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Hell wasn't the way Grendel had imagined it.
Then again, things were never the way Grendel ever imagined.
Something that Grendel realized when he woke up was that his arm, the one that had been ripped away by that 'man' has mysteriously grown back. The only difference was that his right arm bore numerous scales underneath the brown fur, dark red like fresh lakes of blood. His nails were dark black, like arrowheads tipped in oil or tar.
"How long was I asleep? Centuries? Ah well. I guess it really doesn't matter. Another long dull fall in eternity. Poor Grendel."The buildings of this Hell were like nothing he had ever seen before. They were taller than the huts mead halls that the Danes used, and many of them where shaped in the fashioned of this warped environment. Each building was block-like, dotted with multiple windows lined with flickering glass. Some of the windows opened, and the strange inhabitants of this world would piss into the street, hurl themselves out and plummet to ground in greasy smears of scarlet blood and broken bones. The sky was red too, and Grendel swore that he could make out the shape of an ever-present star. It stretched out all over the land, like a vile omen or permanent tattoo on the scabby flesh of Hell. There was a vibrant allure to this place, Grendel admitted to himself, even though he hadn't a clue what to make of it all. It fascinated him and baffled him.
The residents he encountered were... interesting, to say the least. Some of them fit the descriptions of demons and Hell-beasts that the Shaper once sung about. Grendel, for his part, didn't seem out of place among the throngs of freaks and degenerate monsters inhabiting this strange domain. His dark-brown hair and wolf-like ears, fangs and tusks, and great paws intimidated many of the smaller demons who walked pass him. Many of the locals simply ignored Grendel, barely giving him the slightest hint of attention. Several of them blew on thin little torch-like sticks that exhumed gray smoke. The smell of that smoke made Grendel's nose wrinkle whenever he passed someone puffing on one of the foul-smelling smoke-sticks.
So, Grendel walked along the stone pathways that ran all across this strange Hell. There wasn't much he could do about his predicament. He was is Hell, slain by that "Bee-Wolf" bastard, or whatever his name was. Even so, the memory of that fateful encounter still came back to haunt Grendel at times, spiking his mind with sharp needles of inner pain. If he hadn't of been so foolish, or slipped in a puddle of his own blood, perhaps things would have happened differently. Anger rose on his chest, mixing with the pain. Grendel wanted to rip that man apart into chunks of gore and feast on the gobbets, then shit the remains all over Hrothgar's kingdom. That would never happen, Grendel knew, but the thought of vengeance kept snaking in his thoughts.Those thoughts were interrupted, however, as a deep blaring sound forced every hair on Grendel's body to bristle in shock. He turned, and saw a metal object with rolling black rings for limbs surge towards him. Both if it's eyes were glowing white orbs that flashed into Grendel's eyes, and deep into his soul. It had to be some other kind of demon, or a dragon, or worse. A familiar sense of terror gripped him, and he narrowly managed to leap out of the 'thing's' path. One of the demons crossing the black road wasn't lucky, however, and the metal beast trampled the unfortunate fool. There was a brief squeal of agonizing pain, and then a carpet of gore and crushed limbs. Grendel blinked, grasping his furry chest and thankful that it wasn't his body that had been ripped apart. It had all happened so quickly, and his heart didn't cease beating for what felt like a millennia."Best not to get distracted," he panted, "and avoid more dragons on black limbs."
After that near-death encounter, Grendel decided to keep to the stone paths, like everyone else. There were more of the iron dragons prowling the black roads, as Grendel soon found out. It was only when the blazing monsters had approached a flashing lights in a metal box that Grendel could clearly make them out. The color of their metallic hides varied, from red to green, yellow to blue, orange to purple, and so on. Their limbs were like the wheels on the carts used by the Danes and their rival tribes, only bigger and black. As they halted before the flash of red, the beasts rumbled and purred, like forest predators waiting to pounce. The bones on these wheel limbs were plain to see to, and they were made of metal too. The back of their ears had mirrors, and Grendel saw his own reflection in the silvery bowls. Much like the windows of the surrounding buildings, the iron dragons had square eyes of glass, and Grendel could almost see behind the glossy pools and observe their entrails. Instead of breathing smoke from their gill-like snouts, these dragons defecated it from a hole-like tail sticking from their backsides.
Grendel bumped into a goat-like creature, who instantly lashed out at the Scourge of the Danes with a tirade of unintelligible insults. The only form of communication that Grendel recognized was the moment that the goat-thing raised a hoofed hand and raised one middle finger. Grendel glowered, and returned the gesture two-fold with two raised middle fingers. At that, the goat-demon drew a knife from it's shaggy pocket and rushed at Grendel.
Now this feels familiar, Grendel mused as he seized the demon by the throat. The foolish twerp jerked wildly, eyes bulging as Grendel crushed his throat. It was at that moment when Grendel realized that he was hungry. After sleeping for who the fuck knows how long, he could used the snack. With a shark-toothed grin, Grendel brought the struggling goat-demon up to his face, opened his mouth, and bit down on his meal. Without his head, the billy-goat-thing spasmed out of control. Boney limbs flayed like thrashing serpents, and blood sprayed from the stump of the neck. Grendel raised the headless corpse and suckled on the hot gore flowing out. It dribbled onto his brown fur and down onto the stone road. He crunched and chewed on the severed head in his mouth, grinding skull and meat and brain matter into mush between his powerful teeth. Then Grendel took another bite, this time from the chest. He happily chewed and swallowed, ignoring the stares that his cannibalism was drawing. Another demon, a hulking beast with scales and jagged fins, ate his victim and shrugged. Then everyone else shrugged, and left Grendel to his feasting.
