A Reindeer King, Chapter 18

*copyrighted material*

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    He’d hold out just fine, Krishanu began to examine in the middle of the dark. Functioning organs, mended nails, skin, muscles, spine, and bones, a healthy but still lean earthborn body. Dehydrated and still a bit purplish. Wyatt would have to trim that beard and do something about the current lack of tissue and body fat. A wasted frame should only be seen on one of them, a Defender had their looks for sound reasons. One of them was that their appearance’s sole purpose was to daunt humans, opposing figures to whatever was the standard celestial being to deceive those guided only by their eyes and not by a good spirit. Defenders of Shine were the lower tier of attendants of the Cosmos, a ruler in the kingdom of free will, or as it should be in her watchful eye. But these measures had only worked to some degree, the Defenders then realized that even once they approached benign-hearted humans outside the Renou and shared their power, ‘The Grip of Modern Men’ would slowly grow in them just like the colonists. A dormant gene in all humans ever since first established by wicked forces, Cain the first son. Krishanu was positive that the Cosmos wanted him to figure out a way to vanquish that gene from its root. 

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    “What now?” Marut questioned, her eyes set upon the body, who slept under melting snow. The untouched ice contoured his silhouette to the resemblance of a snow angel over the browned turf, the new and freakish heat emanating from his body purifying away. Krishanu, The Flame wasn't exactly a self-imposed title, Wyatt's skin would from now on burn anything like an ember if he wished to.

    “We get out of here . . . ” Her twin knelt over the human and squinted, his eyes fixed on a minuscule hair follicle on the man's eyebrows that had turned white silver. “How strange . . . ” He murmured. His boney fingers plucked it with a quick move and Wyatt groaned. His eyes opened wide and his lungs let in a full-toned draw in. He was greeted by dusty white stars and an army of a thousand Defenders of Shine surrounding him. He stared at the glowing creatures but felt no fright. He knew and did not know about them at the same time, soaked with the enlightenment that didn’t seem to be attached to anything he’d been before this moment. The knowledge that would have no impact on his humanity and flawed self. Ancient archives simply stored inside him, unsynchronized with their host. A Defender of Shine could not reveal its content until the proper occasion came, but Wyatt knew he possessed something valuable within himself. What he seemed to know right away too was that Calvin was somewhere near or seemingly approaching. 

    “Where is he?” He gasped. Krishanu pulled him up to his feet as the ocean of creatures moved away in a slow procession towards Fort Yggdrasill’s main gate.

    “The resolution of the people is coming. Are you going to fight along with him?” The phantom and his twin sister marched on after their ghostly friends. Wyatt saw then their earthly forms, reindeer. Hundreds of them made their way around him to gather at the gate.

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    “I am.” Wyatt heard himself respond, even with no context to what Krishanu meant. Baffled, he ran after the reindeer horde with the strong hunch that they'd lead him to his younger brother. With every step, his joints unlatched energy and his heart pumped the red fluid with a vitality he'd never experienced before as a flesh machine. 

    The cornuted mammals slowly reached the locked entrance causing quite a stir amongst the servicemen guarding the front. Initially, the reindeer seemed like a harmless spectacle to be praised with their wintry-colored pelts of maroon and chalky white, furry noses, long ears, and big voided eyes. But the Visitors monitoring the stronghold from within knew of ways Defenders made their presence known, an average Visitor soldier was educated to know everything about them. Or at least whatever the government had grasped about them over the years.

    They observed patiently through their wired and ancient screen-incorporated computers the size of shelves and smaller encased gizmos that detected all sorts of frequencies and targets around a thirty-meter radius. Machines that’d been pieced together from advanced transmission technology blueprints—for the current time—to suit the Visitors’ needs against an invasive swarm of ghosts that didn’t exist in such a plane. The matter that constituted Defenders of Shine was not called magic but isolated particles found in withered turf and leaves that just like minerals had their components, yet were not fully detectable or discovered. To put it simply the closest constituents they could be related to were river mud and atomic number 79. A tender, yellowish, ductile, and malleable metallic element called aurum or gold. The rest of the mixture contained what they thought could be dry molecules that could stem out to other unknown cosmic creatures.

    But even when the gateway was already saturated, reindeer kept coming in immeasurable waves. They yowled, calling others to join them, fully aware of the Defenders’ cause. Soon,

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one-third of the facility's surroundings were packed full of them, to which Wyatt stared in awe around him.

    “Preeminent enemies need remarkable courses of actions to brawl against, fair and square,” Krishanu spoke to him from over the shoulder. “Wyatt Elsner, do you now see the trail before you? Terror must leave your mind and body now, you are the first nomination, a warrior with the capability to subdue a regimen with bare hands. Yet, you know you can’t do it alone, and fear not, you are not.” The phantom threw a fist to the sky and his comrades began to chant in a strange tongue. 

