Snow Covered Horizons Chapter 2: Guardian, an aliens/predator fanfic

Snow Covered Horizons

By, King Of Jellybean Land

Chapter Two

"Guardian"

"Life could be simple," says the bird in a tree.

"So long as you are willing," replies the wolf down below.

Straightening his back with a feeling of courage he did not currently possess, Jol took the remaining steps keeping him from his father and the less than welcome guest, the Yautja. A prince did not quiver, and did not quail at the thought of danger. Actually, whoever came up with that needed their tongue removed and nailed to their forehead for such an idiotic belief, he thought as he listened to the snarl coming from the hunter.

Schooling his features into a trained mask of bored disdain, the impulse to creep nearer his father rather than stand before the pair, came upon him. He gave it a swift kick and sent the damn urge sailing away. Eighteen years was far too old to be cowering on anyone's leg for protection. Jol set his hands behind his back, lacing long fingers together to keep them from betraying him.

This position gave him the air of a relaxed individual, not a person pestered by a coiling stomach upset because of his nerves. Just as his mouth parted to start a vicious tongue-lashing, his father beat him to the verbal race's finishing line.

"Joljol, my boy, I'm greatly pleased you picked this moment to drop by."

If mortification could cause the floor to swallow him, he would have counted himself blessed. Joljol, his boyhood nickname, given to him by none other than his deceased mother, nearly made his face spasm into a grimace. Why did he have to insist on using that embarrassing title? The young prince had always tolerated his mother calling him that, even in public, but his father always made it seem more of a joke, as if simply to enjoy the sight of his son groaning aloud in reaction.

Once again, he attempted to lift his voice, and lost in the same manner.

"With so many assassins from the Eastern Kingdom, no doubt one of your distant cousins seeking the throne, I decided to hire a bodyguard."

Jol all but leapt to say his piece on that, and received a hand held in the air before he could even put his breath to use.

"I'm already aware you are against this, and I absolutely will not listen to any rebuttal, my boy."

His father's wrinkled face, always a victim to emotion, pulled into a smile.

"However, I'm not without heart. So," he clapped his hands together, that unnerving smile growing, "I will give you a choice!"

That joyful expression made Jol's eyebrows draw closer to one another; his father, though eccentric and aging, still carried the mind of a frightening master strategist. In other words, he knew that face, and that look. His particular grin spoke of a sadistic glee, and like a gambler tossing a poor hand of cards over his shoulder and slumping in defeat, Jol braced himself for what was to come.

"You can either have a bodyguard, or, go to the Northern Kingdom for protection."

He recoiled as if struck on the face with a metal gauntlet.

"No!"

His father's smile increased, so much so that his eyes crinkled, and were close to enveloping under his wrinkles. To go to the Northern Kingdom was equal to death in his mind. That hellhole had naught but ice, barbaric people, and more deadly beasts then civilizations. It filled the youth with a dread great enough to make him want to fling aside his opposition toward the Yautja, and layer kisses on his unattractive head in gratitude for being his first option.

Almost.

Well, the shock was enough to make his feet dance him over to the alien's side. Those who lived in the Mountains and Tundra did not even bathe! His shudder made him realize just how near he was to his soon-to-be bodyguard.

"I-I," Jol cleared his throat and straightened, "I suppose as a guardian he will have to do."

Being this close to something that could snap him in two was not exactly his idea of a comforting zone. An almost shy, no, he was in no way timid, a wary glance behind his shoulder gave him reason to take a wide crab-like step to the side.

"Ohhhh, wonderful, Joljol, I do hope you two can get along in time. You have so few trustworthy companions now days."

The comment about his acquaintances grazed on something tender, and sparked a small ember of agitation to life. "Of course, father." Clipped in a curt tone, he spun on his heel, uncaring as he felt his deep blue robes strike and then brush against the leg of the Yautja in his passing. Reaching the doors, he caught the voice of his father speaking, before he repeated his entry with an even swifter exit.

It took time, navigating the many halls lit with the soft blue glow of hovering sphere lights. However, once he stood in the open of the outer grounds interconnecting other areas of the castle, his breath left him in thin plumes of white mist. The temperature had dropped as the result of the twin moons hanging at their peak within the odyssey of the darkened sky.

