reflecting off the blade like firelight.

When the cat leapt again, Barson was ready. Claws met his biceps as the young man clenched his fist and swung hard. Up and across in an arc that bisected the leap. Warmth seeped into his cheeks from fresh blood and he watched as the beast landed with a howl.

The man stumbled when the pain hit him, finding his walking stick as he toppled forward, and quickly struggled to use it to stand. He stood there with the darkness enveloping him like a blanket for the longest time, the wounds of his arms dripping down his outheld elbows and into the mud while he searched frantically for the assailing cat. In his left hand, Barson held himself up with the staff of worn, de-barked oak, and in his right, he held the blade like a lifeline, like a compass trying to find the lion out of impossible magnetism.

Inspector Mason scowled as he knelt beside the fallen knife, feline blood congealed across much of the glossy-yet-muddied chrome blade. “It was here, I am led to believe,” he looked to the police reporter taking notes in a handheld notebook, “that the cat came upon him again.”

Barson was slammed into the mud as the lion landed on his back from behind and pushed him deep into the rocky post-rain slush; but the beast’s momentum carried it further still and gave the young man that blessed second to regain himself.

Instantly he pushed himself from the ground as though having gained super strength when least expected and thus overshot it and landed on his feet with too much backwards inertia. He tripped over his own heels and almost fell again, had he not still been holding the staff. When he realized the knife had been lost he went white with fear.

This was it. This was how he would die.

Again the lion came at him, charging like a mad rhinoceros from out of the dark. He only noticed at the last second due to the splashing sound of mud, and absently swung the staff around and forward. The jaws gleamed and his reflexes kicked in. His body became a vehicle for the many years of limitless knightly dreams, of wishing he were some heroic armor-bearing knight for the king, and the walking stick became a weapon to be reckoned with. In a flash of hallucination enabled by blood loss and fear, the oak turned to Excalibur and the mountain lion a bloodthirsty dragon.

“Right here,” he indicated with a pointed gesture toward a place where pawprints had meshed with pools of gore, “is where the cat received a major blow, ultimately turning the tide.”

He set his jaw and felt the thin end of the staff pierce the forward crest of the lion’s chest, and subsequently slip upon the cat’s upper ribs. He fell as the beast sailed passed, regained his determination, and swung with all his might as a warrior to carry the extension of the legendary blade into the dragon’s side. He felt something within crumple, and the blade shattered back into a heft of arm-length oak with a wicked crackle.

The cat bellowed out in pain and it’s eyes lost color for a split second…

“...but then the lion reciprocated despite the shrapnel protruding from it’s side…”

...and then it turned back toward the backpacker with sudden animistic, feral fire burning deep within the confines of it’s will.

Barson watched in growing fear as the cat came again, slower now but still much too ferocious to be avoided. He barely brought the heft of oak up in time to land it square into the lion’s underarm as a stray paw swiped at his neck.

The cat landed hard, the staff piece still lodged deep in the soft spot where it’s front right paw connected with it’s chest, turned viciously sideways by the landing, and stumbled a few paces before it turned back toward Barson again. Their eyes held for a brief moment as the man felt his shirt grow warmer and his arms grow numb, when the beast huffed one last breath into the cold night and fell to the trailside grass.

Inspector Chiff Mason bit the end of his pen again and frowned at the corpse of the mountain lion laying halfway out of the trail. The beast was massive. Bigger than most other cats around these parts in the national park lands. The forest ranger, who had first arrived at the scene after he’d received the distressed call of a local hiker going for a morning run, had said the cat was affected by some tumor lodged in the lobes of it’s brain that controlled hunger.

He’d said that was the only plausible possibility for the attack.

“What I don’t understand,” Mason mumbled, “is why the boy did what came next…”

Barson leaned on his knees and panted hard air and fought to stay standing. He’d been sliced too deeply just above the collar, that much was obvious by now, and there was no way he was going to make it back alive. Even worse: there was no cell service to call for help… or to hear the voice of his fiance one last time.

