TAoDaN 4 - Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Bellucinations

"Presenting...Elgar Bellen!"

The crowd went wild.  Different people from all over the world cheered and cheered for the master of fright.  I smiled and looked at Cervia.  "This is so exciting!" I cheered.

Cervia, on the other hand, didn't look so good.  "Elka, I'm not feeling so well," she moaned with a queesy look on her face.  "Suddenly I feel so...so...ill."

"Are you going to be alright?" I worriedly asked.

"I...  I think I need to sit down..."  She suddenly doubled over as a bursting sound rang in my ears.  Her back seemed to almost pop as two thin black limbs exploded from Cervia's wings.  My mouth dropped in shock as feathers flew everywhere, her wings now non-existent.  "Elka, what...  Help!" she squealed as horns jutted out of her head.  "What's happening to me?"

"I...  I don't know!" I stammered in disbelief.

"I...  Elka, you look...  You look delicious...." she panted.

"W-What!?"

"I don't know!  I'm just saying you look delicious...  Th-That's all...  So delicious...  Like one bite will take away all the pain..."  Suddenly Cervia jumped straight onto her feet, a whip in her left hand.  "So delicious..." she whispered.

"Cervia, are you feeling alright?"

"So very delicious...  Let me eat you!"

"No!" I said, recoiling away.  What was going on?

"LET ME EAT YOU!!!!  DREYFUS, LET ME EAT YOU!!!!"

"How'd you know my name!?"

Cervia cracked her whip on the ground and jumped at me.  "FOOOOOOD!!!!!!" she screamed.  I quickly turned into a deer and leaped back.  "Somebody help!" I yelled at the crowd.  "This girl's gone crazy!"  To my horror, everybody else around me was looking at me just as hungrily as Cervia.  "Oh dear..." I muttered to myself.  "Looks like tonight's special is venison..."  I said a bit louder, "Uh, on second thought people, uh, I have to be going now!"  I turned away from Cervia and ran.  Cervia dropped onto...uh...all six legs and came after me.

"DREYFUS!" she screamed.  "LET ME EAT YOU!"

"I'm sorry," I called back, "but I don't think I can do that."  People around me were starting to get that starving look in their eyes...

"Dreyfus, have I ever told you how handsome you are?  You would look SO good on a plate with an apple in your mouth!" Cervia baited.

"Uh, actually I don't think I would," I gulped.  I jumped up onto the roof of a shed (deer can jump pretty high, you know) and turned into a fox.  Cervia followed me up.  She stood up and cracked her whip again.  "Cervia, you don't want to do this!" I tried to remind her.  "I know you don't!"

"Cervia?" Cervia questioned.  "Who's that?"  This time she whipped my leg.

"You happen to be Cervia," I told her as I turned into a deer again and jumped for a taller building's roof.  It was quite a leap, I wasn't entirely sure I could manage it.  I smiled in relief though--if I had a hard time, then surely Cervia would find it impossible.  There was a bursting sound as I galloped and jumped across to another roof, just to be safe.  I turned around and looked for her.  The not-as-cute girl was nowhere to be found.  "Phew, that was a close one," I sighed.  "I wonder what happened."

I heard a tapping sound and my ears shot up.  The sound got louder and louder...  And suddenly there she was!  Cervia, now with a fourth pair of limbs, stood carrying two whips on the other roof.  Had she climbed?  "Dreyfus," she panted angrily.  "I've been chasing you for a bit now, and I don't expect you to get much further.  Look, there isn't any more roofs for you to jump to either.  So just give up.  You can't run forever.  Just give up.  It's not worth it to keep running."  To my dismay, she was right.  There wasn't anywhere to go but down.  And down below, hungry people were surrounding the building.

"I guess I do appear to be cornered..." I gulped.  "Are you sure you aren't Cervia?"

"I still don't know who you're talking about," Cervia smiled.  "I'm just me.  I don't need a name."

"Good."  It was my turn to smile.  "Since if you were Cervia, I'd have to resist killing you."

