What lies below has been extracted from the middle of the beginning. So there are going to be some things you need to know, Sekar is a priest from a church in a fictional city called Thebes, Washington. The god’s name is Termnius. Tidal is a young, childish, albino elf. He has an air of naiveté surrounding him. When he speaks, he voice has the strange, drawn-out inflections as a child. It is unknown if he is as young as he sounds, or if he’s just slow.
The two of them encounter for the first time in this other work, currently called The Hundredth Twelfth Crusade—a complete parody of many things: including cinematics, mythology, religious parodies and many other things. If you want to know the truth, I began the work being my immature, fun-loving sense, but as I get older, the story itself grew into something bigger. It has been a blast to write, but I wanted to write something I’d actually read.
This story happens within The Hundredth Twelfth Crusades. It fits in the arc, but the events are supposed to be forgotten and unremembered by the end, with no evidence that the following events have occurred. I haven't written up to that point, but I have an idea where it will go.
This is happening in a different fantasy world, one that a friend of mine invented, so I challenged myself to put these two seemingly unfit characters into the world. So, yes. Thank you. (P.S. This is not a “chapter”, but rather just an arbitrary amount of words divided into sections. Maybe they’ll have some purpose later on.)
Tidal and Sekar in the Forest
A working excerpt
I.
Tidal and Sekar thought the forest would provide them with the shortcut they needed to find civilization in the brave new world. Brave-faced and prepared for danger, they entered the dark-green canopy and into the uncertain darkness. It was impossible to trust the woods—when they first entered, they were hot and only searching for a quick exit. Instead they found nothing.
The forest had a way to warp and twist minds to make its every thought both discouraging and doom-hungry. Sekar’s inner-voices were so hideous that he wasn’t sure if it was really his voice, or if it was microscopic dredgers in the forest, whispering haunting language into his cochlea.
Hoots and crickets voiced an army around them; it was a show that the life in the forest was aware of the both interlopers. Soon, the sunlight emptied from the forest—assuming that the canopy hadn’t devoured the sun first. On the ground, Sekar saw dead faces of mockery and spite shape out from the leaves.
They walked for many days, and many nights, but they didn’t know how many. The duo only stopped when their legs failed. They would start to move again when they awoke from their troubling dreams. So much time had passed, and they grew exhausted by the effort.
To keep himself alive and hopeful during his time, Sekar would try to remember the scent of his home: the times when he was in his apartment back at Thebes, under the influence of murderously strong coffee, and would say aloud “I’m nothing without my coffee” to the night. The times he would see the mist of Good Scents™ rise from the thurible, and swing it around, pendulumwise, hypnotizing the prayers by its weighty influence into the overwhelming spirit of Terminus.
There were times where he could see all of his friends from the church assembling to slander him for his AWOL, and then agreeing to forever cite him as an eternal example of both cowardice and betrayal. All that could be done with that thought was to diminish the thoughts away by eating his fingernails—which at first were crusted with dirt, but was then cleaned and thinned out—his teeth was soon munching on the quick.
He also noticed how Tidal was not affected by the misery of the forest. The young albino was always grinning and smiling, or thinking of a joke he had heard recently. It bedazzled Sekar to see how Tidal didn’t comprehend the real peril that was breathing steam on their backs—he started to believe everything made Tidal joyful.
“Hey, look at that rock.” Tidal pointed at a cubic boulder that was resting beyond a wall of large, animated Venus fly traps; it appeared boundless. “It’s pretty funny because it reminds me of a TV. Remember television Sekar?” Sekar, once he made tried to shape the boulder could really see the knobs, also recognizing a potential remote control. He wasn’t a big fan of television, but the taste of home made him gleeful.
The bugs loved Sekar. They were drawn in by his sense of fear and uncertainty; to them, he was a fragrance that was sugary and ubiquitous. They were thin and camouflaged, but when they bit into his flesh, there was a short-lived stinging sensation that was subliminally noticeable—that is, until they deposited their natural painkillers. Then, packed and proud with their stolen drops of liquid Sekar, the bugs would fly back under the layers of forest darkness.
It became forever. Everything became forever. Looking back at everything else before became forever too. There were moments when his madness reckoned, filling his head with the sound of bingo balls, and he needed to struggle, against anyone—anything. It was Tidal’s disarming face that saved him from being a victim. Sekar locked his head downward, surmounted by the silence and itchiness.
What doth thou think? Don't fear being the villain here.
ALSO EDITED FOR GRAMMARCRACKERS
