The Horror of Cucuboros

Stick helped Alex navigate the forest. Each time he gripped his arm tighter, Alex watched where he was stepping, looking around, seeing where the vines and bodies on the trees were. The cloak actually seemed to be working to keep him silent. Much like at the old fortress, his foot falls seemed naturally quieter. Still, with the total silence of the night air and the bodies all around him, it was a cold comfort.

At one point, a deer like creature with three horns sticking out of it’s head wandered into his view. Alex paused, watching the creature as it accidentally stepped on one of the vines. Instantly, the old man the vine was attached to snapped to attention, his eyes opening and looking at the animal. A vine whipped out of the darkness and smacked the deer away. As the screaming animal disappeared into the darkness, the old man’s eyes closed, and the forest became still again.

“Stick…” Alex said quietly to his shivering friend. “Make sure I don’t step on any of those, okay?”

Shortly after Alex came upon the village of Gravine, a series of low buildings surrounded by a vast field of plants used for magical purposes, the whole clearing surrounded by the thick forest and bathed in pale moonlight. The vines were thick there, forcing him to hopscotch between them. There was a bright, blazing fire from the center of town, and the sound of singing from a great booming voice. The rotten fall smell made Alex gag, but he forced himself onward.

Alex slid along the sides of buildings, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, listening to Stick when he gripped his arm, signaling danger. He began making out the words of the singing, and they were cruel and horrible nonsense.

“Broken vines and shattered souls, frightened men hide in your holes! A great wide land for me to purge! So find my vines and we will merge!”

The fires burned bright in the central square. Alex could see the people of Gravine, those not wrapped in vines and tied to trees at least, surrounding a massive pumpkin like being easily the size of a bus on top of a great well. It was swaying and singing, a bloodshot eye sitting atop a gaping, string filled maw, with vines sprouting and snaking their way down it’s body from atop a central stem.

“Come! Come, villagers! Oh, how I do love to have an audience I don’t have to control! Such a lovely, lovely night to worship me! But tell me, why are there so few offerings?” the monster cheerfully bellowed.

“Great Cucuboros!” A fat man cried out. “We…we are doing what we can! But you take so much from us! We cannot listen to your songs if we are weak from hunger!”

“Mmm, I don’t know, tubby!” Cucuboros laughed. “Methinks you protest a wee bit too much! The only thing wee about you! But, I think I can help you out!”

With shocking speed the vines from Cucuboros shot out at the wife and little boy of the fat man. They curled around them, squeezing them as they begged for help.

“Please, no! If you have any mercy, please!” the fat man begged. This only caused Cucuboros’s sneer to widen. The ends of the vines attached to their victim’s throats, and they quickly withered and greyed out, becoming vine wrapped husks like the others.

“Now you don’t have to share any food with your family, tubby!” Cucuborous mocked. “More for me!” He began to sing again, his macabre song joining with the wailing of the fat man as the other villagers stood silent, unable to do anything for fear of the monster turning his eye on them.

Alex stood in the shadows, his hands clenched in rage at the sight of the poor man and his family. He remembered the drawing from the little girl in Lugara, depicting him as a hero. And there he stood, useless.

“I’ll save you…” Alex said silently to himself. “I don’t know how, but I’m gonna do it…”

“Well now, why is the crowd so dour?!” Cucuboros asked. “Maybe I should bring in some friends, liven up the mood!”

The vines beneath Alex began to wiggle and shake, retracting towards Cucuboros. “Oh crap…” Alex muttered as he gazed into the darkness behind him, seeing the vine wrapped people walking like zombies through the alleys of the village, headed straight for him. There was nowhere to run ahead, as he would go right out into the open, and running backwards would only lead him to the vine zombies.

“Oh crap! Oh mega crap!” Alex hissed, looking around, searching for any exit. He dove behind a pile of wood, making himself as small as possible. Stick crawled behind his hood, hiding. “No! Hell no! This ain’t the end! I…I’ve got to…” Alex looked down. The strange letters on the edges of his cloak were glowing. “Magic cloak. God, why can’t this crap come with an instruction manual! Look, clearly you’re trying to do something but…what?!” He thought back to Lugara, to where he nearly died. What happened then? How did he make it work? It was…

“True heroism…” Alex said. He thought of the fat man, his family, the old man and the little girl in the woods. Of the girl in Lugara who gave him the drawing. Of Stick, his furry friend, and Elysia, the girl who brought him here thinking he was a hero, and Kraelin, who kept believing in him.

