Chapter 14

Crocodile Bear

Hiccup

My high ranking guests were enjoying the garden chamber. Clear strong sunlight melted through the high glass domes and made the ferns glow. Climbing nasturtiums hugged the furniture, the planters, and the columns at the entrance. Barley and wheat moved in the wind. Lavenfauvish bustled beyond my fields.

Lady Tais You joined us early in the morning for breakfast. Though she was a humanoid lizard without eyes, she picked through the assortment of fruit as though she could see. The others dug in: Noble Bartu, myth rank Linguist; Klick Hedel, myth rank Warlord; Fieef Eleventoes the half-dwarf and myth rank Demon Hunter; Grafth U’ld, a literal shadow at rank oblivion.

I had to admit that I was nervous around such a powerful group of people. Because I was nervous, I listened more than I spoke. Not that I could have contributed much to their conversation. Until I learned that their Dream Cutters were on their way north.

“These Dream Cutters,” I said. “They’re coming here?”

Grafth’s shadow stretched along the floor. “Here. There.”

“I mean to ask if I should prepare accommodations.”

“Yes and no and perhaps. We will acquire these master Planes Cutter beers from Hawkin.”

“Only a matter of time,” Fieef said.

“Each of us will house Dream Cutters under our employ,” Grafth said. “Those that we don’t employ… I imagine they’ll seek Hawkin by way of your acquaintance with him.”

“By Thrush, really,” I said.

A sudden chaos erupted in the hallway. My butlers shouted. A woman shrieked.

“Medic!” Someone shouted.

Another shriek. Footsteps slapped against the hallway floor. I rose to investigate when none other than Margaux stumbled into the garden chamber. She rushed in on all available limbs. A shriek clashed with an attempt for air. Brackish water dripped like slime from her hair, her shoulders, her back. Between shrieks, she wheezed. Something rattled in her lungs, like a pebble in a ball of bone.

I stepped back and put a hand to my mouth. She was missing an entire arm. But it didn’t seem to be that new. There was a healed stump at her shoulder—what’s new was the gash on the healed stump.

Even so, it was her visage that made me stumble back until I fell into another chaise. Her skin was clammy, droopy, sunken. Her eyebrows looked nearly melted over her eyes. Her hair and her dress was in shreds like confetti glued to a scarecrow.

“Ethan! Help me! Please! Call him off! Supplies! Please! Help! He’s in a rage! I don’t have much time!”

Stolen story; please report.

She scrambled over like a broken animal. Her only hand clutched onto my pant legs like I’d stepped into a thorn bush. Her fingernails dug in. Her grip was desperate. She paused, only to wail through threads of saliva slung between top and bottom teeth.

Lady Tais You rose. “What under the gods happened to you? Who is this? Call who off?”

A wrinkle appeared in the threshold of the garden chamber entrance. The wrinkle moved like laundry in the wind. It opened to reveal an image of a swamp. The portal widened and a dark figure began stepping through. A crocodile's leg appeared, but patches of fur bordered every small crocodile scale. Thrush stepped through entirely. Half his body was covered in crocodile skin. A tail the size of a shoe wagged behind him. His giant eyes, the size of my chest, were moss colored with layers of green upon jungle green upon damp grove green.

Thrush was also wet. Brackish water slipped off of him. A mouthful sluiced between the fangs of his slightly elongated snout.

He stepped onto the floor and two things happened. First, the portal shut. It blinked out of existence like an ironed out wrinkle. Second, the floor cracked. When Thrush set his full weight down, he broke through the floor and fell into my beer cave below. The mansion shook when he hit the cavern floor. Dust billowed out of the hole.

Margaux screamed. Her fingernails drew blood.

“Thrush?” I said. “Margaux? What on earth is going on?”

“Will someone please heal this woman!” Lady Tais You said.

Grafth’s shadow slipped up beside Margaux. “Leave the woman be.”

“Okay,” Klick said.

Margaux’s grip lost all its strength. She collapsed and wailed into the floor like she was intent on vomiting her lungs out. Her trembling turned violent like a seizure.

More worried about Thrush, I sped to the edge of the hole in the floor and peered down. Thrush was shoving an entire 15.5 gallon barrel of white beer into his maw. The skin of his cheeks broke open. I saw his massive toad’s tongue and fangs though threads of flesh that hung like strings of melted cheese. I saw the color of the beer too—white, like an Anti-gravity attribute ale.

An orb briefly encompassed Thrush. Then he appeared next to me the next moment by stepping out of another cut in the world. His wild gaze was locked on Margaux who shrieked and crawled away. His eyes throbbed and pulsed.

He did not sprint after Margaux. He did not bolt after her. He did not even run after her. He simply strolled after her as though his arrival to his destination was a mere matter of time. Even the hour hand of a clock could not match Thrush’s sureness, nor his patience. He strode after Margaux like his footsteps turned the world and brought her to him; brought the windows of the garden chamber to him.

Margaux’s good hand slapped at the window. She turned and pressed her back to the window. She was slumped over, as though weary and she attempted to snap her fingers.

Thrush walked through a podium holding a planted fern.

Where was Margaux’s strength? She couldn’t snap her fingers. She looked like she was trying to feel the thickness of a cloth.

My guests scattered from their seats as Thrush stepped through the furniture. If terror was a color, Margaux’s eyes were that color. She shrieked and slapped her chest. She slapped her thigh. She slapped her own face. Just as Thrush fell teeth first into her scrambling legs.

A bottle broke. The sound must have come from an activated attribute ale in Margaux’s inventory because she vanished a moment later. Thrush pushed himself up and turned from the window. A slice of Margaux’s thigh, as big as a rack of pork ribs, was between his fangs. Crumbs of floor rubble sprinkled from the mantle of his lips.

Thrush swallowed. The shape of Margaux’s thigh dumped down his throat. I heard a splash in his belly. After licking his lips, Thrush began sniffing the spot Margaux had disappeared from.

“An absolute pleasure to meet like this, Mr. Thrush. I am Grafth U’ld. Rank Oblivion.”

“T-Thrush?” I said.

Thrush ignored me. Another orb encompassed him. It was bright like molten moonlight. I squinted hard and made out parts of his crocodile and bear body. It looked like he was swimming.

Colors flashed within the orb. Then Thrush was gone. As the orb shrunk, I heard Margaux’s scream rip from the portal.

The orb vanished. I felt my blood rush and my face get pale. All of us were speechless.