what is a rock before fear

Because he is oft times excited, or in a mood to recoil from, I hastened to my uncle's door as soon as the letter arrived. I could have no idea what awaited me there, in fact I am usually quite wary, knowing full well he may have some prank or another arranged for my arrival. Once deposited by hired coach, I cautiously entered his estate, by way of back gate, and hurried through the garden to the stone veranda overlooking his spacious lawns. I purposely left for New South Brumpton, which sat upon the cusp of the eighth wedge, on the very afternoon of the mysterious correspondence, and traveled through the night. Taking the back route, the coach came up to the estate from the North road and as the sun was bright in the morning sky, the driver easily navigated the sparsely used forest road and came up upon the lane farthest from my uncle's house. As a lad, I had explored these hills and woods and acquired the knowledge required for a hike to his doorstep. So, I meant to be both early and stealthy in my approach, hoping to throw my uncle off, in case he was on the lookout and had mischief in mind.

Easily I made the house, sounding no alarm, giving no doff-hound cause to bark, and for a time I contented myself to sit at the porch and view the lushness of his garden and watch the fountains as the water bubbled and leapt to dizzying heights. Overhead some winged hunter was circling, but I could not discern from the distance whether it be raptor or the evil Vapidarion Crest Bungler. I wished that I had brought my ocular scope, because my eye's sight has never been lauded, but in a rush I had left much behind. Whichever it might be, I had little cause to be frightened, especially so near to the house. Unfazed then, I tarried, believing eventually some servant, probably M.Goostors or L.Misteri , would greet me and invite me inside. The day was unclouded, but the veranda was well shaded by intricate pergolas grown wild with fruited pumpkin vines. In fact, dangling nearby was a cluster of the miniature lime orbs, grooved and rutted, amongst twining stems, leaves and paisley blooms. I pulled one free and dusted it off on my sleeve, biting into the thin rind. This cultivar of my uncle's was almost as tasty as the original fruit, but was lacking somehow, perhaps because it had no bite, or tang. From above I heard the eerie call of a Bungler, and I shivered.

Rising, I turned to the door and tried the handle. Alas, it was bolted from within, as I much suspected it would be. Lazily I pushed two hands into my traveling coat's pocket and rapped on the knotty glasswood with another, believing one servant or the other would be close by and come running. It did not come about, as I had wished, so I struck out for the front entrance, in no way concerning myself with the endeavor, which seemed at the time as innocent as the proverbial 'walk in the park'. Stepping off of the porch, I encountered nothing of substance, except perhaps the hard ground below the landing, and I stepped upon that, losing track of the count of my hops, until I neared the corner of my uncle's large home. His spacious abode was of the type only the savagely well off could allow for, and the stories I had heard of my uncle certainly afforded that he would inhabit such an imposing, monolithic structure. Two stories high and capped with turrets and iron fencing, cherubs carved of the finest Cotio marble stared down chiseled gargoyles from the upper eaves. All was laced with sticky pine ivy, numb with the spent seed pods of a late summer season.

The hedges seemed to me a shade overgrown with weeds of the stringiest variety, some with sharp purple blooms creeping out from the undergrowth. Indeed, I heard the rattling of a bumbleshoot- notsomuch as it traversed the rabid thickness, and I fled to the outermost edge of the pathway to avoid its hard stare. It would be just like my uncle to infest his gardens with such a diabolical vermin, and imported from faraway Tower Wishama to boot. Well, I imagined that he would also carry the antidote; I hoped, I mean to say.

Again I heard the rapacious peal overhead and quickened my pace. Even the Lord Vapid was never known to strike during the heart of the morn, so I feared not the call, but His namesake carrion interloper was beginning to drag my spirit down, and lift from deep inside my inner heebie jeebie. I hurried forth, and made the corner of the front, where cascading fronds of paragon Litesho lined swiveling boulder landing stones. The sun's rays glinted off the darkly bronze folio and hovered midair in crisscross diamond patterns. A spectacular sight during the light of day, on the eve, candle lit, the display was unreal and left one's eye lamenting for a fortnight and more, desiring another glimpse of the sublime beauty. Having seen it many times, I spared no moment for the show, but rushed up the path, stumbling only slightly as the stones perambulated beneath my bootstep.

