The Ennui of Hungthor the Great by hypericin

Hungthor awoke late in his vast feather bed, his sleep haunted yet again by the dream woman. As before, she stared at him, stared into his soul, eyes ablaze with a terrible contempt. He withered before her gaze, fell to his knees in a misery of grief and shame, emotions quite alien to his waking life. Gods be damned, who was she?! Certainly not one of his wenches, nor was she so comely for him to have bed her in his travels. As Hungthor the Freebooter he had ranged the land from Sea of Whispers to the blasted peaks of Erebus, and tales of his exploits were still told by wild-eyed tavern bards. Perhaps during these wilder years he slew her in one of his pillagings, and her shade haunted his nights out of spite. All the same, she had a maddening familiarity.

He lay sprawled in bed, bemused, overtaken by the lassitude which had become an overfamiliar companion these past years. Where shall this day take him? Perhaps here, perhaps there, but of what moment, where?

"Ha!" he scoffed. "Ah ha!" Such effeminate ponderings were not worthy of one so mighty as he! Shaking off the unmanly torpor, he strode up winding stone steps to the aerie. The great extent of his kingdom lay prostrate before him: meadows festooned with dewdrops and birdsong. Fields and pasturage, squared off by low stone walls. Misty lakes, reflecting brilliant white clouds, and narrow, snow capped peaks.

He drew forth his vorpal blade Valiance, and raised it towards the sky, his muscular legs braced.

"I AM HUNGTHOR!!!"

His mighty cry reverberated from mountains leagues away. The sky darkened, lightning cleaved the sky, and thunder boomed assent. A hundred frenzied stags in a hundred misty meadows mounted a hundred yearning ewes. Church bells tolled in celebration from the capitol below, and more distantly from riverside towns and mountain villages. The vast visage of the overgod Iblis beamed approval from his cloud palace above. Hungthor returned him a vigorous salute.

But the moment passed, and his exaltation seeped out like wine from a broken wineskin. Hmmph. He felt a fool. To what end all of this bellowing? What cared he for Iblis, let alone all his moon-faced peasants? What could any of them tell him that he did not already know? Sometimes he felt that he encompassed the world, rather than the world he, and the feeling was oft oppressive, stifling.

"Bah!" he shouted to the wind. He, Hungthor, a fool? What nonsense! No soul dreamt such disrespect of the great scion of the land. He smiled to himself. "There be but one cure for this malady of the mind!"

He returned to his bedroom, and called forth his favorite, a slender, adoring blonde. She entered the room, and his intent was in immediate evidence. She disrobed at once and knelt submissively. He spent several amusing moments watching her attempt to swallow his legendary member, whose length and girth exceeded her forearm's. Tiring of this pleasant spectacle, he put her on her back, and the noises of his violent lovemaking brought cheer to the workers of Castle Ravenwind.

She lay wide eyed, gasping, an exhausted, satiated puddle. He considered her. She got on her back and held her knees to her chest, yearning for the honor of membership in the large and growing society of mothers of his brood.

Of course, he could satisfy her again, and then ten others, had he chosen. His puissance was well renowned. Yet, somehow the prospect felt brittle and hollow, a beautiful crystal decanter with nothing inside. He quiesced.

"Be away with ye", he muttered, and forgot her before she could gather her diaphanous gown and slip out of the room.

He lay on his feather bed, pouting. He considered himself and grew enraged. This moping was not of his nature! The cloying foul breath of a malodorous magic clung to the air.

He addressed his crystal ball on its black ivory pedestal: "O ball of scrying, from whence cometh this spell of enervation?"

Before he even completed his query, the answer came to his mind. The mists within the ball cleared, and forsooth, behold! The head of his nemesis was made manifest: Skullthule the Mirthful, the renegade revenant. Somehow sensing the unearthly observation, the lich turned towards him, and cackled in a voice both fey and surprisingly high-pitched: "Ehhh heh heh heh heh heh heeeeee!". Face and laughter dissolved back into blue mist.

"Ah! What effrontery, to mock me from the purported safety of Skullheim Tower!"

Hungthor paced furiously, hands clasped behind his back.

"Of course, all has been made plain! How could I savor life's zest, with that ghoul suborning my will? Reginald!" Hungthor bellowed. "Summon to me my generals, posthaste!"

