Bellerophon and the Beast

Welcome, welcome.

Make yourself comfortable. The trip was pleasant, I take it? All downhill, of course. Never mind the dog, his barks are worse than his bites. You’d think he was the only one with three heads around here. Hmph. I’d offer you a drink, but then you’d forget everything and we’d have to go through the whole story again.

Not much to look at, am I now?

Typhon was my sire, who contested the rule of the cosmos with Olympian Zeus himself. While my major accomplishment was terrorizing a couple of villages in Anatolia.We begin life with such ambitions, do we not? Too late we learn, even for the daughter of a god, even for the son of a king, some trophies are beyond our grasp.

In my day, I was the most feared creature in existence. So savage and strange that none dared stand before me. Behold my fiery breath, which reaped armies like sheaves of wheat. Flee before my serpent-headed tail, the very touch of which is poison. Tremble at my lion’s visage, and gibber in madness at the goat’s head which arises from my back (don’t try to talk to him—deaf as a post and marginally less intelligent). 

These griffons, manticores and hippogriffs, hah, mere imitators. No sphinx was I, to shelter behind soft riddles and twisting wordplay—pure brute power I was, more harbinger of doom than mere physical presence. And yet, it is I, not they, who became a byword for all things illusory and unachievable.

Let that be a lesson to you, mortal: do not rely on the memories of men for your legacy. 

Bellerophon came on a winged horse. They all had something: Invulnerable but for the heel, a ball of string, a lion’s skin. A pack of cheats, the lot of them.

And he had the temerity to think this was all something deserved, as if he had won the winged steed on merit. Idiot boy was accused of sleeping with another man’s wife, got sent on a suicide mission and then fell asleep in a temple. The living embodiment of failing upwards, until of course he very suddenly and quite definitely wasn’t. 

The next time you see someone lauded as a hero, a champion, a strong man, remember Bellerophon. Remember what came of all of it in the end.

He said, I have come to slay you, ravager of Lycia. He said I was a blight, a pestilence, that he would scourge me from the land and make it whole again.

Trying to talk himself into it, I suppose. All this braggadocio and bluster serving just to show how thin his young and brittle courage was. I said, come down from your high horse and let’s talk about that.

He said, I am the son of Glaucus, beloved of Athena, tamer of Pegasus.

I said, that’s neat. I said, you will learn how little these things matter, should you live that long. I too, have a father, one that promised me the world.

He said, silence beast! And he pulled his iron war-helm down over his eyes, spurred his steed into the skies and nocked a goose-feathered arrow against his chest. 

It was not a glorious battle, I’m afraid. He flew high above, his arrows stinging like thorns, but my hide was too strong and he could do me no harm. But always he flew out of reach of claw and tail and tooth. A stalemate, as dignified as a horse trying to swat a gnat with its tail. Until, in my frustration, I opened wide my maw and let loose with a jet of flame.

Well. We all know how well that went.

He had a spear with a plug of lead, and thrust it down my open throat, where it ran red and melted into my gut. Do you have any idea what molten metal feels like, burning you form the inside? Suppose not, otherwise you’d be a resident here, not a visitor. It is. Unpleasant.

And then I awoke, if that’s the term, and found myself here. A fitting end for a monster, you say, as if your end will be any different.

The End of the Orcs

The orc tribes lived by a simple, savage rule: Anyone could challenge a chief, at a time and place of the challenger’s choosing. 

The warlords jostled for position, crushing underfoot the goblin-slaves, who suffered in silence and clutched their secret, hoarded hatreds to their hearts like gold.

Until the tribe stole the secrets of the gunpowder from the dwarves.

No one noticed the goblin approach. “I challenge you here, now,” he said, and from under his rags drew a long pistol. A flash, a roar, and he became king.

He ruled a fortnight, until someone made a blunderbuss.

The Power of Make-Believe

“Back off,” the boy said. “I’m not afraid to use this.” His hand was in his jacket pocket, tenting the material from the inside. 

“That’s just a crayon, kid,” the mugger laughed, before being blown off his feet.

Harold pulled a purple crayon from his pocket and blew a curl of smoke from the tip.

Object of Worship

The Old One reached down with a thousand fingers and stirred the primordial ooze. 

For an aeon it watched life grow with a million eyes. 

No, this would not do. 

Try again, elsewhere, elsewhen. 

It dropped the world, a broken toy, that afterwards would worship it.

The Living Ocean

On the shores of the Living Ocean, he dipped a toe into the vermilion water, and felt it welcome his return.

“Too long,” the sea-foam sang, chiding. “We thought you had forgotten.”

“Never,” he smiled, though he felt a storm-surge of sadness. Truly, a season had been too long. But his long labor was nearly done, his embassy accomplished. “I bring a message from the King of the Dead.”

“Well?” the waves asked sullenly.

