Chapter VI:
The Bubbling-Bogs.
“So the Bubbling-Bogs eh?”
Grimace called the swamps, the destinations the rumors have decidedly lead them to. She came to a slow, tilting her body downwards as Manis hopped off. Springing his knees as dust puffed around him.
“I can take you as far as the path in the forest, just follow it, you won’t be able to miss the bogs. When you’re ready my dear, say my name! and you will find my shadow over you, no matter what I have to trample to get to you! Now! Run along, there’s a kingdom waiting for you!” She pauses with a bubbling cackle…
“And Manis… lest you forget I’m always watching; They’ll never be able to stop you… just trust in me... trust in the darkness...follow it unto the sea of Oblivion…Follow destruction can only mean rebirth…” Her voice hums, vibrates, lulling Manis into a haze that paralyzes him and his visions begins to shake.
Before Manis can readjust his vision, her ruby eyes glistening against the torches light, making them shine even brighter. There was a rumble in the distant forest and as quickly as they rumble came, Grimace was gone. The path was dark, bugs chirped around him, things unbeknown to him rustled in the darkness.
Following the path forward as towering trees accompanied his journey, against a tree stood a back-pack, it was dirty and looked to have been here for years. Possibly even longer. The top of the bag that was folded over and snapped to two buckles, was suspiciously left open. There were dirty brown leaves laying inside the pack as well as branches. Manis cautiously looked up, squinting his gaze, and they definitely didn’t match vibrant yellow leaves that graced the greenwoods.
He rummaged around with his fingers and found a box that was left under the aging leaves. It was a rounded chest, crafted with chipped and aged wood. The lock was already busted open, but it was full of something. Manis set it on the ground, slowly opening it with anticipation muttering. “What in the seven hells…”
A piece of paper lied on top of a heap of things, it only had one thing written upon it. “For: Manis” He crumpled the paper and threw it behind him pulling everything out one-by-one, setting the items on the ground. There was an iron blade with a steel hilt, a short silver morning star that looked to have been cleaned recently.
A set of home-made bombs of sorts, steel balls with holes in the middle of them, with pieces of strings sticking out of the holes. Lastly there was a torch, and sheaths for each of the weapons that he was now fastening to his belt. With the clicking of his accessorized and weaponized belt, out of the darkness he heard a muffled “poof!”
There was a long-line of dimly lit torches on the right-side of the path, announcing themselves and the path before him. Manis instinctively lit his torch. as the embers brightened his dirty face, he began strolling cautiously down the winding path that seemed to go on for a day’s time.
The trail winded and curved and even inclined up a hill for a few miles. The incline, the further Manis trekked upon, the more it seemed to slope. When Manis finally reached the top, heaving and out of breath. He looked up holding his torch, exhausted. He could now see the bog that was bubbling, a village that stood upon a series of docks.
Smoke poured from chimney’s and he could hear a commotion coming from the village, barely able to make out a group of people. Just beyond the village of docks stood a coliseum, and with that Manis grinned. “This is it…” “This is exactly what I’ve been searching for, plague on the rest of my childhood, now these idle docks, I could grow to call home.”
After taking a few minutes to breathe, Manis jogged down the hill and made for the bridge that connected the docks to the neighboring path. The bridge was rickety and made of wooden planks.
As Manis skipped across he stepped onto the docks, which were much more stable than the bridge. The docks were in the shape of an “H” with three buildings on each side and in the center stood a seventh building, the pub.
A sign was hitched above it that read “The Swampy Wench” It didn’t have a door, well, it obviously did but it was thrown off the hinges laying to the right of the entrance.
A mug of ale flies by his left shoulder, and just like that, Manis knew he had found the commotion. Clasping his hands and smiling a smile, that only a snake would have. Many patrons filled the bar, from dwarves to elves, all the way to humans.
Only a few seats were left unfilled, it was crowded so Manis used that to his advantage and immediately sat down to his right, on the only free bar stool. A dirty grizzly looking man, who reeked of foul smells, hiccupped.
