Weekly Drabble #218: The Warlord's Tale (Patreon)

This week's drabble theme is 'I am the way' from Henri Black, wherein we return to our as-yet-unnamed setting of the Black Fleets and the Warlord who leads them. This is, as the title suggests, the warlord's tale.

Enjoy!

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The Warlord’s Tale

Once upon a time in a distant land, there was a young man. He was born in a dark and dreary city, to parents who loved him – but love, he learned as a boy, didn’t protect you from bad things. His father worked himself to death in a factory before his son was nine. In his last months, he was barely more than a withered skeleton, made that way by the industrial toxins and harsh conditions he’d been exposed to day after day for decades.

After he passed, the boy’s mother did what she could to support them, selling herself on the street. Unfortunately, the man for she worked caught her pocketing more than he allowed and made an example of her. So as a boy,the young man lost both his mother or father to cruelty and neglect, both of which he was soon to experience himself when he was taken in by his grandmother, a woman who cared more about keeping her bottle full than caring for her daughter’s son.

He’d seen how both of his parents were chewed up by uncaring masters who only valued them for every coin that they could wring from their bodies, discarding them thereafter. He’d seen how even family that was supposed to care for you couldn’t be counted on. He’d seen how everyone who survived in this world was only out for themselves – after all, if you weren’t you ended up like his parents. Optimism and trust were rewarded with suffering and exploitation. The boy learned all this well, growing into a man... and not a particularly noble one.

His credo was a simple one: take advantage of them before they did it to you. Thus, he was always looking out for himself and no one else. He was a schemer, a gambler, a con artist and liar who considered himself very, very clever. And he was indeed very clever... but not nearly as clever as he thought he was. One day, his most clever and profitable plan yet came crashing down around him as the people he’d intended to steal from discovered what he’d been up to. As you might expect, they were very angry. They were also extremely dangerous people. The worst sort that you might ever imagine and then worse than that. They suffered no slights and intended to make a very grim and bloody example out of the young man. There was no hiding from this, no scheme to enact or ploy to save his hide, so the young man did the only thing he could: he stole a ship and he ran.

But these people, you see, were very powerful. They had ships of their own and they pursued him across the ocean. For weeks and months, they hunted him relentlessly and he was able to only just stay ahead of them. But they came a bit closer each time and his luck was running out. Sooner or later, it would be gone entirely.

By now, they were very far from the known world and deep within the uncharted seas, a place no man had ever been. Upon the horizon gathered a great, roiling storm, one powerful enough to swallow entire armadas whole and leave nothing of them behind. Inside though – there might be safety. Only the mad – or the truly desperate as the young man was – would enter the storm, though. He was not a complete fool, and he hesitated, wisely fearing whatever might be inside.

Before he could decide whether to risk the storm, the choice was made for him. His pursuers arrived. They had tracked him down again and this time, there was no escape. Months of frustration had stoked their anger and fury and if they caught him, the only possibly mercy he could expect was a quick death. Choosing between that certainty and the possibility, however slight, of survival, the young man prayed to a god he’d never believed in and set his course into the storm.

Though they tried to catch him before he slipped within, his enemy were not willing to risk themselves and they prowled the storm’s edges, thinking he might appear from its edges, but he knew they would be waiting for him if he did. With no other option, he sailed deeper into the storm. The last sight he had of his pursuers was of their ship turning away in frustration. To them, this had been suicide and they had been cheated of their grisly prize. If he were able, he would have turned back at this point. His ship was shaking and quavering beneath him as the storm lashed it, as violent as the cannon of his enemy would have been. He tried to pull away, but the currents had him now. There was no escape.

It seemed as if he had only traded one manner of death for another. His ship was coming apart, entire decks ripped open by the storm. The young man himself was badly injured as a power conduit exploded in his face. He fell to the floor, feeling the ship break and he resigned himself to the inevitable. In his final moments, he laughed. He had done everything ‘right’, had he not? He had never been a sucker or let himself be taken advantage of, and his fate was still an ignominious death. Even worse than that of his mother and father: there wouldn’t even be anyone to remember him when he was gone.

He lay there for some time, finally noticing that he was still alive. At first he thought that the storm had passed, but as he raised himself to his feet and looked outside, he realized that he had somehow made it into the eye. And that was where he saw the Serpent.

The Serpent was a great, terrifying beast. Larger than anything you could imagine. Blacker than the darkest of nights, so much that it seemed to be less a presence than an absence. It had created the storm, drawing it around itself like an animal retreating into a burrow, for it was injured. Not just injured, though; it was dying.

This was much for the young man to take in. The Serpent itself. The reality of its existence. The injury that it had suffered, and the realization that it was dying. Some part of him told him to ignore it. To wait for the great beast to die. The storm would dissipate and then he could repair his ship and return home. His pursuers believed he was dead. He could start a new life. He didn’t know this creature. It was a terrifying thing that hurt simply to look upon as it twitched and shivered in its death throes. It was likely very dangerous. If he even could help it, why should he? It would very likely turn on him as soon as it was well.

He told himself that over and over as he, with crippled hand and one eye, knelt over readings and charts as he studied the Serpent and its wound. Blood pulsed and oozed from its injury, as dangerous as the storm. Perhaps even more so. Whatever had done this to the beast had itself been unimaginably powerful; that single blow could have erased his nation from the map. What if those that had done it came to confirm their kill and saw him here? He shouldn’t get involved. Not with his ship and himself both as injured as they were.

