Ari

Brute: “What a beauty,” a Black Cloud warrior said in amazement staring at the roaring flame.

Hagar clasped his shoulder in agreement.

Hagar: “This is our journey’s end. Mathan Valley has been untouched for a thousand years. Its forest is denser than any we’ve taken yet”. His eyes glowed with amazement staring at the woods.

Without Elia, they could only burn sections of the woods piece by piece. But a forest this dense made it a lot easier to spread a flame.

They were only a few paces into the wood. The trees were grouped together and connected by bushes and rocks.

Priests and warriors were chanting behind them. It was a low melodic hymn that regaled the tale of the Smoke God’s birth. They took charcoal and drew patterns on each other’s skin.

Hagar: “All the marching, all the fighting. It’s all worth it when I see the pillars of black enter the night sky”. He had smirked. His smile was genuine.

As he looked about his band of misfits, pride welled in his chest. They spent almost a year following him now. He had found them in a time of desperation. Their village, like many they visited, brought nothing but pain and suffering to the surfs that supported it. It was Hagar and his god the Black Cloud that taught his followers they need only to burn the world’s forced upon them. To create their own lives. To gather people under these pillars of smoke. This was his family.

Hagar looked up and saw the burning leaves of the trees fold and crumble. Their trunks were set ablaze from the bottom. He noticed a large black figure in the tree, looming over the collected people on the ground.

A scream came from farther into the woods where warriors were preparing the next flame.

Savage grunting could be heard with the screams. Then the screams became quiet.

Brute: “Hagar!”.

The chanting stopped, the priests and priestesses, who consisted of most of the group’s elders, began to run back to their camp.

Hagar: “Prepare yourselves men!”. Hagar’s heart began to quicken. His eyes began to dilate as he looked around their group. This can’t be it? We’ve come so far. This forest will be the sacrifice the Cloud has been needing. It can’t be.

Hagar shot direct orders to the warriors around him to close up their defenses. He muttered a prayer to the Smoke God and the charcoal cracks in the skin of his arms began to billow with smoke.

The smoke was a powerful weapon against the people who got in their way. It put most people to sleep. Those who took in too much died. Hagar tried not the kill with his smoke. But he also valued his life in dangerous situations.

Unlike those they fought. The Black Clouds were immune to the effects of the smoke. It was because they each participated in making a flame-producing smoke each day. Their god gifted them immunity when they kept up with the ritual.

The smoke from Hagar’s Arms seeped into the surrounding area. His arms were able to produce smoke in large billows. He had no control over where it went. The wind could take control of his power if it was too strong. But the air in the valley was tame tonight.

More screams were heard in the forest. The crackling of wood accompanied the sound of swinging weapons and grunts of battle. Hagar looked up at the same tree which held the black figure.

Smoke wafted to cover his view. He heard the tree shake. He saw a change in the pattern of the smoke.

Hagar jumped backward and saw it. In front of him landed a person-sized fur-covered beast. A Black bear. Its eyes shone from the bright fire around them. It looked like a creature from a child’s nightmare. Its white glowing eyes were the only thing visible in its black silhouette framed by the blazing woods behind it.

It shot towards him on all fours. Hagar pressed his arms in front of him. The smoke from his arms billowed ahead. The bear’s movements were seen as the smoke curled around it. He felt the mass of fur collide with him. The bear trampled him to the ground. Its claws began to dig into his shoulders. The pain was nonexistent. Hagar had so much adrenaline in his body that he wouldn’t have felt it if the bear ripped his arms off.

Brutes: “Hagar no!” yelled all nearby him. They held back other black bears that emerged from the forest. Those who were not lucky had been ambushed by the bears from above in the trees. They dropped onto them and began tearing their flesh into ribbons.

The bear on top of Hagar had him pinned to the ground. Its jaw was only an inch away from his face. He could smell its last rotten breath. The bear lay limp, Hagar’s smoke saved his life yet again by taking another’s.

He tried to roll and push the body off of him. It was only with aid from his men that Hagar could get out from under the almost 600-pound beast.

The bear’s grunts covered the battlefield. His men held off their attacks as they began to back away from the trees. The scene was covered in heat from the burning brush and exerted bodies.

