literature

Rift Audition: Feel the Thunder

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Kader stared into his mug with the intensity of a scholar attempting to decipher a particularly esoteric philosophy. There was a decision to be made; "There was a decision to be made--'To be drunk, or not to be drunk?' . A simple choice. Rather than be faced with it, the brown-skinned man lazily examined the tavern. The sandstone walls pressed the sweating, screaming mob of regulars together into an indistinguishable mess. Honestly, he already had a hard enough of a time telling the difference between any two humans.

Just looking at them made up the man's mind on whether to get drunk or not. Especially after his latest failure. Three months travel to a sage rumored to be powerful in the arts of magic. Yet the old coot was on a deathbed by the time the desert warrior had arrived. Needless to say, the sage wasn't able to restore him back to his original form.

This thought motivated him even further to drink himself into a stupor. This alcohol stuff was the only thing Humans could get right; Making their damn monkey brains so stupid they forget how miserable they are. How miserable he was.  As he leaned the clay cup into his mouth it was quickly snatched away. Kader didn't even bother turning to find out who it was, he simply slouched onto the counter and raised his hand to order another.

"Why didn't you come see us when you got back?"

The familiar female voice penetrated through the bustling of the crowd, clear as crystal and smooth as his scales. As far as monkey-chirping went, Israa sounded all right.

"This… what do you call it?"

"Poison shop?"

"Yeah, that. It was closer than the house."

The fat, frumpy bartender finally got around to sliding another cup his way. Just as Kader's fingers  brushed against the clay, Israa intercepted the incoming 'poison' once more. Finally he scooted around to look into her dark brown eyes while she took a sniff of the substance in his glass. Instantly her delicate features were replaced with a sour expression.

"There is no reason you should be drinking something this strong before noon."

"Sure there is. Now give me some of that 'poison' before your paws give out and spill my sweet escape all over that dress of yours."

He scowled in frustration as the girl thrust out his drinks into the hands random patrons. He curled a fist, which unraveled instantly as pain shot through his arm. Kader stubbornly refused to wince as his newest wound got agitated. He glanced at Israa who's eyes made him feel like he was sitting in some interrogation room. Like a viper, she reached out and wrapped her smooth hand around his forearm. He twitched in pain as she curiously examined him. He felt a bead of sweat drip down his brow as he hoped she didn't find the evidence of another fight.

"I'm just going to get my drinks back, geeze." He averted looking at her directly but felt her hand gently touch a still bloody cut on his forearm. Kader nervously forced a yawn. After all, if he didn't care about it, how could she? Before even he could feel even his abnormally fast mammal heart beat again, her lightning fast hands had already grabbed one of his drinks back. He felt a rising sense of un-ease at her soft smile.

"What are you do-?" A searing pain leap from the cut and into every corner of his body, knocking Kader off the stool and forcing his face onto the filthy stone floor.

"Gah! It's an infection isn't it? I'm going to die from a damn little cu-!"

"Oh, quiet you big baby! I just poured some of your drink on the wound."

She knelt next to him in an almost mocking manner. At least it seemed that way when the damn woman was always smiling. Still feeling the pain of alcohol and humiliation, Kader forced himself to sit up so that he could at least stay at eye level with the grinning flesh-woman. He looked at her ornate, bronze (was it new?) cloth headdress she had removed. Human's were good at making shiny things…

He must have zoned out for a second, because suddenly she was tying the cloth around his wound. There was an instant sense of outrage rising in his gut.

"Hey! Don't get blood all over the new treasure! Then it'll… it'll… hey, that feels better." He looked down at his arm, and observed that the bleeding had been fully stopped. He had to admit, without regeneration these people were pretty good at managing. Kader looked back up at her face, with that same sugary-sweet grin on full display. But now it gave him a totally different impression.

"You're welcome, Kader. Now come back to the house. Hopefully you can make the two blocks there without picking another fight." She stood up and reached out a graceful hand to help him up. The desert boy scoffed and stood himself up before dusting himself off. Not because he felt dirty, but to show some nonchalance. She may have helped him, but that was the least a human could do for one such as he. Kader stuck his chin up in defiance, but she only chuckled at him. "And now we're back to mocking"

"I swear, if you get in another fight you won't be leaving Father's place for six months."

"Bah! What's Murad going to do to stop me?"

"What we do to most Human's we don't want moving around; lock them up."

That one actually made his hair stand on end. If he wasn't a former Bronze, he swore that he would breathe flames in rage.

"You have no right to talk to a dra-" Even in his blind fury, Kader nervously looked around to make sure nobody was paying attention. Satisfied, he chased after the now-striding woman.

"…Dragon that way."

