Lore of the Underlings: Episode 6 ~ Meeting Minyon Read Online Free Page A

behold! No less than a quest from some new testament
or deed retold from a book of olde. A scene beyond my wildest
dreams. An act befitting our fallen queen. Faunon honored by her
children. Sainted, consecrated in blood…
    “They drew straws and the first task fell to
Eela to track and trap the bully thing, a trial using naught but
her bare feet and the wits she had about her. Well, as well as the
aid of a herder’s spear borrowed from a flocker here.
    “She poked and prodded the grizzly demon
until it was bullfull, seeing red. A bad-news bear gone very
mad.”
    Heads bobbed and nodded in approval, although
no one made a sound now or uttered a single word.
    “The final feat belonged to Axon, armed with
only a claw-blade in hand. Standing face to face with the beast, he
spoke his last peace, a warrior’s speech:
     
    Give me life
    But brutish and short
     
    For kin and bone
    I give my heart!
     
    “Then he went in for the kill.”
    Suddenly Minyon slipped into a whisper and
people pressed closer just to hear.
    “That’s when I found myself on my knees —
miracle, wonder unfolding before me. A vision of foul bile spilled
on the soil, turning the stained ground holy.”
    The followers were fully beguiled. The
elderman’s voice grew louder again.
    “I swear that a father has never been
prouder.” He sighed in a sad and wistful way.
    “Don’t stop now,” a new acolyte worried.
    “Tell us the tail of your story.”
    “Amen!”
    Minyon smiled. “Of course I will. How could I
leave you out there in the wild?”
    The sun shone in his entrancing eyes like two
stones of treasured obsidian.
    “To do justice to this animal king, they
gutted it swiftly and by hand — Eela peeling its pelt from the
front, Axon skinning the belly and back. It came to them like
second nature, the more the gore the more they enjoyed it. Soon
there were entrails everywhere.
    “And I read them, just to be sure.”
    That really piqued his pupils’ interest.
    “What did they say?!”
    “Please…”
    “Yes, yes, do school us!”
    He raised his palm and silenced them with a
dramatic pause…
    “First I foresaw an impending feast, a menu
full of fetid beast — truly, all bull,” he quipped. “Bear with
me…”
    His joking evoked a fawning laugh. Then
Minyon’s tenor turned serious.
     
    “But down in the bowels, I found true news
and knew we needed to return. So we hastily fashioned a pilgrim’s
pyre and set our sacrifice afire.
    “Grateful for its gift to us we ate of its
meat, lifting it up to the heavens first in humble praise of this
life not taken in vain. And we prayed that by this offering we
might bring some peace to the wrongly departed — their long-lost,
my much-missed, our dearly beloved. The girl of my dreams taken
bride by a nightmare. O my Faunon Myne…
    “I searched for a sign of her in the flames…
but no spirit appeared or called our names. That is, until
suddenly, there it was! For an instant a flare of light so bright,
the glow of a figure all in white… And then in a flash it was gone
— burned out. Nothing but ashes, dust in the wind.”
    Minyon cleared his throat.
    “No firebird rising, born again…”
    He looked off as if keeping a deeper pain or
something darker to himself.
    “It was just at dusk’s dawn that we set out
for home, we three, the last of my family line. And as nightfall
stole the remains of the day, I felt a familiar old feeling return
— the curse of being a Fell-Behind, left lost in the dark for
twenty-some years, abandoned for thousands of suns…”
    Minyon suddenly stopped himself and took on a
lighter near cheery look. “But enough of the past, let’s leave that
for the future — it’s high time to get to the present tents!” Then
he shifted his stance setting course for the entrance.
    “Wait!” wailed a whey woman.
    “Elderman Minyon…”
    “What of your prophecies?”
    “And those omens?!”
    “Ah yes,” Minyon mused, “I guess I can share
them… Though