Chapter XXVI:
The Sea Daemon
They remained in that tranquil place for such a length of time that Kurt grew a few inches, muscle and a moustache; his beard auburn red like his long, unshorn locks, well fed by Buck’s flesh and savory water from an ice-cold stream. That tranquil place, Grimnar told him and Verity, was between worlds, a haven from the volltrolls and dwaflar and even the Unghost. Time moved quicker there, much like the temporal conditions in the Eldermark. In the tranquil place a different ghost reigned, a spirit of rejuvenation and unceasing charity.
There was a wellspring of the ghost’s love there, and it would not be much longer when the marchers, having camped for what could have been reckoned as 10 years on Earth, spotted its guardian who lived up on a shell shaped purple cottage on the tallest of those low lying verdant hills.
Grimnar had built himself a cabin from the supple fir surrounding them.
Others were content to sleep outdoors, the nights warm and the days cool, the sky, always a shade of purple, blanketing them.
Kurt early on built himself an oaken cottage, then another for Verity who lived by the stream.
When the 10th year, so reckoned by Grimnar, had passed, Uthurs spoke to his men, commanding them to take up their cargo, and continue forth.
Grimnar translated Uthurs' speech, spoken in a primeval tongue:
“The way has been long, but now we reach its end. Many of you have walked with me since I first left that refulgent city of men before men, named in my dishonor. Now that city is ruled by ettinlings, slaves of our enemy, our former master.
You chose to march with me between worlds, between millennia, so that we would carry the burden of the weight of our crimes.
Behold, it has been turned into a precious metal, far more precious than any metal ettin or earthen or Nergalian.
It is that ore made from the new man’s body: from his spilled aether and blood; spilled by the hands of the servants of the Unghost; by our hands!...yes, my friends, no vision granted to you yet has revealed why we have marched since before mankind was ensouled.
"I was once one of the Orfolk, a creature much like man and ettin in appearance. We were guided by errandghosts, both good and evil who acted as our own souls, for, we were promised, we would be granted our own immortal soul.
But many of us could not wait. The Unghost promised more, we naively believed, and so we accepted him as our patron...I was made emperor of the ancient earth for a time, but heroes of that age fought back. They were guided by the errandghosts of the Spellgesith: the source of all being; and though we slew many of those creatures, we began to wither like a plant uprooted.
"My own body was divided up, offered to myself for myself, each part seeking a new errandghost; a new false-spirit to rule over my crumbling empire. So I became first Uthurs Left- and Right-Head, and then further still the head was split, and I became fractured until a sliver of tongue remained, and that piece, my body, accepted a second chance for recovery...Kalendros gathered me from the grave and into the hall of Rammbock who sent me on this mission...he equipped us with these tools: his own body, and throughout this march I have become close to becoming whole again: to becoming a true man, body and soul.”
He removed his antlers, his face illuminated, now youthful, radiant, second only to an errandghost’s in beauty.
Uthurs lifted his saber and finished his speech with: “Now we are men!”
The 1000 dropped to their knees, many weeping, prostrating, thanking their maker. Grimnar bowed his head.
They continued in their worship for three days by that place’s calendar, finally feasting on meat and berries and wine.
Soon after, they marched to the stream, 101 longships adorned with wolf’s heads awaiting them along the banks, and boarding the ships, ten men to each ship save for the last occupied by Kurt, Verity, Grimnar (who was like twenty men in weight), and Uthurs, they set off down the stream and away from the tranquil place.
Buck remained there, watching them depart before standing up on his legs, removing his horns, and opening the door of the purple cottage on the hill.
The guardian of the hillocks waved them a blessing and entered his house.
+++++
They rowed out for miles till a great diamond-shaped crystalline firth met their ships.
They rowed at the sound of Uthurs’ voice, low and commanding.
They rowed till a mountain that carried the appearance of an eagle, its wings spread out above the sea’s horizon, a craggy head craned over towards their little faces.
Their rowing hastened at Uthurs’ command and any protest of tiring arms was silenced by that fell eagle, and Uthurs’ clanging call in his ancient tongue:
“Fra, Ol, Ker! Fras, Ols, Kers! Ho, Hek, Helm! Hoas,Hekas, Helmus! Grela, Troma, Reka!Meenenar,Grels, Tromas, Reekas!”
