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Beasts of Spirit - Book 1: Delcorgia

Act I: Chapter 1

By Alex CostantinoPublished 2 years ago 22 min read
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Beasts of Spirit - Book 1: Delcorgia
Photo by Neil Rosenstech on Unsplash

1

The Wolf and the Mountain’s Peak

In Delcorgia, west of the capital city of Delcorum, there was a mountain so tall and so colossal that its shadow would loom over the city, consuming the capital in its entirety with its dark reflection as the sun vanished behind it. It was named Mt. Crescence, because it looked as though a large chunk had been ripped from the side of the mountain, causing it to take the appearance of a crescent moon. On clear days, the sun would peek through the crescent-shaped hole in the afternoon, shining a bright yellow spotlight over the city and slowly scanning it from one side to the other as it descended until it was obscured once again behind the mountain.

Near the summit of Mt. Crescence, unbeknownst to the citizens of Delcorum, was a large circular crater that had been repurposed into a makeshift arena. Large stones serving as seats were forcibly lodged into the dirt and arranged in staggered rows down the crater’s slope, lending it the likeness of an amphitheatre. Wooden steps carved straight from tree trunks led down through the rows of stone seating into the crater’s centre, which itself had been carved and flattened out by hand into a circular and perfectly even clearing, hosting terrain of dirt and rock. To reach this area meant enduring an incredibly exhausting and dangerous hike up near-vertical cliffs and slippery, rocky slopes, but that was exactly what a particular group of mountain bandits, dubbing themselves ‘The Red Sons’, did each and every morning.

With heaving breaths and a loud grunt, a teenage boy reached his hand above him and over the edge of the cliff. His fingers found purchase in the soft earth and hoisted himself up and over the cliff’s edge. He stood, shaking his strained hands and flexing his aching fingers. His knees cracked as he shifted his weight from one to the other, stretching out his legs. Then he stretched his arms up high and brought them behind his back with a satisfied grunt.

“Phew. Shit never gets any easier.”

The boy’s hair was jet black and slicked back, with clustered spikes of it protruding from the back of his head. He wore an undershirt stitched together from multiple black and white animal furs, though it wasn’t so haphazardly tailored as to appear piebald, like the shirt he was given initially. The boy had insisted that he didn’t “ wanna walk around lookin’ like some fuckin’ cow or dog or s’m shit” and refused to wear the patchy black and white shirt he was given originally, thus beginning his mid-winter rebellion of shirtlessness. His father eventually relented, conceding that the bitterly cold weather conditions stood no chance when pitted against his son’s stubbornness. In any case, waiting to see if his son might yield to the cold wasn’t worth the risk of pneumonia.

The new shirt took a long while to have made, as none of the men in the Red Sons had any real experience in tailoring, outside of repairing their own poorly made garb. It had a white and woollen interior, made chiefly from sheep and lambswool, and a dual-layered black, rough exterior, with an inner layer made from various furs and an outer layer of dried and tanned animal skins. Like all the clothes worn by the Red Sons, a sigil was painted over the left breast with a red dye made from tree sap and animal blood, though the boy had no idea what it meant or signified. Over the undershirt, the boy wore a black vest bearing the same red sigil on its back. The vest was given to him by his father years before: it was made almost entirely from feathers and looked incredibly uncomfortable, but the boy was rarely seen without it. His thick, black eyebrows had a natural downward slant, limiting the emotions that people could interpret from his facial expressions to anger or a smug bravado, depending on whether or not he was smiling.

“You’re late, Vero,” a man called out to the boy from up ahead. He was lying back against the dewy grass, resting his head in his hands and staring towards the sky.

“Bullshit. Didn’t take longer than usual.”

“Exactly. Your father expected you to shave at least half an hour from that time by now.”

“Tch, I could do it in half th’ fuckin’ time if that asshole would give me a break n’ let these fuckin’ blisters heal,” Vero said, examining the swelling and scratches on his palms and fingers.

The man yawned, stretching his arms upwards, and stood up. He brushed off the remnants of dirt and grass that had amassed on his clothes as he lay in wait and approached Vero with his hands in his pockets.

“Come on, Cassius, how th’ fuck’m I s’pose to do it any faster with these fuckin’ - Ouh!”

Before Vero could finish, Cassius had pivoted on his left foot and whirled around, slamming the heel of his right foot into Vero’s gut.

