Story-a-Week #6
Security
The two travelers were bruised, frozen, bleeding and starved, but they had to push on. The little beast snarled at his companion. His companion, though several times larger, cringed at the outburst.
“Haaarruk,” the large creature grimaced and gasped, “please…”
“Fassssssster!” the small monster’s tongue scraped against his teeth and dug his claws deeper into the neck of his unfortunate friend. It had been six days since the two of them had fled the island of their incarceration. Both were dangerous and merciless, and both had taken many lives before finally being captured by the civil guard.
They had been tortured cruelly, and only managed to escape because of some clerical error involving poorly converted measurements. No doubt some pitiful worker was being tortured even now for the loss of the prisoners. Harruk was counting on the civil guards’ dutiful adherence to torture procedures to slow any pursuit.
“Harrruk, it hurrts,” the giant spoke with slow deliberate syllables. He felt the lack of air sap at his strength.
“You musssst continue!” The small beast’s own body ached from clinging to the giant’s neck.
The giant stopped for a moment looking upward. He tried to grab at Harruk once more, but the effort was wasted. The creature had intentionally positioned himself in a place the giant could not reach. The giant was still weighed down by chains all over his body. Back on the island he had been affixed to a guardtower. It now floated some distance behind the two beasts, still chained and (by some strange architectural phenomenon) still upright.
“The sea is getting… tooo deeep,” said the giant, the water had risen to his ears, “It will be difffffficult.”
When the two escaped monsters finally made it to land, blue in the face and covered in all manner of sea-life, they were no longer a danger to anyone. Only the guardtower remained. Many years later, it was found still standing and half buried in the sand. No one in the surrounding villages knew why the tower stood there, but felt unnerved by it’s presence. It took very little discussion among the villagers to decide to repair the tower and keep it manned by a guard every night.