Montone - The Lash

[Admiral]

Here's, chronologically, the first story of Montone. And now it's complete... Enjoy.

Montone – The Lash

1. Pulp

Brelam and Stanel, the night watchmen of the worksite on the second lowest terrace of the most recent Markish project, were walking their beaten path. They’d walked the same path every night for years, save for Sundays and Thursdays when they got the day off, and knew it well. And, just like every other payday, they were drinking heavily from a shared bottle of rum as they went, pointing, laughing, and cussing at their charges.

“Ho! Stanel, look here at this one,” slurred Brelam as they reached a small circle of blonde-haired, yellow-eyed Aigalonian slaves sitting outside of their tents. The watchman smirked as he pointed at the largest of the slaves. “A bit big for an Aigalonian, aren’t you, boy?” he asked. Even in the deepest throes of drunkenness, no one could be proven wrong in making that statement. The boy, if he could still be called that, stood nearly six and a half feet off of the ground at full height and was equally proportioned in breadth of chest. He bore the golden-blonde hair and yellow, catlike eyes, eyes that gave him incredible night vision, of his people. His skin, however, despite years of laboring in the beating sun, was very fair in comparison to his fellow slaves.

“I said,” Brelam continued after getting no response from the boy, “Aren’t you a bit big for an Aigalonian, boy?” The boy still said nothing; instead only continuing to stare across the small circle with his back to the watchmen.

“Brelam,” stuttered Stanel, “Is this the mutt? I heard about a mutt, but to tell you the truth I’ve never really taken a good look at any of ‘em.” The boy’s face clearly showed shame to any who could see it, but he still did not turn or respond.

“I think he might be,” said Brelam, “Is that true, boy? Is that why you don’t snap to your feet and answer us like the rest of the dogs around you? You think, just cause your father soiled his loins with your mother for a night, that you don’t have to follow the rules?” The boy’s expression acknowledged what was said as true, but he still did not move.

“Brelam,” said Stanel, “I also heard about a slave with what they called a thick skin. You got a thick skin boy?” Stanel reached to his belt and took his whip into his hand.

“We’ll find out,” said Brelam, uncoiling his whip as well. Blow after blow fell across the boy’s bare back, arms, and neck. Blood poured from the wounds, staining the dirt of the camp a murky red, and still the watchmen continued to lash out against their target. Altogether the beating itself lasted only a little more than a quarter of an hour before a supervisor came from the head of the terrace to halt the watchmen, but to the boy and to the horrified, silent faces sitting in the circle, it seemed like hours.

Once they had gone, Aigalonians swarmed across the terrace to see the aftermath. The boy was crumpled in a heap on the ground, his back a bloody, indistinguishable mess. A cry rang out, and his mother was shoving the others out of the way.

“Montone!” she shrieked, “Montone wake up! Open your eyes!” Through her tears, she checked his eyes to find that both were rolled up in the sockets. His limbs were limp, and his pulse could not be found. The woman let out another moan of despair and crumpled over her son, sobbing into the bloody pulp of his back. Eventually, several men of the camp separated her from the body and carried it into a tent to be left for burial during the following night’s break.

Due to their renowned night vision, the Aigalonians could work at any time of day, making themselves ideal slaves, and so they were only allowed two breaks during each workday. One came shortly before noon that lasted until early afternoon, and the other lasted from an hour before midnight until a few hours after. The morning break was always used for rest, so the burial would have to wait until the next night. A gravesite would have to be scouted out, as there was not much in the way of open land on the second of the four terraces of the newest Markish monstrosity. Tools would have to be found as well, along with a grave marker. The men left the body in the tent, knowing that it could easily be several days before they could put the boy to rest.

[Admiral]

2. Messiah

The next morning, one of the men who had carried the body entered the tent to prop open the flap. It was the only opening, and without any air moving in and out of the tent, the smell would’ve become unbearable by nightfall. He paused for a moment before leaving and bent over the body, his fingers grazing over the wounds. With a prejudice for any of mixed race, the man delivered a swift kick into the array of wounds and quickly turned to leave. As he exited, Montone sat bolt upright on the sleeping mat upon which he’d been laid. His scars were nonexistent; in fact there were no marks upon his body whatsoever. He even seemed to be more muscular than he had been the night before, and his skin radiated a faint golden glow.

