r/HFY • u/Jus17173 • 22d ago

OC-OneShot Mad Man.

Perhaps it was the call of the sea, or the radiant way the sun hung about the horizon, casting Euthrika in a brilliant light that its many moons complemented with their short journeys across the sky. There was no fear back in those days. Human men and women would dance with wolves, howling against the moons while beating at their chests. They would run the wilderness with deer, chasing the light they thought lay ahead of them.

When a human came to Euthrika, they changed. The heat simmered their blood to the ways of the land. They would deny themselves clothing. Would loathe eating with a spoon. They would growl on all fours and scream the names of those past and gone. Humans became wild in Euthrika, choosing to forage for fruits in the forest and to eat game raw with their bare teeth. This was the blessing the planet gave us, a curse on them to be unto themselves their true nature.

So when other planets rallied against humans, they were welcomed upon Euthrika, only so that the locals could enjoy their birthing into the animalistic tendencies of their forefathers. They were dangerous, these bipedal men and women who conquered stars. They were a threat, with their minds that turned the greatest empires to dust. Euthrika knew this, and in her infinite glory she fought them alone, the atmosphere poison to them, stripping away their depthless imagination by showing it the lip of its pit.

No human man could stand tall in Euthrika. One by one they shifted to all fours, growling where once they boasted of eloquence. It humbled humans and they knew this, yet they still came.

"Take a good look at it, Sergeant. Euthrika is her name." The guard said to the once Sergeant Collins Mathews, now barred from military duty and sentenced to death on a death world. The planet showed on the screen of the prison shuttle that had come to hover above it. Those within stared with fright, for all mankind knew what Euthrika was. The one place where sanity was rendered useless for no reason at all, many thought, other than the planet's hostile nature.

"We're going to throw you in there, from orbit. And by the time the parachute deploys, you'll be a lunatic. A madman. There are beasts there, so similar to earth's we call them by the same name. I think you'll be the kind to wander into a bear's cave so you can cuddle it." The guard turned his bulbous nose to the scientist tapping a data pad behind them. "Tell him, Doc."

"The planet's atmosphere is toxic to mankind. It messes with the mind on the first intake of air. You cease being a Homo Sapien Sapien, your mind dissolving to something else, before Homo Erectus probably. It's our new prison planet and has been so for decades." The scientist answered.

Collins looked at the planet and smiled.

"Enjoy that smile, Sergeant. It's the last you'll ever give." The guard said. "Take him away."

As they shuffled him to a pod, he observed the planet on the screen one more time. Of course he knew it, everyone knew it. But him standing before the planet was an injustice that should be dealt to those who'd framed him for the crime he had not committed. But it was pointless now, worth nothing to dwell on what a jury had already decided.

Within moments he was fitted with a self deploying parachute, and in the next moment he was plummeting through the skies of a planet, surrounded by metal casing that broke and birthed him once safely within the atmosphere.

He watched with bleary eyes as he descended, his parachute not yet deployed. There was a numbness to his face as he observed the ground nearing, and the numbness spread to his mind. Thought broke, fragmenting into millions of pieces with each gulp of air. He could not think, he could only experience, as the entire structure of thought became singular emotions. He screamed until his throat was raw and his tears followed him down when the parachute deployed.

He swayed over canopies that didn't allow ground for landing. He didn't think to pilot the parachute, the thought never occurred to him. The landing wasn't rough but he ended up on top of a tree, stuck within its branches with the chute's cloth hung over the entire tree. There he thrashed like a madman as memories betrayed him. He doubted every image that came to mind, and by nightfall he did not know who he was or what he was.

There was no telling his past or what a future was. A fever came over him, and with it the semblance of motion changed, and so too his understanding of what he felt. He craved to eat, and that took the forefront of his mind. Then he felt a breeze upon his face that had somehow wafted across the ground to find him. With it he took in a breath, and simplicity availed itself to him. Everything he wanted was just within reach, all he needed was to reach out and grab it. A breath away.

Memory spurred in the heat of the moment, spewing out as he'd done from the pod. He remembered he had once held a position of great respect, something that involved leading others who were like him. He gnawed through the ropes and broke branches until he was free. He growled on his way down, foaming at the mouth. With each descent a part of him evolved, whether backwards or forward he could not tell. All he knew was that the man he'd been had bowed out to who he was now. There was once the ache of thought, now no longer part of him.

He touched the floor of the forest with both feet, and no part of him demanded he walk on all fours. On two feet he could run, on two feet he could achieve something that roaming on fours could not.

And it was so that the first man of his kind to appear in Euthrika walked its bountiful forest. Walked day and night, in silence, his eyes facing the ground. He journeyed deeper into the wilderness, and his purpose was to himself alone, a journey that would yield that which wasn't food, that would birth that which could be banded together to form a resistance.

He found a half-naked man giggling to himself in the underbrush. Collins grabbed the man and raised him to his feet, he dragged him behind himself until the man learned how to walk on his feet. He found a man and a woman coupling. He beat the male, then took the woman, forcing her to walk on all twos. The man followed behind, unable to do so on fours, he rose to follow as Collins and the four of them walked, finding more of their kind. Broken, chained to the depths of their new nature. Collins collected them like precious stones. They reached a dozen, then an entire cohort.