    Marut—commanding her reindeer—walked up ahead as the others let her through, she chanted on. And her allies assembled in countless rows after her, those already in front of her took a u-turn and backed her up as well. She brushed a hand over the heavy adamantine doors, then rubbed her palms against each other, and then pulled them apart until her fingertips pointed far towards the hinges. Arms stretched to their limit. The rest of the Defenders mimicked her seconds after and with all of them a surge of loosened and resplendent ashes that seeped from their tight palms crashed against the doors and drilled through the tough foundations. The walls crunched, and the gates weakened.

    The Roanoke Military held their breath, but the Visitors took action almost immediately. With zip guns, an entire army of them climbed to the ramparts, boots on the battlements. They shot to kill. But the projectiles went right through flesh and caused no harm, sparkling barriers around them pulverizing matter. Antlers radiating light, a dazzling and majestic triangle with twisted angles suspended between them. Every reindeer exalted, a battalion of them ready to strike back with the symbol above.

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    More moving specks appeared in the Visitors’ radars, this time coming from two diagonal rear points, a smaller horde set on a mission to circle the fortress. Renou warriors clockwise from the right, Rootstock soldiers counter-clockwise from the left, both divisions on mounts. Reindeer and half-tamed horses. Mickey and Calvin rode on Thunder leading the Rootstocks, the boy’s fox leaped and howled, gaining speed beside them, while Cobra led the Renou people in a seemingly uncalculated stampede that would come face to face with one another. With reinforcements on their way, the Defenders charged forward and the front gate of Fort Yggdrasill blasted into bloated chunks and bits.

    It had been four months of hatching a plan that without the favorable verdict of the cosmic trial—in which Krishanu and his twin sister faced half of the entire Defenders of Shine population—would have never reached this magnitude on its own. A nonbelligerent village and a handful of renegades were no match. But the ambush perpetrated by Jesse’s men and the Visitors had taken the lives of two dozen Renou villagers. Ráfi, the Matriarch, now thirsted for blood, and rightfully so, her people would join the war. Rootstocks also reported casualties, to which both female leaders Dr. Mulhouse and the Renou shaman plotted for the time necessary to surround their enemy, frozen and trembling. The lives lost were actually what drove the Five Possessors of Enlightenment to approve the Defender’s involvement and bestowed immunity to the oldest Elsner brother. Their loyalty would be to the Renou, always. Gurdaat had said.

    Following the plan, they reconditioned old armaments such as grenades, fuses, and cartridges with just a couple of new ones. Mickey ordered her men to dig as many pitfalls as they could around the mountain, specifically following the routes the Roanoke Military frequented to get to Nooktown, the airport hangars, and pathways around the fortress. All to isolate the enemy as best as possible during the action and to guarantee an escape route for them. Calvin and Killgore joined the task under the doctor’s careful instructions on proportions and depth. A work of two entire

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months with all of them working hand in hand while his fox hunted for food along with the villagers once or twice a week.

   Halfway through the second month, one busy afternoon while returning to camp along with Carol from digging and concealing pitfalls with sticks, grime, and mold. The boy unwrapped one of Edna’s large glowing gum packages to chew a piece. He also smoked a few of her cigarettes, and while sucking a jam of nicotine he choked on it to the sprouting of a new idea. He snatched his bag and dashed after Mickey, he’d find a tactical use for bubble gum. Chewing a piece and then spitting it out to mark a spot. Potentially, a pitfall-infested spot, with the use to alert their renegade forces. A strategy that was very well received by all of his new allies after testing several pieces at night.

     Likewise, the Renou initiated their fair share of work. Which included fabricating their reindeer bone-carved weaponry: swords, daggers, spears, and arrowheads, others made with obsidian as well. They sewed hard-leather armoring and sheaths with incorporated plates made of rock silver. The sons and daughters of Mt. Mowaki pleaded for a benevolent resolution to the spirits in hour-long rituals, they asked for guidelines and intrepidity. For they had won battles in the past and knew about combat and treason. The final day came and that afternoon, Rootstocks and Renou, consumed the blue-dotted magenta leaves before departing to encounter the enemy at their home. This time there would be no aerial attacks, nothing to burn down, no back-ups, just those at the other side of the empty foxholes with no place for cover. Fort Yggdrasill would come down whatever the cost.

    Krishanu left behind his reindeer vessel and someone else took his place. He aligned his ghostly vertebrae to Wyatt's by merging with his body until the phantom was no more. Black

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antlers grew up his head and above, an equally black triangle with no details hovered in the center, raying like encrusted bijoux. “Let me show you what we can do,” Krishanu spoke.