Often busy with everyday work or carriages charged with some business or whatnot, the front lane was delinquent of any activity, and the shutters were drawn. Heedlessly I took each step, there were upwards of thirty, that number being the count of my uncle's preternatural achievements, until reaching the summit, and upon the subjugation of the pinnacle of my uncle's grand entrance, I eyed the door, a towering obelisk of oaken glasswood, polished to a high sheen of two-thousand laboring souls, and I moaned aloud spying the rent upon the well defined grain. Only now could I know of my uncle's wild distress and the disheveled appearance of his well earned castle. Now, at his ultimate age, my uncle had been visited by the wraith of disenchantment, and subject to the Will of His Lord Vapid, and the carrion fowl of Zowar Sent Harasser.

My heebie jeebie throbbed into my chest.

–

There was nothing for it, but to push down the panic, swallow deep, and enter the dissolute domicile of my uncle, no doubt laid low and cowering aloft on his bed of many feathered fallowspans.

The halls below were decrepit and mute, braided webs of the caliginous spider-mites draped the doorways from weeks of neglect and mewling fleawingers wheezed dispassionately from tautly breeze spent threads. I brushed them aside then picked the silk from my sleeves as I traversed the groundling floor lighting tall oil-fats with one free hand. I surmised my uncle was atop the foremost flight of winding steps, possibly consoled by a retinue of his faithful, but felt no dire need to present myself. The process of his demise was an ongoing state of affairs and knowing my stalwart progenitor, would surely progress at the speed of his will, and not another's, be it fair or foul. The columnar door, closed now but allowing a soft illumination, reached to the undulant ceiling. Beside the lamps, it was the only source of light and from its opaque striations the gleam of midday flowed over hallway divisions, the easy height of two and a half men, maybe three. Here, at the groundling, there were no rooms, only a maze of walls leading to various stairs rising upward through the gloaming to a myriad of rooms, nooks, and more oblique passageways. It was a straight route from front door to rear, though a great shrouded dome lay between and the dark unverness rained down in clamshell rifts like loosed incorporeal streamers to confound perception. There was no access to the crypts from here. Those steps, cut into rock and hewn through stubborn, callous tree roots, delved deep below the poured floor of the house and landed upon other rooms and mazes mostly unexplored by the likes of me, or any who fail to repress a weak threshold for unmitigated terror. The downward steps descend from the sloping gardens, without, and carry no light to the depths. Illumination you take by your own hand, and use your free hands to feel the crumbling walls, or grasp a shill-pipe to ward away evil spirits, or worse.

There was nothing that would tempt me that way, and the dull timbre of my own step caused in me a vexing ire, and it was that which finally led me to the spiral staircase that I climbed, hands over foot, haltingly, to my uncle's bedpost. A curtain was all that separated his resting place from the utmost tread, and through the heavy drape of thistle weave I could easily hear my uncle's heavy rasp and the hopscotch intonations of his servants M.Goostors and L.Misteri as they cursed the fell imposition in a mesh of harmony and discordant pitch. I had forsworn the irony of Vapidry years earlier, much to the distress of my motherkin, but the rite of Solemnity I knew well, and fought an urge to recant, if only for this instance. I felt tonal chords flex involuntarily as the rituals of my youth threatened to overtake my modern moral objections, and a pluvial flute, albeit a minor note, escaped my lips to fall upon my uncle's earhorn. He grasped handrails and pushed up from the pillowed loft, so I heard in the creaking of the posts. L.Misteri thrust aside the drape scattering a fine dust, and I saw M.Goostors thrown awry by uncle's free hand who grinned in pain at my arrival. “Away, you dour moaners, be off to fetch us broth and pumpkin wine. h.Brisa! By my side, brotherson, and tell me of your travels.”