Montone rose to his feet, now having to duck to accommodate the two inches that he had added to his height since the night before. He rinsed his hands in a bowl of water behind the tent’s flap and washed bits of dirt from his golden blonde hair, which now extended down below his chin. He took a long breath, braced himself, and walked out of the tent.

An audible gasp resounded across the second terrace of the Markish temple’s westernmost wall. Wonder filled the eyes of those that Montone met with his own, and relief in those of the older woman who had shrieked so fiercely the night before. He also thought that he caught a glimpse of fear in the eyes of one of the men nearest to the tent, but the look, if it had existed, quickly faded. Montone strode swiftly across the terrace and comforted his weeping mother as the rest of the Aigalonians stared in silence.

“I am sure that you all have many questions,” Montone said in a slightly deeper voice than had ever been heard from his mouth, “But for the sake of maintaining the peace, I will not risk keeping any of you past the end of your morning break. We will speak this evening.” He was no longer timid. He was confident, commanding. His words demanded respect, understanding, and obedience from such a weak-willed audience.

From their tent on the third terrace, the watchmen Brelam and Stanel observed the scene, commenting on the unusual amount of activity taking place during the morning’s rest. Reassuring one another that they were indeed free of any requirement to respond to any situation during the daylight hours, they resumed their drinking and napping throughout the day. Meanwhile, Montone’s performance, as no lesser word would be fit for description, upon the second terrace’s wall spoke more clearly of the change within him than the speech he would deliver during the evening’s rest. He hefted unbearably large loads of stone with ease, carrying the weight of ten men on his back. All those on the worksite, apart from Montone himself, were struck by the incredible change in him. The once quiet, passive boy, who had somehow defied death, had returned to them as a man willing to lend aid to any and all that required it. By nightfall, the few that had whispered of his return as devilry had been silenced by his actions.

Word had spread, under the nose of the watchmen as always, about the boy from the second terrace who had come back from the dead. By the evening’s break, a crowd of Aigalonians had gathered in and around the tents of the second terrace. Some were hopeful, thinking him a savior, many were doubtful, and others came out of sheer curiosity. Brelam and Stanel paid no mind to the congregation of slaves; though rare, they seemed to gather together in large groups from time to time to celebrate or to mourn. While nothing, other than perhaps a month’s worth of wine, would have pleased the watchmen more than breaking up the ceremony, the few grave markers sitting by their tent kept them from wandering through the crowd lest some radical slave decide to seek bloody revenge. All evidence pointed to a funeral as it was; there was no need to worry.

On the terrace itself, with a tent behind him, a fire before him, and a semicircle of eager listeners surrounding him, Montone began his tale.

[Admiral]

3. In Death

As the very nerves in his back and arms and neck were lashed by the whips of his cruel slavedrivers, Montone drifted in and out of consciousness, feeling both numbness and excruciating pain simultaneously. One by one, his senses shut down. The crack of the whip, the shout of a man, and the anguished cry of a woman, and then nothing. He could not discern between the blackness of his agony and the dirt that lay pressed around his face. His nostrils were flooded with the smell of blood, his own blood. It was sickening. The scent was so strong, so palpable that he could taste it in his mouth, his own blood invading from the front as it exited from the back. And then it ceased, and all that he could feel was pain. He felt not the wind’s gentle kiss upon his ruined skin, nor the hands gripping him, only pain, and then nothing.

When consciousness took hold of him once more, he was perplexed, amazed, a mix of as many emotions as he could think of, but above all, he was grateful. The pain had finally subsided, and with its departure came an overload of his other senses. He stood at the base of an endless expanse of land, composed of every type of terrain known to man, that sloped upward for miles and miles. Mountain peaks of varying heights, some snow-capped, others covered in plant-life, and a few volcanic, jutted out of the massive cluster of land to form the upward slope. Within the valleys of the mountains lay golden plains laden with flowing rivers and harsh deserts of smooth sand and coarse rock. Vast forests found their place at all altitudes, climbing the mountains with as much determination as any living thing, and within them patches of swamp and bog were scattered. Craters filled with teeming jungle life surrounded the volcanic rocks. A great glacier slowly carved its path through the mountain range, leaving deep lakes in its wake. High upon the ever-sloping mass, a barren tundra took the last bit of the eye’s view as Montone could not take a step back, for the edge of a sheer cliff rested only steps behind him. Surrounding the cluster of land was an ocean that stretched as far as he could see, and to his right was the oddest creature he had ever seen.

