Guilt overtook his feelings of accomplishment and fought to subdue the success he had won, yet when he looked at the faces of the prisoners which he had helped to free, he reckoned that the price of sacrifice was heavy at times. He was trapped once again between responsibility to his people and his own feelings of obligation to a friend, and when he weighed the lives of the many against the life of the one, he found that he had to stay right where he was and lead the people back to the mountain. It was a hard choice, one that made him curse his position in life, but one that he knew in his heart he had to cling to.
“Blast!” Crush muttered to himself as the malcoons bustled into the woods, taking Crush and the freed prisoners ahead and leaving Beni behind.
**********
Beni felt an unexpected warmth blow up from behind, and she sensed that it was time to pay the price for her sins against the giants. Now the running must come to an end. By freeing the humans, she had betrayed the only family that she had known. She belonged to a family that had encased her within a trinket of jewelry, and she believed that same family had justice coming. Breathing the first words of a spell under her breath, she spun on her heel to find Queen Dowager with her hands on her hips, glaring at her as if she dared the younger sister to continue her treachery.
“You look downhearted, sister. Are you missing something?” Beni asked with dripping sarcasm. The confrontation was finally here, and she was not about to let her older sister intimidate her so easily.
“How dare you return here after all these years!!” Queen Dowager replied as she raised her hands to weave a spell. Beni spoke a silent incantation and braced for the inevitable as the lights flared out from her sister’s open palms, and tiny rockets launched toward Beni from the Queen’s hands. With laser accurate precision, the photonic missiles rocketed at younger sister, but to the Queen’s dismay, the rockets burst upon an invisible shield that surrounded Beni. The Queen cursed the ground in anger at the failed attempt, and a quake split the ground wide open at Beni’s feet. A cavern opened wide and deep, but she seemed to float in place as the spherical protection kept her from falling through the open crevasse. The princess whirled in a cartwheel out of the hole and to the opposite side of the cleft in the ground. Looking on through squinted, angry eyes, the Queen fumed in rage at her sister’s escape from the pit, and she made an impotent waving gesture with her hands which Beni failed to understand. Indeed it seemed as if the manual signals had no effect on her at all.
“What was that?” Beni said, and she slipped up for an instant as she let down her guard in order to negotiate with her sister. The strong, muscular arms wrapped around her waist, and she recognized now what the Queen had done. Her gestures had not been a spell at all, but a command to her guard.
“It’s all over now, young one. Stop your fighting,” Mouchard’s slimy voice whispered into her ear.
“Never!” Beni cried out, and she stomped her boot down onto the top of his foot. Mouchard winced, but the Queen’s guard did not let go. He raised her frame and feet off of the ground, and then he slammed her body to the ground beneath his own weight. Stunned and hurting, Beni’s breath was knocked out entirely, and she gasped for breath as her sister levitated over the deep separation of the ground to join them.
“Beni, Beni, Beni,” Queen Dowager said as she bent down to wag her crooked finger in her face. “You should have stayed where you were, safely hidden away. But you had to come back to my realm, and steal my slaves,” she said and held her open hand aloft in the air. Then the Queen slowly closed her open hand into a fist, and the Queen’s magic was at work on Beni’s throat. Beni gasped as she caught a final breath of air, but as the Queen’s fist tightened, she could feel her insides constrict. “You will be begging for death for your treachery,” the Queen assured her. The pain was so unbearable for Beni that if something miraculous did not happen soon, her heart would give out from the stress of the crushing torture. Mouchard released his hold on her and moved a safe distance from the Queen’s agonizing spells, and Beni rolled over onto her back in pain on the ground. Outside of the castle, with her knees curled to her waist, Beni clutched her sides and grimaced in agony, and she managed to get one eye open to look one last time at the trees of the forest. Through her squinted lids, she noticed specks of matter moving through the upper limbs of the forest. Miraculously, a scream of terror issued from the Queen, and the death grip that had seized Beni’s insides eased. Beni’s arms and legs released, and she lay sprawled out upon the ground as her body relaxed from the struggle against the magic. Her body was in shock, and with one last move of her head, she saw her sister screaming as the Queen and Mouchard were covered from head to foot with tiny, scrambling bodies.
