by J. X. Evans
“That’s weird. He took down the wall…and change.” Pericles said.
“Explosives accident, you think?” Rob answered.
“I don’t see signs of a crater, not even a covered up one…And the openings are more than one and…big.”
“Well, whoever knows? Let’s get the stuff and be on our way.” Rob said as he was taking a couple of large awkward steps forward, and then to his right and he stepped on something. A wooden surface covered with dirt, he lifted it up and uncovered a metallic panel underneath. He lifted that one as well, put it aside and dropped in the hole it left in the ground. Pericles followed him with an unnecessary jump. Zora moved over there, took a pick inside. It was a concrete room, with another locked door inside, only this one was made of steel and had a big padlock on it. Zora decided that she liked that Thanos guy somewhat, he took no half measures where it mattered… in the armory. Plus, he hunted monsters for some time and was still in one piece, she guessed at least. He certainly was stupid and he surely was irresponsible, but well…considering all that she could find some respect for him.
“No need to come down here. Not enough space.” Pericles told her.
“You sure?” Zora lifted an eyebrow.
“Yeah, sit there, relax. We’ll join you shortly.” Rob answered as he turned his attention towards the steel door.
It was sunny. It was the distant modest sun of the winter, but it was sunlight all the same. She tagged the loose pants up again and fiddled with the belt. At this one hole it felt too loose and at the next hole, a bit too tight. Not exactly a torment but annoying for sure. She was wearing Catherine’s clothes again today since her own clothes had been washed but they had not yet dried. She was sitting on a big rock next to the crumpled exterior wall of the house and she leaned her head backwards, closed her eyes for a moment and let the sunbeams hit her face and neck. It relaxed her, made her feel peaceful.
Now that her eyes were closed and she was feeling a bit more relaxed she could feel it better. It felt as if the ground was shaking, only slightly, and mildly enough that she could not have been certain of it earlier. And the rock and the ground around it shook the hardest, which is part of the reason that she felt the need to fasten her belt tighter once again. Either the rock was the epicenter of the shaking, or they were drilling for something, somewhere near the area…and she had not noticed any cranes or drills on the way here.
She stood up and took a closer look at the rock. It appeared smooth and symmetrical, too smooth actually; which is part of the reason she had unconsciously chosen this particular one to sit upon, that and the fact that it had the wall for back support. She also noticed that the rock was of a dark brown color while other rocks around the area were more of the greyish variety, and rocks usually tend to be quite racist about that stuff (more like geology reasons rather than color discriminations actually). She reached a hand to gently touch the rock. The vibrations definitely originated from it and they were getting visibly stronger and more frequent. She pushed it slightly.
Suddenly, the rock exploded up from inside the ground, rolled into a big heavy sphere the size of a big inflatable beach ball and started rolling towards her after spinning in place for a second. She jumped sideways, avoiding the rolling rock. It rolled away but then returned with a resolve, but she evaded again easily enough, jumping to one side. It was another creature, though how it had gotten there, she could not even start to think. Most earth dueling monsters navigate by sensing the slight tremors that other creatures produce when they step on the ground through the earth, and they are more accurate than most professional nautical sonars, and that is a fact. Zora run and jumped at the side of a big pine tree, and used it as a platform to launch herself on top of the tilting tile roof. The rock kept on rolling here and there blindly, going in circles and zig-zags, leaving a trail of pieces of dirt and gravel that shot up behind it.
Robert poked his head out of the trapdoor, looked around. And he saw a rapidly spinning mass of solid rock heading straight for his face. He panicked, only for half a second, and then grabbed the metal panel from the ground and pulled it. The panel was half closed and the spinning earth monster rode on it as if it was a ramp. It should weight a great deal, judging by its look and texture, but physics and geometry made the launch possible. It flew upward, heading for the roof, where Zora was standing. She quickly gathered her energy in the small emerald, on the chain on her left wrist which shone brightly, and she let a moderate amount of pale green force explode from the palm of her extended arm. She felt the familiar bone crushing sensation coursing through her bones and her legs skidded somewhat up the roof, knocking a couple of loose tiles out of their place. The force hit the rock midair, reducing its spin considerably and putting a complete stop to its trajectory, as if the beast had hit an invisible and immovable brick wall. The monster fell, uncurling in midair, showing its relatively softer, light brown colored belly. Zora grabbed a dagger from behind her belt in her right hand and dropped from the roof, aiming the gleaming point of the blade straight at the center of the monster’s underside.
