Abattre Dezeer

As the dusk air spread over the scattered craigs and flat lands of low shrub, Sieur Télsarràs felt it was time to become more involved in the purpose of the expedition. He had believed he was merely an escort, an expert man-at-arms in the service of men far more knowledgeable in the demonology.

He had not bothered to learn the name of the daimon djinn they hunted. Never in his life had he ever concerned himself with the differences between the demons of the Abyss and the daimons of Oblivion.

After he helped Abicore set up the lamps whose oils were infused with basil, Télsarràs took a break from watch. He recognized the young dragoon-meer Totara had a better set of night eyes than he did.

The knight sat beside Abicore in the covered portion of the oxen cart reading a grimoire under an oil lamp. The ardant's lips wrinkled tightly as he bit at them unselfconsciously.

"What ails you, Padre?"

"This. It is a book of explicit lewdness. Very base and corrupting. The Lord of Days would likely prefer that I set it to torch, but it is also necessary in understanding what we face."

Brendi now set beside the ardant. She brought him a bowl of porridge. He accepted it with a thanks and a ruffle of her brown curls which were now held back in a proper coif.

Her smile now revealed deep creases at the sides of her lips and eyes.

"Abattre," she answered for the priest who sipped at his dinner. "It means 'the slaughter.'"

"More precisely," the ardant added, "and to the point of its misbegotten existence, Abattre Dezeer, 'the slaughter of Hope.'"

Sieur Télsarràs nodded as if it confirmed a suspicion. "Is that why in the three days that we have left the Sierra Morne, I have observed no flower blooms on the shrubs that cover the ground from horizon to horizon?"

"Correct," Abicore confirmed with a nod.

The knight squenched his eyes as he leaned forward to ask his next question.

"How is it the lack of bloom does not disrupt the cycle of life? Bloom is necessary for seeding."

"The corruption interferes with and replaces sustenance, be it men, beast, flower, or tree. This Abattre Dezeer, he is not a fully realized being as you, I, or maiselle Brendi are.

"He is a function. When the Olviddha, the spirit that permeates all of Oblivion, seeps into our world of Mundi it becomes manifest here in the form of a sustained, recursive pattern. When it infuses with the very air, a daimon djinn results.

"Not all djinn are daimones. Hence, the reason we make that distinction in our word usage.

"Most djinn are born entirely of the elements of our natural world and do not contribute to its destruction."

Télsarràs' leaned back as he sat on the sideboard bench, pondering these words.

"I think I understand why the daimon djinn called me out. When I was a child, I had a dream where I walked in a field shadowed by dismal forest.

"I felt wolfish eyes on me. I heard howls in the distance. I saw the skitter of screeching bats. Blood dripped from their wings onto the leaves. I was so afraid I woke up.

"Not in this world, but inside the dream. So, I knew I was peering into something real, and not just a mere fancy of a sleeping mind.

"A whisper came from those woods, and I saw green lights coming from a hut on stilts close by inside those woods. The hostess of that hut was a beguiler. I could feel her beauty as my eye peered into those woods even though I could not see her.

"She asked me to approach. I knew not what else to do, or what else I could do, so I made a foolish decision to go to her.

"As I stepped forward, a big wind rebuffed through the trees. Sending the bats streaming away, and branches to break. The beguiling voice lost in the whoosh of air.

"The wind lifted me up above the trees. That path is not for you. A voice as old as Earth itself spoke to me in that wind. Be not afraid, it said. You are belovéd.

"Years after, as a young man, searching my way to find purpose in life, I consulted a soothsayer. She told me, I am of the wind in the far distance of constellation; I am of war in the near of planetary rise, and I am of the winter in the here of the Earth.

"She said in the confluence of the three, I will either find my noble purpose or contribute greatly to my undoing.

"Padre, before now, I believed I was merely here to keep you alive so you could play your part in this exalted deed, but now I am certain I am supposed to be here. Yet, I know not how. I have mere weapons that can fell a man or game. A bastard and a bow, and perhaps some good sense.

"Not my bastard, nor my bow, nor my good sense are in anyway enchanted to strike at daimon djinn."

Abicore pondered upon these words as he held Brendi against his breast. The young woman had fallen asleep.

"In your time of need, call to the spirit of the wind who proclaimed you belovéd. If your purpose is true, that should suffice."

"Over the course of my years, I have never learned of its name."

Abicore smiled as if this confirmed a notion he held.

"If you are belovéd of the spirit, it would not waste lies on you with a false analogy of its name as all names in human words can only be an approximation in naming beings forged from the elemental demiurge."

