THE EYE OF ARGON

     The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked
climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the
Norgolian empire.  Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting
sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of
earth.  The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense
from overhead, half way through its daily revolution.  Small
rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily
accomplishments of their dismal lives.  Dust sprayed over three
heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdonsome
cargoes of their struggling overseers.
     "Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of
hell, barbarian", gasped the first soldier.
     "Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death,
wretch!" returned Grignr.
     A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive
barbarians hide enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust
forth, sending a steel shod blade to the hilt into the soldiers
vital organs.  The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his
saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust
with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.
     The enthused barbarian swilveled about, his shock of fiery
red hair tossing robustly in the humid air currents as he faced
the attack of the defeated soldier's fellow in arms.
     "Damn you, barbarian" Shrieked the soldier as he observed
his comrade in death.
     A gleaming scimitar smote a heavy blow against the
renegade's spiked helmet, bringing a heavy cloud over the
Ecordian's misting brain.  Shaking off the effects of the
pounding blow to his head, Grignr brought down his scarlet
streaked edge against the soldier's crudely forged hauberk,
clanging harmlessly to the left side of his opponent.  The
soldier's stead whinnied as he directed the horse back from the
driving blade of the barbarian.  Grignr leashed his mount forward
as the hoarsely piercing battle cry of his wilderness bred race
resounded from his grinding lungs.  A twirling blade bounced
harmlessly from the mighty thief's buckler as his rolling right
arm cleft upward, sending a foot of blinding steel ripping
through the Simarian's exposed gullet.  A gasping gurgle from the
soldier's writhing mouth as he tumbled to the golden sand at his
feet, and wormed agonizingly in his death bed.
     Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the
wallowing soldier struggling before his chestnut swirled mount.
His scowling voice reverberated over the dying form in a tone of
mocking mirth.  "You city bred dogs should learn not to
antagonize your better."  Reining his weary mount ahead, grignr
resumed his journey to the Noregolian city of Gorzam, hoping to
discover wine, women, and adventure to boil the wild blood
coarsing through his savage veins.
     The trek to Gorzom was forced upon Grignr when the soldiers
of Crin were leashed upon him by a faithless concubine he had
wooed.  His scandalous activities throughout the Simarian city
had unleashed throngs of havoc and uproar among it's refined
patricians, leading them to tack a heavy reward over his head.
He had barely managed to escape through the back entrance of the
inn he had been guzzling in, as a squad of soldiers tounced upon
him.  After spilling a spout of blood from the leader of the
mercenaries as he dismembered one of the officer's arms, he
retreated to his mount to make his way towards Gorzom, rumoured
to contain hoards of plunder, and many young wenches for any man
who has the backbone to wrest them away.