He dismissed the biting cold, and kept to the stone walkway lain upon the neatly trimmed ground. Free of the warm ambiance of the behemoth palace, he veered from his path after passing into the thickness of the surrounding woods bordering the royal's home. He strode quietly on the emerald green blades of grass, passing several hovering sphere lights floating like lost spirits in the moonlit night.

Eventually he arrived at his destination, the Galail Stones.

Pulling the thickness of his robes tighter and pushing icy hands into the caves of his sleeves, he was suddenly grateful to have picked out his favorite attire for today. To the circle of standing stones, taller then his five feet six, they towered over him, as if molded in the image of four hooked talons. When he was six, Jol had believed they resembled the model of an AoubZuuik Fiend's great paw raised, and preparing to fall onto any victim ignorant enough to draw under them.

Older and immune to such silly fancies, he went to sit on what could have been a giant, rough palm. The ground, much warmer, as though honestly alive, had an almost restrained hum. A constant buzzing, like the six wings of a white tundra wasp next to one's ear, he at one time had described it. With the calm hush of the evening, the lamenting chorus of nightly insects and nocturnal creatures voicing their songs, Jol felt at peace here.

Unfortunately, sulking ruined the best things in life.

Releasing a short, "humph," and tapping his fingers along the surfaces of his forearms did not help to ease the sensation in the slightest. His Father would have his agenda enforced one way or another, and to refuse both options would have landed him flat on his back in the Northern Kingdom anyway. The shiver that accosted his body had nothing to do with the frigid winds moaning and tugging at the short strands of his black hair.

Roulva, the first-born male heir to the Ice realm, and Shivo, the second born, sent Jol's mind whirling with ideals, each worse then the next. Roulva, although handsome, and Shivo beautiful, they were as ugly and wretched as any watery Fiend found in the Eastern Kingdom of seas and swamplands. Jol was already aware of their lusting hearts toward him, for the Western Kingdom had much to offer, and he was merely the threshold to gain such.

With the monopoly on trade with the Yautja, and alliance to the Southern Kingdom, a thing that no other in history had ever acquired with the neutral race Endarkin, Jol's unmarried state put him onto the map of any House, and royal with enough status to contact his father. Not to mention their interminable treasury continually exceeding its limits by the day, the independent nature, and or demand and supply culture of the Western Kingdom allotting change to happen easily without terrible repercussions to the solid economy.

He sighed in a dismal gust of white air.

The Northern prince and princess were merely more aggressive in their want for their bid on power. Both royals, two sides, each a choice on the same coin, lead to rather undesirable outcomes. Legally to gain power, marriage would combine the two lands, an interest of the ever plotting and manipulative Shivo. Alternatively, through his death, Roulva might benefit. His Father would need to name a new heir from a cousin in either the Eastern Kingdom or the Northern. It was a fifty-fifty percent chance that set his teeth on edge. If only that barbaric bastard wanted him dead and instead not as a lover, life would be so much easier…

Assaulted with yet another shaking fit, this one truthfully from the cold, he drew his limbs closer. Out of spite, he refused to return to the castle, and instead, kept right on sulking beneath the hooked Galail Stones.

Now with only the Yautja as his company, and the air, and his desk, and the chair, which he supposed these items might not have considered him as company, Karshal taped each fingertip together, his smile twisted like a grinning feline. Well, that was amusing. His boy always did have such interesting reactions.

Glancing sideways to his fearsome invitee, he decided it was best to lay a few lines of…a fatherly interest, in hopes of nudging aside any future injudicious acts. Honestly, the way his mandibles shifted, and stance altered, the old man knew it was best. "Garx'Thual, before that fickle temper of yours gets the better of you and your fine judgment and then you go and rip poor Joljol's head off; I would adore the chance to say something."

