Gorv sat in the darkest corner of his cabin, holding his dear dog. He cried in silence, rocking back and forth. Suddenly he threw the axe across the floor, in a startled panic. The thought had not even crossed his mind; that he still held onto the bloody tool.
What is happening? he thought, wide-eyed, as laughter came from the weapon.
”You are a fun one,” said the voice of the unnamed God. ”A man to shape, break and rake. Toss you, for something new.”
What have I done? Gorv wanted nothing, but to rewind time. But what time? He had no idea if Jin, the ronin, would have found him, regardless.
”What you did? You did… me a solid!” That creepy laughter echoed again. ”I feel solid, because of you. This vessel – it’s perfect!”
Gorv hated that laugh, that tic, drumming his ears.
Oh yeah? Why is my logging axe so bloody perfect? Can I have some exposition here? Just a little? You know, between the scares.
”You are bold, but-” The axe lifted itself off the floor and lunged deep into the wall behind its owner. ”This is not a game of my-turn-your-turn.”
Gorv turned his head and saw his own sleep depraved eyes in the blood spattered blade. In his arms, Dragon was still sleeping, chasing rabbits in dreamland, judging by the peddaling of her hind legs.
Incredible how she can do that. he thought, still petting her – still face to face with the axe.
”I think you understand why I chose to haunt you.”
Not entirely, if I can be frank.
”Tsss! There are many killers on this planet. But. But but but, you have that iron mind, the one that few has.”
That explains nothing. It only-
”Oh, come now, don’t be naive!”
Dragon barked in her sleep. Maybe she caught that rabbit.
You come now! Come and show yourself, Gorv thought, about sick of the mental game his God played.
An eerie silence filled the cabin.
A high pitched scream transitioned into that freakish laughter.
”Enough willywallying about! It is high time we go find a good skull to split,” it said enthusiastically, unpredictable as ever.
Gorv knew what that meant. After all, it was far from a riddle. He had always had a knack for physical confrontation, in service of the king, but this new master seemed to choose victims at random. There was little wiggle room for negotiations. And so, his heart raced, dreading who he would be forced to face next. It was not on his agenda to face the void again.
***
The path forked into separate ways.
Gorv gave his axe a squint.
Where am I- Where are we going? He looked back at the trees, shimmering in the frosty air, feeling stupid. He liked to plan the days, to have full control.
”You’re smarter than you think you know that I think I know. So what do you think?”
Uhm.
”Bah! You’ll see anyway. And fun it will be. But no promises!” It-
Screw your cold sodding laugh! Gorv had enough. He could smell the great void, but did not care. You’d be nothing as a human! Nothing, compared to me!
Darkness billowed out from the small grooves in the axe, before it spoke again.
”I will end you one day. One day. But today, tomorrow, or even a hundred years from now, is not the day I will be provoked. But but but, I certainly love your attitude. Keep it, like the plague. I… beg of you.”
He could almost hear the nerve-tugging sound, through some invisible, twisted smile – before the laugh came yet again. Gorv threw away the axe, with all his might. It looked so weak, he had to look around, to see if anyone saw him – for it landed only a few meters away.
”I’ll let you in on this… this super secret secret of mine. But but! Don’t tell your friends now, first thing you do. That would destroy me.”
An open mockery. Hate grew, desperate for a target.
”I… am not to be thrown away, put away, hung up, put down, swept under the rug or dipped like an anchor in the vast ocean. Think on that happy fact, if you will. Or you can simply juggle the jolly thought that we will share in wonderful adventures. All the merrrry way until your lassst day.”
We’ll see, you halfwitted God. Gorv lay a calming hand behind Dragon’s ears, and rubbed.
”Oh, you could become a real treat. Will you reach the liiine though?”
The line? What is that?
”The one drawn by the husk of Jin, the ronin, the samurai, of course. Swiped by Shin’en… or maybe I should say… me?”
You must really be lonely, if you share all this with me.
”Ah! There it is now — The Golden Pig.”
Great Jorm. Well, let us be done with it. Gorv hid his fear well. After all, he was a Wilmar, and a Wilmar never showed what he was, or what he wasn’t.
”Excellent! Then-”
By the way, I’ve been wondering.
”Speak… pun intended.” It found itself quite amusing.
Can anyone else hear you, when speaking to me?
”Oh, no no no! But but but! I can make myself heard, if I so wish.
I see.
”I am your voice, if you’re nourishing that thought.”
The ominous sound of the wind, calm, yet cold, made an imprint of premature regret, planting another seed of doom, before the purge.
***
Gorv and Dragon seated themselves at the middle-most table, with a good view of every other company, every individual, every acompanying animal. He faced the barkeeper and nodded. He got one back, as the senior cleaned a wineglass with a ragged cloth.
The entity from outer space spoke.
”I know you are at unease but, I assure you, they cannot hear me. Trust in my words when I tell you, you will know when I am heard outside of your feeble mind.”
Gorv did not respond. Merely gave the axe a side-glance. He was tense as all Hells. Looking around, he actually knew a few of the faces in there.