The earth monster started whimpering and shrieking, a sound profoundly similar to that of a crying puppy’s with a severely sore throat. It landed on its back, thrashing left and right and crying all the while. It managed to roll off its back and curl to a ball once again. Zora landed next to it and waited, and the monster rolled away, she did not feel like it needed gutting now though.
The monster, which when uncurled was roughly the size of a small baby elephant, rolled round and round a tree inside the perimeter of the yard before stopping on a clear space. It started vibrating profusely and the ground beneath started giving way. Dirt flying all around it in a circle, and in mere seconds it had almost completely disappeared, along with its whimpers, beneath the dark ground, only the very top of its smooth rocky exterior showing.
The two guys came out of the hole, one after another, both having witnessed most of the scene.
“What was that?” Pericles asked.
“Was that…little Rocky?” Rob asked, eyes squinting against the sun’s glare.
Zora walked over to them, dagger still at hand, “I think it might be a shemlear but… it’s Greece, and besides it seemed way too small for a shemlear… Maybe a baby? Judging by the sounds it made when I hit it with my emerald’s magic, but still…small.”
“Shemlear? Little Rocky? You knew that my brother got a shemlear as a pet and you did not ever think of mentioning it?” Pericles had that aggrieved look at his face, when a reliable, close friend has done something really stupid and inconsiderate.
“Hey, some time ago he told me he got a pet, little Rocky. I thought it was a pit bull or something.” The answer satisfied Pericles somewhat, and breathed out a heavy sigh.
‘So…a shemlear as a pet…definitely stupid. But Robert mentioned that he had it for some time now. Did he maybe domesticate the thing? The Knights used a miniscule variety of monsters for a number of reasons; never without danger though, and this species has never been mentioned as trainable. Well, new knowledge is piling on every day...who knows?’
Rob moved closer to the shemlear. Dirt and gravel were trembling in a small area around it, dancing to the monster’s rhythm. Rob placed his palm near the top of the shemlear’s shell and gathered a small amount of energy in his ruby. The gem flickered alight and a gentle, mild flame sparked from his palm. He brushed the flame over the ground around the monster and the trembling stopped gradually. The tremors started back up again a little while later and the little monster emerged from the ground. It started turning round and round without making a sound, so that the flame coming out of Rob’s palm licked its exterior until it was smoking gently. It then moved to Robert placed its triangular head against his palm before collapsing in front of his feet.
“Oh my god it is friendly.” Perry exclaimed in giddy excitement before moving closer to take a better look at the guy.
Zora mimicked him, moving closer. “How is this po
ssible?”
“I don’t know; it certainly is a baby shemlear though. No doubt about it… Now that I think about it, Thanos was in Africa for two weeks about half a year earlier… and I first heard of Rocky only after he returned.”
Shemlears are ground dwelling monsters. They live in the deserts and rocky areas in hot places, and they like warmth; which is why this one warmed up to Rob when he projected a piece of hot naked flame towards it in this cold weather, though they could arguably live in colder climates as well. In adulthood they grew large, big as Elephants, and weight around ten times as much as one. Their shells look as if made out of rock, with lots of sharp and pointy edges, but are much stronger than regular stone. Zora’s strike hit this one only at the shell, and it probably did close to no damage at all. They are not unreasonably aggressive creatures, but are highly territorial, overly protective of their young, and do not particularly enjoy the presence of humans; so a story behind this little guy’s origin would be most welcome to her curious ears. This one was clearly a babe, first of all because of its size, and secondly because of its shell, which was nice and sooth and round, compared to an adult’s jagged and spiked one. But its exact age would be a difficult thing to calculate since shemlears, like most large creature’s, produced few offspring that take a long time to reach adulthood and are practically stick close to their parents until they reach maturity.