Vero clutched his stomach, gagging and sputtering as his legs buckled and he fell to his knees. Long strings of saliva dripped from his mouth as he struggled to breathe.

“If you want me to stop doing that, you’ll start showing some more respect to your old man,” Cassius said, though the tone of his voice was far too casual for the discipline intended behind his words.

The youth wiped away the strings of spit falling from his lips as he looked up at Cassius, who was now closely examining his own nails for dirt. The boy’s fists clenched and his muscles tensed as his body screamed at him to retaliate. He was always like this: whenever he felt that he had been slighted or humiliated, it was as though a flame within him was kindled, circulating explosive, primeval anger throughout his body as rapidly as oxygen. Vero wasn’t entirely sure what caused it, but it felt at times as though his anger didn’t actually belong to him, like there was something else dwelling behind it, reacting on his behalf. However, years of heavy-handed conditioning had helped to bring these inexplicable bursts of rage under control. Vero took a deep breath and let his muscles relax, and the flame of fury was snuffed out before it could catch.

“My bad, Cass.”

“What was that?” Cassius asked. Vero’s jaw tightened.

“Sorry, Cassius,” Vero said curtly.

Cassius was, in Vero’s opinion, a clear outlier from the rest of the Red Sons. He wasn’t as prone to anger or violence as the others, and he didn’t swear nearly as much. Like Vero’s father, Cassius’ speech was eloquent, though his peculiar, unfamiliar accent often betrayed the others’ ability to comprehend it. His appearance was well-kept and his build was slim with a muscle tone visible beneath his clothing. His expression lacked the rugged and spiteful attitude worn by the others, and the clothes he wore and made for himself were always impressively light and well-tailored. Despite his absurdities, Cassius acted as the group’s second-in-command and served as the right hand for Vero’s father, Rosso. Cassius was maybe a head taller than Vero, yet was by no means a large man. Despite this, he was the only person in the group that Vero could not defeat in a fight, excluding his own father.

Cassius watched expectantly as Vero slowly came to his feet, his legs shaking as he regained his composure.

“Let’s get a move on. Your bout is meant to be coming up soon.” Cassius began walking ahead, and Vero raced to catch up to him.

“So?” Vero asked.

“So what?” Cassius said.

“Who’s th’ poor sonofabitch I’m up against this time?”

“Hah. If I were you, I’d check that swagger, boy. You’re up against me again today.” A thin smile emerged on his face. “And I’m looking forward to bringing my wins up to a nice, even twenty.”

A wide grin spread across Vero’s face.

“J’st hope you c’n still count when I’m done with ya, cocky fucker.”

Cassius laughed and shook his head.

“That mouth of yours is going to get you killed someday, you know.”

“Yeah? Let’s see th’ prudes fuckin’ try it.”

“I’m serious, Vero. Being the best means nothing when you’re only in competition with a couple dozen old and angry men. The world’s a lot bigger than this mountain, and there are folks out there much stronger than you - probably some even stronger than your dad - that’d see you dead for a lot less than a petty insult. You’re going to have to try and break the habit at some point, unless you want some angry lord to have your head cut off or some lunatic to rip your throat out for telling them to go fuck themselves.” Cassius said.

Vero brought his fingers to his chin and stroked it pensively.

“Cassius?”

“Yeah?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

---------------------------------------------------------

The air was thin at the peak of Mt. Crescence, and the cool and crisp temperatures kept the grass slick with dew. The clouds hung just barely above Cassius’ and Vero’s reach, and at times their vision was obscured by blinding white as the clouds reflected the light from the sun straight into their eyes. Vero, already short of breath, had his trek made more difficult by deep puddles of mud left by the previous night’s rainfall. He watched Cassius with confusion and envy as he strolled across the puddles almost weightlessly, the same puddles that Vero would then find his own ankle deeply submerged in.

“Hey - nnf - how th’ fuck d’ya do that?” Vero said, yanking his ankle free from a pit of thick brown sludge.

“Do what?” Cassius said.

“Y’keep walkin’ on the mud like its solid ground, but this shit swallows my foot right up. What’s the deal?”

Cassius looked down at Vero’s mud-covered feet and realised that the boy’s shoes had disappeared. He chuckled to himself.

“Have you been trying to copy me?”

“Well yeah, a lil’ bit I guess. Tried following your exact movements and all that, but it’s the same deal every time. How d’ya do it?”

