Immortal Darkness: Shadow Across the Land (2 page)

The only humans who survived were the ones
who hadn’t stalked toward Carpla. Those who hadn’t stalked toward
him immediately retreated from their foe as quickly as possible,
fighting the ankle-high snow the mountains had thrown at them.

As he watched the cowardly humans retreat,
thoughts of boredom began to bounce against the walls of Carpla’s
head.
When am I going to be given a real challenge?
he
wondered. He bent down and picked up his blade before continuing
his journey up the mountain.

As he continued climbing up the perilous, icy
rock, he took sight of hundreds of deceased bodies—some of which he
recognized as current Mocranian slaves.

It was a burden to have in a society—but
Mocrano wasn’t without its slaves. Literally millions of creatures
of all species and likenesses flooded Mocrano with their labor and
sweat—only to receive whipping and torture in return. Such was a
system Yofel had set up shortly after making his society; any Earth
creature who died would be reincarnated to Mocrano in their natural
form to work for the empire.

Before thoughts of slavery and society could
have totally clouded his mind, Carpla found himself in the midst of
the mountain’s peak. A pause came to his feet, however, when the
sound of snoring expelled out into the air.

Emerging the peak of the mountain, Carpla
took sight of a sleeping griffin: the target of his pursuit. This
griffin’s beautiful red-and-orange feathers shared the same color
as fire, sticking out in the white, frozen wasteland.
How has
this thing not been spotted and attacked by a bigger animal?
wondered Carpla.

Nothing more than a single step toward the
griffin caused the light sleeper to quickly wake up. With a snort,
he shook his head, blinked the sleep out of his eyes, and turned to
face Carpla—a sudden look of fierceness flashing in his stare.
Locking his gaze on Carpla, he brought himself up on his feet and
asked, “What do
you
want?”

“It is time,” Carpla said while pointing his
sword in the griffin’s direction. “You will become a minion of
Mocrano. And I will use your body to create my son. There is
nowhere and no time to escape.”

“No,” the griffin angrily responded.
Softening up, he continued “My family and my species has suffered
enough! I
know
there is a female griffin out there for me—I
just haven’t found her yet! And you—you
Mocranians
—it’s your
fault my kind is so rare these days! I barely even remember what
it’s like to have somebody by my side to comfort me—to—” Grabbing a
hold of his tongue, the griffin appeared as if he might burst out
sobbing at any given moment.

“What did you say to me?” Carpla asked, only
listening to the first word that popped from the griffin’s
beak.

“I said no!”

“You’re not telling me what to do!” Carpla
snarled in denial. With these few words flying off his tongue, he
lifted his sword off of the ground, its topaz gem giving off a
bright, rosy light. “You will come with me whether you want to or
not! Give in.”

At the hearing of these words, the griffin
released a yelp of fear, shooting a blue flame out of his beak. In
self-defense, Carpla swung his sword in the air and protected
himself from the flame as its heat dimmed into nothingness.

In anger and impatience, Carpla threw his
sword in the griffin’s direction—only to find it slamming into the
ground at the end of its flight. Fortunately for the griffin, he
pulled himself out of the way with a flap of his wings. A few more
flaps later, he was on his way to retreat.

A small crack appeared as Carpla left his
sword in the ground.
I’ll leave it there for later
, he
decided. At the same time, he left his shoes behind and started
floating his way in the griffin’s direction.

If the griffin could get away from Carpla, he
would have been able to live in peace for another day. But if he
couldn’t, every bone his body contained would become the body of
Carpla’s new son. This thought floating about in his head, the
griffin came up with whatever maneuvers possible—anything to drive
Carpla away!

“I bet you won’t be able to catch me after I
do this!” the griffin sneered while looking over his shoulder.
Seeing a space between two mountains, he squeezed himself through
by performing a spin maneuver. By doing so, he broke off chunks of
these mountains and sent them flying off toward Carpla.

Fortunately for Carpla, he easily sent this
debris away with his telekinesis. “You’ll have to do better than
that!” he exclaimed.