"What?" she snapped.  "You, fight me!?  What kind of idiot are you?"

"The kind that doesn't like spiders."  I turned into my human form and morphed my left hand into a long lance made of ice, my trusty Frost Blade.  "Have at you!" I yelled as I kicked my hooves off the rooftop and jumped into the air.  It would be more difficult for her to whip me if I was in the air, I thought.  A bell tolled somewhere nearby as Cervia jumped up to meet me.  With the flick of her whips she wrapped them each around an arm and landed.  Great, she wasn't stupid.

With the ease only a circus performer would have she began whirling me around in the air by spinning her arms around.  "If I can't have you easily, I'll just have to break you!" Cervia chuckled darkly.  "My Master shall surely be pleased."  She twisted her wrists and both whips released me.  I shattered on the rooftop, but quickly reassembled myself.  I gasped as I saw a thin wire almost like a puppet string lower from the sky towards me.  "I'm independent, I don't need a master," she grinned, contradicting her previous statement.  "But I'm sure we can turn you into one of us."

"What!?" I sputtered.  I didn't exactly know what she was talking about, but I could bet donuts that it had to do with that string descending towards me.  I leaped out of the way of the cable and jumped again.  I tried to grab for it, but missed.  As I fell I made one last attempt and grabbed it with the two toes of my foot.  The gravity of my fall was enough to pull it.  As I shattered a second time, something else hit the rooftop.  I put myself together and both I and Cervia looked at it.  It was a bell that looked almost like a jester's hat.  "Master!" Cervia gulped.

"So, this is your master, is it?" I grinned.  "How would you like him to be on deep freeze?"

"No, don't do that!" she cried.  "Anything but that!"

My tails flashed blue as I took a deep breath and blew cold, freezing air at the bell.  Being metallic, it absorbed the cold and froze almost instantly.  Cervia cried and collapsed, face blue.  "Cold..." she shivered quietly.  "So cold...  Help..."

"You want me to help?  But you just tried to eat me!"

"I...  I don't know what came over me...  So cold...  Please stop..."

I couldn't really stand it.  "Promise you'll be good?" I hesitantly asked.  She nodded slowly, shivering.  "Okay, I'm gonna heat you up now.  You'd better keep your promise!"  I exhaled quickly and sucked all the cold back in.  The bell defrosted.  In a hundred different voices it mechanically cackled, "Ha, ha, ha.  Fool, fool, fool, fool, fool, fool.  Ha, ha, ha."  Cervia's eyes got wide as a string appeared from the bell.

"No!"

"Ha, ha, ha."  The string lashed towards Cervia and connected itself to her deer tail.

"NO!" she cried again.

"I am your master once more.  Serve me, Cervia, as you did long ago.  Kill Dreyfus."  Electric currents shot through the rope and shocked Cervia.  As the electricity fizzed away, her eyes faded into a glazed stare.

"I am reactivated," she said coldly.  "I will kill Dreyfus."

"Good," the bell said before launching itself up into the stratosphere, cable still connected to Cervia.  I started backing up as Cervia approached me with that glazed stare.  "I will do as my master commands," she coldly stated, no emotion in her voice.  "I care not for anything I felt towards you once, Dragon.  I simply wish to kill you now."  She donned her twin whips and picked up the pace.  "I will kill you."

"Now now, Cervia, what did you say about being independent?" I offered as I dodged her whip crack.  "Didn't you say you didn't need a master?"

"I was foolish.  That is all.  Now stand still so I can kill you."

"Cervia, I can't do that."  I dodged her other whip, quickly dashed at her and kicked her in the stomach.  She fell to the floor, seemingly dazed.  But just as a concerned smile came across my face she lashed her whips around my legs and catapulted me onto a circus tent.  With grace she leaped from the rooftop and onto the bouncy tent.  She cracked her whip again and hit me on my right hand.  I cried out in pain and backed away.  She wrapped her whips around my Frost Blade...and I reacted.  I pulled my lance forward and dragged her with me.  With my canines I chewed apart her whips and pushed her away.  "What now, Cervia?"