“Why keep trying after losing the first shoe?” Cassius said, holding back laughter. “Why not just walk around the mud? It’s not like the puddles are covering the entire” -

“Fuck you, man, knock it off! Forget I fuckin’ said anything.”

“No no, it’s alright. I’ll tell you,” Cassius said, “Just as long as you don’t step in any more mud, deal?”

“Yeah yeah, you’re fuckin’ hysterical. Just get fessin’, asshole.” Vero said. Cassius, ignoring the insults, cleared his throat and began to explain.

“A long time ago, back when I was even younger than you, the man who brought me up trained me to… well uh, he taught me how to... hm,” Cassius scratched at his head.

“Well, the simplest way to explain is that he taught me to move weightlessly, to control my centre of mass in such a way that it distorts the ground beneath my feet. Rather than supporting my body weight with my legs, my mass is… transferred, for lack of a better term, to the surface beneath my feet. Hmm, actually… that probably isn’t the best way to... Okay, so whenever my feet are touching the ground, I can lend my weight to the earth beneath them, and thus make myself… weightless. Understand?” Cassius looked at Vero, gesturing at him with a half-shrug. Vero’s face contorted with equal parts confusion and frustration.

“Sometimes I just wanna beat you to death with a rock. Y’know what I mean?”

“Well, no, I can’t say I share the sentiment,” Cassius sighed, bringing his hands to his hips. Vero’s crude and brutish threats had become so tired and expected that they were now little more than platitudes, as certain and inevitable as a rooster’s morning crow.

“Just to figure out how to do it, even just trying to understand the concept of it, took a lot - and I mean a lot - of time, and just as much pain. Mastering it was a trial all of its own, incomparably worse to the rest of it. The man who raised me taught me a bunch of other handy techniques as well, but I haven’t used any of them in a while. Funny to think the only thing I use this one for these days is keeping my feet dry. If I'd known that would be the case back when I was learning to do it, I might have saved myself a lot of pain and just bought myself some decent boots,” Cassius said.

“Reckon y’could teach me?” Vero asked.

“Maybe you missed the part about pain? Lots and lots of time? Trust me on this one Vero, just because it looks cool doesn’t mean it’s worth learning. There are plenty of other more useful techniques I could teach you in a fraction of the time it’d take to” - Cassius stopped, looking back to see Vero standing on a puddle of mud, his feet resting atop the surface of the rippling pool. His body quivered as though it was balanced on a tightrope, and he was exhaling with a deep and unsteady whoosh.

“Vero?” Cassius asked, turning to face him properly. “What... how are you” - Cassius was interrupted by a loud splash as the entirety of Vero’s body weight suddenly plunged into the mud.

“Fuck! I fuckin’ had it! You ruined my fuckin’ concentration! Ach, hell. Lemme try again. And this time y’better shut your damn mouth!” Vero said, standing back up and stepping out from the mud. Cassius watched on, his parted lips frozen in an inquisitive pout. Vero took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and slowly reached one foot out towards the puddle. He gently leaned forward, planting his foot against the mud. As he allowed his weight to shift against his foot, he immediately fell back into the puddle and groaned loudly.

“Fuck me! Fuckin’ bullshit!” Vero yelled, splashing in the mud. “Stupid motherfuckin’ bullshit damn kiddy tricks! What kind of fuckin’ special stupid asshole does it take to figure out how to do that shit? What kind of fuckin’ idiot does it take to fall in fuckin’ shit and dirt so often that he gets immune to it? ‘Oh hey cool trick man, how’d ya learn it?’ ‘Oh no big deal, I just walked into a pile of my own shit every day until one day I just walked right over it!’ Fuckin’ stupid fuckin’ bullshit!”

As Vero ranted and raved, splashing mud over the vibrant green grass surrounding his mud pool, Cassius looked on with an expression of astonishment that slowly dissipated with each curse and petulant complaint Vero squawked. Once all of his surprise was exhausted, all that remained was restless contempt.

“Alright, enough!” Cassius said. “Out. We’re going.” Cassius turned and began marching again towards the summit. Vero pulled himself out of the puddle and trudged after him, simultaneously trying to shake the mud from his legs. When he caught up, he brushed at the mud on his pants and grimaced when he realised he was only spreading it further.

“Just let it dry. It’ll peel off nice and easy,” Cassius said.

“What, you’re a fuckin’ expert now? Mister ‘I haven’t touched mud since before I hit puberty?’”

