The Three Thorns (17 page)

“Sebastian Cain,” Sebastian said proudly.

“I’m guessing those pillars below your torso work then,” Cecil suggested, pointing a funny looking walking stick at Sebastian’s legs.

“Of course they do,” Sebastian snapped.

“Well then, you will have no problem keeping up with my wings now, will you?” Cecil snapped back. It was clear that they misunderstood one another and this made Sebastian untrusting and Cecil irritable.

“I am not going anywhere with you in this bog,” Sebastian whined, only to have Cecil Baskin’s stick knock repeatedly on the side of his head, which the boy tried to ignore. Sebastian mumbled, trying to excuse himself from Cecil’s presence, but instead he was interrupted with a tap on the head with every word he spoke.

“Will you stop that!” the boy finally yelled, boldly reaching out to grab the stick off the agitating pixie.

Cecil’s wings began to tire, causing his stumpy body to float lower until he could only muster enough strength to hover face to face with his human companion, panting out of breath. A smug smile crossed Sebastian’s mud-covered face.

“You need a diet, Mr. Baskin.”

“I’ve been sent to protect you,” Cecil said, as he spat spittle on the swampy ground.

“That’s one nasty habit you’ve got there,” Sebastian said.

“You have to come with me…your friends will be waiting for us,” Cecil insisted.

“Why didn’t you say so? We could’ve already been on our way out of this dump,” Sebastian groaned in disgust as he looked around at the barren wasteland of swamp. “I do hope you’re smart enough to get us out of here.”

“Of course I am. I’m a Knight!” Cecil said boastfully.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sebastian sighed, rolling his eyes.

“I…I don’t know…but I didn’t achieve my Knighthood for nothing…now kick your feet up, it helps when walking through these lands. We have a long way to go, so I guess we’ll have to eat soon. I brought some pots and pans with me to make a stew while we camp,” Cecil said.

“If you think I’m camping in this wide open hovel with you, you’ve got another thing coming,” Sebastian mumbled under his breath as they moved toward a massive mountain that hung over the entire scenery of swamp hills and mudslides. Glancing over his shoulder to talk to the hovering pixie, Sebastian felt another stinging tap strike his head.

“Eyes front, boy-o, walk while you talk,” commanded Cecil.

Nothing seemed to have any life around these parts of the new world. Sebastian noticed the emptiness in the lands afar, after the great oak tree shrunk to a tiny shrub in its place. Pieces of dead trees and rotted logs poked out everywhere from below the mire the further they trekked.

“W-what happened to this place?” Sebastian asked, scanning the wasteland of oozing swamp.

Cecil sighed. “This was once the greatest forest in all of Abasin, before it became the Black Swamp. A wicked politician, betrayed by the False One, was cursed here and his body was transformed into this sludge.”

Sebastian glanced below his feet and started to lose his nerve. “You mean I’m walking on—” he cried out, climbing on top of a nearby log as far above the sludge as he could possibly get.

“Not to worry, young Master, I assure you he’s a long time dead, or so I’ve been told,” Cecil insisted, reassuring Sebastian with an encouraging wink. “Take my hand, child. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, no matter how unfunny you seem to be,” he teased.

Sebastian hesitantly took hold of the pixie’s warm and prickly hand. With one light tug, Cecil safely lifted the boy into the air and set him down into the sludge.

“Chop chop,” Cecil continued, hovering beside the boy as Sebastian pushed and pulled his legs through the deep muck.

“This is revolting. Where are we going, exactly?” Sebastian grumbled, taking long strides.

“To the Stained Castle. That is where your friends are headed,” Cecil said quietly tapping him on his head using his stick once more. “Northeast, Sebastian Cain…eyes front.”

Cecil pointed, directing the tired and filthy boy across the great swamp toward the overgrown mossy mountains in front of them.

“And to think…this was my only good suit,” the boy sighed to himself.

It took Benjamin a while to register where he was when he first awoke. The carcass of a dead nymph lay decaying a few feet away from his face. Benjamin yelped at the ghastly sight and ran toward the edge of an enormous cliffside to get away from it. Dark blue water led out to an ocean far below the thousand-foot drop. Once he noticed an old broken rope bridge that hung over an opposite cliff side, he decided to turn back. The sunset was clear and shone against his face. A low bundle of orange fruit trees covered the area ahead.