Which Grimnar interpreted as:
“Right and left, onward! Swiftly goes the right and swiftly the left as we fare onward! Eyes, tongue, heart! We peer, we speak, we fare with courage! Our goal, our destiny, our end! My bretheren, we soon will be victorious, we will meet our fate and complete the task at hand!”
Grimnar translated as he rowed, his mighty arms striking the water with contentedness.
Kurt and Verity rowed behind him, Deathbrand upright in the ship’s stern like a second mast, and twin to the wolf’s head carved into the stern.
“Ker,Ker,Ker! Jaakarae sethii!”
“Onward,onward,onward, we’re passing the gate!” said Grimnar nearly in tandem with Uthurs.
“The gate?” asked Verity.
“Yes, I’m not sure what he means either...to be honest,” said Grimnar quietly, "the eagle looking mountain perhaps?”
“No,” said Uthurs, "the gate is a boundary between the sea of the Purple Queen and the Wildermark. Once we pass it, we will be 30 miles from Subohemia.”
“Where is the boundary?” asked Verity.
Kurt grunted. “We just passed it.”
“When?” said Verity looking around.
“Just now, the sky, the water, look," said Kurt, pointing behind the stern.
The crystalline waters of the firth were now a murky shade of red, as was the sky like a dark wine spilled out over the clouds. “Ker,ker,ker!”
The one hundred one wolf-head ships rowed, turbulent waves coming,cutting against them, some boats capsizing.
“Ker! Meenenar! Ker!”
Uthurs’ hair whipped back as wind and thunder howled, lighting struck the mountain, and the capsized men clambered onto their brothers’ ships.
Eighty boats now remained rowing onwards, the eagle looming taller and taller as they approached its base.
“Poryol-ker!” cried Uthurs. “North...” translated Grimnar.
“Away from the mountain,” said Kurt. But with each stroke northwards, violent waves pushed them further away from the path to Subohemia.
“Poryol-ker!”
More boats were swallowed by the waves. Thunderbolts rained upon the men. Fifty boats were lost. The eagle stood within a stone's throw.
The waves calmed, the men rowed onward.
There was silence other than Uthurs call of “Onward, Northward.”
“Do you see that?” said Grimnar under his breath. “The waves were no freak storm.”
He pointed towards the mountain. “Look, you have the Weever’s Eye, so look, lad. See.”
Kurt noticed it too. The shape of the mountain looked more defined.
It had arms, legs, the great wings beat into the heavens, lightning bolts striking forth; it was made of Rock-Pulver.
“It’s an ettin,” said Kurt.
Uthurs stood upright at the helm, the fifty ships that remained bobbing in the wake of the eagle.
Its mouth opened and, in the language of Uthurs, with an earthquake rumbling voice, spoke at length to them.
“What’s he saying?” Verity asked Grimnar.
Grimnar said nothing, his face flushed of color.
The eagle finished its speech and cast its gaze, its eyes, yellow, bared little teeth agape as if amused at the presence of the little things at his feet. He hovered now above the waters, talons flexing, like two giant octopods dangling over the ships.
Grimnar cleared his throat: “He asked them...what path they would take. He offered them an apegift. Promised them bodies and power like his own.”
“But they marched for how many millions of years!” said Verity loudly.
Kurt shook his head and said,“Yes, and they just hours ago became men. Received a soul...”
“I don't understand it...” said Verity.
“So, they are men now. And men will do as men have always done...” said Kurt sighing.
One of the boatsmen in a nearby ship yelled out. “Prove it,” translated Grimnar: “Prove you may give us that power.”
Uthurs shouted down the man.
They argued as the ettin, chuckling, spoke:
“Keevah.”
“Observe,” translated Grimnar.
The ettin-mountain picked up a longship with tremendous hand, lifting it to his face, as if he was a child playing with a toyboat in the bath.
“Koirathet, Seryathet?”
“Death? Or Power?” said Grimnar following his words.
“Serya!” cried the men.
Atop the ettin’s shoulder sat a man.