“Monkeys,” she said as she closed her eyes and passed out.
**********
Her eyelids were matted together with the tears and sweat of the struggle, but through strength of will, Beni forced them open finding one body on the ground next to her. She could not tell who it was since the monkeys had covered the entire surface of the body in a smothering heap of biting primates, but from the size of the frame, she guessed that it had to be Mouchard beneath the pile. It was a horrible death, and Beni turned her head over in the other direction so that she would not have to look at it anymore. Within a few moments, she found her strength returning, and she rose to her feet and surveyed the surroundings. There were charred bodies of monkeys scattered in all directions and a ring of black extending from the center of the ground where Queen Dowager had stood, and Beni guessed that her sister had survived the assault by using an explosive spell to discharge the biting apes from her body. The stench of death was overpowering, and she held back a gag with her hand clinched over her nose.
“How long have I been out?” she wondered, but there was no time for her to stand there and worry. If she was going to have any chance at all of getting away, the time to move was now. She turned away from the castle, and before she could take a single step, a lone monkey leaped from the ground and climbed up her leg. Startled, Beni looked down to see the creature’s intent, and when their eyes met each other, she recognized the little climber. He looked no worse for the wear, and she imagined he played a significant part in the events that had led to Mouchard’s death.
“Simon!” she exclaimed, and she picked him up in her hand and placed him on her shoulder. The tiniest, little creature had somehow convinced the other monkeys of the forest to help save her life, and Beni was very thankful that she had been able to make friends with him. “Do you want to help Crush?” she asked him, and he nodded his head excitedly and jumped up and down on her shoulder. Beni then glanced over her shoulder at the castle doors, and there was no sign of her sister anywhere. But still, she was overcome with a sense of great foreboding. Perhaps the dread emanated from the remnants of the battle scene, but maybe there was something more to it that she could not yet understand.
Suddenly, the piercing screech of terror filled the air around her, and Beni clasped her hands to her ears at the din, nearly knocking Simon from her shoulders in the process. The monkey buried himself within the crease of her neck, and he too clapped his paws over his ears and cowered in fear at what he knew was coming for them. Standing straight with dismay, Beni was frozen in fear, and she failed to make a dash for cover while she still had a chance of escape. Above her, the dread beast of destruction broke through a cloud in the sky and shot straight down to the outside of the castle. With a thud, the weight of the fiery serpent delivered another quake to the terrain, and Beni lowered her hands to her sides and braced herself for the onslaught of the beast. The dragon raised its mighty head and exhaled a gruff breath of smoke as he examined his quarry. He glared at the giantess through the slits of his eyes, and the white inner eyelids slowly rose to shield the moist and tender organs. This was a sign of terrible things to come, and Beni lowered her center of gravity in a crouch of self-defense to counter the dragon’s probable att
ack. Time slowly ticked by as the creature observed his adversary, yet the dragon’s belly failed to light up with the churning of inner fire.
“The serpent is measuring me up, perhaps before the meal,” Beni registered within her mind. Then she contemplated a different tack, and she cast her thoughts at the beast as it sniffed the air of death that hovered over the outer yard.
“Dragon, oh mighty beast of woe, what can your servant do for you?” Beni asked as she telepathically projected the flattering words at the beast. The dragon puffed a swirl of smoke from its nostrils and then whiffed the air as if examining the breeze for her scent. The white eyelids came down with a moist click, and the dragon’s neck extended out menacingly toward her.
“I know you, princess,” he seethed as they returned cold anxious stares at each other. With his head lowered, the dragon stood nearly the height of a giant, and he returned no fear of his own at the giantess’ posturing. “You and I, we once met in a game of chess, young lady. There were kings on both sides of the conflict until one of them was cornered. The real battle of wills then began between the Queens, and each side made one destructive move after another, until there were only four of us left. Two pawns and two queens.”