Cursing under his own breath, the griffin
flew forward—nearly killing himself with every flight maneuver.
I’m just going in circles,
he realized. Before he knew it,
he eventually found Carpla pressing up against his tail.

“Oh no!” the griffin screamed while taking a
look behind his wings. Fear caused him to panic; panic caused him
to flap his wings harder in a desperate attempt to escape Carpla’s
grasp.

Before escape became a reality, he found his
tail feathers clutched by Carpla’s dusty grasp. Once touched by
Carpla, the griffin noticed his energy draining from his body at an
alarming rate.

This drainage caused the griffin to lose
control of his wings. As a result, he began to plummet toward the
ground in a nosedive. Carpla watched as the griffin’s fragile body
made contact with the icy ground below.

No,
he swore, his mind a panicked
mess.
I’m done for; I’ll die in this little patch of ice without
anybody. Nobody’s with me. I should have ended this while I had the
chance!

Carpla watched as the griffin made a futile
attempt to fly away to safety. This attempt was interrupted when
the griffin felt Carpla’s sword driving into his skin.
What?
wondered the griffin,
I didn’t see him flying with that thing!
How did he get it back?

Only a heartbeat of this unbearable pain had
come to pass when Carpla’s blade swept over the griffin’s
neck—killing him instantly.
It is over,
Carpla stated,
barely noticing his swelled head.

There Carpla stood—all alone—as he pulled his
sword from the griffin’s blood-bathed body. Tucking his word
beneath his arm, the suddenly-ambitious Mocranian dug into his bag
of orbs, took one out, and threw it on the ground. What resulted
was the appearance of a magenta bubble.

At this moment Carpla grew suddenly squeamish
in the presence of the griffin’s dead body. With a small shudder
running down his back, he put down his sword and wrapped his arms
around what was once a worthy adversary.

Oh, what am I doing?
he asked himself
as he picked up the deceased bird from the ground. Not used to such
demeaning tasks, he picked the griffin off the floor, hauling the
creature’s body over to the bubble in front of him. Upon making it
to this spherical mass of cool air, he carefully placed the griffin
inside the bubble.
There,
he thought, relieved and
shuddering.
Now I can carry this much easier.

Now with the griffin dead and captive, Carpla
decided to head back home. Using the same sword he had used to slay
the griffin, Carpla touched his sword to the soil beneath his feet.
Such an action caused the ground beneath him to shake and quiver
until it finally gave underway to both Carpla’s and the griffin’s
weight. As a result, they both fell into Mocrano’s dark
atmosphere.

Using whatever weightlessness he still held,
Carpla grabbed a hold of the bubble and slowly floated down to the
Mocranian city below.
I barely recognize this place,
he
realized while still falling.
I’ll need to find another Eas
before I can even think about making it back home
.

A soft landing brought Carpla into a whole
different place. While he could not make out exactly where he
stood, he felt at home.

Curiosity taking over his thoughts, Carpla
turned his head and took a look up at where he had just fallen
through. Although the sight had remained unseen to his eyes, the
hole he had created with his blade slowly found itself blanketed in
magma—which would eventually freeze into a solid. Therefore, his
mess would become invisible within time.

Only a short distance from another Eas,
Carpla held a tight grip on the bubble, letting out a grunt. Not
caring whether or not anybody thought this as strange, he marched
over to the Eas and placed himself inside. He released a sigh as he
waited for the next teleportation.

--

Shortly after being teleported back home,
Carpla pushed his bubble down into his castle’s basement. Already
tired of seeing the griffin’s dead body, he hurried on down,
careful not to pop the bubble at the wrong time.

After a while, Carpla made it down to the
very bottom of his home. Dust liked to settle in this room, but
Carpla—already made from the dust surrounding him—paid no heed to
it. With his furnace serving as the only source of light—a light
which made the room look blue—he felt a sense of caution lingering
in the air.