                               -2-

     Arriving after dusk in Gorzom,grignr descended down a dismal
alley, reining his horse before a beaten tavern.  The redhaired
giant strode into the dimly lit hostelry reeking of foul odors,
and cheap wine.  The air was heavy with chocking fumes spewing
from smolderingtorches encased within theden's earthen packed
walls.  Tables were clustered with groups of drunken thieves, and
cutthroats, tossing dice, or making love to willing prostitutes.
     Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench,
Grignr advanced wishing to wholesomely occupy his time.  The
flickering torches cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over
the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy orchid twines of
hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose, as she raised
a half drained mug to her pale red lips.
     Glancing upward, the alluring complexion noted the stalwart
giant as he rapidly approached.  A faint glimmer sparked from the
pair of deep blue ovals of the amorous female as she motioned
toward Grignr, enticing him to join her.  The barbarian seated
himself upon a stool at the wenches side, exposing his body,
naked save for a loin cloth brandishing a long steel broad sword,
an iron spiraled battle helmet, and a thick leather sandals, to
her unobstructed view.
     "Thou hast need to occupy your time, barbarian",questioned
the female?
     "Only if something worth offering is within my reach."
Stated Grignr,as his hands crept to embrace the tempting female,
who welcomed them with open willingness.
     "From where do you come barbarian, and by what are you
called?" Gasped the complying wench, as Grignr smothered her lips
with the blazing touch of his flaming mouth.
     The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive
female, pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples
to his yearning chest.  Without struggle she gave in, winding her
soft arms around the harshly bronzedhide of Grignr corded
shoulder blades, as his calloused hands caressed her firm
protruding busts.
     "You make love well wench," Admitted Grignr as he reached
for the vessel of potent wine his charge had been quaffing.
     A flying foot caught the mug Grignr had taken hold of,
sending its blood red contents sloshing over a flickering
crescent; leashing tongues of bright orange flame to the foot
trodden floor.
     "Remove yourself Sirrah, the wench belongs to me;" Blabbered
a drunken soldier, too far consumed by the influences of his
virile brew to take note of the superior size of his adversary.
     Grignr lithly bounded from the startled female, his face lit
up to an ashen red ferocity, and eyes locked in a searing feral
blaze toward the swaying soldier.
     "To hell with you, braggard!" Bellowed the angered Ecordian,
as he hefted his finely honed broad sword.
     The staggering soldier clumsily reached towards the pommel
of his dangling sword, but before his hands ever touched the
oaken hilt a silvered flash was slicing the heavy air.  The thews
of the savages lashing right arm bulged from the glistening
bronzed hide as his blade bit deeply into the soldiers neck,
loping off the confused head of his senseless tormentor.
     With a nauseating thud the severed oval toppled to the
floor, as the segregated torso of Grignr's bovine antagonist
swayed, then collapsed in a pool of swirled crimson.
     In the confusion the soldier's fellows confronted Grignr
with unsheathed cutlasses, directed toward the latters scowling
make-up.
     "The slut should have picked his quarry more carefully!"
Roared the victor in a mocking baritone growl, as he wiped his
dripping blade on the prostrate form, and returned it to its
scabbard.
     "The fool should have shown more prudence, however you shall
rue your actions while rotting in the pits." Stated one of the
sprawled soldier's comrades.
     Grignr's hand began to remove his blade from its leather
housing, but retarded the motion in face of the blades waving
before his face.
     "Dismiss your hand from the hilt, barbarbian, or you shall
find a foot of steel sheathed in your gizzard."
     Grignr weighed his position observing his plight, where-upon
he took the soldier's advice as the only logical choice.  To
attempt to hack his way from his present predicament could only
warrant certain death.  He was of no mind to bring upon his own
demise if an alternate path presented itself.  The will to
necessitate his life forced him to yield to the superior force in
hopes of a moment of carlessness later upon the part of his
captors in which he could effect a more plausible means of
escape.
     "You may steady your arms, I will go without a struggle."
     "Your decision is a wise one, yet perhaps you would have
been better off had you forced death," the soldier's mouth
wrinkled to a sadistic grin of knowing mirth as he prodded his
prisoner on with his sword point.
     After an indiscriminate period of marching through slinking
alleyways and dim moonlighted streets the procession confronted a
massive seraglio.  The palace area was surrounded by an iron
grating, with a lush garden upon all sides.
     The group was admitted through the gilded gateway and Grignr
was ledalong a stone pathway bordered by plush vegitation
lustfully enhanced by the moon's shimmering rays.  Upon reaching
the palace the group was granted entrance, and after several
minutes of explanation, led through several winding corridors to
a richly draped chamber.
     Confronting the group was a short stocky man seated upona
golden throne.  Tapestries of richly draped regal blue silk
covered all walls of the chamber, while the steps leading to the
