The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (31 page)

“The Wild Man found a dead zone inside of the
capital.”

“A dead zone?”

“The Spire's electromagnetic field doesn't
work there. The stone and the shape of the place interfere with
synchronization.

“That's what you said...”

“He's trapped in there now. Jacob's going to
bring the place down. Baucis gave me permission to help catch the
beast.”

“You don't know what you're doing. Tell
Baucis to stop. We can't control them, they're too smart! Look what
the old one's already done, if that one gets inside, we're all
doomed. Its like Ntelo prophesied.”

“You don't believe in all that stuff,” it
wasn't a question.

“But he's the
Wild Man
!”

Warriors.>

“You can't do this. If the
Wild Man
gets in here he'll bring down the Spire!”

“One ape could never destroy the Spire,” she
said icily. Skup realized her intentions, and knew her power.

“No. Urea you don't know what you're
doing.”

But she was already gone, slinking down the
hallway on silent feet.

She had fought it as long as she could, but she
relents, she has to. She'll give the monkey freedom when its all
over, she tells herself, that's the only way to make it right.

There's only one more thing we need, Zetis chimes,
your user login.

My what?

He means your name. Phoebe’s soft eyes fall on her.
What can we call you?

What do you call my brother?

The Wild Man,” she speaks.

She thinks on it for long time, but she knew the
answer all along, the hermit had whispered names to the youth long
ago, she takes one of them for herself.

Wyla, call me Wyla.

Kao is not stupid. He is new to symbols, but
has hunted since he was a babe. As soon as the kingcrow left, he
began preparing. The Hidden will return. They will come with all
they have and flush him out or crush him inside the structure.

He will fight.

There is much to learn inside of the ancient
stone structure. There are all sorts of things the Hidden made.
Pieces of wood made to sit in, soft floors like grass, but best of
all there are beautiful paintings, dozens of them. They ring the
dome on every level. Kao can smell their age at the top, older than
the hermit. They get younger and younger as the spiral down and
around the dome. They are filled with all sorts of people. They're
all mostly hairless, only the tops of their heads and stripes above
their eyes are furry. Some of the oldest pictures show men with
hair around their mouths. How he knows they're men, he's not sure.
But he feels a kinship with these people, they're so alike, more
alike than they are different.

There are rooms and rooms to explore, but Kao
does not have the time. The black moss did not get in this place,
and Kao must learn why.
In the Garden, the black mass eats all
but rock. What is different? Why does wood survive here?
He
thinks of the dome as he first saw it, perched high on a hill.
The moss runs downstream.
He carefully examines the rotunda,
and sees some of the Black Moss. It is growing in tiny stripes
wherever One-eye scratched at the stone ground.

Did it come from the kingcrow? Was it venom
like a snake makes, or collected and used, like a frog that eats
ants for their poison? Kao cannot be sure.

But all that will have to wait. They
come.

A thousand deadly prongs march up the hill,
churning up pristine grounds, leaving nothing in their path. Hooves
black as coal kick holes in the earth. Plants are crushed. The
earth is tilled. On their backs dozens of monkeys ride into battle.
The piercing shrieks of kingcrows ring in the air.

An army comes for one man.

The prongbucks gather speed as they come up
the hill. The whole place rumbles now. Kao knew it would not take
long to destroy the stone dome, but it will take less time than he
thought.

A dull thud and dust falls from the ceiling.
Then another, on the opposite side of the dome. The howls and yips
of monkeys dare Kao to stay inside or come out. Another thud and
another. Soon paintings fall from the walls. Stones fall from the
roof, growing ever larger.

Kao does not have much time. He runs down a
flight of steps that connect the high ringed rows to each other.
Out an opening he sees the army: a dozen elk and twice that in
monkeys. A moon ago he would have stood no chance, especially so
close a new moon. But there is something different new Kao's
mushroom addled brain: a plan.

