Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 12 Read online

Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 12

  by Christopher D. Carter, © 2014

  Text and Illustration Copyright © 2014 Christopher D. Carter

  All Rights Reserved

  Also by Christopher D. Carter available at ebook retailers:

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 1

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 2

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 3

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 4

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 5

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 6

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 7

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 8

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 9

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 10

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 11

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 1

  Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 2

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Epilogue

  Next Issue

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  *

  Escape from the Velvet Ant

  *

  The Queenmother grinned her wicked smile from the silky covers of the wooden sleigh bed, and Pound hesitated as she motioned enticingly with her index finger for him to join her. He resisted with all of his willpower, but he found that her wicked spells were more powerful than his own ability to repel them. In the end, he felt his feet stir, and his knees wobbled. With the sliding of one foot at a time, Pound slowly and agonizingly eased across the room against his will, and he feared that he was to be her next victim. He remembered from his dreams how she had tossed aside the dwarf’s love for the appeal of power, and his stomach began to turn even as his feet carried him to her bed for her consumption. The Queenmother’s appetite was for destruction, and Pound knew that as soon as she finished using him for her needs, she would toss him aside, maybe to live, maybe to die.

  “And what was she now,” he thought to himself as she slid back the covers and waited for him to join her. From the visions that he had been shown, she had been transformed into something quite scandalous by the demon, though she bore the outer appearance of the beautiful young princess that had fought to rescue her father from the dragon’s fire. Carried by the appetite of her monstrous will, Pound neared the edge of the bed, and involuntarily, Pound’s hand reached down to rest upon the silky sheets of the mattress. It was then that he found the inner strength to blurt out his protest in desperation.

  “Queenmother, you are no beauty! Your heart beats with death’s throes, and the demon that cursed you to this shell of existence mocks you in his laughter!” Pound said as he verbally attacked the very core of her being. Believing that his outburst would at least affect her desires, he was surprised to find that he was still being drawn into her bed.

  “You humans are all the same,” she laughed as she drew the covers back to make room for him. “You believe that you can change your future by cursing your betters. Insult and swear all that you like, human. I have seen the power which you wield, and my children shall bear it as well,” she said as Pound reluctantly raised his leg and placed his knee upon the bed. Using all of his remaining strength of will, Pound managed to reverse the motion of his movements, and he stumbled backwards to the floor. The Queenmother peered at him from over the edge of the bed, and she giggled to herself at his plight.

  “Let me go, Queenmother. I have seen all that you have endured, and I pity your position in life,” Pound reasoned. “But taking me for your mate will not bring back your father.” The Queenmother’s eyes suddenly sparked with the passing of these words, and a look of anger grew where her shallow grin had once been.

  “What are you talking about, peasant?!” she demanded as she sat up in the bed and drew the covers over her bare skin.

  “I was shown a vision, my lady, a vision of you in your youth. And in the vision, your father had been taken captive by the giants during a raid of their castle,” Pound said as he described what he had been shown, and the Queenmother listened to his story with interest. “I witnessed your deep love for your father, and I know that you did everything in your power to save his life from the giants,” Pound continued, though he left out her careless actions that had led to her father’s untimely demise in the dragon’s fire. His hope was that he could find some constructive way of communicating with her, and then maybe he could charm his way out of her clutches. After all, he had only his wits to bail him out now since Shad was nowhere to be found.

  “You are very discerning then, my sweet tart,” she said as she turned her head away to glance at something behind her. Restricted by her spell, Pound could not see what it was that she was looking at, but perhaps it was nothing of importance. Maybe this was her way of being introspective. “If I could have had the assistance of the king’s court, their knowledge and their foresight, then I would have been warned of the trickery of the giants before the dragon burned their castle to the ground,” she said as she rubbed her fingers across her eyelashes. “I will carry that regret to the end of my days, but rest assured, my father’s advisors carried it to their own graves,” she said as she licked her lips with disdain. Whatever had happened to the royal advisors, Pound could only guess the answer from her facial expressions because the Queenmother was not going to elaborate on it. Still, Pound wanted to know, and discretion sometimes was not his strongest suit.

