The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (45 page)

Skup, on the back of his
vultus
with
Urea in his talons, swoops around, following the corpse of the
Spire back to the navel it punched into the earth.

anything>

Skup drops her and she screams. A quick dive
and she's in the kingcrow's talons again, sobbing.

“I don't deserve... this... all... my
fault...should be... dead,” she chokes out between sobs.

Skup swoops low with Urea over the crowds of
people. They stand back from the stump that once made the Spire. It
still throws sparks into the night sky, but not so many, without
the full gradient of the stratosphere, the root of the Spire lacks
much of its power.

Skup releases Urea some distance from the
crowd, then swoops back around and goes in closer. She can hear
screaming, someone is spewing Naturalist propaganda, even now, at
the foot of the crumbled Spire. But she doesn't listen, instead she
feels. The earth is warm beneath her feet, much warmer than she'd
expected, probably from the burning Spire, but the grass is soft,
her toes curl and uncurl, wet with dew and dirt. She remembers her
dream, but feels no terror until she hears a long growl.

It sounds so ominous when coming through her
ears. She swallows and turns around. Two slits stare at her from
orange spheres. Her dreams play through her mind and she considers
running, but that would be folly. She could never outrun her
panthera
. Besides, she is not prey, but a hunter as
well.

So she growls between her sobs and trudges to
her death, one heavy step at a time. The
panthera
'
s
fur bristles, but Urea doesn't stop moving, she doesn't care if she
dies. Whoever is left of the Spire wants her dead anyway. Their
panthera princess, as big a liar as they come.

“Death to the false god!” Ntelo lunges at
Urea with a prong from one of the bucks. Urea, trapped in her own
misery does nothing, but her
panthera
leaps and crushes
Ntelo with her paws, soft as velvet and strong as iron. Blood
spurts from her mouth to the
panthera's
face. Her ribs are
all broken, her lungs collapsed, Urea knows the look. The
panthera
looks to Urea and bares her teeth. Urea shakes her
head
no
but the
panthera
ignores her. She swipes a
clawed paw across her neck and the High Priestess, is no more. The
predator starts towards Urea.

She is a few feet away, than one, then
inches. Urea can smell the priestess's blood on her breath, feel
the low rumble of her growl. Just like her dream, just like she
deserves, she'll die for enslaving this magnificent creature.

The
panthera
stretches out her neck
and smells Urea, her hair is sucked towards the feline's huge
nostrils. Before she knows what she is doing, Urea hugs the
panthera
, wrapping herself in her deadly black fur.
If I
must die, this is how I want to go.
She touches every part of
the magnificent creature she knows so well. Her arms, her legs, her
paws, her claws, her wonderful tail, how many times did Urea wish
she just had a tail? As a girl she dreamt about having a tail. Urea
ever so gently scratches the
panthera
below her ear. Its all
she's ever wanted to do, ever since she was a little kid. Finally
they stare into each other's eyes, redefining their relationship a
thousand times a second.

The
panthera
nuzzles her with her
whiskers and Urea feels her growl turn into a purr. She cries sweet
tears into her black coat until the
panthera
pushes her away
and licks them clean off her face.

In death, I fear nothing, for my fate is known.
Instead I pity the living, who must carry on with no one but
themselves to turn to.

A crowd of nearly a hundred people cower
together as
biselk
kick at the earth and walk forward in
lockstep. Every one of their movements is perfectly synchronized,
they move as one. The crowd is surrounded by the
biselk
on
one side, the collapsed Spire on the other, and two
Wild Men
battling in the center.

“Stop it!” Kao's sister yells, as the two
grapple with each other.

“Release him!” Kao screams at the hermit.

“There is nothing to release you fool! He
ended his life when he threw my body from the Spire! I am all that
remains.” The body of the hermit cackles. As he does electricity
arcs over the crowd of people from the stump of the Spire to the
enclosing ring of prongelk. The people scream in terror, the ghost
of Baucis just laughs harder.

