The Order: A Knight Of Fangs

by J. X. Evans

  Thanos moved further up the mountain that resided a little bit outside the village, and after that he went a little further. He sported a partridge perched on a tree, plump, and docile and kind of sleepy. He drew his pistol and shot the bird down. He kept on strolling through the woods and repeated the process whenever he spotted a bird. By the end of the escapade he had gathered a small, colorful, diverse flock of six birds; he tied them all together with rope and hanged them from a branch, a little bit off the ground, not too high though, but not low either. He walked downwind from there and climbed up another tree with clear view of his bait and he waited. He did not have to wait much before he needed to use his night vision binoculars, but he did have to wait for some time before his lure started doing its job. But the wait did not discourage him, and he was always appreciative of the time he spent in nature. He enjoyed the smells and the sounds, the trees and the animals, and he enjoyed the clean air; even though it was night and this particular air was surely forming ice crystals inside his lungs and it was damn drafty up that tree…he should have worn a second scarf, maybe a third, and he could even feel the freezing wind in his ears, despite the warm wool cap and the big leather hood of the leather duster. He spotted movement a couple of times and he focused his attention with casual interest. The first and second time, the visitors were two lone foxes. They both tried to reach the fast food that Thanos had strung on the branch, but in the end each one gave up and moved on. Beautiful creatures foxes, big blue eyes, pointy nose, chasing mice and digging holes, tiny paws up the hill…’shit’, and they left before he had the chance to ask them what they do say after all. ‘Damn you Ylvis, now it has freaking stuck again.’

  Several almost silent sneezes and nose blows later, the extremely probable culprits of the one heinous and the many minor crimes made their appearance. Small creatures, with short legs, big feet, ridiculously disproportional, long arms and the face of a troll that has been beaten by a stone giant one too many times…Greols. There were four, each one of them carrying small, crude clubs made out of tree branches. They were smelling the air and they were approaching wearily, carefully. They spotted the bait and they spread out to inspect the area, or they made a show of it anyway. After the briefest recon of an area in the history of anything, they gathered under the tied birds and started jumping up and down with their tiny legs, long arms held high, trying to catch the bait; the whole thing was quite comical and Thanos bit the inside of his cheeks so that a chuckle would not escape his easily amused mouth. After a minute of pointless jumping in place and another minute of pushing, face slapping and gibberish talking at one another, they decided to work together for the juicy prize. They formed a tower with two of them on the base and another on top their shoulders and the last little monstrosity climbed up on them and managed to reach the bundle of birds.

  The easy part was over, the one that only required sitting on top of a tree branch, admiring the forest and waiting… the next part demanded walking of all things, at least he would be slightly warmer. He climbed down as quietly as he could manage. A slim branch snapped as he put his weight on it and he felt the earth pulling him down in an instant; he landed awkwardly. Fortunately though, those pesky ankles of his miraculously held firm and remained unsprained…few things are worse than a sprained ankle and he had an ugly history with the things, there was bad blood between them…especially that right one. He was lightly taping them for support before every little adventure and he was careful with choosing the right footwear, trying to find the golden line between good range of motion, support and good heavy, thick soles. Either when hunting monsters or running away from them, good footwear might be the difference between life and death...or a bad ankle roll.

  He could barely see the little rascals with only the moonlight as a light source, but he had no need for a torchlight or his hunting skills. Their nightly hunting expedition was successfully over and they certainly seemed happy about it. They were yelling and grunting and making a fuss, not minding about scaring prey away any more. He successfully followed them to the mouth of a small cave that seemed to steeply descend downwards, their lair. He saw them going in and he heard their rumbling getting more and more distant. He started making his way back to the village with a smile on his face, there was time enough tomorrow.

  He reached his pickup truck, got in and turned the A/C on for a while, mainly to lower the humidity level which seriously threatened to turn the car into an aquarium. He grabbed and devoured a cold, pre-packaged sandwich and went straight to sleep in the back sit of the car, drawing a heavy blanket over him.

  Next morning came and the sun came with it, naturally, and it was a rude guest for coming early, according to Thanos’ undeniably broken biological clock. He drew the blanket over his face, placed the slim, small pillow over his head and slept for a couple of hours longer.

  He awoke with a headache and unable to feel his nose from the cold. He opened the door and hopped out of the car. He walked a couple of steps, unzipped his pants and shot a stream of hot piss to the frosted over root of a big tree, the frost melted away in a satisfying manner. Thanos had parked his car outside the village premises, near a nice earthy spot so that Rocky could burrow in; he also enjoyed relative privacy, even if it could make him more vulnerable to a random monster attack. He was always taking the shemlear with him after they met one another. A heavy duty car trailer could still manage Rocky’s weight…he did not want to think what would happen in a couple of years though. When he had found him he was the size of a really, really fat beaver and now he was more like a baby elephant and his rocky exterior was still smooth and rounded. No one is quite sure if shemlears ever stop growing completely and he had seen one in Africa that was almost the size of a blue whale, with rocky ripples running the length of its body and rocky spikes the size of fir trees protruding from its massive sides.

