He exhaled white life in the cold night air. The vegetation of the island rattled, perturbing the sepulchral air that usually settled after dusk and remained undisturbed until dawn. The endemic forest stirred, nervous, all around him, and so he took to the shore with light, quick steps. To see what defied the status quo of this lovely prison among the jawed sea was imperative. Because it could be doom, and it would be welcome! After so many years of a castaway’s life, it wasn’t death that the man of unkempt beard feared. Hope, on the other hand, donned the mask of a nightmare for him. His rational side wanted to return to civilization, yet as he staved off stinging branches and slouched his way to the foram graveyard he called a beach, he couldn’t dispel the primal fright the prospect of change constantly seeded inside his heart. Out of the island there had been a home, but after so many nights, was said home still waiting for his return?
Peeking from behind the white-barked tree that marked the frontier betwixt forest and beach, he spotted him in the distance: the cultivator was taking a leisurely stroll amidst the treacherous waves, his hair a flaming ship in the moonless night, the sea foam cast over his old jacket, rice that rained over newlyweds.
And he was drawing closer. He couldn’t discen the traveller’s intetions, but his aura was oppressive. Not in the way a murderer’s was, though, but rather in the way of a swindler, of a man that would offer him a terrible deal he would be too afraid to refuse. A deal that could take him back to civilization, maybe.
Coming from behind the tree like a scared monkey, and not being too far from one, he drew nearer to the shoreline, careful to not appear anything but servile. To hide was to refuse what could very well be a gift , or a trial, from heaven itself.
Dirty head against the sand—against the endless skeletons of forams— he paid reverence to the coming man of bright eye and satisfied expression. Years had not eroded even an ounce of his talent for bootlicking. “This humble one begs your aid, travelling master. For more moons than I can possibly count I have been trapped here. So I beg you, oh blessed one from abroad, to take mercy of me, and help me escape back to the continent. I can offer but my body and word, as poverty and misery are a castaway’s faithful concubines.”
The dictator smiled, amused. He loomed over the man and crouched to tousle the ill-treated mats of hair that adorned the shpwrecked’s man head. “Tell me the tale about how you ended up here.”
“I was drinking something in the bar, sir, and then… “his lips trembled as he remembered the few details about his perilous travel through the mercyless innards of the ocean “…the whale dove. The sea broke in through the doors and windows and carried a half drunk me away, and when I managed to surface, the bard, and my little boat, were both gone.” The man opened his blue, tired eyes and regarded the cultivator. “But you who walk over water as a lion through the savanna, you can help me go back to the land I love.”
“I could carry you back. But not for free: I want your ear in exchange.”
The man straightened his back and took his hands to his ears. “ You will cut one? Which one? there has to be another way. “
“No. Not your ear literally. It’s a metaphor: I listened to your tale, so I only ask for you to intently listen to mine. “The cultivator moved faster than the eye could see, lifting the Castaway in a princess carry. “Unless you want to remain on this island.”
The man begged with his mere stare, making himself understood without words. The cultivator began walking back into the sea. “good. I have been searching for someone like you. You see, there are countless worlds, some far more magical than ours. And in the distant universe of Retrieribia, elves with a cup bigger than E, male or female, and humans can mate with just a thought…”
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What? Did you, naive motherfuckers, think the previous scene would end on a serious note? Not on my watch!
Roll the title, minion!
JORNEY OF THE ROTTWEILER
… You forgot the u, you useless monkey!
JORNEY OF THE ROTTWUEILER
You are fired. Journey. Fired, minion, fired. I’ll do it myself.
Journey of the Rottweiler
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The tropical breeze frolicked around Samari’s short hair. She smiled and contemplated the miracle of life as Kalon’s long brown hair followed his owner in his unpropelled flight towards the sun. The Cryzard also stared at his enemy, confused about the current events regarding the universal law of gravity, and depressed because the world was a dark place devoid of purpose and with too many porpoises. That made him even more depressed. Porpoises. Poorpoises, even, with their boxes of cheap wine and decadent culture.
Kalon crashed through a cloud, and so did Jagger and all of his unnamed Rottweiler puppies. Other clouds cast judgmental stares in the pierced peer’s direction. How dare you? A minor, and a buncha dogs to boot! You degenerate!
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The accused cloud dispersed. They would never understand, so suicide was the only way out for the falsely accused mound of vapor, water, ice and shame. A true tragedy rain would tell for generations to come.
Samari opened a bag of chips and offered the reptile donning black and white makeup one. They may have been enemies, but watching Kalon defy gravity was a show that brought peo… errr… amniotes together.
“Why do you even oppose us? We are trying to kill you,” she asked casually.
The big lizard with its slanted fringe of gelled scales glanced sideways at her. “We may share a goal, human, but not the means. Being killed is not angsty enough for me. My death must be preceded by a glorious manifesto that makes people regret treating me like they did.”
“With slight concern for your mental health and angry because you kill and anguish their cattle?”
With a haughty stare, the animal whose sharp teethed mouth could swallow Samari’s head whole answered. “I don’t need their pity. I only need the cruel sunlight upon my scales, and my deep, dark music blasting in my lair as the liberating razors kiss my wrist, letting pain out along with the blood, the cuts not deep enough to free me from another day of tribulations and suffering.”
