Red Tsonia & the Jungles of Madness

She wasn't sure if the fall had rocked her head or if she really heard it, but there was a low, growling noise. It grew louder and louder, mounting in front of her. She couldn't see! She could only hear the noise, writhe as the tendrils slithered over her. No, not over, but into her! One, then two invaded her, probing at her ravaged insides.

The gurgling stopped on a strange note. For one breathless moment Unami thought to hear a wordless question. The disgusting tendrils withdrew from her insides, leaving her spread open and shivering in the chamber's rank air.

Then the noise returned, loud and angry and so very close.

A mighty weight settled onto her helpless body, covering her feet, legs, belly, chest and finally her snout. She sank her teeth into soft, warm tissue, tearing long, weeping gashes into malleable flesh. The noise changed as hitherto closed orifices gaped, adding a horrific wheezing to the cacophony.

Unami added her own incoherent screams as acid poured from numerous maws, burning her limbs, dissolving her helpless body until nothing remained but a sweet-smelling puddle of goo.

The Sleeper lapped at it, a satisfied purr echoing off the walls.

***

Shala's patience grew thin. What hope of finding Kelgore had she if these fools that carried her fell victim to some easily avoided calamity and left her stranded in this gods-forsaken wilderness?

She had tumbled from the whore's back as the claws of a dead man seized the crude pack full of carrion and tore it away. She could not see how her captors fared against the undead horde until the fop had knocked her aside to hastily gather the scattered meat and supplies.

The buffoon's man and the traitor both fell to the horde of corpses that had dragged themselves from the haunted swamp. Shala feared for a moment that all of her captors might perish and leave her stranded in the mud. But the whore fought bravely and well. With axe and sword she hacked a path through the grasping hands of the hungry dead. The fop followed in her wake and the buffoon held a lackluster rearguard.

Almost as an afterthought, he reached down and plucked her out of the muck by her hair. The leather strap that secured her gag shifted, but only slightly.

It would have been so easy to turn back the horde with just the right words of power and a bit of fire and flesh. But it would require hands that Shala did not yet have.

She watched as the buffoon's sword lodged in the ribs of a flanking corpse and the thing reached for him with rotting hands. She tried to scream in furious protest as the impudent fool swung her like a flail, slamming her skull against the head of the accursed ghoul. Through some intervention of the fate spinners, the impact knocked her gag askew.

Working her tongue and jaw, Shala was finally able to spit out the shard of wood and let the leather strap fall away, just as the buffoon tucked her up under his arm.

Shala nearly cried out at the insolence, but then she caught a tantalizing whiff of blood. There was a gash on the buffoon's arm. The blood coagulated against her cheek, but her tongue could not reach. She was jostled in his grip as the buffoon ran limping after his companions, stumbling and fumbling blindly through the jungle boscage. Bit by bit she shifted until she could press her thin lips right to the wound, and taste the ferric tang on her tongue.

"You can stop now," Shala called out, once she had lapped her fill of the buffoon's essence. "Do you hear me? You've fled beyond the reach of the dead."

"And why should we believe you?" asked the whore, panting. Before Shala could answer, the whore added "Joras, find another gag."

"Because if you die then I am abandoned out here. Do you think this is how I wish to end my existence? Lying in the muck, helpless as the scavengers pick at my flesh until nothing is left? My only chance at life is if you reunite me with my son. While you may well choose to slay me once my usefulness is done, I'll take a slim chance over no chance at all, and help you where I can."

The fop scoffed. "And what help can a disembodied witch offer?"

"While you dithered at a crossroads, I felt the jungle life fade away before the great predator that stalked you. And you ignored my warnings," Shala spat.

"I alone recognized the rancid scent of death tinged with the ozone of magic and knew the undead were nearby. But again you ignored me and two of your number paid for your negligence with their lives. How many more will die because a reckless whore refuses to heed my counsel?"

"Your point is made," the whore growled. "There is no need for more insults."

"Oh, do my words hurt your poor little pride? Perhaps you'd feel better if you were gagged and hauled around like chattel." The whore glowered at her, but did not retort. "I have eyes to see and senses attuned to powers from beyond the veil. Give me a mouth to speak and heed my counsel and your chances of living to find Kelgore will improve! You've lost two pairs of eyes already. Are you so foolish as to throw away a third?"