“Suffer yourself to be a puppet, beast. I am no one’s pawn,” Beni countered.
“Are you not?” he questioned as the slits in his eyes narrowed. “You stood between your sister and myself, and you protected her though she later wore you as a trinket on her blouse. How is that not like a pawn?” he parried with a grin and a snort.
“Pawns it is, then, snake!” Beni relented. “But the game was over long ago, and your queen won, as I recall. You make a poor winner if you are here to rub in the faults of a battle long gone.”
“Enough of your talk, princess. I was released for destruction, and you are in my way,” said the serpent. The dragon’s belly flared a bright light, and he reared his head back to strike. Simon stayed by his friend’s side, but the other monkeys who had survived Queen Dowager’s wrath had fled in fright of what was to come. Beni gulped in fear as well, and she weaved her hands in motion around herself as smoke puffed from the dragon’s nostrils. The glaring burst of heat, flame, and smoke exploded from the dragon’s gaping mouth, and the brilliant orange and yellow light engulfed Beni and Simon in a wave of intensity. The dragon blew the flames until his lungs were emptied completely, and two smoke rings rose from the tip of his nose as he stood momentarily before the castle. Inhaling again, the smoke rings were sucked back into his sinus cavities as the smoke and ruin settled, and to his amazement, Beni and Simon stood untouched and unfazed in an enchanted sphere of magic.
“You forgot our last encounter, I see,” Beni reminded him, and the dragon contentedly placed his hands on his belly as the glow faded from his scales.
“Absolutely not, my cherry,” the beast revealed to her. “I needed to know whether you were still as invulnerable as I remembered. You are, and so we pawns are at a stalemate,” the dragon proclaimed with the spreading of his wings. “I smelled my missing tooth here, and though you may protect yourself from my wrath, I will tear every log from the castle until I find it. You had best hope that your sister fairs as well as you,” the evil beast roared as he hovered in the air over her, and he disappeared over the castle walls where the screams of the giants could be heard echoing in the forest.
Beni covered her face in shame as she shed tears of sadness at the vicious turn of events, and she scolded herself for believing that she could make a difference in this world of evil. A tug pulled at her hair, and she remembered that Simon was still hiding on her shoulder. With one hand extended, she picked the speck of a monkey from her shirt, and she held him in the palm of her hand. Simon combed his hair back with his hand, and he pointed toward the forest where Crush had gone with the malcoons and the prisoners.
“You are right,” Beni said as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “Though I cannot save my people, if we hurry, I can save Crush and the prisoners from the dragon’s wrath,” she said as she accepted fate’s roll of the dice.
“Let us go then,” she said, and they jogged off behind the malcoon tracks into the forest.
**********
As the sun began to set, Crush urged the malcoons on beneath the shadow of the mountain. He turned his head around, and he looked back to where he had been. An orange and yellow glow emanated over the treetops where he thought the giant’s castle stood, and a beastly roar resonated against the mountainside. Crush knew that their time was growing short. He dug his claws into the skin of the malcoon to urge its pace, and the creature snarled in anger as it trotted ever faster toward the front entrance of the mine shaft that would lead them to Prince Argentine’s lair.
###
Next Issue
Discover the fate of our heroes, Crush and Pound, in the jagged claws of the dragon, the cruel magic of Queen Dowager, and the hateful wrath of the Queenmother in Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 12, the cataclysmic conclusion of the seven-part series!!
Then, beginning with Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 3, prepare yourself for the DAM’s next harrowing adventure which pits our heroes in lethal confrontations with the deadly organization STUN, the mysterious Lord Felino, and the Eye in an epic search for the missing Huit Brighter!!
About the Author
Christopher Carter is an engineer by day, and transforms into a writer and artist by night. He lives with his wife and cat in central North Carolina.
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