RESILIENCE

                             

RESILIENCE

By: James Martin-Davis

"Prashpak shar Nisk?" hissed the beast in front of Matthew. Its inhuman voice caused the cavernous chamber to fill with the rolling sound of its harsh words. A chamber that held only two beings, Matthew, a Twin master of the Vein, and a Grelkian interrogator.
"Prashpak shar Nisk?" repeated the beast.
"Where is your unit, Skin" was the rough translation of the repeated question. Living in a blur, Matthew who may have been questioned for several days or even for several weeks - the exact timeframe was impossible to tell - attempted to unravel the meaning of the harsh Grelkian tongue. He had been tortured, beaten and deprived of sleep. His once incredible physical strength had all but disappeared. Nevertheless, he hung on. He would not break. He would not turncoat on his unit, no matter the pain, no matter the pressure. His mental conditioning honed from years of study and training in the Veined Temple, and then tempered throughout a lifetime of conflict and military hardship, would provide the soldier the resolve to withstand any torment to his physical person. Even if that torment became so extreme as to lead to his demise.
Existing in this hellish state, Matthew decided to explore a more extreme method of torture evasion. Rather than answering the scaly mass with words, he instead spat through swollen lips directly at the towering beast. The bloody spittle landed plumb on the monster’s short stumpy snout causing the massive hulk of the Zor interrogator to jerk back.
"Now that was a fantastic shot" thought Matthew in a brief flash of lucid black humour.
Standing just over nine feet tall the Zor was a picture of balance and power. With its flattish reptilian head now dripping with spit and blood that marred the blue-black scales that covered the creature's body, the interrogator raised its sinewy arm to its face and wiped the offending human secretion away. Its other arm remained stock still, poised in typical Zor fashion; upper arm angled slightly away from its side. Its forearm ended in a hand that sported a set of wickedly sharp, curved talons of a dark silvery grey.
Its teeth now bared, the Zor's deep-set eyes narrowed. With terrific force the Zor suddenly smashed his right arm forward. Talons extended, hand and arm sped toward Matthew's left eye. As the curved claws travelled along their path, time slowed for Matthew. Each scale, bump and scar on the integrators arm came into acute focus. The dim light given off by the braziers placed in the interrogation cavern caused the creatures scales to reflect the light. At first small glints sparked the Zor's shiny carapace. Then as the talons approached closer these glints grew into small fires. Closer still, the fires became a continuous conflagration of flame which jetted up and away from the arm. The impossibly lit limb, a burning spike of pain, propelled by the absolute nemesis of Humankind, drew even nearer.
The talon hit. Pain exploded and the light in Matthew's world disappeared. 

