The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (12 page)

The cave extends deeper and deeper, firelight
illuminates older and older paintings. They grow less polished with
age. In the farthest depths of the cave there are only hand prints
and the crudest of figures.

“We come from the earth below our feet, like
the monkeys, the birds, the fish and the insects, even the plants
and mushrooms. We started simply and of clay, but made by Chaos, we
are always hungry.”

A shimmering tendril of clay reaches from the
depths of the earth into the light. Then another grows beside it.
It is like watching crystals grow, only faster, dirtier. As they
squelch up from the depths of the cave they sprout nubby limbs to
suck the essence of the other. Soon they harden their edges to
protect themselves, and in barely a moment they go through legs and
tentacles, teeth and armor, and finally wings. One pool of clay
turns into a butterfly and the other a lizard to chase it, and they
fly and scuttle into a mural on the wall that has every animal the
young hunter has ever seen.

“Chaos made the animals to sculpt each
other.”

A million generations of each animal birth
and die before his eyes. Each generation hardly changes, but over
millenniums there are vast differences. Fish chase fish, and as one
grows faster and stronger, the other does as well. Spiders do the
same with insects, and wolves with elk.

“But we...are different.”

The tribesmen chase elk, birds, rabbits,
fish, insects, and everything else. But they
are
different,
for while every animal changes its body, his people make different
tools of stone, weave fibers into rope and nets, or hunt with
signals and trickery.

“Sometimes Chaos himself intervenes, using
our home as a weapon against life.”

Rain pours, floods fields and washes the
painted animals into layers of skeletal smears on the floor of the
cave. Some rise up and continue their eternal struggle, growing
tougher than they had before. A volcano erupts underneath this new
batch of creatures. It kills most, freezes some in ash and rock.
Again a few emerge and resume the dance of hunger.

“Some of us saw the beauty of Chaos’s
sculpture, and we rejoiced.”

A tribesman nibbles a mushroom growing from
the earth, then looks at all that surrounds him. He sings, then
shares the treat with others and the hunter's ancestors sing to him
from the past. Others paint the walls they themselves are painted
on. Still others, overwhelmed and in awe, simply sit and stare at
the magnificent moving mural. But a few, the young hunter’s horned
likeness among them, continue to leap and howl among the animals.
They sculpt the beasts as they had done for time eternal. They run
and sleep with the animals. They grow stronger and more fearsome as
the beasts do.

“We still celebrate the hunt and our hunters.
It is our grandest mark on the sculpture of life.” The hunter
thinks of his mother and sister, dancing joyfully around the fire
that afternoon. Their smiles wide with pride as they dance close to
their
favorite hunter.

Lightning crashes through both the paintings
and his memory. Wind and rain smear the image of his sister into
nothingness. His stomach lurches and he vomits yet again.

“However not all were happy to continue to
live in his sculpture.”

A solitary outline emerges. He is different
from the tribe’s soft textured edges that come in browns, blacks
and reds. He is white and hard, a painful contrast. The stark one
runs from thunderstorms, hides from beasts, his eyes always wide
with fear. One of the tribesmen approach him but he hurls stones at
him as he runs. Terrified, he draws his own hard lines around him,
blocking himself from the storms and beasts. Inside his block he
builds tools more complex than anything the hunter knows. He stands
above his box and launches weapons that burn all but his own barren
square. Tribesmen hide from the desolation. They step back into the
thick jungles and forests that remain.

“I think they are made by Chaos as well, for
the mighty force is present in all, but they claim a different
sculptor, a creator from the heavens, Ordor.”

A red light floats high above the earth. The
stark figure kneels before it. Others like him sprout in his
square. They cower together in fear. Then the first draws thorns
upon his head and the rest kneel, then chant. They exalt the man as
the red orb in the sky above them. They curse the earth below their
feet and the dangerous animals it births.

“They fear being sculpted by Chaos’s rules of
eat and be eaten, and instead hide behind walls of Ordor.”

