APRIL FOOL'S - Lord of the God-Kings, Part I

EDIT: (April 2) I'm disappointed that nobody commented on this so far.

For an April Fool's joke I decided to pretend that I had finished a short story, and that it was horrible. Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to actually write a horrible story.

Come on, guys. "Lord of the God-Kings?" Really? And I said "jagged spikes" about fifteen times in a row.

I would have fun with this, except that apparently either no one read it in time or everyone thought I was serious and declined to comment. Either possibility disappoints me.

Anyway, the original post remains below:



This is the story on which I have labored this month past.

Are you surprised? Did you think that I would never get it finished, that perhaps I don't actually work on things? Wallow in your shame, for you have been proven dramatically wrong.

I do not hesitate in calling it my greatest work. You can really feel my passion for the subject matter oozing out of every orifice this story has. Read, and you will have no choice but to enjoy.


Now, without further adieu, I give you: Lord of the God-Kings, Part I.


The slavering horror was eating Steve’s parents.
    It was eight feet tall, greyish-white in color, and had a bunch of jagged spikes all over it. Long, thin jagged spikes thrust out from its spine. Its teeth were tiny, jagged spikes that clashed together when it closed its jaw, and it was probably slavering simply because it didn’t have any cheeks. Other jagged spikes were stuck more or less randomly all over its body, at a bunch of different angles.
    Steve didn’t see a whole lot more details, because it was eating his parents. He cried and screamed and threw a horseshoe at the monster, but it kept right on eating. He charged it, broom handle lowered like a lance, but the broom handle wasn’t quite as long as some of the thing’s jagged spikes. It stabbed him in the shoulder without taking much notice at all.
    In the grip of grief and rage, Steve kept trying to hurt the monster. It didn’t work, and after a while the monster patted its distended stomach happily, checked its golden wristwatch, yawned, and walked away.
    Steve cried for a long time, then by himself took the shovel from his hovel and buried his parents. His neighbors came in, patted him awkwardly on the back, and left, leaving gifts of food and sympathy behind them. Steve would remember their words of comfort only later.
    “The good die young,” said Old Elder Haman.
    “This was how they would have wanted to go,” said Mr. McGee.
    “They’re in a better place now,” Goodwife Sharlot said kindly. “I hear they’ll have paved roads, and plenty of company, and they’re certainly plenty warm.”
    “Rub some dirt on it,” suggested Steve’s grandfather.
    Though the support of the village folk lifted his spirits, Steve waited until he was alone, in the dead of night, to swear vengeance.
    “I swear vengeance,” he said. “And I swear upon the memory of my parents that I will not return home until I have the beast’s head.” He lifted a torch, angling it toward his wooden hovel. The firelight reflected angrily in his eyes, highlighting his grim features. “And to ensure that my will remains strong, I will leave myself no option but to go on.”
    With that, he tossed his torch onto the tiny one-room shack that had been in his family for generations. It took fire immediately, and the smoke from Steve’s burning home took the heat of his vengeance up the the stars.
    “I don’t mean to be critical,” a new voice said, “but once you have the beast’s head, how are you going to return to a home you just burned down?”
    Steve whirled to face the person with the voice.
    “Who are you?” Steve said. “What do you want?”
    It was a man of average height, perhaps thirty years of age, but his head was shaved completely bald and shone in the firelight. He wore black robes decorated with eagle feathers and oddly-carved bone tiles, and he had a smirk on his face that Steve suspected was more or less permanent.
    The robed man ducked in a small bow.
    “I am Elcaro the Oracle,” he said. “Which is spelled the same even in the mirror.”
    “What’s a mirror?”
    “I have received a message from fate, and oddly enough it concerns you. You see...” And here Elcaro leaned closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “You see, the monster that ate your parents here tonight is a foul creature, born of the deepest darkness. Through its veins flow the tears of a thousand orphans. Its very heart is fueled by the fires of hatred and antipathy. It is a monster of legend, and its name--” Elcaro’s voice rose to a stentorian thunder-- “is PHYLLIS!”
    Steve drew in a sharp breath. “Phyllis? Yes, I shall remember it.”
    “See that you do,” Elcaro said. “For it is your destiny to destroy the monster Phyllis once and for all!”
    “Awesome,” Steve said. “How?”
    “Seek out the great trainer of heroes, Master Chekov. He will equip you to destroy this beast.”
    Steve clenched his fists, and steadied his eyes on Elcaro’s. “Where do I find him?”
   
