1.3 The Ingredient, The Keeper of Gods

This is the ongoing tale of “The Keeper of Gods”. A fantasy novel. A story about loss and love and rebirth. There is a link to the Prologue and other parts of the story at the end of this chapter if you would like to go back, as the story builds upon itself. Hope you enjoy!

The Keeper of Gods

by Ryan Delege

1. The Old Man’s Quest

1.3 The Ingredient

Like a ruby red apple in a basket full of green, the redskin tree at the side of the road stood out clearly amongst the great sentinel pines, and it stood as the marker for the much-important detour Tannos had planned.

It was Mort who’d told Tannos and Marrannah about the tree and what to do when they crossed it. “When you get to the redwood, Tannos — and you can’t miss the redwood — hack yourself a path down the slope through the thick hedge vines. You’ll hit a broken and ancient road. Follow that road down a good ways, and there are the orchards after the field. No better place for apples and pears and plums, and cherries, lots of cherries.”

Marrannah had been first to pull a machete and start hacking away the hedge vines all those years ago, swinging the blade left then right, left then right, her muscles flexing with each deliberate stroke. Tannos had always admired her assertive nature, her lusty willingness to get her hands dirty, despite her noble birth and prestigious upbringing.

“What are you waiting for, Tannos? Keep up!” She teased, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Or are you just busy admiring my arse?” she’d quipped.

Pulling his machete from its sheath, Tannos went at the hedges just as Marrannah had once done. Slash, slash, slash, sending leaves and twigs flying. The vines were easy to slice through, but it did take a chunk of time to cut through all of them, as they were thickly layered and interlaced. Tannos had to grab at them, gathering them in his left hand before he could machete them with his right. But beyond them was the secret road, and at least that was easy as before to find.

Over the centuries, the road had been naturally dismantled. It was little more than patches of cobblestones, secreted by high grasses and encroaching white-barked trees. But if one knew what to look for, saw beyond the degradation and natural camouflage, recognizing that it had once been a grand roadway was an obvious thing.

Down and down the gently sloping and winding landscape Tannos went. Rays of golden light tracked through the high, loose canopy of branches and leaves as he pushed his way through the waist-high grasses.

Eventually, the white-barked trees reduced to a scattered few, and the canopy on high waned until Tannos stood at the threshold of an entirely different landscape. First, a flowing field, then the sought-after orchard waiting across, open and inviting. It looked to him as familiar as an old friend’s face, different over the scores of years yet still altogether the same.

As he left the treeline of white-barked trees and crossed the pitted meadow of low growing grasses, he was gifted a few minutes of full sunshine upon his face, warm and wanted. Then he came to the doorstep of the orchard’s canopy, much higher, much thicker, and passageways that were much more fragrant.

A mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant odors came from the decaying and fermenting fruit upon the ground. But although the odors were strong, they were not accosting. Tannos walked up and picked the first unscathed and ripe apple he could find dangling from a low, reachable branch. After taking a big bite, crunching his teeth into its crisp and waxy surface, the richly flavored juice flushing into his mouth, his senses were overwhelmed, and he was whisked away into a bright memory from long ago…

“Tannos, Tannos!” Marrannah hollered.

Tannos was sitting on the ground, back up against a plum tree, eyelids sagging and bobbing, his belly bulging out from fullness.

“What is it, my love?” he cried back. “I was so close to an afternoon slumber.” Tannos let out a small, perfunctory burp, then listened for Marrannah’s next words. When there was no answer, he became mildly curious. He leaned away from the tree and looked left and right for his wife, trying to understand which way her cry had come to him.

“Marrannah, my love, where are you?” His voice echoed and bounced about from tree trunk to tree trunk. But still, there was no sound. What game is this? Tannos thought. He pushed himself up with an effort, and another belch escaped him, smelling of several types of digesting fruit.

“Over here!” came Marrannah’s voice after a time.

“Where?”

“Over here!”

Tannos thought he’d gotten a good enough sense of where she was and began walking in her direction. It had been a hot day, but the trees and leaves above were many and manifold, and their cover gave a pleasantly cool darkness for Tannos as he trudged along. He dodged various clumps and mounds of dead fruit, stepping zig-zaggedly and often hopping as he made his way. When he stopped where he thought Marrannah’s voice had come from, the orchard was still and soundless, save for the scattered chirps of birds in distant branches.