As Grendel gobbled on his goat-man treat and wandered this newest addition in the fog-roads of Hell, he felt something that he never thought a vile creature like himself could experience: joy. It was only a crackle of a feeling, but it was a start. Hopefully.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Grendel picked a stray lump of flesh out from in-between his teeth, a leftover from his last meal. It had been stuck there for quite some time, and he had been licking at it with his tongue in a game of push-and-pull. One of the setbacks of having such large incisors was having to scrape away those stubborn little tadpoles of food that squeezed themselves into deep crevices. The Wrecker of Mead-Halls flicked away the scrap and belched loudly. By the fake gods men worshipped, he was full.He scratched his belly, swollen with gore and meat. As Grendel relaxed against a black-trunked tree with deep-blue leaves, he surveyed the aftermath of his feasting. The ground was littered with the half-eaten corpses of demons and stray limbs, all squirting crimson streams of blood like miniscule geysers. Broken bones punched out from torn openings, leaking marrow. Many of the demons had been rent into so many portions of flesh, and Grendel had feasted on the juiciest gobbets. Each cadaver was headless, or half-headless. Eating one or two of them in his fist reminded Grendel of how humans had eaten apples, and so he ate his prey like apples too. He took bites out of their arms and torsos, one wet crunch at a time, until the middle sections of their bodies were gnarled to the root. They would squirm and shriek, and Grendel would cough before biting down again.His choice for a feasting area was a remote little boggy moor riddled with stinking moss and lined with other midnight-dipped trees that twisted and turned like tuber worms. It reminded him of the boggy mere that he called home. Well, part of his home. anyway. Hills slipped upward in smooth bumps, choked with bent collections of luminous waterlilies. There were no roads or stone pathways here, simply vermin-trails and the footprints of other wandering souls. Little beasts roamed this place, frog-like fish with slim eel-bodies that popped from the churning water to nibble on whatever remnants of viscera Grendel left for them. Grendel looked up, and the red sky was blotched with black clouds drifting from the dwellings of the massive demon-homes. The desolate fens, the haunted feeling of the heath and foreboding marshes: it felt welcoming. The mist bands licked at the scent of hot life-blood, taking the shape of gray carrion birds when Grendel coughed and spat. Reeds with obsidian fingers of fungus bloomed, and the rancid smell made Grendel sneeze more than once. Birds made from marble-white eyeballs fluttered across the trembling eaves, claiming the barbed oaks as their own. Every tree or knobby plant that grew from the demonic pools and worm-choked marsh-dens terrorized the fish-creatures that bobbed for air, frightened by the maze of tree-roots and snaggle-toothed maws of leaves mirrored in its surface.
Lumps of leathery scalp and colorful hair piled up beside him, a little game that Grendel had thought of. When he bit the top of a head off, he would suck out the brains and pluck out the skull cap for crunching upon. Then Grendel would spit the greasy remains somewhere nearby, taking delight in hearing the flaps of scalp flop wetly against the emerald grass. The sound of flesh splatting against flesh was entertaining too. Next to that mound of hairy meat were clutters of broken bones, all snapped in half and gnawed clean. Once he had grown bored of scalping other creatures, Grendel chose to suck the marrow from the bones of the deceased. Marrow was delicious, especially when it was gulped down once the femur had been cracked open and guzzled with sizzling blood.
The air, once rich with the scent of demonic fauna spraying ashen pollen, was now thick with the tang of metal. So much blood had been spilt by Grendel in his careless butchery that there wasn't any surface that wasn't stained by the tiniest droplet of red. Every blue leaf, an arrow-head of weeping sky, dripped with beads of blood that would occasionally patter onto Grendel's bestial nose and make his nostrils twitch. When the monster breathed in, he tasted the overwhelming aroma of dismembered viscera and the buttery flare of yellow marrow. The yellow of the marrow reminded Grendel of the yoke of a bird's egg. Sweet, golden milk for a bastard child.
At first, he had bitten off the head of random demons and what must have been fiends from 'the foulest black pits of Cain.' Some fiends. Despite their wicked characteristics, the creatures that Grendel had chosen to decapitate via his fangs were a joke. The few who tried fighting back attempted to stab at Grendel with their flashing knives, but none of them came close to delivering so much as a jagged bee-sting on his thick, tree-trunk limbs. There had been exceptions, of course: demons who matched Grendel in size and strength. Those 'challengers' gave him a wonderful fight, until he overpowered them with his supernatural strength and crimped their skulls open with his fists.
