Beats Entropy

(Continued from PART 1 , which was continued from PART 2, continued in PART 3 Continued in PART 4, Continued in PART 5 , C Continued in part 6 CONCLUDED IN PART 7

The cave mouth was much smaller than I thought; generations of hunched and scrabbling Ogres had burnished the edges smooth with their bulk. Thick scrub had grown around the entrance in the Brute’s absence, giving easy cover. I waited until sunset, then crawled the last hundred feet flush to the ground, broken bits of stone and bone tearing at my chest. The Ogre and his vacant bride crouched together, further down the hill, a discouraging lump blackened by the fading light.

Once past the bottleneck the interior of the cave broadened into a more spacious entryway. Meticulously flattened walls were painted with a variety of naturalistic scenes. The effect was surprisingly tasteful. The floor was even, save two drainage gutters, and carpeted by the well cured skins of careless animals and travelers. The charming view was made possible by a sickly spectral light that sent little pulses of hysteria along my composure.

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I was halfway to the next chamber before the ignominy of crawling to my certain death pulled me into a shuffling crouch; my left hand traced the smooth grain of the wall in some instinctive bid for comfort. The scent of burnt cinnamon and ozone sucked and pulled at the atavistic fear oozing through me; ugly chattering whorls that wouldn’t quite associate. It was shock more than courage that allowed me to round the corner.

Impossibly tall, his broad, blood soaked back was turned to me. Twin ruptures of bone marred a form so perfect my own flesh felt a betrayal; a corruption. The feverish heat rolling off him churned my stomach and thrummed an ache from my balls to the base of my teeth. I fought back the groveling urge to lie prostrate; my hand crawled down my leg to the sword that seemed a lifetime away.

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A voice of mind breaking richness poured out from the creature. He seemed vaguely amused, and unfathomably sad.

“Have you come to kill me, thief?”

I wanted to weep and beg his forgiveness, tear out my tongue for thinking to speak…but I’d never been much for begging, and it seemed a poor time to start.

“Uh…yes.”

The banal, lacking, reply baffled him a moment; the awkward silence following grounded me enough to move. Eyes closed, I slashed my sword in a wild overhand arc, half hoping I’d miss the hideously beautiful creature I could no longer see. An immense, casual force sent me violently into the wall. I pushed the wet crunching sound of impact to the back of my mind. A clutch of loose feathers drifted past, a haze of tears making them shimmer. The creature turned.

Again his voice rumbled forth, like a tearing cloud.

“How could that have worked? You are an idle thought, half forgotten; I am morning, I am rain.

Few things fray my judgment faster then condescension. I spoke with as much contempt as my broken jaw could harbor.

“Yeah, all right. Nice cave, chief.”

A wounded hiss sent deep cracks racing along the floor; the creature moaned in reciprocal pain. Hunks of ceiling peppered down around me.

“I am bound…but I will be free. You’re a smudge on a veil, a barely felt conceit.”

The blood in my lungs kept me from laughing at his attempt to twist the existential knife. There was more poet on my boots than there was in my soul, and I cared far more for the former, than I did the later. I had just decided enough was enough when I heard the Ogre’s bellowing charge into cave. Why does no one ever listen?

To be concluded