“HEY! What are you doin’ in ‘ere kid…” Manis hears a breeze pass through the pub, from his right ear to his left it whispers, “Do it, start the situation and control it, no one can stop you…”
Manis flips his hair and cocks his eyes, piercing his. He laughs with a dead gaze, unsheathing his blade. He stabs the man in the ribs twisting his blade and putting his index finger on his mouth. Telling the man whose legs are now shaking, not to scream. His blood pouring down the stool, onto Manis’s blade and painting his fingertips. A voice then shouts from the back of the pub.
“OI! What the devil is goin’ on o’er there mate! “ Manis laughs turn to a sigh of irritation, he pushes the Man’s body to the left, as he topples over, Manis shrugs. “WELL I GUESS I’M DONE WITH THAT ONE!” He hopped up on his stool balancing himself on one foot. Jumping on the bar and kicking glasses everywhere. The barmaid curses at him but before she can say another word his mace swings to the side of her temple. Her words quickly slowed to nothing, as she twitched on the ground Manis looked down…
She groaned saying quite slowly. “W…why…” He chuckles as everyone in the pub is still in a state of shock, almost if he felt a pleasure in their fear. Every woman is shrieking, jolting his eyes toward the back.
“THIS… is what is going on here gentlemen and WHORES” He says as he screams and spits dragging his mace on the bar with a terrible scraping sound piercing everyone’s eardrums, chucking splinters of wood every which way, Manis looked around, analyzing the crowd as he stops walking.
“Oh? Uncomfortable are we? Good, great, SPLENDID!” Manis throws his hands out and jumps off of the bar smashing a table in half with his mace. There’s a group of men now standing in the back, shaking with their weapons drawn, Manis drew long, deep breaths. “Who… WHAT IN THE DEVIL ARE YE! DEMON OR MAN?!”
A hearty man with a long, surprisingly kempt beard. He had sad dough eyes, scraggly black hair that rested on his shoulders. A kind soul who wore dark plated armor, with orb like pauldrons, sharp and heavy plated boots. head-to-toe, as did his men whom were sitting with him at a table in the back of the dimly lit pub.
“Do you have eyes?” Manis says calmly with a welcoming grin. Chuckling as he speaks. “well… USE THEM YOU SODDING MORON!” He swings his mace upward to the right, cackling and smashing a woman’s already broken-glass jaw.
She somehow, cursed, screamed, hacked-up blood, cried, and clawed the bar floor all at once. As Manis continuously drives his morning star into her face, she begins to look less like a women and more like a terrible tragedy. The kind of tragedy that would come to work in bandages, if she did perchance survive this…
He picks her up by the hair forcing her to face the men in the back. “Pretty ain’t she boys?” All of her teeth are hanging by a thread, some are falling out, her face is drenched in her own blood, her eyes swollen, her face is horrifically disfigured and dripping blood, practically pouring. The look in her eyes says she’s barely alive, but she might as well be dead. As she stared at the men in the back for some glimmer of hope, they clinched their weapons and did nothing. Manis pivoted her body toward a post in the pub, pulling her by the hair, she didn’t retaliate. He then leaned her back, smashing her head into the post, as he snapped the post and dented her forehead. The barmaids face was now unrecognizable. Manis smiled, stretching the skin on his face as he cackled. Gritting his teeth as he slammed her into the post over and over, and over again. As blood surrounded and painted the post, Manis Threw her body to the side, shaking his finger at the crowd, his hands soaked in her blood.
“now that’s number three! Shall we go to four?” “Or are you lads going to be clever and put down your weapons and listen, you wanted The Slasher…” “You got him boys.” He grins sheathing his mace and graciously bowing and wiping the blood off of his forearms. The only sound that filled the pub was all of their weapons dropping. “Y-Y-our, just a child…” The hearty kind-soul-of-a-soldier says in disbelief. “Well the world creates some terrible monsters…” “I’m not here to mutilate, a thousand apologies for the mess!”