Slaying old Hrothgar's bravest thanes had been far more exciting, more passionate...in those first years, anyway. Still, the rush of blood and bent ring-mail beckoned to Grendel again and again. The dragon's charm had prevented any weapon from harming him, allowing Grendel to murder his victims with ease. It became evident, however that part of the charm had somehow faded away when Grendel felt the sharp teeth of a rather bellicose target sink into his left leg. When Grendel felt that rush of pain flare in his massive limb, every strand of dark hair became a razor-edged needle. The sensation shocked Grendel, an unrivaled slaughter of men. It was a measly scratch compared to the loss of his previous limb, thank the fake gods. Despite the occasional burst of pain he received from a vicious knife or tooth or nail, Grendel didn't encounter anything resembling a genuine threat. That changed when Grendel encountered those thrilling, terrifying little rods that spat fire. Other that that, no pale threat.
This...this wasn't a challenge. It was harmless butchery, despite the reward of rich flesh and the spilling of blood. At least the Danes and various heroes attempting to win gold from Hrothgar knew how to wield a sword properly. Yes, a few of these maggots would occasionally draw a wavy-pattered sword and attempt to fight back, but it wasn't the same. Fighting with nail and fist ended an opponent with a shattering of demon-skin and bone-cage, but that only granted Grendel a moment to savor the rush of gore. One of the most peculiar weapons these little freaks carried were... disturbing...yet thrilling at the same time. The weapons were iron tubes that fired thunder and flame, ripping holes into whatever their wielder aimed at. The 'thunder rods,' as Grendel had decided to call them, produced tiny little pieces of metal beads that reeked like dragon's fire. It was frightening how such small little things could inflict such destruction. One of the metal beads had embedded itself in the deep muscle of Grendel's new arm, followed by a thin serpent-spray of foul blood staining his would-be assassin in the face. Removing the seed-like projectile took a solid hour, as it had lodged itself like a tick through the sinew. Finally, after hopelessly digging at nothing but sore flesh and bloody hair for what must have been decades, Grendel plucked the round little projectile out of his thick limb. Grendel stared at the red-stained ball, pinching it between his beast-like fingers. After that incident, Grendel found it wiser to carry out his hunting with caution.
All of these demons and Hell-beasts, these monsters and creatures, they were dead now. Or did demons truly die? Perhaps they were reborn and shat up from the ass of some other place in Hell? Either way, they weren't in a condition to confirm that theory, or strike up any form of conversation. Interestingly, there were many among the "Cain-spawn" that bore some resemblance to what the Danes and their doddering old priest spoke of in hushed whispers, followed by worthless prayers to their multiple gods. Among the unruly bands of demons that Grendel had slaughtered, there were little runts with curled horns colored with rings of black and white. The ends of their tails were barbed, like arrow heads or spear-tips that Hrothgar's people used to hunt deer or wild boars. Their blood-red skin bore the occasional blotch of white pigmentation, along with black symbols that reminded Grendel of the tattoos that the Danish thanes bore as they swaggered bare-chested among their womenfolk. One of two of them had fleshy-little wings poking from their shoulder-blades; little good it did them, as none of them had the brains to fly away as Grendel throttled them. Decimating these little pipsqueaks brought back memories of snatching pigs or cows from their pens late at night, when the humans were too busy sleeping or drunkenly boasting in their mead-halls.
Grendel scratched his furry neck with barbed nails, grumbling as he tugged at scabs of dried blood. He was all alone, once again, like he was before. Grendel hadn't bothered to strike any form of conversation with any of these demons, and why bother? When Grendel lived in the land of the Danes, he had been unable to communicate with those foolish, stupid humans. The far-flung memory of his encounter with the bull, being stuck in a tree, and his disastrous first encounter with human beings fogged Grendel. He understood their speech, but they couldn't understand poor Grendel when he bawled for his poor mother. Since then, communication with the Spear-Danes seemed impossible. Well, not entirely. Grendel chuckled at the memory of humiliating that would-be hero Unferth, breaking the illusion of becoming a true hero and dying an 'honorable' death. That encounter had seen Grendel communicate with a human being for the first time in his life, however hard it must have been for Unferth to decipher every snarl and bestial grunt.
