PART 1
CHAPTER 4
BLOD AND HONGR
Unfortunately for the salamander, it did not dream of anything meaningful. It did dream some vague sensation, without vision, of sharing a moment of rest with someone, but not the dream of eating and changing it had desired. Even worse, the salamander was awoken before dawn, disturbed by a sense that something had entered its pond. Remaining as still as possible, the salamander scanned its surroundings, until it spotted the source of this disturbance. Three langostinos stood at the threshold to its pond.
“I suspect you are here to avenge your comrade.” the salamander thought, silently, in its own head, at the langostinos. “I am prepared! My will is steeled, and I cloak myself in honor. No harm may come to the righteous!”
The langostinos, for their part, said nothing. They did notice the salamander waking, and turned their pincers to it.
The salamander launched into action. It had spent the night prior honing its agility, practicing maneuvers and techniques for this very eventuality. Using snails for practice, it developed a set of lethal techniques, such that no challenger could threaten it again.
“I am prepared! The crippled coward who put these marks upon my lip surely told a tale of near victory, but know that today you die! FIRST TECHNIQUE, GLORY TAIL SMASH, HUMBLER OF THE WICKED!”
The salamander shouted its attack, mentally, in its own head, as it whipped its muscular tail around, slamming one of the langostinos in its side. It was thrown end over end and visibly injured, struggling to right itself. With one foe out of the fight, that left only two for the salamander to contend with.
“SECOND TECHNIQUE, HEAVENLY METEOR CRUSH, BREAKER OF SHELLS!”
For the salamander’s second technique, it swam above the second langostino at high speed, and dove headfirst into it, smashing it against the underlying rock. Its thorax was shattered and it died on the spot.
“THIRD TECHNIQUE...!”
The salamander pulled distance from the third and final langostino, and stared it down. The langostino raised its claws towards the salamander and began to advance.
“DIVINE ROLLING FIRMAMENT…!”
The salamander charge the langostino, and it moved to pinch its mouth, but the salamander changed target at the last moment. It aimed intentionally for one of its claws, and took it whole into its mouth.
“ENDER OF DAYS!”
The salamander spun its entire body, and the langostino spun with it. The salamander’s spin ripped the langostino’s arm from its socket before it could detach, and blue blood poured from the gaping hole. The langostino slowed, and became still.
The salamander returned to the first, still living, langostino. It watched the langostino struggle to right itself, its entire left side dented by the force of Glory Tail Smash. The salamander towered over the langostino, utterly triumphant.
“You whose countrymen have been slain before your very eyes. You who invaded my palace to avenge another invader. You who have fought without honor, for a cause without honor...”
The salamander leaned in close to the langostino.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“What have you to say in defense of your pride? What dying words will you leave to this world, what final message to deliver to your brethren?”
The langostino said nothing. It continued to struggle to right itself, and the salamander watched with darkened eyes.
“Truly, you are a pathetic sort.” With that, the salamander took the langostino’s tail in its mouth, put a leg to its thorax, and tore the pitiful wretch in twain. It ate the langostino, and one more, and it was satisfied. But still, even in the wake of this victory, it felt that same vague sense of alarm. It climbed once more upon the rock, and looked out into the creek.
More. More langostinos. At least a dozen visible from the rock, moving upcreek against the current, as if on a pilgrimage of struggle. Now the salamander was awed. As it gazed out, seeing ever more langostinos come into view, it thought. “So many of them… So many marching east, but to where? For what purpose? And now, there are so many here, so many outside my pond… so many to kill, so many to eat!”
If it could, the salamander would grin and giggle. It trembled with excitement and glee. It saw only opportunity in this coming wave. It saw battle and food crawling towards it, walking morsels of glory, waiting to be defeated and eaten by any sufficiently daring salamander. And this salamander so dared.
Even though the salamander had just stuffed itself with two whole langostinos, its stomach hungered greedily. It burned with acid and fire, it felt as if it would leap out of the salamander’s mouth to find its own food. The salamander was happy to feed this greedy stomach all that it desired, and dove again into the fray. Its newly developed martial arts served magnificently, and as it slew langostino after langostino, new techniques revealed themselves.