throne were plated with sparkling white ivory.  The man upon the
throne had a naked wench seated at each of his arms, and a
trusted advisor seated in back of him.  At each cornwr of the
chamber a guard stood at attention, with upraised pikes supported
in their hands, golden chainmail adorning their torso's and
barred helmets emitting scarlet plumes enshrouding their heads.
The man rose from his throne to the dias surrounding it.  His
plush turquois robe dangled loosely from his chuncky frame.
     The soldiers surrounding Grignr fell to their knees with
heads bowed to the stone masonry of the floor in fearful dignity
to their sovereign, leige.
     "Explain the purpose of this intrusion upon my chateau!"
     "Your sirenity, resplendent in noble grandeur, we have
brought this yokel before you (the soldier gestured toward
Grignr) for the redress or your all knowing wisdon in judgement
regarding his fate."
     "Down on your knees, lout, and pay proper homage to your
sovereign!" commanded the pudgy noble of Grignr.
     "By the surly beard of Mrifk, Grignr kneels to no man!"
scowled the massive barbarian.
     "You dare to deal this blasphemous act to me!  You are
indeed brave stranger, yet your valor smacks of foolishness."
     "I find you to be the only fool, sitting upon your pompous
throne, enhancing the rolling flabs of your belly in the midst of
your elaborate luxuryand ..."  The soldier standing at Grignr's
side smote him heavily in the face with the flat of his sword,
cutting short the harsh words and knocking his battered helmet to
the masonry with an echo-ing clang.
     The paunchy noble's sagging round face flushed suddenly
pale, then pastily lit up to a lustrous cherry red radiance.  His
lips trembled with malicious rage, while emitting a muffled
sibilant gibberish.  His sagging flabs rolled like a tub of upset
jelly, then compressed as he sucked in his gut in an attempt to
conceal his softness.
     The prince regained his statue, then spoke to the soldiers
surrounding Grignr, his face conforming to an ugly expression of
sadistic humor.
     "Take this uncouth heathen to the vault of misery, and be
sure that his agonies are long and drawn out before death can
release him."
     "As you wish sire, your command shall be heeded
immediately," answered the soldier on the right of Grignr as he
stared into the barbarians seemingly unaffected face.
     The advisor seated in the back of the noble slowly rose and
advanced to the side of his master, motioning the wenches seated
at his sides to remove themselves.  He lowered his head and
whispered to the noble.
     "Eminence, the punishment you have decreed will cause much
misery to this scum, yet it will last only a short time, then
release him to a land beyond the sufferings of the human body.
Why not mellow him in one of the subterranean vaults for a few
days, then send him to life labor in one of your buried mines.
To one such as he, a life spent in the confinement of the stygian
pits will be an infinitely more appropiate and lasting torture."
     The noble cupped his drooping double chin in the folds of
his briming palm, meditating for a moment upon the rationality of
the councilor's word's, then raised his shaggy brown eyebrows and
turned toward the advisor, eyes aglow.
     "...As always Agafnd, you speak with great wisdom.  Your
words ring of great knowledge concerning the nature of one such
as he ," sayeth , the king.  The noble turned toward the prisoner
with a noticable shimmer reflecting in his frog-like eyes, and
his lips contorting to a greasy grin.  "I have decided to void my
previous decree.  The prisoner shall be removed to one of the
palaces underground vaults.  There he shall stay until I have
decided that he has sufficiently simmered, whereupon he is to be
allowed to spend the remainder of his days at labor in one of my
mines."
     Upon hearing this, Grignr realized that his fate would be
far less merciful than death to one such as he, who is used to
roaming the countryside at will.  A life of confinement would be
more than his body and mind could stand up to.  This type of life
would be immeasurably worse than death.
     "I shall never understand the ways if your twisted
civilization.  I simply defend my honor and am condemned to life
confinement, by a pig who sits on his royal ass wooing whores,
and knows nothing of the affairs of the land he imagines to
rule!" Lectures Grignr ?
     "Enough of this!  Away with the slut before I loose my
control!"
     Seeing the peril of his position, Grignr searched for an
opening.  Crushing prudence to the sward, he plowed into the
soldier at his left arm taking hold of his sword, and bounding to
the dias supporting the prince before the startled guards could
regain their composure.  Agafnd leaped Grignr and his sire, but
found a sword blade permeating the length of his ribs before he
could loosed his weapon.
     The councilor slumped to his knees as Grignr slid his
crimsoned blade from Agfnd's rib cage.  The fat prince stood
undulating  in insurmountable fear before the edge of the fiery
maned comet, his flabs of jellied blubber pulsating to and fro in
ripples of flowing terror.
     "Where is your wisdom and power now, your magjesty?" Growled
Grignr.
     The prince went rigid as Grignr discerned him glazing over
his shoulder.  He swlived to note the cause of the noble's
attention, raised his sword over his head, and prepared to leash
a vicious downward cleft, but fell short as the haft of a steel
rimed pike clashed against his unguarded skull.  Then blackness
and solitude.  Silence enshrouding and ever peaceful reind
supreme.
     "Before me, sirrah!  Before me as always! Ha, Ha Ha,
Haaaa...", nobly cackled.