"Is any death truly honorable?" Grendel snorted. "Mine certainly wasn't. It was painful beyond all reason, a white-hot blur of agony when the "Bee-wolf" tore my arm free." Grendel flexed his new limb, observing the scales underneath brown patches of bloodstained fur. The familiar jolt of pain from that fatal encounter came back to torment him every hour or so, striking every nerve and peeling through the bone-lappings of his current thoughts. "The hell-spawn I have so generously dismembered would agree, had I not bitten their heads off. I couldn't help it. I was hungry, and a little bored." Not that it changed anything. If these fools were still alive, rolling while their life-essence spewed freely, it would be impossible to strike up a conversation. So, Grendel got up and snatched the headless, half-eaten corpse of a red demon. "I wager that your death was painful, yes? No? Of course it was. I chomped on your brain and bones, and your muffled screams tickled my throat. It didn't make your passing any easier. If it makes you feel any better, a shard from your horn became stuck in my teeth. It must have taken ages to remove it; I wasn't keeping track of time. Tell me, little 'cousin,' do you think that humankind has changed, or have I?" Grendel knew that the lifeless body would grant him no response, so he pretended that the gaping wound in the belly was a mouth. He pretended that the flaps of eviscerated meat were lips, and the ropes of intestines were the tongues of multiple serpents. "Of course my death was painful, stupid Grendel. Stupid, stupid Grendel. Look at you, so desperate for companionship that you would strike up a conversation with the remains of your lunch.""You could have been dinner.""Yes, I could have been dinner. Or breakfast. Did I taste good?""I am certain that you were. When I caught you, 'cousin,' you were stripped to the waist and having your way with some tall, pink slut. I plucked you off of the ground, like I had with so many others, and bit your head off. The blood spattered your partner, and she squealed like a stuck pig.""It was a male, Stupid Grendel. For all you know, I could have been the female. You didn't bother to find out, did you?"Grendel shook his head apologetically. "No, of course not. If it gives you any comfort, I let your associate in carnal devotion run away, running with his or her barbed tail between the legs." He gently set the grisly puppet of flesh across his hairy lap and recalled the faces of every demon he had slain. Some gave out wails of horror, yet a few were to drunk on their strange drink to care. One or two didn't offer any resistance at all, allowing Grendel to devour them with uncaring silence. Before they were seized by the Grim World-Roamer and Devourer of Hrothgar's thanes, Grendel had watched his victims go about their business. The urge to gorge on flesh was tempered by a hunger for knowledge, to know more about the bizarre creatures who were supposed to be distant relatives. Grendel would hide in the narrow valleys between their towering buildings of red and black, observing in the coolness of the shadows with squinting eyes. He did his best to avoid the metal dragons on black wheels, feeling his hair bristle at their rumbling approach. They would usually open their wings and disgorge one or two demons onto the stone paths, or remain silent as their occupants shook the beast's insides with their unbridled fornication. Now that Grendel thought about it, the demons in this world engaged in the act of copulation more often that he would have liked. They would make love out in the open, ripping off one partner's clothes before commencing in a passionate series of thrusting and moaning. It all sickened Grendel, as much as it fascinated him. The Danes had engaged in such carnal activities, from what Grendel could remember, but these freaks brought the act of sexual intercourse to incredible new heights. When they weren't filling each other's holes with their throbbing organs, the demons would engage in various activities like murder or thievery. It was amazing, how some demons could die the same way humans died: strangulation, a knife to the throat, endless fist-blows to the face, etc. Whenever one of them was slain, the body was looted of anything valuable, such as clothes or whatever passed as currency in these lands. Grendel would swipe the body once the killers had left, and he had dinner. There were those demons who ate their dead, and Grendel would kill them in a rage for denying him a meal. Other times, he would snatch the body and leave the bewildered cannibals staring at nothing, laughing while their empty bellies rumbled and drool cascaded from their lips. It was like observing the race of man, but the stupid, greedy humans had somehow mutated, manifesting into the ugliness of their souls before descending into new forms of debauchery.
"I wager that none of them bother to think anymore. Not for them is the dissection of the mechanical bits that make up this meaningless universe. If they think, they think of mounting the nearest living thing in a rush of blind fury. They are crabs in the mud, crabs in the shit. They enjoy being crabs in the mud of their existence. They do what they do because it is what they are: sinners who swim in their past like pale fish in cavern pools. Beneath all of that consumption of sin are morsels of complexity, which they murder time and again with their scented smoke-sticks and drink. They kill and fornicate, kill and fornicate. I am on the same path, massacring them in mechanical symphonies and flooding my pain with their grinded flesh."
Grendel stared at the heaps of dead and gave a fake laugh. "Ah, who needs them. I certainly don't. I have all the company I could ever want right here." He stumbled to his paw-like feet, almost slipping in a damp patch of blood and mud. Standing up to his full height, Grendel approached the largest of the iron tunnels and belched. The sound of his belch rang down the dark hole, spreading onward and downward until the rock slide of gas-like creaks evolved into a tidal wave of thunder claps. Grendel kept staring down the tunnel, awe-struck at how vast it was in proportion. It wasn't made of rock, like the winding paths of his mother's underground cave. Who knew how far it went, how deep into the belly of this strange world it sank it hollow claws? He hurtled a rock the size of his fist down the tunnel, letting the darkness swallow it before the pitter-patter of hard mineral against cold iron swarmed the depths and evaporated into frost-rimmed clicks.
"See that? All of my friends and distant relations nearby. So loyal, so dependent of me, begging for my eternal attention." Grinning now, Grendel cupped his mouth and shouted down the endless murk of grim metal. "Hello!""Hello!...Hello!...Hello!...Hello!..."A thousand voices, Grendel's voices, answered his ancestral call. There were voices much like his own, monstrous and hideous. Other branches of his echo twisted into guttural snarls like bent iron molesting rocks, and some of those "Hellos" opened their throats wide into deep-based rumbles that retained Grendel's snarl. The echoes stretched their lips wide and grew fanged maws of their own, licking at the darkness with red eyes and peeling into existence in the form of hunch-backed shapes. With each new wave of a tingling "Hello," the pitch-black ancestors that filled the guts of the tunnel awoke and bred little monsters of their own.
Grendel knew that these voices were his own, not his long-lost relatives. There was always the possibility, however, that some of his blood-relations did inhabit this endless labyrinth of pregnant darkness. Grendel didn't care, smiling like a demented child and shouting down the tunnel a second time."How are you?""How are you?...How are you?...How are you?...How are you?""I asked you first!""I asked you first!...asked you first!...asked you first!...asked you first!"
Grendel chuckled. "Maybe you
asked first, eh?"