It was very large, or very small, or a mixture of the two. The top of the head stood only a few feet from the ground. The limbs were thin and lacking muscle, and the spine had an odd angle to it, looking as if someone had stretched the creature horizontally midway through the torso. The one visible eye was bulging, the nose was long, crooked, and hooked, and the ears hung down below the elbows. A tuft of white hair capped off the creature’s lackluster appearance. The other eye was what drew Montone’s attention, as it was hidden behind an incredibly long appendage supported by one of the creature’s arms. It was drab brown to match the rest of the creature’s skin, glinting from the unceasing sun in many places, and longer than one of the terraces of the Markish temple was tall. It took until the creature had released the appendage from its grasp, muttering to itself about failures, for Montone to realize that the two were not attached. In fact, the creature had vanished entirely.

Montone shook it off as a hallucination, or a trick of the mind, thinking himself to be alive be lost in the unconscious, until he felt a cold, clammy hand grasp his own. As the creature materialized before him, matching the skin tone of the Aigalonian with his own, the grip on his hand instantly warmed to his body temperature. When the creature spoke, it was with Montone’s voice.

“I am Issei,” it said, “Watcher of the land of the dead. I assign a task to all those of your kind who perish in the mortal world. Those who succeed will pass on into the afterlife with limitless power, capable of doing whatever they please instantaneously. Those who fail will advance into that same plane of existence as they were in the last. You may notice that the wounds inflicted upon you, yes I know of them, prior to your death are no longer present upon your skin. I must inform you that, should you fail, they will be returned to your body and will remain there for eternity as a sign of your failure.”

“And now for the task itself,” Issei continued, “You will be given one of your human years, not a second more, to scale this slope before us and reach the summit. If you will look through this instrunemnt here,” he said, leading Montone by the hand toward the long brown tube, “You will see your goal. Atop the plateau that rests on the peaks of the highest mountains is a tree that bears golden apples.” Montone, grasping Issei’s hand tightly for fear of losing his only guide, put an eye to the end of the tube. He saw, as close as if it were within his reach, a luscious green tree with bright golden apples that glimmered in the sunlight. Mesmerized, he stared for several minutes before the impatient Issei tore him from the instrument.

“How far is it?” he asked. Issei shook his head.

“I can answer no questions. All those who pass from the mortal world receive the same information and are given the same amount of time to complete the same task. I will tell you, as I have told the others, that the cluster of land is shaped much like the structures that your people have built for centuries in that there is a wide base that circles around a central point, in this case that central point is the tree that you have just witnessed.”

“Now, listen carefully to what I have to say, for failure to follow these instructions will result in failure of the task,” Issei continued, “On your way to the summit, you must gather the following things for me.” The creature produced a clear cylindrical jar from the air and handed it to Montone. “You must bring to the tree a perfectly triangular stone from a sand pit in the deserts, an unbreakable vine from the depths of the jungle and the thick branches from the largest tree in all the forests, a long, sturdy stem of grain from the golden plains and the blue-black barbs of a tundra bush, mud of the hole where the swamps and bogs join together, a rock of hardened lava, and a perfectly formed crystal of ice from the lakes in the shadow of the glacier.”

“At the summit you will find a need for all of these things,” said Issei, “You must use them to reach the tree and, if you succeed in doing that, you must devour an apple from its branches. The jar that I have given you will expand as necessary to accommodate your tools, and will appear or disappear as you will it. You will need neither rest nor nourishment during this task, though any injuries incurred will take time to heal. I will be monitoring your progress, along with the progress of every other unsorted soul, from here. Begin.”

[Admiral]

4. The Task

For the first two weeks, the boy simply explored the areas nearest to him. Having never been away from the area surrounding the Markish cities, he had only ever seen desert and had only seen paintings of a few of the other types of terrain. The rest had only been described in old tales told around the fire. His thirst for knowledge quenched for the time, he began to search the sands of the largest visible desert for the stone that he was meant to retrieve. The task did not take long; Montone had traversed rough patches of desert in his travels between worksites and could easily cover the desert land. After two more weeks, he had searched countless sand pits and clusters of cacti, finally finding a stone matching Issei’s description in a sunken mess of quicksand. Try as he might, the boy could not discern a way to retrieve the stone. Marking his surroundings, he traveled eastward into the jungles in the adjacent valley, vowing to return to this spot to complete the task.