The knight shrugged. "That makes a certain sense, but it is a sense not of my kith and beyond my kin."

Abicore gently released Brendi whose hands clasped his dalmatic vest and laid her down on the bench they shared. He kneeled down on the bed boards of the oxcart.

"I will now pray to the Lord of Days for guidance," he said. "You are welcome to join me."

From the front of the cart Totara and a teamster were speaking rapidly.

"Sieur Télsarràs," the dragoon-meer called out.

"One moment, Padre."

The teamster pointed to the distance. Dreíz was in sight. A lamp-lit set of streets, buildings hid in shadows and an ominous aquamarine aura above as if the very filament of the heavens spilt through and gyred.

He gathered from the spread of buildings far from the lamp-lit streets, Dreíz was once a sizable city in population.

"We will make camp by that set of boulders. It is best we enter the town by the clear of the morn."

He stepped back under the canopy. The priest looked up, hopefully. Télsarràs had not prayed since he was a child when his grandmother brought him to Temple with her.

He was not even sure that the Lord of Days was the same deity or not. However, he joined Abicore on the floorboard, knee pressed to knee. Hand clasped to hand.

Télsarràs called for Abicore to be at his side as all the members of the expedition stirred up from their sleep. Rattled as they were by the commotion that approached.

Télsarràs and two other men had been standing watch for near four hours when a giant of a man, seven and a half feet tall, approached the camp.

He stopped two dozen yards away. He wore a simple red smock with feather gris-gris running down the length, and a belt held two falchions five feet in length, each sheathed.

He was followed by a red-faced grig of a mere four feet in height beating a drum strapped to his little fat belly.

"Winter Knight! Winter Knight! Abattre Dezeer awaits thee. Before you are worthy of an audience with the Lord of Gros Skerd, you must face me in a mortal challenge."

The grig accompanied the pronouncement with a slow pounded drumming.

The man smiled broadly with pierced lips lined with opals and pearls. He was a very dark man. Dreíz was north of the Suüd nations his race would be commonly found.

The merchants of Saädroze, however from whom his Queen's paternal grandmother descended, could be found anywhere in the Western and Eastern cities and states. They set up shop everywhere.

What should I call you," the Knight asked the giant of a man.

"My name. That does not matter."

"How am I to defeat you? You have the advantage in arm and blade half the length of a full-sized man."

"If you are worthy of audience, you will find a means."

Télsarràs studied the man but he felt a confusion sheer through his thoughts as he tried to get a read. When Télsaràs regained his senses, he focused again on the man.

The Knight was certain of the man's nation. The pose of relaxed gaiety was almost universal of the Saädroze culture.

He was a shopkeep. Most likely, in his offices late at night, he gets struck dumb by possession in the midst of his routine.

The Knight turned to Abicore.

"Padré. Is the man possessed?"

With a nod, Abicore pointed.

"Do you see the flame a-glitter in his eyes distorting the very light of our lamps? There is devilry there in those eyes, Sieur. He is no rogue ally of the Olviddha in willing betrayal of mankind. Just a poor victim of deviltry himself."

A tattoo of a rose inside of a triangle graced the man's brow. The Knight did not know to which sect the emblem belonged, but surely a diabolist would not bare imagery of the peaceable world.

He turned his pointing finger to the grig who settled into a battle march beat.

"What of that one?'

"Drunk ... Just a drunken little fellow."

"Aye... Padré. Are you well practiced in the exorcist crafts?"

Abicore hesitated with a habitual biting of his lips.

The Knight cleared his throat.

"Now would be an excellent time to answer in the affirmative, Padré."

"Yes. Very much so. I only hesitate to answer because every possession is a unique coming together of the personalities and temperaments of two beings.

"We have a set of common practices that are intended to lead to a correct diagnosis and set our ritual in accordance with what we uncover."

"Very well. It appears this being has minions."

"So he says, but it could be a purposeful deception," Abicore interjected.

Sieur Télsarràs pressed on. "Does it ever sleep? Does it ever become distracted?"

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"Not sleep as we understand it. It will dwell between Mundi and Oblivion pulling in sustenance which does tend to distract it.

"That is how the medicine man came into contact with us. He entered a chapel which the daimon djinn had not the strength gathered in him to challenge until hours of rest later.

"A daimon djinn draws a cord of energy from the Olviddha and it is limited in its actions by that capacity. Say, it sets a dust bedeviled twister upon you. It would be weak as a sow bearing a litter for days to come afterward.