The lone figure, now wearing a golden helmet,
barks orders and his tribe scratch out more blocks to hide inside
of, slowly at first, but as their numbers increase they grow bold,
and soon their rigid walls cover much of the cave in perfectly
parallel and perpendicular rows.

“They escaped the hungry dance of Chaos, for
a time.”

Some of the stark ones toil under the red orb
to grow their own plants. They water them with their hands instead
of letting the rain fall. Other figures capture beasts and put them
in boxes of their own. At first the beasts fight the cages
fiercely, bending lines and breaking others. But the stark ones
build walls, and more walls. Eventually the beasts tire, and cut
off from the hungry dance of Kans, they grow lazy and multiply,
like the people of the boxes.

“Ordor is powerful, and makes their leaders
craftier than any of our tribe. The others honor their leaders as
Ordor herself.”

The squares take on new dimensions and race
higher and higher towards the ceiling of the cave. They are
beautiful, made of shapes and lines, but they are all rigid,
inflexible. They begin to glow, then smaller shapes emerge from
them. They fly and dart between the huge structures.

“Chaos tries to teach them his power, but
Ordor is powerful.”

Waves crash against the blocks. Earthquakes
shake some to the ground. Wind rips up plants, tears at stone. Some
crumble, they are built anew. They replant their gardens in neat
rows, rebuild their buildings and paths with parallel lines.

“They learned to fear Chaos, for once he hid
inside their tools.”

One of the blocks explodes in a huge mushroom
shaped cloud, fire spreads out from it in an ever increasing ring,
few of the white figures escaped, even fewer of the animals.

“But they could not come back to Chaos, Ordor
has been their master for too long, and the fear was too
great.”

The figures build bigger and better tools
that build their blocks back faster than before. In an instant,
there were more of them than there ever had been before.

“Chaos' attack, or accident, for they are one
and the same, finally pushed them off the earth.”

A tidal wave tall as mountains boils up out
of the depths of the cave. They all knew the story of this wave.
Their hidden home, high in the mountains, was all that saved them
from the sea's hunger.

Only those in the tip of the tallest tower
survive. Their flying boats crash. They try to scramble back down
to the surface, but they are too far up. Before they can reach the
ground the few animals on the earth resume their chaotic dance of
hunger, and soon, the earth is back to its state before the figures
ever imposed their god Ordor upon it.

“I do not know how, but Ordor still saves
some, high above, in the skies.”

The tallest tower slowly fills with the stark
figures. They grow puny and pale without the sun. A garden grows
beneath the tower, nearly as ordered as the blocks they once
worshiped. Bolts of lightning drive away creatures brave enough to
eat from the garden. But the animals, always reacting, soon grow
smart and stealthy enough to avoid the powerful but imprecise
lightning bolts.

“They enforce their law from above, but the
hungry denizens of Chaos were breaking their rules. So, Ordor was
put in the beasts themselves.”

Dozens of red orbs rain down from the tower
and into the beasts. The beasts march and defend the garden, pulled
by strings tied to figures high above.

“For a long time the two tribes were
balanced, but no longer...”

The hunter’s own pronged image kills a
prongbuck while one of the stark figures pilot it from far away.
Herds of prongelk scatter. Then he battles the kingcrow as well,
again one of Ordor's worshipers fights bravely against him, and
loses.

Memories of the battles race through his
head. The odd jerks of the prongbuck's head, the tenacity of the
kingcrow and the inner turmoil it faced when it fled. It all seems
to be a pattern. Those animals had behaved differently. They acted
not for hunger or survival but to try to end him, a warrior of
Chaos.

Snapped back to reality the hunter finds
himself staring deep into the hermit's eyes.

“You are Kao, the spirit the men of Ordor
have always feared and fought against. You will restore balance,
for they seek to tip the scales against us!”

“Why?” he manages to ask. The words feel
heavy and stick in his mouth like sap.

“They think their tribe is superior, and will
not rest until every inch of the planet is ordered. And the
simplest way to enforce order over the beings of Chaos, is
death.”

