Chapter VIII: Kurt’s Third Burial
Embla piloted the obelisk aircraft throughout the thunderhead-clouded pre-dawn, over hills and rolling farmland, until a sheen of pink horizon heralded the new day.
Kurt slept. He slept despite the nagging quickore cord pulling him taut to the Bodyguard cordoned off somewhere beyond.
Before he had fallen asleep, he narrated the events preceding their flight to Embla: of the fight between him and his father; Carolus’ death and burial; the meeting of Mockwitch holding Verity’s body captive in exchange for Deathbrand; of the Bodyguard's insistence on handing over the blade; of the death of Verity, then his murderous rage. He asked Embla too what would become of the body of Verity, or if there was a chance to resurrect her like they planned to with the Weever. “What you describe, the body’s liquification after it was pulled apart, I’m not so sure it was what Etzel told you it was.”
“It?”
“Yeah, not a she; not a person but a synthetic body made of pulver. Or how else do you think the ettinland has filled up so quickly with new residents? They've used pulver to craft bodies since...since forever.”
“So, Galvan was trying to harness a pulver body???? But how?...quickore burns it away for starters...” “
"Exactly...perhaps that is why the Weever’s Tooth fell from his neck...or he discarded it...either way, his plan was never to unite with the Weever, but reunite with this pulver body, even if it was only a soulless husk of his beloved. Purge himself of the quickore in his body, however great a task that was for him, the apegift promised he could reinvent himself...how and why though I'm still unsure.
It seems at first perhaps he was trying to outsmart the ettins, killing your dad instead of you, stealing the body away, but you can’t cheat with ettins. They always win when you play their game.”
His conversation with Embla lifted a weight of uncertainty from him. Feeling feather-light, Kurt slept and dreamt for the first night in days. He dreamt of Etzel in a cage like a gorilla, screaming, shaking his cell's bars.
This was for the best he concluded: there was no reasoning with him at this point, if there ever was even a point when he could have been reasoned with. He was destined to be locked up. Etzel Galvan had always concerned Kurt. He had a murderous reputation. It was common knowledge in the schoolyard that he had stabbed a boy to death in a sewer when he was twelve after his dead mother was insulted by a naive classmate.
The murder was never proven, but the reputation remained: Etzel was a loose cannon and ready to kill those who insulted him.
His infatuation with Verity Duchess Von Herrenhausen was also well known.
Whether she was fond of him as well was a hot debate, but most of the students at Temek High School agreed that they never were physically intimate.
Above rolling brown terrain below and the shimmering seaside to their West, Embla was steering them in circles as Kurt slept.
When he woke, he said, “I think that Etzel, Verity and her heirloom are probably out of the picture now…thing is, John always said we hadda first go to the sequoias to meet a friend of his. John had it all mapped out...there were four heirs to the Weever’s parts. John’s friend should be the fourth…he should be able to help us with figuring out the Tooth's absent heir...”
“No,” said Embla flatly.
A hot rage rose to Kurt’s face. My ideas are one thing to disregard, but who is she to say no to John??
“Listen, we’ve had this plan one hundred years in the making!!! The fourth heir of the Weever’s parts is waiting for us!…otherwise why did Todteld allow us to be tied together by this thread? We must put together again what's been taken apart…only then can we put an end to this damned ettin-rule.”
Embla shook her head, slowing the aircraft till it hovered quietly a half mile above the ground.
“I’m telling ya, Kurt, we aren’t going to the sequoias…it’s pointless…You'll be sorely disappointed.”
Todteld suddenly burst forth flames from its seven candles, illuminating Kurt’s face in the raging glow.
Canute bowed his head, as if gesturing in veneration to the blade and its flaming pillars. Kurt stood firm, tall, regal and expressionless. Within Embla’s range of extraordinary vision, she witnessed burning white creatures clinging to the pillars, seven in number of diverse dress and form. She covered her face, shielding it from the creatures and their radiance. The creatures and their flaming pillars remained for a minute longer before extinguishing. Kurt held fast to the blade.
Embla let her shielding hand fall from her pretty face contorted in an ugly dismay, as if she had stared into the sun far too long.
“To the sequoias,” said Kurt firmly.
Embla winced. “...So, Kurt Eisenforst. You wanna go to the sequoias? Remember what I said: you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
Embla spun a little amber steering orb atop her chair, accelerating them all to a terrifying speed. Faster and faster, they flew till the blur of the world around them darkened from day to night, and into that night’s chasm they fell.