    He followed the trading road until he reached the second big tree, took a left, turned right at the Old Blue Barn, and walked clear on through Hamlet Wood. Then the directions started to get complicated. He touched the wooden gate (the password was “please”), followed the moonlight wolf, and stole the Ferryman’s oar. The way through the fairy well was the hardest, because he could only see by the light of his rapidly-dimming hopes, but when he emerged he just had to answer a troll’s riddle and escape a rotting rope bridge before it crumbled.
    Six weeks after his parents’ mastication, he stood before the home of Master Chekov.
    It was a ranch house, in the middle of some rolling plains. The main house was enormous, two stories high, and it was all made of wood painted grey, which almost made Steve faint at the extravagance. There was a patch of grassland to the left of the house encircled by a home-made wooden fence. The fence restrained an exotic assortment of animals: three horses, one with wings and none the same color, two brown cows, a handful of sheep, one wolf with a sheepskin hanging loosely on it, and a toucan perched on a bird feeder in the middle of the circle.
    To the right of the house was a huge barn.
    Steve limped up to the door of the main house and knocked. Master Chekov, a sun-weathered old man in a plaid kilt and an orange tank top, peered up at his new visitor. The young man was covered in dirty, shredded clothing, bleeding scratches, burns, bites, and bruises. He swayed slightly, even standing still.
    “I see you took the fun road in,” Chekov said. “I like that. I’ve got no time for slackers who take the easy road.”
    “There was an easy road?”
    "Well, no time to waste. Come on in.” Chekov headed into the house, and Steve stumbled after him.
    The main room was simple: hearth with a brick chimney, a few chairs, some rugs. Three or four doors all around the room were shut. Above the mantle, resting on a plaque over a crackling fire, was a strange device: on one end it was a brown slat of wood and a metal tube on the other, with a little curving piece of metal about an inch long sticking out from the bottom.
    “What’s that for?” Steve asked, pointing.
    “What, that thing? That’s not important, forget about it. Pull up a chair.” Chekov took his own advice, and Steve practically collapsed into his own hand-carved wooden rocking chair.
    “You must be the boy Elcaro was sending up,” Chekov said. Steve nodded wearily. “You know, I trained the best. Stoic the Vast, Steelarm the Steely, Holga the Man-thief, and even the dwarf lord Beardly Hammerfist. All of them came right through my training camp. And now you, little...”
    It took Steve a moment to realize he was supposed to speak.
    “Steve.”
    “Steeeeeve,” Chekov said. “Hm. Not much to work with there, name-wise. Oh, well. No sense blaming anyone, as it’s your parents’ fault, and they’re dead. Anyway, you’ve only got to realize one piece of advice to get through my training: training is never over. Say it.”
    “Training is never over,” Steve repeated.
    “Great. Now, your room for the next few days will be through that door. I expect you’ll want to rest a little after your journey.”
    Steve nodded again, and stepped through the door. He was somewhat surprised when he fell seven or eight feet into a pit, slamming his shoulder and jarring his skull against a packed dirt floor. He barely maintained consciousness, and it was with only a focused effort of will that he heard Chekov say, “First step of your training: survive for two days. I’ll come let you know when time’s up.” He paused for a moment, scratching at his short grey beard. “Oh, right. And mind the snakes. They aren’t too poisonous, but they’ll slow you down right enough.”
    It was about at that point that Steve noticed he was sharing the bottom of the pit with about ten four-foot-long serpents. There was a window high up on the wall, so he hand plenty of light by which to see the fangs as they quickly started sinking into his calves.

