Gath sat under an overhanging rock in Panga Pass blinking at the first light of day brushing the distant night sky. Behind the slits of the horned helmet, his eyes were weblike red trails. The searing, stinging lids hammered each other. But he did not dare sleep.
The helmet had produced an incredible heat, as if his brains and blood were on fire. He was soaked with sweat and parched. Earlier in the night, he had thought the heat would fry his flesh and bones and kill him, and he had frantically and blindly tried to untangle its cowl from the chain mail, but failed. Then the heat abated somewhat and a strange unnatural sensation had coursed through him, as if the heat had somehow melded his head into the helmet. He could feel the cool night air on its metal, and at the tips of the horns. They had become part of his flesh, and they brought other sensations. He could sense danger about him as if it were a palpable substance. All night he had felt it: cannibal ants crawling under the earth he sat on, and predators hiding behind the tall grass swaying nearby.
The helmet was serving him like an infallible sentry, but it was also playing a deadly game with him. His eyes fluttered tiredly, then closed and stayed closed. His head dropped sideways and the weight of the helmet, just as it had been doing all night, got the better of his neck and tried to throw him to the ground. With a grunt, Gath came awake and yanked his head upright. He gasped with exhaustion, then forced the helmet to behave like a normal helmet and remain balanced on his head.
He looked around warily as his body heaved with heavy breathing and steam drifted through the links of his chain mail. His eyes fluttered and closed again. This time the helmet enlisted a numb elbow as an ally, and dropped him to the ground. His helmet hit a rock, and clanged with mind-splitting vibrations. Metal ate into his jaw and scalp. The pain screamed into the core of his brain, leaving him paralyzed. He lay like dead meat on a plate until a sharp and different pain arrived unannounced, and his eyes snapped open.
Gath was eye to eye with three inches of feisty dragon-lizard. It was perched on his sprawled hand, and breakfasting on his thumb.
The thumb tolerated this only a moment, then punched the lizard aside. The reptile tumbled over three times, leapt up and charged again. The thumb was ready. It had taken hold of a neighborly fingertip and drawn it back like a tiny catapult. It snapped, clubbed the reptile in the side of its blue jaw, and drove it several feet through the air to land in an unconscious lump beside his boot.
Gath picked up the lizard, tore off the head, legs and tail, and shoved the body through the mouth hole of the helmet into his mouth. Chewing and swallowing ravenously, he dragged himself to his knees. The horned helmet suddenly lifted, and his eyes stared at the underside of the overhanging rock. The sense of danger was so palpable it could have grown hair. His muscles rippled and swelled in response, as if instructed by the helmet. His body exploded off the ground, and drove the helmet into the lip of the rock shattering it. He stepped back quickly. The crumbling pieces fell to the ground in a cloud of dirt carrying a flailing, six-foot python. Its mouth stretched wide displaying a parade of toothy executioners. Gath closed it with his boot, flattening it to a bony pulp.
He picked up his axe, strode out and a din of noises greeted him. He could see grass and brush moving, and feel deadly adversaries lurking in the shadows and behind rocks. He trotted down the trail, ready for their attack, wanting it, but they did not appear.
He reached Noga Swamp, in good time. Home waited beyond its wet, murky body, but the local residents had other destinations in mind. Every branch, root and vine was alive with deadly creatures, all hungry to fill their bellies with his meat, and whirlpools of murky water beckoned with the same dread invitation.
He turned along the dirt road with a determined trot, then picked up the pace and began to run. Up ahead, as far as the floating bridge, the entire surface of the road undulated with swarming lizards and snakes. He charged onto the living carpet, his boots crunching and churning. Viper, adder and lizard cracked their teeth on his chain mail as he dodged and leapt past, but others buried fangs in calf and shin.
He made it to the bridge and pulled up gasping with horror. A dozen tiny snakes clung to metal and flesh, pumping venom into them. He ground his teeth, picking and slapping them off, then gave up and waited for the venom to do its work.
The pain came, and he staggered back, blinded. The heat was swept from his body by an icy wave of terror, then death’s cold bite tore into him. It did not allow him a flashing moment to review his life, but propelled him headlong into an endless void of emptiness and loneliness. He was nothing. But he still stood on his feet, and still held his axe.
He howled with the crying torment of death. But still he stood.
The coldness abated, then the heat came surging back, like flames searing through his veins. His muscles corded, then bulged and stretched the confining chain mail until it was molded by his body. His bones swelled within his meat until his joints accommodated his weighty mass. He fed on the power of the helmet.
He looked down at himself uncertainly, then strode on through the foreboding landscape to the center of the swamp where the stone bridge spanned the two ponds. Sunlight trickled through the leafy roof. Reaching it, he stopped and bathed alone in its splendor as understanding and exhilaration surged through him. He was a massive horned demon of black metal and sinew graced by golden light, drinking air and holding the bridge with booted feet as if all the elements were personal possessions. The helmet had transformed him. He was death, and he had never felt so alive.