Giving that jolly chuckle he was so fond of, he allowed the pause to extend itself. With a swish of his soft black robes, he turned to the hired mercenary, and folded his hands atop his belly, one that he had gained through a few too many delicious meals made by the lovely Northern cook, Tiural, over the years. "I must admit, my actions were based on an old man's concern for his son. Spoiled though he may be, I still care for him as any proper father does. Oh, which brings me to the reason for the special speech you're about to receive. Calling on you, dispite your reputation and attitude toward humans, and offering the amount of money I have, is something that doesn't bother me."

As he spoke, his eyes, those simple, plain brown eyes, became much older, frost bitten even, and far less friendly then what he had always portrayed in the guise of a kindly king. "My child is precious to me; dear as the very soul I carry beneath my flesh. If you lay one hand on him, nick his skin, so much as bend a hair on his head, my restitution for anything that befalls him, will go to you." In that instant, Karshal was no longer that pudgy, happy man who always seemed to live without a care. His visage had changed, the creased, soft flex to his face now gone, replaced with a darker nature, a cruel, heartless fiend imitating the form of a human.

"I will not rest until punishment has come to you. When it does, your life will become mine. The very air your lungs take in will burn with my fury." His eyes narrowed, and his laced fingers tightened upon themselves. "Death will not give you release until I have taken full satisfaction, for I am a father infuriated by his son's injuries." He did not drop the gaze of the hunter, but instead readily met it, and did not waver.

"The tortures I will choose shall be slow and inhumanly agonizing, and will not give you repose from the pain." His lips, once a line showing a hardened intent, teased upward into a smile. It was not his common glee covered grin, for the design beheld produced the air of ice. "Such as taking a finely edged knife, and removing your knee caps, and then severing the fleshy pieces under them."

That tight lifting of his lips curled further.

"Or, something I particularly enjoy inflicting is the removal of nails, in your case, your talons. One by one, torn from the beds of your fingers, or slowly yanked until the skin gives. Once gone, small shards of heated metal, no bigger then those needles you Yautja use, will be inserted and kept at a heated temperature until they burn the wounds shut." Karshal gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. "The same would happen to those tusks on your mandibles, and I am fully aware of how sensitive they are."

The small smile faded, and he resumed his unveiled persona. "I also know of ways to cripple you and to keep you alive as a broken, wretched thing, fully aware of what you used to be. Your world would be set in a public place, in all your destroyed glory, and you would know only scorn, hatred, and disgust by those who lay eyes on your undone self. And just to be certain the existence inspired was more terrifying, and more sickening, I personally would rend your prized frame asunder."

Turned somewhat to the side, as if withdrawn to observe a private image, he continued.

"Hands that might have held powerful weapons, reduced to mere stubs, each digit and bone removed; feet that carried you, useless and limp, each tendon and sinew torn free of their moorings, with only bloodied knees to bare your frail weight when you move. Every day, you would lie on the hard, cold stone floor of your cage, weak and pathetic. Limbs barely able to help you crawl to the scraps of garbage tossed to you for nourishment. Ah, and if one day you refused to eat, it would be my hands there, shoving portions of the waste down your throat. For you would languish in agony, enduring that long life Yautja have behind those bars, rotting, and praying for a death that would never come."

His gaze refocused, and settled on him.

"Moreover, this is only if you injure my boy."

A noise escaped him then, faint, like a dry leaf crumpled in one's hand. "Or I would merely give you to the demon god as a sacrifice, and Dragons Below, I normally wouldn't wish that one on anyone…"

Karshal's face, burdened by deep furrows and decorated with gray, bushy eyebrows, abruptly bloomed into his regularly felicitous expression of blissful content. "But enough of such dreary mutterings of a silly old man, please, please," he waved his hands in a playfully shooing motion toward the doors, "Joljol will no doubt be at the Galail Stones sulking. It's his favorite place, second only to the woods."

Never one to keep his mouth turned in a frown, he started humming a terribly off-key song as his feet sent him behind his desk, and plump bottom sat him down in his chair. He gave the plushy cushion a little wiggle. Like sitting on puffy clouds made of melted marshmallows, he thought. "Ohhh my, that would make a fantastic snack right about now," he wondered aloud, not caring how random it sounded to one outside of his colorful head.

-Disclaimer-

King of Jellybean Land does not own Predator

-Claimer-