  “So where are the king’s advisors,” Pound asked, and the Queenmother followed up with a glare in his general direction.

  “You will learn this of me, human,” she said in her smug tone. “The royal court was here to serve me, and they have been served.” Pound did not like the sound of that, and though he had very little control over his motor skills, he could still think for himself and read between the lines.

  “Your majesty, I meant no disrespect. I am new to your realm, and I wish only to ask for the release of the slaves within the mines,” he requested as he lay there on the floor. “If you can find it in your heart, my lady,” he added for good measure. It seemed the simplest request, and since she was so powerful, he reasoned that she really had very little need for their service. In his time within her chambers, he actually had not seen any servants whatsoever, and so beyond digging for gold, the slaves appeared to serve no tangible service to her.

  “You know at first glance, you are an attractive man,” she said as she placed one wicked finger to her lips. “But the more words that spout from your lips, the more unattractive you become.” With her finger raised high above her head in a spell, a pillowcase on the bed unwound itself from its pillow, and the fabric crawled across the bed to the edge of the mattress. With one end lifted, the silky material danced with the motion of her fingertips, moving like a snake from a wicker basket. The pillowcase hissed once, and when the Queenmother thrust her hand forward, the fabric leapt from the bed and wrapped its body around Pound’s mouth and neck. Gagged and bound, Pound could no longer ask any more of the irritating questions of her majesty, and she breathed a sigh of relief at his condition. “Now that is much better,” she said as she leaned forward over the edge of the bed and smiled. “Now, we have business to attend to, advisor. And if you serve me well, I may let you live.”

  **********

  Shad stood outside of the Queenmother’s bedroom, steaming in jealousy at the thought of Pound bedding her. Though he knew in his heart that Pound was under her spell, he was still having trouble pressing the emotions down from the surface.

 
“After all,” he thought, “haven’t I been a good steward and brought him here to her lair. Isn’t that what is expected of me?!” he raged as he slammed his fist into his open palm. But with the other side of his mind, he wondered how could he blame Pound for what she was doing? Wasn’t she ultimately responsible for what was happening?

  Shad shook his head in disgust and plopped down against the castle wall. With both hands behind his head, he closed his eyes and thought back to his childhood. The princess had been quite demanding as a child, and even though she had played with Shad and Sean, she had never really been close to anyone save her father. Since the king was not around to control her desires, Shad would have to accept the fact that he himself had created a family with a promiscuous woman. There were consequences to his poor choices, and this was one of them.

  “I wonder. If I popped into the room, would the process stop itself?” he wondered as his mind shifted from analyzing the problem to overcoming the problem. “Or would I interrupt something that I would never be able to get out of my mind?” Shad had no idea what he would encounter if he entered the room unannounced, but his jealousy for the Queenmother’s affections had clouded his thoughts, and there was no way that he could stop himself from entering. With a snap of his fingers, Shad vaporized into a cloud of dust and arrived almost instantaneously in a dark corner of the royal bedroom. To his surprise, he found that the Queenmother was alone on the bed, covered in a blanket and staring down at the floor. Afraid of being discovered, Shad crouched down in the corner behind a table, and he watched as the Queenmother beckoned Pound to lay by her side. As the events unfolded, Shad noticed that an unusual glow was emanating from a covered object on a nearby tabletop. It was about the size of a small lamp and was covered with a black fabric, and a dim light came from beneath the cloth as it sat alone on the counter. Curiosity gained the better of him, and he kept one watchful eye on the Queenmother as he snuck closer to the edge of the table. Preoccupied with her newest conquest, the Queenmother failed to notice the dwarf as he crept around the corner of the table and out into the open. With one hand, he lifted the fabric from the object, and he found himself staring intently at a radiant statue of a child. Immediately, he recognized the Soul of the Mountain, and Shad snatched the precious stone and disappeared from the bedroom while the Queenmother was distracted by Pound’s resistance to her charms.

