Chapter 4
In Which Seed Stands Before Flame
The field of ash was even bigger, the charcoal stumps even blacker than before. The coating of ash across the ground made it seem like a shifting desert, sudden pockets of heat flaring up around his ankles as he stepped.
He saw the swarm, felt the crushing magic coating the beetle-monster, before he knew where the creature was. It was pressed against a pine, burning layer after layer of bark with its mandibles, grinding away the tree’s still-living flesh with his horn. It looked like the world was too small to contain it, bits of the heat-warped air seeming to make parts of it warp away, into some strange dimension all its own. Seeing it again made Seed tremble. His cloak of leaves rustled around him.
The shaking of the pine’s last needles, the ones at the peak and unburnt, trembled and rustled fear and pain. It screamed, even as all its ability to scream burnt away.
”S-Stop it!”
It sounded more frightened than he had intended. The mad eyes of the beast fixed on him. Seed had, in that instant, no idea what to do – but in times of strife before, he had always tried to block. And so, his thoughts a jumble of disassembled lines, he dashed through the ashen field to the space between the raised body of the beetle and the pine, and rammed his side into the former with all he had. His face and back were dark with sweat, his head reeling from the sensation of that sort of contact – now, of course, he had no time to wonder when physics had started being a thing that happened to him.
The beetle king clacked its mandibles together, and as they came apart, a sputter of flame burst between them. The cape of leaves swirled around like a halo around Seed, catching the flame and withering before the blaze. But it let him push a little more, making the beetle on its back two sets of legs stumble backwards, scraping the shell along its shoulder against the red-hot tip of a broken-off tree.
But then it landed and came back to itself. Then it stared at Seed with its hateful red eyes. Then it made the strangled sound, half whirr and half roar. The insect swarm that surrounded the area buzzed their wings, and converged on Seed like locusts. He ran – not away, not to safety, but bolted into the space of the ash field, the forest of burnt-out stumps. The beetles grabbed to the edges of his cloak and tore the pieces away, leaving him bare and exposed.
The monster raced towards Seed, lumbering forward in jerking, spasming motions – it couldn’t support its own organs without magic, and it let the magic surge and die to fill in the missing movements of its steps. Seed looked around, desperately.
I can’t do this! What am I doing? Am I insane? He asked himself. The fact of the matter was, even if the trees were sending someone who could handle this, there was too much damage here – the trees needed to touch, or nearly touch, to send information.
He was alone, some foolish little poet with no clue what to do.
And the monster was hurtling right towards him, leaving a rising trail of fire in the wake of its steps, tracing flame arcs from its great horn. Seed stared at it…And as he stared, he noticed. He noticed the place where it had nearly fallen onto the tree, a place where the chitiny shell of the monster was…Thin. Raw. A place Seed felt that maybe, just maybe, a strike would go through.
Seed thought, seeing that chink, that there was something he could do – something he must do. To be good enough. To be the hero that his life needed. All he had to do was strike with all he was. He reared up, to gain more speed. The beetle seemed to dip on its mammoth legs as it came, at last, before Seed.
All Seed could hear was his own heartbeat, getting slower and slower as the moment slowed to a near-halt. All he could see was the chink in the beetle’s chitin, red and translucent and shiny. That had been a lucky shot – this would mean it. He could still believe. He could still be good enough, could be useful, could be like the ones who could do difficult things, and live without tearing their hearts up. The world was contracted to a single point, where he was anchoring himself into the dirt, grinding his back hooves, balancing his weight on a narrow pinhead second.
Do you really think…That’s what you are? What you ought to be?
He didn’t have time for that! He just had…The infinity of his plunge. Even if his knees were shaking, he at least could stand and matter!
Time sped up. He descended, waiting for the sensation of antler-tine breaking away the last of the burning shell. Waiting for the sound of a crack. Everything moved in a second, ending all the waiting.