He huffed through a blood-filled mouth and lost his dinner onto his feet. God it hurt so much. The whiteness of the numbing sensation was fleeting through his body like a phantom mist, thicker in some areas and thinner in others, but these places never stayed constant. He would lose full feeling of his left shoulder one second and the next he could feel every nerve crying out in a searing explosion of throbbing hellfire.

Before he knew it, the ground met his face with a thunderous echo…

…and there in front of him, inches from his nose and looking into his own, were the bloodshot eyes of the dying mountain lion as it fought to breathe it’s very last breath.

Barson felt the tears begin to flow, the sadness of it all summing up in that one glance as the beast and he recognized each other as equals, and that neither would survive to remember the sacrifice of the other as nature took it’s toll. He lifted a heavy, brick-laden right hand and placed it upon the cheek of the lion, meshing his fingers with the fur and a soft grin appeared across his cheeks.

“We’ve had a good run,” Barson whispered reassuringly as though to himself, “I’m just glad to have made it this far. Thank you.”

“Thank you?!” Mason interjected, catching the reporter off-guard. “Private Fennison, really? You think he thanked the beast?”

“Well, yeah,” the small man winced under the inspector’s glare, “the guy was a romanticist. It’s clear in the way he wrote all those books of poems that he thought himself a reincarnation of an age-old hero.”

“And you just assume that means he was thankful for such an attack?”

Fennison found himself looking at the way the young man had lain in death, with one arm held over the lion that had killed him, resting his palm on the soft spot of it’s cheek where one might cup the face of a pet or a lover. He gazed upon the way the two had bled out together from their numerous wounds, and how content the man was despite the circumstances. “Judging by the way Barson commonly ends his books of poetry, how the bad commonly becomes subjugated by the wonderful, I cannot help but think he died with a sense of loss at the creature’s life that was just as strong as that for his own.”

Mason pushed his lips forward in denial, “well don’t think that’s going into the report, Private: there is nothing to say why he chose to lay like that.” He stood taller and beamed, “in fact, I might rather believe the man was saying something more akin to ‘take that, asshole’ than some cheesy thank you.”

Dragon Rider

“Dragon Rider”

a short excerpt

Gary Baker, December 2013

(possibly the prologue to Kingdom's Rise)

“Ride high! We've almost got him!”

Vaughn kicked his stallion into gear and charged faster to clear the dust of the prince's gilded mount. The warm saddle shifted as he swung his hunting pike, a long double-hilted shaft of the finest hardened oak that ended in a lightning-like double spike, and pulled closer to his king's heir.

Ahead the drake sped like a hare being chased by a hawk, though with none of the ragged misdirection. It was young, that much was obvious. It's opalescent gray armor shone in the light of high noon, almost reflecting the vast green of the broken plains around them. Vaughn found it inspiring to watch the beast sprint like never before, as it's muscles grew taut as it leapt forward and how they bunched into massive hunks of glistening smoke-gray mounds as the beast landed.

The beast began to veer off to the left, trailing toward a series of jagged cliffs that arose from the grassy hills as though broken by the hammer of god. This was where they would do it, he knew. This was where the beast would die.

“Lithomir!” He shouted over the ever-present thunder of the group's stallions pounding the earth beneath their feet. The prince looked over, excitement showing in his deep green eyes, his golden hair held back in a long tail over his chrome-armored back, and grinned. It was his tell-tale sign that he was up to something again. Vaughn, captain of the boy's personal guard, knew this look all too well. The blasted heir knew.

He must have planned this from the start.

Vaughn dug his heels into his mount's hips and pushed closer to the silvery white horse armored with plated gold and steel over intricately woven crimson wool, noting the series of weaponry that the heir seemed so attached to. Though everyone knew he wasn't one, the heir carried them like a Centurion: always ready for anything, prepared to fight until the last breath with whatever he had on him. In Lithomir's case, however, the boy seemed to think this meant he should carry more should he drop anything, instead of the usual mantra that followed along “a man's blade is his life, lose it and death will be there waiting.”