Another two weeks of travel had him deep in the jungle, surrounded by vines. He’d been testing vines for as long as he could remember, finding every one as sturdy as the last. Under the strain of his considerable strength, they would snap, but each seemed strong enough. Montone selected one at random and, tentatively, willed the clear jar to appear. As promised, the jar popped into his hand, weightless, now large enough to hold the length of the vine. High a ridge to the east, he saw the golden waves of grain blowing in the wind. After an easy climb and some wandering through the plains and their streams, he stumbled over the stem that he’d be sent to find. It stood bolt upright, oblivious to the pull of the wind that affected its peers. Montone tested it, finding a small amount of pliability, in the end decided that it would certainly be described as sturdy.

With the stem in the jar and the realization that Issei had been speaking of very specific items in the instructions, Montone returned to the jungle to find a truly unbreakable vine. After weeks of dangerous swinging and tugging on vines, he was met only with futility. Resolved to come back later, though nearly three months had already passed since the start of the task, Montone started swinging toward the center of the island, hoping to reach a murky patch of land, a swamp perhaps, that he remembered seeing above the jungle. He swung and tugged, nearing the edge of the jungle and the steep incline of a hill to the north, when he came across a vine that had no pliability to it. His momentum stopped after lightly grasping the vine as he passed, Montone plummeted through the air and crashed into the side of the hill. Despite his now-broken arm, the boy was ecstatic. He had given up hope of finding the vine. With a firm tug at the base of the plant, he uprooted his prize. It slackened immediately as its roots came out of the soil, but hardened once more at Montone’s touch. The vine, like the jar, responded as well as it could to his will. With this newfound knowledge, Montone discarded the other vine, replacing it with the new, and continued up the steep hillside.

With one useless arm, the climb was exceedingly difficult, especially as he neared the apex of the hill where the muddy earth of the swamp snaked its way onto the hillside. The climb itself took the boy well into his fourth month. His search of the area, was rapid though, as the swamp was dwarfed in comparison to the other terrain that he had crossed. Patches of jungle were interspersed throughout its murky waters, and then the waters became less and less as more jungle sprouted. A stretch of pure jungle, and then a bog that smelled faintly of death. Once more, Montone was baffled. Though he searched and searched, there was no joined patch of swamp and bog. Frustrated, he left the area, climbing even higher and farther east, now above high above the plains where he had found the sturdy stem of grain.

As the fifth month of his task began, Montone was consumed with the search. He no longer stared in wonder at the sights he had never before witnessed, nor did he crane his neck back as far as he could to try to see the top of the massive island. His thoughts were only of the tales that he had heard as a child as he tried to recall the characteristics of the various types of terrain. His first volcano, however, broke the haze of inobservance that held him. Had it not erupted as he passed through its foothills, Montone might have missed it entirely. But, as it was, the mountain did erupt as the boy passed and only one without any senses at all could have missed it. The sulfuric smell of the air filled his nostrils, the heat assaulted his skin and the earth trembled beneath his feet, and the sound was unbearably loud. Montone was overwhelmed and, knowing nothing of lava and its destructive power, nearly caught in the red-orange flow. Only the sight of a nearby bush melting away brought his attention to the danger and gave him time to leap onto a nearby stone. The platform upon which he stood was unlike anything that he had ever seen. It looked as if someone had taken cream and spread it thickly, yet the rock was hard. As Montone inspected what he assumed were the lava rocks that Issei had spoken of, he spotted, high up on the slope, a perfectly formed stone as large as his own body. Its surface was unmarred, bearing no stains of ash or cuts through it from the still-running river of lava. Montone knew that it was the right stone, the one that he would need if he ever reached the summit. He leapt from stone to stone, slipping and nearly falling to a fiery death more than once. After several hours of patient waiting for stones to flow down to him and adept jumping to bring him to the top, Montone fit the enormous stone into the jar and looked down the slope. The lava had reached the foothills of the volcanic mountain and was spilling over the cliff face into the plains below. He was too far east to make his way back to the bog, and so left with no other choice he ran the two steps of the stone he stood upon and leapt high and long over the flowing river of lava. He caught the branch of a tree no more than ten feet from the ground and swung himself farther east, away from the heat of the volcano.