"Maybe you...Maybe you...Maybe you..."
"Ah yes," Grendel snorted before he called out again, "VERY MATURE of you, repeating EXACTLY what I SAY!"
"repeating EXACTLY what I SAY!...repeating EXACTLY what I SAY!...what I SAY!...what I SAY!"
A wicked thought came to Grendel, splitting his face into a cat-like smirk as he bellowed "I AM AN IDIOT!"". . . . . . . . . . ."
"YOU ARE AN IDIOT!...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!...AN IDIOT!...AN IDIOT!...IDIOT!"
The smile that Grendel brandished sunk into an upside-down crescent moon as he gawked in disbelief. "Wha....No, YOU are the IDIOT!!""No, YOU are the IDIOT!!...No, YOU are the IDIOT!!...No, YOU are the IDIOT!!...No, YOU are the IDIOT!!...No, YOU are the IDIOT!!...No, YOU are the IDIOT!!...YOU are the IDIOT!...the IDIOT..."Who would have thought that his brothers and inbred relatives would be so spiteful? "Alright, fine!" He hissed, teeth poised to dagger-tips as he wracked his breath with spite. As Grendel spoke, his voice was so needle thin that it would have blinded one of the Dane's wooden gods. "Be that way, you bastards! I'm not talking to you anymore! In fact, I'm going to whisper! Yes, I shall whisper from here on, till the end of days! So that by the time my voice reverberates off the walls, and bounces back to me, I won't be able to hear it! Those dead bodies offered more preferable
company than you ever did! Good luck entertaining yourselves then. What have you to say to THAT?"
". . . . . . . . . . ."
"STILL AN IDIOT!"...STILL AN IDIOT!...STILL AN IDIOT!...STILL AN IDIOT!...STILL AN IDIOT!...IDIOT!...IDIOT!"Eyelids twitching, the Horror of Hrothgar felt every muscle and sinew in his body tighten. His fangs and tusks gnashed with such fury that they ripped down into the pinkish gums, tearing the very nerves. Grendel raised both fists, balled into hedgehog-spiked hammers of raw hate and struck the boggy earth, splitting the mud with such force that a seam cracked for miles around and wept with agony. He paused, then sucked in an eternity of breath and screamed down the tunnel. "DARK CHASMS!!! SEIZE
ME!!! SIEZE
ME TO YOUR DARK, FOUL, BLACK BOWELS...AND
CRUSH... MY... BONES!!!!!!!!"
What followed was a chorus of inhuman shrieks that claimed the tunnel as their own, multiplying into thousands upon thousands of hateful rock-rumbles and dragon-throated roars. So terrible was his voice that the blood around him hardened into scarlet ice. His wrath still undiminished, Grendel bellowed and stamped on half-eaten corpses, grinding them into bursts of warm gore and mud. He gave obscene kicks at imaginary foes and dead demons, then spun around to smash innocent trees into ugly splinters. After that, Grendel kicked at a pile of corpses, scattering ruined carcasses like fallen leaves. This world hated Grendel, just as the world of the living had hated him too. It would only make it fair to spite this world back, and Grendel raised
two defiant middle fingers at the dark-red sky.Sighing like the giants in Danish tales, the "Grim Hell-Walker" Grendel felt empty, despite the amount of meat he had gorged upon. He shifted his head towards the blood-splattered grass. The jagged coal-black trees were stained with red, along with colors of the rainbow. Other than the occasional creak and elderly groan, the trees denied poor Grendel any audience. When Grendel had dashed some of his victim's brains against the tree-trunks, countless leaves of shimmering ocean-blue twirled and brushed the blood-pools. There was a beauty to watching those leaves touching the surface of the blood, making rings that reverberated into existence. Those echoes of theirs eventually faded away into nothingness. Brilliant deep blue against merciless deep red. Grendel knew that feeling all to well: a hell-scented gem among crimson tides of hell-tanged crystals, farther away with every ripple. The leaves were silent, just like the trees where they came from. The leaves hated him too, raising their invisible middle fingers at him. He snatched up another headless demon and bit down on the torso, ripping away food that would eventually turn to spoiled meat. As Grendel slowly munched and gulped, he sat down on a smooth rock and grunted."Am I eating and drinking...because I am bored?"Shuddering at the empty response this world provided, Grendel rolled over and made himself a blanket of earth and ragged viscera. As he tucked himself into a false sleep, the Heather-Walker thought of his mother. No amount of hot gore or broken bones would replace his memories of the only blood-relation he had ever known. Pitiful, life-bloated, baffled, long-suffering hag. Grendel spoke to the bloody soil once the image of his fat and slightly glowing mother inflated in the back of his mind. "She never had a name, you know, or perhaps she had forgotten it all together, just as she had lost the ability of speech long ago. She should have known that there would come a time where poor Grendel would leave the nest. Even then...I miss the old beast." He missed his attempts at trying to make his mother understand his higher speech, and how she would primitively drool when her son brought up the complexity of the world. Perhaps this is what it felt like for his mother whenever her only child departed the cave, clawed with despair that she could clasp her baby to her breasts and keep his safe. "Is she still alive, somewhere? And does she still miss her furry little babe?"
