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Badlands IX: The Mountain God
(© Biswapriya Purkayastha)

This contribution is part of a series:-
1. Badlands (5-Jun-2014)
A knight and a demon, on a mission to save a town from an unknown danger.
2. Badlands II: God of Wrath (16-Jul-2014)
Revisiting an old love, the knight finds her missing. Only the demon can help find her - and, if possible, to rescue her from where she is.
3. Badlands III: Boat on the River (3-Dec-2014)
Something strange is happening to the world and the knight and the demon must solve the problem if they are to survive.
4. Badlands IV: The Beginning (3-Jan-2015)
Where it all began - The demon, the knight and the beast meet each other for the first time.
5. Badlands V: The Hatching (8-Feb-2015)
About a mountain slope on a winter night, a lost girl, a meeting with an entity, and how something was created, immortal and dangerous.
6. Badlands VI, VII & VIII (7-Sep-2015)
Three new parts to the series.
7. Badlands IX: The Mountain God (31-Jul-2016)
An erupting volcano, a cult which lives on its slopes, and the knight, the beast and the demon must attempt a rescue mission.

Page 1

All through the day, the mountain above them had quaked and grumbled, and the black clouds of smoke that had gathered overhead had rained ash which had coloured everything, including the beast’s heavy shoulders and the knight’s armour, grey.

Only the demon had been unaffected. The ash hadn’t touched her glowing red-gold limbs and spreading wings, and though the knight and the beast both coughed and wheezed at the ash and the heat in the air, she spoke as easily as ever, as though none of it touched her at all.

Now, as the darkness fell, the sky above the summit glowed a sullen, inflamed red. The rumbling through the earth was continuous, and the air was so filled with searing gases that the man and the beast could scarcely breathe. Slipping off the beast’s back, the demon called a halt.

"I’ll go on alone from here," she said. "This is too much for you two. I can’t really ask you for more."

The knight fought for breath enough to be able to reply. "We can’t let you do that," he said eventually. "We’ve come this far and we’ll go all the way."

"You aren’t going to be of any help if you get yourselves smothered by ash," she told him. "And the mountain’s going to blow, Man. We don’t have much time left to rescue those people."

The knight peered up at the glowing bulk of the peak above. "Do you really think they’re there?" he asked. "Don’t you think they should have left by now?"

The demon flapped her wings a few times, clearing the air around them for a moment. "You know what they told us in the villages on the plain. The people living in the town below the crater worship the mountain. They won’t leave because they’re convinced it won’t ever harm them."

"Even when it’s all set to erupt?" the knight said. "And we don’t even know where this town is. We haven’t found a trace of it. Maybe it’s already buried by the ash or a rock slide like the one this afternoon."

The demon nodded. "That’s possible. But things like the rock slide this afternoon is why I don’t want you to risk yourselves coming further. I’ll be able to search more quickly if I’m alone anyway. You two go down a little, where the air’s clearer, and wait for me. I’ll be back as soon as I can."

"What happens if you do find them, and they don’t want to come?" the knight asked.

"They may, certainly, Man," the demon acknowledged. "I don’t think, though, that in that case if we’re three of us there together, they’d change their minds." She flapped her wings again a couple of times. "If they refuse, I’ll see what I can do."

There was a bright spurt of flame from above, and the slope trembled. "We won’t go all the way down," the knight said. "Do you remember the shelf of rock we passed this morning? We’ll wait under that. It’s good shelter."

The demon nodded. "Be safe, Man." She reached out to them both a moment. "I’ll see you soon."

The knight turned the beast’s head away from the track up the slope and back down the way they’d come.  Once, only, he looked back over his shoulder. She was still standing where she had been, watching them.

He remembered how she’d touched his arm and the beast’s neck just before they’d parted. It was only his fancy that it had seemed so much like a gesture of farewell, he told himself. Of course it had been.



The night was full of glowing red skies and raining ash, shuddering ground underfoot and rumbles as of thunder. As the demon ran, the slope around her feet cracked and quivered and split open, bleeding molten rock which trickled sluggishly away. She raced up towards the crater now, directly up the slope, running so quickly that her feet barely touched the kiln-hot soil. As she went, she strained her ears, trying to make out the sound of voices, or any other noise that might indicate human beings, from the grumbling of the mountain torn asunder.

It was a forlorn hope, she knew. If the town near the crater really existed – and the village people had been totally uncertain about its whereabouts – the people should have left by now. If they hadn’t, they’d most likely already be dead from the ash and the gas in the air, even without the lava that would come pouring out when the final eruption came.

[ Continue to page 2 ]

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Genre:General Horror
Type:Short story
Rating:8.33 / 10
Rated By:9 users
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