World Leapers Book I: The Forest

The Gong

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Enormous gray boulders peppered the layered landscape of small brittle rocks that lined the ancient landslide on the face of the mountain slope. Gnarled branches of dead, dry pines jutted out in the spaces between the boulders, many of the trees petrified and as hard as the rocks through which they protruded. Beneath the shadow of many of the old branches, and directly underneath several of the boulders, were deep and dark crevices carved into the side of the mountain. Each hole, and much of the mountain face, was a desolate landscape void of green and instead comprised of a barren and black surface, a surface poisoned by an infectious rot that had degraded the landscape, killed the natural flora and even penetrated into the underground fungus and roots that had once served as nourishing lifeblood for the surrounding forest.

It was upon one of the boulders that Kull's massive scithrin descended from the sky and touched down, hissing and opening her gaping jaw to release a vile screech. She swiveled her neck side to side, snapping her mouth open and shut. As he slipped off the side and planted his boots on the surface of the boulder Kull smiled and patted the scithrin's neck. "There, there. You will feast soon enough on human flesh. For now, go hunt a rabbit or raid a bird's nest. Get!" He slapped the flank of the scithrin, and she pushed off the boulder, unfurling her wings and soaring down the slope towards the treeline at the bottom of the rockslide.

Kull glanced at the sky. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and dusk's shadows were already dancing across the side of the mountain, creating an eerie portrait of a pitted landscape and lifeless trees. A slight chill settled in the air. Kull shoved his square jaw forward and grinned, then planted both hands underneath the boulder upon which his scithrin had landed and pulled himself into the crevice below the giant rock. For a moment, his feet hung and dangled into the ledge that dropped precipitously down to the cave floor just a few feet from the opening of the crevice. Ignoring the tattered climbing rope that descended down to the bottom tier of rock, Kull launched his towering body down and landed with both feet planted firm in a deep squat position.

Then he stood upright in the cave, his only source of light a tall flickering torch that jutted out from a crack in the wall of the cave to his right. To his left, on a rusted metal stand was a large, copper-colored gong, entirely flat except for its rim, which was curled up to make the gong a shallow, circular cylinder. Leaning against the gong's stand was an enormous hammer nearly as tall as Kull. He took two giant steps to the gong, gripped the long wooden handle of the hammer and, veins in his arm bulging like pythons, swung the vast hammer out to his side with seeming ease.

When he swung the hammer forward and struck the face of the gong, a violent echo filled the cave, sending a booming clang out into the mountainside. He struck it a second time, then a third. A reverberating echo built inside the cave, and spilled out into the mountain air far beyond. The skin on Kull's cheeks shook and shuddered from the churning sound waves, and pebbles rained down from the roof of the cave, showering his head, shoulders and black boots with a fine powder.

The mountain was silent for a moment.

Then it began to stir.

From far above Kull's crevice, a scithrin shrieked. Then another. And another, this time from below the crevice. Several hundred feet to the right, the long, wicked head of a scithrin emerged from a similar cave. Below that scithrin came another. Nearly a dozen more serpents appeared from a series of caves above the crevice, and then farther down the landslide. Like black ants pouring out from a mound of scarred earth, the scithrin came dense and furious, and with them emerged a multitude of dark shramanic figures, following as black shadows that scurried below the legs and necks of the scithrin.