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Chapter 23: The Bigger They Are
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"Myself: And would you say, your highness, that you have acted despotically towards the people of Arameya?
The Royal Majesty, High Seat of the Imperium: It’s not a matter of how I have acted, but of what I am. Do I not represent finitude? Am I not the sum of all men’s ambition? The wall, uncaring, upon which the nations of the Universe bash themselves?
Myself: You are.
His Majesty: Indeed." ~ From: "A Royal Commentary" by Porissiam, 951 A.P.
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Blood pounded in his head, his muscles screamed, his legs burned, and his lungs heaved as he pumped his arms by his sides and drove his feet into the dirt, sprinting with everything he had.
Fallen branches cracked underfoot, air whipped his cheeks, and adrenaline coursed through his veins, a furious torrent of energy urging him onwards.
He pushed his body far past its limits, his knees rising, pistoling downwards and extending, his calves propelling him forwards at speeds he’d never dreamed of running. Usain Bolt would’ve gawked at Logan as he tore from his hiding place at the edge of the copse and flew towards the center of the clearing, desperate to intercept the llort before it could reach his friends.
Tarn, likewise sprinting as fast as he could, was quickly losing pace with Logan’s mad dash and looked on in awe at the man who’d hired him for this job.
Huck and Ryan reached Synec, Ryan diving to search inside the Sellis’s cloak looking desperately for the instant recovery potion as Huck drew his bow and unleashed an onslaught of arrows at the oncoming llort. He fired arrow after arrow in a steady stream: knock, draw, release, knock, draw, release. His hand moved in easy rotations between his quiver, the bowstring, and his cheek. His arm was a machine in motion, and his bow the harbinger of death.
Logan was unaware of the spectacle, his mind focusing singularly on his task. What felt like mere seconds after he started running, he was upon the llort. He had built an incredible speed, and as he neared the llort he leapt into the air. The creature towered above him, a colossus of grey skin pulled tight across sinewy muscle that bulged and rippled as it moved.
Soaring through the air, Logan summoned a long halberd from his inventory and let it slide through his hands in front of him, dropping point-first towards the earth. He used the butt of its haft to propel him, pole-vaulting higher, then desummoning the halberd. Two knives appeared in his hands, and he held them in front of him in a backhanded grip, arms raised like a cat, as he collided with the llort’s calf.
He hung there, daggers imbedded in the llort’s flesh, like a climber on the side of a sheer cliff face. Logan whooshed through the air, clinging desperately to the hilts of his knives as the llort’s leg swung forwards in a great lurching step. Trees, dirt, rocks, leaves, patches of color blurred as Logan climbed the llort’s lower leg, pulling himself up, removing one dagger, then stabbing it higher before repeating the process.
Rancid, greasy blood streamed from the holes he created with each stab, pouring down the llort’s calf and staining the rabbit pelt and leather strips of Logan’s armor, leaving oily black stains. His strength and dexterity of five enabled his ascent, allowing him to climb easily like a veteran rock climber, and soon he’d reached the back side of the llort’s knee. He looked down at the forest floor below, his stomach lurching as it blurred below him, a bone-breaking distance, then drove his dagger into the soft, exposed skin behind the llort’s knee. He fought against the tough muscle, pining with his blade to either side, shoving it deeper into the beast’s knee, searching for a tendon.
Logan carved a vicious gash in the flesh as quickly as he could, driving his arm deeper, up to the elbow, desperate to stop the llort’s advance. Blood spurt from the wound, covering his arm, shoulder, and chest, spraying into his face and mouth. He blinked and spit, screamed as he cut, then drove his arm even deeper into the hole he’d created, engulfing it to the shoulder in the hot tunnel of muscle, sinew, flesh, and blood.
Logan summoned his kite shield. The wall of steel, wood, and leather, easily four feet tall, grew into existence deep inside of the llort’s knee, taking shape around Logan’s hand. It cut up, down, and out, severing muscle and tendon with impunity.
The llort roared, no, screamed from above, a grating, tearing, animalistic sound of tortured pain and insatiable rage. Logan screamed to match it, his throat raw, burning. He could taste blood, hot and iron, his own mixed with the llort’s, as he returned the shield to his inventory. He spawned a handful of blue blood arrows and gas orbs, then deposited them in the gaping hole inside the llort’s leg and yanked his arm free.
