Monsters (1/6)

A new day brought with it another bout of pain, another set of bruises and more long hours of bleeding and sweating under the jungle’s humid canopy.  Left , right, back, back, back, right, another right, quick left, quick right…not quick enough. Crack! Bells were ringing in Mycaelis’ head when it collided with a thick tree trunk. The shock of the impact was just as familiar as the pain of splinters digging under his skin.

All familiar and all reoccurring, it was part of yet another training session with his father. For years in the jungle Mycaelis had been beaten down, and for years more he had always gotten back up to be beaten down again.

The cycle was endless and had only but one goal: To destroy who Mycaelis was in order to pursue perfection. A soul was but one of many flaws he had been born with that needed to be remedied. To his father, a soul was an imperfection, a defect, a sickness, one that kept a healthy Charmander like him from reaching his fullest potential. The cycle was not always the same, when the sickness in Mycaelis began to recede, his father would arrange for harder and more difficult cycle of training to begin.

“Had enough?” His father, a hulking Feraligatr loomed over him, asking a question that he had asked many times before.

The question was rhetorical. It always had been. The training would continue regardless of what he said. Instead Mycaelis spoke with actions, leaping from the ground and latching onto his father’s head. He was weak and his muscles ached, but that didn’t stop the Charmander from roaring and letting a salvo of fists fly into his father’s skull. His small hands impacted like flies against a pane of glass, enough to make his father chuckle with pride and throw the youth from his head.

Abstinence and bravery in the face of defeat or overwhelming odds were a key principle in Mycaelis’ training. This was a part of his education that Mycaelis had learned well; to keep fighting until he was nothing but a bloodied corpse and to look death in the eye and greet it with a smile. To discard his feelings, his emotions, his fears, the very ailments that held him back yet made him who he was. None of his desires mattered; he was to be a warrior, the finest in all the known world.

Mycaelis lay beaten on the jungle floor, the thick and cold soil sticking to his sweat laden body. The morning sun was reaching its peak, seeping through the jungle canopy in rays, one which bathed his father in a divine radiance. The Feraligatr was huge, a colossus who stood a full head, and fin, taller than others of his species. His body, tattered by battle and time, was still very much in its prime, boasting muscles as hard as iron. His might, his stance, his glare, even his scars; Mycaelis wanted them, he wanted them all, he wanted to be every bit the man his father was. From the moment of his hatching, this was the only goal he ever had.

“Get up, Son. On yer feet.” His father did nothing but cross his arms and glare, he knew that he didn’t have to do anything else.
Mycaelis did as ordered. Like a marionette, he felt the strings of iron discipline pull at his limbs until he was standing upright. He tried to stare down his father and scowled. That tail, his father’s freaking huge-ass tail, that’s what got him last time! Not this time, not again.

He charged, he jumped, he dodged, stumbled a bit, but quickly recovered in time to doge a punch. Was his father moving slower this time? Impossible, Mycaelis must have been moving faster. His father would never let him gain the upper hand. Another blow was coming, a jet of flame from his mouth forced it back. There was a gap, he went for it. Slice! A small scratch on his father’s flesh; excellent! More of those would be needed; many, many more.

“Power, Son! Power!” He heard his father bellow, not satisfied enough with his tiny injury. “Speed and power, speed and power! You’re a beast! Act like it!”

Gaius, his father, was a giant colossus that knew no such thing as mortality. Mycaelis on the other hand was but an insect with nothing except weakness to support his desire for greater strength. He jumped at his father attempting to slash at his snout, but was caught by a giant hand and slammed against a tree. He was kept pinned their while his father glared at him.

“Maybe you’re just tired, eh?” His father grinned and squeezed tighter. “This session isn’t even over, and you’re already tired?! Only whelps tire, only whelps know weakness! Are you a whelp, Mycaelis!? Or are you more like Vagus…that Totodile you call brother?”

The words cut like knives. He wasn’t tired, he was just getting started. He wasn’t allowed to be tired, he wasn’t allowed to be weak or make mistakes.  He was, as his father said, a son of Ladon; a descendant of the great serpent, the one who demanded the best from those that carried his power within them. He demanded the best from the best, and Mycaelis was eager to show his father that he was the best of those best, and that he and Ladon had a son they could both be proud of.  

Mycaelis glared at his father with a venomous stare, one that projected hatred in the purist of forms. Like a rabid animal Mycaelis scowled and flailed against the force of his father’s pinning hand, kicking, scratching, biting whatever part of it he could reach. The iron hand remained unmoved, leaving Mycaelis efforts rewarded with nothing but a menacing chuckle from his father.

Hate, anger, rage; it built up inside the Charmander, pushing aside his sanity, his ability to reason, leaving him with only a desire to burn, crush and destroy. Only his enemies’ screams of pain and terror could feed the creature he was becoming. The source of his hatred was not his father, nor was it his purpose in life, or the training he endured, it was hatred of weakness; his own weakness.

He wasn’t weak! He wasn’t! Couldn’t be! Not an option! Mycaelis roared and what followed next made even his father shudder. The Charmander’s eye glowed a brilliant white; the flame on his tail doubled in size and turned a hot blue. The trunk of the tree at his back burst into flames as Mycaelis’ body turned hot as molten lead. In almost the blink of an eye a storm of fire exploded from the Charmander, engulfing all around it.

The fiery blast hit with the force of a charging Rhyhorn, sending his father stumbling back with flames tearing at his body. The Feraligatr scowled, falling back onto the ground and withering around in an effort to extinguish the flames. As the echo of Mycaelis’ roar faded deeper into the jungle, Gaius quickly clambered to his feet. Mycaelis’ Overheat had left a wide crater of smouldering trees and small spot fires in its wake. The scent of smouldering jungle was thick in the air as Gaius loomed over his son once more.

Mycaelis had fallen from the charcoaled tree trunk was kneeling before his father. Violent shakes had taken hold of his body, symptoms of dire exhaustion accompanied by deep and raspy breaths. He had done it! He had beaten his father back! Only one last thing remained. Summoning what was sure to be the last of his strength, Mycaelis looked up at his father. The sight he beheld made him sigh, collapse and slip into his waking dreams. His father had smiled.

With a proud chuckle Gaius knelt before the unconscious Charmander and placed a hand against his head. “Well done, my son.”

The thought of possibly killing Mycaelis today did not once seep into his mind. It never did. Mycaelis’ death in the midst of his training would mean only one thing; he was unfit to be his son. Gaius was, none the less, elated by his son’s receptiveness to indoctrination. He was proud of the monster he was creating, proud of fathering such a marvellous creation.

And so, Gaius took the monster of his creation into his arms and carried its limp form through the jungle. Home, they were bound for. A night’s worth of rest so that another day of indoctrination and soul purging could take place. After all, a soul was no more than a sickness; an obstacle on the path to greater strength, one that Gaius would do all he could to purge from his own child.