Page 8 of Caveman Alien's Terror

I take a full bite of the fruit and close my eyes. With flavors like this, I can only handle so many sensory inputs. There’s something almost meditative about this.

I eat the whole fruit greedily until there’s only the pit left. Sucking it clean, I start to wonder where I can plant it. “It would be nice to have a tree like that nearby. As long as you have a suit of armor for when you want to pick the fruits.”

Putting the seed on a shelf, I lick my fingers and lie back on the bed. The fruit picked up my mood a great deal. If that was the final good experience in my life, then I can’t complain.

For absolutely no reason I feel really optimistic about the mission I’ll go on. It’s as close to suicide as I’ve ever come. My chances are a rounding error from zero.

The way things turned out, it will have to start tonight, so I better get some sleep.

“You’ll have to deal with the Sword Ceremony yourself, Melr’ax,” I mutter as I take out the dragon dagger the old shaman gave to me some weeks ago and inspect it. It’s thin and short, but he claimed it’s sharp enough for its purpose. “Your apprentice will be nowhere to be found.”

3

- Praxigor-

“No, no,” I sigh. “Not like that!”

The two dragon slayers roar and slam their rusty blades together, making a resoundingclang. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.

They stop and look at me. “What?”

I want to murder them both, but manage to restrain myself. “What is the purpose of that? One piece of iron hits the other. Nothing is accomplished!”

“Battle is joined,” one of them protests. “The fight starts. The fighter stays alive, looking for the other to make a mistake.”

“The fightstarts?!” I groan. “But one must never allow the fight to start! One must strike and kill with the first blow without waiting for the enemy to act! Don’t even let him see you! And what is all thatyelling?!”

The primitive slayers look at each other, frowning and clearly not understanding anything at all.

Sighing again, I look up at the dark canopy of leaves high above. I can’t even see the sky. That’s how low I’ve been brought. Me, Praxigor the Devious, terror of planets and owner of the greatest hoard in seventy star systems, forced to stay on the ground like some kind of mudcrawler!

It really is too much for one dragon to bear. If only I had my strength, I would murder all these primitive dragon slayers and burst up through all that damned foliage, soar into the sky and into the Void, return to my hoard and just lie on it for a century, feeling its warmth seep into me and strengthen me, enjoying the bliss of simplyowning.

My hand seeks the little pouch in my single pocket. That’s all I have as a hoard here. A handful of random items, pebbles of some semi-precious stones, pieces of metal and other trash.

Plus some items I have myself carved from pieces of worthless rock. They are imitations of the dearly loved gold items in my hoard. Coins, necklaces, bracelets, rings… I keep trying. And while they have the right shape when I'm finished with them, they lack the reassuring weight of the real pieces, the warmth, the joy. They are pitiful imitations, crude and desperate attempts to make something that possesses at least theshapeof the gold I miss with such intensity. None of it gets close to giving me a fraction of the joy a real hoard would.

“Chief,” the slayer called Tarat’ex says. “Thisishow one fights. Simply attacking the enemy from behind without making a sound is dishonorable! Nobody wants to win a fight that way.”

“Thatway?” I reply, exasperated. These primitives are terrible raw material for servants and lackeys, but they’re all I have. “Nobody careshowyou win! The only thing that matters at all is the victory! And why are you worried about honor? You’re all outcasts, dead to your pitiful tribes!”

Tarat’ex scowls at me. “Perhaps the high and mighty alien chief would like to show us how to—ghrgh!”

In two quick steps I’m behind him and the claw of one finger is digging into his throat. “I’d be delighted. Did you seethat,men? The fight didn’t start. I just won. I should mention that I would of course have rammed this claw deep into his brain if we weren’t just practicing. There’s no victory without killing. Never leave your enemy alive. Shall I demonstrate?”

“No!” Fearing for his life, Tarat’ex flails wildly with his arms, trying to get at me. But I simply push him forwards into the trunk of a tree. He sags to the ground with a deep moan.

But even this minor victory doesn’t cheer me up. “See? No need for those silly blades. One claw is enough.”

“Chief,” the outcast called Cret’ax protests, “we can’t move as fast as you!”

“Perhaps if you left those swords behind, you could. Or at least move faster than now.” I can’t take more idiocy, so I turn my back on the primitives and wander into the jungle.

My effort to recruit slayers to help me accomplish my goals may have been misguided. Certainly it would be helpful to have a gang of misfits I can command and use for my own purposes, but training them to be even mildly useful seems like it will take years.

Well, I have to try. I desperately need to get away from this goldforsaken rock. And I do hope it’s notcompletelygoldforsaken. I need some semblance of a hoard to regain my strength and return to my true form, not this land-bound body.

“The encounter with that female may open up another possibility,” I say to myself.

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