  The fire he had light on top of the dirt at the spot where the little guy had burrowed had burned out, but the leftover coals were still producing a little bit of detectable heat. The shemlear awoke to the realization of Thanos’ walking pattern that traveled through the earth, and he resurfaced out of the ground, trembling like a drill compressor, scattering the coals and ashes and the few pieces of wood that had survived their small, personal hell. Rocky rolled over and let Thanos scratch his belly. “Are you ready to make yourself useful yet, you dirty freeloader?” The shemlear tried to roll back over, and Thanos gave him some help, which was more psychological than anything else. Rocky managed to roll over at last and stood staring at him with equivocal dark eyes. “I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet. I got a task for you that will require all of your appetite.”

  Thanos walked back to the greols’ lair, with Rocky energetically alternating between walking and rolling beside him, the uneven forest pseudo-trail proving a challenge at times for his six still stubby legs. Thanos inspected the area yet again under the sunlight and walked about four hundred meters away from the cave’s mouth, trying to find the right spot. He indicated a place and the shemlear started digging in a heartbeat (a human one at least, since shemlears have two hearts, a superficial one that provides circulation to their shell and a deeper one for the rest of their bodies. Both of them beat hard and slow compared to a human’s), if the guy enjoyed one thing, it was digging; and he did it really well to top it off. Rocky dug, and dug, and then he dug some more, and Thanos waited and waited, and he waited some more after that. He was impressed with the creature, Rocky was smart, it felt as if he could understand him perfectly, a friend that he could share his thoughts and worries without fear of being judged, and a damn useful one at that. The shemlear finished the job of digging a tunnel all the way under the greols’ cave but it was late, he had not expected it to take that much time, and the greols would be out hunting again soon. Maybe he should have woken up a little earlier in the morning…what can you do right? Thanos would have to finish the job tomorrow. He was not in too much of a hurry and he was not particularly worried about any
more kids going missing, it was an unfortunate event. Greols usually live in mountains and forests and hunt the wildlife and gather berries. This particular group of rascals had just happened to build their lair close to a human village and sometimes took advantage of the nice penned up cattle.

  He was walking back to his car with a heavily dusty Rocky tiredly following in his tracks, and he was once again amazed by the seer amount of mass that these amazing ‘monsters’ could consume. But then the whole minotaur thing happened, with the hikers and what not and holy mother of freaking god Thanos forgot about the motherfucking greols. He returned to Athens, dazed and stiff and tired from the unexpected ordeal, and he would probably not have been able to return at all if he did not have the shemlear at his side, to distract the ferocious minotaur. The shemlear had curled into a ball and he had struck the hooves right under the minotaur. After that, the angry beast had tried to chase Rocky, but the shemlear rolled down a hill at seemingly the speed of a racing car and the minotaur tumbled down the steep slope with no hopes of catching up to its target. Thanos went to Bed (his best friend, along with Pillow and Covers, well second best friends now that Rocky was in the picture) and he woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the fucking greols.

  He got up, got dressed and drove back down there, grabbed the explosives and set to decorating the nice, big, dark, cheery tunnel that Rocky had so lovingly dug a few hours earlier. He set them up in nice, regular intervals, placing them carefully here and there; it reminded him of Christmas. He climbed back out of the hole, coughed the earth and dust out, dusted the dirty duster and grabbed the explosives’ detonator. He moved a couple of meters away and dramatically approached his index finger to the button, which was not red, but grey. The button did its job just fine even so. There was a bam and a shaky-shaky of the earth and birds flew from their nests and perches and there were no more greols near the small, jaded village. No greols meant no more possibility of roasted babies for dinner. Thanos walked to the cave entrance to find it collapsed and swallowed by the earth, he walked around in the rumbled area and he detected no survivors. ‘A successful escapade if I do say so myself’.

  It was a little bit after noon and Thanos returned to his car, only a little pissed off about having to pay double the overpriced gas money…it was kind of his fault of course, and his choice. ‘Well, not much of a choice really…’ He had already eaten through most of his inheritance in weapons, ammunition, a cheap house and the various basic necessities over the years. When he had free time he was working on handcrafted miniature dollhouse accessories, chairs, tables, mugs, appliances, mostly wooden, sometimes even the whole house or dolls even. It paid well, unexpectedly well; some people are crazy about that staff, though his ‘job’ did not leave him much time for his craft which actually helped pay the bills. And he could always ask his brother, Orpheus for a loan, though he had done so only thrice over the years and he preferred not to result to that. The last time was because he had needed cash pronto, to buy a grenade launcher and some pistols from a guy in Egypt, it had been a real deal, less than half price, and smuggling weapons by ship was a piece of cake. Well, he did not really have to do anything, the Egyptian arms dealer had a friend in the cannabis business who had some peculiar problems that Thanos helped him solve, so he took him on board his smuggle ship and helped with the arms dealer’s discount.