Grendel remembered how his mother would rest against the wet rock walls of their underground home, rolling over piles of old bones while old memories molested her. Grendel did the same thing, tossing and turning in his cradle of mud and meat as a lifetime of unanswered questions rapped his skull-cage. He did his best not to weep. It didn't work.Then Grendel noticed something.
Much of the blood trickling from the slain glowed now, like molten iron spilling from a blacksmith's mold. Grendel silently watched the blood froth like murky soup, cocking his head and taking a whiff of the fresh metallic scent. The ragged stumps where he had yanked limbs free wept more blood, but some of that blood wasn't red. It was green, like emerald bile. Other puddles of ichor rippled in the color of melted gold, or honey-scented amber. It was so brilliant that it hard to imagine that it was gore. All of the blood, red and otherwise, intermingled and formed a wet swamp the size of a small goat. Then the bloody water began to wallow and surge, bubbling and filling the fen-banks with a terrible new sound. It was loathsome, yet fascinating, and Grendel couldn't look away from the phenomenon. There were upthrows and overturnings, small waves the size of a goat's matted wool that steamed and never evaporated. Insects that had the misfortune of getting caught in the broiling wound-slurry chirped once, their thin legs kicking before the despicable liquid absorbed their bodies and turned them to stinking jelly. Rocks and smooth pebbles shattered, melting into grains of glistening sand, twilight stars that flared and dwindled into the foul blood-soup.
"It wasn't doing that before..." He muttered.
Grendel crawled rather childishly towards the golden little pool of mixed blood. Instantly, the scent of burning life-liquid speared his nostrils and forced him to gag. Greasy smoke drew crystalline tears from the corners of his eyes, like malevolent garlic. With each pop of a golden bubble or snake-hiss of steam, the demonic blood found a voice of its own. It wouldn't evaporate into a coppery smog like animal fat on a red-hot anvil. Instead, the blood kept churning and swirling, birthing little waves that rippled with silvery bursts. Streaks of dark red intertwined with the bright gore-water, remnants of winter-rosed blood that refused to die.
There was something...alluring...about this strange mere that Grendel couldn't explain, as much as the odor nauseated him. He was tempted to poke a hairy finger into the blood-water and stir it about, simply for to feed his growing bowl of curiosity. Grendel stopped himself, wiping away tears. "Wait a minute. Why should I drink this?"Why not? There was another shudder knifing up Grendel's back. He knew that feeling: it was the sense of emptiness and nothingness that whispered to him as he raged against an unfair universe. IT reminded him of how the Shaper, that string-plucking bard of Hrothgar's court, would shape the chaotic world to his melody. Finally, Grendel shrugged. "Ah well, why not? I have nothing to lose," and he chuckled with a raspy "Grendel is crazy already, so why not a little more suffering, eh?" With that, Grendel bend down and scooped up as much of the golden blood as his paws could hold. The liquid was rather sluggish in the cup of his hands, like actual gold melted down to make arm-rings, and not as scalding as he had imagined. Grendel felt his eyes pour rivers of salt-slick tears as the scent and smoke puffed in his face. Then he opened his sharp-fanged maw and swallowed the golden blood.
Instantly, Grendel's head rang out and burned from the inside. The golden blood scalded him as it oozed down his throat and into his lungs. Smoke, black and ugly, blew from his maw in clouds of laughing faces. Both of his eyes rolled beyond their natural extent, pink and purple veins cracking across egg-white and tearing into the jelly like rusted nails. His tongue shot out, soft flesh bubbling and blistered while demonic smog spiraled around his taste buds. Goblets of gold sloshed against his uvula, forcing Grendel to vomit forth silvery bile.And then the entire universe became a whirlpool of sizzling colors, colors that evaporated into steamy dragon whispers that snapped at Grendel while his throat melted from within. To be more accurate, everything that Grendel could see beyond his puffing eyes became a slow whirlpool of shadowy folds and bright rainbow liver. Every object, every rock and tree and puddle and corpse, twisted and bent until they burst into tatters of elderly wails. Menacing flowers of red became blades of roaring glee, and those blades tore new veils into whatever slivers of reality remained. The broken bones of his victims hardened into iron before they crumbled into sandstorms. It was impossible to the the night from the light of day, dark red rippling into pale moon grins. Grendel felt each emotion he had ever experience rise like mountain ranges, until they melted into amber waves to churn and boil reality. He tried to look away, take his mind of something else, but his mind was already exposed to the nothingness in an ugly splatter. Now all of his memories were lightning, barks and banters of blue thunder with maws of thunder. Grendel's fingers bent like tortured iron as he balled his fists and stabbed into the palms of his paws with iron nails. He had no control over his own flesh and bone, and the only free will this uncaring world granted him was the right to spasm and quake on the swaying earth. Eyes popped from the granite flesh of stones and blinked at Grendel in curiosity. Some of them glared at him with marble spite and envy. His anger became a fog that sank into the wounds of the dead, and he spasmed as hate-howling hurled from his belly against black rivers. Red storms glowed beyond the midnight darkness as time wheeled by, and Grendel couldn't find any morsel of strength to curse the universe in defiance, or even crouch in shame. That shame billowed from his ears in gray clouds, numb mist that sliced birds and beasts with cinder-hot fog. The trees stretched their barbed limbs wide like parasitic eels, wilting and rising with every century of sorrow. Gnarled roots sprang from the shimmering steam and impaled Grendel through his chest, taking nourishment from the metallic blood cauterizing his lungs. Leaves, those arrows of false mercy, fluttered by and laughed at poor Grendel before diving into the pools of spike-cracking hate and resurfacing as bubbles of one-eyed deceit. His sorrow was copper now, saliva melting and hardening to beads of iron. It was all happening at once: bones aching and breaking into infinity, quaking as they reformed and stuck to his nerves like spiteful tar. Spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning like liberated balls of yarn and cobwebs, that was the state of everything. Each piece of what made the world and creation itself detached from the roots, lifting itself from one meaningless scramble right into another. Blobby holes or nothing grinned wickedly and peeled open to lick at Grendel with razor wires, diamond fangs expanding into whips before slicing themselves into billions upon billions of stars. The stars and golden nothingness turned into various shades of black, then red, then green and purple waves of raw light swallowed them into fresh innards of inky white.It didn't make sense, just as Grendel knew it wouldn't. All of this nothingness and chaos simply because he chose to gulp down golden blood. Then again, it only made sense for some brute entity such as himself to suffer while a mad reality scarred him for daring to ponder his place in that meaningless pit of hopes and fears.