The force of its removal caused him to lose his grip on the dagger in his other hand. His stomach caught in his throat as he felt himself come free of the llort, hovering for a moment in empty space. Desperate to create distance between himself and the impending explosion that promised certain death, he kicked off of the llort’s calf, sailing backwards, freefalling through the air, and plummeted towards the hard forest floor below.
An explosion erupted above him, the llort's knee bursting into a spray of blood, flying gobbets of flesh, and shattered bone, severing lower leg from thigh. Needles, dirt, rocks, and branches rushed up from beneath him, miniscule shapes of brown and grey growing in size until they were rendered in high definition, consuming his entire vision. He braced himself, closing his eyes and tucking his knees and elbows to his chest, covering his head with his hands, and tightening his core. A small sound, a whimpering, humming groan, arose in his chest.
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Something slammed into his side, wrapped around him, and his eyes snapped open.
“Fuck but you’re ‘eavy mate! Grab on!”
Tarn swung from a long chain, his hand gripping the straight metal rod and wrapped twice in the chain links, his other arm wrapped around Logan’s torso. The floor, only ten or so feet below, flew past them as they rose out of the bottom of a pendulum-like swing. Tarn’s beige robes flapped in the wind, the sand-beads in his hair jingling, his white teeth shining through his dark beard as he smiled.
Logan hurriedly unwound himself and grabbed onto Tarn with one arm in an awkward hug, his other hand joining Tarn’s own around the chain.
He was too shocked, too filled with surging adrenaline to form a response; Instead, he clung to Tarn and the chain, swinging like Tarzan and trying desperately not to puke out his breakfast. The butterflies were worse than any rollercoaster ride he could remember, and the sour, greasy, moldy taste of llort blood in his mouth turned his stomach.
Wind rushed past as they swung, and Logan looked above at the origin of the chain. Its hooks were inexplicably imbedded in the llort’s shoulder, high, high above. Tarn pulled downwards powerfully as they came to the top of their arc, now even with the llort’s mid back, just before losing momentum, and swung his other arm, now released from Logan’s side. His other hook-chain tool was in his hand, and he released its heavy metal head, flinging it upwards, keeping hold of the rod at its near end.
“Zatar!” shouted Tarn.
The heavy, hooked, flanged head of the chain leapt from his hand, propelled, possessed by some unseen force, gaining momentum and rocketing through the sky towards the llort’s other shoulder. Logan looked down. They were reaching the apex of their swing, nearing stillness in the air, and the llort was tumbling in a slow fall onto its face below them. Huck had ceased firing at the llort, put Synec’s still unmoving body over his shoulders, and was sprinting out from under the llort’s looming, falling figure, Ryan leading the way, shouting something that Logan couldn’t hear.
The llort dropped its club, the great trunk of wood and metal sending up a cloud of dirt and needles as it hit the ground. The llort’s shoulders fell forwards towards the ground, and it put out arms to catch itself, dropping to its one remaining knee. The lurching motion tugged on Tarn’s chain, yanking them forwards, jerking them violently from their moment of paused levitation where they sat suspended in the air at the top of the chain’s pendulum swing. A moment later, the second chain connected, and Tarn ripped his arms straight out towards his sides, sending them careening downwards towards the center of the llort’s shoulder blades. Tarn smiled and laughed maniacally while Logan clung, terrified, to his torso.
The base of the llort’s neck grew before them and Logan summoned his halberd, holding it in his right hand, wedged into the crook of his elbow and under his armpit, his left arm wrapped around Tarn.
They collided with the llort, the tip of Logan’s halberd plunging into the back of the llort’s neck. It broke the skin with next to no effort, barely slowing as it penetrated the flesh, then paused momentarily, encountering a brief, hard resistance that must’ve been vertebrae, before continuing onwards, sinking all the way to the butt of the shaft.
Logan landed, feet planted, the llort’s back becoming the floor. Tarn muttered something, a quick word that Logan couldn’t make out, and pulled his arms inwards, the hooks in the llort’s shoulders flying towards him, returning to his outstretched hands like Thor’s hammer.
In a crouch, Logan held on to the halberd for balance, now a protruding haft of wood about a foot and a half long, as the llort’s head crashed into the forest floor a few paces away from where Synec had lain moments before.