Shrubs from the gateway clung and tangled around his arms. He pulled them off him without much effort. His stomach adjusted to the new air instantly. Suddenly, a shadow crossed his. A hairy unkempt creature stood a few feet in front of him. Its lower jaw stuck out like a piranha’s, showing a row of sharp teeth that grotesquely chattered.

The ghoulish creature moved its raggedy head from side to side like an inquisitive dog the moment it spotted him.

Benjamin took one step to the left and took an anxious breath when the creature suddenly mirrored his movement. Then, without warning, it started screeching to signal to its leader far away. In a heartbeat, a sword was slung from the fruit vine behind the noisy creature and struck a fatal blow.

The courageous boy slowly stepped over the slain creature to get a closer glimpse past the fruit vine when a young man swiftly sprang out from the thicket. Benjamin jolted at the sudden presence of the man, who seemed uninterested in greeting him. Pulling his golden sword from the creature’s back, the young swordsman glared at Benjamin briefly after he wiped the thick bloodstains off his weapon’s tip.

He was short for a grown man, and had cropped black hair and piercing dark eyes that gawked from under his thick eyebrows. Benjamin noticed the man’s skin was a tan color, much like the Spanish sailors he’d read about growing up. His features were severe, just like a pirate.
Maybe he is a pirate?
Benjamin wondered.

The young man knelt down beside the slain nymph and closed its eyelids with a stroke of his fingers.

Sensing the young man was of no threat to him, Benjamin decided to break the ice. If Sebastian had have been there he could have put off the formal greeting a little longer, but this was the quiet, shy Benjamin, trying to be as direct as he knew how.

“Are you a pirate?” Benjamin asked openly.

“Ask that again you little toad, and I’ll show you what I would do to you if I were such a treacherous soul,” the young man snapped, pointing his shiny gold weapon at the tip of Benjamin’s babyish nose. Benjamin stiffened in fear.

“I hope you were referring to the human,” a voice gurgled from the bushes.

The young man swung his sword toward the shaded cliffside where a little man that resembled a toad-like mutant crept out from the trees.

“Lower your weapon, bounty hunter,” the toad-man instructed, followed by an unsettling gurgle.

“Well, if it isn’t the infamous Trump,” replied the young man. “Still in that horrible body?” he teased. “It must be hard knowing how beautiful you once were, having to wake up every day to the thing you are now. At least now the outside of you matches the inside.”

The toad-man named Trump was repulsive to look at. Slime dripped off the stubborn amphibian and there was something about the shifty look in his fishy eyes that made Benjamin uncomfortable.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Benjamin, he’s bounty hunter scum,” Trump gurgled.

“How did you know my name?” Benjamin asked with suspicion.

“My boy, you are known to everyone here in Abasin,” Trump said gleefully.

“Abasin?” Benjamin asked.

“Yes! All you see around you is Abasin. Welcome to the new world,” Trump gurgled and smiled. “You are very famous here.”

“I am?” Benjamin gasped, smiling in shock and excitement.

“I’m taking the boy to the Stained Castle,” the bounty hunter interrupted.

“My orders are to stay here and wait for the other protectors to arrive,” Trump argued, scowling suspiciously.

“Really?” the bounty hunter asked, disbelievingly. “I’m changing those orders. It’s too unsafe here. Screams of a sea guard will not go unnoticed. Not from these heights,” he continued, brushing past the toad-man. “We go to the castle.”

As Benjamin sat carefully studying the unusual pair, a sudden strange change in the color of Trump’s skin caught his eye. In a matter of seconds Trump’s color changed from lime green to light orange, revealing his mood of irritation.

“I can’t leave without my friends,” Benjamin insisted to the pair.

“Your friends are safe. I’ll take you to them.” With one sharp stroke the bounty hunter pointed his sword at the dead nymph. “I’ve been sent to replace your protector.” He then handed Benjamin a large dagger and a heavy bag of food. “I trust you are strong enough to carry these?” the bounty hunter asked, raising his thick eyebrows in hope of a positive answer.

“The boy is too small to carry all that. He’ll slow us down,” Trump grumbled, hopping in front of the bounty hunter’s path.