”Glck.” The blood rushed its way, with the last of his breath, up his throat, splattering the edges of his mouth. Seed’s gaze wavered downward…To the great horn that was rammed straight through his chest. His blood darkened the color of the horn, and glistened with the reflection of his blank expression.
The beetle moved, and Seed’s body flopped on the horn like a speared piece of meat. He rasped and choked on another spurt of blood.
I’m….So….Sorry.
He thought, as his vision began to fade. He could no longer hear his own heartbeat. No longer see the horn. All he saw were faces – faces flashing through his mind. Of loves he had lost. Family and friends he had still been praying, until a moment ago, to see again. To people he had seen…Just so recently. Walked with. Spoken with. People he knew, right then, he had every regret and no regrets about.
…There may have even be a face that hit him with an unexpected strength of feeling, as great an impact as the horn.
I…L…”
But whatever those thoughts, those faces, those feelings might have been…Who could say? The thought tumbled into darkness. Whatever Seed had been fell silent.
The beetle tossed the limp and broken thing in a single rough motion, sliding it in a slick trail of blood from its horn. The corpse landed with a crash in the treetops. The Beetle pressed onward, leaving that empty shell to hang from the branches.
To Be Continued...
And with my bumping, I feel I
-speechless-
Good Speechles, I hope ;P
Good in the way that your
Oh, well that's just the
Hi! So I, uh, read your story
Hi! So I, uh, read your story today. And I'm really liking it. :>
This might be a silly question, but while I was reading, I kept on wondering if you're a native english speaker.
Either way, I'm impressed with the way you paint with words - I can picture all these written scenes in my mind quite vividly, like watercolour.
I love Seed as a character. He's my favourite type, a sort of anti-hero, dragged into trouble kicking and screaming and unprepared. He's very relatable and real in his thoughts and reactions. I see a lot of myself in him, too, especially after reading his bio. If that makes me biased, well... I still love him.
Coincidentally, I was thinking of creating a plant-turned-deer some time ago, but had no clue where to go with the idea. It's delightful to see someone's gotten this far with theirs.
I do have one tiny complaint about this chapter: all the underlinings are making it slightly irritating to read. I did get used to it, but thought I'd mention it anyway.
Anyway, thank you for the story! Looking forward to more of it!
Doubt I'll ever be compact and that's a fact! ~
Thank you very much! I'm glad
I am a native speaker, though I'm autistic so my use of any language can be a little bit odd even before factoring in creative liscence.
Underlinings?
Oh! Oops! I meant
And you're very welcome! I really did enjoy the story. I want to have a look at your poems, too, but it's getting really late, so I'll log off and leave that for later.
Resurrection!
Edit: Hum. Your writing doesn't seem weird to me at all. But then, I am a foreigner and don't know much about autism, either.
Doubt I'll ever be compact and that's a fact! ~
How odd. On my screen, only
And thank you again; there's more story left, so anything's possible.
Anyway, it's not something I think is noticable, either. I just figure if someone is picking up something off in my writing, that'd be it.
Funny, for me chapter 4 is
Doubt I'll ever be compact and that's a fact! ~
I have the same issue, though
Just the basic BBC [ u ] [ /u
Uh, so this is a real late
I wondered myself if the underscores were intentional, but then I thought: if I were to post a story online, I'd want it to be easy to read, and would like to know about stuff like this. Not that the underscores were a big inconvenience - I just didn't really see the point of having them all over the page, even if it had been for effect. ^^;;
I'm using Firefox, by the way - beware the Forces of Habit... Not that I'd have a clue, but wonder if FF and Chrome have some sort of issues with this code or something?
Doubt I'll ever be compact and that's a fact! ~
Alright, thank you very much
It's rather odd, but I think just the permanency of the bold is much more acceptable than the underlining. This is really very weird, though...
Anyway, I'll probably start work on the next section: If I do it right, it'll have some need for community activity.
;_; Seed...