Kurt’s pulver ear listened to a cacophony of voices inside that in-between place as they fell. It was for such a short instance that he could not make out much of what had or had not been said but for the word “Eisenforst” that Etzel’s voice spoke to him; a horrible wheezing voice, but certainly Etzel’s.
Light returned. It would have appeared to an onlooker observing the sky that they had risen upwards out of a diamond shaped hole.
The obelisk slowed, Kurt catching a brief overview of the land half a mile below the cockpit window. It was a grim, desolate place, barren and of gray soil; stretching on and on with no end in sight. Its sky was the color of mud. It stunk of burning things, fires near and far on mountain tops offering more light than the pitiful sun obscured by the overwhelming smoke.
“Embla…where did you steer us?”
Embla ignored him, still steering the craft further along the wasteland.
“How much further to the sequoias?”
A tall creature, black furred and hoary skinned flew before the eye of the obelisk.
A shadow of hundreds more in the creature’s likeness descended from an unseen doorway, like a plume of blackest smoke, blotting out whatever sunlight remained in the brown firmament. “Murderbaulker,” said Embla, “You followed us…”
“Yes, Kaarvame. The master does not permit treachery...this one is designated as a flesh offering.”
He pointed a talon to Kurt.
The letters Carolus forced him to carve were a fiery sting against Kurt's cheek.
“Is it your apegift to slay Kurt Eisenforst?” asked Embla. The aircraft had halted. Murderbaulker stretched out a hand to the land below. “I am a lord of the Unghost! I take no apegift for my kind has been pure since the beginning of this world...As lord of apes and ettins alike, you should know that this land is my domain. You both are trespassers, and yes, it is my duty to slay all trespassers.”
A scourge of teeth and black talons was unleashed upon the aircraft and its crew. The winged things ripped at the metallic ship, pounding and slashing over and over on the craft’s surface like a black parachute ejecting and rapidly crumpling again. A typhoon blast of wind roared into the ship. Embla and Kurt were exposed. The obelisk was sliced asunder. The vaighlings cast themselves upon Kurt with the full force of their grotesque anatomy; biting and nipping, screaming they all were. Murderbaulker and a taller comrade pushed and pulled at the compartments of the craft. As they scoured the craft for the captive, Kurt and Embla were immersed in a veil of those thousand perverse wights. Embla yanked at the chain on her neck: instantly, she was covered in shimmering silvery scales.
The attackers bounced off her quickore armor, fracturing beaks and claws, scraping at the girl in frustration. She would not budge.
Kurt had mounted Canute, holding high his blade. Deathbrand’s candles flickered only, though its light drove off those vaighlings daring to attack that Heir of the Weever’s Eye. All the while, the Eye pulsed, it bled; it swelled and shook in his vest pocket. Canute kicked through the vaighlings like paper, tearing and ripping them into little pieces, snorting and exhaling a fiery blue gas that drove back dozens more. Murderbaulker drew forth a lance from a pale sheath.
“Ape! You carry the saber of death, it must be heavy... allow me to sheath it here, here in the skin of one you know well! Tanned his hide myself...”
The dozen vaighlings remaining had circled the craft’s perimeter.
Embla was still covered in the shielding scales, unmoving like a worm in its chrysalis.
Kurt rode up to Murderbaulker, his mouth hesitant to question further the leathery object in the vaighling's grasp.
“Behold! You recognize him... The bartender…yes, after you and that experiment of Geissler's killed my brother Crowmonger, we repaid the favor…all of them were killed, but I was told this one was a friend of yours so I kept him for you as a gift, Ape."
Kurt screamed. The leathery sheath bore the face of Hendrik Lamm.
Murderbaulker sniffed the sheath dreamily.
Kurt wanted to kill.
He thrust forward Deathbrand, clashing with the vaighling prince’s lance.
Murderbaulker dodged every thrust. “That blade is the ettinslayer, and etttins are a breed far from my own.”
Was it true? Was the blade totally useless against non-ettins? No. It had driven away countless others. Kurt did not heed the twisted-beast's taunt. Another thrust, another swipe. The lance pierced through Canute’s neck. The ghostly horse took no notice of the mortal blow and charged.
They jousted, the aircraft now spinning, round and round as a boat caught in a maelstrom.
They were primed to crashed into the earth.
Embla, her armor retracted, was at the amber steering orb, furiously spinning it to save the plummeting ship. Murderbaulker thrust the lance towards Kurt’s heart.
It pierced him. They were mere seconds until landfall. Blood sprayed forth from Kurt’s chest. The aircraft slammed into the gray ground; it bounced rather than burst into a flaming wreck.
With each bounce it billowed over the dreary terrain.