“Are you deliberately trying to slow us down before we even get started, Trump?” the bounty hunter asked, folding his arms. “I have a better idea. Since you’re so concerned about the human’s ability, you can carry the food and the water too,” he ordered, throwing the heavy bag into Trump’s slippery hands.

Benjamin stuck close to the bounty hunter to escape the sour company of the cursed toad-man.

“So, what’s your name?” Benjamin asked.

“Cassius,” the bounty hunter replied unenthusiastically while they waited for Trump to catch up. Slogging with the weight of the small bag on his slimy, disease-ridden back, Trump’s complaining finally stopped.

“Move it, Trump, we’ll vanish with hunger by the time you get across these fields. Hop to it,” Cassius shouted.

“You don’t like him much, do you?” Benjamin asked quietly so Trump wouldn’t hear.

“I don’t trust him,” Cassius corrected, holding an old bronze timer and compass up to the sunset. “It’s as I feared. We’re already behind the others.”

Cassius led the way across a beautiful landscape of greenery and fruit patches that ran parallel to the moss-covered mountains. Close by, but a few miles west of them, Sebastian and Cecil Baskin continued to make their own way through the Black Swamp.

Benjamin’s excitement grew the moment the Stained Castle became visible. His legs were almost worn out from walking in the evening heat. “Can we rest and eat now?” he asked.

Cassius pointed to a cluster of large rocks that rested on the top of a gigantic hill. “We shall rest once we reach those rocks,” he said. “It’s safer upon high ground.”

Trump’s pores oozed with enough slime to make his own pond by the time they reached halfway up the hillside. Cassius paused for his companions to catch up every time he climbed too far ahead of them.

“You’re almost there, Benjamin,” he called down from the large rocks above them, once he’d made it to the top.

Suddenly, the sound of marching footsteps emerged nearby. Cassius jumped to the highest point to get a better view. A horde of twenty soldiers swarmed over another hillside and briefly halted when they spotted Benjamin and Trump.

They were the royal sea guards of the new world; vicious amphibian fighters that served the False One; each cursed with their own unique form of mutation that resembled various sea life.

Cassius took out his sword and called down to his companions to climb to the top as fast as they could.

A dented patch in the hill caught Benjamin’s next step off guard, causing him to lose his balance on the dangerous hilltop and roll back to the bottom. The soldiers were only a few yards away when they began to close in on him.

Cassius leapt with his golden blade high in hand ready to greet his enemies below. He wasn’t afraid to take on the entire regiment in combat; rather, he was more worried about reaching Benjamin safely in time without making a clumsy mistake in his attempt.

Nearer the top, Trump had saved his own slithery skin by hiding behind one of the large rocks, shying away from the oncoming tribe that was prepared to seize the hillside. Grabbing at clumps of grass, Benjamin managed to stop rolling a few feet from the bottom. Cassius leapt over Benjamin’s head, landing directly in front of the swarming sea guards.

“Lemis!” Cassius growled, gawking at the hideous chief sea guard. A simple signal from Lemis halted his troops.

“You be a warlock, young one?” Lemis asked Benjamin, who cowered behind Cassius, terrified by Lemis’s razor-sharp under-bite.

“Do not speak with him,” Cassius warned.

“Your brains are in your boots, young bounty hunter. Civilian trespassing on the King’s land carries the death penalty,” Lemis hissed.

“Just try it,” Cassius snapped back, swiftly raising his sword to swipe and causing the entire group of sea guards to flinch.

“I’ve heard a rumor from the witches that a powerful warlock is in the making. You civilians should beware these Children of Abasin you have been sent to protect,” Lemis rambled. “One of these thorns will bring a prickly end to you, the witches say. They are destined for darker things.”

“A rumor from a witch is hardly trustworthy, fool!” Cassius mocked.

“Ah…now I remember you. You be young Cassius Shark. I thought I recognized you. The pirate’s son turned rebel bounty hunter. How you’ve grown…
a little
.” Lemis jeered alongside his troops, poking fun at the bounty hunter’s height. Cassius sighed and gripped his sword handle tightly.

“I’m big enough to see you fall this day,
accursed
,” Cassius announced for all to hear.

“Such bold words. There are too many of us to fight this time,” Lemis promised, regarding the False One’s world forces.

“There’s only one child, and he’s too small,” one villain shouted out.