Two knights in combat. The sky was grey and the silver sun shone on their iron. The clash and clang of their armor as they close, like two boars locking tusks.
In that country the stones were heavy and dark with moss and ivy.
All of a sudden the grappling knights tumble, breaking loose, like avalanches over one another.
With a tilt and a shove by his shoulder, one knight sends the younger to the sand.
The standing one poises his sword to strike, cocked like a scorpions tail. He thrusts to finish it, but the younger rolls, evades, and brings his sword sailing down- the elder raises his blade just in time to parry the thunderbolt. His weapon is knocked from his hands, and falls to his feet...
He rips his helmet off.
"Leonard!" Says he to his adversary, "your heart, your heart, your heart is the only thing that can save her! You've got to give it up!"
The elder knight rushed forth and tackled him. They wrestled like scaly snakes in the sand and stones.
"You're mad, Gornzalo," the younger growled, "the physician can save her, still your grief..."
But the grey knight screamed, and the glint of a little dagger flashed in his grips...
He never ran out of tricks. He made to plunge this knife into Leonard's throat. But he was swept from his upright hold by a cunning maneuver, and sent rolling on his shoulder.
Leonard didn't desire to do his comrade any harm.
There wasn't any clear course of action. He returned his sword into his scabbard and ran as fast as he could, from his comrade, and the madness that possessed him.
The man's daughter was reported, in the midst of a séance, to have demanded the warm, dripping heart of Leonard, the Cresting Puma, and to have the organ tossed into a village well, whichever was the deepest and darkest.
If this feat were not carried out to completion, she oracularly pronounced, then an appalling plague would strike the valleys and hills.
Sepulveda, the Master of the Séance, had interpreted the hypnotically-produced signs quite literally and as a reflection of factual obligation.
"Reality," the sage reflected, "must be brought to accordance with the dream..."
The waves of the sea licked and flowed over the rampart. The puddles in the stone shone immortally in the sun.
He crept over the puddles and up the castle's seaward entrance. It was a secret crawl space, up an ancient stairway, through an immense rock promontory. The gulls cried at his return.
Zephyr the Sea Breeze often played here, soaring through the cliffs, whistling through their cruel wind holes, guarding the high walls to the city and the citadel. He gusted now with a brown cloud of sand. Leonard gripped the thin, rusty chain fasted into the stone.
The citadel was his.
The wooden door of the chapel crept open. The hinges cried with age. The fresh wind and the brilliant morning followed Leonard into the candle-lit twilight inside.
He always consulted this monk, Razabarius, on these kinds of misadventures.
"Yes, I have heard Sepulveda's hermeneutic against you..."
Leonard looked out the window at the beautiful glowing sky and couldn't believe the machinations of these morbid sorcerers and oracles. He was not amused.
"You must defy the prophecy, violate it profusely. With a perverse and bold transgression against his pronouncement, you can drain the aura of his words and further protect yourself. Such audacity can only be achieved by killing Octo-Andros, the Undefeatable, in a duel; then," the wrinkled monk licked his lips, as if relishing the ghastly counsel, "marry the widowed damsel, the very same who had such vivid nightly portents of your juicy stolen organs."
Feeling strange and more confused, Leonard thanked the monk and laid a bunch of polka-dotted circus tickets, lotto-cards, mild psychotropic herbs, and a candy bar on his old wooden table.
A brown pooch passed by in the sunlight. Leonard, his hands in his pockets, ambled forth, following the hound into town. His face was half-concealed under a black silk shawl. The steel of his pommel and hilt were warm.
"Anywhere in these twisting streets, some fool might start screaming, and they will try, one and all, to rip my heart out..." he thought.
The brown dog rushed into a lively café. Leonard almost followed him inside, but turned sharply and abruptly away.
He heard a gasp from the closest tables. Several villagers, burly men, stood up.
Their chairs crashed to the floor.
Leonard disappeared down the slanted streets, through the winding alleyways; slipping into shadows and shade, emerging in the halcyon of the midmorning sun.
He offered chase. They came crashing through the vendors and stalls. Leonard leapt up onto the headstone of a large, somber fountain. The light played in its water.
He perched on the old stone, waited for them to catch up, and then waltzed along the wall. The madmen were panting for breath, screaming, grasping at him with their fingers.
He leapt up one step more, turned on a toe, and gracefully sent a boot flying to kiss one of them on the cheek. The fellow folded over flat. With another half-turn, his left boot turned the lights out in the bigger man's head.
Leonard the Cresting Puma pulled himself over the adjoining wall. He rolled over the top of the stones and strolled very calmly through the charming restaurant above the fountain square.
In a booth of maroon velvet, under a celestial chandelier, sat Octo-Andros, enjoying brunch with his fiancé, Yunakeria, the lovely, sensitive young broad who was dreaming of ripping Leonard's heart out of his chest, and dropping it down the deepest well in the region.
Leonard spotted them in their warm repose. He ambled through the heart of the crowded restaurant in his puma-walk. He stood before the musing couple and unveiled himself.
"Octo-Andros and faire Yunakeria."
All commotion ceased. The princess Yunakeria was solemn as she ever was. As if she had even been waiting for him to arrive on the scene.