Those upon the craft had sprung, sent off in opposing cardinal points.
Embla and Kurt to the East, Murderbaulker and his brethren to the West.
Deathbrand had planted Kurt and Canute firmly to their fallen point.
Kurt gripped his bleeding chest. He pulled out the source of the bleeding: the Weever's Eye.
It throbbed even more; heavier than ever. It had repelled the attack.
Murderbaulker's lance was shattered. Murderbaulker turned to Kurt and charged like the black steam of a freight train.
He flexed his talons.
Kurt held out Deathbrand, charging on Canute.
Man and imp clashed.
Murderbaulker had overestimated his foe without his lance.
He was skewered. “Mah…mah…” he babbled, blood dribbling from the mouth.
Deathbrand's blade emitted an electric pulse of blue embers rendering the vaighling a fine purple powder.
The other vaighlings vanished at the death of their head.
The battle was done. Kurt held Deathbrand over the desolate plane, victorious.
He buried Hendrik soon after.
Embla stood beside him. She was unscathed in her hardy scale armor if not distraught at the state of the aircraft.
“We’re stranded here…we’re…I told you,Kurt Eisenforst…I warned you!”
“Warned me? About the vaighlings?”
“No! This is the place: just as you commanded!”
“The place? The Sequoias?…the Forest?"
“Yes! See what has become of the great mammoth trees of the past!”
Kurt looked out in the distance for any sign of life.
There was a shadow of something tall, barely visible among the haze of the dead woods.
He mounted Canute and said, “We three are still bound together by the quickore thread,right?”
“Apparently,” said Embla hotly. “I need to fix this damn ship…”
Kurt stormed off toward the towering landmark, remembering the instructions on John’s map:
(Head to the tallest tree, talk to a giant of a man, goes by ‘Grimnar.’)
+++++
The three little shadows were escorted to a new destination, outside of the world of men and at the rim of the Eldermark.
Hot-spring steam rose from canyon pools filled with giant ettin bathers. From a door in a rock face beside the springs stepped out a man with two faces: one a black skull, the other pale like a mime's painted visage.
There was a vaighling at his door, a little man with a round face and spectacles, the Governor of the Southern GUSA, Orbaulker.
“What?” growled the two-faces of the Groomslayer.
Orbaulker nodded in recognition of the Groomslayer's lack of welcoming him, and, unsmiling, looked up to the great beast before him.
“Eugenius. And Erich. You are summoned to report to the forestland of my son, Murderbaulker. Immediately.”
The Groomslayer placed a hand on his holstered arquebus. The black skull spoke:
“Your vaighling-affairs concern me not, Baulker. I know what you are made of: piss and shite. Away with you.”
“He is dead. My son. Killed by the Beholder of the Weever's Eye.”
The Groomslayer sniffed, slightly amused.
“And?”
“ The Son of Carolus Eisenforst slew him, wielding the ettinslayer Deathbrand.”
“Deathbrand? A useless dagger in the face of our glammercraft," spoke the pale face.
“Useless perhaps, but the apes march now in the dead woods including your cousin the Duchess of South Herrenhausen, and the one trapped...the Countess and her lover's end result. Your personal project, yes? One of your so-called couplings?”
“An ongoing project, yes...What does that concern you? The project is under surveillance here in the Eldermark, being trained, perfected...Reveal something of use to me."
Orbaulker smiled. “You put too much credence in your glammercraft…Our Lord of Lords bids you to take my son’s post in the dead woods. You must defend it from the wildman who lives among those trees.”
“And you are unable to take the post?”
“The Unghost asks you personally…or can you not slay them all with ease?”
“Do not dare test my puissance and might, Baulker…," spoke the skull.
Standing outside of the obelisk was a gaunt creature, its teeth small and sharp, its eyes like olives, squinting in the sunlight.
“Adatmen? Why is he here?” said the pale face.
"Son?" spoke the skull.
“The Groomslayer is commanded to slay and slay he shall,” said Adatmen holding aloft a jagged black dagger.
“I said, what is he doing here, Orbaulker?!!!” screamed the pale face.
“It’s time for the Groomslayer to increase...or did you not believe this day would come?” said Adatmen.
The Groomslayer reached for his holster.
The dagger bisected him from head to his back end as it simultaneously cut into Adatmen's own body.
The little vaighling spread his arms like a vulture's wings, enveloping the Groomslayer and Adatmen, allowing Adatmen, Erich Prince von Herrenhausen-North to apply his surgical tools as amply as necessary until he and the two-faced beast were indistinguishable.
Chapter IX: Buck and Green-Churl