And Jake. No…he wasn’t going to let Jake down.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” Alex said. The vine zombies stepped forward, and they were upon him.

*

“I don’t like it. Its been too long,” Jake said, pacing back and forth, looking in the direction Alex had walked.

“I’d believe your suspicions weren’t overblown if you hadn’t said so a minute after he left,” Kraelin said, leaning against the truck.

“When do we go in, though?” Elysia asked. Kraelin looked away. He wished he had a good answer.

“So what? We wait and see if Alex comes back? How long is too long?” Jake questioned.

“It’s already too long,” A voice said from the darkness. Jake and Kraelin immediately readied their swords, while Elysia prepared a green glowing reception around her hands. “Relax. I could have attacked a while ago if I wanted to.”

“Damn it! I could feel we weren’t alone!” Kraelin said through grit teeth.

“Could have told us then!” Jake exclaimed.

“Calm down,” Elysia urged them. “Okay! You say you aren’t here to fight? Then show yourself.”

From out of the treetops the woman dropped, her white cloak fluttering around her as she hit the ground. She knelt there for a moment, looking at them with a masked, mirrored face, her red eyes boring holes into them.

“You,” Elysia said. “I noticed you at the bar.”

“You did?” she asked.

“Everyone there seemed like drunken rabble. But you…you’re a Sweeper, I’m guessing?”

The woman nodded. “Correct.”

“So I’m guessing you’re either here to help us…or take the bounty from us.” Elysia looked right into the mystery woman’s cold red eyes, not blinking.

“I think you already know which,” the woman said.

Elysia nodded. “If you were out to get us, you’d wait until we actually succeeded. It’d be easier to claim the reward.”

The woman walked over to Elysia, putting out her right hand. “Call me Silver.”

“Elysia,” she replied, shaking it.

“Your friend. She went straight into the town. Brave move, but stupid. I know about the Twisted in Gravine. In fact, it being here is somewhat my fault,” Silver said.

“How?” Kraelin asked suspiciously.

“Cucuboros was a small little gourd when last I saw him. But, given enough water, he can grow to be a giant. When I caught him he was terrifying a farm house. He wasn’t big, about the size of a trihorn, but he was still large enough to do lots of damage. The good news is, if you cut him off from his nutrition, he shrinks back down to a manageable size.”

“Hate to ask, but how big would he have to be to do this?” Jake asked, motioning towards the vine people.

“Big,” Silver said. “I’m guessing he got himself to a well, grew as large as possible and trapped most of the town, keeping his form stable.”

“So if he’s this big and dangerous, Alex is in deep crap then!” Jake said, stepping forward. “We’ve gotta go get him!”

“Exactly my plan,” Silver said. “However, I’ll need you to trust me.”

“Why should we?” Kraelin asks.

“Wait. Let’s hear her out,” Elysia said. “What do you have in mind?”

“Allow ourselves to get captured. We get led right into the heart of the village. They’ll take the boys weapons, but you have magic, a fact they don’t know. Create a distraction, and I can get to Cucuboros and inject him with a formula I have. It won’t kill him, but it will shrink him, make him weak enough to tackle. Then you get your weapons back and take out the vines. Once Cucuboros is cut off from his hosts, he’ll wither back up to a manageable size and I can recapture him.”

“Your plan is to make us bait?” Kraelin said skeptically.

“Better than your plan of waiting to see if your friend is dead,” Silver said, getting up in Kraelin’s face.

“She’s right,” Jake said, frowning. “It’s been too long. Alex might need us.”

“I don’t like it either, but…we don’t have a better option,” Elysia said.

“I’m getting real sick of this all action barely any thinking pattern my life is getting into…” Kraelin said with a deep sigh as they began to walk into the lion’s den.