The guard captain looked back over his shoulder to gauge the depth of the playing field as they closed in on a corner in the cliffs. The others had fanned out to give the heir more room, and took unspoken orders from the boy to block off the passage should the beast turn and flee. Their own mount's shuddered with the growing energy: Huira's murky dappled mare cantered as he slowed near the far wall, his pike drawn and ready, Kilnar's jet-black mount pushed ever harder against the reins as he flanked off to the right, crossing with Jilai as they rode onto the rises that overlooked the coming arena. Vaughn had to admit that the arena was well-planned, too. At the far end it rose with a sheer wall of granite over three stories high, and tapered out on either side with not much room to spare other than the not-quite-circular clearing where they were headed. The flooring was well-packed with plenty of grass to soften falls without losing too much traction, and the bottleneck would give the drake just enough of a view into the arena to expect an outcropping where it might leap with it's ungodly strong hind legs and escape.

There wasn't any such ledge, in truth, but the young beast didn't see that until the group was following it into the corner.

Instantly Vaughn spotted the continuing crevice where the two sides had collided into each other, and would have been traversable for a while longer for a man on foot. The drake made for this only to crash against solid stone against either shoulder before it spun to get out and found itself flanked on all sides. Kilnar and Jilai then dropped bolts of weighted arrows here and there to keep the drake in the furthest point in the corner until the prince and heir could become the gatekeeper of the bottleneck and prevent it from escape.

Vaughn and Grishe then slowed to a trot and watched from the opening as the would-be king swung his pike side to side to loosen his arms. “You think he's ready for this?” Grishe grumbled under the ear-piercing cry of the trapped drake, timed so the heir wouldn't hear. His brown stallion heaved it's head side to side as it fought to run again, but stayed put as the rider quickly yanked the reins twice consecutively.

The captain held his breath for a moment and felt his pulse quicken as he watched the arrogant young man move from wall to wall while flashing the blade in an attempt to intimidate the beast that must have been scared half to death by now. “It's possible,” he admitted uneasily, “he is the King's boy, after all.”

Grishe nodded at that, snapping a fist to his heart in salute to the great leader's mention, and turned back to watch the display. There were a couple of wayward attacks from either side as the game moved into showoff mode and the heir grew visibly cocky, throwing obvious swings to merely antagonize the beast into another pointless charge. “I hear he's been training with Master Ghera's centurion's,” he glanced across to Vaughn from under his scarred right eyebrow, his dirtied helmet barely hiding his deep black curls that fell along the sides of his face, “what might yon Captain Vaughn Heirsguard think of that, eh?”

Vaughn pressed his lips tight as he fought to intervene in the boy's display of bravery and show. “The men of the empire will never follow a man who is weaker than they, Grishe, you know that.” He gripped his pike tighter and brought the shaft into his lap atop the saddle, distractedly fingering the dark, carved oak while expecting the beast to land a fatal strike at any moment. It made him twitchy, watching this. Each time the wingless, gecko-shaped dragon launched forward, it's horned spines gnashing the air, Vaughn kept thinking his future king was about to be gored before ever reaching the age of two-hundred and twenty new moons. “The boy has to fight harder than any of us, Grishe, and I'd be hard pressed to say his training hasn't done him some good in the last fifty or so, other than this increased bravado.”

Just then the drake leapt off the ground, using those toad-like hind legs to send it full force into Prince Lithomir's face. They all witnessed as the boy brought up a hand just in time to deviate the beast's maw before the two tumbled in the grass. The heir's stallion then did what all Celestial mounts were trained to do in such a situation and shot quickly out of reach where it could not be harmed in the ensuing fray, taking with it the boy's only means of escape.

