Leonard, the Cresting Puma

Two knights in combat. The sky was grey and the silver sun shone on their iron. The clash and clang of their armor as they close, like two boars locking tusks.

In that country the stones were heavy and dark with moss and ivy.

All of a sudden the grappling knights tumble, breaking loose, like avalanches over one another.

With a tilt and a shove by his shoulder, one knight sends the younger to the sand.

The standing one poises his sword to strike, cocked like a scorpions tail. He thrusts to finish it, but the younger rolls, evades, and brings his sword sailing down- the elder raises his blade just in time to parry the thunderbolt. His weapon is knocked from his hands, and falls to his feet...

He rips his helmet off.

"Leonard!" Says he to his adversary, "your heart, your heart, your heart is the only thing that can save her! You've got to give it up!"

The elder knight rushed forth and tackled him. They wrestled like scaly snakes in the sand and stones.

"You're mad, Gornzalo," the younger growled, "the physician can save her, still your grief..."

But the grey knight screamed, and the glint of a little dagger flashed in his grips...

He never ran out of tricks. He made to plunge this knife into Leonard's throat. But he was swept from his upright hold by a cunning maneuver, and sent rolling on his shoulder.

Leonard didn't desire to do his comrade any harm.

There wasn't any clear course of action. He returned his sword into his scabbard and ran as fast as he could, from his comrade, and the madness that possessed him.

The man's daughter was reported, in the midst of a séance, to have demanded the warm, dripping heart of Leonard, the Cresting Puma, and to have the organ tossed into a village well, whichever was the deepest and darkest.

If this feat were not carried out to completion, she oracularly pronounced, then an appalling plague would strike the valleys and hills.

Sepulveda, the Master of the Séance, had interpreted the hypnotically-produced signs quite literally and as a reflection of factual obligation.

"Reality," the sage reflected, "must be brought to accordance with the dream..."

The waves of the sea licked and flowed over the rampart. The puddles in the stone shone immortally in the sun.

He crept over the puddles and up the castle's seaward entrance. It was a secret crawl space, up an ancient stairway, through an immense rock promontory. The gulls cried at his return.

Zephyr the Sea Breeze often played here, soaring through the cliffs, whistling through their cruel wind holes, guarding the high walls to the city and the citadel. He gusted now with a brown cloud of sand. Leonard gripped the thin, rusty chain fasted into the stone.

The citadel was his.

The wooden door of the chapel crept open. The hinges cried with age. The fresh wind and the brilliant morning followed Leonard into the candle-lit twilight inside.

He always consulted this monk, Razabarius, on these kinds of misadventures.

"Yes, I have heard Sepulveda's hermeneutic against you..."

Leonard looked out the window at the beautiful glowing sky and couldn't believe the machinations of these morbid sorcerers and oracles. He was not amused.

"You must defy the prophecy, violate it profusely. With a perverse and bold transgression against his pronouncement, you can drain the aura of his words and further protect yourself. Such audacity can only be achieved by killing Octo-Andros, the Undefeatable, in a duel; then," the wrinkled monk licked his lips, as if relishing the ghastly counsel, "marry the widowed damsel, the very same who had such vivid nightly portents of your juicy stolen organs."