Taurok the Ravenous's Arc

Chapter 2 of 1

Taurok returned to the dead trees with his strength restored. But the gods had not waited. Their champion was already inside his forest. Taurok could smell nothing of him. No footfall. No man-sweat. The wind carried only rot and the gray cocoons swaying overhead. He did not know where the hunter waited, and a blind beast could be speared before he ever charged. He pawed the ground and searched the shadows between the trunks. Then he heard it. Not steps, but breathing. Wet and ragged, close to the dirt. Taurok wheeled toward the sound and froze. A huge man sat slumped against a dead trunk. His shoulders were broad as an ox's yoke. A lion's pelt hung from one arm. His skin ran with dark veins, black as spoiled meat, spreading from his chest to his neck. This was the demigod, the son of the sky-father, sent to end the rampage. But no god's champion should look like this. A plague had taken him. His hands shook. His eyes could not fix on Taurok. Beside him lay a great battleaxe. Its twin blades caught what little light fell through the branches. Runes glowed faintly along the haft. The weapon hummed when Taurok stepped near, as if it knew a hybrid stood over it. "Come to finish me, beast?" the demigod rasped. He groped for the axe and could not lift it. "My father cursed your ground to weaken you. Then he sent me sick to kill you. He wanted us both to crawl." He laughed, and blood flecked his beard. Taurok lowered his horns. Here was the enemy he had meant to trample. One stamp of his hooves would end it. His anger surged, hot and old. He raised a front leg over the sick man's chest. The demigod did not flinch. "Do it. Better than dying by inches for a father's spite." Taurok held there, hoof trembling in the air. Killing this broken thing would prove nothing. The gods wanted an easy death, a champion too weak to fight. If Taurok crushed him now, the sky-father lost nothing but a used-up tool. Taurok set his hoof back down. He seized the great axe in his jaws. The runes flared white against his teeth. The demigod's eyes went wide. Taurok turned and hurled the weapon deep into the trees, far past the cocoons, where no shaking hand would find it. "You will heal," Taurok said, his voice like grinding stone. "Then you will fight me whole. I trample champions. Not corpses." He walked out of the dead grove. The champion lived. The axe was lost to both of them. And the gods, who had wanted a quick and dirty ending, would now have to watch their sick son crawl back to strength before the true fight came.