    Two days later, Chekov opened the door again and let Steve climb out.
    “Did I ever tell you about the most deadly monster I ever had to fight?” Chekov clapped Steve on the back amiably, causing Steve to pitch over onto the floor. It didn’t interrupt Chekov’s story.
    “The Druvian Co’remanti. It’s like a red lion, only it’s got a scorpion tail as big around as my thigh, and twice as long as it’s body. Devilish fast, lightning quick, fond of snack cakes. It killed a hundred soldiers in about ten minutes before I got there and settled it right up. Worst thing was, it’s real hard to catch it: it likes to run through the woods, and I’m telling ya’, catching that thing before it catches you...yikes. It’s like trying to find your way through a maze, only there’s a panther in the maze, and you don’t know if you’re going to be able to find the exit before the panther gets ya’.”

    The next morning, Steve awoke inside a hedge maze. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he was sharing the maze with a panther. It wouldn’t have been so bad, really, but Chekov sat on a tower overlooking the whole maze, drinking and singing off-color limericks and occasionally pelting Steve with darts from a blow gun.
    After twelve hours of desperately avoiding two hundred pounds of hunting cat, Steve was finally hauled out of the hedges. When Chekov pulled him over the outer wall of the maze, it was easy to figure out why he had never been able to escape: the maze had no exit.

    “That Co’remanti? It’s got this venom that can eat straight through a brick wall. Saw it with my own eyes, I did. And speaking of eyes, it’s got a pair in the back of its head. And I mean that literally, boy. And it can see in the dark just as good as you or I can in broad daylight. I tell ya’, I’d rather be burned alive in a vat of acid than face that hell-beast again.”

    The next day Steve woke up hog-tied and dangling by a frayed rope over a vat of glowing green liquid that sizzled and smelled like burning iron. He finally managed to build enough momentum to swing himself away from the vat just as the rope snapped, so he landed painfully on the floor.
    After he landed, he looked up to see Chekov standing over him with a manic grin on his face. “Training is never over,” he said.

    One week and seven convoluted torments later, Steve woke at the crack of dawn ready to flee from a new challenge, only to find himself in his bed. Chekov didn’t come to rouse him until a few hours later, and there was no hideously sadistic training scenario waiting for him. Only breakfast.
    “Chores today, son,” Chekov said. “Not training. Barn needs cleaned out.” Steve almost wept with relief.
    “The thing about the Co’remanti,” Chekov continued as they marched out of the house to the barn, “it’s that I don’t just fear it; I respect it. I captured the durn fool thing, but I couldn’t kill it. Kept it instead.” He opened one of the barn doors a crack and held it. Steve held a shovel and walked inside. Chekov followed.
    “Really?” Steve asked, only half listening. “Where did you put it?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t keep track of it. It could be anywhere...up in the rafters in this very room, perhaps. Or hiding in the stalls of this very room. Or behind us, in this very room.”
    Steve whirled to see the sliver of sunlight vanish as the barn door closed. He was submerged in darkness with only a few sounds for company:
    His own breathing, harsh and labored.
    Chekov’s chuckling laughter, getting farther away as he returned to his breakfast.
    A low rumble, like a lion growling deep in its chest.
    A crackling clatter, like chitinous plates on a scorpion shifting position.
    A steaming hiss, like acid chewing another pockmark in pitted wooden planks.

    After a nice dinner, Chekov headed out to the barn and opened the door. Steve tumbled out, whimpering and covered in red welts, matted blood, and charred clothing. “You look good today,” Chekov remarked. He dragged the unconscious boy back inside the house and shut the door.

I think it has everything a good story needs: monsters, destiny, a looming threat. It's a very serious work about a very serious topic: people killing monsters. It's like Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self, etc. ...only it's Man vs. Monsters. I think I'm really pioneering new ground, here.

Part II, which I believe will be about this long, will follow tomorrow.