Jungle

Night Calling

Terrance, the King of Attlhuital, walked the parapets of the midnight barricades. The jungle scream eternal chaos and serenity. Wailing against the gravestone gray walls encasing the slim streets. Terrance, king of these midnight jungles looks south over the rest of the world beyond the ocean of treetops. Terrance turns, and seeks out the sage. 

The sage's hut sits on a mound of stones, a lesser pyramid in a city of greatness. The sage's hut at the top smells of gods-smoke, shadows danced like giants against the stone grey walls. 

"Turvac, what do the runners say?" 

The sage was dancing through the smoke and through the shadows, "Runners tell, the jungle remains the same."

"Is that all you can gleam from the jungle?" Terrance groans,  brown eyes narrowing to see through the stinging gods-smoke. The shadows were starting to peel off the walls and dance around Terrance and the sage. 

"Runners see many things, there are things the jungle tells them that the jungle does not wish them to know. Things the jungle wants to stay a mystery." Suddenly all the things in the hut stopped. the sage was in front of Terrance before he could register the movement. The sage had the vitality of a mountain, but his eyes were like the trees. Eyes that had seen a thousand kingdoms rise and fall under his roots. 

"Do your runners see the world beyond? Beyond the trees?" Terrance asks the sage. 

"Runners see out there, the south, we are atop the world. My runners see great kingdoms and watch their machinations. Great kings offered up their nations to the dead and are so overrun. dark tidings soak into the roots of one nation where magic is law. The Jungle remains the same." The sage croaks in a weary voice. 

"How old are you sage? How many times have you seen those kingdoms fall? This kingdom fall?" Terrance scowled, the hut fell into darkness not even an bat's eyes could penetrate.  A choking humid darkness, natural and unnatural to the world that made the veins beneath Terrance's skin writhe and twist with anxiety.

"Old."

Terrance left the  hut and padded down the stairs to the slim streets, grumbling his frustrations against the ancient sage's vague answer. 

"Some one has not had a pleasant night," a dark figure under torch light smirked a wicked smirk. Sun tanned skin covered his athletic frame whose sharp features cast shadows across his abdomen and arms. 

"Do I ever have a pleasant night since that happened? Since the dream, Huiltakka?" Terrance grumbled, fatigue and frustration like smoke in his voice, hurting his throat. 

"A blade cutting open the sky? Your dream will not come true, old friend. Such things do not happen in this lifetime." Huiltakka advised, his voice permeating the air from under the hoods the south people wear. Terrance had not seen his bodyguard's eyes in a long time, not since Huiltakka got lost a year ago.  "You look tired, old friend. head home, to your bed, to your wife, your dreams will not bother you."

"They always bother me," Terrance replied. 

"I have a tea, from the priests. It will give you a dreamless sleep," Huiltakka offered up a mysterious gourd, hollowed out. Terrance reached for his salvation with both hands, partaking in the tea, like the sacred drink from his coronation. 

Huiltakka clasps an arm over his friend and leads the drowsy man back to his palace. The secret guards watch from their stony alcoves between the towers and galleries. They breathe a sigh of relief as they watch Huiltakka carrying the snoozing body of their king. 

"You found him Huiltakka?" Queen Atzannil  asks, her voice wavering with worry. 

"Of course, sister. What kind of bodyguard would I be if I let my king stumble about through the night?" Huiltakka chuckles, he and Atzannil carry Terrance's muscular body to the royal bed chambers and lays him on the piles of furs to sleep on. Huiltakka left the sleeping king to his rest, Atzannil retired to her private chambers within the palace, happy to know her husband would be dreamless. 

In the night, Terrance's dreams fought the tea keeping his mind dull. The hours dragged on and soon Terrance slipped into the dream he loathed with every fiber of his being. In his dream the sky was grey, just after dawn, but before the midday rains. He stood on the Temple of the Ancestors, Huiltakka and his grandfather were with him. They spoke around Terrance, things that Terrance could not make sense of. Terrance looks toward the sky. A brilliant star shown in the day, it wandered across the sky above. The star began to bleed, and the blood fell like drops of rain over the jungle. the star left a stain across the sky. The stain was green and hurt Terrance's eyes, then the stain ruptured like a pustule and something fell out of the cut and fell to the jungle, only a few miles away it struck the ground and threw rock and trees up into the air. There the dream ended and a new nightmare began for Terrance. In the jungle alone, he carried a spear, hunting a jungle pig. The jungle pig grazed on ferns, oblivious to the hunter. Terrance watches the pig graze, there was peace there, the birds coo harmonious songs with the pig's grunting. Terrance watches a big hand reach out from the brush and grab the pig. With shocked eyes, Terrance watches a beast he has never seen crawl out of the jungle. A monster bigger than he, skin a silvery mirror. the hand with the pig in it holds the animal steady, while the monster's other hand, whose fingers ended with needle like claws puncture the pig's body. the monster's eyes glow an insidious green as the pig withers in it's aberrant grasp. 

A shock throws Terrance from sleep, his wife crying and Huiltakka on top of him shaking him awake. 

"My King, My King! The dreams, they are true!"