  In an instant, Shad found himself alone at the top of a stairwell deep within the royal palace, and he gently placed the artifact against the wall. Another blink of his eyes came, and the dwarf found himself back inside the royal bedroom where Pound still struggled against the Queenmother’s desires. Knowing what he must do, Shad leapt over the bed and wrapped the lady inside her blanket. Then he tackled Pound to the floor, and they both disappeared before the Queenmother could catch sight of him teleporting. In the next instant, Pound found himself freed from the selfish spell of the Queenmother, and he quickly thanked Shad for saving him from her powerful influence.

  “Don’t be thanking me yet, laddie! We’ve far to go before we’re free of the witch!” the dwarf instructed Pound, and he bent down to retrieve the child of stone. “The steps lead down to the mines. Follow them down and take this with you,” he said as he handed the glowing artifact to Pound. Pound accepted the gift, though he was unsure of the stone’s significance. “Keep quiet as you go, and when you get to the bottom, keep the Soul of the Mountain safe from Prince Argentine. The Queenmother is going to be one pissed off sorceress when she finds out you’ve taken it from her.”

  “I didn’t take it from her, dude! You did!” Pound exclaimed and shoved the statue back at the dwarf.

  “Aye, but if you want to get back to your world, you’re going to need it more than she will,” Shad explained with a grin and pushed the statue gently against Pound’s chest.

  “Great!” Pound said to himself as he took the dwarf’s advice. He tucked the statue in the cradle of his arm and bolted down the well of stairs. He had only gone a dozen steps when he realized that Shad was making no effort to join him. “What are you waiting for?” he asked the dwarf. Shad shook his head and waved him on.

  “Oh, I’ll be along in a little bit, but don’t wait up for me,” he said as he nervously scratched his chin. The only light Pound had in the darkness came from the stone statue, and Shad watched as he disappeared down into the darkness of the mine.

  **********

  The Queenmother unraveled the blanket that had covered her head, and to her great displeasure, the man was gone.

  “Where are you, little one?” she playfully asked as she placed her bare feet on the cold stone floor. There was no answer, and so she knelt down by the bed and looked underneath to see if he was hiding down there. “No,” she said to herself, and that was when she caught sight of the bare surface of the corner table. Standing to her feet, she marched over the bed as if it were not there and franticly searched for the missing stone. When she could not find it anywhere in the room, she cursed at her luck, and her eyes blazed with anger.

  “Shaddd!!!!” she screamed aloud, and the surface of her skin began to bubble beneath the superficial layers of epidermis as she clinched her fists. Her former lover then appeared on the bed from thin air, lying down on the disheveled blankets with his head propped upon his palm.

  “You rang, my lady?” he answered with a wink and a smile.

  “What have you done with the stone?!” she yelled. It was not her custom to hold back her temper with underlings, and she certainly would not break tradition for this dwarf. Her skin began to change to a deep red with her rage.

  “Oh, that little trinket?” he asked innocently. “Why would you care about the Soul of the Mountain? Isn’t it more important where the human is, hmm?” Long hairs popped out of her skin and grew across her back with the rise of her anger, and the Queenmother paced determinedly toward the bed. “It has been a long time since we shared our time together here,” Shad chided as he patted his hand on the bed. Her skin ripped open, and the beast within burst out of the thin layer of dermis like a jack-in-the-box toward the dwarf. Shad snapped his fingers and disappeared as the red and black exoskeleton of the velvet ant tore across the soft blankets of the bed. The mandibles churned and the antennae flicked back and forth as she searched the room for traces of the dwarf and the man, but there were none to be found. Only the lust of her wicked heart for the Soul of the Mountain remained, and that alone was enough to drive her insane. It proved to be a very short ride.