A thunderclap booms and the nauseous hunter
looks out the cave opening to see dark storm clouds racing towards
the valley. Wind howls through the entrance of the cave. Lighting
strikes the valley again and again. He watches in horror as winds
whip round and round, and pulls a massive spiral of clouds into the
valley. He thinks dumbly that twisters were only kid’s stories. The
winds grow faster, and he vomits again as a tree whips past the
entrance of the cave.

“Stop the vision!” he yells to the hermit,
but the hermit only shakes his head.

“The forces of Ordor are upon us... there is
nothing we can do.”

He howls louder than the storm itself as he
watches water and wind demolish his home. The clouds themselves
seem intent on destroying his people and he curses them. He tried
to step out and climb down the cliff face, but his stomach reels as
the walls wriggle. The potion is still strong in his system.
Undeterred, he grasps the stone, and starts out into the storm.

“Stop!” the hermit yells, “They want your
death. Don’t give it to them!”

Blinded by rage and deafened by the wind, Kao
descends the rock face.

You doubt like your brother...that is wise. But they
are real child, I promise you that. Even if you don't believe me,
it would be folly to stand against the beasts, for while the Hidden
make plans, an animal's only ambition is meat.

Baucis paced back and forth in the hidden
room with the card table, its haunted game players and garish
chandelier. He paused now and then to study a painting of an
ancient skyscraper. His long fingers danced on the ancient paint
like spiders on cobwebs. In the warm yellow light of the chandelier
his skin appeared waxen. His black eyes burned like sunken flames
on waning wicks.

The Council remained silent as the Ecologist
deliberated. Skup and Urea had arrived last. Baucis told them to
stand, and had said nothing else. The room was tense. Eyes flicked
from the twins to Baucis.

The twins stood easily a foot taller than
Baucis. They both had strong posture, but there were subtleties
between them. Skup kept his head high, eyes open, alert and
ever-watchful, the falcon high in its roost. His long black hair
was swept straight back and kept pristine, until it flared slightly
at the tips when it caught a draft. Urea stood with supine
shoulders and a supple neck. Her muscles never locked like Skup’s
did, they kept twisting and flexing, ever prowling. Her black hair
was kept short and framed her face perfectly. Her fair skin against
the deep black made her look lithe and graceful.

That two so strong could look so afraid
invigorated Baucis.

As it should be, animals wary of their
master.

Desperate to break the silence, Skup spoke
first, “We did what we had to.”

Speaking was a mistake. Baucis whirled
around, his eyes possessed.

“You had to
bury
the ape?
Bury
him?”

“Sir, there were dozens of them, they
represented an enormous threat. Just one caused so much damage,”
Urea said meekly.

“What do you remember discussing at our last
meeting?”

“You said-“

Skup glanced sidelong at his sister, then
back to Baucis’s black eyes. She never chimed in front of Baucis.
The Council knew nothing about it, but it seemed risky.

own voice> Zetis chimed.

He leaned back in his chair, long bangs as
black as the twins’, playing an invisible game on his VRC, as
usual.

here with us> Skup chimed angrily.

Zetis only smiled in reply.

Baucis continued, oblivious to their
communication, “We were discussing an organism strong enough to
cull an elk herd, an organism that already has the fine muscle
skills needed to operate tools, and a body that behooves
synchronization. In other words, what we've all been waiting
for.”

Zetis
chimed, relishing the private channel.

Urea did her best to hide a smile. Skup
scowled.

“But Baucis, perhaps its best that they took
care of it. What was I supposed to tell my congregation? There
would be a panic if that... thing... was discovered.” The High
Priestess's voice was smooth and sweet, her tongue delicate with
the words. She was dressed in a habiliment of soft earthen colors,
browns, greens, and oranges. Her skin was adorned with golden
leaves to match.

Skup chimed.

“Snake eyes there'd be a panic. You would
tell your congregation whatever I tell you to tell them, and
they'll swallow it like they do everything else. Besides, does
anyone in here really think that a thunderstorm killed that thing?
Skup, you're a moron, but a gifted
vultus
pilot, if that
thing could beat you do you really think a little rain would kill
it?”