[shaman]

New chapter.


2) The Suffering City.

It was evening, the skies had darkened with heavy storm clouds and a comfortably cool wind swept through the jungle.

The old kingdom for all the terrors it faced in these troubled times was never more alive as more and more refugees from conflict areas settled deeper and deeper into the kingdom’s monstrously large lands, here in the capital it was like nothing ever seen before. The whole area was situated around a huge stepped pyramid, an awesome sight, with snarling faces carved into its side. And the sheer magnitude of its towering sides terminating in a stone structure from which incense smoke was always rising, a heavy aromatic fog which was said to be stimulating to breath.

Surrounding the pyramid were countless other stone structures. Looking over the jungle and the vast lake beyond, and around them the countless hovels and wooden structures which served the inhabitants as homes.

A market place bustling even at this time of night, was easy to hear from the tell tale noise of hundreds of the jungles’ many natives. Mudokons, Grubs, Skuba toads and many other creatures were there; many, unfortunately driven into the city by the ever advancing industrialists.

Outside all that, when you walked so far into the jungle the last house vanished from sight into the array of curling plants, there sat one solitary figure. Next to a small tent in a deep state of trance; a grub, who preferred to avoid the hustle and bustle and focus on more interesting matters out here in the wild, a thick orange smoke surrounded the place, blown from a large pipe the Grub was smoking filled with an unknown burning substance.

Tuanto breathed the orange smoke and sighed. It was at times like this when he wondered if the whole world had gone mad. If people stopped worrying they would find it easier to obtain a solution to the war raging in the jungle, maybe this was true, or maybe it was just the overactive mind of a regularly doped Grub. Still however stupid he may make himself from smoking such a product, it did prove useful, and sure enough; in Tuanto’s mind ... some strange images started to appear.

Tuanto saw a lake; he was almost touching the water. Standing on nothing, floating above the surface, suddenly a wolvark appeared in the ripples a rough looking creature holding a gun, and dressed in a large red and black hat and trousers.

The image died and a mudokon appeared, also armed with a spooce bow and surrounded by others whose faces were blurred, those tooS faded and finally a mighty Steef clad in golden armour appeared, holding a sack of moolah.
Suddenly the whole world up heaved and Tuanto heard himself grunt with pain, he was flying into the blackening sky, past the atmosphere, and into the void of space, he felt hot limbs grab him from all directions and had to concentrate to stop the spiritual creatures from damaging his mind, a white flash blinded him and he saw the three figures again, the figures holding him began to scream; nothing coherent just random words: Murderer, traitor, assassin, betrayer, thief, bandit, criminal. But one word sounded loudest of all, an unyielding scream pierced Tuanto and he heard what it said as clear as day.

“KING”

Tuanto screamed as the figures exploded and a terrible creature tore its way into his consciousness, a being of unimaginable power, with parts of a scrab and parts of a paramite, with thrashing talons erupting from its muscle-bound body and several glowing red limbs bursting with white fire. The most unearthly sound filled his ears as the creature bellowed and Tuanto sat bolt upright, awake just in time to see a mudokon walking towards him.
“Tuanto?” The mudokon inquired pushing past a few bushes into the clearing.
“Oh”. Tuanto gasped, brushing the orange smoke away from is pale green face. “It’s just you Toko.”
Toko sat down next to him, it had begun to rain. For which Tuanto was very grateful; shocks were so much better absorbed when soaking wet - especially for an amphibian such as a Grub.
Toko coughed the orange smoke away and turned to Tuanto.
“What did you just see?”

Tuanto felt his heart sink; he did not want to tell Toko what he had just envisaged. But he was trying to decipher the prophecy and he needed all the help he could get.
Tuanto darted his large bulging eyes around the clearing to make sure they were alone. Then turned back to Toko and whispered.
“Toko, I’ve done well now I have!” The grub chuckled. “Them all dead, muds you been talkin to was right!”

Toko smiled. “What do you mean?”