It was the pain that woke Grendel, ringing in the hollow crater of his mind like ten thousand anvils that hammered his flesh into purple mush. He blinked, and groaned while pressing his nails to his hairy forehead. At first, everything was nothing but fog before his eyes, but a second blink revealed the same boggy mere with the same mounds of familiar demon corpses. Grendel tried to stand, but his legs gave in, forcing him to topple against a tree. The bark shuddered at his touch and creaked, and both monster and tree tumbled to the soggy heath. Bodies burst into sheets of crimson innards. "No offense," Grendel snorted. There was no sound of wood snaping or meat spurting. All he could hear was the buzzing "ding-ring-ping" that itched his reality like no other itch in the history of nasty itches.
The pain festering in his head wouldn't cease, and every time Grendel tossed about, it piled up one one part of his brain pan and forced him to flop aside and fill in the other half of his mind, "Arrrrrrgh..." he moaned, digging into his brows in the hope of drowning out the needles of agony prickling every part of his body. Now that his thoughts were finally his own, not an eruption of madness, Grendel remembered how he had drank that pool of golden blood. "Stupid, stupid Grendel." Then again, he simply couldn't help himself, for reasons he couldn't explain. His throat was sore, a bare hole scraped clean and raw with fury. Grendel scratched his chest and neck, wondering of the glowing ichor had seared holes in his flesh and singed his beastly hair. He scratched and dug, but felt no tunnels in his flesh. Slowly, Grendel massaged his vibrating scalp as the anvil-blows bouncing against his skull-cage sluggishly faded away. They didn't fade away all at once; they were too cruel to simply leave Grendel without cementing their legacy in lightning sparks of dark obsidian. As Grendel dragged his nails down the sides of his head, the familiar sound of the Hell-bog flowed into his ears like a melting iceberg in spring.
His ears slurped in the noise of blood dripping, trees creaking, insects chirping, and-.
"...A head shorter these poor fools ought to be right now.""Of course they're a head shorter, dumbass. They're fucking heads have been bitten off!""As I said: a head shorter."Grendel blinked, and his eyelids rapidly fluttered as voices like chipped reeds caressed his ear drums. He turned left and right, trying his best to ignore the sluggish purple agony shifting in his brain cage as he searched for the source of those-."Grisly, simply grisly, this one. No table manners at at."There, up in the branches, Grendel saw eyeballs looking down at him. After a couple of blinks, he discovered that those eyeballs had wings...and little bird-like feet that allowed them to perch on the bark like round little marbles.
Those eye-birds...they were SPEAKING... As he listened in, more raspy chirps some of them sang, twittering gossip, or insulting the other for ruining a nest."Too busy stuffing himself to bother saying 'excuse me' or 'please pass the steak sauce.""You're no different yourself, always picking the remains with your claws, stupid."
Grendel leapt to his feet and smashed at the trees, sending eye-birds squawking and flapping in all directions. "Who are you calling 'stupid,' you little peepers?!""AH! He's onto us! FLEE!"Lowering his fist, the monster took a few minutes to let the fresh skittering and rush of sound to glow within his ears. The moors and and windswept crags began to open up to him, peeling their maws wide and caressing his trembling form. Every treacherous kesh with a cold streaming pouring down in lazy retribution, forks of cricket-tongues and gnashing weeds that hid under mist and moorland, they were speaking to him. He could even hear every single bubble rise and pop along the surface of the murky water. There was the metal-tongued drip-drop of blood from slit muscle and sinew, beckoning Grendel to quench his thirst.
Grendel heard a rustling in the heather, and he saw a shape tumble from the tangle of thickets. The figure was small, crimson-skinned with dabs of white, and his blue trousers were crudely sewn with patches of grimy fabric. It was another one of those little red demons, Grendel realized. Curled horns of black and white dug furrows into the mud and blood, before the demon struggled to his hooved feet and groaned. He was so short that he barely came up to Grendel's knees. Grendel discovered that it was indeed a 'he' when the puny, rose-red twerp brought down his trousers and exposed his male organ (which was also quite puny) and relieved himself in the closest marsh.
