The sound was enough to make his heart leap straight into his throat, which was quite an accomplishment given that his heart had always preferred the chest. It wasn’t a roar, like you’d expect from a lion or a particularly loud person with a toothache. No, this was a hiss—a sound that somehow managed to be louder than a roar and more ominous than one too. Cats had it right, a roar was a challenge and could raise the fur, but a hiss? Time to get out of there, pronto! Especially if the hissing noise was accompanied by a cucumber-shaped object.
Much like the comparative hypothetical feline, every instinct in Denor’s body screamed ‘Danger!’ and even had the good sense to capitalise the thought and add an exclamation point in case our hero had missed it. Granted, this was rather redundant because the hiss had already done that quite effectively. Even a creature of Denor’s limited capacity understood the primordial urges, even if ‘primordial’ was the kind of word he could only form by falling into a box of letters.
From the shadows of this strange underground complex, a cucumberseque serpent uncoiled itself, and Denor’s eyes widened to a size that might have been useful for seeing danger, but only if they hadn’t been too busy seeing the impossibility of what was right in front of them. Snakes that had the misfortune of being born here were generally modest creatures, with ambitions no larger than frogs or mice, and even a viper—deadly though it might be—was only about the length of a forearm. Snakes weren’t fans of snow, so the bigger varieties tended to avoid a planet like Andron VII, and the ones that did keep the vermin count low weren’t common in the slightest.
But this snake? This snake looked like it had spent the last few millennia on a steady diet of all the other snakes and had grown to about twelve meters long as a result. It could’ve swallowed Denor whole without so much as a bulge to show for it. When it opened its mouth, its fangs dripped poison, and those fangs were longer than any forefinger Denor had ever seen. Its lidless golden eyes gleamed with the sort of ancient knowledge that’s better left unknowing, and continued to gleam with an evil that was older still. Denor would have almost called it a ‘primordial’ evil, but as has been established, he didn’t know the word. Perhaps Charan knew it, but he was bravely guarding the entrance. Sufficed to say, this particular snake wasn’t a natural occurrence, and was bad news whether he had the vocabulary to describe it or not.
The serpent’s terrible gaze locked onto him, and it hissed again, a sound that now carried a certain malevolent satisfaction, as if the universe had gone out of its way to provide it with an easy Denor-shaped snack. A tongue, impossibly long, flicked out toward the young Andronian, and the serpent began to slither straight at him.
Denor, naturally, responded in the traditional manner when faced with something large, scaly, and looking to make a meal of you: he screamed in horror. It was a good scream too, full of all the disgust that comes naturally to warm-blooded creatures when confronted with cold-blooded reptiles. But Denor was no ordinary scream-and-freeze sort of boy. As his cry echoed through the clearing, he let a bolt fly from his empty palm, completely defeating the purpose of his blaster in the other. It struck the snake right beside one of its nostrils—a perfect shot, really—but the bolt just bounced off, leaving nothing more than a scratch on the creature’s armor-like scales.
Denor stared down at his hand in disbelief. He wasn’t aware he could do that, but apparently facing off against a giant man-eating serpent unleashed a lot of things previously buried. It would have been a good therapist save for its unfortunate propensity to devour its clients. Though certain unhappy souls would claim the more unsavoury therapists did that to their wallets anyway.
The snake wasn’t pleased by this diversion into talking about therapy. It reared up, clearly intent on crushing Denor for the audacity of resisting. But this was no constrictor, and it struck with a speed that made lightning look leisurely and helped move the plot along considerably. Fortunately, Denor, stricken with terror, tripped over his own feet. Another bolt flew before he even had time to think about it, but it wasn’t from his palm. This one came from Charan, and lodged itself just behind the serpent’s head. It was a wound, sure, but it only seemed to make the creature angrier.
Its mouth opened even wider, and the sound that emerged wasn’t anything you could describe by comparing it to anything else. It was a hiss—sharp, angry, and full of the promise of pain. The serpent struck again, venom dripping from its fangs, but Denor dodged it thanks to his improbable decision to leap directly at the beast’s mouth.
The snake, unprepared for such a colossally stupid move, received a full Denor’s worth of impact directly under its jaw, mollifying its desire to attack for a split second.