“Marrannah!” Tannos cried out. But there was no reply. Where could she have gone?

Then Marrannah leapt out from behind a girthy and knotted tree trunk, only steps away from where Tannos had stopped. “Roooaaaarrrr!” she screamed, loud and silly and holding her arms up high, wrists bent and hands formed into claws, looking ready to attack.

It was no less than an impressively effective jest! Tannos’s heart nearly popped like a cast-off soap bubble, and bowls worth of half-digested fruit and their juices all but leapt from his belly. But the most alarming thing about the wicked ambush wasn’t the roar Marrannah had fired, nor the aggressive posture looking so much like an attacking grimp. It was that she’d been devilish enough to take some squashed cherries and smear their bits and their juices all over her mouth and cheeks, which gave the impression she’d been at work savaging the belly of some poor, felled beast.

Gods, how they’d both laughed. Tannos clutched at his chest, trying to catch his breath while Marrannah keeled over with laughter, cutely snorting, and tears flowing from the corners of her eyes. Tannos went to the ground with Marrannah, and they laughed until the fuel for such laughter ran dry. Then Marrannah leaned in and kissed him, smearing the cherry juice on his face using hers. And happy kisses turned into pleasure kisses, and they caressed with their lips for a while as lovers are often known to do.

They were content to stay lying on the ground, half intertwined, amidst the fallen leaves, twigs, and fading fruit. Marrannah kept her head on Tannos’s chest listening to the quiet thud of each heart beat, while one hand touched and squeezed his shoulder. They watched and giggled at a plump, crimson-painted troll, fist-sized, waddling awkwardly in and out of its mudhole, gathering the widely abundant fruit scattered about his home. The troll was so rotund that it seemed implausible it could get around at all. But it huffed and puffed and managed the uneven terrain better than Tannos and Marrannah would ever have believed possible. He eyed the intruders murderously as he hastened to gather every last fruit corpse he could see and roll it briskly back to stuff into his hovel. It was as if he thought the flow of apples and plums would run out someday and that Tannos and Marrannah would be the ones to steal the last of it.

“Tannos, I almost forgot,” Marrannah said suddenly, lifting her head up to look at him. “I have something to show you.”

Tannos was almost in a dream, but her words kept him with her, and his eyelids rose with her question. “What do you want to show me, my love?”

Excited, Marrannah sprang up, tugging at Tannos’s arm excited for him to join her, but Tannos didn’t rise quite in the same way. He was slow and sluggish and groaned with the effort, but get to his feet he did.

They marched onward together, Marrannah leading her husband by the hand. Deeper and deeper into the orchard’s depths they went, the sound of crunching leaves underfoot constantly breaking the natural silence of that secret place.

“There are statues,” Marrannah exclaimed as they honed in on her purpose.

And so there were. Towering twice the height as a man. Hued of granite and propped up plumb on stony haunches, baring the likenesses of ancient beasts, though which kind was hard to tell. Their features were weathered away, cracked, and choked by vine and masked by leaching mosses.

“Obviously, this orchard was more than just a lowly farm orchard,” Tannos said, going to one of the effigies and laying an open palm upon the cold stonework.

They pressed on, following the rowed statues until, off through the crowding trees, they saw a light and began gravitating towards it as would a moth to a flame. It became apparent that the perpetual dimness of the orchard was born by a massive stone wall, and the light they were making for was a gap in that wall’s snaking fabrication.

“Amazing,” said Marrannah. “It’s huge.”

“Yes,” agreed Tannos. “Very impressive.”

“Do you think it was made by a God, Tannos?”

Tannos didn’t even have to think about it. “No, no God made this wall.”

“How could you know?” asked Marrannah, frowning.

“The stonework has imperfections in it. I’ve seen enough of the Gods’ work to tell you that would never be.”

Marrannah didn’t argue. She just nodded and took Tannos’s arm, and they passed through the opening in the wall together, walking headlong into foretelling light.