"It cannot draw substance from a human soul as demons of the Abyss are capable, but they tend to be much more intelligent than demon kind and use what they have available to them more effectively."

The giant waited patiently with his massive arms folded.

The dragoon-meers squatted behind Télsarràs; the teamsters, calvary men and Brendi gathered by the oxen carts.

Only the two other priests were in action. They carried censers with elaborate glyphs written upon them swinging from rope. Incense smoke bellowed forth.

The giant seemed untroubled by their presence even as they chanted. He smiled and bobbed his head to the grig's beating rhythm. He made a circular motion with his right hand.

The incense reacted as if it were a living thing under an enchantment. It grew into a full-fledged ring of smoke, and the giant stood just inside it.

The grig seemed to get lost in it and he stopped playing as he suffered a coughing fit.

"What say you, Kel Télsarràs?"

The giant called out.

"What is there to say?"

The giant grinned as he crossed and uncrossed the falchions in acrobatic fashion with a display of tight finesse.

"How do you believe I am supposed to counter that," the Knight asked. "I am a simple swordsmen of the battlefield, not a high-class duelist. What if we instead take up the challenge of a game of ducats'n'shots?"

The laughter of the giant filled the yards between them. There was a crash. The drum hurled down an incline. The grig lay under the smoke ring. He let out a belch, a fart and a snort in that proper order, before falling into a loud snore.

The giant shook his head at his slumbering companion. He turned his head back to the Knight.

"I'm still game for challenge even without my grig at my back. Say you? If you can't best me, then turn tail. I'm eager for battle, but I will not stop you if you so choose to turn around and go back across that bay.

"Be sure to inform your Queen her reign does not extend here in the Gros Skerd."

The mockery was designed to shame him into the fight.

Télsarràs had hoped to find a means to spare the innocent giant, but now called out to defend the Queen, Télsarràs had no other choice. Or else, forfeit his title, knighthood and freedom, if he abided a challenge to her due sovereignty.

"Very well, Nameless One, we will fight."

Télsarràs picked up his shield. It bore the sigil of the desert raiders, but the knight doubted its efficacy. He turned to Abicore.

"Padre, when I disarm him, you and your brothers do what is expected of you."

He entered the ring of crimson smoke. The giant charged like a jaguar with a running lunge jump.

"Winter Knight,' Brendi yelled to warn.

The giant landed square flat a yard from Télsarràs. Both falchions followed in an arching sideswipe.

The Knight rolled with the strike as it caught against his shield and shattered it. The impact pushed him back a few yards. He caught his feet from tripping.

The Knight smelled cinnamon, myyr, talcum and something else that defied his senses. There was a puff of dust from whence they clashed sword and shield.

His forearm felt numb on the skin. Télsarràs frowned as he noticed the pouch on the giant's belt. Was this some means to cheat an honest duel?

"Oh, Tess'o'Shoal," the Knight cursed the Demon Empress of legend. "I've grown fond of that shield, and I hoped the sigil would weaken you, Nameless One."

"I felt it best and only fair to disabuse you of that notion. The rebels you acquired it from got very little correct in that design. It would take a full day to properly sketch, carve and enlay to have even a meager effect on us."

"Still, an excellent shield, Nameless One. Imagine if I had an alchemist fossilize it. If I was to reinforce it with steel inlaid. That sigil replaced with my house emblem. It would be a shield to which I would take much pride."

The giant leaned to the side with his falchions down and studied the remains of the shield on the ground.

"Would not the fossilization necessarily disturb it's balance as treated wood would reset in a different gravity?"

As he asked the question, he shifted back around, and the giant charged forth once more. Télsarràs slid his boot forward, and leaned all of his weight on the back leg.

This time he thrust up with his sword blocking, clanging brightly with the falchions. He rolled away and once more faced off with the Saädroze man.

"Not necessarily. The alchemist mix a batch of chemicals with more than a dozen degrees of potency. With the strongest mixture applied to the center, and the rest applied in kind.

"Once that is done the shield is treated a second time with the strongest chemical applied to the edges, working this time towards the center. Once complete it is evenly fortified and solved like an algebraic equation."

The giant nodded, but his voice was slightly off when he spoke. Like a ventriloquist trick.

"I have never worked with the alchemist. I don't even use them to stock my tanning agents."

He came forward. The two fighters blocked and countered in a frontal mêlée. Neither found an exploitable entrance. After several attempts, the giant backed up.

"Ha! You say... ," He took two hard drafts of air before continuing. "You are a mere battlefield limb chopper."

"Not too late for that game of ducats'n'shots."