This wasn’t supposed to happen Hagar thought. Every other wood they burned, the animals fled from the fear of fire. It was only other humans who fought to protect their land from being razed.

Hagar: “Fall back!” he said turning heel.

The remaining soldiers; around half the original number; followed with them. They ran at a full sprint, towards their camp at the edge of the forest. There the glow of the woods wasn’t nearly as intense. They reached the outskirts of the forest and their sprint became a jog.

Then they stopped.

Their tents were gone. Their horses lay on the ground, their innards pulsed in the dirt, clawed from their bodies. Their wives and children lay limp stained in their own fluids. Their tents were crumpled to the ground, coated in a wet layer of red.

Hagar and the warriors looked in shock. Their lives had been inside that camp. Their families. It lay now in a pile of blood. Hagar knew he had brought them to their doom. He knew there was only one way out of this.

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The few priests and priestesses that ran back to the camp at the start of the ambush were laid in a pile. On top of that pile, rest a heavy-breathing mountain.

Its fur was brown. Mixed into the fur on its back and sides was jagged bark. It had small mountain-shaped rock protrusions on its hips and shoulders that cross over its back. A ridge of stone arched over its spine. It had leaves and foliage festooning its rock and bark-covered skin.

The beast stood up on its hind legs. It was just under ten feet tall. Its eyes held no mercy.

Hagar looked at the faces of his men. They cried. They held each other. Their dread was his dread. Their sorrow was his to bare.

Hagar: “I’m sorry my brothers. I’m so sorry”. He cried with them. This was not his plan. This was not his journey’s end.

Hagar could see it in front of him, the day he burned down the farm and his abusive father with it. He had met the Black Cloud that day. Back then he was only as big as his palm. He remembered the first village he burned. They had been sending knights to beat the serfs into working more hours. He remembered how beautiful Elia’s eyes were as she looked upon the burning forest of her home. Lastly, he heard the old words of his teacher the Riverman. “Your god will come to you in time of aid. All you need is an offering”.

Hagar looked up at the gigantic bear with a smirk.

The smell was horrid. Ari knew what that unnatural smell was now. The Touched of a new god. It was the worse stink a human could have.

She looked at the crowd of humans gawking at her. They held their stares in amazement. She could smell their fear. It hung in the air like morning mist. She could smell feces and urine from some of the invaders. They were truly weak creatures.

The one in the middle. The Touched. It had the same gift as her father Kari. The most destructive of the gifts. The instruments of your god. He was her target.

The other humans charged at her. She roared and grabbed many with the vines that sprouted from her back. With them wrapped in the vines, she slammed them into each other in a swatting motion. Others she tossed into the darkness. Their screams as they cartwheeled in the air gave her joy.

A few humans made it to her. Their metal weapons clanged against her stone skin. Those that hit her “exposed” bark skin only found they could not pull their weapons out from the wood. Those few warriors were brought down with quick bites to their heads.

The rest of the humans, including the Touched, huddled in a large circle. The remaining Schnell warriors surrounded the humans. Their number was now equal in the dozens.

Ari came down from her throne of human bodies. She slowly approached the group. The Touched seemed to not be producing any more of its vile smoke. They huddled and shouted at each other. Their shouting became unison and they chanted the same word over and over again.

Even in the face of death, they held their devotion, their zeal. To Ari that was the only natural thing about humanity.

The Touched made eye contact with Ari. Its eyes swelled with tears. They looked at each other, Touched to Touched. The human nodded and then broke eye contact.

The circle of bears continued to encroach on the humans.

In unison, they yelled the same word one last time. Then several of the group members threw bottles onto their bodies. Splashing black liquid all over their huddles group. As soon as the liquid met the arms of the Touched, the entire group was lit up in flame. Their screams of joy quickly turned to that of pain. The mass of humans fell into a pile of fire and smoke.

Ari and the Schnell backed away from the mass of suicidal humans. They stared at them perplexed.

The mass had stopped their screaming. They lay quiet, with only the sound of their sizzling and popping flesh. The smoke from their bodies began to darken. Ari could sense a disturbance.

The bears began to regroup and slowly back away.

The black smoke began to grow and grow. It twisted and writhed above the body of its sacrifices. Red glowing eyes and a mouth appeared from the black smoke. Two large charred and glowing tree trunks sprouted beside the swirling mass. An orbiting circle of embers emerged and began to circle the smoke.