"I don't trust it or its counsel," the whore said. Being referred to so coarsely would have raised the bile in Shala's throat, if she had bile, or more than an inch of throat. She let the insult pass.

"Neither do I," agreed the buffoon. "But I have known many men I did not trust, and I have never known it to be a lie when a man says 'I want to live'."

"Our resources are few enough," the fop agreed. "I don't think we'd be any worse off if she betrays us."

"Fine," agreed the whore through gritted teeth. "But if you lead us into danger, I shall smash you with a rock before I die. Understood?"

"Agreed." Shala swallowed her pride.

"Unless our new advisor knows of a safer camp, I think we should get some rest," the whore decided. "Joras, skin our dinner. Ambrose, see if you can spark a fire. I'll gather you some wood. Shala..." she paused as if it pained her to speak the words. "You're on watch."

In the distance, from every direction, the drums continued.

***

In the chamber above The Sleeper's lair, Condor sighed. "One malnourished whelp won't do, you know?"

Death Inevitable touched his golden forehead. "The Sleeper is mightily displeased indeed. Unami was but a morsel for it."

"At least his hunger will be sated for the moment," Serpent muttered. "We might find a bit of respite tonight."

Together, the elders returned to the great hall. The rumble of the drums was loud and clear, reverberating from the walls.

Condor cocked his head. "A hunting party returns. They have brought an outsider."

"Fortunate tidings indeed," Serpent said, a smile in his voice. "The Sleeper might feast again shortly."

"Let us see what the hunters have brought then," Death Inevitable purred. "Hopefully this new sacrifice will send The Sleeper back to sleep. I dread the day when the temple and the offerings can't contain its might no longer. The Sleeper might devour reality itself."

"If it is an outsider woman, we should avail ourselves of her services before tossing her into the Pit," Condor said. "To make sure The Sleeper will be properly serviced, of course."

Chuckling softly, the elders headed for the exit, eager to meet their next sacrifice.

As dawn broke, they strode into the village. Hunters prepared for another expedition into the jungle, sharpening their spears or wrapping rations. Passing females, their young scurrying between their feet, offered bows of respect. The midwife clutched Unami's newborn to her bosom, allowing the pale blond whelp to suck at her teat.

"Let's hope the outsider was strong," Death Inevitable muttered. "His offspring looks disgusting, so pale."

"We will see in a few years' time," Serpent said. "Ah, there they are." He gestured towards a tangle of tribesmen, clustered around the hunting party. Adults and whelps alike muttered among themselves.

"As if they've seen an outsider for the first time," Death Inevitable murmured. "How different can they be?"

The knot of tribesmen split, allowing the elders their first glance at the outsider. He stood unbound, surrounded by three hunters who gazed upon him in open admiration. The fourth, a female, had her tail raised high, the scent of her cunt announcing to all downwind how desperate in need of a thorough railing she was. The outsider was odd. Too scrawny to be a warrior, he nonetheless bore himself with the stance of a chieftain. What little fur he wore on his head was long, slick and the color of night. But most odd were his eyes, featureless black orbs of night. He raised his voice, speaking the strange words of the outsiders. None understood the strange syllables he used, but all felt the power radiating through his voice. It commanded their full attention. Transfixed, the elders, the tribesmen, the women and whelps watched, their gazes fixed on the strange man. Each one of them he bathed in his obsidian gaze and one by one they became his unquestioning servants. Not even the Sleeper could help them now.

***

"Stop it!" Ambrose screamed into the night. "Stop the fucking drumming all day and all fucking night. Just fucking stop it!"

The distant drum beat continued unabated by the outburst. The sonorous rhythm had followed them from the beach, through the jungle, surrounding them, moving with them like the stench of a beggar. They had tried more than once to follow the sound and find one of the natives, but always the drum they approached fell silent and a distant drum joined the chorus.

"What do you want?!" Ambrose continued, stalking from one edge of their campfire light to the other, yelling into the darkness at the top of his voice. "Do you want us to go? Do you want us to follow? We don't know what the drums mean! We use words! Do you hear me? Words! Show yourselves and tell us what you want! Kill us or capture us if you must, but for the love of all that is holy, stop the gods-damned drumming!"

His injured foot throbbed. His whole body ached. Nicks and cuts and lacerations bedeviled his face and arms after being thrashed through the underbrush by that slavering beast. The midges and mites of the swamp had fed on him mercilessly and if it hadn't been for Tsonia and Joras, the shambling dead would have finished him, just as they had poor Montu and Sethos. Ambrose was a man of the sea. The perils of this mad and alien landscape perturbed his senses and flustered his wits.