The opening was the gatehouse of a castle’s westerly wall, and through it, Tannos and Marrannah stepped into what could only have been the outer bailey of an ancient and abandoned stronghold. Large and small buildings were scattered about. Those whose roofs had once been made of timbers and thatch and thick clay tiles had caved in, and sunlight from above came shining through their tracery windows. From the shady sides of the walls, the windows looked like lambent and staring eyes, watchful to where the newcomers were headed.

Marrannah went straight for the largest structure, the main castle, Tannos decided. Her skirts fanned back and forth behind her as she strode.

“What are you doing, woman?” Tannos called out.

“I want to go inside,” Marrannah cried back over her shoulder.

Strong instincts told Tannos to be wary of danger. He stomped through the grasses looking for the scat of dangerous things but found none, and that put him at ease. Meanwhile, Marrannah had managed to pry an old, burnt door open. It broke off its final hinge with a profound crack that echoed through the bailey, and without hesitation, she went straight into the newly revealed darkness.

“Gods, this woman is bold beyond wisdom,” Tannos blurted, smirking, and he chased after his wife into the unknown.

The inside of the castle may have once been beautiful and fashionable, but the years of neglect had made it derelict. All its innards had been picked clean of adornments that once hung on room or corridor walls. There were odd pieces of furniture scattered about, but all were busted and splintered, most flattened to the ground and festered with black mold. Room after room they explored; some were dark and dank, sheltered from the sun by the floors above. Others were bright from no ceilings, and those had wide arms of ivy cascading off their broken and crumbling wall ledges. Marrannah’s eyes lit up as she wandered through the derelict rooms. She ran her fingers over the splintered furniture, her mind painting vivid pictures of the castle’s former glory. In her mind’s eye, she saw the grand tapestries, the bustling halls, and the lively feasts. Her euphoria grew with each step, the decay around her transforming into a majestic vision of the past.

“This place goes on forever,” Marrannah noted with a smile.

“Oh, come now, your family’s castle is vastly bigger than this place,” Tannos pointed out.

“But I didn’t know they built castles like these this far north of the great cities.”

“Yes, yes, many, my dear. But like this one, many were destroyed through wars or uprisings, abandoned during plagues. Castles like these dot the landscape all over the north, I’m afraid. A sad sight, knowing these places were home to so many families at some point or another.”

“Yes, very sad,” Marrannah agreed solemnly.

As they ventured deeper, they came to a great underground hall. It had once been an above-ground hall, but mudslides from long ago had changed all that. Once proud windows were now jagged and crumpled apertures, each with its own outpour of splayed mud piles webbing across the cracked stone floors. Several breaks in the ceiling way up high shed the bare amount of light to see by. Tubes of dusty grey light beams lit up the center of the chamber, while the outermost reaches remained shadowed and mysterious.

“I wonder if this was where they had their guests and ate and danced,” Marrannah said, and she moved to the middle of the room, centering herself in the natural spotlight that was there. She began to leap and twirl, her movements echoing the beauty of the practiced grace-dancers that trained and toured with their singers and instrumentalists. Her skirt billowed with each spin, and a solemn tune she sung filled the vast hall. Tannos leaned himself against a wall and watched his wife at play. Her liveliness never ceased to swell his heart with awed rapture.

“Come dance with me, Tannos,” Marrannah beckoned. “Come court me the way I should have been courted.”

Tannos grinned and went to her. He took her into him, his arm around her waist and the other hand clasped in hers, and he led her around the room, dancing together both gracefully and skillfully, just as if an entire orchestra was there to serenade their every step.

“Can you hear it, Tannos? Can you hear the music?”

“Of course, my dear,” Tannos replied with a smile, cocking his head back to look into Marrannah’s dewy emerald eyes. “They’re playing Dance of the Silver Chalice, it’s beautiful. I especially enjoy the harpist, very deft fingers, that one.”

What Tannos actually heard was mostly quiet, save for the shuffling of his and Marrannah’s feet as they glided smoothly across the floor. But there was another sound, one lonely note, so quiet as to almost be imperceptible.

They finished their waltz with Tannos dipping Marrannah so deep that her hair spilled across the floor.

“Ta-dah!” Marrannah exclaimed, as they held the pose for some imagined audience’s appreciation.

Tannos brought her back to him and kissed her warmly and truly.

“You are my everything,” he said in a muted voice.

