Twists!

So I've stopped with the serial. I was playing a lot of things too close to the chest, and, because of that, I couldn't really find a voice I liked. Maybe I'll come back to it someday when I'm not so angry about the true subject matter; maybe then it could be kind of funny. Right now, it's simply aggravating and petty. So I wrote this instead! I think it sounds like me, which makes this piece a first in quite some time (if I could count the number of drafts I've started to put together as an extension of Aaron's story and thrown away because I can't stand the tone...). But, for anyone who's heard my twist on a fantasy story - so, Jennifer (who hasn't ever read this blog, to my knowledge) forever and a half ago - this would be very close to the beginning. But the premise is different from anything I can think of in the vein of Lord of the Rings: it's an alternate world (like Middle Earth, I suppose) on which mammal and avian evolution never really got started, so dragons are just the extension of what we have now as cattle or horses or birds or, as evidenced in this piece, squirrels or monkeys. Also, dragons evolving along a humanoid path became Elves - saurian elves! Can you picture that? It's pretty cool. I guess; I'm biased, though. Anyway, there are three "races" of Elves, in the sense that there are Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid humans - I assume they could interbreed, and probably often do - at least between two of the three races. Anyway, in the past, one of the three was a warrior caste and served as a unified, independent military led by an Elf called the Archon. The Archon is like a demigod - he's been directly touched and used as a mouthpiece (thus the name) by the Demiurge, some entity from "beyond" that claims all of creation as its own. So he's like a warrior-priest that won't die because he was used as a freaking conduit by the divine to commune with the Patriarch, the leader of the Moren-dur (or the Plainsfolk, or the Plains Elves), and the Matriarch, the leader of the Barath-dur (or the Forestfolk, or the Forest Elves, Wood Elves, what have you). So, anyway, somewhere along the line the Matriarch and Patriarch decided the Archon was an insane heretic, and formed their own armies to combat his, eventually locking all the warrior caste's survivors inside a peninsula of obsidian and basalt along the southern coast of their main continent (there might be more, but I think I've got an insane idea as to where and what the Continent is, though). The prisoners, the Archon included, vowed to escape - particularly since his heresy was based on his claims of a future threat that he intended to spend millenia preparing for - and eventually do with the guidance of a creature called a Ngyar, which claims its kind to be from "beyond time."

Anyway, that's a lot of unnecessary prologue. Enjoy!

'Twigs snapped as the group of people moved through the forest. Long, bulky rifles remained shouldered as individuals clattered and crouched to tree trunks. Insects buzzed through the damp air, hovered near pools left by the near perpetual rains of this part of the Continent, were snatched midair by leaping forest dragons. Silence fell over the group of people, water dripping and sliding over waxen leaves, gurgling in tiny rivulets down the mossy, vine-choked trunks of the vaguely tropical trees. One of the people stood and tapped the glass visor of his gasmask with a scale of his dragonskin glove. Another tapped his own visor several trees away in a different pattern, lost in the perpetual twilight of the undergrowth. Clicks swept east and west along the staggered line of soldiers, then abruptly ended.

A forest dragon yawned in the low branches ahead of the line. Another rushed past it, hurtling along the branches with singleminded purpose, barreling past its sleepy cousin, its body slung long as it bounded from tree to tree. A flash lit up a small portion of the undergrowth, and a crack reverberated amongst the thick tree trunks. The bolting dragon split in half, blood spraying up toward the canopy, the halves of its body falling to the forest floor. One of the tall, lanky soldiers rushed forward, doubled over, to recover the dragon's body. A scream radiated from north of the line, dozens of creatures emitting a banshee's wail as one. Arrows and crossbow bolts suddenly filled the air of the undergrowth, coming from both the ground and trees ahead. The soldier dashing forward threw himself to the mossy forest floor and rolled to a tree's trunk, clutching a bleeding wound on his chest. No shots returned against the onslaught of aerial wood. The hail eventually stopped.