"It's not even good drumming, damn it!" Ambrose saw Tsonia and Joras scowling in the firelight at his agitated pacing. He didn't know if his ranting had awakened them, or if they like he had laid awake, unable to sleep with the constant racket. "A poxy toddler banging on his mother's pot with a spoon can come up with a more inventive rhythm! But not you lot, no! Your primitive fucking brains can't come up with anything more original than just bum bum bum over and over and over again and again and again!"

He grabbed up a heavy stick from their dwindling pile of firewood and banged it back and forth in a forked tree trunk—bang, bang, bang—in time to the distant drums' cadence.

"You hear that? Huh? How do you like it? How about if I keep it up all fucking night so you can't sleep?"

"Peace, Ambrose," Joras implored, rising to soothe his friend's discomfiture. "This raving does no good and it wastes the vitality you'll want for tomorrow."

"I don't care!" Ambrose screamed, and continued to beat the tree trunk. "I don't fucking care any more. I want them to stop or to show themselves or to attack us or something! Anything! Anything but this infernal drumming! It makes me wish I had drowned, Joras! I would rather die with the sound of the sea in my ears than live another hour beset by this ceaseless racket."

"I know it's trying--"

"Trying!? It's maddening! This whole damn place is maddening!" Ambrose's arm gave out at last and he let fall the stave from his hand even as he collapsed to his knees with a sob of exasperation. "Why won't you stop!?" he cried again into the darkness. "Why won't you show yourselves!?"

"You are loud," grunted a coarse voice in the simple words of the Trade Tongue used among sailors. Into the firelight stepped a tall native, his mottled green fur broken in places by ancient scars. His hands, though tipped with razor sharp claws, were empty, and held out in a gesture of parley.

***

Tsonia, lithe as a panther, came to her feet with blade in hand, ready to smite the intruder. The towering, beast-headed native dodged and came to face Tsonia, still empty-handed. A leather bandolier bisected his broad chest. Spears and a pack rested on his back while a woven cord around his waist was hung with pouches, a sling and dagger and a simple loincloth.

"We will fight," he growled. "First, I will make the drums quiet for your loud friend."

The fire-haired warrior stayed her blade, curious to see what the newcomer would do next. "Slow," she told him, speaking the same pidgin trade language. "I am watching."

The native bared his fangs, his ears perking up. Tsonia wasn't sure if he was threatening her or if that was the stranger's idea of a grin. Slowly, he reached for the pack he had slung over his back and placed it on the ground in front of him.

"Watch," the stranger said, kneeling. He opened a flap and pulled a small drum from his pack, which he struck in a certain rhythm—bam, bam, rrrrap. He repeated the cadence, then again. And around them, the drums echoed the new beat—and fell silent. In the distance, the sonorous rumble continued, but in their immediate vicinity, there was nothing but the wind rustling in the trees and the occasional chirp of surprised nighttime birds.

"What did you... say?" Joras asked, intrigued. Next to him, Ambrose sighed. The exhausted sailor settled down with his back against a tree, and despite his curiosity his head fell onto his chest almost immediately.

The native offered Joras the same strange visage, open jaws and hanging tongue. "I found what I want. I need quiet to... see, watch, find," he seemed to be searching for a word.

"Hunt?" Joras asked, backing away from the beastman.

"Yes. Hunt." the stranger agreed. "They are quiet. They will listen."

"Hunt, eh?" Tsonia sneered. "Will you... make us sick with... small spears?" She held up a finger and thumb spaced about two inches apart to show how small the darts were. Tsonia also struggled to find appropriate words in a vocabulary meant for trade and barter, but she lowered neither her guard nor the sword.

The stranger sank onto his haunches, his dark eyes reflecting the flickering flames of the campfire. "No small spears. I am proud. I do not hunt with small spears."

"Your people are not proud two yesterdays," Tsonia growled. The Trade Tongue didn't concern itself with such lofty concepts as the past or the future. It was a language for discussing the here and now. "They hunt me with small spears by the good water. They make me sick."

"My tribe who hunt are not smart two yesterdays. Many outsiders come to our beaches and cannot leave again over many moons. My tribe thinks you are weak and not smart, like the other outsiders."