The Saädroze man shook his head.

"The daimon djinn riding me would not allow it. Could use a drink to quench the thirst though. The more the fiend pushes on me, the more dehydrated I become."

They stood at opposite ends of the smoke ring. The giant seemed to control it without the smoke even intruding upon his awareness. When he walked near it, it cleared space for him.

Télsarràs nodded his head.

"Aie. Let us take a moment to quench our thirst."

From beneath his jerkin, Télsarràs produced a flask. He took the cap off with his teeth and he took a swig. The knight recapped the flask, and he threw it to the giant who caught it between his twin falchions.

"What is it," he asked.

"Soured sherry from a baiter's chest. I was curious to what the sea maidens could find so appealing. But then I tried it, and I acquired a taste for it."

The giant hoisted the flask up in the air. Stuck a falchion in the ground, and grabbed the flask on its tumbledown. He took a sip, cocked an eye, before taking a good sized gulp.

"It is decent enough. Surprisingly so."

The giant took another drink, capped the flask and threw it back.

"You are a most curious one, Winter Knight. You regularly engage in bright and idle chatter while in battle?"

They began to circle one another. Télsarràs was at a loss to how he was supposed to penetrate through his opponent's defenses.

"How am I supposed to conduct myself? Taunt you? Vex you? Point to a presumed moral deficiency on your part? Question your parentage, your fiber, your couth? Is that the word play I'm expected to engage in?"

The giant chuckled as he urged the knight forward with a motion of his falchions.

"What of you? You haven't been exactly meekly quiet in all of this," asked the knight.

"Gab is part of the weaponry for daimon djinn. Humans have a peculiar weakness for it."

Télsarràs had a target in mind. He needed to break the giant's knuckles so the ardants could close in on the giant safely. He caught a fleeting shape of a small figure breaking through the smoke and rolling with the atlatl in her hand.

"Brendi, no," he admonished.

She threw him a curt look that aimed as true as any dart.

"Finish him off before he beguiles you any farther," she demanded.

"I assure you, maiselle, I am in full command of my senses."

"Are you, now? Have you ever fought a daimon djinn before? He is about to wring your cherries through the wine press. Finish him off, or I will."

"Now, that is a taunt!" The giant applauded.

"Don't shoot him, Brendi. It would be dishonorable to turn the outcome of a duel to which you are not a party."

Brendi cursed under her breath and disappeared back under the smoke ring.

"What a knight we have here," the giant bellowed. "Such honor. Such virtue. Such integrity. Your soul would make for a demon's feast in the banquet halls of the Abyss."

Télsarràs considered what Brendi had said. Is this what possession is? My will becomes bent as I remain oblivious? The maneuver so supple I remain convinced I'm still in my good sense until it is too late to invade full control by the possessor.

He decided to test Brendi's claim. He would initiate an attack. So far he had only defended himself, and he had not brought the battle forth, but only reacted.

He circled one side trying to find an opening as the giant clanged his falchions together. The knight circled to the other side. He could not bring himself to attack.

All the while he rationalized a half dozen excuses to why the various combinations would not work. A side jaunced maneuver would only leave an upper cut opening. A straight ahead lead would weaken the necessary follow through.

He tried to force thought from his mind and merely act upon his battle honed instincts and reflexes. His feet did not respond in kind.

The giant smiled amiably.

"My enemy-friend has grown silent. Shall we fill the silence with the music of swords clanging?"

The giant rushed once more with his falchions held akimbo. Télsarràs deftly brought his bastard up to his left shoulder, as he held it straight out.

He saw a way he could smack both sets of the Saädroze man's knuckles with one parabolic motion, but he merely reacted with a defensive swiping of both blades followed by kicking off with the flat of his left boot against the giant's thigh so he could roll away, and not get caught up in the double thrusted counter-move.

Crouching down, after the maneuver, he reflected. He would have broken the giants kneecap with the stomp of his heel and achieved the same defensive advantage, but his reflexes gained over thousands of hours of practice and battle execution refused to follow through as expected.

Brendi with her keen eyes must have noticed how he protected the giant from any true harm, and concluded correctly his judgment had been compromised.

He sparred for another series of thrust and jabs before the giant backed off to the other side of the ring of smoke. The giant heaved his mighty lungs. That was another weakness on the giants part, short duration, and little endurance.

Télsarràs had noticed this early on but never thought to exploit it.

"May I ask you for another quinch of that fine sherry," the giant requested.

"'Fine' be a stretch of terms, but certainly, sir."

The knight abided the request and threw the flask back over.