He hurls a prong at the elk. It slices
through the air, a black razor faster than gravity. It sticks in
one of the prong elk and the great brute bellows. It shakes its
head back and forth and Kao knows he found its mark. The Hidden's
control slips on this one. But already, monkeys are scurrying up
the outer walls of the place, coming for him.

He throws another couple prongs at the elk.
Another finds its mark, and a second elk begins to rebel against
its orders, but the rest lodge in flesh, the elk continue their
assault.

Now the monkeys know exactly where he is.
They climb towards his opening with maddening speed. He retreats,
hoping they will hesitate to enter, but they do not. The Hidden
understand the great sphere holds the real magic of this place.
They are unconcerned with the rest of it.

The monkeys pour through the opening like
ants. They leap for the things hanging from the ceiling but Kao
anticipated this. Each one they attempt to hang from falls to the
floor, knocking the wind from the vandal. The rest slide uneasily
on the slick floor. Prongs fly from Kao's hands but the monkeys are
quick. Besides, they don't turn their backs to him. He wants to do
nothing but free them from their bondage. His people don't eat
monkey. He does not want to kill the monkeys, they are but a tail
away from brothers.

But he does not pause. He has to keep them
off guard. Back to the dome, already the monkeys are readying their
dizzying yell. The scream at him but he is ready and drops to the
floor. The crippling energy blasts past him at the speed of sound,
reflects around the domed room and comes back, a disorienting and
ugly screech. The monkeys cover their ears while Kao doubles back
towards them. He knew he would have to do it, which only makes it
more painful. He grabs one of the monkeys, and quickly slices the
stone out of its mind. Already tasting freedom it struggles in his
arms. Unable to free it, he puts the elk skull on its head, ties
it, then wraps the cloak around the monkey. He ducks into the domed
room.

He bends down low and looks in the monkey’s
eyes. It is terrified. He asks what he needs of it. Hopes it
understands that sacrifice is the only way for Kao and its brothers
to be free. But he does not speak its language, only the garbled
mushroom tongue of the hermit.

Something burns his skin. He smells flesh and
burnt hair and sees white bile cut a neat circle into his hand. He
looks up. Cracks are already forming in the ceiling. kingcrow vomit
drips through. He did not think the Hidden would be so eager to
destroy this place. He has to leave. Now.

The hunter scoops up the monkey and drops to
the ground floor right as a crown of horns cracks through the wall.
Sunlight and warm breaths of outside air stream in. He pushes the
cloaked monkey to the center of the room and ducks into one of the
side halls.

The head of an elk bursts through but the
monkey stands there. Maybe it does understand all that he asked.
Another monkey hoots excitedly, they've got him.

The stone roof groans. No longer perfectly
geometric, it cannot support itself. Fissures ripple up and down
the walls, then a singular crack rings out, and the roof comes
down. An avalanche of polished marble rains down.

Before the dust has settled prongelk are
kicking through the stones, looking for their horned prey. They all
saw him get crushed by the stone roof. They will be at it for
hours. The hermit would be proud. The hunter is more than
instinctual survivor, he has premeditated one of his kills. Maybe
pride is not what the hermit would feel at all, for Kao feels only
sick resolution in his gut as he goes forward with his plan that
demanded blood sacrifice.

The hunter rolls out a window and sees two
elk still struggling against the Hidden's magic stones. He goes
wide behind them, and leaps upon the larger elk's back. It bucks up
as he plunges his blade into its neck.

He pops out the stone with a satisfying
squelch and the elk's front hooves crash back into the earth.

It pauses for a moment. Tranquility in a sea
of chaos. The prongbuck looks to the sky. The moon is but a
crescent, yet Kao knows the buck can feel its energy as strong as
he can.

A monkey hoots from the cracked line that was
the dome. He grabs hold of the buck's antlers, and digs in with his
feet and yells, “Go!” an emotion that transcends language, race, or
species. The elk goes.

It thunders down the hill before any of the
others notice. They are still all kicking through the rubble,
looking for the monkey's body he had to sacrifice. Another life the
Hidden owe.