Manis grinning as he pulls a chair forward and turns it around sitting on it backwards. “Listen, listen, listen, mates… if ye do happen to comply, I could personally say that you five would be my most honored personal guard. Taking care of yours truly, Manis slyly points to himself as his posture slopes. If you accept that this village changes from henceforth, I promise you, nay, all of you. Right here and now, that everyone in this village will have a rightful place in my kingdom… but mates… before you even think of responding, know this. What I did just moments ago is nothing compared to a force greater than even I, and what it will do if you deny me. You folk know him as The Ripper…”
Everyone in the bar goes wide-eyed… the kind souled leader of the men spoke, without hesitation. “We accept…” A clatter of argument begins to erupt.
Manis eyes wander around the room smiling at what seems to be transpiring. The leader booms in a shout, slamming his metal gloves down on the table, adding a new hole to its many. “SILENCE…” “If this be our only chance, lest he calls his beast on us… that we have talked of for a many-a-nights now…aye… I’ve heard the stories, the speculation of this beast we’ve come to know as: The Ripper.” “The Boy speaks the truth! Traveling the road, I’ve seen it’s peril, it’s destruction… it’s ghastly carnage…” “And I pray unto all of you, LISTEN TO ME.“ “The things I’ve witnessed The Ripper do, it is more vile than the devil himself!”
As a silence spreads throughout the bar, Manis claps his hands.
“So, we’re in agreement are we? While you’re not wrong about The Ripper being quite the terrible beast, to think he wouldn’t be present or to think that siding with me would prevent my holy dark liege’s presence, well that’s just foolish sir!” he says jokingly, chuckling and holding his stomach. “Now I will ask of all of you to go to the coliseum, please my subjects” he says with a disconcerting smile and a paralyzed gaze, “have no fear…” They all follow Manis as he marches, just like he used to march toward that stage every year. This year was no different, Manis had just found his next stage. As the lot of them poured into the center of the coliseum. Manis spread his hands into the air.
The coliseum itself, was abandoned. Toppled pillars, seats sprinkled with debris, even charred stairs , from a battle that’s a story for another time. The archway was crumbling as the all the drunk patrons followed in single-file, their feet thumping in a rhythm. The fallen pillars were toppled on one another at the colliseum’s base floor. Weathered from age, some were crushed and some were still whole, disheveled from time. Many of the balconies seemed to have been torn off by something ferocious from a time before. Just as the crowd of drunkards stomped into the base of the arena, their boots kicking up the sand, Scuffling forward. Manis stomps, pivoting his body and taking a deep breath, holding his stomach.
“My dark liege, COME UNTO ME!!”
“OH, GRIMACE, PLEAS HEAR THEE!”
He dances and screams giggling, as a rumble approaches from the forest and all the people turn back stricken with fear, nasty humid sweats, seeing it’s tyrannical horror in all of its splendor. All of the peasants hollered, screamed, and ran into the coliseum in a panic as Grimace’s enormity had increased, undeniably. It towered as crawled over the archway, it’s legs seemingly endless and hairy pillars. Peering its gaze downward at Manis, it’s tendrils slopping and dripping it’s bile. Grimace then reached its leg forward and picked up Manis, quickly setting him on top of her hairy head. Manis cackled as he spoke. “Oh my dark liege, how I have truly missed thee.” Grimace was speechless, her pincers slammed together in a booming clap, crawling over the coliseum it’s legs creeping all the way to the back wall. Where the people had all huddled to in absolute terror, in some, poor desperate salvation. Crawling around the coliseum to the opposite side. As Grimace positioned its body to be looking directly at all of the peasants. Its legs then stretched onto both of the adjacent sides of the coliseum, crushing the only seats left in this abandoned venue. Grimace had to bend its legs to fit in this poor excuse for a coliseum of this stature can hardly contain Grimace’s ferocious, immense, and terrible existence.
The crowd is rife with panic, terror, sweat define their faces, women’s knees buckle, father’s fists clench, children wailed, screamed, and babbled as they inevitably cried. Until their cries turn into irrefutably horrible shrieks. Manis flips his hair back, smiling a grin no boy should have.