Leonard pronounced: "Octo-Andros the Undefeatable is the only man in this town worthy of plucking my heart- or at least he is the only one fit for the attempt of such a mad and poetic deed," he said gallantly. He paused here for effect (for he was a skillful man, as you have seen.)
"However- I am convinced that the only hands to go digging into my breast, to pluck the comet crashed there, are the faire lily fingers of my lady, sweet Yunakeria."
Octo-Andros stood at once. Leonard reached to the maiden with his gauntlet hand. He would do battle.
Her mad curly locks, dark as chestnut. She was not blushing. She gazed at the Cresting Puma with unfolding foresight in her oracle's eyes.
Octo-Andros the Undefeatable wore a metal octopus as a helmet, the tentacles scultptured in steel, wrapping his head, neck, and shoulders. He wore this ferocious helmet at breakfast, and stood now in full armament.
"So be it," he said from under his mask, tossing his dirty napkin on the table before him. Yunakeria the lucid damsel did not touch her fiancé as he rose.
Leonard was inspired, as are all young men confronted by the prospect of an untimely and gruesome demise. He dashed at the man-killer Octo-Andros at his breakfast table. The warrior took the tackle, and the two fell through the glass mosaic behind them.
The combatants crashed to the floor in an embrace, shards of vivid glass raining over them. They rose to their feet, still grappling, in the street outside. Leonard heard Octo-Andros growling;
"You'll feel my wrath you withering wraith, jade, rogue!" The Undefeatable was kneeing Leonard over and over in his stomach and abdomen, making it impossible to breathe.
They clenched teeth and drew daggers simultaneously, scratching each other to shreds. The Puma was like a dancer; back, out of the sweep of Octo-Andros' razor, then slipping in to scratch sparks off his adversary's plates.
Octo-Andros was the man-killer, the Undefeatable. His sword was curved, jagged, and cruel; and it turned with a ferocity not of sane hands. Leonard was the Cresting Puma; he was not the biggest, strongest, quickest, or even the most technically-proficient of knights, but he was the slickest and swiftest, the most graceful.
The Reaper's scythe swung high, and he ducked, turned, sailing a boot into the gut of Octo-Andros. He growled. His curved sword had cleft in one stroke the pillar of a granary. The wood splinters flew.
Leonard didn't know what he was doing, fighting Octo-Andros. His sword could only parry the onslaught of blows. He could just manage to evade the sheer madness of the attack. He felt as if his weapon were somehow not enough to kill this man, if man he indeed was.
The man-killer spun like a top with his scythe. Leonard slipped around another leg of the granary. The horrid sword went sailing through, scratching a bloody path on Leonard's neck. Leonard smirked at the sting. Octo-Andros was focused. He had intended to behead him with that stroke. He thrust, and Leonard was gone with a pirouette, another kick to killer's chest.
The granary tilted onto two broken legs, the other two immediately strained under the gravity.
Leonard turned with a sudden assault, a straight kick to the killer's stomach; he advanced so fearlessly, grabbing the steel tentacles of his adversary's helmet, twisting them and blinding him, kneeing him in the sides and gut. He caught a side-hook on his left, blocking the zig-zag dagger that had been cruising for his lungs. He deflected this, and the man-killer delivered a nasty gash to himself.
Leonard leapt back. The enraged man swung his curvy sword, across the legs of the granary, the razor's edge licked Leonard's hair as he leaned out of its arc. He heard the wood crack and split as the blade cut the knees of the granary and the structure came crashing down on the man-killer's head.
Leonard was breathing hard. The crowds in the windows and street were silent.
"AGHH!" The head of Octo-Andros burst from the pile of wood and grain.
"Rouge-!" Octo-Andros spilled these last words, ill-chosen, as Leonard flourished, beheading the octopus man with a full backspin. His sword let out a satisfied ring, relishing the wave of blood spilling from the sailing head.
Leonard wiped his sword on the ground and replaced it in his scabbard. The head fell to the street with a soppy, splatting gush.
Yunakeria the enigmatic maiden stepped enchantingly through the shattered glass parquet of the restaurant where she had breakfasted with her fiancé, who was now being extricated from the city grain surplus.
Leonard offered her his hand through the jagged crystal glass. It seemed to him as if she radiated a stained-glass halo. Her eyes were so dark and deep.
They took to the open sea for their honey-moon, so they could get to know each other. The sky was full of blue light and the air was fresh. Assortments of fish cast themselves onto the deck of the ship, offering themselves as sacrifice to the princess and her suitor, Leonard the Cresting Puma.
"The dream I had was the impetus. The death knell, of the beast, the man-killer, to whom my father had me betrothed as prize in the jousting tournaments.
"I anticipated your strategy in double-violating my oracular dream as well as the portent of my Undefeatable fiancé. How else could I have you?" Yunakeria gazed across the sea.
Leonard had shown the city that he was exempt from oracular dreams, pronouncements, general magic, and portents of all kind.
"You must tie me to the mast of this ship," said she to her betrothed. "Or the Nymphs and their call will take hold of me, and I will take hold of you."
Leonard took hold of Yunakeria, and ran his hands through her luscious, insane hair. And they held hands and watched the sun fall into the sea. Only a day had passed. The sky turned violet. As night fell they embraced each other, with the rhythm of the sea. Yunakeria called out to the stars, "Oh this boy who outdanced death, who escapes dreams, and all my traps for him. Oh!"