The Ulangar: Book I, Part 9

This continues the epic I wrote between 1991 and 1996.

He started to go into his mystic trance

to go to the lands of King Surthur

and his followers the Fire Giants

to gain the fire root

Into the earth he fell

gliding among the rocks and dirt

to rise again on the northern part of the

Krox Peninsula east of the Braken desert

in a small ravine with a stream

that traveled in a southern direction

into the heart of the Red Swamp

The walls of the ravine stretched

up to a full twenty feet

not smooth but broken and crumbling

Lamaraz decided to follow the nameless creek

on its muddy shores

and for a hundred kilometers he traveled

watching the fish in the rivulet

flowing down small falls

with the current of the brook

leaping and diving through the warm water

Down the gentle slope of the bank went he

until he came to a lake one kilometer wide

where the creek and other waterways intersected

with a large river named the Phlegethon

where the temperature is always

ninety-eight degrees Celsius

heated by pits of molten earth

near the surface of Siglar

It is here that the Fire Giants

had their mill one of thousands

operating by wind and gravity

which added ingredients

to the lake to make it nutritious and good

to the owners of the mill

but poison to all else

This same solution surrounds the

coast of the Brakenia and Unikul to the north

where these Giants first began to spawn

It is a gelatinous hot substance

which the Fire Giants learned to make

to move themselves from the Sea of Dust

once bountiful and beautiful

until Prince Krutan spoke that Sacred Name

These figures were at work at the mill

standing half again to Lamaraz

Three meters they stood

with shoulders the length of an arm span

and biceps the size of boulders

The muscles coiled under flesh

like pythons ready for the kill

or springs prepared to pounce with titan power

Their flesh was fire frozen in space

and plastered onto muscles and tendons

as a decorator would apply wallpaper

They had scales resembling flames

shaped like triangles with colors

of red and white and yellow and orange

and straight copper wire for hair

which was bent down their neck

These gigantic men transported brown sacks

of ingredients used to make the poison

not small as small goes

nor big as big goes

just the size of a mature bovine

Lamaraz knew that south of the mill

the Red Swamp loomed just beyond Anshar and Kishar

It was there that the fire root blossomed

by the nutrition of the poison of the giants of flame

It was there he must go

into the middle of the land of these giants

where death held its grim face

in every sloshy footstep

So he went south

where he concealed himself in the brush of the quagmire

against the ever probing eyes of the Giants of Fire

The sludge was acid

hot and fiery and burning

deteriorating unprotected flesh

but the skin of Lamaraz

was hardened by the Desert and Shimir'Leh

which leaves its leathery brand

for all to see for the rest of the victim's life

The liquid also gave off a putrid odor

a combination of roses and mustard gas and sulfur

The brush held many stalks of Flågna

the source of the fire root

Thousands of these weeds covered the marsh

standing one and a half meters

and many did Lamaraz pull

and removed them from the root

Lamaraz after grabbing a handful of the root

was about to meld into the earth

but there was no Earth nor Water

only Air and Fire

So north he went into the dirt and Earth

constantly cautious of the Giants

He went unseen he left unseen

and he faded into the earth unseen