“MY EXTRAVAGANTLY STRANGE SUBJECTS! WHY THE LONG FACES?”
Manis points to his rosy cheeks, rotating his fingertips. “SMILE! HAVE A LAUGH! Or perish…” He chuckles throwing his head back, losing himself in the moment, and quite possibly Manis’s damaged mind… Snapping back to a serious tone, his expressions becomes flat. “Now… I do have to think you lovely folks, truly, if I had a hat, I’d tip it!” “For being, such lovely hosts, inviting me in like this and deeming me your young king, many couldn’t accept this honor…”
“Oh my darling subjects!” his grin flashes wide and violent as he chomps his teeth. “You truly are the kindest, if not the only kind folks I have ever met!” “You could say I am a man of theatrics.” He says with a twinkle in his eye, flashing his yellow teeth. A small child breaks away from his father’s grasp, a snot-nosed runt if there ever was. He was only a few feet shorter than Manis, although when the child spoke it was apparent that he was indeed… slow.
“OI! B-B-BUT, YOU’RE JUST A BOY, YOU’RE NO MAN…” he bows his head down ashamed “Well at least not yet…” Manis dawns this puzzled look, puckering his lips and squinting his eyes. He forces direct eye contact with the boy, refusing to avert his gaze. As he snaps his fingers one of Grimace’s legs picks him up. She sets him down graciously, Manis still with his gaze locked on the frightened child. Manis stares down at the child smiling. “Not a man huh?” His tone quickly transforms, from charismatic and cheerful all the way to vitriol. “AND YOU’LL NEVER LIVE TO BE ONE MY DEAR BOY, YOU, ARE THE FIRST EXAMPLE!” He draws his blade slowly. The father catches it with his eye and sprints toward him shouting “Sire! Sire!! Please! NO!” Tossing the blade over the small boy’s shoulder, the blade spins so fast it whistles through the air, straight into the father’s neck. As the boy hears his father grunt and choke on his pouring blood, he turns around and screams. Sadly for the boy, Manis has already sprinted to the father, pulling the hilt across his neck spraying blood all over Manis. He cackles in an escalating pitch, which only lead to hysterical laughter and tears. The boy shrieks “D-D-DADDY!” Manis holds his hands up. “Don’t worry my esteemed subjects! There’s a happy ending waiting for us!” He bows, flinging his arm back, jabbing the knife into the boy’s neck. “Don’t worry, you’ll see him soon” Manis says in a soft, concerned tone just before breaking out in hysterical laughter.
Chatter spreads across the crowd, and old man shouts. “OI! He can’t take the lot of us on! Another man chimes in. “Aye! He’s just a boy!” Manis scans the crowd, left-to-right. As they inch closer, the crowd’s shouts become indistinctive, a sporadic audible clatter.
Manis doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t unsheathe any of his weapons, he continues to stare at the crowd.
Placing his hands on his hips, a wryly grin stretches his face, His ghastly grin was the only that Moved. “Don’t be so sure my foolish subjects!” he stated with a shriek and a crack in his voice. He cackles spitting on himself, “Uncertainty is the first sign of weakness!”
The crowd is now inches away, The leader from the tavern steps through the rage-induced crowd. Gently shoving them to the side with his metal gloves. “Slay me you might…” he cocks his head back gazing at grimace, as she tilts her hairy head down and clacks her pincers. “But slay My dear, dark, Grimace, you shall not!” “The thing about the darkness is…”
The leader cuts Manis off— “PISS ON YOUR POETRY YOU DEMON…” Manis talks over his powerful voice,
“MADNESS, IS THE ONLY LIGHT THAT SHINES, MY DARK LIEGE, YOUR GAZE OF MADNESS! YOUR POWERFUL DARKENED SPLENDOR, LEND IT TO THEM LIKE YOU DID I, YEARS AGO!” As the leader began reaching for Manis, Grimace turned it’s body upside down, knocking stone and dismantling the architecture around the crowd. As stones plummeted into the coliseum below, Grimace’s legs rotated its body. Its pincers clacked together, slowly at first, but with the rhythm they smacked together, their speed increased. The clacking thump grew louder, and then Grimace shrieked a shriek that pierced the eardrums and in an irrefutable unison the crowd dropped to its knees, all of them screaming. Tears lining their delicate dirty faces. “Foolish, insolent, mortals…”
Grimace spoke in an irritated tone, the closed eye on
it’s now rotated back, slammed-open.