“At least one of us has.”

“Huh? What, touched mud?”

“Hit puberty.”

“Psh. Fuck yourself.”

Cassius smirked, concealing his tightly balled hands in his pockets and squeezing a hard, pebble-shaped object in his right fist.

At this point, both of Vero’s shoes were gone, and his feet were ravaged with insect bites. Vero pushed down the urge to grunt as the feeling in his feet constantly switched between an intense itch and a burning sting. This feeling was compounded by the bitter cold of their high altitude and the frosted dew on the grass that licked and bit at his mud-covered feet. He made a conscious effort to stop his body from shivering, watching Cassius amble on seemingly without a care for the glacial breeze. He tried to match the relaxed swagger of Cassius’ stride, but the stiffness of his limbs made his movements more akin to an asymmetrical march.

“How do you know about that stuff anyway?” Cassius asked. Vero stumbled, quickly trying to change his stance back to normal as Cassius turned to face him.

“‘Bout what?”

“Puberty. Where’d you learn about it? I don’t remember talking about it with you.”

“Oh. Leif told me.”

“Leif?” Cassius asked, raising the corner of his lip in a half-smirk and narrowing his eyes.

“Yeah. Went on this huge rant when I told him he had no balls.”

“Is that right?”

“Yup. He’s way too easy. Him ‘n Ganden don’t get that I’m just screwin’ around. It’s like they really think I’ve got it out for ‘em. ‘S why I love hangin’ around with ‘em so much. Most fun I’ve ever had,” Vero said.

“There are other ways to get people’s attention, Vero. Being loud and irritating isn’t your only option.”

“Maybe. Works pretty good though, eh?”

“Well, have you ever just tried talking to them? I mean without swearing at them or insulting them. Have you ever really tried to know them?” Cassius asked. Vero snorted and began to chortle gleefully.

“They’ve got one brain between ‘em, Cass! I’d be better off talkin’ to rocks!” Vero said, wheezing.

“Well… just a thought,” Cassius said, sighing.

Up ahead, a large arch structure made from twigs came into view. The trail leading to and beyond it was so well-trodden that the crushed dirt and matted grass outlined an artificial path towards the arena, just fifty metres ahead. Cassius and Vero walked through the arch and approached the gigantic man standing at the crater’s rim and staring into it. Without looking back, the man spoke:

“Vero.”

In a casual and conversational tone, but with a voice so deep and reverberant that it echoed throughout the valley beneath the summit, the man - Vero’s father and the leader of the Red Sons, Rosso - uttered this single word. His form only appeared more gargantuan as the pair approached his twelve-foot-tall figure. His clothing was thick, barely concealing his bulbous musculature beneath wool, fur and rawhide leather. His hair was long and brown with streaks of silver, With a large braid in the middle and two smaller braids behind each ear. His gloved hands were large enough to fit small children in their palms and so calloused that their texture was almost scaly. His legs were as thick as boulders, and Vero suspected they might be as sturdy as well. A red sigil was tattooed around his right eye - the same sigil painted on the clothes of all the red sons.

Vero approached, exuding a temperament of impatience and frustration. He could not, however, stop his legs from trembling. Even sitting down, his father was almost double Vero’s size. Standing, Vero could barely reach past his waist.

“Didn’t realise how soft you were gett’n in your old age, thinkin’ I need a babysitter ‘n all that,” Vero nodded towards Cassius, sniggering. “I’m touched.”

Cassius watched him in stern silence.

“How are your feet?” Rosso said, still looking down into the crater.

“Huh? Oh, they, uh...” Vero looked down at his itchy, swollen and mud-bathed feet.

“They’re fine, I guess. Good as ever. Oh yeah, by the way, gonna need some new shoes, it's lookin’ like.”

Vero looked back up at Rosso with a smile and a nod, but his face tensed when he saw his father staring over his shoulder at him with one eye.

“And your nap? Comfortable, I hope?”

Vero noticed a slight change in his father’s voice as he said this, a crack in his usual stoic tone.