When he paused, he was among trees unlike those that he’d ever seen, though the awing power of these shrunk in comparison to that of the volcano. He knew his place though; this was the forest. He had heard many tales of this type of place as a child, where the leaves of the trees were dark green and the colors around him were drab and depressing. Montone spent two months in the forest, measuring the trees as well as he could. Finding the branches of the largest tree was a task of perseverance. The ground was not level, and so the boy had to climb countless trees to find which of them was tallest from root to canopy rather than which allowed him to look down upon the others from their highest branches. Though he viewed this task alone as a waste of time, he was pleased to have completed it, as he had solved another problem while searching the forest. While high in the canopy of one of the trees of the forest, Montone had noticed a section of swamp not far to the south amidst a patch of small trees and foliage. Knowing that a bog required dead things to flourish, he took the large volcanic rock from his jar and hurled it through the air so that it crashed and rolled over the plants and trees surrounding the swamp.

[Admiral]

4. The Task (cont.)

With the stone left behind to mark the place of what he hoped would become a bog, Montone continued east up a high ridge that leveled out with the face of the glacier. After another long test of perseverance during which he trained himself to breath underwater for extended periods, Montone began searching the bottoms of the lakes left in the glacier’s wake for a crystal of ice. The boy found the crystal, a sharp, radiant thing about the size of his fist, as the tenth month of his task began. He had come here in the spring, and though the weather had never become even mildly harsh, he had noticed the seasons changing. Spring was coming once more, and time was running low.
Late in the tenth month, Montone completed his first full circle of the island. He came once more upon the familiar deserts and noticed the landmarks that he had ingrained into his head. Within a day he had found the pool of quicksand once again and, using the unbreakable vine, he was able to reach the flat, triangular stone. With only the mixed mud of the swamp and bog left to gather, he raced across the island slopes to find that his plan had indeed succeeded. A section of bog had grown where the plants had been smashed into the water, and the mud of the two wetlands had joined together. Montone harvested as much as he could allow himself the time for, and then placed both the mud and the volcanic rock into the now-enormous jar. Bending to his will as with the other objects, the mud hardened itself to keep from spreading throughout the jar.

Now, with little under a month remaining in his allotted year, Montone climbed upward. He passed through the forest, climbed the slope of now-hardened lava and passed the volcano, circled around a raised crater teeming with jungle life, and finally reached the barren tundra that formed a ring around the top of the island. In the center of the tundra was a low plateau, and over its lip a faint golden glow could be seen.

The boy was running now, scrambling up the steep slope of the desolate plains. He reached and climbed the face of the plateau with a full week remaining. At the top, he found a shallow bowl. Fifteen feet of rocky, barren hills ran around the perimeter of the plateau, and down below, in the center, sat the tree of golden apples amidst tufts of lush green grass, still glowing as brightly as it had when Montone had first laid eyes upon it. But, as he had dreaded, the task was far from over. A chasm, too wide to leap over, surrounded the tiny island of green and gold. Frustrated and out of ideas, he wasted away a day pondering his fate pitifully. And then, recalling the instructions of Issei, he summoned the jar and began to try to make use of the things that he had gathered.

A heavy stone, a long vine, a thick branch, a sturdy stem of grain, a flat triangular stone, mud from the self-made bog, and a crystal. All items that bent subtly to his needs. The vine, to be of any use, needed something to counter Montone’s weight, so he tied it around the lava rock and, despite the rock’s smoothness, found that it stayed in place. In trying further combinations of his supplies, he found that the mixture of mud made for a suitable paste and, with this knowledge, he hatched a plan. Using the glacial crystal, he cut the long, thick branch into two pieces and whittled them for three days straight. Now with only two days remaining, he stood ready with the crudely-whittled frame of a longbow and several thin shafts of arrows. Using the mud-paste, he attached the stiff stem of grain to the frame as a bowstring and glued the loose end of the vine to the back of one of the arrow shafts. On the front of the same shaft, he placed the flat triangular stone to use as an arrowhead. After extensive testing, for he would not risk his eternal fate on a miscalculation or poor construction of his bow, Montone took several practice shots with the headless arrow shafts that he had made. Feeling confident in his aim and with time running low, he fired his one completed arrow and missed. He took several more tries, pulling the arrow back with the vine each time, but could not make the shot under the pressure.