Skin ripped once it had opened its eyes, dead skin and debris falling. The eye itself was blood-shot, with a spiral incessantly oscillating from the inside of its pupils. Their screams turned into silence in an instant, the gaze from grimace’s eye sends a pulsing energy through the air, through all of them, simultaneously. From dropping on their knees the entirety of the crowd threw their heads back. Slinging their arms backwards. Their faces toward the sky, and their mouths agape. Saliva slowly dripped from their mouths, they were now unarguably brain-dead. Manis wiped his forehead, placing his hand on his knee, propping his other hand in the sand to push himself up. Well not push, Manis jumps upwards on his feet. Wiping his shoulders free of the dirt of the coliseum floor. He grins, a wryly, distant, grin. Turning away from the people he throws his hands up.
“Grimace, oh my dark liege! Witnessing your power.., it is truly enticing! Oh, yes! My dear dark calamity!” His smile stretches wider, cackling as he spoke. Grimace slowly scurries to the top of the arena. “Ah… You truly are too kind, but Manis! What will my little devious king to be, do now?” Manis scratches his chin, slicking his bright-red hair through his dirty palms and shouts. “WELL, what an excellent question!” “If the tragedy of Jaykob has taught me anything, it’s always, ALWAYS, find the biggest, mountain-of-meat, you can find and bring him to his knees!” Manis begins trotting and humming, skipping through the dirt. Approaching the leader he pulls him by his hair, saliva still drooping off of his chin. He grabs the leaders cheeks in his palms, rotating it back and forth, examining his bone structure thoroughly. “Oh ! yes, well, I truly cannot see it any other way!” Manis throws his head back laughing, stretching the veins in his neck, spitting as he cackles. He pushes the leader’s head forward, back-first into the dirt. Manis positions his legs on both sides of his stomach. His head cocked down, his glare lazy, his grin stretched. The leader groans slowly, placing his face in his palms, moaning in excruciating pain. “Ah finally! My knight in shining armor rises from the depths!” clapping his hands, Manis chuckles without smiling. He stumbles through his words laying on the ground. “I-I-I- can’t remember, b-b-b-ut I feel as though my mind is blank, vacuous... a-a-a-are you my king? The one I look to and serve?” Manis begins cocking his eyebrows, smiling deceptively. “Oh? You forgot all ready did you?!” He smiles even wider his charisma shining through his eyes. “You were like a brother to the king, alas, sadly, regrettably, my father passed. Ever since, which is roughly six-months passed mind you. You have guarded me as your own, to not only ensure my safety, but be that commendable king my father would have oh so joyously wanted!” Manis smirks clasping his hands together, he steps over the leader and to his side, refusing to break his piercing eye contact. Placing one hand on the dirt and another on his knee, the leader stands up, groaning as he does. “I… remember this.” Manis begins shaking his hands laughing, “Well I certainly hope! We were to beginning construction on my father’s—“ Manis’s grin stretches “ MY kingdom, when you all decided to celebrate! And got shit-faced, rightfully so, and I’m the young one here you sorry excuse for a knight!” Manis’s spit flies and hits the leader in the face. Manis’s eyes stretch wide as he screams. “I’M LOSING MY PATIENCE HERE, ALL OF YOU SODDING IMBECILES, MY FATHER, HE DIDN’T DIE FOR THIS! TO GET SHIT-FACED, TO LEAVE HIS LONE SON CONTEMPLATING HIS FATE UNDER THIS BLANK SKY.”