Samari decided not to further entertain the self-pitying lizard, and instead paced a bit away, as to avoid being mauled as soon as the truce for Kalonwatching was over (Remember this key piece of information Samari told the team when they first met: Dying is bad for Arcagnostics).
Brunhilda was in custody of a dandelion. She was singing sweet lullabies to it. “Burr burr burr, buuurrr, burr.” The dandelion stood there, scared seedless, in all its non-sentient glory.
Kalon finally bounced against a parcel of air that voted for the opposition, and began falling back to earth, headfirst.
He retracted his fist and gathered vital energy on it. His avatar began laughing inside his head. “What will it be now, Big K?”
Kalon thought for a moment, which sent shivers down heaven’s spine and made a black hole millions of light years away to gasp in horror. “Maybe… a tornado of puppies? Around Jagger? Using him as spearhead?”
“And why did you retract your fist then?”
“To punch him if the tornado fails.”
Seeing that Kalon’s argument was unassailable, the Avatar acquiesced without wording the smallest of objections.
Kalon pointed Jagger forward, head lower than any other part of dog or owner. Vital Energy —the vital energy— coursed from Kalon’s hand, into Jagger’s sail[1], then crept down the dog’s spine until it reached the head. Jagger retched, regretting everything that had led him to this point in life. Not choking himself with the umbilical cord, for example.
Soon enough, a flurry of wet, vomit-scented puppies came forth, erupting from Jagger’s mouth, and they began whirling around both Jagger and Kalon, a veritable black and orange puppy storm with the boy at his heart.
Seeing this sorry spectacle unfurl, the first thing the Cryzard felt wasn’t fear, but indignation. A second later, he decided to race for safety, because the fluffy twister was falling down towards him, drawing closer. His nightmarish talons grasped the uneven terrain of mountainside as it reached for the thicket of conifers that would provide him with cover. That’s when he heard the buzzing.
He turned, eyes wide open, to see Samari flaring her inner control incunabula.
“Before the fight you told me there won’t be bees!” The Cryzard honored his name.
Samari’s eyebrows rose. “The conifers there are anemophilous, there are no flowers for the bees to suck nectar from.”
Brunhilda remained in the way of the swarm, because she couldn’t be arsed to escape from angry wasps. Bees would have her legalizing a passport and a few visas, but wasps? Wasps were just insects.
For Brunhilda, whom I don’t endorse in case she ever runs for president. I mean, I’d vote for her, but not as a form of support for her, and rather out of hate for the other candidate.
Trapped between the swarm and a bark place, the Cryzard accepted his fate, releasing his symbiotic algae from his skin, letting these dark emoxantelles flee free in the air.
“Farewell, my companions in imitation sertraline consumption,” he said as his skin bleached, leaving him a pale, almost albino lizard.
But he wouldn’t go down without a fight. Ignoring the river of wasps that closed in from behind, he faced the approaching pupnado, and filled his lungs with air. Then, not giving in to panic —elsewhere but in the disco— , the creature released black flames, its texture like needles of glass. The boy would suffer his pain: he would get cooked in it.
The fiery attack impacted Jagger first, and, as powers clashed, the advancement of the pupnado stalled.
Samari,dispelled her incunabula to make the wasps return to their nests, pulled a jar of instantaneous coffee out of her backpack, gathered some with a spoon, and, plugging one of her nostrils, snorted it in a single inspiration. She let out a satisfied sigh and with eyes injected on caffeine, began cheering on her friend. “Go Kalon! Woooo!”
Jagger was enveloped in the dark flames of depression and self-doubt, and they bit the flesh of his face, causing him no damage at all, because he was already dead inside.
The other puppies, however, caught fire, their minds filling with hopelessness, aimlessness and shitty pop with a shade of nü metal. So you had a white lizard breathing out black flames of sadness against a tornado of puppies ablaze.
And, for the Rottweiler team, this was just another Monday.
Kalon opened his palm and pointed it behind him, gathering vital energy. “I need more power, Avatar!”
“You want to use a beam of puppies as propulsion? You will cause a mess,” the Avatar’s voice echoed inside his head.
“But I will win”
“Nuremberg defense, my old friend, I feel I will find myself in need your protection soon. Have your puppies, idiot!”
From Kalon’s free palm a stream of confused, whining dogs gushed out, adding an arch of spreading and falling Rottweilers as a tail to the tornado.
Samari’s pupils constricted as she saw the incoming rain of little dogs cast shadows over her. She ran away and tried to dodge them as best as she could as they fell to their death and splattered against the rocky ground. Some hit her legs and almost made her trip, but, with the impacts cushioned by the thick layer of spiritual threads she had woven around her, they were more of an annoyance than a threat.
Slowly, the Cryzard’s might diminished, and closing his eyes, he honored his name just before the pupnado pieced through him. undoing his body and adding lizard blood to the puppy remains splattered all around.
The surviving puppies vanished as Kalon breathed heavily. They had won. Finally, they had won, and this would be their last job for Honeytown, at least for a while.
Jagger wiggled his way out of his grasp and went up to Brunhilda, who was commuting with the wasps.
“It’s finally over, Brun.”
“Burr. Burr?”
“No, you cannot adopt the dandelion!”
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[1] This was a typo, as the intended word was tail. But the double take I did when reading was so fucking funny that I HAVE to leave this in. So, yes, now Jagger has a sail. Metaphorical, but a sail all the sailme.