Another bolt flew from Charan, this one landing on the serpent’s tongue and tearing through the soft flesh that its open mouth had exposed. The hissing sound was now muffled, but if anything, the creature’s fury doubled. It lunged after Denor, determined to grind him into pulp if it couldn’t bite him.
Denor didn’t hesitate. He aimed his blaster and fired. Well what do you know? It actually worked! His aim was terrible—hitting the marble to the left of the snake, which inexplicably bounced the bolt right into the serpent’s left eye, driving itself deep into the creature’s small, vicious brain, the second smallest mind in the room at this time.
The serpent thrashed wildly in its death throes, rag dolling Denor purely by accident, which was only fitting after the indignity of his finishing attack. The old altar was overturned, the ancient statue shattered into marble splinters, and so did the boy’s skull upon impact. The snake continued its furious dance with death for what felt like an eternity, but was really just a few minutes before the thrashing was reduced to a socially-acceptable level.
When the serpent lay still, Charan took his sweet time approaching the colossal body, displaying the wariness of a hunter who knew that even a dead snake might have one last trick up its scales. After waiting a few moments longer, he tapped its snout with his clenched fist, holding it out as far as possible. The snake snapped at him convulsively, there was no way it could miss, but its bite found only air.
“That really hurt, my head is splitting!” Denor complained, having accidentally stumbled into Charan and saved him.
“You saved me!” Charan stared at Denor, shock on his face that the boy could achieve this.
“Silly Charan,” Denor chided, “the snake is dead now, it can’t hurt…”
The tail whipped around in a final spasm and tripped Denor’s feet, sending him sprawling.
Charan helped him to his feet with a laugh born of desperation, and the boys took a closer look at the carcass.
“Besides, you’re like me, you can’t die, right?”
The boy eyed the corpse. “I don’t want to test that theory out any more than I have to, Gella would be furious if I did.”
Denor wiped the sweat from his brow. The giant snake lay before him in a sprawling heap, its once sinuous body now a floppy, defeated mess. It was, for lack of a better word, thoroughly deceased. “Well it looks like the snake can certainly die, even if we can’t.”
“That was…” Charan finally managed to sputter, “That was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my life.”
Denor grinned, holstering his blaster and ignoring the odd switch from the body. “I don’t know, I thought it was quite funny.”
His companion blinked. “Funny? How is being attacked by a giant snake funny?”
“So it’s safe to say…” Denor began, his eyes twinkling in a way that would have made Sulas proud, “that you didn’t find it hiss-terical?”
Charan’s mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments, his brain evidently struggling to process both the recent brush with death and the atrocity that had just assaulted his ears. “Did you… did you just make a joke?” he asked, incredulous.
“Did I?” Denor mused, rubbing his chin. “I guess I do have a...”
“Don’t do it,” his companion warned.
“...hiss-story for such a thing!” he concluded triumphantly.
Charan groaned. It was a sound that could only be described as the auditory equivalent of a thousand hands slapping a thousand foreheads. “Denor, we just fought an enormous, deadly serpent that could have swallowed us whole! And you’re making puns?”
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Denor shrugged, giving the dead snake a friendly pat on the head. “Oh, come on, Charan. Life’s too short to be venomous about everything. And anyway, I think I did a pretty good job of scaling the situation down.”
Charan felt something inside him break slightly. It wasn’t so much that Denor was making jokes; it was that he was making bad jokes, with no apparent regard for the sacred rule that, after defeating a monstrous creature of unspeakable horror, one should at least pretend to be solemn for five minutes.
“That thing was huge! It could have crushed us, bitten us, swallowed us whole, or all three in whatever order it pleased! And all you can do is… is…” He gestured helplessly at Denor, who was now whistling tunelessly while trying to knot the snake’s tail into a decorative bow. “Is this!”
Denor glanced at his handiwork, looking rather disappointed that he couldn’t lift the snake’s carcass, let alone tie it in knots. “I think it’s quite fetching. You know, it’s a good thing…”
“Denor, please no,” Charan implored.
“...I’m cold-blooded about these sorts of things.”
Charan’s eye twitched. “You’re not a snake, Denor.”
“True,” Denor conceded, as if this was a revelation that had only just occurred to him. “But you have to admit, that was a pretty good tribute to Sulas.”