Her body bulged and burst, and in her place was a dreadful black, horned spider, the size of a table.  "I will kill you," she again stated before charging towards me.  I turned into a deer and jumped over her.

"I can't let you kill me, Cervia," I said with a bit of worry in my voice.  But would I have to kill her?

"This is your nightmare, Dragon.  I have to kill you."

I turned into a Grolnashier and leaped at the large spider.  "No, Cervia.  I have to kill you," I growled as we struggled.  Her mandibles clawed my face, breath burning my eyes.

"That's not...  Not possible..." she grunted.  "I am immortal."

"I bet to differ," I growled.  I slammed her to the tent top and we burst through.

"Dreyfus!" Neshae exclaimed upon seeing me.  "What is that thing?"

"No time to talk, Neshae," I snapped.  Cervia pinned me down and bit my chest.  She was a strong spider, I'll give her that.  I howled in pain and clawed her face.  She now howled, and I took this time to get her off me.  As she continued to scream, I went against my morals and let the beast in me take charge.  I slammed her onto the ground and dug into my newly found prey.  My bite made her scream for a moment before the shadowy creature turned purple and froze.  Frostbite, my secret weapon.  Surrendering to my instincts, I felt no sorrow in Cervia's death.  She was not the girl I knew her as.

But what of the other people?  Surely they were ready to get me too?  Actually, their attention was again focused on the bell tower.  Neshae was the only one gazing at me.  "What was that thing?" he asked me.

"An old friend gone bad," I answered.  And I left it at that.

"Gee, I missed all the fun," Neshae sighed.

A loud clapping sound echoed through the streets.  "Bravo, bravo, bravo!" cheered somebody in the crowd.  I knew that voice...

A large bell dropped down in front of us.  "Bravo, bravo, bravo!" it excitedly cheered.  "I'll have you know that she was my best performer!  Well done, lad, well done!  Oh Cervia, how I shall miss you."  It had a Kentucky accent.  Weird.  "Now then, drones!  Clean up this mess!"  Two of those smaller bells dropped from the sky and vacuumed poor Cervia's dead body up into their hulls.

"Your performer?" Neshae snarled.  "What do you have to say for yourself, Dreyfus?  You killed his performer!"  Bravo, Neshae, always staying on my side.  Not.

"I don't really mind," the big bell smiled.  "Why, I was trying to get rid of her anyway!  So independent, that one.  Why, if my drone hadn't gotten her back she probably would have lost her mind.  And that would mean loss of profit, ho ho!"  The bell took a brief moment to make a jolly good laugh.  "Anyway, Dreyfus, Neshae, my name is Elgar Bellen.  Yessiree, I'm the head honcho at this frightful place.  Good to meet you!"

"How do you know who we are?" I demanded.  I felt uneasy around this guy.

"Dreyfus.  I know everything that goes on in my circus.  Why, when you guys fell out of the sky I knew I'd get some action.  Independent women need to be dealt with by young men, not old fellas like me."

"Excuse me?  I thought she was your performer."

"Yeah, well, I don't take lightly to traitors.  A while back she broke her string.  We can't have Bellucinations breaking their strings; that's like a spider without a web!  So we hunted her down, and you led us right to her!"  I was starting to feel bad that Cervia had died.  Bellen took a moment to laugh again, but settled down quickly.  "So, where are you guys from?  I'm not used to dragons and puzzle pieces visiting my circus, ho ho!"  I was about to speak when Neshae interrupted me.

"What's it matter to you, brass boy?" he demanded.

The bell paused for a short while, staring at Neshae.  After a sigh, Bellen said sternly, "I said, where are you from?  Or is it that important?"  For a moment I swore I saw sheer panic cross Neshae's face.  He was sweating and trembling and his eyes darted this way and that...  But it was only for a moment.  I don't know what came across him.  "Uh, I guess it isn't too important," he mumbled.  "We're not from this place.  I'm from, uh, the Hall of Doors.  And Drey is from, uh, somewhere."