Télsarràs smiled as he thought of the beauty of the daimon djinn's plan as it came clear to his intuitions in full. The Oblivion indigene had put a suggestion into Télsarràs' head.

What appeared to be a pointless lie concerning his identify had an ulterior purpose of corrupting the sound course of Télsarràs' thought. He had said he was sent by Abattre Dezeer to test his mettle before he faced the daimon djinn lord, himself.

Whereas, it was evident whom it was Télsarràs now dueling. Only through a lie that the subject agrees to could a beguiling take place, and only through a beguiling could a possession follow suit.

After he returned the flask, the giant spoke.

'I see you're too concerned with the outcome of our duel to continue in good humor, Winter Knight. I confess disappointment. You seemed not to know of fear until now."

Télsarràs studied the giant as if he was seeing him for the first time, as his mind had been beguiled to ignore the obvious.

The tattoo of a rose inside of a triangle above the man's brow, the pierced lips lined with opals and pearls, the pouch that smelled of herb and talcum and numbed his skin whenever they came to blows, and a smock beset with gris-gris fetishes.

This Saädroze man was the herb doctor he came here to find.

Télsarràs recalled his dream from youth. He recalled the advice given to him by Albacore to call upon his elemental benefactor. And how did he accomplish that?

Though the benefactor shaped the very course of Télsarràs's life that was the first and last time that they spoke.

If his life path was a true one, and not merely a delusion propped by a long ago dream, certainly he should be able to call upon the wind. Certainly, it would speak to him once more.

He closed his eyes and imagined the wind as he remembered it in his dream. He recalled the dank smell of the dismal forest, the wildberries of the field. He imagined the breeze upon his face.

"Has my enemy-friend grown mad of the sudden? Oh, I see. He wishes to school me in a masterclass on the techniques of blind fighting because I questioned his fearlessness."

Télsarràs' vision grew in clarity and the voice spoke once more.

You are beloved, Kel Télsarràs. The daimon djinn envy you as if you were siblings but you were the favored child.

"If my purpose be true," the knight said as he dropped his sword. "Then let it be."

Télsarràs felt his breath extend far beyond his body. It touched upon the smoke ring and he could feel the smoke ring as if it were in his own hands. He seized control of it from the daimon djinn.

The ring of smoke rebuffed and reformed into a sphere enveloping the giant. The giant doubled over coughing.

Télsarràs' mind was free. Sweeping down to pick up the bastard, and in a forward dash he closed in on the giant and rapped his knuckles with the broad side of his bastard with two quick alternating smacks forcing the giant to drop the twin falchions.

No defense was even necessary, as the giant was now too incapacitated to stand.

Brendi came up to his side, she looked up at him sternly.

"Did you lose your mind there at the end? Closing your eyes? Dropping your sword? If not for that freak wind, you would be dead."

She grabbed him by the elbow.

"Come along, my Sieur. Our part here is done. We are only in the priest's way at this point."

She pointed to one of Abicore's brothers who sprinkled the ground with supernatural gold oxide while chanting in a long-dead language meant to stir favor from elder gods far removed from scribed memory.

Abicore brought a wooden statue out of an oxcart. It bore a bird of prey's body, a lizard's hindquarters, and the face of a screaming, frightened man.

He placed it in front of the giant as a companion priest grabbed the giant's arm and he held him down. The man from Saädroze seemed frail, fragile, and weak.

He muttered incomprehensibly, and the words grew more and more rapid as he was forced to stay kneeled. A curling and whipping purple ectoplasm rose from the giant's mouth and entered the statue.

It engulfed the statue and slowly absorbed into it. Changing the color of the statue from mahogany to midnight blue, it came to glow in a pulse. The statue burst into a sputter of white hot flames, and was quickly consumed soon after. Not a trace of it was left in the Mundi.

Télsarràs finally turned to answer her.

"The wind played its part, but that is not what saved me, Brendi. You did. When you disabused me of my vainglorious presumption of having full control of my faculties you likely saved us all."

He kneeled.

"When we met, Maiselle Brenduanne, I thought you might be a daughter, but, nay, I see quite clearly now, how the sun has sketched into your face, that you are my peer."

She smiled and bowed her head. "Thank you, my Sieur. I accept your complement in full."

"I will ask once more, the first time I asked you it may have felt for you like you were under duress. It is still not too late to train at the archery school. We need you, Maiselle Brenduanne, to defend our Suüd Nation."

Brendi feigned a frown.

"I'm coming with you because someone has to keep you alive. And it seems that responsibility has fallen into my hands."