--

G.Toxur earned his letter at the youngest age possible, in his second year at the Cotio Armaments, and even then at his side stood Goosters and Misteri, young plebes, eager to Capitalize and stand against the northern threat. Before long, he had gathered all of his honors and formed his own squad, not known for merely standing against the foe, but for searching out, and engaging. G.Toxur penned the book on maneuvers in the land of Zower. He marched into those decrepit pits ahead of an army of hundreds only to be driven back by the hordes, scarred but alive. Hobbling and scratching his way out from the brambles with the chosen few who stood and fell, my uncle invaded again and again, never conquering the foe, but keeping the fight alive in enemy territory. G.Toxur grew in stature, his grimace hardened by the years and fracases, his inner heebie jeebie shriveled into a stone pit and rattling piteously inside of its lonely, echoing cavity. Uncle had never, would never allow the fear to fester in his belly, or to soften his inherent anatomy. Now he pondered me from a pallet of firs, clothed in ceremonial garb and bedazzled with the polished bones and teeth of his vanquished, and sighed. “h.Brisa. You do me the honor of your visit. You represent your father in this place, my loyal brother and co-general, he who stood ground against Zapid at the crest of many gaping hollows. We lost many bloody frays, scads of followers perished, petrified, in the ranks. But he stood, hardened as any blockwood testament; yes, he faced the enemy and never faltered. He was my rock, and I, his.” He closed his eye for a moment, then my uncle turned his head to me. “I will see you standing as your father, H.Vinsid, and not as this, this perpendicular shadow of fallen willow barks.”

“Wha...” was the only sound that I could muster, and my breath fell flat against his stern countenance.

“The Lord Vapid will not leave me to rest for long. His Evilness senses my resolve, and I am old and weakening. It cannot be helped. He will have his grinding fists at the summit, soon, and vomit on my doorstep. Cannot you see? This is the final end all of us must face, but more so I, I who have taken the fight into His corner and come out intact, not bent and groveling, not with my sides ruptured from the abject fear that exudes from every pore of the horrid, crooked face of the enemy.” My uncle gasped for air. It was the only time I had ever witnessed something that resembled terror on his face. But he brushed it aside and took two of my hands in his, withered and calloused.

“Uncle.” It was all I thought to say, and my gaze fell.

“Yes. Your fatherkin fell, as he should have, when the blight from without, the flaxen missile from the stars, hovered over our hills. The thing fired on us, glazed over our gardens with a crackling honey pestilence. That day we lost many, thousands who lifted their faces to the sky and pushed hard against their sides to keep the dread from digging in, and expelling. That day he fell, much to my regret, for I had all I could handle, righting the fortitude of my lieutenants and remaining intact, myself.” The star flung menace was no match, and seeing the fallen and the quivering innards that erupted, scattering from the hill, it resigned. “It left our orb to harass another, not so willing to capitulate.” Uncle spoke of an event recounted in the oratory history of the renowned j.Benes, adjunct of the general, from afar. It was well documented, as are all his exploits, and beyond refute. He and my father also stood against the fright of AkNastard and the venomous tooth of Beehavistam. Every child of the twelve wedges and points without know these tales, and more.

I knew the stories all too well, was reminded of them constantly in my learning age. My lineage was known, and forever fell like an oaken shadow over my path. “I never knew my father,” I answered, akin to a squeak from my perch.

“Or your siblings. Scarcely knew your motherkin. Yes, I know of this. Sent far from your home wedge to toil on the inner marsh, to dwell upon the skein of dread and grow resolute. But the training failed, you bent to the terror.” My uncle threw his leg over the bed and leaned forward heavily on two of his hands. “The kin harbored a thought you might yield and become a subjugate-foe among us, so you were removed into our care. h.Brisa, you are my brotherson and I must favor you, or loathe and fear you. I cannot do the last, so you are forever held high in my esteem.” He took my hand. “Help me stand
for one last endeavor.”