And for the first time since he had begun his task, he rested. He dropped everything where it lay and sat, calmly reflecting over his past life and slowly analyzing the possible outcomes of his success or failure in this task. An eternity with scars on his back did not seem so bad compared to the wounds that he had seen cause others to die. Soothed by the thought that even the worst of his possible fates wasn’t as bad as he had thought, he stood and fired his arrow, sinking the flat stone head deep into the trunk of the tree. He tugged hard at the vine to find that his shot had been straight and true; the arrow was securely lodged in the tree and, at the touch of his fingers, the vine became taut. Climbing hand over hand, Montone angled his way down the fifteen feet from the top of the hill to the grassy island.

His feet touched the grass, soaking in the warmth that contrasted so fiercely with the barren earth that he had just left. Standing in the presence of the tree alone was enough to lift his spirits and, calm and relaxed, he strolled to the tree and plucked a golden apple from its branch. His first bite was blissful. He thought of the food of the gods that had been described in the tales told around the fire; food that satisfied the desire for every taste and quenched the thirst with its juice. Still reeling in ecstasy from the first bite, he devoured the rest of the skin of the apple, savoring every bite, when he felt a cold hand clasp his own.

“I see that you made it,” Issei said in Montone’s voice, “Well done, and an interesting way of doing things. I can tell you that I certainly wouldn’t have done it tha– what’s that in your hand?” Montone sighed, staring dejectedly at the ground. He had not finished in time.

“So you haven’t finished… or have you?” said Issei, “You see, I may not have been entirely truthful with you when we first met. I… am not the watcher of the land of the dead. I watch only the proving grounds, and I answer to the true watchers of the land of the dead. It’s through that chasm there, by the way, though the fall would kill any who hadn’t yet eaten one of these apples. Dying in the proving grounds, as you may have guessed, has dire consequences. Rather than being taken to the land of the dead as simple failures, that is, as they were when they left the mortal world, they are taken as they died here, and I can assure you that the results are never pleasant.”

“But, as you have not died,” Issei continued, “That doesn’t concern you. What does concern you is that a situation such as this has never happened before, leastways not under my watch, and, you see, there is no precedent for it. So, with that in mind… back you go.” With strength unbefitting such a little creature, Issei spun in place, whirling Montone through the air, high above the lands of the island and down past the cliffs until he plunged into the ocean, golden apple still in hand. He sank and sank, but no bottom ever came into view. Instead, a sky came where the ocean floor should have been. Montone’s spirit plummeted through the air of the mortal world, losing grip of the remainder of the golden apple as he hit the break between the mortal and immortal worlds, passing by the many buildings of Markom, and crashed through the top of a tent on the second terrace of a Markish temple as an Aigalonian slave turned away from the body and exited the tent.

[Admiral]

5. In Life

Faces bearing many different emotions stared back at Montone as he finished his tale. The magnificence of the island of mixed terrain had caught the interest of many an elder while the suspense of the task itself, with its climb up a slope of lava and swinging by vines high above the ground, had enthralled the youths of the camp. The description of the keeper of the place between life and death had frightened many of all ages. But it was the idea itself, that knowledge, not myths or predictions but knowledge, of the afterlife was readily available, that kept them listening. The Aigalonians knew now to die in one piece if at all possible, and they knew what to prepare themselves for when death did come.

Before any more questions could be asked of Montone, the watchmen from all four of the terraces, gathered together to avoid any disobedience, called for the end of the evening’s break. The night shift passed without incident, though Brelam and Stanel, who had noticed Montone’s lack of wounds, spent the entire shift huddled together in conversation rather than patrolling the worksite.

As was customary, Montone slept through the morning shift along with most of his terrace’s camp, though a small group had been moved during the night. According to the whispers around the camp, disease had disabled a fair amount of the third terrace’s workers, so the supervisors had taken slaves from the other sites in an effort to balance the workload. His mother, as Montone would find out upon his rude awakening, was among the replacements.

The murmur of pity and fear that ran through the second terrace could barely be heard above the continuous rhythm of a whip’s crack followed by a woman’s scream. Montone rose to his feet and looked up the wall to the next level, shielding his eyes with his hand against the sun. It took him a moment to make out the scene; there was a woman bent low to the ground, cringing as a watchman’s whip came down across her back. As the murmur around him began to separate into distinct sounds, one woman spoke of increased savagery, another of inefficiency, and a man spoke of cruelty towards a family.