He withdrew his toe, sadly put on his ashen shoe. “A truce. Acceptance of the lines that separate you. If the waters rise no further, he will raise no more lands.”

“Agreed,” it said, sea-quick, storm-quick. “Now, come back to me.”

He did cry then, red tears marking his face. “I am on his ground now.” And turned his back on the wide, red ocean as it rocked itself in misery.

The Orc King

We used to be elves, said the orc king, upon his throne of skulls.

Nothing like nasty old orcs, are they? ‘Course elves are nice, it’s easy for them.

The beautiful child who is loved and praised grows up believing men are good; the ugly child shunned and hated knows they are evil. Can’t both be right, you say, but I tell you they can: The world is different for you and I.

This is our war then: Revenge upon those that rejected us, rage against all who live the happy, soft lives that by our countenance we are denied.

Wolves

The wind scratched at Vathis like ten thousand cold claws as he floundered through the snow.

Vathis cursed the cold and cursed this dead planet and cursed the Captain who’d led them here. Led them to die out here. He didn’t curse the thing they’d found, no. That might call it.

He tightened his mask and listened to the wind, but now it whispered of prey and the chase, and the stories were not his. Once the hunt had been theirs, the search across the icy gulfs of space to fall upon some fallow world, but these mournful songs belonged to the pack hunters, the scavengers in this wasteland. 

Vathis redoubled his pace, and clutched his prize against his chest.

Through the flying ice his four eyes made out a steep-sloped hill. He scrabbled towards it and hauled himself up the side, the baying creatures closer now. Over his shoulder he saw them flowing liquidly across the ground, yellow eyes glittering. 

The wind sang of the scent on the wind, of reckless hate and burning hunger.

Captain Skelsi had been so proud. A touchstar, he had said, hidden within this forgotten corner of a nowhere system, once home to some nothing race that had devoured itself. A touchstar, far from the scrabblings of the other Houses, a thing to raise their shoddy clan to glory. The prize would be theirs.

“Grave-robbing?” Vathis had muttered to himself. He’d been against this from the start. Not that Skelsi had listened. 

“This isn’t theft. You cannot steal from the dead,” Skelsi had said, and dismissed him with a wave of one of his upper arms. 

Look what that arrogance had brought them.

They’d pawed through the brittle remains of blasted cities—Skelsi in the lead of course, a reluctant Vathis at the rear—burrowed into the cold corpse of a long-dead civilization, until they’d found it, found the touchstar. Brushing aside the spiky, trefoil warning signs posted about a concrete and steel sarcophagus, they’d found this glowing echo, this faint reflection of the sun’s life-giving rays.

Found the thing which kept it, too, as old and bitter as the winter wind. 

Skelsi had brushed Vathis aside, rushing forward to claim his prize. Instead, it claimed his life. Skelsi had died first, and the others, all save Vathis—last and least—who had fled with this one fragment.

Vathis clambered over the sharp, cutting rocks with all four hands, until he stood at the top of the hill, crested by a snow-capped boulder. He placed his back against it, drew his pistol with an upper hand, a knife in each of his lower two. The animals drew closer, circling, fangs bared. The wind crowed of red joy and white bones. 

And then they drew back, turned and fled. The wind stilled. The touchstar in his hand throbbed, like something alive.

Vathis turned. Skelsi wrapped his cold, dead hands about Vathis’ neck. “You cannot steal from the dead,” he hissed. 

His fingers bit like ten thousand cold claws.

Anabasis

“You are trapped, mercenary, five hundred leagues from home,” said the satrap. “Before you lies the trackless desert, beyond that impassible mountains. How do you think you can escape?"

"Same way we got here,” said the Greek. “One step at a time.”

* * *

Based on "Anabasis," by the Greek general Xenophon.

Destroyer of Worlds

"How'd it go?"

"Guess."

"He's doubling our funding, putting us up for the Pulitzer and sending us on a vacation somewhere warmer. Like Mercury." 

"Close. Field ready by the end of the month or he's closing us down."

"Not unexpected, Kitty. What's the next move?"

"Try again. Figure a way around the schizophrenic heautoscopy. Something about waking up and finding you're the copy seems to drive them mad."

"Maybe we need better material."

"You've got an idea, Jules?"

"The volunteers have been special forces, alpha wolves. We need military training, but without the self-regard. Someone detached, maybe who doesn't even feel human."

"A sociopath."

"Or traumatized."

"Stop."

"You know it could work, Kitty."

"Hasn't he been through enough already?"

"He's one man. At the moment. Put that in the balance against the entire human race."

"It'll destroy his world, you know."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

Medieval Italian Man

The blacksmith eyed the stranger, the stump of his right wrist wrapped in red rags. “I can’t forge you a new hand,” he said, “that is beyond my skill.”

“Revenge only needs a blade,” the other growled. “Fingers would just get in the way.”

* * *

Medieval Italian Man is the hero we deserve.