When the frightful monsters come out to play...
Haloween...
What things will there be to face?
Hello All reading the Tome Blog and Happy Haloween!
As tonight is Halloween I thought that I'd treat you to a particuarly spooky treat from the Tome World. Tonights events are based before Tome: When the Night Falls and so has absolutely no relevance... except that Filius Mortis is in it... and he is hunting... again...
So sit back, make sure that you have a sick bowl close by and... enjoy...
Tome: To Hunt the Hunter
“ROAR,” the child screamed jumping up and down.
Mortis’s head twitched a little as he turned to look at the child but he ignored it.
Halloween, the only night of the year that he could walk out in public with his scythe. He loved it… being able to stand in the open with his scythe, a fully grown man going out for Halloween and standing still the entire night did turn a few heads but Mortis did not mind the looks.
The child roared again and jumped around his form. The children however…
“Trust me I am this close to…” the child’s mother walked up dressed as a witch and dragged the child away.
“Traurig…” ("Sorry...") she flustered in German and walked away.
“Happy Halloween…” Mortis called out.
The witches that Mortis had seen were much more than that… they did not carry broomsticks around with them… usually they had knives… and swords… and an assortment of other weapons…
Mortis sighed. Magic was a dangerous game…
Mortis’s feet stomped across the pavement as he walked far away from his original position. Of course, staying in the same place had its disadvantages of course… He could not see the whole world from one place and that was Mortis’s main disadvantage.
Staying still was not something he had been programmed to do.
Feet pounded against the ground and echoed around the street like armour clanking although his body was so much more than mere armour.
Inside there were cogwheels and clockwork parts that never stopped ticking. His cranium was made up of seventy different sized cogwheels and pistons kept it working. This was the inside of a Bio-Mechanical warrior. Seven Million years old his brain was at least. He himself was not quite sure. Death had its way of making you forget some details.
Mortis’s body was young however, almost five years old. Not a single sheet of metal had started to corrode.
The lifetime of a Bio-Mechanical was indefinite, nobody had lived long enough to record their lifetimes and those that had were long dead. Nobody to continue their experiments.
Death however was something that Mortis’s body yearned for. It needed death to continue on. He had lived too long now and there was no more left to do in this life.
It was time to die.
A scream filled the air, the sound in Mortis’s ear told him that it was many miles away. Nothing that a Bio-Mechanical couldn’t handle… Although there was something else there too, a voice older than time itself. A voice that was fear itself. A fear of death.
A primeval, guttural growl rose from the very bottom of the Bio-Mechanical’s throat as it heard the old voice.
“Come child… I won’t hurt you…” it said. Convincing. Monstrously convincing.
Mortis hated it…
Turning around he started to walk faster and then he heard the cry again so very far away. Mortis started into a run, his tails flailing behind him and the shadows gripping at his form.
Suddenly he fell through the night darkened floor and into a new world. A new world of swirling, dark colours before he fell again through another shadow in that distorted world.
Reappearing he wasted no time in drawing his scythe and pinning one of Grosse Mann’s arms to the ground.
“Grosse Mann,” Mortis shouted aloud for the child to hear.
“Mortis?” Grosse Mann sent the psychic message, the shock in his voice evident.
The person behind him was young, very young and dressed again as a witch. A stereotype white with luminous green face paint and a long warty nose. White string clung tightly to her skin. A black hat was clutched between her two shaking hands.
Mortis removed the scythe from Grosse Mann’s arm and let him retrieve it.
The six armed beast let them flail in the air around his head as he raced forwards towards Mortis but he was already gone. The child in his arms, racing through the forest.
“This is my domain, Mortis. You can’t run from me here! I will kill you!” Grosse Mann roared and shouted.
Mortis was not listening and only hissed, “Why Germany? Why the Black Forest ? Just why?”
The girl clung tightly to Mortis’s form, tears well in her eyes and some dripped onto his shirt. He carried her, endlessly through the Black Forest until even Mortis had to stop in shock.
He set the girl down and held her head so as she would look him straight in the eye,
“Was immer Sie tun, don nicht offnen Sie Iher Augen,” (“Whatever you do, do not open your eyes”) Mortis spoke fluent German hoping that the girl would speak that language.
The first thing that went right today, the girl nodded.
Mortis gripped her hand and she closed his eyes. Mortis guided her, his eyes locked on what hung between the trees.
