19 December 2011
Bob the deer was passing through a section of Pennsylvanian woods when a rifle slug tore his iPod from his arm band. "How could I have been so stupid?," thought Bob, "It's hunting season!"
As he turned to run, a second round caught Bob in the side, a fatal wound. Adrenaline driving him, Bob made it to a thicket of trees near a stream where he collapsed. "Never thought it would end this way," Bob mused, "but perhaps I can repay the hunter!"
With his life slowly ebbing, Bob scraped together a lump of damp clay soil which he fashioned with his hooves into a golem, an artificially created being given life by supernatural means. He smeared his creation with his blood and saliva, and chanted words in a Celtic tongue unspoken for hundreds of years. As the dying deer stroked the clay figure, a blue glow seemed to emanate from it. Bob smiled weakly at the thing he had made. "Avenge me!," he commanded it, and then his eyes closed in death.
The clay figure dropped from the now lifeless hooves, and fell to the earth where it rested. Slowly and imperceptibly at first, the golem started to move, minutes later assuming a writhing motion as if in the pains of birth. The small figure rolled upright to its legs, and additional earth was drawn into its mass, the greatly augmented thing assuming the form of a male deer and then rearing to full height on its hind legs. The eyes of the golem opened, revealing bottomless black pools. There was a wet sucking sound as the thing detached itself from the ground and began to move about, awkwardly at first and then with fluidity and strength.
Looking for his kill, the hunter stepped into the thicket and himself became prey, the golem stepping from behind him and breaking his neck in the commando fashion, seeming to draw additional strength from this act. Cocking his head in an almost human questioning manner, the life-sized deer of clay stooped to pick up the hunter's weapon, turning it over in his hooves as he examined it. In a few moments the golem understood the purpose of the weapon, firing it experimentally in the air and understanding that the device would make his mission much easier. This pleased him...
Armed, dangerous, and indestructible, the golem strode purposely forward into the hunter-filled forest to begin a grim harvest...
Wrath Of The Antlered • Opuss № I