A family. Suddenly Montone knew exactly who was being whipped and without a second thought he was dashing up the switchback trail to the next level. He reached the top in under a minute, coming over the summit to see the watchman, Brelam, standing over the bloody form of his mother. Montone let out a bestial roar and charged his family’s tormentor, nearly impaling himself on Stanel’s sword as the second watchman stepped into his path.

“Ah, ah,” said Stanel, holding the much larger man at bay with his sword, “We can’t have you interrupting just yet. You see, boy, Brelam here fashions himself a bit of a scholar. He’s been wondering whether you get that remarkably thick skin from your slave of a mother or from your traitorous Markish father. He’s been whipping her for some time now, and so far she’s bled from every wound. Tell me, boy, how long does it take for it to heal?”

Montone did not speak. Fueled by his rage, he pushed Stanel’s sword aside and tried to run past him, scrambling near the edge of the terrace as he did. Stanel had been prepared and had set himself squarely where he stood. When the boy had pushed his sword away, Stanel had steadied himself instantly. As the large blonde head flashed by his own, Stanel hurled a shoulder into the boy, sending him tumbling over the edge while the watchman halted his fall and pulled himself to safety.

Montone fell, cursing the short length of his second life as his fellow Aigalonians yelled and screamed below. But, as the objects of the afterlife had bent to his will, so now did his surroundings. Rather than hitting the ground in a bone-crunching collision, Montone sunk into the dirt momentarily and then sprang back to his feet, unharmed. Not wasting any time marveling over his good fortune, he ran to the wall of the terrace and hastily climbed, gripping the grooves and juts of the carved rock face. He was back on the surface of the third terrace before Stanel had even sheathed his sword.

Brelam, who had left the dying woman to check on his partner, turned to face Montone, drawing his own blade. Before the sword was halfway out of its scabbard, Montone dove into the watchman, crushing him into the ground with his shoulder. He rolled quickly to dodge a swing from Stanel and was back on his feet, his fingers stretched out as an animal would bare its claws. There was fear in Stanel now, and he backed away as Montone advanced. Slowly, the boy backed his adversary to the edge of the terrace and, with a single swat of his arm, made him flinch and stumble over the edge.

Edit

Dissatisfied with Stanel’s prevention of vengeance, Montone strode to the twitching body of Brelam and picked up his sword, a flat-bladed weapon reminiscent of a gladius. With uncanny skill, he stood over his fallen opponent and thrust the blade into the watchman’s heart, leaving it where it stood as he checked his mother. The older woman had expired during the fight, unable to recover from her wounds as her son had. As he covered her face with a cloth, Stanel, who had managed to catch hold of an edge as he fell, climbed over the edge and raced off toward the capital for reinforcements. Montone laid his mother’s body gently on the ground and withdrew his blade from the dead man’s chest.

For a moment, he faced the crowd of onlookers, searching for the right words to rally his people behind him in a bid for escape. He did not think himself to be a leader, but he did think that his people deserved better treatment and, a little more selfishly, he thought that he could not defeat a large number of soldiers by himself. Try as he did, no words came to him, though he was not left alone. The onlookers of the third terrace had flocked to him, giving him a slight berth but still standing close. Others were coming from the second and fourth terraces by way of the switchback trails. Within a quarter of an hour, two scores of Aigalonian slaves stood on the third terrace with Montone at their head, all warily eyeing the path to the capital. As they watched, over a dozen Markish guards, armed with long pikes in hand and short swords in their belts, arrived on the terrace with Stanel at the rear.

“That man,” commanded Stanel, “the one in the front, he is to be executed for the murder of watchman Brelam. Slay any who stand with him.”

Montone stood quietly still as he heard the shuffling of retreating feet behind him. He appeared almost statuesque; the illusion only disrupted by the subtle rippling of tensed muscles, the long blonde hair blowing faintly in the wind, and the tip of a blade swaying back and forth in the boy’s loose grip. He was confident as he eyed his target, paying no heed to the ragtag bunch that remained to fight with him, armed with sculpting tools.