    His legs moved and trotted. The ice fractured under his feet as he ran towards the unbarred gateway, his body steaming like a flare. He bolted past the walls, the bullets colliding against a similar barrier deflecting the projectiles but they did not turn to dust. A Defender had limits in the physical world wearing a human body. A delicate balance was needed. But even so, Wyatt easily took hold of the nearest armed serviceman and punched him in the nose, his face catching fire upon contact. The next one jumped over him from the ramparts to lock a chokehold using a musket but ripped him off his back with an overpowering yank frontward. His uniform caught blazes too. He faced three more soldiers that ran with the same fate with additional broken cheekbones, punctured lungs by a smashed rib, dislocated arms, knees, and more. The outer ward became a warzone in a matter of seconds. Reindeer vessels stomped and gored enemy after enemy, but some lay already in blood shortly after their glowing shields had expired. Just then would the fallen Defenders retreat and wait for the outcome of the battle. Giving space to a part of the Rootstocks and Renou’s divisions to venture in, while those outside threw grenades and arrows at the soldiers above the walls and drum towers. However, the military’s cavalry made their appearance before any partition could crumble down, and both factions danced around the fortress in a deadly fight.

    Meanwhile, Wyatt made his way in a hellfire, part of the edifices had begun scorching and his attackers tried everything to break the barrier around him—machine guns and explosives—yet it was futile. Jesse’s men still did not know how to put a stop to him. He wrestled, jabbed, kicked, and head-butted with ease and nearly with no sweat. 

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    Wyatt’s senses intertwined with those of Krishanu but to the human mind came what he wanted to do with his new powers. The next thing he desperately needed. Squeezing Jesse Mcallister’s throat until his eyes turned blood-shot red and his pale skin to a sickling off-white. All in the name of his brother, the Dahlgren family, and Nelson too.

    He knew where to find him, the inner ward. Protected yet by another set of walls and adamantine doors. But he had no time for that. The Defenders began to struggle on keeping their forces inside as many had been shut down, while the Rootstocks and Renou pushed in with all their might. The Visitors—who’d retreated to the core ward along with Mcallister, presumably to keep the stronghold under their domain, no matter the sacrifice—had finally reappeared guarding their ramparts. Wyatt realized there was only one way in, and that was climbing. Climbing the inner structure and busting in. Krishanu tried deflecting the shared thought knowing it was a plan with a too high risk, the time to attack was slipping out. A complete retreat would be needed soon, the cavalry would chase them out and while doing so fall into the majority of the untouched pitfall traps, a perfect escape. But Wyatt’s stubbornness was uncontrollable and he began his ascension toward the Visitors without minding the phantom’s warning.

    Out in the field and catching momentum, Mickey and Calvin rode the starless stallion around the stronghold, everything unfolding before their eyes. With the help of some binoculars, the Rootstocks leader monitored the upper sides of Fort Yggdrasill in hopes their grenades would bring down at least one of its walls. But once the military’s cavalry was out, she switched to her rifle. Chaos unraveled very quickly, as allies and enemies chased each other in a deadly hurricane of explosives, bullets, and arrows. Right or left, in such mayhem, it was impossible to keep track of what side of the structure they were.

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    Soon they were being chased by five riders armed with shotguns that only closed their distance by the second, anticipating a still moment to ensure their bullets would keep them both dead for good. Calvin barely knew how to guide Thunder out of the dangers of openings caused by the blast of the bombs and obstructing horse and reindeer carcasses. Mickey spun herself around as quickly as she could but their first bullet brushed her left arm, still, she killed the perpetrator’s horse and the man was crushed under the rolling body. She faltered to kill the next, she was bleeding, yet Carol sprinted just in time to hurdle over one of their chaser’s feet and closed her jaws so tightly his toe bones cracked loudly.

    “Holy crap on a cracker!!” The boy gasped, turning back to see the doctor in a red hot mess, and Carol still dangled from the man’s limb while in motion, the soldier shrieked in pain. Dr. Mulhouse put a bullet in his head in an instant and he fell off from his charger limply. Carol disappeared again.

    “Calvin, quick, take us to the forest!!” The doctor squeezed her wound.

    “Roger that!”

    Thunder accelerated, making its way through the thickets and out of the battlefield before more enemies spotted them. Galloping downhill, nearly losing all control. Yet, the horse speeded up and took a curve toward the dense woodlands. Everything turned to shadows, branches, and twigs stroked their faces with the taste of frost. The boy scanned the pinewoods around him in search of the hot pink bubble gum, the last three riders then sent another torrent of bullets their way.

    “CALVIN!!” She responded to their attacks, forcing them to take distance again.

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    “I KNOW! I KNOW!!” Thunder turned left as the kid caught a glimpse of a vivid rose hue far into the woods. The doctor embraced him with her wounded arm, as he took Thunder to his limit. The cool, stinging wind cut through skin as they traversed across uneven territory full of pinecones and frizzled pasturages. Snowflakes began to pour apace and Mickey’s ponytail was set loose by the breeze, her flaxen hair blowing on her face. The doctor let out a mighty cry and discharged another aimless batch of projectiles with her free hand, luckily another horse was brought down disappearing in pitch darkness.

    After what felt like an eternity, they rushed past a hot pink glowing patch of bubble gum smeared on a tree. And the boy tightened his grasp on the lead rope in the forethought of what would come.

    “Mickey, hold on tight!” The next thing she knew they were leaping into a field of traps amidst a brown-out, headfirst towards the unsung.

END OF CHAPTER #18