Vaughn inhaled suddenly, his lungs becoming solid as his grip tightened on the lower hilt of the pike, as his eyes searched through the cloud of dust to find his charge.

Finally the air cleared just enough that they could see the prince now standing in the corner with the drake between himself and his guards. Vaughn moved to kick his horse into action when the prince held a hand and stopped him mid-way. “Stay!” The boy shouted, “he's mine!”

Jilai barked a laugh that echoed down from the plains above and mocked the horseless heir. “Would you look at that! The wittle bwayby pwince feww off his howse!”

Kilnar joined in, then, with a “you know the rules!”

“No remount!” Grishe joined in with a static grin towards his captain.

“Take him on foot!”

“Show him who's the true heir to the empire!”

“Fight like a man!”

Vaughn scowled as the scene deepened into greater feats of callous manliness and show. Personally, he felt that a man should prove his strength in battle against his fellow men, not in a self-made arena against a young, just-off-the-teat drake. Yet the odds seemed even more against the young heir now, as the beast was easily as tall in the shoulders while on all fours as the heir was standing as tall as he could.

The problem now was that the drake was in it's natural element whilst the heir was weighed down by several blades, his armor, and the heavy cavalry pike in his hands.

Yet Lithomir grinned at his cliff-top comrades and dropped the majority of the weapons into the soil before he began to spin his pike in circuitous motions until it became but a blur of silver and two gold-framed hilts churning the dust once again. He moved to the side, the beast watching him and doing the same, and lashed out twice before the drake reared back and slapped the pike high into the arena walls. Suddenly the boy was on his own with nothing but an ornate dagger at his hips and a short-sword on his back.

“How could you not block that?!” Kilnar mocked.

“Lithomir!” Vaughn scoffed, “pay attention!”

“Hey, Kingsheir!” Jilai sang. “You dropped your pi-ike!”

Grishe brought himself a few paces closer. “Now what would your father say, if he heard about this, eh?”

Kilnar bellowed with laughter from his perch, “he'd be shamed, he would!”

Vaughn found his eyebrows cinching toward each other, burrowing as he watched the fangs appear and the spines flare out from the beast's body to make itself even more fearsome. “Lithomir do not let this break you!” He pushed his mount as far in as Grishe's and brought the pike back out and to the side, ready to swing should the need arise. “Focus, man!”

It was obvious to the captain as the boy began blindly boasting and laughing off about the drake's inferior speed and mobility, that the heir, too, was scared out of his wits. “Look at him!” The heir shouted, “if he were human he'd be crying!”

“What a bwayby!” Jilai taunted.

Kilnar added in, then “does the wittle thing want his mommy?”

Seeing the heir's lowering sense of bravery and thus his narrowing ability to survive this event, Vaughn, too, played along to keep morale high. “Hell if I was it's mother I'd tell it to lay down and die already! So weak!”

“Well let's just be glad you're not!” Jilai retorted. “This is the most fun I've had in weeks!”

Lithomir lashed out, then, using standard Centurion slash and dodge techniques. He swung the sword low to clang against the solid armor of the drake's outer elbow, and side-stepped the beast's whip-like tail as it spun to slam it into the grass. Vaughn felt the earth shudder as the tail hit home, knowing that had it hit the boy there would have been no going back. Every bone would have been crushed by that blow.

He was lucky this time.

This went on for a handful of further attacks by both the heir and his target when finally the boy made contact with penetrable points in the underside of the drake's shoulder, as well as another gash into it's chin. Neither were of any significance, but the beast had started bleeding and that was the point. Now the grass was becoming redder and redder as the minutes wore on, with the traction loosing quality as blood was churned into the soil to become a brutal, gory mud. Vaughn raised his chin at the sight, seeing all too many memories of battles waged against the various surrounding territories as the centurions had vanquished all opposition in the age of expansion. Nowadays the broken plains that surrounded the empire's capital was as bloody in history as the arena in which the heir was finding his manhood, though the plains had long ago overgrown the thick rivers of gore while this corner was just getting a taste for it.