  Thanos drove for a bit, and as he went down the mountain, his mobile signal started waking up; mountainous regions away from big cities and holes in the ground make for terrible signal service. Two missed calls and a message from Rob. Thanos opened the text and read it ‘I need the stuff I gave you for safekeeping. I’ll pass by your place sometime tomorrow. If you are not home I will accommodate myself. I hope there is no problem with that :P’... ‘That meant today. And the only reason that he would need to get his stuff back is if, for some reason, he had no access to his own weaponry…interesting. Maybe I should be over for a cup of coffee?’

  Thanos got a cup of coffee, not from the café though, he got it from a canteen. The café was apparently burnt to the ground. Police, firemen and forensics scientists were moving all over the charred rubble, picking up pieces of anything and placing them in plastic bags. The smell of smoke was still somewhat evident in the air. Thanos moved over to a cop who was standing guard at the perimeter, while sipping from the felizol cup of warm, less than mediocre black coffee. The cop eyed him suspiciously, maybe it was his highly eccentric dirt covered leather duster, a gift from his oldest brother and a prototype at that, the thing was the best gift he had ever received, and it made his life much easier and much less painful. The dickhead may not have been able to accept his choice of lifestyle but after a gift such as that, Thanos was almost ready to forgive him for all that ball busting he had to endure over the years. Maybe the cop did not like his carefree attitude. Or maybe it was his face, a lot of people seemed bothered by it, and it sometimes made conversation with strangers difficult; his nose had been broken a few times and it was slightly crooked, he had two long scars on his right cheek, running from his temple and all the way to his chin; his eye and the corner of his mouth were just slightly droopy on that side of his face as well, the fucking harpy’s claws had slightly damaged his right facial nerve resulting to an aesthetic and functional defect, although it was mild enough that he didn’t much care, he sometimes needed to put water droplets on his eye when the weather was windy or dry. It was worse at first, but with time and proper medical attention things went a lot smoother than expected. His stay at the hospital was tedious and even his other brother, Orpheus, was set to busting his balls about it; he had been a bit scared too, he is not made of stone, he had gotten ridiculously close to dying, and his beautiful face had been permanently disfigured, he had also broken some ribs and injured his ankles again. Perry had shouted at him, and he had told him that if any Knight was there that the harpy would have been torched and charred in moments, there was no need to put his life on the line. He knew that, he knew that he was no Knight, nowhere near that, but it is what he does, he felt useful. He had pointed out that there was no Knight of the Order in the general area and if it had not been him the one that met that harpy, then it would have been some clueless innocent passerby that would almost certainly not have stood as lucky as him, or two, or ten until they had taken notice of the fact and dealt with it. They had been only two of them at the time, Rob and Perry, and they were too few to deal with every trouble quickly enough, and Perry knew that and he had left the room, stopping at the door to tell him ‘Maybe you should start thinking of yourself a bit more’. Four months later he received the duster in the mail along with a long letter explaining what it was all about.

  “Howdy officer. Could you inform a law-adhering citizen of what this is all about?”

  “Sir, this is an ongoing investigation, no citizens past here.” The policeman indicated the tallow tape behind him. He seemed bored and tired, yet his eyes were calm and alert.

  “Arson? Any suspects?”

  “Ongoing investigation, get out of here before I take you in for questioning.” Most criminals don’t return to the scene of the crime…arsonists are an exception, the fascination with fire and destruction probably takes the better of their common sense. Thanos had no yearning for a trip to the police station and a quick body search would provide the officer with enough reason to take him for a ride downtown.

  Thanos shrugged, tossed a farewell behind his back, sipped his coffee and walked away. He strolled to a newsstand and picked up a paper and somewhere in the middle of the page he spotted a sketch that bore an uncanny resemblance to a young man that he knew. He snickered, then read the short article and snickered some more. He placed the newspaper back to its place and walked away to stroll up and down the nearby streets, checking the place out.

  He saw a man, sprawled down the pavement on his knees, looking under a dumpster. Thanos moved quietly to stand behind him. He grabbed a gun from his pocket and placed the barrel against
the man’s head. “Freeze! You are under arrest. Bitch!” He said, making his voice deeper.

  The young man froze and slowly started standing back up and Thanos saw an almost invisible, almost imperceptible yellowish barrier appearing just behind the man’s back and in front of his gun in an angle, so that if the trigger was pulled, then the bullet would ricochet upwards, probably not harming anyone. The man turned around slowly, hands in the air and the barrier stood still in its place. He was holding a smelly tin can in one hand and his face had an expression of tedium turned to giddiness. But after he saw Thanos, the boy’s brown eyes lowered and his pressed lips shifted to a lopsided grin.

  “You should be more careful out in the open, what if it was someone who was not solely after capturing you? Your picture is in the paper after all. You are famous!” Thanos said, spreading his hands open in a swift motion, and the coffee almost splashed out of the cup.