And yet, he did not stop. Maybe it was because he had faced his own death and come to realize that throughout it all he had never changed anything – anything at all, not even his own life – for the better. Maybe he believed he couldn’t actually make it back home and that this would be the last thing he could ever accomplish, a small act of mercy to balance out all the wrong he had done in his life. Or at least, attempt to balance it out. Maybe he saw the Serpent, a being of incredible, horrible majesty suffering and for the first time let pity guide his actions.

So he worked. He thought, he planned and he used every bit of his cleverness to study the situation, ignoring the pain he was in and that his body was starting to fail. He would do this. This one good thing in his life. He could save this creature and make – he thought – one good thing come from the existence he’d squandered.That, if nothing else.

He knew the Serpent was watching him, its great eyes upon the small, hapless vessel before it. A single flick of its bulk would smash him to pieces, but it did nothing. As he finally approached, plan in mind, the storm thickened around his craft. Twice, he had to stop and retreat. On the third time, he pushed through the storm. He did his work, though the Serpent’s corrosive blood ate away at his ship, destroying whatever the storm hadn’t. He did just enough to stem its bleeding and saw its wound finally begin to close and heal. As he fell for the second time upon his bridge, he knew he would not rise again.

But he did.

Some time later – he never knew how long – he climbed to his feet, wondering how he could still be alive. He looked at his hand and saw that it was no longer broken and bleeding, but intact, though it was different from what it had once looked like. In the mirror, he saw the scarred and burnt half of his face was likewise healed, but healed in a manner that distorted his features, like a clay sculptor who had never seen a human face before. His dead eye was restored, turned a pure, dark green. It would take him a long time to fully understand what it could see, but that mattered little in the moment.

More afraid than he had been as his ship cracked and broke and his death had been imminent, the young man rushed through his vessel. Like him, it was restored – but not as it had once been. It was something different now.

It was then that the Serpent chose to speak to him. Its voice was unimaginable. It spoke without sound or radio, as if it were within his very mind, like a cluster of spikes erupting from his skull. It had no voice of its own, and it used his own memories. Thank you,his father said as the boy offered the withered man a fresh glass of water, dabbing with a cloth at what had spilled from his lips. You’re a lifesaver, Slim Wen said, smiling that gap-toothed smile of his as the young man handed him the briefcase.

The Serpent had never expected such a small, insignificant life to come to its aid. It was grateful, and in turn it restored the young man’s own life as well as offering him three gifts: the first was some of its blood. It had already given him some when it had saved him; this would be for anyone he wished. With it, they would gain a measure of the Serpent’s strength and nature.

The second gift was one of its scales. Sharp enough to slice through a ship’s hull, it was nearly unbreakable. With even the smallest of slivers from the scale imbued into its hull, any ship would become mighty: strong, fast and powerful.

The third was the greatest, most terrifying gift of all. The Serpent whispered of it to the young man before it faded into darkness. It was not alone in the deep, darkness, so far from the lights of mankind. There were many of its kind and though they had slept for an eon, they were beginning to stir. A slithering, shifting squall of great beasts, each of them alone was an end of empires. Together, they would be unstoppable.

He saw them in perfect, terrifying clarity, these visions. Cycles of slumber broken by frenzied feeding that swept the stars clean of life. Only when there was nothing left did the Serpents return to sleep. Again and again this had played out. Inevitable and inescapable as they spread and consumed and destroyed. Over and over. The young man was transfixed in horror as the prophetic histories filled his mind, nearly to the breaking point.

They are coming, the Serpent told the young man through his own memories. They are hungry. A capstone to the horrors he’d witnessed for himself. That was the last he heard of the Serpent. It was not fully healed but it could move again, returning to the darkness... at least for the moment. It was only the first of many. A scout. A herald of the swarm.

As the Serpent departed, the storm dispersed, leaving the young man alone. He remained there for some time as he thought over everything that had happened. Finally, he made his decision. That young man, the wastrel and schemer, had died upon the deck of a stolen ship, the victim of his own plots and pride. It was someone new that helmed this vessel, someone else who would return to the distant lights of civilization with fateful purpose.

No longer would he be a person who exploited, conned and cheated his fellow men for his own avarice. He could no longer allow them to expend their time and energy upon besting each other, upon slavery, cruelty and infighting. The Serpents were coming and only a united humanity would have a chance of surviving. Anything else, and they would be swept away like wheat before a farmer’s thresher. Autumn had already arrived, and harvest was close.

He knew no one would believe him. He had no proof, no evidence to back up what he knew in the depths of his soul. He would be seen as a ranting madman. The changes he had endured and the gifts he had received would be seen as curiosities, not evidence of the horror that lay waiting for humanity. They would be stripped from him, fought over as nations and peoples slavered for these scraps, ignoring the truth until it was too late.

No, no one could know of the Serpents. He would find another way to unify humanity. Too long it had been fractured and squabbling, cannibalizing itself for ambition, power and money. None of that would matter on the day the Serpents came. Humanity needed to be better to survive. They needed to ascend from what they were to reach greater heights – to become the single point of light that would survive the harvest.

This was the young man’s new goal. His mercy had given humanity a chance. He would not see it wasted. He would make every city, every nation and every world in the sky ready for the day of the Serpent. Nothing less would do.

So the man set his course back towards the distant star he had fled. That, he was resolved, would be where he would start. His life had begun anew and this time, he would do things right.