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A couple entered. A couple left. The most drunken of the homeless men clocked his head against the table, causing the barkeeper to call for his bouncers, Jepo and Harka.
”See him out, if that’s how he repays my hospitality! I let him rest from the weather, roof over his head, fireplace and all – he can damn well rot,” said the barkeeper, now rubbing a plate. Cold water seemed to do it no favors.
Jepo and Harka dragged the drunk dunce directly by Dragon’s delightful dreams, and promptly woke her up. The smell was unbearable for her superior senses, making her growl at the passed out man.
Gorv’s hand quickly calmed the good girl.
WHACK!
A swipe of the axe! Harka screamed.
Jepo, muscular as he may have been, tried to flee as he saw Harka’s foot still standing. The rest of Harka was not standing. Still, he seemed to have important things to do — crawling for the exit, for one, was an apparent top priority.
Outside Jepo also screamed, when the canine teeth of Dragon crunched right through him.
Gorv looked on, as the wind blew the door shut.
She’ll manage. he thought, yanking the axe from the floor, thinking of all the ways this scenario could end, which really was a troublesome thing to make sense of. So he did the sensible thing — Concentrated on surviving, from one moment to the next. He’d just have to ride this lightning and move on.
By this point, engaging in a bit of the old stealth – would be quite impossible. Guest after guest screamed. The rabid dog had drawn their attention. Then they saw the foot, belonging to the crawling screamer, still waiting for that last ale to kick in. Quite comical, how a severed foot could shock the customers, more so than a deathly injured man, missing this forementioned bodypart.
”Ah, take it in. Take it in. The beautiful symphony of trauma.” The axe’s God bathed in their fear. ”Sweet yang to the yin of peace and love.”
CHOP!
Gorv buried the axe deep in the skull of the slithering man. He felt different this time, eyes scanning the scene as if separated from their sockets, dissaproving. He twisted the axe loose, dividing the head in two equal pieces. Just like cutting wood.
The place was cackling like a chicken coop by that point. There was no rooster, and Gorv was the fox.
”The back door, through the kitchen!” someone yelled, as his friends and a bunch more followed.
”Badgers bladders!” another one panicked, as she stubbed her toes on a table leg near the counter. She heaved herself over and shuffled her way into the chef’s area, with the others.
The kitchen door swung back and forth, until a tall man stood in the opening, and shut the door gently behind himself, chewing on a peace of meat.
Gorv had been patient. There were still terrified guests in the dining part of the inn, feeling helpless and trapped.
I recognize you, he thought. Chef of The Golden Pig, and former soldier of the king’s army – Captain Lion.
He didn’t know why, but there was a bloodlust in him that seemed to single out specific individuals. It surely looked like he would have ro defend himself against this Lion character, but even so, all other people in the inn seemed to vanish in darkness.
The king’s army had been disbanded, years ago. Captain Lion was likely glad to at least still be working with sharp tools in his newer trade. An even bigger perk though, in that sought after profession of his, was to have access to constant warmth. Two ovens, that only had downtime at night, according to the rumors, and a fireplace in the big dining room, that never seemed to rest.
”Your beard grew long, guard of the king,” said chef Lion, pigsticker in one hand and butcher’s knife in the other. ”And… is that hair on your head? Could swear you’d never grow anythin’ up there. Goin’ grey, are we?”
The smug bastard smirked, then spat out some leftover bone.
Can’t answer, you turd.
The God of the axe intervened his thoughts.
”The words in your deep black heart. Say them,” it said with biting malice.
Lion began to walk slowly towards him.
Gorv looked at the flem of spit before his feet, then at his axe.
”Do it,” the voice said. ”Don’t you trust me?”
He never got used to the sounds that God-thing made when it amused itself. But, he decided, as if coersed, to trust it. And so his mouth moved — and so its voice came through.
”If you don’t run now, I will cut you in half.” The voice came from Gorv, but the sinister tone in it was dialed up. Gorv did not flinch. No need to.
”Holy pigshit, what was that!?” said Lion in an outburst of disbelief. He stumbled back, but caught himself on the counter.
The God cleared Gorv’s vision so he could see all the petrified guests. He saw that Lion saw them, and they saw Lion.
Lion’s pride forbade him to waver. Standing half a head taller, plus weighing more than the inn’s intruder, the advantage was on his side. He lunged at Gorv, long pigsticker first!
A smooth sidestep. A weapon disarmed. Gorv looked down on the tall former captain. Lion was scrambling to get up.
”Aaaaamnh!” His own weapon, humiliatingly it stuck through his calf, and nested right into the boarded floor. Rendered unable to even flip onto his back, he just screamed again. He cried for his mother, and all that which he would not get to see again.
A bottle barely missed the woodsman’s head. He cared not even to pay it the slightest glance. Hollers of horror came from the same direction.
Gorv assumed the same position, over the body of chef Lion, as when he chopped wood for his cabin.
”Noooo, don’t!” cried a woman.