Charan threw his hands in the air. “That’s it! I’m done! You’re incorrigible!”
Denor leaned over and clapped him on the back. “Come on, Charan. Let’s go home.”
“So long as you stop with the puns,” Charan said, trying to summon some dignity. “The legacy of Sulas has been fully memorialised.”
Denor grinned as he started to walk away. “You know what they say, Charan. Laughter is the best medicine, especially when you’ve just been through a scales of terrifying adventure.”
Charan frowned at him. “That one didn’t even make any sense.”
“It didn’t have to.” Denor agreed cheerfully.
“Are you done then? Can I take my trophy from this thing’s mouth and then leave?”
Denor shrugged, and observed as the boy took a blade from his scabbard and embued it with sputtering energy. Something our hero still couldn’t manage, unless threatened by a giant serpent or evil sorcerer, apparently.
Charan cut out two of the fangs and carefully tucked them into his pocket, not trusting Denor with one because he knew the boy would undoubtedly poison himself and slow them down.
He glanced toward the cave from which the serpent had emerged, wondering if there might be another of its kind lurking in the shadows. But no, it seemed that this ancient horror had been the only one, a relic from a time as forgotten as the temple it had guarded. Shaking their collective heads in amazement, the boys retraced their steps out of the ruin, following the winding path that had brought them here.
Denor rubbed his eyes, which didn’t help, and looked again. The path that had led him here now simply ran into a part of the forest he knew well. He retraced his steps a few paces, still no giant tree. He rubbed his eyes a second time, just in case, but the tree remained conspicuously absent.
“Yeah, I’m seeing it too,” Charan confirmed. “If you didn’t have the bruises and the splitting headache, it was like none of this had ever happened.”
For once, it wasn’t just our hero who was confused by this strange turn of events.
***
Denor parted ways with Charan close to the outpost where General Stantych’s men had set up shop. The invaders—now occupiers—were as vigilant as ever, with guards posted all around their now much more formidable walls and energy fields.
“Not so fast!” One of the guards shouted from the walls.
Denor slowed to a casual walk, but continued approaching.
“Maybe you should stop altogether,” the guard corrected himself.
He looked up at the walls and shouted at the guards. “Would you mind turning the energy fields off so we can invade?”
A chorus of derisive laughter greeted him in response, that was a no then.
“Where are you from, boy? Your village is in the other direction.”
“Denor,” Denor supplied helpfully, mishearing or misunderstanding the question, or perhaps just not listening. “Denor Kara.”
The guards stared at him for a minute, this wasn’t how the script was supposed to go.
“Would you like a pie?” he asked, offering them one as if his arm could reach up the wall.
“We can’t eat on duty,” replied the unsettled guard before realising he was the one that was meant to be asking the questions. “Where did you get that?”
“Vendor,” Denor said, voice muffled by pastry.
“What vendor?” the guard began “Where—”
“Pies here!” called the pie merchant from the foot of the wall. “Golden crusty pies! Special discount for occupying forces!”
“Get lost, the pair of you, before we come down there!” A more serious guard bellowed, clearly wanting nothing to do with this tomfoolery.
The vendor shrugged and pushed his cart off, back into the snowy wastes, possibly to sell to some Gurruks with better taste than these guards.
Denor narrowed his eyes, it was clear that they were ready for any potential attack. No one, it seemed, could hope to surprise them, and the forest path had been widened so that they could get to the village in record time should there be any fomenting of disorder. So that was that idea truly dead and buried.
Unless...
It took Denor a further hour for his brain to piece it together, and when it did he stopped dead in his tracks, mid-sentence in fact, while talking to Gella about the snake. “No one can surprise them by day!” he shouted to nobody in particular, as if daring the universe to disagree. “But by night—”
"What’s got into you, Denor?" Gella called out, as he dashed away from Charan’s house and from the previous conversation with the urgency of someone whose trousers were on fire. But he didn’t stop—didn’t even slow down, unless you counted the times that he fell.
“Ledo!” he called, skidding to a halt in the gunsmith’s doorway with all the grace of a drunken freighter captain careening into an asteroid field.
Ledo, who was in the middle of a board game with Tycho, looked up at the boy with the default level of disapproval. “What is it now, Denor? You look like your mouth is trying to catch up to your brain, not the other way around.”