“I always wanted a body like this, and now I
have one!” One of the elk breaks file and charges Kao. He dodges
and it careens into the stump, electricity crackles into the air,
some catching on Kao's prong stubs. “Though I must admit I didn't
expect the added benefits!”

Kao leaps away from the hermit as another
prongelk charges him.

“You can't stop me!”

Howls ring out across the Garden and the
monkeys surge towards the battle. They too move as one, guided by
Baucis's single warped mind.

“I lost the Spire but will not lose my
Garden!” he screams to no one and everyone. The monkeys’ howls
become dangerous. People from the Spire fall to their knees, noses
bleeding. People vomit. The monkeys’ howls hurt even the prongelk.
They bellow in protest but march forward, pinning the crowd
together.

“Bow to me!” Baucis yells from the hermit's
throat, and all the Evanimals drop to their knees as bolts of
electricity surge directly from the stump of the Spire to Baucis's
new body, to the hordes of Evanimals he has created. Most of the
crowd, those with VRCs, bow as well, the command short circuiting
their will power, an argument as strong as any against
technological meddling.

Kao rushes at Baucis's incarnation but is
stopped when Baucis releases a wave of pure power from his hands at
Kao. It knocks him back with more force than any of the walls in
the Spire ever did. The stump of the Spire throws more and more
blasts of lightning into the air. The ground starts to bubble
beneath Baucis's feet.

Out of the dark of the night itself, bounds
the
panthera
. She roars at Baucis, then, plain as day to all
those with VRCs she chimes her voice is soft, firm,
and strikingly feminine.

The elk freeze, the monkeys as well, people
look up from the ground, but Baucis does nothing of the sort. He
cackles ever louder, each guffaw of laughter magnified to inhuman
levels by a chorus of
howluchin
monkeys around him.

“You dare to challenge ME?” a hundred voices
call out, even the
biselk
grunt rough syllables.

“I AM BAUCIS LORD OF MANKIND, LORD OF THE
ANIMALS, LORD OF THIS EARTH!”

Lightning thunders from the remains of the
Spire and a great plume of electricity shoots into the air. The
ground shakes and the volcanoes on the periphery of the caldera
erupt. The earth beneath Baucis's feet glows red, fissures form,
and finally its solidity gives way.

Kao has seen much in the last moon, but never
did he think he would see the earth boil. But boil it does, as
rolling a boil as any soup pot he has ever stirred. Flecks of lava
spurt out of the earth around the Spire. The ground rolls and
sputters out protest to the energy burning it from deep below.

Baucis sees this too and tries to run from
the burbling lake of lava, but he is too close to his source of
power, the ground gives way and his feet and shins slip into the
earth as smoothly as an eagle hunts in water.

Baucis screams out in the hermit's voice as
all below his knees is incinerated in an instant. For a moment he
balances there, an homage to his precious Spire, but the pain
overwhelms him and he cries out bestially, lightning shoots from
his palms and lava boils more aggressively. The ground shakes him.
He tips forward and falls. His hands are no more. He's just a
torso, screaming into the night as he slowly melts into the
earth.

“
I AM BAUCIS
,” he screams again and
again inside of everyone's minds, until his body is gone, and he's
just a head, but the earth is not sated, and that melts too, so
that all that remains is a VRC, made of stronger carbon than meat
and bone, glowing red into the night, and then that sinks below the
surface, and finally his will is no more, and all is silent.

In the aftermath Urea runs forward to Jacob's
burned body. His elk is half submerged into the earth, but the
pilot is still alive, barely breathing, but alive. He moves to
speak but she puts a finger to his lips.

“I know. I love you too.” He smiles, then
passes unconscious. The
panthera
approaches and Urea gently
lifts Jacob onto her back.

she chimes Urea with disdain, but
no one else hears.

Skup and Elia hold hands, their birds flying
overhead in the predawn light. The flock already descends on the
remains of the Spire, some instincts are too strong, but they spare
the five hundred living souls that walk from the Spire, thank
Nature.