Perry reached down and gently flamed the ruby of his left arm. He placed a warm palm on its hard exterior “I would have gone with Rolling Stone personally. Rocking Roll? Rolling Rock? Rock Solid?”
“Good thing you did not have the chance then, the Tumbling Boulder is the far better choice. What do you say kiddo are you up for a name change? TB?”
Zora still could not believe that the shemlear had been turned into a house pet and these two fools had already warmed up to it without any inhibitions. Unbelievable! On the other hand though, it was kind of cute and amazing, she had never seen one from up close before and she was glad she had not hurt it. If someone did not try to look at its face under the rocky turban it wore at least. And it certainly was a rare and precious specimen. Fit for documentation and experimentation.
After the couple of men had played with the shemlear a bit, they went back inside the hole. They opened up the padlock and the steel door and they started searching around the place. Zora stood above ground, studying the usually underground dwelling monster and listening to the sounds from the hole, sounds of stacks of objects falling on the ground and the two men mildly cursing one another. Maybe she should take it back for research… surely it was research worthy! They could learn a thing or two, and a team of trained shemlears could prove extremely beneficial in a number of situations, the upcoming war being in the forefront concern in her mind. They were surely nothing to scoff at. But with all this mess with the vampires no one would have time for anything else, for the moment at least. She would keep it in the back of her head and return to it when the circumstances permitted her to.
The couple of men came out of the hole, Robert carrying a large travel bag, and Pericles with a freaking missile launcher across one shoulder.
“I am just saying,” Rob was arguing, “it is rude to get in someone’s armory without their knowledge and just take off with their missile launcher.”
“He is my brother, and I am just borrowing it. Besides he does not seem to have any use for it in the moment, and he definitely does not need it more than we do. I will bring it back when we are done with it along with some Red Velvet cake.”
‘Done with it? Done with what?’ Zora suspected that they were not simply after the guns just in case… Suspect…huh. They knew something that she didn’t? Probably… She was yearning to do something about this whole situation too. She had taken a whiff of action yesterday, a whiff that her delicate nose was after for so long a time. A whiff that reminded her how much she liked it all…time can sometimes dull the intensity of the emotions. It had been better than she remembered, and now she wanted more. But the orders… the chain of command, the structure and efficiency of a well-regulated and strongly united front. A tight punch, well timed and well placed at the enemy’s gut. Could that be threatened by the independent action of one small group of people? Certainly not. But then again…it never does.
“Still, Thanos is sensitive about his stuff. And I gave him a bag for safekeeping and it is right where I personally left it, undisturbed. I would feel like I was mistreating him if we took his stuff on top of it all.”
Perry stopped, turned to Rob and raised a palm “Hey, hey, hey, I saw the way you looked at it. I know you fucking want the missile launcher as much as I do. I promise that I will tell him that you objected if you shut the fuck up about it.”
Rob snickered and continued walking, “Yeah… Not a word.”
They stopped in front of the little shemlear that was now half-burrowed under the ground once again, just like it was at the beginning, only it was calm now. Not a ripple could be sensed running through the ground. At first it would have gotten scared by the sudden appearance of three unknown vibration sources, but it seemed it had accepted their presence now… ‘Too friendly.’
“What do we do about the little one?” Perry inquired.
“I don’t know, I guess Thanos will be back shortly if he would leave it here alone. He usually knows what he is doing about that stuff.”
“Yeah, and I don’t think Duke (Orpheus’s dog) would go along well with Rocky around.”
“Besides, all that mass concentrated in such a relatively small surface area… it would be difficult to get it on the truck. It could poke a hole right through the floor, especially if it got nervous and started vibrating like it does. It could be dangerous.” Robert added.
“So, we leave it here…I am glad that he is not here, he would want to tag along for something like that.” Thanos knew when he was in out of his league, but if some stupid thought stuck to his brain, there was no scrapping it off.