There is still so much Kao does not
understand.
What is the black moss?
He thinks he understands
where it comes from. He has seen the animals in the plains, their
antlers and flesh have long strengthened him, making his fur
darker, his blades stronger. Yet he never saw any as large or so
full of the stuff as those in the Hidden Garden. The Hidden have
much to do with the black moss, of that, he is certain.

If the hungry, ever-devouring moss is their
curse, then the stones and the Totem are their blessing. The two
are part of the same spell, Kao is certain. The Hidden never took
their animals from the Garden because it was too far from the
Totem. Same as losing the stone, animals are free of the Hidden
control if they can only get clear of the Totem. Kao can feel its
energy after his time in the Garden. It does not have the same
subtle ebbs and flows of the moon. It is blunt, always pouring its
power into the air. Even when the Hidden slumber, the animals
consume the feast of energy. Kao can feel it grow stronger and
stronger as he and his elk near it.

Its energy is real, observable. When he came
to their Garden it felt like a punch in the gut, but now, after
days he feels it like the prongelk do. It empowers him, he uses its
energy as his own.
What is different? The food
. Every bite
of black-tinged food he had taken in the Garden sparked and charged
his body. He had built up an immunity, like the frogs did with ant
poison. But this was far more than poison.

As he and the prongelk near the Totem he
feels its power in his bones. The buck's crown of horns glow.
Sparks of lighting crack from the buck to his own prongs. The
closer he gets, the more he feels the Totem's power. He has no idea
how to scale it, but has nowhere else to go. The Hidden found him,
and he doubts they will abandon their search at dark, not when he
is this close, so he goes forward with his plan, doubting the
hermit's approval more by the minute.

The Hidden would not be so bad if they would
just stay in their cloud, but instead they expand. Why else would
they have destroyed the Kao's people? They saw competition, and
ordered its end. Kao does not resent their lifestyle, or what they
are, only what they did, and what they take.

The young hunter thinks that they put too
much work into growing food. His people tend plants too, but not so
much. They did not take control of the rain, the weather, the
animals themselves. The hermit had long told a tale of a time when
the wild people had tried to grow their own food. They had been
successful, and multiplied, until there were many of them. But then
a drought blighted the land, and the whole tribe starved. There
were too many of them to feed from the jungle's bounty. Many had
died. Since then, the hermit had said, the people understood that
it was best to live off what could survive, and not grow too much
food, for it only led to too many people. In this way, the tribe
had not gone hungry for many seasons, since before the hermit's
time.

Kao ponders this until he is knocked from the
elk like the top of a mountain is blown from a volcano.

The elk swerves to avoid whatever knocked its
rider clear and crashes into the Totem. A sphere of energy larger
than any Kao saw at the midnight prongbuck ritual illuminates the
elk as it flees into the growing darkness. Lightning flashes high
above, thunder follows in a moment, a violent tear in the dim calm
of the evening.

Kao faces the usurper. The black lion growls
at him, the pitch at the bottom edge of his hearing.

He bares his teeth and draws his blade. His
last one. No more can be pulled from the buck's skull buried
beneath a mountain of rubble. He rubs the blade against the spikes
sticking from his arm. They glow with lightning, this close to the
Totem, everything is full of power.

The lion bares her teeth, and sparks crackle
in her mane. She growls a warning, a challenge. But she speaks not
of death. There is more to her growl. Kao can almost make it out
but he has no experience with jungle cats like he does with birds
or prongelk.

Kao darts forward, his prong blade flicks
towards the lion's neck, but she's gone long before his blade
touches so much as a whisker. She pulls back and springs over him,
coiling then uncoiling her muscles in one motion. She has none of
the sluggishness the elk have. Every inch of her is muscle. Though
she does not attack.

Kao runs towards his goal. He is not ready to
climb the Totem yet, not with a deadly killer at his back. Instead
he grabs the white hot tower with one hand and feels its energy
course through him.