Macabre corpses. Broken and mutilated. It was a grotesque scene with the victims bodies being ripped open by Grosse Mann’s precise fingers and their innards spilt on the floor. Seven meters of intestine sprawled on the floor. Eyes had rotted out and their sockets left bare a long time ago. Fresh blood stained some places on the ground and Mortis could see some of the bodies of the dying lying there. Still breathing with those slits in their stomachs. Skeletons of previous kills littered the ground with vacantly horrified expressions left imprinted on their skulls for an eternity.
Mortis led the girl farther through the dead and only let her open her eyes when he was sure that they were far away from the corpses.
“Warum habe ich menie Augen schließen?” (“Why did I close my eyes?”) the girl asked innocently.
“Eh…” Mortis, unsure of how to answer that question, walked away.
The girl scampered along beside him moments later not wanting to be left alone with that monster.
The two walked beside each other for a while in silence but soon the inevitable question came to the child’s mind:
“Sind Sie ziew magischen?” (Are you two magic?”) she asked.
“Ziew?” (“Two?”) Mortis asked then realised, “Oh… Grosse Mann… Er ist kien Zauberer… er ist a… Monster. Nicht einmal ein Monster, sonder ein Unternehem. Er ist die Furcht selbst kind,” (Oh… Grosse Mann… he is not a magician… he is a… monster. Not even a monster but an entity he is fear itself child.”) Mortis explained. “Magie ist nicht alles ugly Hexen,” (“Magic is not all ugly hags,”) Mortis gestured to the girl’s costume, “Und Zauber. Es gibt enie Seite des Lebens un des todes es…” (And spells. There is a side of life and death to it…)
There times however was up, Grosse Mann pushed his massive form through the twigs and forced Mortis onto the ground with one long spindly hand that reached out and grabbed Mortis’s chest. It forced him face up, chocking him with the force that it placed on his lungs.
“The girl first, Mortis. Then you…” Grosse Mann growled at him. A sound that only Mortis could hear and the girl could not.
Grosse Mann reached down for the girl and its free clawed hand reached out for the girl but Mortis was not to be quite from his place on the ground. The child had not much knowledge of death yet. Not like he did… maybe… if only…
“I won’t let another die while I’m forced to sit…” Mortis thought to himself clenching his teeth and forcing out the words, “Kind, der Tod ist nicht etwas zu befürchten. Es ist etwas, gegen steigen. Um trotzig gegen! Fürchtet euch nicht!” (Child, death is not something to fear. Death is something to rise against! Death is something to be defiant against! Do not fear!”)
Grosse Mann forced his hand down harder against, Mortis’s frame, “Silence, Mortis. Let me enjoy my… feast…” Then his jaws pried themselves from the rest of his face and they raced towards the girl.
The girl however had heard Mortis’s words and it was true that she had so little knowledge of death that she screamed aloud for the world to hear: “Ich habe keine Angst!” (“I’m not scared!”) and Grosse Mann’s jaws stopped short, the teeth on his maw were shaved away by the fearlessness of a little girl.
Grosse Mann wailed out loud, the scream alerted the entire forest and awoke flocks of birds and forest creatures that roamed the night.
And the girl laughed.
That only added insult to Grosse Mann’s injury.
Tired, wounded and beaten, Grosse Mann turned and fled through the night back to something which would not fight back.
Mortis sat, elbows propping him up from the ground and watched as the beast fled and looked over at the little girl saying: “Erstaunlich.” (“Amazing.”)
The little girl slept over his shoulders, last nights events another dream in the thousands that she would have in her lifetime. The world of magic as he had said was a matter of life and death and to get the little girl involved, he thought, was a grave mistake.
So he left her, at the door of the police station in Germany
Grosse Mann never did bother the child again at any part during her life but he watched her. Oh how he watched with eyes so grave that they were black as coals but he knew well that this was the only human that he couldn’t touch.
Though he could scare…
And where Grosse Mann was, starring right back was Mortis. The girls eternal guardian. Right up until her death…
January 26th 2091
Mary stood and watched as the coffin was lowered deep into the hole in the ground. A single, solitary tear rolled gently down her face and onto her black suit.
Her mother was dead, Julia was gone.
In her last days she had talked a lot about the figures. The figure with no face and the figure whom had hid his face. Julia said that the figure who had no face had followed he, stalked her all of her life but her hero, Mortis, Mary recalled had always been there to protect her from his evils.
She raised her head and looked far into the distance hearing the ceremony continue. It was then that she saw it. Hiding behind a tree. Crouched down so as its head was hidden under the leaves. Its arms were huge but planted on the ground. It was watching.
Closely.
Closely.
Then she looked behind her and saw another figure. The one who hid his face. The one who had a scythe strapped to his back.
The one called Mortis.
Happy Halloween!
Robbie
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