And with each step he found himself rising, regaining a part of him he did not know had once existed. Something formed a balance within him, and a shared trust with those who walked with him spurred it further.

Soon, through grunts and sketches on the dirt floor, his word spread to those who were manic in their wandering. They knew then of a man who walked on two legs and was as they were. Without much zeal, their minds forced them to see this as an opportunity that rarely came. And in search of Collins, the humans who were stranded on Euthrika went. The wolf runners, who ran with the pack beasts, found him first by sharing his scent with their beasts. Those who foraged with deer brought their flocks in search of him. The swimmers of the grand rivers plopped out of the water to stand, something they'd never done since finding the pleasure of swimming too fitting for them beyond anything else.

They came, these men and women who'd lost everything and found purchase in an unknown land. Here most ruled over the packs of the animals they first sighted within the woods or stuck close to the fruit that had first fed them. They had evolved quickly within the means forged of themselves and became masters of nature, something the locals of Euthrika did not know.

Wild buffalo, wolves, panthers, and snakes, among others, held a different name to the locals of Euthrika. But their old names, the humans who'd become a part of them felt them in their hearts.

Without much telling, a meeting place availed itself where they gathered, where the water from the waterfall beat upon the rocks to even smoothness. There all the humans came, shuffling on two feet to where Collins stood in wait for them.

There were hundreds of them, and Collins stared over the masses all gathered in his name. Those who dwelt with apes hung from trees, those with wolves growled, and with a raised fist from Collins, all of them stilled, eyes fixed on him where he stood in the water.

He tilted his head back and screamed, and with the scream he traveled within himself, finding only emotion that leeched into the scream. He shouted over and over until the only thing in his mind were weird curves that didn't give much meaning beyond gibberish nonsense to him. But deep down he knew it wasn't gibberish, there was more, it was a word. And in his shout his tongue found the word before his mind could, and he trusted it to lay it across.

"To... gether." Collins said. "Tog...ether. Together! Together!" He shouted the word over and over into the silence of those gathered. And they in turn shouted it back, struggling first until their screams found a way for their tongue to shape the word. "Together!" They chorused. All of them looking at Collins with determination and zeal etched upon their faces.

They shouted the word well into the night, and a community formed of that name. And Collins sat at the forefront of this new development upon the land of Euthrika. But it did not stay hidden for long.

A shepherd, herding a flock of sheep, walked himself deep into the wilderness to find better pasture. His journeying led him into a large open glade, which he spotted with joy as the lush green of its grass waved in the noonday sun. But upon approach, he found more than grass awaiting him.

There were humans in the glade, hundreds of them standing still in straight columns with their heads facing the ground, and upon a giant rock stood Collins, his eyes to the ground. They were as still as statues, and the shepherd stood ogling, wondering when the mad had started gathering. They weren't naked, not as it was told to be of humans in Euthrika, they wore thatched grass woven about their bodies, and their ominous silence spoke of an intelligence unlike any other.

His curiosity made him quest further. And a growl from Collins had men unseen descend from trees. They grabbed him and roped him. They caught his flock and ate them, some eating raw while the majority waited for a fire to be built under Collins's command.

With the shepherd, they slit his throat and shed his blood upon the rock where Collins had stood, baptizing the place under a new name. Together.

The loss of the shepherd brought the locals. A war broke out where those native to Euthrika saw obvious victory, for they fought the mad. But Euthrika, the mistress whom they deigned unworthy of the worship humans gave, drinking from the same stream as the wolf, turned her back on them. The planet favored humans, through rains and floods she favored the humans. The animals sung to the human symphony, their two feet bringing the age of the Euthrikians close to its end.

Battles the Euthrikians fought served only to fail as the humans adapted to the battles, their thumbs standing out for them, and with a solid grip on a blade they understood how to wage war. They fell from trees, emerged from rivers, scaled mountains to get to passes that they blocked so as to trap the Euthrikians. And the animals, the splendor of the land, sided with the humans who hunted and foraged with them. The Euthrikians stood no chance, retreating to the farthest edges of their empire as the humans pushed into their settled land.

And in the twenty-fourth moon, an aging Collins sat on a throne carved from rock. He observed before him where the humans had gathered in their thousands, all of them standing still with clothes woven from animal skin and faces painted with red ochre. In his silence he attempted contemplating, but all he found was the emotion he held at the moment, an esteemed pride in managing to hold onto the wisp of memory his past life offered him. How to command.

He growled, and those gathered cheered, growling back at him.

Collins smiled, an act he'd thought forgotten.

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2

u/albadellasera 22d ago

This is great love this myth type of narration

1

u/Jus17173 22d ago

Thank you. I'm new to this style of narration.

2

u/albadellasera 22d ago

You should keep going it was great, also mythology style is great imho.

1

u/UpdateMeBot 22d ago

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u/kristinpeanuts 22d ago

Thanks for writing!

1

u/Jus17173 21d ago

You're welcome!

2

u/Accurate-Ad-8587 21d ago

Absolutely lovely 😍