                               -3-

     Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his
mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner
recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained.  An
incompatible shield of blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense
of sound.
     Grignr's muddled brain reeled from the shock of the blow he
had recieved to the base of his skull.  The events leading to his
predicament were slow to filter back to him.  He dickered with
the notion that he was dead and had descended or sunk, however it
may be, to the shadowed land beyond the the aperature of the
grave, but rejected this hypothesis when his memory sifted back
within his grips.  This was not the land of the dead, it was
something infinitely more precarious than anything the grave
could offer.  Death promised an infinity of peace, not the finite
misery of an inactive life of confined torture, forever concealed
from the life bearing shafts of the beloved rising sun.  The orb
that had been before taken for granted, yet now cherished above
all else.  To be forever refused further glimpses of the snow
capped summits of the land of his birth, never again to witness
the thrill of plundering unexplored lands beyond the crest of a
bleeding horizon, and perhaps worst of all the denial to ever
again encompass the lustful excitement of caressing the naked
curves of the body of a trim yound wench.
     This was indeed one of the buried chasms of Hell concealed
within the inner depths of the palace's despised interior.  A
fearful ebony chamber devised to drive to the brinks of insanity
the minds of the unfortunately condemned, through the inapt
solitude of a limbo of listless dreary silence.

                             -3 1/2-

     A tightly rung elliptical circle or torches cast their
wavering shafts prancing morbidly over the smooth surface of a
rectangular, ridged alter.  Expertly chisled forms of grotesque
gargoyles graced the oblique rim protruberating the length of the
grim orifice of death, staring forever ahead into nothingness in
complete ignorance of the bloody rites enacted in their
prescence.  Brown flaking stains decorated the golden surface of
the ridge surrounding the alter, which banked to a small slit at
the lower right hand corner of the altar.  The slit stood above a
crudely pounded pail which had several silver meshed chalices
hanging at its sides.  Dangling at the rimof golden mallet, the
handle of which was engraved with images of twisted faces and
groved at its far end with slots designed for a snug hand grip.
The head of the mallet was slightly larger than a clenched fist
and shaped into a smooth oval mass.
     Encircling the marble altar was a congregation of leering
shamen.  Eerie chants of a bygone age, originating unknown eons
before the memory of man, were being uttered from the buried
recesses of the acolytes' deep lings.  Orange paint was smeared
in generous globules over the tops of thw Priests' wrinkled
shaven scalps, while golden rings projected from the lobes of
their pink ears.  Ornate robes of lusciour purple satin enclosed
their bulging torsos, attached around their waists with silvered
silk lashes latched with ebony buckles in the shape of morose
mis-shaped skulls.  Dangling around their necks were oval
fashoned medalions held by thin gold chains, featuring in their
centers blood red rubys which resembled crimson fetish eyeballs.
Cushoning their bare feet were plush red felt slippers with
pointed golden spikes projecting from their tips.
     Situated in front of the altar, and directly adjacent to the
copper pail was a massive jade idol; a misshaped, hideous bust of
the shamens' pagan diety.  The shimmering green idol was placed
in a sitting posture on an ornately carved golden throne raised
upon a round, dvory plated dias; it bulging arms and webbed hands
resting on the padded arms of the seat.  Its head was entwined in
golden snake-like coils hanging over its oblong ears, which
tappered off to thin hollow points.  Its nose was a bulging
triangular mass, sunken in at its sides with tow gaping nostrils.
Dramatic beneath the nostrils was a twisted, shaggy lipped mouth,
giving the impression of a slovering sadistic grimace.
     At the foot of the heathen diety a slender, pale faced
female, naked but for a golden, jeweled harness enshrouding her
huge outcropping breasts, supporting long silver laces which
extended to her thigh, stood before the pearl white field with
noticable shivers traveling up and down the length of her
exquisitely molded body.  Her delicate lips trembled beneath soft
narrow hands as she attemped to conceal herself from the piercing
stare of the ambivalent idol.
     Glaring directly down towards her was the stoney, cycloptic
face of the bloated diety.  Gaping from its single obling socket
was scintillating, many fauceted scarlet emerald, a brilliant gem
seeming to possess a life all of its own.  A priceless gleaming
stone, capable of domineering the wealth of conquering
empires...the eye of Argon.