Ari: “They summoned their god! Run Schnell’s! Run!”.

The black god bellowed a roar that sounded like creaking wood screaming in wind.

The warriors tried to run. The god roared and smashed several of the black bears with its burning trunks. Others that ran were pounded with an avalanche of smoke. Felling them instantly. Ari saw them die right under her protection.

She had to grab the attention of the god to let them escape.

Ari planted her feet into the dirt and shot her vines at the cracked and charred trunks of the god. They wrapped around and pulled the god closer to her. It roared. The smoke tornado obliged her beckoning and twisted towards her.

Its last followers, the people who brought it into being had sacrificed themselves to bring their defeat to justice. The Black Cloud God was here for vengeance.

It blew a puff of ash, embers, and smoke into the face of Ari. Her face stung with pain. She was blinded. Her breath was getting heavy. She roared and began to drag the god away from the forest. Her vines smoldered and frayed under the heat from the log. They began to snap and she had to continuously grow more to replace her grip on the god.

She pulled a step at a time. If only they were close to the river. She could douse the god. That thought gave her an idea. A dangerous one.

The god continued to berate her with embers and smoke. Her nose, throat, and eyes burned. Her patches of fur singed and burned. She could feel her grasp on life slip. She became weak. Her pull on the god loosened.

Ari knew that if the god was let loose, it would burn the Ulfin woods down. She knew she had to. She didn’t want to. Even the protector of the valley wanted to be selfish. But she did what she had to.

Ari was Touched. She had the body of the God of Mathan Valley. This gave her the strength of the valley. The stone skin. The bark body and vines. It also gave her the power of the three great lakes of the valley.

Ari consciously cut off a flow of energy she was funneling inside her, inhibiting her to be at full strength. Her body, now at full energy potential, began to dampen. The flickering flames on her body extinguished. The vine’s grip on the smoke god became coated in water. The water sputtered and boiled on contact, cooling the trunks.

The god screeched. It pounded her with more smoke and embers. They touched her body and were swept up by the water. She was now covered in a bubble of water. Floating a foot from her body in all directions.

She pulled the god closer and closer. Her water sizzled and bubbled as the trunks were pulled into her bubble. The swirling bandoleer of embers caught into the water and became extinguished. The god’s screams became more haggard. It looked at her. She pitied it. It was born of humans. Anything created by humans was worth pitying. The eyes of the god extinguished as its body sizzled into the bubble. It was dead. She dropped her water shield and it splashed in all directions. The water was black and murky, now more sludge than liquid.

She felt a pain inside her. Her sacrifice was already taken. She stood on all fours and looked around. The forest smoldered and burned in the distance. Her duty wasn’t done yet. All she wanted to do was rest.

Only a dozen Schnell remained. Oso was alive but had a human weapon inside him. It took her another hour to extinguish all the flames with her body of water. She climbed every burning tree and slid down the trunks covering them with water. Most of the trees snaped as she slid from her weight.

She was exhausted. But. There was one last thing she must do. The remaining Schnell’s left to the rest of their clan. Some remained to look over the wounded, the wolves would take them if they didn’t.

Ari took to the mountain paths. There she could see the rising sun. She walked for hours up the mountainside north. There she made it to a cave.

The cave reeked of dead flesh. This was a place none but she was allowed. Not even the squirrels were permitted in.

She lumbered in. It had been almost two days since she last slept. She walked deep into the stone and dirt cave. The back of the hole was where the smell came from.

Emaciated rotten flesh hung to a years-old skeleton.

Kari, her father.

He was the valley’s protector before Ari. She had respected him so much. She came to his cave whenever she needed strength. There under his husk of a body, she lay.

She began to weep.

In the next hours, Ari labored, and one by one pulled out three pink unborn cubs from inside her. Her Touched body allowed heightened control of her body. She decided to cut her connection to the three to fight the god. They were born still and lifeless.

She lay with the paw-sized cubs in her arms under her chin. She licked the film from their bodies.

She wept.

She had tried for years now. No matter her strength, she had yet to start her own family. They were always taken from her. As it was the natural order of the valley. A balance she had chosen to maintain.