Israa made her way to the exist with Kader breathing down her neck. If it had been anyone else who said that, they'd already be gutted on the floor.

"I'll speak to any Human however I please."

That was the last straw. He leapt at her with both arms out. Just as he wrapped his fingers around Israa's legs, the tan skin he barely embraced dissipated into a fine mist. The boy's mouth curled into a frown and his bronze eyes narrowed as he examined the phenomenon. "Damn monkey senses, always fucking up." He wiped he eyes on the white sleeve of his rope furiously to 'fix them up', but when he looked back even the stone floor was dissipating. To something unknown, there was always a fight or flight response. With nothing visible to strike out against, fear took hold.

Frantically, Kader scrambled away from rapidly disappearing land and back to the tavern. Immediately, raw shock took it's place, striking at his legs and sending the poor boy down to the ground once more. The entire crowd of apes continued to share mind-destroying elixirs as parts of them evaporated. Every sound became distant and muffle, further driving home his desperation.

As each bit of the world he'd come to know disappeared, the faces that were once so forgettable were burned into his mind. Kader felt as if every one of his senses were falling apart, so he desperately tried to hold on to what he could. Every wart and scar on each of these ugly beings would be held in his mind for as long as possible. As if in response to his desolation, the evaporation picked up speed until all that was left to memorize was the white expanse he found himself in.

Fear continued to spread through every inch of his body, motivating it to move somewhere. But where do you go when there is literally nothing where you exist? Kader's thoughts were spreading like a cloud to think of every possible solution to the problem he didn't fully understand. Kader silently wished that some foe would make themselves known, some target to either battle or just hate. There was no cause here, only effect. His entire life was based on reaction… there needed to be something… anything to just give him a starting point.

"Well, it took us a bit longer than we expected…"

Despite being muffled and barely understandable, Kader latched on to this sound; a single person speaking. He searched all around for the voice that seemed to just permeate from all of this 'existence'.

"…But we finally got him. Ladies and gentle, please give it up for…"

As this entity spoke, the more voices joined in to form an unstoppable chorus of thunder. It reminded him of the old villager mobs that would hunt for dragons. Their screams rocked the foundations of the realm. Kader tried to achieve some sort of footing as the same terror presented itself once more.

"Kader Tineen!"

The man's voice climaxed into a crowd-driving yell that redefined the white-plane he was in before. The vast expanse was pushed away by an explosion of colors. The dirt floor of some vast stadium, the monolithic walls of stone and glass around it and the thronging masses beyond. The gods had blessed him with a million targets for his rage!

In fury and confusion, Kader's head whipped around what felt like 360 degrees, searching for a path out of this stadium and into the crowd of beings observing him like some kind of animal. Targets, targets everywhere, but nothing to kill. As his mind cooled down merely to boiling, the former dragon examined the walls a few more times, finding them without weakness. What was it that Murad said he should do when he couldn't figure out what to do? Make a list of objectives. So that would make the current objective escaping this confounded place.

"Now, where Kader's from, there is a certain creature that is considered sacred. Let's see if he can bring himself to kill a holy beast, and a child no less. Release the dragon!"

Scratch that. The objective was to find whoever was saying this shit and snap his neck. He felt his anger stew for a few moments before fully comprehending what the speaker had said. Kader bit his lip and ran a hand roughly through his already messy hair. From nowhere in particular, smoke seeped into the stadium, heralding the approach of his kin. If need be, the boy knew he could kill them, but surely there was a way to avoid the slaughter of an innocent Bronze?

As if cloaked by invisibility until this very moment, a small dragon, no larger than a horse, appeared a few… how did Human's measure? Yards? Away from him. The scales shown off of vast torches near the top of the stadium that shot light down onto it. So much that it cast a blue glow on everything Kader could lay his eyes on. Blue.

Blue

The wyrmling roared at it's prey, clearly having been trained for these fights. A scowl quickly overtook his face before any moves had been made. In a single, graceful gesture the former dragon drew his sword on the baby kin. The beast reared to jump, the dark skin boy was already on the move; bounding right at it. Something used to being at the top of the food chain wasn't generally used to smaller, weaker creatures leaping into it's claws.

"First the fangs…"

The reptile's unusually long neck sprung at the sword-wielding maniac who had finally managed to shut that damn crowd up. He felt the disgusting monster's spittle fly into his face as he stared down the toothy gullet of his target. With a single, almost prescient roll the (tragically) human avoided the bite by a wide margin. He let out a battle cry that dwarfed his foe's roar by several orders of magnitude as the silver blade tore it's way through scales and muscle in the beast's shoulder. The initial resistance from the blue plates always made him nervous, but there was an even greater sense of satisfaction when a sword wormed it's way through and cut right to the insides.