“FOURTH TECHNIQUE, RISING FIRE, WHICH CASTS TO THE WIND!”
In a shallow bit of the creek, it grabbed a langostino and tossed it out of the water, freeing it to attack the next langostino.
“FIFTH TECHNIQUE, FIVE-FOLD SHACKLE, DISEMBOWELING GIBBET!”
The salamander used its legs, the first four shackles, to restrain a langostino’s claws and body. With the fifth shackle, its mouth, it sealed the gibbet by grabbing the tail of the langostino, and tore it from the body. It swallowed the tail and left the body where it lay.
The salamander continued like this, crushing, gutting, tearing, and eating an unknown quantity of langostinos, never becoming full, never becoming satisfied. Surely were it a normal salamander, it would have been physically too stuffed to eat any more, or it would have ruptured its stomach. But the more it ate, the hungrier it became, and ever higher rose the flame in its belly. It was in a trance, a fugue of blood and hunger, and nothing existed to the salamander but itself and its foes.
So deep was the salamander’s martial meditation, so encompassing the blinders of fury, that it did not realize its building fatigue. It didn’t feel the nips and cuts building across its body. It did not notice the thickening of the langostino horde. Even as it killed and ate tens of langostinos, it was pushed back with each dodge and retreat by the thickening wall of claws, until it found itself back at its pond.
Here, the salamander retreated fully into its pond, and took stock of its situation. It found it was missing the tip its front left leg. Its face was more scratch than skin. Its tail had small chunks taken out of it, which bled a concerning but not immediately life-threatening amount. Its tongue was nipped in two places. But still it hungered, and wished to throw itself once more into the sea of langostinos, into the trance of blood and hunger. As it turned to swim once more to the creek, it found the creek was choked with langostinos, and the pulsing throng was spilling over into the pond.
The salamander set its mind to how it would best manage this. It raced past the coming langostinos, barely dodging their pinching claws, and climbed the big rock from upon which it had so many times peered over the horizon. What it saw from there, looking out over the creek, in an instant ended its state of manic glory. As far as the salamander could see, on all sides, the creek was black with langostino. Shoulder to shoulder, front to back, a nearly solid mass of langostino, all moving eastward.
Doom assaulted the salamander there. It crept at the edges of the salamander’s mind, it sought to worm its way in and pry open the gates for hopelessness and death. But the fire in its belly still burned. The sweet intoxication of blood and hunger was heady and thick. The bells of Will rang true in its mind. Doom found no home within the salamander, and so neither would death.
The salamander stood atop its rock, its final citadel, the last redoubt of its kingdom, and declared its resolve. “If I am to die, let it be awash in glory!” In ones and twos, langostinos crawled up the rock, and the salamander crushed them in its mouth, or smashed them with its tail, but still they came. The horde thickened, and more were forced out of the water, and more climbed the rock. The salamander fought them valiantly, but the wounds mounted, and its strength waned.
The salamander was grabbed by two of its legs, and when it spun to fling the grappler away, it was grabbed by its tail by two more. The salamander twisted to bite at them, and threw its head directly into the open claw of another. Its eye was stabbed, and it was blinded. Another langostino grabbed it by a third leg, and another climbed onto its back. The salamander had not the strength to resist, and it cursed the very world.
“So offended by my superiority are you that you send an army to cut me down! So powerful am I that only an unceasing horde of the wicked can bring me low! Know this! You cannot undo that I had existed, and though victorious you may be, you will know that my solitary existence so outclassed you, that this is the extremity you were forced to commit!”
Satisfied with its glory, knowing that even in death its mark on history cannot be unwritten, the salamander allowed itself to rest. The langostinos pinched and clawed, they tore at its dying body. No mercy was to come, and the salamander expected none. It felt its body lift from the rock, surely the hands of a Daena lifting it to the Bridge, to rest eternal among the glorious.
=========================