“And you mine,” she replied with a smile. “Should we go? Was that enough adventure for one day?”

“I think so,” Tannos confirmed.

But as they began to walk away, that single note that Tannos heard was not shaken from his mind, and curiosity argued him into staying.

“One moment, my love,” Tannos said. “Let’s just have a quick listen.”

Marrannah looked at him, curious and doubtful, but when she saw he was listening intently, she decided to do the same.

The sound was there. Very low, but there. And it sounded as if someone was trying to play the quietest flute in existence. Tannos let his ear guide him, and it brought him irrevocably to the corner of the room, where the shadows were busy keeping their secrets.

“What is it, Tannos?” Marrannah asked. “Something there?”

“Not sure,” was all Tannos replied.

The whistling was caused by air currenting between two very large floor tiles. Tannos put his finger to the sound and could feel the warm air sucking inward.

“Hmmm, I wonder,” Tannos said.

He stomped on one of the two tiles. Like a tile drum, a hollow and muffled echo came back. Then he stomped on the adjacent tile; very dead and solid sounding. He did this action back and forth a few times until Marrannah began to chuckle.

“You look like a cave dweller performing a rain dance, my dear!” She quipped. Tannos just smiled his agreement. He went to his knees and tried to fit his stout fingers between the stone tiles and pry the one with the hollow underbelly upwards. His fingers were barely slender enough to fit between the deep crack, but to his astonishment the tile did start to lift upwards. It was heavy and Tannos grit his teeth and groaned as he tried to make progress. Marrannah picked up on what he was trying to do, and seeing that he was struggling, she went to his aid. Together they managed to heave the stone up vertically and lean it against the neighboring wall. The stone made a long grating sound as it moved and a loud thud as it came to rest.

“Well, Tannos, I have a feeling you found their sewer system,” Marrannah said gleefully.

“Perhaps,” Tannos agreed. “Should I go down and inspect what the Lord and Lady might have last had for dinner?”

There was a tunnel revealed underneath, and it had been constructed with a good amount of care. The floor at the bottom, about five feet down, was clean and swept with no sign of ever having had running sewage, and a ladder was leaning ready to receive them downward.

“You sure you’ve had enough adventure for one day, my love?” Tannos asked.

Marrannah put on a sly grin and looked at Tannos through squinty eyes. She did not have to say a word to ask, “Are you kidding?”

They went down into the tunnel. They did not have a lantern with them, but that was okay. Tannos pulled a small wand from one of his deep coat pockets. At the end of the wand was a globe of spook-bee jelly, and he slapped the jelly against his palm. The curious, semi-magical property of the spook-bee jelly was that it lit up when disturbed, and its white light rushed to life, lighting the dark and eerie tunnel before them.

“Are you ready?” asked Tannos.

“Yup, ready,” Marrannah replied.

They ventured down the low-ceilinged tunnel. It was only a short stint when they saw they were coming into a calm blue light. Instantly, Tannos knew what it was.

“Oh Gods, Tannos, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Marrannah asked, almost breathlessly.

The first time I ever saw you, Tannos thought but did not say.

They’d come out to a cave ledge, hued flat by the working of hand tools. And beyond was a luminous cave chamber, high and wide and deep. The jagged rock walls, ceilings, stalagmites, and stalactites were laced with veins of glowing ore, casting a radiant glow in shades of blue and purple, with hints of shimmering rainbow colors woven throughout. The fair and magical light yielded an immensely wondrous ambiance, surreal beyond description, the likes of which Marrannah had never seen. Her eyes went saucer like and her breath caught as she absorbed the spectacle.

“Tannos, is this place what I think it is?”

Tannos sighed and nodded. “Yes, it’s a power deposit, my love. There’s god’s magic infused into the minerals here. Very wise for the proprietors to have hidden all this by dumping a castle right on top of its entrance. And now that I think on it, the hall we supposed was for entertaining guests was probably not that at all, but I’d warrant it a storage area for whatever they harvested out of this cave, perhaps even a place to perform their alchemy.”

“Well, it’s one of the most amazing places I think I’ve ever seen, Tannos. How it glows!” Marrannah exclaimed. “I can’t believe it was just abandoned.”