"The the tail."

As he predicted, the blue beast swung it's back adpendage around in an attempt to brutally crush him. With a particularly jagged rip, Kader recovered his blade just in time to block the wyrmling's strike. By slanting the scimitar to the outside, the tail slid away from the him. Without a single instants hesitation the brown skin Human let out another scream while spinning to face the Blue's exposed next.

In the moment before the final blow, he couldn't help but smile. That was one less Blue in the world.  In a two-handed move, Kader plowed right through ever natural defense the dragon had, permanently separating it's head from the rest of the body. Blood spewed forth onto his robes from the stump, but there were worse things in life than being covered in the lifeblood of your natural enemy.

"Well… I have to say, that was… different than what I was expecting. Let's hear it for the Dragon Slayer!"

Prefering to ignore the voice, the 'dragon slayer' reached down and ripped a scale from the fallen beast. After claiming his prize, he whipped out a small case from one of his robe's many pockets. Inside was a collection of other blue scales, all lined up nice and pretty. He ran a finger over the stack causally, counting that he now had four. As he stuffed the trophies back into his pocket, he closed his eyes to avoid a bright light focusing on him.

A few moments later, he opened his eyes to yet another new sight; a plane grey chamber that seemed to lead off into equally bland and tasteless rooms. It was better than that blasted void, but still. If they had a wizard to teleport people, couldn't they get a nicer motif going on? "Oh well. May as well check it out."

Huh. That's weird. His body didn't move. He was pretty sure that he told these useless fleshy limbs to propel him forward. Kader had an instant urge to jump as a hand rummaged through his pockets. Will to make an inference as to who was doing this, he chuckled bitterly.

"I should have known you were behind all this Leif. Now, let me out of here so we can fight like… something more honorable than men."

"No database record of subject designation 'Leif'. I once knew a man named Leif approximately 500 years before your birth. He made whicker baskets for farmers part time and taught in a small school the rest of the time. He also enj-"

"Whoah, okay. I'm fine with being taken captive, but the last thing I want is being felt up by a human girl. Remove your hands from my pockets before I find a way to remove your head from the rest of your body."

"I have neither hands nor head, so your statement is illogical. I've completed my search. The confiscated items are one scimitar and one dragon bone dagger. You can enjoy your stay in the catacombs now. Oh, did you know there is a place in France from your world called the catacombs? It is quite an astounding place actu-"

Kader wiggled a few fingers, testing the waters so to speak. The test was sufficient; he knew he could move again. Finally able to express his hate, he turned around to see the third oddest sight today. Several metallic arms were retreating with both his weapons into several holes in the wall. The boy angrily leapt after his possessions several times, even after they had disappeared.  

"Glad to see you're so eager to get back in the arena! However, some of our other gladiators need bit of rest. I advise you get some too, after I play the designated message."

Once more, the former dragon tuned the invisible woman out. There was a man's voice too. As he kept trying to retrieve his favorite tools, Kader dully noted that the man in the 'message' was also the person who was talking in the arena. Now, given all the events that had transpired up until this point, even HE would admit that he was not in the best state of mind to be listening to this. Still, the dragon-boy paid some attention.

Blah blah blah tournament, blah blah blah most important thing, blah blah blah could be anything.

Kader's eyes flew open in yet another fit of re-kindled fury. For the first time, he looked at the magical image of the announcer on display. It was a tan skinned man with messy blond hair. His shirt was an ungodly bright orange with clashing baby blue pants. Everything about this man screamed that he should have been killed long ago.

"Give me back my scales you bastard! I want my god damned dragonhood back! I swear, if I don't sprout wings in the next 10 seconds I'll kill the wench, wherever she is. So I need to fight in your tournament? Big whoop. Just throw every one of the other poor bastards in the arena with me! We'll get this over with fast! Come on, bring it on you fuc-"

Kader's constant stream of curses and threats echoed throughout the catacombs for at least another hour. Despite being ARi's wonderful advice, Kader probably wouldn't even see his room in the dungeon before the next match. There was a brilliant determination present. A spirit that said no matter what, no matter the cost, I will achieve my goals and I will work towards them at all times. Unlike some people, Kader really meant it when he said that he wouldn't rest until 'he ass was shinier than his sword'.
HEAR THE ROAR

*ahem*

So yeah, tragically rush. YAY. Screw you. BLAH. I WANNA GO TO BED. Shimmy on along now, grandpa.
Comments7
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Rafael-Domination's avatar
I could have sworn I heard "Release the Kraken," not "Dragon." :D

Ah well, a great entry as usual.