Chapter 132：Build-up

It had once been a grand tree, its branches colouring half the visible sky with a green tint. It had once provided shade and shelter, the splendour of the rolling forest, its grandeur far larger than the human eye could ever capture. Its roots had once been the epitome of elegance, twisting and twining like barrels of oak-coloured snakes, minus the squirming of course.

But it was no more.

A month before, there had been a tussle between two mammoth-sized Jaguars. They had imbued their claws with magic and their magic with vicious brutality.

*ffyien* *ffyien*

They had struck each other like sword against sword, their screechings louder than the clangs of a hammer. And because of this, because of how blinded by bloodlust they were, they hadn't noticed as they had ripped apart the tree's bark. Instead, they had fought with greater ferocity as time had passed, their collateral damage building up. Then, one of them had done the inevitable; he had missed…

The snap, the creak. The shock, the horror.

The two youngsters had slipped out of the way in time, their furs wet with cold sweat. On the other hand, the tree had fallen with no way to get back up, forever to be separate as a trunk and a stump.

For four weeks, microbes with inflated appetites had feasted. In their wake, they left behind only the fragile husk, it apparently not to their taste. Now only the stump remained, and would remain for the next hundreds of years, staying behind to serve as a reminder. Not of some subtle moral lesson, no, it had and would stay behind to show that the Jaguars, to be one of grandest species in the cosmos, one of the only few to survive out of Earth's original fauna, had started out in a backwater, nameless forest.

But that was the future, and this was the present.

Stanis brushed the build-up of dirt off the surface and sat his weary arse onto it. Whoever had cut the tree down, they clearly hadn't done a good job as the surface was rough and jagged, far from being a luxury chair. But he swallowed down his complaints and instead waved.

In the distance, chaotic lines of Jaguars marched, their bright and moving colours hypnotic to stare at. In this rabble of monsters, Stanis noted many a friend. Too many a friend, far more than he would have managed with an army of Humans.

The dusking sun gave the sky a dark-orange blush, which in turn reflected off the Jaguars' furs. The wind blew gently and the Earth gave off enough heat to not chill, but also not enough to burn. At the end of their convoy, Stanis saw the two largest Jaguars trailing behind. Not because they were injured or the such but because they wanted to see whether he would come.

He wouldn't. He had a ghost to confront, a spectre of the past to haze away from his mind.

He saw them turn their heads, before cantering to the front. He would join them, eventually, surely.

****

2 days later

Stanis shifted on his feet and lowered his head. He was currently on a large hill overrun by thistlebrushes. A few spikes dug into his flesh and drew blood but it was nothing excessive, nothing dangerous. Though, even if it had been, he still wouldn't have cared, after all, below the hill was a clearing devoid of all plant life. It was, instead, filled with monsters.

As if in protest of the larger than life beasts who now covered Earth, these monsters were merely chest-sized at max. They had large, spherical heads with veins throbbing out and instead of facial features, they had two fist-sized holes in their heads. Their figures were stubby and rounded, although that was quite hard to tell due to the swaying robes they wore. Funnily enough, despite their robes obviously being well-made in terms of design and defence, they were also chaotically coloured.

Their army-sized camp was both quiet and disorderly. It was quiet because it simply was so. But, at the same time, it was only quiet because of the way they communicated. Instead of talking with words, they hummed with inordinately high frequencies. This was the reason why all Stanis could hear were hums and squeals similar to a dog's whines.

But while he didn't understand a single word, or better put, tune, they hummed, he didn't need to understand their speech in order to understand their thoughts. Just outside their grandest shelter, he saw close to ten of these Aliens arguing. From the respect they were given by the populace and the fluctuations that escaped their bodies, he knew that these were the leader figures. And from their wide and powerful actions, gestures and signals, he knew exactly what they were up to.

One of the larger Aliens hummed loudly with a falling pitch, simultaneously pointing into the distance. It violently scraped its foot against the ground and paraded its three-fingered fist in a threatening manner.

One of the smaller leaders slouched onto a backrest but raised its fist all the same, while another similarly scraped its foot against the floor. They all pointed in the same direction and made plans. At one point, they even began to, what seemed to Stanis, mock their adversaries; the largest leader tip-toed onto its 3-toed feet and began to move in a stiff manner, occasionally growling and at other times shouting gibberish, although those had more in common with squeaks than shouts.

The direction they all pointed in was, coincidently, also the same direction the Yora village lay in…

The strongest of the Aliens was a tyro Laeon, so the same power as the strongest one Stanis had killed in the last war, and they clearly showed a fervid interest in razing the Yora village down. But, at the end of the day, all of this meant nothing to Stanis. Or at least it wouldn't have under ordinary conditions: it was just his luck that the conditions were more extraordinary than ordinary.

Not too far away from Stanis stood several sentries: all of them undead and all of them belonging to a certain friend of his. He had withdrawn his fluctuations to the best of his ability and had even hidden in the midst of several prickly bushes, not so that he could escape the Aliens' surveillance but so that he could escape the Zombies'.

He had discovered this clearing an hour ago and had straight-away known that he had struck solid gold. She would follow the Alien's charge for conquest in order to wet her necrophillic desires. She would raze both groups and leave no survivors, before cackling at her victory. He would then strike and leave her begging, leave her crying. He would show no mercy…

****

Stanis followed the group from a distance. His face couldn't mask his excitement and so he grinned like a spoilt child. Well, perhaps what he wanted was that very child-like joy, after all, what was more enjoyable than dominating your most vexing foes.

He hadn't spotted any undead in sight yet but he knew they were coming; he trusted Jen to at least take advantage of such a fight.

At the corner of his vision, he could see the village. There were guards hunched up around each of the cannons, frightened of what was to come. Well, he couldn't actually see their expressions from such a distance, nor did he have some supernatural power that enabled him to smell fear. But still, he could smell their fear. They had to face these terrors without an adult supervising their pathetic performance; they had to be scared…

****

Just wondering what you guys thought of that, if any thoughts at all. Was the style just distracting and ostentatious, or did it actually help any of you imagine the scenes better? Or was there no difference whatsoever?