They followed a path off the stony ledge, and it immediately split off into many directions, so they went along, picking their route at random. As they wandered, they came across stone carving tools, chisels, and hammers, lying on ledges or left haphazardly upon the ground. And there were also many wooden buckets, and pickaxes with girthy, shiny handles polished by the mortal hands that had once worked them. None of that interested Marrannah, though. It was the magical nature of the ore that kept her in ceaseless wonderment. Mosses and mushrooms and some kind of subterranean vines had been growing and investing themselves into the natural cracks of the walls, and they too glowed with their own sort of radiance, sparkling like flats of snow do on sunny days, or perhaps like stars on the darkest of nights.

“Tannos, is there money to be made from this place?” Marrannah asked, turning to her husband and looking at him with bright, wide eyes, brimming with the lust for riches.

“A fortune,” Tannos admitted. “But not for us, my dear,” he said bleakly. “We moved to these parts to escape attention, remember? If we started trading magical ore, we would be the talk of every town. And eventually, our pursuers would discover us. Besides, although there is much good that can come from objects and fauna imbued with the magics here, there is also much destruction that can come from it. Sword and bow are ten times more deadly if magic is woven through them, and deadly potions can be concocted by those who have such skill to do so. No, I would not sleep well at night knowing it was me who sent such materials out into the world. Not anymore, that is.”

Marrannah sighed. “You’re a bit of a spoilsport, my dear,” she said, putting on her cutest pouty face.

“I know, my love, truly I’m sorry.”

They walked around the cave longer, exploring and looking and pointing. They could hear the sporadic buzzing of cave-ferries off somewhere but never saw them; that seemingly was the only animal life in the place, save some tiny glowing beetles that scurried here and there. Finally, it was Marrannah who said she wanted to be back in the sun, so they found their way to the hall where they’d had their dance and then they thudded the hefty tile back in place, leaving it just as they’d found it.

As abrupt as it had begun, that was where Tannos’s memory had sadly ended. The sense of longing for Marrannah was tremendous and unbearable. He threw the finished core of the fruit he was eating with a furious whip of an arm, and he heard it skid across the ground, then rustle away into the shrubs.

He trudged his way through the orchard and found the defaced statues and the bright opening in the great stone wall. Across the bailey, Tannos strode and into the very same door Marrannah had pried open once upon a time. The castle was much more of a labyrinth than he remembered it to be as he trotted through its bare and bleak passageways. But with perseverance, patience, and having to backtrack only a few times, Tannos found that familiar great hall where the windows were broken out and mud spreading across the tiled floor.

The deluge had migrated much further since his last visit with Marrannah, and he understood that in a few more decades the large tiles across the room guarding the cave entrance would be fully burried, making the cave impossible to enter without some hard digging or perhaps not accessible at all. After stomping on several stone squares, until he was satisfied he’d found the right one, he fitted his fingers into the narrow gaps and heaved upwards, groaning, grunting, sweating, and cursing while lifting with his legs. Gods, how the tile felt heavier than he remembered. He hadn’t thought Marrannah’s help was necessary way back when he’d first freed the stone, but he sure was wishing for her help now. Just when Tannos was certain his fingers were going to fail him, and he would drop the massive slab, he made it past its tipping point and was able to shove it securely against the wall, and a profound thud sound filled the room.

“Bravo,” he said to himself, breathing heavily and leaning against the wall in the dark on an open palm. Inside, the cave still glowed eternally, yet a glaring change had come about. All the plant life had multiplied greatly, forging their way across wall, over ceiling, up stalagmite and down stalagmite. Glowing vine work was ubiquitous. And finally, to Tannos’s dismay, the cave floor had fully flooded. “Damn!” he cursed, and his voice went forth bounding all about, echoing off the walls and across still waters.

He walked up close to the water’s edge to inspect the flooding. Below the surface, he spied small slender fish, their flanks aglow with silvery swaths of emerald light. They darted this way and that way and popped up to the surface on occasion to taste the air, and it was enough to make Tannos crack a smile. They don’t look dangerous, was Tannos’s only thought.

The point of coming to the cave was to harvest mushrooms, those that had successfully absorbed the magics that harboured within, and they were to be the key ingredient of the poison Tannos planned to concoct. It would have been too perfect if he’d found them waiting for him right there at the cave entrance, but alas such luck was not with him.