He plunged onward into the ranks of the Markish guards, ducking, dodging, and parrying blows with luck matching that of whatever force had kept him alive after his fall. He disemboweled the final guard that stood between him and his target and lunged forward, primitively disregarding his blade in favor of his sharp-nailed fingers. The boy caught Stanel’s arm as he swung and drove the blade back into the watchman’s shoulder with incredible force. The watchman fell to the ground and Montone was upon him before his head had hit the dirt. What remained, as Stanel slowly died from the deep wound in his shoulder, was what could scarcely be called a face. Deep cuts and gashes lined the blood-soaked skin. Montone rose to his feet, retrieving his sword from where he had cast it aside in his frenzy, and looked back upon the battle at hand.

But there was no battle. There were no warriors among those who had supported Montone. They had counted on him to lead the charge over the soldiers rather than passing them by, and in turn they had received swift and brutal deaths. The remaining soldiers, of whom few were missing, now advanced on the nonviolent Aigalonian observers, casting threats, goading them into action. Any sudden movement was met with death, and so the jittery, nervous bunch saw many of their own fall to the steel of their oppressors. Montone watched on in horror. The vengeance that he had attained was smothered in the bitterness of guilt and shame, and so he fled, not knowing of any other way to cope with his failure.

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And there we have it. Sorry for the delay, I got caught up with Star Wars Battlefront II, Knights of the Old Republic, and preparing for college.

I'm not sure about how I feel about this ending, but it accomplished what I wanted it to, so I guess it's okay. In any case, let me know what you think.

EDIT: Changed the ending. I like this one better.

[Technician]

Nice story.

[Admiral]

Thanks guy, any criticisms? I'm thinking of submitting this one for publication.

[Nosedagger]

I would so pay my lunch money for this.

[Ailysa]

Originally Posted by Admiral

Thanks guy, any criticisms? I'm thinking of submitting this one for publication.

I'm not sure if its long enough for that

And that wasn't very nice, Digger-Of-Substances-In-My-Left-Nostril

[Nosedagger]

It was a compliment.

[Admiral]

Aye I got your meaning Nose, and thanks.

Ailysa, I didn't mean as a book. Specifically, I'm looking at Clockwork Phoenix, which is a compilation of stories that will be accepting anything up to 10,000 words between August and January. I'm at around 6,500 words there, and if accepted will be paid about $130 up front, and then more depending on royalties.

It may just be wishful thinking, but this story fits the criteria, so it doesn't hurt to submit it. I ask for criticism in hopes of polishing it/fixing the grammar, word usage, run-ons, etc. before I submit it.

In any case, thank you for reading.

[Nosedagger]

Montone's weakness at the end came a bit unprecedented. His character overall also seems a tad flat in retrospect, so it might help if you developed him more.

[Admiral]

I was slightly worried about the end being unexpected, but the flatness was actually something I was striving for.

In a short story like this and the others, because of their brevity, it would be difficult to create a well-rounded character because I would have to recreate him in every story. While this is the first one, it is still meant to be viewed on its own and, because of the short length, it doesn't seem proper to effectively waste the reader's time with an in-depth explanation of the character when they'll only be together for maybe 10 minutes.

Instead, my focus here was to give the image of a strong, capable character who doesn't really think for himself. I don't want him to be the type who would stray from my original narrative because I see the story more like a fable, which is often told in incredibly heroic and/or dastardly detail. There are no work-arounds to the problems, only epic solutions. An example would be the way that Montone assembled all of the parts of the island and found his way out. Feasibly it could have happened another way, but that was how I intended for it to happen and I didn't want to create a character that would make me stop as I was writing to reconsider what he'd do in the situation.

If this isn't making sense, I'll try to clarify. But, regardless, thanks for the feedback. If the weakness at the end seems unrelated to the flatness of character, let me know so that I can rectify that part, perhaps by having him attempt to rally the troops but failing. My original plan was actually to have him leave one of the guards alive and try to bring a rebellion against the remaining guard and the soldiers that he'd bring. During which, Montone, the only real warrior, would bypass the soldiers and go straight for Stanel/Brelam to get revenge for his mother's death. This would leave the few rebellious Aigalonians exposed and they would all die. At that point, Montone would flee.

I do think that that is a better ending, but I must admit that I got a bit lazy. If you think that's better, let me know and I'll change it up.

[Nosedagger]

Character-wise I think that sudden bit of cowardice might seem to some readers as a convenient way to end the story. Perhaps you could spice it up with that little rebellion you talked about, but I suggest enlarging the choice to flee itself, so it becomes a more difficult one to make. Yes, I think detailing out something like a dilemma might be appropriate.