“What do we do now?” a child asks no one in
particular.

Skup and Urea say nothing, but turn to
Kao.

“Let's go home,” Kao says.

“We're already here,” his sister replies,
wiser than she was for all she went through, her brain and body,
even her soul forced to grow under pressure. Excess was stripped
away, desire, pleasure, slovenliness, childhood all chipped off
like shards of marble, until only the core of power, the most
necessary, that which was needed to stand up to all that confronted
it, remains.

He is the Wild Man, and his world is
out there
, among the animals and the trees, the sun
and the rain, the lions and wolves and everything else that we hide
from with our walls and our culture and our comfort. It is good his
kind is out there, for as long as they are, there's place for all
in this world we share.

Kao looks to Father Mountain, hoping to
recognize the old craggy rock face that never aged until the
Hidden's storm removed his forested beard.
It looks nothing like
him.
He does this every day since the Spire crumbled, hoping
for some sort of recognition.

The hunter walks through the growing village.
Close to a thousand people survived the Spire, few of them older
than Kao.
I am an elder with only fifteen summers.
Its
different for the people of the Spire though. They had no time up
in the sky, the seasons meant no more than the moon. Down here the
seasons are real. Winter was cold. A few of the youngest did not
survive, but considering where they came from...
They grow
strong. They do not need me.

For six moons, all of winter and much of
spring, he was their hunter. He taught them stealth, patience, how
to butcher an animal. They learned hunger. Much of the Garden was
burned by the eruptions or crushed by the Spire, but enough
remained. A fresh crop was planted and already it offers its
fruits.
They will not starve.

Water cascades down Father Mountain to the
two rivers that water the Garden, The North and the South.
Father Mountain protects his children.
The mountain sent
meat too. Rabbits, squirrels, even some of the egg laying ground
birds Kao's people valued so highly. They caught and ate the
rabbits and squirrels, but Kao taught them how to keep the
groundbirds, and they quickly learned the joy of eggs. He thought
they would be desperate for meat, but he should have known
better.

They never slaughter prongelk, though just
one of the huge males could have fed hundreds of people.
They
worship the animals.
Though even Kao had to admit the animals
of the Garden were the closest to gods he had ever met.
Does
One-eye still look for me?
Skup and Elia had moved to the
mountains with the kingcrows. Urea had cried so hard, but Kao was
not surprised to see them leave.

“We have to go,” Elia had said, “the flock
needs a leader.” So they moved to the mountains and took a few
dozen people with them.
They are children in truth, but that is
the way of things now
. Children to build a world from the
scraps of adults.

They had done well though, never did the
kingcrows attack. Kao wished it had all gone so smoothly. For a
time it had been too hectic to think. Most of the howlers had fled
as soon as Baucis had died, but the monkeys had returned to raid
the fledgling village. They had even taken a few of the youngest
children.
My fault
. But there was nothing the hunter could
have done. The howlers had feinted a strike on one side of the
village, and when Kao and Urea had gone to defend it, they had
snuck in the other side and looted their food stores and taken
children screaming back to the woods. Urea wanted to go after them
but Kao would not allow it.

“No!” Kao had ordered, his teeth bared, and
Urea had backed down with a furtive look towards Shadow.
I
should have let her go
. Urea and her lion had adapted well to
their new relationship, but he had not wanted to risk their
greatest weapon and their wisest thinker.
A bad decision, but I
am no hermit.

Kao thinks of the hermit more than anything.
They never found Baucis's tiny pudgy body after the hermit had
flung it, with his own consciousness inside, over the edge of the
Spire. It had probably been swallowed by the molten earth, same as
the hermit's true body, but Kao cannot be certain. He longs to see
the hermit's cave again, to see what he could glean of his people's
history from the drawings that went down so deep in the earth.
Did he write his recipe for the mushroom potion
?

Kao wishes he could have another taste. He
understands much of what the fallen sky people said, but many words
allude him.