Carpla finally popped the bubble holding the
griffin. As a grunt of tiredness escaped from the filthy collection
of dust, he took a look over at the furnace, a light-blue shine
reflecting off his robes. Carpla carefully uncurled his sleeve and
reached a hand into the furnace. Once in the collection of
scorching-hot stone, he focused his sight on the torches hanging on
the walls.

Just as quickly as he had placed his hand in,
Carpla pulled out a small collection of blue flame. Within a
heartbeat’s notice, he swung his arm in an arc parallel to the
ground. As a result of doing so, the flames in his hands spread out
to all the torches in the room—causing them to catch fire.

Now that Carpla could properly see, he took
out his knife and started cutting out whatever unnecessary material
the griffin carried. This material, he believed, was every part of
the griffin’s body—excluding the bones. As almost all Mocranians
were made from bone, Carpla desired his son to be made in the same
way.

Not used to the Earth dwellers’ bodily
functions, Carpla found himself easily growing lightheaded with
revulsion.
This is for my son,
he constantly reminded
himself as the uncomfortable process continued.
But this won’t
be easy.

His sword in hand, he started carving the
unnecessary debris from the griffin’s body. Unfortunately for
Carpla, the process of separation took almost too long for him to
bear. He hadn’t any idea how much time had passed; he hadn’t any
idea on how much longer this process would take. How many organs
could a griffin hold?

While unnecessary, Carpla needed to go
through with this process if he wanted to keep Molar looking like a
Mocranian and not a slave. This skinning resulted from a single
Mocranian fact: Mocranian citizens were shaped by bone while the
slaves were shaped from bone, meat, and flesh. Not removing certain
parts from a soon-to-be-born child would only result in them being
mistreated by the Mocranians.

After what seemed like days, he had finally
come to the end of the griffin’s skinning. As a result, a sense of
relief swept over him. At the same time could he now see the pure
white of the griffin’s bones.
Finally!
he thought, heaving a
sigh of relief.

Carpla pushed the flesh and meat of the
griffin away from the bones with his foot as he marveled at the
griffin’s skeletal features. However, the most astounding feature
was the griffin’s ability to slowly grow from a griffin to an
eagle.

Such a sight blew his mind, as he had never
seen any other creature do anything like this. While he had seen
many griffins before, this was the first time Carpla had actually
taken a close look at one of their skeletons. This fact resulted in
him taking extra precautions when bringing the body over to his
furnace—as dropping a single bone could have resulted in a possible
birth defect.

Swooping the bones from under his arms,
Carpla marched his way to the furnace and rested them on its blue
embers. Once he had done so, he shut the door in order to keep the
furnace’s heat on the inside. As the furnace created what would
soon be his son, Carpla was suddenly reminded of his own
father.

His thoughts being drawn away from his
father, Carpla faced the furnace and quietly wondered,
Did
enough of my dust rub off on his bones?

The main method for creating Mocranian
children was one of great complication and intensity. Step-by-step,
the main idea of this method was to take over a corpse with the
power of the burning embers—much like the ones in Carpla’s furnace.
The purpose of such heat was to create a
spark
of new life
within the body.

Carpla knew the griffin would receive the
spark
of new life in its bones, but worried whether or not
he had mixed in enough genetic material into the solution. Without
any of this material, the final result of this process would turn
out as a mere clone of the griffin Carpla had known
before
killing him.

He patiently waited as the furnace brought
life into the burning bones. The mix of embers and fossils began
boiling together, with a hint of unity coming between them. This
very thought caused Carpla to wonder how the bones could have
survived such heat.

With time, the light within the furnace began
to dim. Once this dimming had come to pass, a small rumble vibrated
against the walls of the furnace. As a result of hearing this
rumble, Carpla rushed to the furnace and opened its front door. The
result of him doing so caused his mind to burst with
excitement.

An odd-looking head poked through the door,
youthfully shining into Carpla’s eyes. Not a single scratch or
crater showed itself on the young griffin; not a single impurity
stood out.