"Splendid, splendid!" Bellen laughed.  "I'll take a guess and say he's from planet Earth!  Am I right, Drey?"

I blinked.  "Uh, yeah."

"Ho ho, I wondered why things were so weird!  You're having a dream, aren't you?  Excellent, I love dreams!  Especially ones from Earth, they are so fun!"  Bellen cleared his throat and floated behind us.  He looked at our faces over our shoulders...kinda like he was searching for something.  "Say..." he said after a pause.  "Why don't you come to my place?  It's a cool tower at the center of the city; can you believe, I'm about to be crowned King of Westvard!  My castle will be this cool tower Count McDonald pointed out to me.  I've already set up for my amazing theatrics later tonight, so why not drop by now and check out my home?  I'm sure you'll find something or another that will leave you simply dying to stay for a bit.  Or maybe forever!" he added with a jolly laugh.  Geez.  Talk about an invitation.  Well, Neshae and I couldn't just say no, so we smiled and accepted.

At that moment some unseen force whisked us into the air and with Bellen between us we were blown right towards...dare I say it...the Bell Tower.  It certainly was just as spooky looking as it was before, but it looked new and fresh.  No bell rested in the chapel, and even inside I could hear the wind howling through the empty bellfry like a ghost calling for its friend.  I'd love to say it was just a creepy old bell tower, but it was so much more!  The inside walls were covered with beautifully done framed portraits of the scariest things I could have imagined.  I felt like throwing up and gasping in awe at the same time!  There were paintings of gorey battles and terrifying monsters ripping people's faces apart; they were so lifelike that had they been more believable I would have called them photographs.  One in particular had a fine looking bull (only a fellow ruminant like me would say that, I think) being punctured by an Iron Maiden, with blood squirting out and a look of pure horror on his face.  There was a shining brass bell in the corner of each portrait.  It looked almost like Bellen, but much more fierce.  The bells had horns and mean-looking markings.  The tower was much like any bell tower in that its primary object was a winding staircase going up the sides of the inside walls towards the bellfry up top.  The cold stone walls added to the medieval castle-feel of the tower.  The stone floor was covered by a big black painting of a "W," which I assumed stood for "Westvard."  There wasn't a single light apart from the light shining in from outside.  And speaking of outside, to my surprise the people had calmed down as if nothing had happened.

"The King of Westvard lives...here?" I gulped.

"Well, not anymore," Bellen said before quickly adding, "but I do now, and I'm going to be the new king, so you could say he does indeed live here."  He chuckled, as if having said a joke.  I just smiled.

"Kind of a cold, depressing place, isn't it?" I quietly mumbled to Neshae.

"It is, isn't it?" Bellen agreed loudly, speaking before Neshae could say a word.  "Just how I like it!  It adds a bit of mystique to the place; and anyway, the bells add a bit of theme to the tower, doesn't it?  The last ruler--uh, I mean, the last owner wasn't much of a dark fellow.  I just couldn't STAND him or his decorations, so I made them better."

"Who was this 'last owner?'" Neshae asked, annoyed that he wasn't able to speak before.

"Oh, some old crazy fool!  I'll tell you, it was hard to get him to let me have this for my palace.  He...  Well, let's not get into bad stuff.  Why don't you two sit down and have something to eat?  My treat."  Bellen glowed for a moment and two jester bells floated down from the bellfry, lines attached to juicy steaks and lucious goblets of milk.  The bells set the meals on a table that I hadn't noticed before, detached the cables, and flew back up and out of the bellfry.  I then noticed two chairs by the table; had they been there a second ago?  I wasn't sure, but I was quite hungry and hurried over to get a bite to eat.  Quickly I sat down, turned into a wolf, and dipped my head to the savory tenderloin that greeted me on the table.  Neshae more hesitantly sat down and poked his steak before grabbing a knife and fork and eating with me.  No matter how much I ate, it seemed like there was still more steak and more room in my stomach.  A never ending pile of juicy steaks that don't fill you up!  I was quite happy.  I wondered if Bellen was going to join us, but he wasn't around when I looked for him.  I just shrugged and continued eating my meal.