                               -4-

     All knowledge of measuring time had escaped Grignr.  When a
person is deprived of the sun, moon, and stars, he looses all
conception of time as he had previously understood it.  It seemed
as if years had passed if time were being measured by terms of
misery and mental anguish, yet he estimated that his stay had
only been a few days in length.  He has slept three times and had
been fed five times since his awakening in the crypt.  However,
when the actions of the body are restricted its needs are also
affected.  The need for nourishmnet and slumber are directly
proportional to the functions the body has performed, meaning
that when free and active Grignr may become hungry every six
hours and witness the desire for sleep every fifteen hours,
whereas in his present condition he may encounter the need for
food every ten hours, and the want for rest every twenty hours.
All methods he had before depended upon were extinct in the
dismal pit.  Hence, he may have been imprisoned for ten minutes
or ten years, he did not know, resulting in a disheartened
emotion deep within his being.
     The food, if you can honor the moldering lumps of fetid mush
to that extent, was born to him by two guards who opened a portal
at the top of his enclosure and shoved it to him in wooden bowls,
retrieving the food and water bowels from his previous meal at
the same time, after which they threw back the bolts on the iron
latch and returned to their other duties.  Since deprived of all
other means of nourishment, Grignr was impelled to eat the
tainted slop in order to ward off the paings of starvation,
though as he stuffed it into his mouth with his filthy fingers
and struggled to force it down his throat, he imagined it was
that which had been spurned by the hounds stationed at various
segments of the palace.
     There was little in the baren vault that could occupy his
body or mind.  He had paced out the length and width of the
enclosure time and time again and tested every granite slab which
consisted the walls of the prison in hopes of finding a hidden
passage to freedom, all of which was to no avail other than to
keep him busy and distract his mind from wandering to thoughts of
what he believed was his future.  He had memorized the number of
strides from one end to the other of the cell, and knew the exact
number of slabs which made up the bleak dungeon.  Numorous
schemes were introduced and alternately discarded in turn as they
succored to unravel to him no means of escape which stood the
slightest chance of sucess.
     Anguish continued to mount as his means of occupation were
rapidly exhausted.  Suddenly without no tive, he wasrouted from
his contemplations as he detected a faint scratching sound at the
end of the crypt opposite him.  The sound seemed to be caused by
something trying to scrape away at the grantite blocks the floor
of the enclosure consisted of, the sandy scratching of something
like an animal's claws.
     Grignr gradually groped his way to the other end of the
vault carefully feeling his way along with his hands ahead of
him.  When a few inches from the wall, a loud, penetrating
squeal, and the scampering of small padded feet reverberated from
the walls of the roughly hewn chamber.
     Grignr threw his hands up to shield his face, and flung
himself backwards upon his buttocks.  A fuzzy form bounded to his
hairy chest, burying its talons in his flesh while gnashing
toward his throat with its grinding white teeth;its sour, fetid
breath scortching the sqirming barbarians dilating nostrils.
Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant
body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor
teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of sight
glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.
     Taking hold of the rodent around its lean, growling stomach
with both hands Grignr pried it from his crimson rent breast,
removing small patches of flayed flesh from his chest in the
motion between the squalid black claws of the starving beast.
Holding the rodent at arms length, he cupped his righthand over
its frothing face, contrcting his fingers into a vice-like fist
over the quivering head.  Retaining his grips on the rat, grignr
flexed his outstretched arms while slowly twisting his right hand
clockwise and his left hand counter clockwise motion.  The rodent
let out a tortured squall, drawing scarlet as it violently dug
its foam flecked fangs into the barbarians sweating palm, causing
his face to contort to an ugly grimace as he cursed beneath his
braeth.
     With a loud crack the rodents head parted from its squirming
torso, sending out a sprinking shower of crimson gore, and
trailing a slimy string of disjointed vertebrae, snapped trachea,
esophagus, and jugular, disjointed hyoid bone, morose purpled
stretched hide, and blood seared muscles.
     Flinging the broken body to the floor, Grignr shook his
blood streaked hands and wiped them against his thigh until dry,
then wiped the blood that had showered his face and from his
eyes.  Again sitting himself upon the jagged floor, he prepared
to once more revamp his glum meditations.  He told himself that
as long as he still breathed the gust of life through his lungs,
hope was not lost; he told himself this, but found it hard to
comprehend in his gloomy surroundings.  Yet he was still alive,
his bulging sinews at their peak of marvel, his struggling mind
floating in a miral of impressed excellence of thought.  Plot
after plot sifted through his mind in energetic contemplations.
     Then it hit him.  Minutes may have passed in silent thought
or days, he could not tell, but he stumbled at last upon a plan
that he considered as holding a slight margin of plausibility.
He might die in the attempt, but he knew he would not submit
without a final bloody struggle.  It was not a foolproof plan,
yet it built up a store of renewed vortexed energy in his
overwroughtsoul, though he might perish in the execution of the
escape, he would still be escaping the life of infinite torture
in store forhim.  Either way he would still cheat the gloating
prince of the succored revenge his sadistic mind craved so
dearly.
     The guards would soon come to bear him off to the prince's
buried mines of dread, giving him the sought after opportunity to
execute his newly formulated plan.  Groping his way along the
rough floor Grignr finally found his tool in a pool of congealed
gore; the carcass of the decapitated rodent; the tool that the
very filth he had been sentenced too, spawned.  When the time
came for action he would have to be prepared, so he set himself
to rending the sticky hulk in grim silence, searching by the
touch of his fingertips for the lever to freedom.

nextoh god! no more!back to the books