Suddenly a loud bang sheared through the depths of Matthew Vein's mind lifting his subconscious out of the bleak black nothingness. With the grogginess of one who has just been abruptly awakened from a deep sleep, Matthew opened his one good eye. His vision was met with the familiar view of a small spartan room awash in the crisp clean golden light of a morning sunrise. As his eye adjusted to this welcome invasion the memory of the previous night’s hellish dream retreated back into his subconscious, for now, shut way until the next time it broke free.
The pain of the Zor's violence, so real mere moments before, disappeared leaving in its place the permanent memento of that hideous event. A ruinous throbbing pocket of flesh that had ached continuously since the interrogators talon pierced the soft pulpy mass of Matthew's eyeball. As always after these regular nightmares all that remained was an animal-like panic that surged with each beat of his heart through his large and battered frame.
"Master Vein, wake up." said a voice full of panic.
A young girl stood framed in the doorway of Matthews home. Recognising the fear in the girl's voice, reality came flooding back causing the hard-bitten warrior to sit up quickly.
"What's wrong child?" growled Matthew "You nearly gave me a heart attack."
"Apologies Master Vein, but Albert has just rushed back into the village saying he has seen Grelkian nearby." the girl said in a breathless rush.
"Whoa Sarah, slow down" Matthew said," You are saying that there are Grelk here now?"
"I think so master. Master Brect asked me to run up here as fast as I could to fetch you." replied Sarah.
"Of course little one. Let me get dressed and I’ll come immediately".
With a grateful smile Sarah turned heal and closed his thick wooden door. The sound of her footsteps receded quickly as she scampered back down the forest path that led to the village.
With purposeful movements Matthew strode over to his favourite chair and retrieved his well-worn clothes that he had slung there the previous night. As he dressed, his concerns grew.
"Grelk in Palla," thought Matthew, there had not been any type of Grelk spotted in this region since the clearings ended with the purging of the last Grelkian stronghold in Southern Palla twenty years before. "Was this sighting a goatherd's imagination playing riot, or had Albert actually seen Grelk."
Having located his rumpled white linen shirt amongst the pile of clothes, the ex-soldier slipped it over his shaved head, momentarily covering his long scared face. Once pulled down, Matthews's one ice blue eye flared with anger and then with fear as these thoughts started to blossom.
"If the boy is telling the truth then we will have to fight them – I will have to fight them". With a sinking feeling Matthew prayed that the Grelkian interlopers were not the battle-bred Zor. "I can not face Zor again. I will break. I will be captured."
These fears bubbled up uninvited from the hidden corners of Matthew's mind; a mind once fearless, brave and confident; a mind now reduced to a state of perpetual fragility and trepidation by the torture he had suffered at the hands of the Grelk ten years ago. This vast swing in personality had led to Matthew's sudden military downfall. His immense strength and physical toughness counted for nothing when these fears arose, and now they were surfacing again.
Realising that he had stopped dressing and was gripping the back of his hand made oak chair, Matthew attempted to calm down. He let go of the honey coloured wood, took a deep breath and made a choice.
“Run? Can I really turn my back on this village,” a village that had harboured and eventually grew to love the sorrowful figure of Master Vein. "Can I leave my friends?”
Looking deeply within himself, Matthew realised that he couldn’t. He would stay and face both his real and imagined fears.
He then stretched up to his full height and took a deep breath.
“Blood.”
“Speed.”
“Power!”
“Aggression!!”
Each word of the mantra becoming louder until he screamed out the last. The words worked as intended dampening the fear that was fighting to conquer Matthew's new found resolve.
Matthew yanked open the door of his cupboard and reached inside, his fingers closing around a dusty hilt of a Sword.  The fallen warrior pulled blade and scabbard out into the light for the first time in many years and with an expert twist he strapped the massive blade into place.
With the hilt protruding over his left shoulder Matthew ducked down as he stepped through the doorway of his home and out into a wonderfully bright summer’s morning. Closing the door behind him, he adjusted the unfamiliar load on his back and walked across the glade that surrounded his dwelling toward the short path that led to the village.

“My friends, please let me speak,” said Brect. “We need to act upon this quickly. We can not be running to and fro or shouting each other down.”
The now quiet collective heads of the crowd nodded in agreement.
Brect scanned Hocq’s population, moving his gaze from familiar face to familiar face. “The Zor have returned,” he suddenly said, voice catching slightly as he pronounced the short sharp name. “We must act, we must….”
“So Albert has seen Zor?” interrupted a deep voice that reverberated from behind the gathering. As one, the already nervy crowd jumped and spun to see the imposing figure of Matthew Vein standing rock solid. “Is it true?”
“Don’t let them see your fear” thought Matthew, “Control it, use it”.
“Matthew, thank the Blood God you came” said Brect. “Yes it is true; Albert spotted roughly twelve large figures on the Southern bank of the Lee. Apparently two of the creatures were pointing toward Hocq.”
“What shall we do Master Vein?” said a voice in the crowd.
With a slow deliberate movement Matthew drew his enormous steel blade, and said. “What we do Aubrey, my boy, is kill them”
“Brect, gather thirty of the strongest men and meet me at Hilda’s as soon as you can and make sure that the rest are holed safely up in the hall.”
Brect nodded his agreement and swiftly moved into the crowd.
As the group of villagers dispersed, Matthew strode down the main street to the last building in the village.
Standing beside an old barrel Matthew rested the five-foot blade against the cobbles. Only one of the Blood God's warriors - The Soldiers of the Vein Order - had the strength to wield such a devastating weapon. The exceptionally heavy blade tapered down from a width twelve inches at the hilt to a sharp stabbing point; a style of sword specifically designed to cause maximum damage to any creature as large and strong as a Zor.
His resolve now firm, Matthew looked up into the rising sun.