"Ughhhhhhhh...Ah...oh, I knew that last tequila would came to haunt me. Oh FUCK, that hangover wasn't long enough." Evidently, the crimson shrimp was unaware that he was just a few feet away from the Dread of the Danes. In fact, the measly little demon seemed unbothered by the piles of dead littering the bog. Or, perhaps he had noticed, but didn't really care.
As he urinated like one of Hrothgar's prized war-stallions, Grendel winced and snorted. Now the reek of blood was soiled by the ugly stink of emptied drink. Even after bearing witness to countless other fools passing water all over the woods when he was alive, revulsion always found a way into Grendel's senses and made him gag."Disgusting little bastards," Grendel hissed.
The red demon flinched and turned around, and pissed on a disemboweled corpse. Yellow eyes with ink-black pupils stared up at Grendel in surprise, before the demon creased his eyes in frustration. Instead of screaming in terror, like almost everyone who laid eyes upon Grendel, the scarlet Cain-spawn merely placed both hands on his hips and glared. He didn't bother to conceal his red penis, letting it droop like a limp fish."Oh, well excuse me, pervert! Who asked you to take over as the pee-police? I mean -HIC!- if you don't wanna look, then don't look at all. Or maybe your jushhh -HIC!- jushhh jealous 'cause you have a smaller dick. Seriously, can't an imp take a piss without someone trying to hit on him 24/7? Sheesh." Grendel felt his cheeks flush, and the urge to rip the head off this runt was tempting, and let out a bestial retort."Well, maybe
somebody could find a better place to-." Before Grendel could finish his sentence, he froze. Now the fuzzy music of Hell's nature went silent for what felt like a thousand years. The world and all of the realities containing it formed and reformed. He remained rooted to his spot as the realization blossomed throughout his ancient core. "....You....you....you can understand me?"The horned midget, or 'imp, as he called himself, looked up at Grendel and blinked. "Er....yeah, I can understand you, bud." Then he began sizing up the Horror of Scandinavia for himself, and then blushed a deeper red. The Hell-Spawn became less tense and held up his hands with drunken placidity. "Look, I didn't mean to snap, but uh...I hate being surprised like that. I mean, I don't mind
if other guys can see my dick, but if you wanna fuck, could you at least wait for me to fini-."Grendel leaned in, his bestial muzzle only inches away from the scrawny demon, and both of his large eyes were alight with bewilderment. "You,
you
can understand what I'm saying? What I'm saying right now?"Intimidated, the red pipsqueak felt himself shrinking to his knees. Y-y-y-y-yeah, yeah, I -HIC!- I understand you, I hear you loud and clear, King Kong." He shut his eyes, waiting for the blow that would dash his brains apart and add him to the mutilated schmucks around here, but it never came.Grendel stepped back and stared off into space and time, his jaw hanging wide open to reveal every blade-sharp canine and a quaking tongue.
For the first time in his long and melancholy existence, since his encounter with the Dragon, his humbling of Unferth, and that fateful encounter with that unnatural freak Beowulf, Grendel felt a glimmer of that spiteful feeling known as hope dare to illuminate his soul. He could be understood. If this little red shit could understand him, then that meant other little red shits could too. If they could communicate with him, then why not others in this strange Hellscape? So many emotions began to flow through Grendel, like a million tidal wave of time-raping shock. The impossible had suddenly become possible, but how-?
The glowing blood, Grendel realized. By drinking that burning liquid, it had somehow lifted whatever curse of isolation that haunted Grendel since childhood, and granted him the ability to speak among other living creatures. That was how he had been able to understand those little eyeballs with wings, and why the rest of this world was opening itself up to him. Grendel felt...open...exposed...almost like a newborn, malformed lamb gushing from a shrieking womb. Nothing made sense, and then everything made sense. All he could do was recline on a hill of slaughtered demons and stroke the bristling hairs of his chin at this new development.
When the imp opened his eyes and noticed Grendel resting on his makeshift 'chair,' an awkward silence passed between them. Only the faint chirp and bubble of the bog, along with the trickle of blood from slit intestines, dared to answer. Finally, the imp cleared his throat. "So...uh...are you gonna kill me...or not?"
The only he received from Grendel was the needle-thin scratching of nails upon fur as Hrothgar's Foe mused on his fresh ability to ruminate with other flesh-and-blood beings, and ursine rumblings like "I can talk...I can talk like never before..." If Grendel's eyes had been wide before, they had stretched to the size of battle-shields.
"Uh....alright then." The imp shrugged and stuffed his cock back into his trousers, giving another loud 'HIC!' before leaning against a dead fucker for support. "I guess you can kill me after you're done doing...whatever the shit it is your doing right now. Sounds fair, huh?" Aping Grendel, the red demon sat down on the remains of some murdered bastard, producing a cigarette and match. "You mind if I shhhhhmoke -HIC!- while we wait? You want a cigarette too? Yeah? Nnnnnno? Alright then?"As the bog popped and reeked, Grendel ignored the colorful odor of the cigarette and the drunk demon who was using it. So much was changing now, and the joy that had fluttered in his heart was instantly being lanced by the creeping finger of doubt, always lurking and ready to destroy any morsel of hope...