When the drake had been gashed enough to cause it to lose balance a few times and stumble on it's own feet, it charged full-force, much to the captain's dismay. Unexpectedly, and just like a battle-seasoned centurion, the heir shifted on his feet and grabbed one of the four arm-length head-adornments to swing himself up and over the beasts neck and onto its back. Instantly the boy was riding the wild drake as though he'd gotten atop of a wild stallion, fighting to stay on as it bucked and rolled to get him off.

“Haha!” Howled Jilai. “Look at him! Our prince – a bonafide dragon rider!”

Grishe rubbed his chin with his free hand, watching the show with overly excited bouts of laughter and howling. “Why, I'll be that one day they'll call him 'Lithomir, Lord of the Drakes'!”

The captain rolled his eyes angrily. Each second that this went on for was another second in which the beast could impale the boy on a stray horn, or worse: on his own weapons that still lay end-first in the grass at the far end of the arena. “Lithomir, get it over with!” He hollered through cupped hands, “I'm hungry for good meat and you're doing nothing but serving to make it bitter!”

The heir made eye-contact with his guard captain, then, and grinned as wide as Vaughn had ever seen the boy grin. Cockily, he reached down with his dagger as the drake charged toward Grishe and Vaughn to break their lines at last, sending the whole group charging after him, and slid the blade up along the young dragon's throat. It stopped in mid-stride as he did so, seeming to know what was about to happen, and reared back onto it's hind legs one last time. It was an ungodly sight for Vaughn to watch as the heir rode the drake's flaring form even as he brought the blade through the beasts spraying neck and against the armor scales along it's spine. The whole sight then ended with the beast falling, headless, atop the king's heir in a heap of gore just beyond the entrance to the broken cliffs.

Vaughn leapt from his horse just as the mount brought him close and sprinted to the headless dragon's side where he'd last seen the king's son. Neither the head nor the boy were anywhere to be seen for the longest time, until finally the boy stumbled out from behind the mound with a gory dagger in one hand and the drake's head dragging along the ground in the other. He was painted in blood as though he'd just been swimming in wine, though he limped on one side where Vaughn instantly spotted the bone spike jutting from the heir's left side.

No one spoke for the longest time.

Grishe seemed cowed for once, and the two jokers in their gleaming chrome armor stared with slack jaws from atop their horses. The heir looked from one man to the next with his opalescent teeth the only contrast to the steaming gore. Even his now-crimson hair was so drenched that it had fallen from the ties. The heir appeared more like a child soaked in the innards of a sweet cherry pie than he did a man with a drake's horn rammed through his kidney.

At such a sight Vaughn felt a beaming smile of his own creep over his cheeks as he cupped the boy's chin in a dark-gloved hand. “You're an arrogant bastard, you know that?” he guffawed, “just like your father!” Together they all fell into a fit of raucous laughter.

Alethi

"Alethi"

a working of character

Gary Baker, (date unknown, sometime within the last few years)

Bright light; blinding, searing. An intense ripple of electric pain, so great that it seemed to drive toward insanity, until that blessed moment of sure-to-be emptiness.

Then something changed.

A slim, faded blur of green wisped across and then gone. Curiosity peaked and then came the tantalizing rub and tug of flesh on bone, of liquid within the flesh morphing it's shape just slightly enough to turn the skeletal fragments housed within. Then the glidingly easy, lubricated sensation of that bone turning on cushioned cartilage.

...and the green blur appeared again.

Focusing on the green enabled more, and the painful white existence became numb. The green began to grow, sharpening and gaining contrast with itself, forming new shades and slashes of darker tones interspersed like stones in the sand.

Continuing still, the blur dissapated into shards with shadows generating the darker hues while spots of glimmering light generated brighter tones. As if in response, the green region grew, reaching the sides of the visible white expanse where it then sharpened until it became visibly soft.