–

His Lord Vapid had no use for a feeble heebie jeebie. It is a soft muscle, plump and easily agitated in its cavity just inside the thin hollow of our venter plates. We are born with one, fully formed, squeamish, overly nourished. The evil one defers to the white faced among us, those who blanch at His name. We go in peace, never to be harassed by His minions, having been told the mucous of healthy innards is like a viscous lye, an acid to His spleen. Still, we stiffen and quake. We crouch on rear lines, and flee under the shrieking tongues of flying vermin Bunglers. With every heartbeat, the responding organ strains at its fetters, easily breaking loose of its fleshy umbilicus and bursting forth. The anguish is tremendous. I have felt such pain as I would never wish upon another, although I know the strong, the hardened, suffer worse and for longer. Yet they emerge whole and heartier, or die broken, face down and bloodied by nothing less than a terror beyond the scope of their endurance.

G.Toxur led me, shuffling from heel to toe, to the spiral stair and slowly descended step by step. His back was bent, but my uncle was formidable yet in stature. His regalia fell at sharp angles from frail shoulders, and each shallow hop that he managed induced both creak and moan to escape his fragile bones and dry lips. My uncle should have been in his bed, awaiting the final visitor, defended by his loyal servants who would unselfishly succumb alongside their master. But he was with me, before me, ushering forward to the task he had settled on. There was no dissuading the general. There was nothing to stop me from fleeing, but I would just as soon perish, ruptured and bleeding from an irreconcilable wound, than allow my old, moribund uncle to die cursing the name of his brotherson.

I knew I could not live through the ordeal. We left the house, and moved down to the garden, beyond the hedges. A bumbleshoot-notsomuch scampered through brambles and stopped on the path, raising its narrow head to hiss. Quickly I shaded my eye, feeling my side bulge, but my uncle kicked a pebble at the creature and drove forth, hardly noticing a burning iris. He wiped a bead from his sodden brow. Grievous raptors drifted airily and entwined aloft, crying out faintly, adding thus to my distress. Shortly we entered the opulent garden and came before a door closed upon a stony abutment. Roughly carved from a solid chunk of glasswood and varnished with the black fruits of pine ivy, the door gave an impermeable view. And once opened, surrendering an empty foyer to its guests, the door would shut, and in shutting would close off the sun, to abandon us shuttered, dark and disillusioned in its clutches.

My eye refused to adapt, it was pitch black, and I reached out, encountering only a harrowing void with my searching, grasping fingers. “Uncle,” I begged. “Surely you must know, this is more than I shall be able to endure.”

“Yes, yes. I know.” Was all he said. And we waited, bereft of all sight, indeed of any sensation, for the air was still, even odorless. Nothing could be heard, except the boisterous beat of my own three chambered heart and the inhalations of my off-tilted tricorn earhorn. Of my uncle I sensed nothing, and had the disheartening dread he had crept away, to leave me helpless in this silent tomb. The wait went on, seemingly an eternity, when suddenly I was grasped from ahead and behind by many strong hands. The muggers made no sound, but gently laid me prone as I struggled slightly, then swooned. A leaf of forest whimsy was pressed up to my face, covering my mouth. At the first I fought to shake it loose, but a strangled frenzy overtook me, and I breathed in sharply, inhaling the mildew dust of the plant, and then I knew no more.

–

I know not when nor how long I lay in a stupor, but I was no more ineffectual in that state than I might have been fully aware, and surely tremulous, at whatever had befallen us in the sinister hollow. When I stirred from the forced slumber, I found myself spread on a well padded mattress of feather and fur. My uncle was beside me, in his bed, and gently snoring. He looked to me much at peace.

“What has happened,” I pondered, believing myself to be alone. “And what was the miracle that delivered us to safety, I wonder?”

“You were attacked in the cavern. Do you not remember?” asked a voice from behind me. I turned and there saw L.Misteri, she was wearing a stained surgical gown and bent to wipe my uncle's sweating brow. “Can you not feel the pain in your side, will you look now at the scar, and the scar on G.Toxur, your uncle?”

M.Goostors entered, toting a ewer, and set it down. “h.Brisa, you entered the cave a belly rat, and then emerged, slashed, yet whole. Do you feel changed, are you not H.Brisa?”

Certainly I was stressed, and completely fatigued. But likewise I felt confident. “I have lived.” To my right I heard the labored breath of my uncle, and thought him soon to be a ghost. “I would to have made my uncle proud, so he could leave this world unashamed.”

