Predator Press
[LOBO]
t was cold. And Troy had grown so much over the past year, his gigantic feet stuck out over the edge of the bed.
Virtually everyone commented on his size. And naturally large already, the hard farming toil made his body answer as
steel.
In deference to his heartbroken mother, rarely was how much he looked like his father spoken aloud. Indeed, 'Vetter the Silent' would have been long
forgotten were Troy not first born the very same year the Beast was slain. To the contrary, he was hailed by the small community as a sign of a fearless new beginning.
And at seventeen, he was already starting to doubt those stories.
Tired from working the dying fields, he should by all rights be sleeping soundly. But his mind dwelled relentlessly over the previous day; the day his beloved Ella, the graceful, lovely girl whom he had deflowered only weeks before, was denied him forever.
He could no longer stare at the ceiling through tears; the cold, mourning weight of his aching heart collapsed deeper into the void every second, and rest was not soon imminent. Rubbing his eyes he sat up. Surely Ella’s mother was mistaken! Was he not rich enough? Honest enough? Good-looking enough? Indeed, Troy passed over desirable –and desiring-- brides every day. Why should he be so denied? The image of that hard, disagreeable woman, aged to unguessable years by the unkind elements and labor, telling him ‘no’ seared wounds into his mind again and again.
Earlier, Kess tried to help with advice. Winter drawing near, the chores easing ever so slowly, they found themselves occasionally frittering twilight hours away fishing, climbing trees, playing games; the idle pleasures of youth. “You are, after all, a bastard,” he offers. “Perhaps Ella’s mother is simply unimpressed with your
prospects.” Smacking Troy hard, a wrestling taunt, he smiles, “I would suggest you do something
heroic, were you not such a big pussy.”
Pondering this, Troy got up in the early night and donned his twice-altered pants and his thrice-altered shirt. After his boots, he folded his seemingly tiny blanket out of habit, lost in deep thought. There was nothing to heroic to
do, it seemed, in this bland farming community.
We barely survive; was this not heroic enough?
***
The “Beast’s” former lair is still well-known. Looted completely, it was sealed with stones sixteen years hence.
And it was most certainly an evil place even still.
Nonetheless, one by one, Troy mindlessly tossed the stones away. Perhaps a demonstration of
courage was in order; were he to retrieve a souvenir from this shunned, ominous place, perhaps it would impress Ella’s mother. Tip the scales. Win her over. And then Ella and he would be wed with her blessing, raising her grandchildren.
He poked his torch into the small hole he had created and dropped it inside, watching carefully. There was nothing to see except more cave. No cobwebs, no life,
nothing.
He wiggled in.
It was warmer than he expected. And
moist. And the smells were that of fetid, unseen vermin. Were he not so sure the cave was utterly sealed, he would have suspected that maybe the mountain cats were denned here. Maybe bears.
He knew that anything
easy to find in this forsaken place would have been stolen long ago. So despite his size, he worked himself into difficult corridors that seemed to loop and climb and drop, sometimes only to pointlessly loop back into a sizable chamber where he had been before. Still, with his innate and uncanny sense of direction, he was never lost, never moments from the tiny entrance in the random maze.
In a tight downward shaft, he began to find bones.
Small, uninteresting ones at first. But the deeper he crawled, the larger they became. An avid hunter, these were bones of animals he had never seen before; long, delicate birdlike ones. Even
one of these strange specimens would have fulfilled his original goal most likely; groups would come for miles around for a campfire only to speculate fantastically what The Beast
ate, weaving tales told over generations.
But questions arose in his mind.
Why are there so many of this same strange animal? And what does this large bird look like? The fact that the
size of the bones increased as he persisted downward in the dark made his heart race.
How big were the really big ones? Would he find the bones of something of equal size of the beast? What would that be?
Noises.
Scratching. Something heavy against crumbling stone.
He stopped and listened.
Nothing.
***
The cavern spilled wide suddenly, into a space the torchlight couldn’t illuminate well. He dropped it in front of himself to gauge the depth. It fell for about ten feet, sparking wildly on the ground from the impact. Then with an abrupt stop, it came to rest awkwardly on a pale, jagged surface.
It was the surface of a sea of skeletons. Bones picked so clean they could have passed for snow in the poor light.
He gasped and gaped; this chamber was just so
vast; it was like standing under a dark sky.
Dropping his torch here was a mistake obviously. He only had one left, and unless this adventure was over
now, he would need one for the winding and cramped way to the cavern’s opened entrance.
But the
treasure! Within ten feet of the torch was a bone of such incredible size, it must have been a horse, or at least a creature of equal size. Troy had never actually seen a 'horse' before; this could be
proof.
Before long, torch retrieved, he was scrambling across the jagged, ivory surface. In the distance was a strange geometrically
organized area that had drawn his curiosity, and he decided that that would be the end of his explorations. He scrabbled deeper into the chamber, boots sinking --sometimes to the knee-- into the grizzly terrain.
In a circle on the biggest bones of all lie scattered big, thick, randomly-shaped shards of some sort. He picked one up.
It was light, yet strangely flat and thick. Too flat to be a bone.
You might think it was an
eggshell ...
***
Bedazzled by the new smell of young human flesh, the hunter glided down in virtually silent circles. Despite being crazed and ravenous by the exotic, delectable meal, it was wary and restrained, picking the moment by instinct.
It came down on the boy perfectly. A certain killstrike.
But Troy, senses alive, was no fool. At the last second he stepped aside as the mammoth predator slammed into the "ground". And in a fraction of a moment the clever boy’s sword was being pulled from the foolish beast’s neck.
He stood in awe of his kill. It was
easily fifteen feet long--
Smaller, the next one seized upon the hesitation, clamping down on his torch arm at the elbow. Troy passed into shock as he and the grinning beast pulled at separate angles ... flesh, muscle, and ligaments stripped away from his naked bone, punctuated with a sickening lurch at the wrist.
The third, much smaller blur, lopped at his other arm. Missing badly, he snapped the boy's sword with a sickening, muffled clang.
And then there was another.
And another.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Alas, fair Ella, your mother was right--
[LOBO] 