The impact shook Logan’s balance and he tumbled from the llort’s back, cast onto the dirt sprawling like a drunkard thrown from a bar by a particularly displeased bouncer. The wind was sucked from his chest, and his lungs felt like they’d been stuffed with cotton. His head slammed against something hard, and his arm twisted beneath him awkwardly, twisting gruesomely at the elbow. Sharp pain shot through, but was dulled by his foggy, fuzzy head.
Tarn leapt gracefully from the llort’s back, landing like a cat softly next to Logan’s heaving, gasping form.
“You took a right tumble there, mate,” he said, bending over Logan who took a potion of lesser healing potion from his inventory, downing its contents as he lay flat on his back.
A right tumble indeed.
Logan raised himself to a sitting position, posting on his good arm and dragging the other painfully out from under himself. His head felt like it was being squeezed from all sides, and his vision swam. He hissed as he looked at his arm, the same one he’d savaged in his first fight with a rabid rabbit so many weeks past. That feels like a lifetime ago.
Slowly but surely, like the creeping, tingling sensation of a numb limb filling with blood and waking from its slumber, warmth coursed through his body as the healing potion began to take effect.
He stuck out a hand, and Tarn pulled him to his feet, whistling. They stood next to each other, facing the figure of the fallen llort, splayed out in the dirt like a great toppled statue. It lay face down, unmoving, its long tusks speared into the earth, buried up to its face.
Dirt and mud filled its mouth where the mangled lower jaw left a gaping hole, blown away by their first attack. That too felt like a lifetime ago, though the entire fight had only lasted ten or twenty minutes. Logan found that he had trouble making an accurate estimation of time, his head still clouded and pounding as it was.
Huck and Ryan walked over, and to his astonishment, Synec limped slowly behind them, using his bow as a cane for support.
The group huddled close to each other, battered, beaten, sweating, and worn. But they had survived. They had won. For a while they stood in silence, staring at the great llort in something close to a cautious disbelief; its corpse, muscled, alien, and terrifying, seemed something too powerful, too intimidating to really be dead.
Many gouges and cuts leaked inky blood in streams, pouring silently down its skin into the dirt. Its back was pockmarked with small crater-like wounds from the explosions of their arrows, and Logan’s halberd jutted out from between its shoulders. A bone sprouted from its thigh, jagged and broken, its marrow visible inside the hard exterior white casing. Blood poured from the severed leg, forming a veritable pool below. The shin and foot, alone at least ten feet long, lay several yards behind; gnarled, calloused foot, twisted, hairy toes and overgrown, claw like toenails covered in blood and grime.
Looking at it, Logan felt something awaken inside of him. Like a boulder shifting, he felt something unlock deep in his core, causing a floodgate to open within him and a looming power to rise from the depths. A sensation unlike any he’d ever felt tickled at him then, not unlike the feeling he had when he first noticed Mikey’s presence within his mind. It felt totally foreign, indescribable, but at the same time impossibly familiar, like the lost remembrance of a dream. He immediately thought of his encounter with the Huntress at the coffee shop, outside of the Tarik bazaar.
“The bigger they are, the taller they fall,” said Mikey in Logan’s mind, his high-pitched voice triumphant and proud.
Logan couldn’t help but to laugh aloud. The others glanced at him, his outburst sudden and unexpected, then they too began laughing, joining him in a sonorous exaltation, a whooping celebration of joy and defiance.
“We did it, lad,” Huck said, pulling Logan with his free arm into a warm embrace.
The sound of laughter was a welcome one. Though it didn’t sooth the pain of their wounds, it melted away the tension of the last several hours and warmed their weary bodies.
It was cut short, however, by a growing howl from the cave behind them, a burgeoning roar like that of an oncoming train that rose in pitch and volume until it consumed everything, dominating their senses.
They spun around in unison, the smiles dropping from their faces, their expressions transforming into casts of horror.
Huck shoved Logan hard, sending him hurtling away, then leapt to the opposite side, too late, as a second llort smashed into him, flying outstretched, parallel to the ground, like a baseball player sliding, reaching for homebase. Its thick fingers closed around Huck’s arm, and the last thing Logan heard before crashing into the dirt once more was a sickening crunch and Ryan’s screams interspersed with the llort’s roar.