“And so you have. Yet he lives, and soon will face his, all of ours, worse enemy. Lord Vapid will come tonight, and there will be a mighty battle for the soul of G.Toxur. We shall see your uncle to his grave, you will see.”

The night slowly passed, and soon I was recovered enough to take food and drink and move about the upper level. Below us, the glasswood entrance was shut, but left unbarred, for no lock could stay Vapid in His hour. I stood, and sat, tracing over the stitched scar with first one finger, then the others. It seemed strange to have been wounded only in this one place, and for my uncle to have the same fresh wound on his body. But I had little time to ponder, for soon we heard a momentous thrumming, then skittering footfall. Boom, came a thudding upon the front door, and with no resistance it opened on its oiled hinges.

I stood before the doorway, while my uncle stretched and opened his eye. “It is my time. H.Brisa, help me to my foot.” I propped my uncle up, and we stood together to face the enemy. G.Toxur and his able servants had seen the foul lord before, but I had only heard tales, and the stories were less horrible than the truth. Into the room came the Lord Vapid, and He was shrunken from head down, ghastly pale and crimson as the bleeding noon sun. The man - if you could call him a man, for His belly sat upon a pan of curdled flesh and crawled below with the phalangi of twenty stout hands - rotated around a fetid, bulbous body and His many arms weaved smoking circles into the stale air. At the stump of each waving limb was a toothy maw that lunged erratically, then hissed out of stream of pithy vapor.

From its pulpy lips issued a gibber, but then the thing, the Lord Vapid, discerned its surroundings and became quite loquacious. “My old friend, G.Toxur. Finally I have come to inhale your being. I will relish the moment. Perhaps I might carry you on my belly for a month of moons, rolling your marbleized grain of stalwart in my cheek, for a while. Or longer.” The thing was amazingly still in the darkening chamber. “Do your stone servants join the fight, or will I return some later eve for their...fear?”

I held my uncle, he seemed to droop, even quake. Would he fail to meet this last challenge, after all he had fearlessly faced in his life? I began to doubt my uncle, but would not let him fall, not now. “Leave them be, foul Lord. They will have their own terrible end, tonight you come for G.Toxur, and he will have a singular death, one you surely owe him. And it will be sung of for an eon, if only to vex you further.” Even in the face of this grotesque monster I stood unafraid, but the Lord Vapid was not interested in me, only in the foe who had stared Him down on many a battlefield. It came closer and stretched out its quavering, slavering limbs. My uncle shivered and shrunk back into my arms, he reached down to feel his side and groaned in pain, as his scar began to seep red. “No,” I shouted, and thrust forward the general, G.Toxur, to the waiting, writhing arms of His Lord Vapid.

G.Toxur cried out, in shame, and Lord Vapid plunged His hungry, snapping palms into my uncle's feeble body, tearing the flesh and digging into his wounded side to feed upon the ocher, battle hardened heebie jeebie that lay within. The maw slobbered and gobbled it up, but the heebie jeebie was round, and soft. It squirted juices into the gullet of the heaving monster and the succus seeped around and between the grooves of its chin and gums and leaked into the gullets as they each tore into the ravaged body. His Lord Vapid pleaded retreat to its rapacious limbs, but to no avail and they devoured all of G.Toxur, there was nothing left, neither a splatter nor a splot.

“Trickery,” it cried out, only one time, then Vapid sprang to the window ledge and clutched a fist upon His chest, falling through, down to the waiting moonlit path. Wholly dead - and the carrion fowl of Zowar Sent Harasser howled out of their bony skull rifts and circled away in ever widening spirals until they came back to the inner lands, unto the wedges center, where they remained for an eternity and more.

Ever after I lived without fear, harboring the stony relic of my uncle in my side. His servants and I stayed in the house, tending the gardens. Together we lauded my uncle, who had given away his strength to become the lowly g.toxur, and to rid the world of a foul beast. Mine now, it slowly softens, the heebie jeebie, and only yestereve I took fright upon seeing a blunt-toed bidderknocker. M.Goostors merely chuckled, and blew his nosehorn.