*****

Hungthor surveyed the battle from the vantage of a neighboring peak. In earlier years he would have taken part in the fray, but he now found such exertions tedious. He stood and watched his blue bannered legions engage Skullthule's skeletal forces. From below came the clank of steel upon rusted iron and bone, roars of rage and vengeance, yelps of pain, forlorn moans of the mortally wounded, the clattering malignancy of undead battlecries.

On a high parapet of the tower Skullheim, he spied Skullthule himself, calling out orders below. Skullthule outstretched a bone white hand and lightning crackled from his fingertips, blasting one of his heroes into ash. "Ehhhhh heh heh heh heeeeee!" he cackled. He danced a jig, prancing from one bony foot to the other.

"This shall not do!" cried Hungthor. He summoned a ball of fire, sending it towards Skullthule with a crackling roar. It exploded at his feet, shattering the parapet upon which he stood, sending him tumbling with broken masonry to the tower's base, crushing a squadron of skeletal fighters beneath the rubble. Others observed the fall of their lord and let out dismal clacking groans, greatly demoralized.

The tide turned decisively and Skullthule's forces were routed, sent scurrying to the chasms and valleys of that rocky, wasted land. Skullthule himself was captured, bound in irons and humbled, his mirth quite subdued.

"My Liege!" He proclaimed in a high, raspy voice, "I beg thee, spare my life, let me be your willing servant! Exploit my powers at your whim, to your great advantage!"

Hungthor swung down the blade Valiance, and Skullthule's head rolled down the steps, marking its path by a trail of black ichor. His black shade emerged from freshly truncated neck and flew skyward with banshee wail, to endure forevermore the overgod Iblis's sternest ministrations.

*****

Among talents innumerable, Hungthor was master of the painterly arts. He worked a remarkable likeness of the burning tower Skullheim, set against the scarlet twilight, a black dagger plunged into a febrile wound. Reginald attended him, fetching paints and brushes as needed from the baggage train.

"Sir," he fawned, "the resemblance is astonishing! Another triumph, I must declare!"

He considered Reginald, eyes gleaming, mouth slightly agape, so eager to please. The obsequious servant, more caricature than man, hardly seemed flesh and blood.

Hungthor's triumph turned at once to ashes. Of what use greatness, in a world peopled by marionettes such as these? Was the world itself not a vast canvas, and these blots of paint before him mere shadows within shadows? What a farce, the universe a beggar's pittance.

He kicked the easel over and slashed the canvas in twain, jumped upon it repeatedly, fists clenched in a rage, stomped it into the earth.

"This is all so fucking meaningless!" he screeched.

Reginald raised an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic outburst. "Sir? Be all well with thee?"

Hungthor summoned forth a ball of psionic energy and sent it towards the attendant's head, bursting it like a melon.

"Good riddance! Who the fuck are you, anyway? Really?"

From somewhere, a great bell tolled. His viscera sank as if they knew what it foretold. The clouds coalesced into a face: the woman of his nightmares. She blotted out the sun, plunging all into gloom. Illuminated by an unearthly glow, her homely features were grandiose in their magnitude: overlarge nose exceeding the mightiest mountains, nose hair like twin black forests, crows feet like valleys in vast savannas of skin.

"DOOM!" she intoned, with a voice so colossal its reverberations shook the earth. "DOOM! DOOM!"

Hungthor fell to his knees, clasping his ears. "Who be you, fell witch?!" he screamed. Yet however much it eluded him, the truth was: he knew.

*****

Josephine walked into the Somnium LLC front office. She glanced at their motto: *happily, ever after!*. "Yes but for whom?", she asked herself, the question at this point a reflex.

As well as a popular pulp writer, hubby Hunther was a great investor, but great only in his ambulatory lifetime. His portfolio was not recession proof, and had receded with all the rest. The principle withered away, by depreciation, and by his upgrades and monthly upkeep, and had dwindled to naught.

She let herself to his room, she knew the way well. She had seen her husband, Hunther the abandoner, the betrayer, here before. And had wept at his destroyed body: skull removed, the brain of a porcupine, with thousands of implanted electrodes bristling. Sagging and atrophied, bedsored, pallid flesh marbled by varicosity like a great blue cheese. Artificial heart, artificial lungs. Catheterised, colostomied, a heap of spoiled flesh forever unviable outside this room. But her rage and grief had passed in mere weeks, like a summer storm. Only bitterness remained.

The company doctor knocked and entered with the lawyer, both men brusque and all business. "Ma'am, This is your last chance to reconsider. Do you legally authorize the termination of our services?"

"Pull the fucking plug."

She walked out, not looking back.