A figure dropped from the canopy upon the wounded soldier. He tried to raise his rifle, but had it kicked away. The figure stooped and laughed. The soldier grabbed from the chest wound – arrowhead protruding from his chest through the dragonskin tunic – to the ceremonial bone knife on a boot sheath. The figure grabbed the knife from the soldier's hand, forced his arm to the tree, and nailed his hand to the wood with the knife. The soldier's screams were muffled by the mask as the figure grabbed the soldier's face and slammed his skull against the tree several times, pulverizing it.

“Turn back!” the figure barked, its voice echoing into the forest. “You were imprisoned for crimes past, you were locked away for a reason!”

The figure stood tall, sticking its muscular chest out. It was a man, naked from the waist up, loincloth covering its pelvis, blue paint intricately streaked across its chest, legs, arms, and face. Along one leg was a quiver, strung over its back was a longbow. Its ears stuck righteously to the sky, defiantly wide of the earthily-colored quills that crowned its head. It stood in a posture of challenge to the soldiers.

Clicking again reverberated along the vague line of hidden soldiers. One stood, rifle above its head, and walked slowly toward the challenger. As it approached, it lowered the rifle by the stock and removed its gaskmask. She was classically beautiful, with pouted lips and thin lines of browscales and wide eyes. Her long ears were tied together behind her head, just beyond the black, short cut quills of a soldier. She stood, challenged gauging the challenger in the low light of the forest floor.

“I was born into imprisonment. My mother and father were born into imprisonment. Their fathers, and their fathers, and their fathers – surely – were born into that same imprisonment. I was born into a world without natural light. I was born into a world of warrens carved from the living rock of the southern peninsula. I was born into darkness because of the likes of you. You and your ilk have taken from each and every Deru-dur here and still working within your prison the right to a life. You have cast aside your own race's Archon of the Demiurge-”

“You dare,” the man bellowed. “You dare reference that foul creature as my creator's Archon?”

“I reference him as history would reference him: the mouthpiece of the Demiurge, cast aside for alleged heresy. And I fight for him. He fought for him,” she pointed to the dead soldier with her rifle. Then, referencing the soldiers behind her: “They fight for him. And we will not turn back.”

“Then we will fight!” the man screeched again.

“You should surrender,” she said quietly.

“HA!” Laughter sprang from the trees to the north. “We defend Barathoth with our lives, in the name of the Matriarch.”

“You should send word to the Matriarch that you are besieged by overwhelming force, that the Archon has unleashed magicks unimaginable, that his armies shall march unimpeded across this continent once more.”

The man again laughed. “And what magicks are these? The staff you carry, perhaps, is it charged somehow? Do you bring spirits forth from the ground, do you harness the powers of the sky or oceans?”

“So you do not yield?”

“We yield for no army! We yield for no felled Archon of ages past!”

“So be it,” she said softly. A whistle found its way from a pouch at her waist to her lips. She blew, and forest dragons skittered. A flash lit the undergrowth to the east, accompanied again by that sharp crack. The man's grinning face suddenly dissolved into a red mist, his mostly decapitated body slumping to the forest floor. The woman had disappeared back into the brush.

Banshees wailed again in unison, and arrows flew forth in fury. The earth itself rumbled and shuddered as wood filled the damp air. Trees were pushed aside as four-legged machines walked forward to the north. The machines were of different designs: one with a roughly humanoid torso atop the walking platform with one arm shoving aside flora as a shoulder-mounted cannon fired into the forest ahead; another with a plow placed at its front, mowing down trees as masked soldiers followed along at a rapid clip, rifles at the ready; a third hefted dual axes, crushing all before it, hewing a path through the undergrowth.

“What if we come upon a settlement of those new creatures – those humans?” a lieftenant asked of the woman who had accepted the challenge.

“We give them,” replied she, redonning her mask, “the same ultimatum: stand down or be dealt with.”'