  **********

  Pound slowly wound the stairs around the inner wall of the well, and he found that the dim glow from the Soul of the Mountain shed just enough light to see about three steps ahead in the path. For the first time in several days, Pound actually felt as if he had a legitimate chance at escaping this world of giant birds, enormous bugs, and magical people, and he had no one else to blame this positive turn of events on except Shad. The moody dwarf had proven to be a difficult companion on their journey through the dead forest to the fortress in the mountainside, but as it turned out, the little fellow had enabled Pound’s escape from the Queenmother into the stairwell where he found himself on this dark path to the mine. Based on the previous events, the dwarf’s actions against the Queenmother did not seem to line up squarely with Pound’s expectations. The more Pound looked at the bleakness of his surroundings, the more he thought over the apparent rescue. The longer he wandered through the empty mineshaft alone, the more he began to wonder: had he indeed been rescued by the dwarf because of the dwarf’s good intentions? It was true after all, the Queenmother had special plans for Pound that involved her forcing him to help her bear more children, and it was also true that Shad had fathered some of her children, including Argentine.

  Pound stopped in his tracks and looked upward to where he had climbed down from for a moment as he thought to himself more deeply about what was going on. Was it possible that Shad had helped him out of pure jealo
usy? Or did the dwarf really want to help the slaves of the mine to escape? The answer to the former question seemed likely to be yes, and based on the dwarf’s surly demeanor, the answer to the latter question was likely no.

  “So why should I trust him?” Pound queried himself as he looked down at the child of stone that glowed in his arms. Maybe he couldn’t trust Shad? Maybe then he should go back up the steps and fight the Queenmother face to face. That would truly be an insane move on his part. She had successfully paralyzed him and rendered him no more than a slave to her lesser desires. The outcome would be certain. If he were to face her in battle, he would undoubtedly lose. Pound shook his head in aggravation at the complexity of the situation that he had stumbled upon, and he decided that whether he could trust the dwarf’s intervention or not, he had to go with his gut feeling and continue heading downward into the mines.

  It was too much to think about, and maybe there was some unanticipated bit of luck that waited for him when he reached the entrance to the mine, he thought as he held on tight to the Soul of the Mountain. Taking the next step down, his foot slipped on some loose dirt, and he immediately crouched down to steady himself from a fall. His momentum slowed as he slid uncontrollably down two more steps, but his grip on the Soul loosened just enough in the process that the child of stone slipped from his hands to tumble further down the steps. Before the darkness caved in around him, Pound watched helplessly as the Soul pinged off the corner of a step and plummeted down the center of the well.

  “Crap, it’s a long way down,” he thought as he saw it bounce along on the bottom of the shaft. An instant later, the echo of the artifact’s rebound reached him, and he cursed his luck under his breath as the unforgiving hard angles of the stone steps pressed into his back.

  **********

  Shad appeared behind one of the great curtains that hung down the full height of the throne room, and he held his breath as he listened quietly for any evidence that the Queenmother would return for him. He counted to one hundred behind the curtains and still there was no sound of the monster that he could detect. He knelt down on one knee and stuck his face next to the surface of the floor, and looking beneath the fringes of the drapes for the giant ant, he saw nothing besides the bottom of the throne. Dissatisfied with the limited view that was offered, Shad stood up to his feet and leaned his face forward to peek around the edge of the hanging fabric. With one eye, he peered around the voluminous room, and to his surprise, there was no indication that the colossal insect had ever entered the room. Shad stepped out from behind the curtain and began to tiptoe quietly toward the columned exit when he heard the sound of mandibles grinding. With a gulp of dread, Shad stopped in his footsteps and slowly angled his head back to take in the setting. Perched atop the throne, there stood a six-legged monster. The exoskeleton was colored in black and red hair, and its mouth salivated between the oscillations of her hardened jaws. Shad froze in terror at the horrible sight of his former lover, and his life was mercifully ended before she devoured him.