He rose and leapt onto the ship, covering them all in a black tarp.
The man could hardly be seen by those below, except for his face, pale like the moon against his night shade body and the bleeding clouds omnipresent.
A man of twin faces, one black and skeletal, the other yellow,corpse-like.
“It’s Geissler,” said Verity in a tiny voice.
“The Two-faced Groomslayer,” said Kurt.
“He’s the Unghost’s prince...he's been waiting for us here,” said Grimnar.
The Groomslayer finished his work underneath the tarp.
The ship splintered in the mountain-ettin’s tightening grip before the Groomslayer revealed his work:
The men were multi-colored, pink, green, orange and glowing; taller than before though still dwarfed by the old ettin entirely.
“Try out your power, do what you want, you are now all gods of gods!” said the Groomslayer.
Some flew; dove into the water; removed the heads of their former comrades.
Others below cried out for an apegift.
The Groomslayer obliged their requests as boats were scooped by the giant hand and the surgical tarp was thrown again over the willing bodies of the men.
Lighting poured from the ettin’s wings; winged glowing ettins swooped from the surgical bed.
Ten apegifts became fifty, fifty: five hundred.
As it carried on, Uthurs commanded those undaunted to row northwards still.
There was only one boat that remained loyal, glowing servants of Azza bursting across the air like falling stars.
“Row,row,row!” Uthurs cried.
The two boats sped across the waves, like wolves in flight.
The ettin noticed them, growling something in Uthurs’ tongue.
“Row!!!”
The apegifted men circled round the fleeing boats, calling; cackling.
Kurt swung Deathbrand round at their necks. The flames of its candelabra spat from the wolf head’s mouth, the Ettinslayer cutting down the cacklers, some falling into pieces back to the waves.
The ettins fell back, some whining incredulously in the midst of their apparent destruction: “Why? Why? Why?”
“Leave them!” commanded the Groomslayer. “We must have their blood!” they squealed back to their surgeon.
“Let them flee as cowards!!," spoke the skull of the Groomslayer, "they do not deserve to die a hero's death.”
Few heeded him and collided with the boatsmen and their returning blows till Deathbrand had cut more than a hundred down.
Some of the ettins fled too, cursing Uthurs and Rammbock.
“Let me swallow them,” moaned the eagle to Groomslayer.
“No. Azza wants them alive, wants to give them one more chance.”
The Mountain Roared. “A curse on Azza! I am Azza! I am God!”
He took flight, his mighty wings beating as he hovered.
The boats were a half-mile away from his reach. They coursed faster still, unseen errandghosts speeding them forward.
The ettin-mountain’s talons splayed and reached for the boats.
Lighting vomited from the creature’s mouth.
Its yellow eyes were two moons above the men, its open maw a sunbeam.
Kurt gripped Deathbrand. “Lemme end this,” he said, triumphantly.
He stood on the stern, his knees poised to leap.
“No Kurt!!” cried Verity.
Kurt, holding the saber aloft, jumped towards the giant's mouth.
As he leapt, his head was tossed back.
He was suspended in the air, held only by his black pulver ear. The ear twisted.
He screamed. A pale hand, twisting, pulling his ear wielded him around in a spinning circle.
Kurt was let loose into the sea, cast like a fishing line, far from the others.
He thrashed about, Deathbrand still impossibly at his side.
Peering up over the dark waters he glimpsed the pale hand, the body that had yanked him up effortlessly by that wretched ear.
The creature stood before the giant ettin, hovering mid-air, its long white moustache blowing as he spoke.
“No. I am Azza. I am God.”
There was fear in the ettin's great yellow fullmoon eyes.
“I misspoke...milord,” said the ettin.
Azza placed his hands on the trembling mountain’s head.
“Shhh...it’s all over. Don’t fret.”
The eagle exploded, its thousands of parts falling into sea like flaming asteroids.
Kurt met eyes with Azza, the Unghost nodding in recognition before disappearing through some interworld nook.
The Groomslayer followed after.
Kurt looked out to the remaining company of Uthurs, then drifting towards the horizon. A gray haze of matter floated upon the sea, smoke billowing up from its towers like storm clouds.