The axe fell. No fuss.
The former Captain, Lion, lay split – separated at the abdomen.
The screaming woman was not alone in making herself more than heard.
Awefully quiet now, aren’t you. He looked down on the mess. It felt surreal it was his own doing. The strength. The utter preciseness of the cut. The gore.
”Aaah! Do me a favor, woodsman. Borrow the kitchen and drain his body.”
What the Hells for?
”My concentrated power grows from blood. Do you follow my meaning?”
I do. As your power grows, so will mine.
”My my my, not born yesterday, are we? Well well, go on. The bloodlust belong to the both of us,” it said, like it was in a rush.
As Gorv entered the kitchen, the floor was rumbling with panic. Guests wrestled and tackled each other to reach the cold bully of a weather outside the inn. The door slammed against the outside wall.
There Dragon waited, happy, tail wagging. She heard her master’s snapping fingers and went in.
Gorv hung the cleaved body up on meat hooks. A couple of buckets, otherwise probably used to feed the pigs and horses in the adjacent barn, were placed underneath. The blood flowed unrelenting, like the will of the axe.
There you are. He smiled seing his dog again, all red in her face. An all too common occurance these days. But, all that mattered was that he had saved her.
As Lion’s blood filled the buckets, the eldritch God made indescribable noises of glee. If only he could shut them off forever.
How are we getting these to my cabin? he thought, scratching Dragon between the eyes, revealing her natural dark fur under the blood and innard mixture. He spread his palms toward the buckets and wrinkled his forehead at the dog.
Wroof!
His good girl just raised a paw behind her neck and started the day’s cleaning.
”We are not going to your cabin, Wilmar. And you, you’re about to feel your power grow – by a lot.”
I’d ask if you were kidding, but I’ve learned a few things about you, God of the void. One of them is you lack the wit to crack jokes. Another is you think you don’t.
”Hm hm hm… You have a cold home, much like your heart. Do not tread in the deep waters with me, or I might just redirect your next blow.”
Gorv thought of his encounter with Jin. Thought of Shin’en – and shuddered.
”Good. Stay thoughtless for a moment.”
Confident voices grew outside. Hostile voices.
I didn’t plan for this, thought Gorv.
”You’re lucky one of us planned anything at all.”
Enough! Enough! He shook his head.
Soldiers of the king rushed into The Golden Pig. Behind them, an angry mob. A few of them recoiled as they saw the bloodbath inside. A young man, still in his teens, threw up, upon seeing the bouncer on the floor, still leaking somewhat from his head. They all gasped.
What do I do? The unfolding scene started to become uncontrollable. They’re too many!
The God-voice hissed in anticipation.
”Drench the axe’s blade in one of the blood buckets.”
What? Why?
”Get your head back to your neck. Pitch a guess.”
The bloodlust.
”Yes!” Sounds of unknown origin accompanied the excitement. A million marching spider legs? Welps from a dying fetus?
Gorv was about to hoist his axe once more, ready as he’d ever be, to face death.
”Quickly, and don’t hesitate! Pour the other bucket over yourself! Then pick up the bloody axe!”
The three Hells does that mean!? he thought, simultaneously attacking himself with bucket number two.
When he cleared his eyes, he found himself to be as trapped as a Braxius dwarf.Looking around, the angry mob was swarming the place. They even amassed inside the back door, leading in to the kitchen.
It was like a stone, a stone breaking against another, from a huge fall. With that sudden clatter came the shouting. All voices of the angry villagers and king’s soldiers.
”He’s in the kitchen!”
”Burn the bastard!”
”King’s Guard scum!”
Dragon growled. Teeth bared.
Did you isolate the noise from me, abomination?
”Thank me tomorrow, tea kettle. In truth, you needed focus. But now you will need the ears for focus of a different kind — Battle. Don’t-boil-over! Now, go play.”
Gorv’s upper body, all of it, had become dark red. And the axe, it still dripped drops of dark demise. The time had come to show his lionheart.
Lights. he commanded.
Darkness seeped out of the axe, dimmed the building and smothered the fireplace. The torches of the mob puffed out their brightness.
Dragon was in the middle of her barking when she seemed to feel some aura. For she cowered, much like when they met Jin, the ronin. Strange noises started to come from her. Noises he’d not ever heard from a dog before.
No one wanted to be the first to confront the woodsman. Or so it seemed.
A man, looking the part to be leader of the soldiers, cowardly whisped his idle hand in the direction of three men, all with spears and light armor. Within some two seconds they advanced.
Gorv raised his axe.
Show them, and show me, true cosmic dominance.
Out surged a visible power, cascaded down, engulfed him and his sighthound, covering them in dark matter of distant space – billowing over the haunted crowd.
Gorv moved – fast – feeling the power of bloodlust.
Dragon howled, enchanted by the dark force. Her teeth extended unnaturally long.
By the time his dog claimed her first victim, after the transformation, Gorv — and the will of the axe — already claimed a heart, a throat and a head.
Axe action! How was it on the enjoyment meter?