Tycho smirked. “The boy has ants in his pants. Go on then, out with it when your lungs recover.”
For a moment, Denor’s mind flicked back to the temple and its snake-infested horrors, but only for a moment. The present was far too pressing to dwell on serpentine nightmares. “We could attack the Trunians at night,” he blurted, excitement making his voice wobble like a rickety bridge. “Catch them all by surprise!”
Ledo regarded his son with the calm that comes from years of hammering metal into submission. “We could, yes, master tactician that you are. But tell me, what happens after that?”
Denor stared at him, baffled by the question. “Well, then we’d be free of them!” he exclaimed, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
But Tycho, who had seen more battles than his grandson could dream of, saw further. “Your father is right, even if that damn fool plan worked, we might be free—for a time,” he said slowly, “but Andron VII would still be under their boot. And when the rest of the Trunians found out what we’d done, they’d come back with vengeance in their hearts and blood in their eyes. The occupation would turn into a slaughter, we just don’t have enough men to mount a credible nocturnal offensive.”
Denor’s excitement faltered, but only for a second. “Then we must strike at New Titania and the outpost, all at once,” he insisted, his fists clenching as if he could squeeze victory out of thin air. “Hit them with everyone we have, and force them to leave the planet!”
“If we could do that,” Ledo conceded, “then yes, they might be gone for a time. But even if we could how do you plan on making that happen, General Denor? We’ve a handful of men and none of them are particularly fierce.”
Tycho nodded in agreement, continuing with their game as if the matter had been concluded. “I like the idea as much as you do, lad, but in practice… your father is right, we just don’t have the men. Those that we do have can’t even win an argument with their wife, let alone beat back the Trunians and their Kilru pals.”
Denor was struck silent by their grim outlook. “Why did you fight the invaders at all if you think like that?” he demanded, his voice tinged with the frustration of youth. “Why didn’t you just surrender from the start? Wouldn’t more of the villagers be alive?”
Ledo’s eyes narrowed, that particular comment struck him hard. “We fought because we assumed the Trunians were like the Temrit,” he said, each word landing like a hammer blow. “That they would kill us all eventually, but just be nicer about it. Turns out that we’ve brokered an occupation, so your little friends like Gella get to live a while longer.”
Denor bristled at the response, but before he could get heated it was Tycho’s turn to offer advice.
“Sometimes, the hardest fight is knowing when to hold back, waiting for the right moment to strike. Impatience is the enemy’s best friend. We’ve decided that we’ll keep training you, and the other boys, but out of sight of these Trunian dogs. There will be a time when we are long gone that the Andronians will rise again, but not if you blow it all by attacking them outright.”
“If we’d crushed them from the start, they might’ve given up and gone home,” Ledo continued, his voice heavy with the weight of hard-won experience. “But as soon as they built New Titania decades ago, we knew it was a matter of time. They’ve dug in their heels, made this land their own, but at least they have allowed us a life of sorts instead of butchering us all for fighting against their empire.”
“I’m going to drive them out,” Denor stated, and somehow he knew in his heart that he was speaking the truth.
There was a pause as both warriors looked at each other, they had felt that change in the air.
“Perhaps,” Ledo replied, his voice as steady as a metronome. “You will require years of training to do it though, remember your commitment.”
They stood there, the three Andronians, staring at each other across the gulf of years and battles fought in very different ways.
“Very well, Ledo.” Denor said, and the words leaving his mouth seemed to form by themselves. “But I will force the Trunians off this planet, and it will be within your lifetimes, Tamet wills it.”
The silence reigned supreme again, and a touch of surprise crept over both the older men’s faces, as they cautiously eyed eachother, confirming the distinctly unDenoresque tone of what they had just heard.
Assuming that the conversation was complete, Denor marched into the home and threw himself on the bed, resuming his dejected child phase instead of being a planetary conqueror in potentia.
Tycho grinned at Ledo. “Within our lifetimes, eh? Shall we tell him?”
Ledo shook his head. “He seems upset enough as it is, there’s no need to burden him any further. Litarn was an old goat anyway, I’m glad he’s gone.”
The older man let out a lingering cough, then played his final piece. “I can tell you’re letting me win, you know. I won’t tolerate your sympathy, boy.”