Tuanto leaned forward; he was almost nose to nose with his friend.
“I did see ... them” .Tuanto giggled with excitement, this was the best moment he had had for a while, the only spark of good news for ages.
Toko looked faint; this was the moment he had been waiting for over a month.
“The three Toko” Tuanto continued. “I saw the three, an’ it’s true!, they make the monster come onto dis’ world! I saw him too! S’plain as day!”
Tuanto nodded, he had never felt so happy. This provided a flicker of hope for the old kingdom, Toko was clearly pleased but wasn’t that good at showing it. Tuanto had always found the muds to be a little strange- Even if he did say so himself.
It was obvious that Toko was concerned, he stood back up.

“Tuanto, tell me everything, everything you’ve seen.” Toko pulled Tuanto up to his feet and shepherded him into his tent it was very cramped and Toko had to hunch over to fit inside. The tent was full of jars of various chemicals and hypnotic stimuli, with hundreds of tools for shamanism and several pages of noted written in a language (probably Grubbish). Which Toko did not understand.
“Tuanto, I need to know what’s going on, I need to find these guys whoever they are. They could win the war for us!”
As Toko spoke it was obvious what was going to happen, he was going out to look for these “Three Bad Kings”, and Tuanto was terrified that he may not see Toko again. Journeys through the jungle and swampland had become increasingly dangerous lately as the industrialists had closed in. But still, this was history and Tuanto wanted to be a part of it.

“You gonna go then?” Tuanto sighed.
“I have to” Toko repied. “But i need you to tell me everything first.”
Tuanto picked up his staff and starred at it for a while before turning his frog – like head to face Toko.
“I can show you Toko.”
And he tapped Toko lightly on the head with the staff. Toko fell instantly backwards and began to convulse as he saw the same thing Tuanto had.
Toko got up and looked at him.

“I have to go” he said and walked out of the tent.
“Wait”! Tuanto shouted running up to him. “You might need this, it got me a good way through the marshes, use it on them fleeches, makes um’ sting bad. Real bad”! He handed Toko a small vial of green liquid. Toko nodded and walked out of the clearing.
The market was alive with activity, everywhere there were stalls set up for buying countless varieties of products scoured from The Old Kingdom, although lately it was becoming more and more common for stall keepers to sell what they could and ration the rest in these troubled times.

It was getting late and was now raining heavily; Toko stopped and looked up at the waterlogged sky, which cracked with the sound of thunder.
Something was wrong.
A whooshing sound swept across the market, everyone dropped what they were doing to find the source of the noise hundreds of heads turned as the sound echoed off the great pyramid and the trees were bent over. Then suddenly, as if time had stopped; everybody knew what was happening. Toko looked into the crowd and only had time to whisper one word to himself.

“No!”

A few metres from him, a large hovel exploded into a ball of flame, the inhabitants around screamed as they were thrown into the air, in an instant the whole market had descended into chaos. Several more loud bangs and the sight of great plumes of black smoke spiralling upwards, many natives were running blindly around, shielding themselves with whatever they could from the shrapnel. It was as Toko feared.
The industrialists had found the city.
Toko looked around at the suddenly transformed landscape; the whole jungle ahead of him had been set alight, and was burning furiously like a lake of fire on the horizon. Several large airships flew ponderously overhead, with their deadly cargo falling like raindrops from their great hulls and bursting into flame on the ground below. A large mine fell from one of the aircraft onto the pyramid, exploding in a flurry of rubble, and shattering the roof of the temple at the top, which groaned and cracked.
It ended as soon as it started. And the market was empty, everyone had run for cover.

The silence was only broken by the quiet crackling of the fires, Toko coughed, the air was black with soot and smoke, and he knew this place didn’t have much time. Tuanto - knowing him – would have jumped into the river and would by now be swimming happily into the jungle; so there was no point in looking for him.
Toko brushed the ash from his face, and before anyone saw, he crept away from the burning market as the mudarchers descended on it to help the population, dull bangs could be heard from far away now as the natives fired back at the industrialists, but Toko had other things to do now, If what Tuanto and the weirdo’s said was true, he had three people to find: a thief, a traitor and a murderer. The disadvantage was that he had no idea which people the prophecy referred to, nowadays there were plenty of criminals living in The Old Kingdom, but the weirdo’s had managed to narrow it down to a mudokon, a steef and a wolvark. And the vision Tuanto had shown him told him to go north.

So, having no idea where the next clue would lead him, Toko stepped away from the gutted city and into the dense jungle.