His eyes searched left and right for a path running the perimeter of the flooded cavern floor, but fortune was not with him there either; both sides of his ledge had only steep tilts of smooth rock and glow vines running straight down into the abyss. Tannos sighed in resignation. “Time to get wet,” he said to the cave, and his words came echoing back to him, as if duplicates of himself were tucked away and hiding around every darkened corner, copycatting him for their own amusement.

After stripping down naked, Tannos went and dipped a toe into the glowing pool. It was cold, and its bite made his jaw clench, but it was not freezing. He held his haversack above his head and stepped in, the water causing goosebumps to rise out of his flesh. To his relief, the water was not deep, and he began to trek along with care, patiently feeling his way with his feet across the uneven bottom.

He whistled a soft tune as he went; it echoed out and about and back to him in different pitches and intensities, its bizarre patterns of echoes somehow gratifying, and it put him at ease as he discovered his way through the frigid waters glowing with the bits of plant life that thrived underneath.

After some time and around a few sharp corners, Tannos came across the desired ingredient. Up an embankment and removed from the water’s edge were a troop of the glowing mushrooms, plump and ripe, all jumbled together and fighting for space between twin boulders, just begging to be picked.

When he reached the embankment, he stepped out of the water and set down his haversack. He opened it and brought out the three stone jars and his paring knife, and he went to work at freeing the mushrooms from between the boulders they sprang from, gently slicing their stems then stuffing the mushrooms into the jars as tight as he could pack them.

He’d only just begun his work when Tannos was startled by a “zip-zipping” sound that came from above his head. Fairies, he thought. And he looked up to see multiple speedy objects blurring about. He was not worried; fairies were abundant in the world and rarely disturbed you if you did not disturb them.

The zipping came to an end, and Tannos found four cave fairies had landed and seated themselves upon the stump of a broken-off stalagmite at his side, only an arm’s length away. They’d stopped to investigate exactly what it was that the stranger in their cave was up to. They were of average size for fairies, the length of a child’s hand came to Tannos’s mind. This particular breed was of a deep and dark blue hue, nearing to black, wings and all, and they were exceptionally sheen-skinned, reflecting the magical blue of the cave back at him. They were easily distinguishable from one to the next but it was impossible to tell their sex just by looking at them. Two were very plump but markedly different in face, one was average in build with very wide and wonder-filled eyes, while the fourth was taller than the rest, and it impressed upon Tannos that it was none too pleased that he was there with them in their cave. It glared at him with a furrowed brow and a mouth shaped as if it had just eaten something sour.

Other than the single displeased fairy, the others were grinning with pleasurable curiosity at what Tannos was up to; that was good. Tannos continued his work but kept a watchful eye on them, mostly the one that seemed disgruntled, perhaps frustrated that Tannos was picking at what could very well be his personal mushroom garden.

As each jar was filled, Tannos gently returned them to his haversack. For the briefest of moments, he sweated that the upset fairy might pester him when he tried to sneak away with the stolen mushrooms, perhaps bite him and infect him with itchy, purple-spotted skin for a week, but a splash from far off in the cave set his mind at ease, as the sound was enough of a mystery to the unhappy fairy — and one of his companions — that it sent the pair flying off to assuage their curiosities. The other two remained, and they continued to observe Tannos with keen interest, like enthralled children enjoying a theatrical group putting on a motley play. Tannos smiled at them, and gave a little nod too. He went back into his haversack and came out with a bright red apple. The fairies, with their white and pupilless eyes, never altered at the sight of the fruit, not realizing what it was or what he was up to. Tannos cut out a chunk of apple with his paring knife and divided that into many smaller pieces which he laid out before his audience. He himself took a bite and then the fairies understood that this was food, a kind they hadn’t seen before. They weren’t shy to grab the morsels and they began to munch slowly and contentedly, their jaws making the tiniest of crunching sounds as they chewed and swallowed. Tannos put the rest of his apple away for later and stepped back into the crisp waters, wading with one arm out and haversack high above in the direction from which he’d come.

