Wild Things

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 5432

A swirl of phantoms pounced upon the foursome and all became a sea of steel. Fred had eyes only for his own self-defense. What little light there had been during the day had dwindled to almost nothing and the clearing erupted into the sounds of howls, moans, a chorus of inhuman voices and it was all Fred could do to shut his mind to the crazed noise and concentrate on the sword in his hand. Yet the sounds were now becoming deafening and one such forced its presence upon the ear of Lord Fred. It was a not-so-gentle rubbing of a soft body on the soil, it was the crack of a bony joint. Fred whirled to his backside and saw with mounting horror a hunched figure with spidery arms and a bestial head. It was an outlandish combination of all things foul and animal. It shambled toward where Fred stood and the knight felt as if under a spell, as if his very body had lost all ability at movement. Fred stood, frozen by the sound of rasping flesh and creaking bones, and the beast only got nearer and nearer.

"DHER GHAKCHAR JHUEKTUEL!!!" screamed out one of the dwarves and a bloodied axe came down upon the monstrous head of the insect-beast. What ungodly liquids splashed upon Fred's armour the knight did not know, yet it sizzled thereon and a smoke smelling of rancor and waste struck him in the nostrils and nearly laid him flat. With that, though, the spell was broken and Fred flew into action anew, slicing at the dark forms, cutting at them, parrying with them, pushing them back farther into the wood.

Fred grew bold with a strength he knew not he had and the Flamebane glowed eerily in that twilight between true day and true night. He slashed and pushed, he cut and he shoved. Farther and farther he forced the putrid forms from the clearing of the wood, yet farther and farther did Lord Fred travel from that clearing. And then an owl was heard hooting and a deadrel crowing and the phantom menace melted backwards into the full- grown shadows and was gone.

And Lord Fred was left alone, with black-limbed trees before and behind, with darkness above and below, with nary a sound to guide him back to the clearing but for the strange gurgle of some stranger night-crawler.

With apt realization Fred understood then that he was indeed 'lost'.

  1. "Higher Ground"
  2. "A Soft, Still Voice"

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11/13/1999 7:26:09 AM

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