It was an hour later of voracious eating that I started to wonder where our host had gotten off to.  In any case, it was certainly quieter outside than it had been before.  I would have shrugged it off, but the everlasting steak finally ceased to exist and I turned into a human and neatly wiped my muzzle--uh, face.  Neshae burped and finished as well.  We took one last sip of our milks, and found that they had run out too.  Sighing in content, we decided to go look for Bellen.  The tower was very quiet as we crept up the stone stairs, up towards the bellfry.  The goal of our ascent was to have a good view to look out onto Westvard from an altitude so we'd have a better view.  "I wonder how the circus is going?" I quietly pondered to Neshae.  "It isn't much like a circus to be quiet."

"Eh, there's probably just some bad act going on," Neshae chuckled.  "Maybe it's Bellen!"

"Oh my god," I gasped suddenly as we reached the top.  I put a hand to my mouth and just stood, staring.  We were at the bellfry, and right against the wall was an iron maiden, a bull's deformed skeleton surrounded by a pool of blood.  It looked just like the painting downstairs.  Exactly like the painting.  Except it was real.  Too real.  "Uh, Dreyfus?  We've got bigger problems," Neshae gulped.  "Check out the circus."  I turned my gaze to peer out of the bellfry, and I froze in silence.  The circus was as bright as ever, with the festivities going all happy-dappy.  But there was a massive problem.  The city was empty.  There wasn't a single cow in sight, let alone other races.  Skeletons lined the tents.  Bloody skeletons.  Clouds floated on the horizon.

"So, are you enjoying yourselves?" Bellen coldly asked from behind us.  I jumped in surprise and turned around to face him.  "Bellen, what happened?" I asked in shock.

"I should be asking you that question, Dreyfus the Dragon Child," he responded as coldly as before.  "What did you do to my audience?  Everybody's dead."

"I don't know what you mean..." I mumbled, trembling.

"What are you trying to pull?" Neshae demanded.  "We didn't do anything!"

"Oh no?" Bellen mused.  "You're wrong.  You did everything.  You killed the cows and ate them as meat.  Every single one, and all their milk too.  As for the bulls, you slaughtered them and ate them as well.  You two are murderers."

"No..." I started.

"Oh yes, murderers.  You could have had any food, any at all, but your hearts wished for steak.  And in the home of the steak, too.  It sickens me.  As King of Westvard, I can't have such cruel acts go unnoticed."

"I'm...  I'm not a murderer!" I yelled.

"Yes you are.  What about Cervia?  She was your friend and you killed her with cold hearted rage.  I saw it all.  You two have made a mess of my circus, and now you must pay the price."

"What are you gonna do to us!?" Neshae roared.  "We did nothing!"

Bellen glowed and change shape.  His jester cap and kindly face changed to a menacing face with devilish horns.  A burst of purple fire sparked on both sides of him, and to Neshae and my horror there stood two feminine figures.  In front of Neshae stood his lover, Jomeiah.  And in front of me stood my own mother.  "Dreyfus, what's going on?" she asked worriedly.

"Mom, no...  No!" I cried.  Bellen laughed hard, though not a jolly laugh but an evil laugh.  Two Iron Maidens flew down from the sky.  "You two took my precious assistant and my precious audience.  Now I shall make you pay by taking your precious people," echoed Bellen.  His bell tolled as the Iron Maidens flew and slammed shut on Mom and Jomeiah.  Neshae and I screamed, but Bellen just laughed.  And then finally I realized the horrible truth of it all.  Bellen was the Bell of Westvard, and as I looked around I realized we no longer stood on a tower among a circus.  The rain poured as I looked out at the ruins of Westvard.