As the cave entrance loomed ahead and Tannos’s endurance against the cold water neared its breaking point, a ripple on the surface, seen from the corner of his eye, caught his attention. He turned his head to survey, but the water had stilled so suddenly that he wondered if a disruption had happened at all. But at his next step he became sure that the disturbance had absolutely been real: an appendage gracefully slithered around his ankle then up his leg. It was not a vicious attack but rather a soft and careful caress, some slick tentacle closing around him curiously. Nevertheless, it was very much unwanted. An inner panic took Tannos, a tightening in his chest and a widening of the eyes, and it was a panic he had not felt since that dreadful night when the menace Bozear had killed his dog. Where other men may have tried to pull free from the surprise grip, Tannos was clever enough not to give in to that urge. He’d been in many and more precarious situations in all his years and this moment was no different. Panic killed, he knew it to be true. So, he became very still, as still as the water itself, and then slipped one arm into the loosely noosed opening of his haversack — very slowly. He found his paring knife easily and gripped it firmly in his right hand. He chucked his haversack across the water with his left, and it made it to the bank beyond, its contents jangling as the bag hit the stony shelf; one of his jars rolled out and stopped at a stalagmite. If his lurch and his throw had made enough movement for the thing at his leg to sense it, it must not have cared, because it did not move and it did not tighten further. Tannos thanked the gods for that.

His plan was simple: try to keep walking, and if the creature did not let go, then he would strike it with the paring knife. “Please don’t bite me,” Tannos pleaded in a hushed voice, not knowing if the thing underwater had teeth or not. The plea was not likely heard or understood anyway.

Then, from a yard away, a black, globulous mound rose slowly out of the water. It was not large but not slender either. It was tall and had translucent bumps of green about it; they glowed very faintly. All at once the globule opened dozens of misplaced and differently shaped eyes, black and reflective like slick tar, and they took a good stare at Tannos.

“Glug, glug,” it asked Tannos.

Tannos shook his head slowly, not understanding what the thing was saying, not knowing if it even was speech or simply the sound of food being digested in the creature’s throat.

“Blog gloog, gloog blot,” it noised.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you,” Tannos replied. He could see his own horrified reflection in the largest eyes, while the other eyes blinked at him one pair at a time, as if each set had a mind of its own.

The creature must have gotten bored of its interaction with Tannos as it returned to the water’s depths the same way it had come out; slowly and calmly.

That was very strange, was Tannos’s only thought.

Tannos decided to keep with his plan: try to walk away slowly. So he tried pulling his leg away, and his worst fear came to fruition as the creature decided to tighten its grip. Gods, what strength it had! Tannos winced from the pain as its hold wound tighter around his leg, and he worried his bones would snap if the creature were to add even two more pounds of pressure. Tannos brought down the paring knife into the water; it splashed as it broke the surface and then he stabbed the creature straight and true. He felt the blade sink into soft flesh and he immediately drew the blade back out. The creature let go just as Tannos had hoped. Free of its clutches, a relief ran through him so strong it was like a shock of lightning, and then he began racing towards the bank, not an easy thing to do in waist-deep water and the unseen floor beneath bare feet.

He was so close. So very, very close. Tannos was already imagining his hands laid flat on the landing beyond, pulling himself out from the water, pulling himself to safety. But just when he thought he was going to make it, that same slither from before came lashing up his leg, and this time it was not just one appendage but two, two slithering tentacles wrapping both of his legs and dragging him backwards, back into the glowing waters. Before Tannos knew it, he was submerged and he was flailing, and to make matters worse, he was no longer holding the paring knife. Where was it? Oh Gods, it was his only hope! He recalled hearing a sound before he was taken under, the chiming sound of metal hitting stone. And that’s when despair sunk in. Tannos understood that the knife had slipped from his hand and been thrown to the stony ledge beyond, far from his reach.

Tannos was going to die; there was little doubt in his mind now. How many times had he escaped death in his life? Dozens, many dozens? Hundreds? But had he ever been so certain that death was going to take him as he was now? He probably had been, but in that moment of danger, no such memory came.