Pacing around Manis throws out his hands, “Or is it THAT WHAT YOU WANT GOING TO YOUR grave!” pointing at the leader, marching towards him until his finger pressed against his plated armor. Slowly pushing him back with Manis’s surprising strength. His shouts growing louder. “IS THIS THE KIND OF BEST-FRIEND MY FATHER HATH KNOWN?! BY ALL THE lands that GRACE OUR PITIFUL SOULS, I NEVER THOUGHT MY FATHER… OH I KNOW INSTEAD OF TALKING AND TALKING. WHY DON’T I JUST BEHEAD YOU RIGHT HERE AND NOW, EH?” Manis’s nose now pressed against his, the leader said nothing. His face didn’t react, he didn’t flinch, he was void of all emotions. “No my liege, no, of course not, my apologies, I… please… my king, let me fix this.” Manis paces back and forth, cocking his eyebrows his gaze widening. “Well? What are you— WAITING FOR YOU DOLT. GET TO IT. YOUR IRRESPONSIBLE LIFE IS IN YOUR OWN HANDS,”
Manis intense rage cools to a grin, placing his hands on his hips. The leader begins shouting, “UP, UP, UP!” A good portion of the crowd slowly arises, the other half, which a good amount seemed to be HIS men. He began hitting them on the shoulder with the hilt of his sword, shouting. “OI!” “GET UP YOU SLAGS” “WE’VE GOT A TYKE-OF-A-KING TO LOOK AFTER AND LEAD, UP YOU DOLTS.” The rest that remained unconscious, began to wake them up. Nudging and prodding them with their elbows and knees. “Now, since the lot of you decided to finally get up. “ “ You see that tyke of a man over there? Did you all forget? Getting shit-faced under the starless sky?” “Sodding pathetic” “THE WHOLE LOT OF YOU.” “When his father died, he entrusted me, he entrusted ALL OF US TO PROTECT, AND GUIDE THIS YOUNG MAN TO BE THE KING THAT HIS FATHER NOT ONLY WAS, BUT EVEN BETTER THAN HE COULD BE.” Talk began to spread throughout the crowd, it was indistinctive, but it all resulted in the same raising questions. “What father?” “King?” “Since when?!” Suddenly they all ceased chattering, Grimace’s eye began to throb, pulsating its familiar energy again. They all nodded attentively, as if someone had all just told them the story. As if something had whispered into all of their ears, and convinced them this is the story as they know it.
They all shared the same lost look in their eyes. Nodding in synchronization. In a complete, unison. As the leader watch their faces change, as he paced back and forth he nodded and continued on. “I don’t want this boy’s death on my conscience and I know neither do any of you pour souls, we have a SODDING KINGDOM TO BUILD.” “ So what in the blazes are we doing just standing about?” “Idly twiddling our fucking thumbs, I don’t know if you confounded morons have noticed, but, time doesn’t stop. Soon this boy will be a full-fledged-man, and besides look at the state of this ruin we call a coliseum!” They crowed aimlessly gazes around, paying absolutely no mind to the hulking spider preying above them. “ Is this the kingdom you want to call home?!” The crowd doesn’t respond but sulks at the remnants of the coliseum. “Aye, I said, IS THIS THE KINGDOM YOU WOULD CALL HOME?” outbursts spread through the crowd simultaneously, “I WOULDN’T BARE MY CHILDREN ANYWHERE NEAR THESE DUMPS!” “NAY! This coliseum used to know combatants, glory, and fame! WHERE HAS IT ALL GONE?!” The leader points amidst the crowd “Precisely!” “All of you are correct, AS RIGHT AS RAIN!” “So why sit idly? Lollygagging, let’s give ourselves a home to not only be proud of, but a kingdom to please our young and budding king!” Applause and cheering spread amidst the crowd. Manis slowly walked forward, slowly clapping his hands. “Right as rain you all are, so why don’t we all, begin…” He says slowly, annunciating his words, slithering out of his mouth like a snake. Manis sat on Grimace’s head, Grinning ear-to-ear, his eye brows cocked, and his chest-puffed out. Grimace subtlety and slowly whispered
“Yes, yes my dear Manis. Look into the darkness and I promise you, it shall grin back.”
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