Smaugust 2022, Day 3 - Bear Paw
Characters: Arazumus
Prompt list: Found here
Bear paw - Admittedly, I only know about this food because I’ve heard it mentioned on American-made tv shows. They remind me of the animal though; They’re big, have claws, and you don’t want to get into trouble with one.
“You can leave now.”
“Yes sir.” Elias nodded and turned, doing as he was told and taking his leave from Arazumus’s quarters. Arazumus was sitting in a wide lounge chair, an arm lying along its back. Its size would fit about five humans in normal circumstances, but it could only fit three at most when Arazumus sat in the middle of it like this.
Now that he was alone, Arazumus looked towards his window. It had long since passed nightfall, and he could barely see more than street lamps and illuminated windows through his partially-drawn curtains. Arazumus shifted, and his hoof connected with an object with a metal clink. He picked it up; A long bident, the dual prongs straight and piercing. He held the pole of the weapon in one hand, tapping the other side against his palm. A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. It was quaint to think about how much power he supposedly held in this one hunk of metal.
The search had taken months. Elias had been obedient, as always, and more than willing to throw himself halfway across the country to find what Arazumus wanted. The boy was spineless, but at least he was doing something worthwhile with his life. Arazumus wouldn’t trust his other lieutenant Xothtareth to leave the city, let alone the state. Elias had followed the lead to a small rural property, owned and managed by the same family for decades. The head of the bident had been sitting in their living room, a trinket picked up by their great-grandfather on some field and kept as a family heirloom. Arazumus had given Elias permission to relieve the family of their heirloom, however necessary. He had more use for it than they did; to them, it was nothing more than an old and rusty farming tool.
In the present, Arazumus ran his clawed thumb over the seam where the bident’s head had been attached to a new pole. He’d been present when the bident had been cleaned and restored, and he mused on how well a job had been done to restore it to its full glory. The visible age might have placed it at only a century or two old, but it had been left in the turned earth for at least four times that long, and existed for even longer than that. According to the stories, the weapon in Arazumus’s hands had originally belonged to a deity. The details were fuzzy on which of - some said mountain ranges, some said storms, some said harvests - but the power it contained could be accessed by those that weren’t gods, as long as the weapon was intact. And ‘intact’, hopefully meant reattaching the head to a new pole would do the job.
Arazumus turned the weapon upright, tapping the butt of it twice against the carpeted floor. Nothing happened, although he hadn’t really expected much to. He frowned in thought as he considered how to use the weapon’s supernatural powers. His eyes drifted back towards the window in his quarters. With a slow rock, he rose to his feet, rolling his shoulders to stretch. He wandered across the room, dragging the head of the bident along the floor behind him. With his free hand, he drew back the thick curtains, opening his view out into the street below. Other buildings rose high into the air around his, and random creatures made their way along the sidewalks below, most of which were human. Xoth was probably out getting shitfaced again. The curtains had been fine, but with the size of his clawed and furry hands, the latch on the window took a moment of fiddling to get open. A breeze blew in, cool against his face. He lifted the bident, pointing it towards the street, and took a deep breath. The obvious was the method to start with, wasn’t it?
“Go on then.” Arazumus ordered. He waited a second, then two, then tapped the bident against the windowsill. It rang dully, but nothing else happened. Arazumus grunted. He tilted the weapon up and rolled it between his fingers, checking for any markings or instructions on the surface. The metal was bare, reflecting some of the light from inside the room as it was turned over. Arazumus aimed it further upwards this time, towards the top of the building across the street and the dark sky it obscured behind it. He waved the bident in a tiny circle, making movements with his wrist with little direction in his mind, other than making something happen. The breeze filtered through the window again, rustling past his curved horns and disturbing some of the random odds and ends on a nearby table. Arazumus’s goat-like ear flicked, his attention turning slightly to the sound of the disturbance. He looked back to the bident, then up to the sky, heavy clouds curling in from the horizon.
“Alright.” Arazumus’s expression set into a focused scowl, and he tightened his hold on the polearm. Gods were supposed to be beings of great strength, able to carve the world through their will. Maybe - no, not ‘maybe’, there was no doubt in his mind - he had to focus his own will if he wanted anything to happen. Arazumus concentrated on the sky, on whatever ability the bident had surging forward, cleaving into the world and leaving an impression that no-one would soon forget. Arazumus concentrated, and he ordered again. “Show me something.” Another moment passed. The seconds ticked by, moving at a crawl. Then, the bident caught the light again. Wind blew into Arazumus’s quarters, not a light breeze like before, but a gale that buffeted against his fur like a solid wall of pressure. Arazumus blinked against the air, and his lips curled up into a smile. He concentrated again, this time on the overcast sky. His hold on the bident remained steady and grounded, and a surge of excitement rose in him that he swiftly quelled to not break his focus, as he swore he could see the heavy expanse of clouds begin to curl in on themselves. They moved and shifted into circles, coming into a central point like a whirlpool. It was slow at first, but gained speed, a rumble spreading along the swirl. The clouds began to pull downwards, the whirlpool steadily forming into the familiar funnel-like shape of a tornado. Street lamps flickered and people had begun to notice the disturbance, calling out in surprise and quickly hurrying for cover. The tornado snaked its way down the side of the high-rise building, writing against the metal and glass. It reached half-way towards the ground until Arazumus yanked the bident away, the whirlwind dissipating before the shape had even fully formed. Arazumus let out an exhale, short and shallow as if he were out of breath. He stared at the weapon in his hands, the metal shining as if life had returned to it after a long expanse of time. He turned it over in his hands, and his smile grew, exposing fanged canines as sharp as the bident’s prongs. The old stories were true.