He tried to pry the tentacles off his leg. He held his breath and clutched and pulled and dug with his nails at the monstrous restraints but they were solid as granite. He felt around for sharp rocks, but all his hands raked through was sand and pebbles. He even tried hitting the tentacles with his bare fists, but under the water, he couldn’t generate enough power behind his swing for this to be effective, not even slightly. So Tannos returned to his tactic from before, of just keeping still, to stop struggling and not waste breath and energy until a solution of how to escape struck him. He stared at the surface of the water, only inches above his head. I think this is it, I think I’m coming to you, Marrannah! Tannos thought. Soon now, very soon!

Flipped over to his back and staring skyward, Tannos released the air from his lungs; the final bubbles floated gently, even beautifully, to the surface above. He focused on the light of the glow vines that rayed down into the clear water. Blue, blue, blue they were, soft and ethereal, almost awe-inspiring like the heavens he reflected upon the other night while he ate that greasy, cooked rabbit and sat smiling at the stars. The tentacles did not pull or tighten further; they seemed satisfied to just wait for the inevitable outcome, waiting for its prey to drown, then they would probably drag Tannos to whatever mouth he was meant to feed, teeth or no teeth.

But a curious thing did happen, something Tannos would not have guessed nor have believed likely. Above the water’s surface, a small object “zipped” into view. A small object with two faintly glowing white eyes, and it was holding his paring knife. Gods, it was holding his paring knife! Tannos reached out with his hand; it broke the surface of the water and his paring knife was gently floated into his palm. If Tannos could have thanked his little savior just then, he would have, but there was no time. He took a firm grip of the knife and began to stab, hard and fast and with reckless abandon. Just as before, the tentacles let go, but this time Tannos prepared himself for another attack. He rose from the water and took a gulp of air, then went back down and searched for more tentacles. And come for him they did, like a dozen dead things in the night. Tannos backed away, all the while slicing and stabbing at each tentacle which came searching for him. When he felt the embankment at his back, he allowed himself to turn and rise out of the water; even then, he felt another tentacle come reaching out and slip around his toes but he was quick enough to turn and slice it away.

“I’m safe!” Tannos yelled aloud. “I’m alive and I’m safe!” He dragged himself as far away as he could from the deadly waters, then he lay on his back breathing heavily and allowed himself to lie and stare up at the glowing fauna, but perhaps keeping half an eye on the water’s edge lest the creature breach the waters and come to try and collect him again.

He lay that way for a long while, his chest moving up and down and up and down as he gulped in air. He had a gnawing suspicion there would be a part of him that was going to be distraught that he didn’t die just then, there in the cave, and be reunited with his dead friends and family, Marrannah most of all. But that part of him never did show its face. Apparently, his will to live was still strong, or perhaps it was simply his resolve to kill Bozear. Either way, air in his lungs had never felt so good.

More time passed. His assailant didn’t seem too willing to take the fight to land, and the waters went back to being as still as ever. Tannos set himself to his elbows and looked around for his fairy friend that had saved his life, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Thank you!” he cried out to the glowing cavern. But the only response he got was those echoing versions of his own solemn voice, seeming always happy to talk back.

The haversack had been flung up against a large boulder. Tannos sought it out, opened it, and examined the jars containing his precious glowing mushrooms. Two of the jars had large jagged cracks running through them, but other than that, they were intact. He grabbed the jar that had rolled across the floor and returned it with the others. From deeper within the haversack, Tannos found the remainder of the apple he’d shared with the fairies. He carved the rest up into tiny bits and set the morsels on top of a very large, very flat rock. He called out to the fairies again, hoping they would show themselves so he could thank them properly, but they never did. Only that echoing of his own solemn voice. The cave felt as empty as a tomb. No matter, he felt sure in his gut the fairies would find the bits of apple before they spoiled.

Tannos gave one more goodbye to the cave and its magical glow, and most importantly to his surprise hero. He began his walk back to the world of green trees and rolling hills from where he came.

Previous writings of this story..

Prologue. https://medium.com/@rydelege/this-is-the-prologue-of-a-fantasy-novel-abd9914485ca

Ch. 1.1 Judgment. https://medium.com/@rydelege/1-1-judgment-the-keeper-of-gods-7148af719d7a

Ch. 1.2 Under the stars. https://medium.com/the-dream-emporium/1-2-under-the-stars-the-keeper-of-gods-5ed3425d6e0d