05: Whispers of Power

The twigs crushed under his bare feet, the leaves spread out, making way for his royal entrance, the birds stopped singing, the beasts daren’t howl in his presence.

The boy entered the forest, aimlessly wandering between the trees, his mind was as healthy as his charred skin. His steps getting heavier, the boy was tired, the boy was hungry.

Hunger won over the boy, and the boy closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the land of dreams.

A growl followed by a whimper woke the boy up, his stomach tearing itself up from hunger. He groggily walked to a nearby pond, cupping water with his hand, gulping like a cactus in the rain, the long tongue of the maw also helped itself, a tongue came out from inside the boy and started picking up water like a dog, giving them a surreal image that could drive a man to madness.

Beneath the boy, A croak caught his attention, the boy looked down to see a green frog with a spotted tail, not minding anything around it, croaking loudly, probably looking for a mate.

The boy picked up the frog to his eye level, carrying it like a precious pet, or a burger. In one bite, the frog’s head found itself crushed between the boy’s molars.

So bitter the boy tasted, so better that he couldn’t finish the creature, but the maw happily accepted the rest of the cat-sized toad.

The boy kept wandering, trying to find a source of food to quench his ever-growing hunger, but suddenly he found himself on his knees, the flesh under his burnt skin more painful than the last two times, yet the flames were innocent, nowhere to be found.

Droplets of sweat formed on every inch of the boy body, he felt hot as a cinder yet cold as an iceberg.

The boy shivered as pain soared all over his body, blood pouring out of his mouth, ears, and even eyes.

What the boy didn’t know, is that he just ingested the entire poison gland of a Kurshi Toad, one of the most poisonous creatures of this forsaken forest.

His eyes were closing slowly, the boy knew he was dying, the boy knew he made a mistake, but the eyes shut to a whisper the boy thought it was just a death hallucination

“The poisons were curious, the poisons shall not harm, but make a home out of its curiosity”.

Gold coins jingled in harmony as they hit a table, it was a large sum, large enough for the old couple sitting across the table to buy themselves a horse cart, maybe a tiny piece of land from the Baron or a new house.

The couple weren’t happy, their faces blackened with regret and sorrow. The husband looked at his wife barely holding her tears, then back at where their son slept, reminding her of the reason they agreed to do what they did few days ago.

Across the table, a man of otherworldly business attire sat, holding the ornamented coin pouch with two fingers, slowly pouring out the promised sum, humming a song in a language unknown to the peasants before his black eyes.

The man looked happy, way too happy for the death of a mere peasant. He finished counting the gold with joyful spin.

“Fifty shiny gold, as promised, thank you for your business Mona, Hurmad. Now, excuse me, I have other matters to attend to” The man fixed his small glasses “don’t be so grim, you can now buy the horse cart, a new house instead of this shitty cottage? Maybe move out to the city? You two should be happy, you just gave your son a brighter future “The man cheered as he walked up to the door and disappeared in the shadow of the night, leaving the speechless couple staring at the small mound of gold on their worn-out table.

As soon as the man left the premises of the village unseen. The joy on his face did not change as his bones started to crack, a pair of black wings sprouted out of his back.

The man, still humming, jumped and pushed back with his large wings, heading towards a volcano in the far horizon. A grin of satisfaction spread across his face, he had the right to be happy, the first phase of his plan worked out flawlessly.

Under racing clouds on a starry night, the blue eyes opened, and the boy found himself lying down under the shade of tree so large it covered tens of meters wide with its trunk.

Groggily the boy stood, subconsciously heading towards where his ears picked the faint sound of water.

Beside silvery running river under the moonlight, the boy mindlessly killed his thirst, fed on wild berries, and wandered more until he found a small caving in a small pocket inside a hill near the river.

And the days passed

For a year, the cavern was the boy’s home. The boy grew, living on fruits and small game, even dead ones which the jaw certainly did not mind. The boy learned more about his unnatural body, his tail grew even longer than meter and a half self, his horns turned thicker, and the jaws inside his torso also grew, its teeth became sharper and more intimidating,

A day came when the boy was taking a stroll after hunting a deer twice his size, dragging it on a wooden sledge, one of many primitive tools the boy created over the past few months.