“Something like what?” Zora asked, Robert and Perry turned to look at her.
“I received information from a source of mine. Yesterday’s events in our region were carried out by a squad of only three vampires, but they were preparing it for a while as I understood it. I also have knowledge of their location. We will go take them out.”
‘Information…from a source. Too good to be true? Definitely shady enough. Could he be a traitor, the traitor they were discussing about yesterday? One of the traitors? Too paranoid? Maybe. Maybe not.’
“What source?” Zora inquired of Rob.
“I caught a guy yesterday, the vampire that attacked me split his head open, but before it happened he revealed some things. I wanted to confirm them first. Which is why I did not say anything beforehand. We are going, if you want you are free to tag along. Perry here tells me you got something fierce going on. We could use a hand or two.” Rob answered smiling all the while.
‘Overexplaining things now eh? A rather conspicuous behavior... He is lying about the source. And even if he was telling the truth, what of the source? What if it was lies? What if it was a trap? It could be dangerous. The orders were clear, stay put until we have regrouped and formulated a collective efficient strategy to deal with the current crisis…damn decisions…’
She could follow the orders, it would be the right thing to do, and it would be easier, less dangerous, and smarter. The Order’s leaders were professional anti-crisis planners after all. For ten whole months now though her orders had been to sit on her hands behind a desk, if some passerby had given her a pacifier to suck on to pass the time most people would not even have noticed…she had followed those orders. And she was pretty sure that things would only have been better for her if she had disobeyed. Her gut told her to go for it, kill the bloodsuckers, and be done with them. People rarely get in serious trouble for disobeying orders when the consequences of their actions result to a desired state of affairs, especially when there are more important things to be done and not
enough people to do them. ‘Wiping the floor with a couple of vampires seems a pretty damn desirable result.’ Her head told her to be cautious, always be cautious. ‘Do I trust the Order? Yes… Do I trust these jokers? Reasonable so… Do I trust this alleged informer? Absolutely not.’ She could certainly do nothing to change their minds, she had no authority over them and they seemed pretty determined. What she could do is stay back and play it safe, stand back and let the other three walk into the trap. What if it wasn’t one though? Ten months… She placed an awkward smile on her face, “Can’t wait to get started.”
22. THANOS
The tunnel collapsed, and Thanos dragged himself out through the mouth of the hole, spitting and coughing up dirt. It was a chore or sure but now it was done. But then again, it was not really a chore, it was his pleasure. What was a chore was the fact that he had forgotten to do it the first time around, and he had to come all the way back to finish the job.
He was investigating a case of a boy that had disappeared from a village near Korinthos city. But also hens and chickens and roosters, cats, dogs mostly, but sheep and lambs and tweeting birds straight from their cages as well. And the boy, a little boy. He was only three years old. The police found nothing of the boy, no leads at all, except from some weird tracks, and the search was practically abandoned a week later. They suspected abduction. It is really sad that there is not much that the police can do in such an occasion. It was an abduction alright, the kid was dead now, eaten. Slain, cooked and devoured.
Thanos learned about the case of the missing child from a contact of his in the police. He went to the village and asked around about the kid. The distrustful villagers spoke little, and what they said, was mostly about him leaving the grieving family alone, and Thanos did. He left them alone without ever bothering them once because for one he was not a heartless prick and for another, he happened across a pair of squabbling farmers. Each one of them was accusing the other of the crime of recurrent cattle theft. There was a lot of shouting and a lot of cursing and a couple of punches. Thanos stood leaning against a fence, watching them and trying not to pee his pants from laughing; the whole thing was kind of droll. After witnessing that little squabble, he started noticing the apparent lack of felines and canines in the village and he started asking about animal disappearances, which turned out to be a flaming topic of the small community for the past month or so. Earlier, he could barely get a couple of words out of the toothless mouths of the old ladies tending their gardens about the toddler incident, but now he could not make them shut up about the animal incidents. Not that a missing child would not have been a scorching hot topic all on its own for months and years yet to come, but it was not a topic to be openly discussed with a weird foreigner.