The 12 battle bred Zor threw themselves against the makeshift spear wall that the villagers had created out of an assortment of forks, billhooks and scythes. The beasts, heedless of the damage they were sustaining, smashed blade and spike aside, quickly reaching the soft centre of the defensive formation. Claws, teeth and blades ripped into the stunned Humans, severing limbs, tearing flesh and shattering bones. In the mere seconds following this charge the brave folk of Hocq broke, scattering in all directions. Except for one.
With a scream of pure insanity, Matthew Vein charged into the knot of Zor, his blade spinning with preternatural speed, slicing, stabbing and cutting his way through the cold black scaly flesh of the killers.
Blocking a viscous sideswipe whilst simultaneously swaying away from the Jaws of a Zor to his left, Matthew exploded into a complicated move that confounded his two opponents. Feigning a riposte toward the sword wielding Zor, he changed the direction of the blade and slammed the point into the neck of the biting Zor. The steel penetrated the thick hide and slid into the flesh beneath and the ever-widening sword sliced through the Zor's neck until only a flap of skin held the beastly head in place. Using the momentum of this perfect strike, he spun around and leapt over the fallen body of Aubrey. Landing in roll he shot through the legs of the last standing Zor. Blade licking out, he severed the creature's hamstring causing the towering beast to collapse onto its knees. Standing behind the crippled beast, Matthew swung his sword downwards with all his might.
Withdrawing the blade from the chest of the now bisected Zor, Matthew surveyed the carnage that this skirmish had caused. Of the 30 Men who had stood so bravely against the dozen lizardlike warriors only 7 remained. Pitifully under armed and lacking in training the survivors now crept back into the field where their friends, brothers, fathers and sons now lay in pools of blood that where even now coagulating into thick pools of bark red mud. Brect, supporting a long cut along the side of his face walked over to the tall gore spattered form of there savoir, Master Matthew Vein. In a daze the steps that this peaceful man took were laboured. His thoughts ragged, like a worn piece of cloth, newly ripped. Without looking into the gore covered face of the warrior before him Brect asked a one word question in the barest of whispers.
“Why?”
“Because this is what they do my friend,” responded Matthew “All the Zor do is kill, eat and breed. They are a plague upon this Earth, a plague that I and my fellow brothers thought had been eradicated.”
With a kindly move Matthew placed his hand gently upon the shoulder of the towns’ leader as if trying to give the man some of his new found courage.
Raising his eyes up from the grisly ground beneath the soled boots of the warrior, he slowly started to make sense of the past 30 minutes. The ragged cloth was being sowed together, thoughts and memories melding back into a cohesive pattern so that his rational self could come to fore, Brect was now becoming Brect again and not just a frightened and shocked mass of flesh and bones that had survived the insanity of the fight.
“We must send word of this to Palla, Matthew,” said Brect, his eyes now firmly holding the weapons masters hard blue stare. No darting back and forth for the village leaders eyes now, the animal panic had now been subsumed and the man had reappeared in that gaze, a man who had now been tempered into a harder being, a gaze that spoke of pain and sorrow, yet had a gimlet quality that only those who had experienced the stark horror of battle could show, a gaze that was mirrored in the veteran in front of him. “If this reptilian plague is back then we have to warn everyone. Who knows if there are more out there, or if there will be another Zor attack on Hocq, we have to get to Palla.”
“Yes, I will go, but first we must attend to this field. Gather the surviving warriors to me,” said Matthew, unconsciously giving the, until half a day ago, farmers a title that carried his respect and at the same time weighed those peaceful men down with a newly found doom. “We must pay our respect to those we have lost and remove the taint of the scum who have slashed our peace away.”
Once Brect had nodded his agreement, Matthew turned about and walked over to one remaining breathing Zor. He crouched down before the head of the prone scaled figure. The Zors golden slitted eyes flicked open as Matthews form cast its shade over the lizardmans head. Silhouetted against the bright heady light of the sun Matthew leaned in, bringing his mouth close to the Zors armoured ear hole and whispered.
“"Prashpak shar Zor?”
The Zor tensed his neck; sinewy lines lurched underneath the scaly hide as it attempted to move its broken body. “Nisk, you will all die.” Was its hissing response.
With an evil smile and a felling a boiling anticipation that Matthew had though long buried in the torture caverns years before. He stood up for his crouch and with an expertise gained from many years, slashed his massive blade through the neck of the defenceless Grelkian.
“ I had hoped that was what you would say” he muttered, and without a moments hesitation scooped up the head of the decapitated Zor and strode back to the village and away from the field that had reawakened the violence which had once made the warrior one of the most feared Masters of the Blood Gods veined order.