The boy stopped at the sight of men, human beings that were lying motionlessly on the dead leaves, their bodies were void of any sort of liquids and covered in some slimy substance as if something just spat them out.

He crouched down and scooped some of the sticky goo on one of the corpses, he smelled it and instantly knew what it belonged to, he stood up fully prepared to run away from this scene as far as possible, but it was too late.

The boy, Noa as his mother named him, turned around to see the creature that just spat out a dozen of men behind him, the Maoa Crusher Python.

Noa’s eyes darted to its surroundings, looking for a way out, the creature slithering closer and closer after sensing his heat.

Big as a horse, long as nine of them back to back, the Python slid to the boy as a speed the boy barely could react to, he jumped away from the pile of muscles wanting to coil around his tiny body.

The boy ran at full speed, using his tail to balance his sharp turns. He didn’t sense the snake behind him anymore. He stopped to catch his breath.

Feeling somehow safe as he ran a great distance away from the monster, but the boy forgot something important, the reason why the Maoa Crusher Python was one of the few apex predators of this forest, the creature could burrow and move beneath the land.

Under the boy’s feet, the earth split open, revealing a jawless, fangless mouth larger than the small town’s gate, and in one single gulp, the boy disappeared.

The boy slid down into the abyss of the snake's body and stuck between walls of muscles.

His bones cracked, his skin tore, making way for his blood to gush out, feeding the creature along with his bodily fluids.

“Whoever dares to attack the home of the Poisons shall be punished”

“Resilience is a virtue, and thus, you shall be awarded”

Near a small hillside, far away from the boy’s home, a dust storm settled, revealing a python twitching it’s last before stopping completely, its eyes nothing but bloody marbles, its large mouth served as the base of a blood valve, gushing out the red liquid in all directions before it settled.

A bulge in the python’s mid-section twitched, then the skin started to peel, revealing dagger-like teeth tearing its way out of the body.

The boy emerged, unmoving, bloody, near-death, most of his bones crushed, but the light in his eyes shining brightly, as if he was defying the will of the god of death himself.

In a few hours, the snake was no more, the last piece of it being grinded inside the maw, the boy’s wounds were closing, his bones mending.

"The Mother said. Eat… Eat and grow my dear child … and the child ate, and the child grew, grew to devour the world itself"

The boy stood, bulkier, his muscles bigger and more defined, but what stood out the most was his tail, it was thicker and full of pure muscle, the bone at its tip constantly dripping purple liquid that hissed whenever it touched something.

He shook off the confusion and moved on, thinking about what saved him from certain death inside the monster, thinking that the voice he keeps hearing whispering inside is head is somehow relative to him still breathing, relative to him feeling immense power coming out from his five limbs.

A cave entrance filled the boy's vision after several hours of walking. Hiding inside a large bush, the boy watched as two carriages pulled by some skeletal monster stopped at the entrance, five robed figures came out of the first one.

The uncovered second carriage was filled with sacks that contained something that Noa identified as humanoid beings, some were wiggling while some remained motionless as some people came out of the cave and carried them inside.

Rancid smell hit the boy’s nostrils as he snuck into the cave, torches barely lighting the rocky hallways as the boy crawled in the dark, his endless hunger driving him to find whatever these hooded men used for nourishment, but the boy stopped! Stopped at a scene that instantly made him decide that this cave, has to be his new home.

In one of the rooms past the hallways, a robed man peeled his sleeves and dipped his hand in an open stomach of a corpse, taking out whatever his palm caught and carefully dipping it in some yellowish transparent liquid, and neatly putting the jar near its brethren, under a large shelf of books the boy's eyes didn't leave for a while.

The man took off his thin leather gloves and gently swatted away his sweat, admiring his nearly perfect work. He called it a day and turned away to leave the room, it was a long day and he needed much rest for the ritual tomorrow.

As soon as he turned, his eyes met with another deep blue pair, the man opened his mouth to chant a spell, but words stubbornly refused to come out, his vocal cords were swiftly sliced with a tail swipe from the demon standing before him.

The man fell on his knees, his eyes still locked to the demon’s, and before his soul leave its body, a tail coiled around the man and shoved it inside the demon’s body.

Only crunching sounds could be heard coming out of the room. A sound that everybody in the cavern was used to from their daily necromantic experiments.