At first the green appeared fur-like, but with second thoughts coming from an unseen zone of being, came the notion of grass. The green shards were grass.

But what was this 'grass', really? And how was this known? Surely knowing such would be impossible to something nonexistent, yet sensation overrode doubt and existence, too, was known... though not how.

The thoughts crept out more, touching the place where the bone and flesh sensations had emanated, in that far-off point in space, and found a sturdy, unseen force in the way. The force had a cushioned quality, with the idea of connectivity to something larger, though displaced by invisible fog, and hinted at a more in-depth force of being than was currently known.

In shock and curiosity both, the thoughts felt onward, driven by a greed to have as much of this knowing as possible before it slipped away again. They imagined five-pronged appendages with more of this amazingly addicting bone and flesh feel, though why five was not yet known, where each struck out from two larger lengths and everything within cognition was contained within a slightly oily, slightly dry, not very sticky but not gripless surface. The thoughts imagined eight of these as small projections containing an overwhelmingly greater number of points where they could relish in the sensation of flesh and bone turning and pivoting with the help of oily cartilage. Somehow, from those same thoughts came another realization that these chaotic instruments were known as hands, and that these hands had four fingers each with an opposing thumb off to the side.

The hands returned to the point of origin to find the same feeling as before, only now more intensely felt through comprehendable fingertips and fleshy muscular pressure. The fingers pressed and prodded, all at the thoughts command, creating the image of moving liquid within the fleshy origin, so near to the wonderous lumescent green and yet so very far away.

The thought came to find the end to this new idea, and through unspoke commands the fingers once again slid away, deep into space beyond the origin, finding more bony structures beneath more flesh and padding. An Array of bumps caused by long, horizontal-but-curved bones beneath more flesh, then quickly faded beneath separate mounds of piled flesh ever-so-slightly more padded to the touch than the other fleshy regions thus far explored.

Continuing still, the fingers relayed signals of more beyond as the flesh dropped away in a deeper curve than that which had started these mounds, until once again bony flesh came to pass. A series of ripple-like bones beneath a thinner layer of flesh slid beneath the exploration and ultimately gave way to an unexpected flaw. The fingers paused, hesitating as they found themselves without command whilst the thoughts tried to comprehend why it was the bone had suddenly gone away, replaced by a full region of space where only flesh could be found. Worried, the thoughts sent the fingers out again, frantically seeking a return of these lovely structures of bone.

It was then that the smallest of the fingers, a twin of the smallest on the other hand, dipped into a sudden divot. The thoughts reeled, both ecstatic at such a find and terrified that this was the beginning of the end, that from here on there would be no further space to traverse into. So they made up for it by sending all fingers at once to push and shove their way over and into this tiny point, discovering a short drop ended with more crevaces than there were fingers, all smaller than the thoughts could imagine as being possible, yet there they all were, held together by a tiny mound at the cratorial center.

After much deliberation, the thoughts became coherent enough to send the fingers out further, to seek out more of these elusive nuances. Continuing, the fingers reached an unknown substance further below the lone divot, where tiny spindles of corrosive fibers splayed out with no intended direction, as though this form of chaos was normal.

But why? Why enable chaos on a perfect existence? Curioser still, what would the spindles of fiber be intended for? And by whom?

The thoughts grew ravagingly more greedy to find out the answers, and pushed the fingers further, pressing into what could only be imagined as wiry grass that grew from the flesh beneath, where they finally reached a sharp decline. On the sides of the fiberous expanse the flesh moved onward without delay, yet within the area of the fibers the flesh fell away dramatically. Pressing onward to sate a curiosity of their own, the fingers delved into a point where both the flesh and the innermost fibers felt warm and wonderfully moist. Further on this warm flesh then became folded and rippled, and more moisture seemed to appear the longer the fingers pressed onward.