“Shit. Alright, hey, I was just” –

Suddenly, without warning or even the opportunity to react, his father’s arm swung backward. His reach was so extensive, and his movement so powerful, that the instantaneous sweeping motion carried with it the dust from the ground and the dew from the grass before striking Vero’s chest. Vero was flung backward, narrowly avoiding tree trunks as the brunt of his impact was absorbed by the trees’ thick branches. He landed at the foot of a tree in a pile of snapped branches, his mouth agape as his emptied lungs desperately sucked in air. Raising his head slightly and looking down at his bed of sticks, there was no doubt in Vero’s mind: that fucker aimed for ‘em. He felt his chest tighten and his muscles tense as his blood began to run hot, and he made no effort to calm himself down as his savage glare fell upon his father. Rosso spoke, still facing away from him.

“Have you any idea how embarrassing it is for me, for the men, when the young boy that - time and time again - continues to claim victory over them in combat, comes trouncing up the mountain as though he were out on an evening stroll? How demeaning for them it must be to risk life and limb, push themselves to their very limits, and still be bested by an uncaring brat?”

Still winded from his father’s sudden attack, Vero struggled to muster the necessary oxygen in his lungs to deliver a coherent response.

“I… I…” –

“And do you think it would be any comfort to them to know that their rival, and the son of their leader, whom they are trying so desperately to best, is taking naps? While they work so tirelessly?”

“... Not my… fault they’re… weak as piss”, Vero wheezed in between deep swallows of air. Rosso turned and began striding towards him, the sheer length of his legs carrying him metres with each step. Vero dug his hands into the pile of branches beneath him and gripped at whatever might help keep his body in place. Rosso stopped in front of him, looking down at him impassively and shaking his head.

“Over and over, you boast of strength, of being the ‘strongest’, yet all your actions reflect is cowardice.”

Vero snarled, pushing his back up from the ground as Rosso continued.

“Only a coward looks down on others and thinks himself their better. Only a coward believes that there’s nothing left to learn, nothing else about himself to improve. Only a coward” -

“Knock it the fuck off! I took a nap, alright? Not ‘cause I was cocky, not ‘cause I ran out of piss to slash down on the other guys, I just got fuckin’ tired, alright? Y’make it sound like I was pointing at ‘em and laughing in my sleep or some shit.”

“Disrespect is not always achieved through direct action, Vero. If the men knew about what you were doing, their motivation would suffer. They believe that you are working hard, and that your determination is why you are able to surpass them as much as you have. It encourages them to hold themselves to a higher standard. For them to know that your strength is a natural trait, that it wasn’t earned, it would destroy the image they have of themselves; the image they have of you.”

Vero’s legs trembled violently as he tried to pick himself up before he collapsed again into the bed of branches.

“Your band of geriatrics and their feelings aren’t my fuckin’ problem. I’ve never pretended to be anything but me. If they don’t like the idea of me takin’ naps, then maybe the ‘image’ they have of me’s got a bit too much flavour in the first place. Everyone fuckin’ sleeps, even fourteen-year-olds. If that’s enough to totally shut ‘em down, then they probably weren’t much of bandits to begin with.”

As Rosso was about to retort, he noticed a shimmer in his son’s eyes, a brief flash of animalistic anger that differed from the usual rowdiness and petulance that fueled his tantrums.

“We’ll talk about this later, Vero. You have a fight to prepare for. You should take some time to recover before the rest of the men arrive. I don’t want you spouting excuses about your wellbeing if you lose again,” Rosso said, deciding to let the issue go and do what he could to placate his son. He reached out a hand to help Vero up, but Vero shoved the giant hand away with both arms and slowly pushed himself up, swaying as he came to his feet.

“I’m good,” Vero said.

Examining him, Rosso noticed that the cuts, swelling and bruising that Vero had on his hands and legs when he arrived had vanished entirely. Everything had healed, even the callouses that had developed on his hands from the daily climbs. Rosso remained expressionless and said nothing as Vero limped past him towards the arena and clutched at his chest. By the time Vero reached the steps leading down into the crater, his limp was gone. His chest pain as well looked to have disappeared as he skipped down the wooden steps and began doing one-handed push-ups in the crater’s centre. Rosso looked over at Cassius, who nodded back at him with a knowing glance. For now, Rosso thought, at least it looked like Vero was still in control of himself. He watched his son for a while until the others began arriving, hollering and whooping at the end of their long climb. They groaned as they approached the arena, looking in to see Vero at the centre and realising he had bested them once again.

Meanwhile, Vero’s mind raced with torrents of vicious thoughts and violent fantasies aimed towards his father, towards the other bandits, towards anything that should enter his reach. Without him realising it, the flame within him had been tendered, and its embers now began to glow.

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