So they were not the first sailors to be marooned on these shores, Tsonia realized. Clearly the native had learned the Trade Tongue from somewhere, so castaways must be fairly common. It did not bode well for them that none had ever returned to tell the story of this place.

The stranger hissed several times in quick succession. Maybe a laugh?

"You kill two of my tribe. They know they made a mistake so they choose to hunt easy outsiders." His eyes roamed over Tsonia and she could hear his satisfied purr. "I hunt you."

Tsonia raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Two of my tribe are dead. I want... the death price."

Tsonia sighed. He wanted revenge for the two natives she had killed. The stranger before her was no savage. He obviously had intelligence and honor, perhaps even wisdom. But she didn't have the vocabulary to explain such a complex situation, much less negotiate a peaceful solution.

"Joras, you're better with words than I," she said in their native Thelyrian. "Tell him I killed two of his kind while driven half mad by their poison in my veins. Ask him why he thinks he can beat me now when I have my wits fully about me."

There was a struggle over words as Joras and the stranger exchanged the terms they knew and agreed to what they meant. Tsonia was beginning to regret involving her friend in the conversation. As her patience grew thin, he seemed to be enjoying the give and take and the accomplishment of finally conveying the whole idea.

Again, the stranger laughed. "I watch you yesterday and two yesterdays, fire-hair. I watch you fight. I watch you walk far. You are tired, so I offer a bargain."

"Kaela..." Joras implored in Thelyrian, his voice laden with dread. "Don't do anything foolish, please."

"I haven't agreed to anything just yet." Tsonia snorted in exasperation. "Are you blaming me for our misery too?"

"I would never-" Joras began.

"Let him talk then," Tsonia snapped. "And don't call me Kaela in front of everyone!"

The stranger placed his clawed hand upon his chest. "I am called T'pek." His voice, although struggling with the Trade Tongue, had a formal, almost ritualistic tone about it.

Tsonia bowed her head. "I am called Red Tsonia. What do you offer?"

"I ask you to fight, Red Tsonia. You owe me two hunters."

"You-kill-me is not equal to two hunters. They will not live if I die," Tsonia said. It was another hard concept to convey, but she'd be damned if she was going to let Joras spend all night trying to negotiate poetically. "I see... a fight for pride... is a waste. A waste for me. A waste for you."

T'pek bared his fangs again. "We will fight. If I win, you will be... my tribe." T'pek immediately waved away that idea as if it wasn't exactly what he meant to say. "Just my tribe," he amended, thumping his own chest.

"Mate?" offered Joras. It was a Vizangian word that had made it into the Trade Tongue and was used to refer to any woman a man had sex with, be she joined by holy ritual, or just a concubine, slave, or whore.

"Yes!" T'pek agreed. "Mate. You will be my mate. We will make strong children. My tribe will get more than two hunters."

A laugh escaped Tsonia's lips. "You are too proud, T'pek. You are too proud of your fighting skill and your fucking skill. What will I get if you lose?"

"I do not insult you, but you are slow and loud. You walk like blind and deaf children. You see bad signs but you still go forward. You risk weak people." T'pek nodded towards battered, blissfully snoring Ambrose. "I offer that I will lead you and be smart for you... And I will also give you children." He caressed his loincloth.

Tsonia laughed again, a full-bellied sound of unbridled mirth. "You are smart. If you lose, you still fuck me. Is that right?"

"A good hunter is strong and smart," T'pek said with that uncanny grin.

"Your tribe... Where do they take 'easy' outsiders?" Tsonia asked. "What do they do with him?"

"My tribe take your outsiders to our village. The leaders decide outsiders' fate." T'pek shook his head.

"How many outsiders go to your leaders?" Joras interjected. "What do they say to your leaders?"

"Some want to trade. Some are held to work. Some breed. Some fight."

"The unlucky ones are tossed into the swamp," Tsonia added darkly in Thelyrian. Her brow creased in thought. "If I win, you will lead us to your village. You will teach us about your tribe and the village."

"Yes." Said T'pek.

"If I lose, I will be your mate, right?"

An eager nod set T'pek's mane aflutter.

"Will I stay here," Tsonia indicated their campsite with a sweep of her hand, "until I make children?"

"No," T'pek said with emphasis. "You will be my mate in the village. My people will take care of you. I will protect you and love you."