The thoughts became ecstatic again, decidedly knowing that this point in space was where the flesh originated from. There was no other explanation for it. They revisited the divot above and came to a similar conclusion, though chose instead that this was an older point in existence, one that had been used for it's course and had simply became outdated in time. Further review brought the thoughts back to the mounds, where flesh seemed to be stored, kept within reach until the need for growth became tangible and in one swift move the thoughts declared this space to be known with truth.

There was an unmistakable doubt lingering within the thoughts, like an echo hailed against a cavernous wall, but the more important matter of discovering where it all ended still remained. Returning to the origin point above, the fingers responded to this matter by moving in the opposite direction with renewed vigor.

First came the sharp incline of incredibly bony flesh followed by an ever-so-slight decline with more flesh deposits beyond. Pressing with all ten appendages, the fingers found several openings to more moisture, the largest and closest to the sharp incline resembling a horizontal version of the opening beyond the fibers below. Above this existed two smaller twin openings on another sharp incline, and two more beyond that.

Moving further, the fingers reached over the two latest openings and the thoughts could only watch as the glowingly trance-like grass became obscured by deep shadowy blurs of darkness.

Instinctively the fingers drew away quickly to keep the grass within view, but curiostiy peaked again and the thoughts turned the structure of bone and flesh to move the fingers back into view below the image of the grass. Once again the shadows hovered there, moving when the thoughts commanded the fingers to, and faded into clarity with the prolonged exposure. The light dimmed slightly as the shadowy fingers came into reality, declaratively seen through the oval holes above the point of origin, and the thoughts chose to know that these figures were the very fingers that they controlled. Of this, there was no doubt.

Then came the details, so many wonderful details. The fingers were pale, but not too pale, the thoughts somehow knew, but more pale than they lighter grass tones. Over the places of cartilage, creases were visible in the outermost layerof pale flesh, as if merely there to remind of the magic-like structures within. They all seemed to hint of more and, sure enough, as the fingers flexed toward the ovals that enabled vision, a new texture could be seen hiding on the back of the fingertips, seemingly made of a glossy flesh that drove into the first joint of each appendage.

The grass flickered slightly and the thoughts pulled their new-found gaze toward it once more, to see a tiny figure resting where one had not been previously. The figure wasn't anything like that which the fingers had explored. Instead of a patch of fibers, the new figure was covered completely in white and muddy brown red splotches. The figure stood on all four limbs with it's head tilted to the side, curiously.

What is this? The thoughts wondered, coelescing into one lone voice with all the vigor of much-needed comprehension, while pushing into lower limbs of it's own extending below the fiber-covered opening and swung them aside like larger fingers. Something touched the limbs where the vision could see them end with five more digits per limb and when the voice within tried to understand what it had been, something exploded in the space between the two figures. A painfully loud bellow of a high-pitched yelp seemed to emanate from the four-legged figure in the grass and instantly the hands reached for the sides of the voice's own head, as if this could block out the sound.

Unfortunately, however, upon clapping to the head the hands created loud 'pop' sounds of flesh hitting bony flesh again, followed by a painful ache within the voice's head, swimming around the source of the thoughts with pulsing irritation and a 'ping' that eventually gave way to an endless high-pitched ringing.

As cognition returned, the fingers suddenly became aware of more fibers, less coarse than those down below, but more greater in number and apparent length. Following the ends of these fibers, the fingers reached across and over the ovals of vision once more, pulling the long strands of pale whitened-tan fibers into view. These fibers seemed to draw in the perfection of the existence beyond them to display it all with glittering realism.

Entranced, the fingers reached up and meshed into the sheer immensity of how truly thick these fibers clustered around the origin of thought. Again the fingers brought these forward so it could gaze at what the unheard voice kept hinting at as being hair, and pure joy rushed in, starting within the inner thoughts until it reached out and drew into the flesh of the head. Muscles tugged at the sides of the horizontal opening and ecstatic joy overflowed the thoughts into a twitch that reached through all points, explored and unexplored alike, ending in a sudden exhalation of air through the horizontal opening that sounded like a toned-down version of that which had come from the figure in the grass.

Suddenly the voice declared itself a figure and witnessed in awe as the mind-generated thoughts began to connect pieces together with a knowledge of unknown origin; recalling folds of flesh between it's lower limbs, the mounds of flesh above the divot and the intensely long hair, to bring the notion of womanhood into being. With this in mind, the figure reached out to an intangible sound somehow already known: she.

She reached out again, concentrating on what to call the figure in the grass, coming up with only 'it'. Frustrated, she pushed harder, delving into the expanse of knowledge contained within her thoughts, focusing on the figure to bring clarity. Finally she hit her first clue: she was nearly bare of the fibers known as hair, whereas the other was covered entirely. Somehow this meant the other wasn't a figure at all, but a... thing? Yes. But no, it was something else... a... creature? Yes! That was it.

'She,' she mouthed, 'it.' Her face contorted the muscles to somehow give her more clarity in thought and then brighened suddenly. 'Cre – ture' she mouthed, then pushed harder with an exhalation of breath like something hinted at from the back of her mind, while instictually contourting the muscles within her neck. “Cr – ea – t – sur.” No, that wasn't quite right. “Cr – ea – jur.” Still not right. “Cr – ee – ch – ur.”

Another wave of ecstacy pulsed through her body and she knew she'd gotten it right. “Cr – ee – ch – ur,” she exclaimed, “cree – chur.” With excitement as her fuel, she finally pushed to speak it faster “cree – chur, creechur! Creature!” The low-toned yelping sound came back again with more joy that she couldn't help but release and she began to scream with this sound that her mind told her was known as laughter.

As she let the convulsions of amusement roll through her, her mind began to wander, stuck on the idea of all this knowledge coming so very fast. What was this knowledge? How did it know these things? And why was a four-legged being known as a creature? For now it didn't matter as all existence of her body, the grass and the fluffy creature before her exhaled in an outrageous fit of pure wonder and joyous laughter.

“Creature!” She yelled, “it! She! Grass!”

The fit continued even as she stood from her seated position in the still-white expanse and took her first step toward the grass. The step pushed the feeling of tiny, sharp, loose stones and dirt into her mind, where the feeling seemed painful as there hadn't been any just moments ago. Still laughing, she took another step with slightly wobbly balance and then another and another and another, each time she came ever-closer to the furry creature in the grass.

When she was only a step away from the grass, she turned to see how far she'd come by this new sensation of walking and saw that where she'd stepped was no longer white, but a deep brown and black with dark grey stones scattered within each footprint. Amazed, she knelt and put her palm to the ground and felt the stinging sharp roughness of the stones and the smooth, silky feel of the soil.

Then the sound of the creature panting brought her attention over and as she turned to it, she grabbed a handful of the soil. Moving toward the creature again, she slowly set her foot down into the grass, sure that the sharpness of it all would cut her wide open – but as she pushed her toes down first, they seemed to slide into the soft, hair-like tufts of greenery. In awe, she nearly let go of the soil, until she concentrated hard enough to keep it in her fist as she knelt to touch the blades of grass with her free hand. Her fingers pushed into the grass much like they had in her hair – now hanging around her neck to barely touch the back of her grass-covered hand.

The excitement returned, and she convulsed with laughter again, causing her to fall over and let go of the soil. Her right shoulder hit first, landing easily into the lush fur-like foliage with a soft 'shush' sound, followed closely by her back as she rolled to laugh hysterically at the sensation. Feeling the energy of the moment, the creature ran with small leaps until it landed beside her and shoved it's soft head into her hands.

Smiling broader, she grabbed the small figure and hugged it closely, gently stroking it's fur. With tears in her eyes, she repeated “creature” over and over while it wriggled within her arms.