The Invinctus of Droida
Once upon a time, the much vaunted, universally known and in many places feared Invinctus of Droida met his besieger.
As in the rest of the Universe, there is nothing that cannot be conquered.
Thus each has yet found his master, and once strong, fair and dare, even the strongest, fairest and darest must take his humble hat. But of course, now all the tension is gone, dear listeners, you complain about this? Don't. Watch out and tighten the harness again, there is no need to condemn the day before the evening.
The indomitable was indeed bored to death,
or would very much like to be now, if Boredom had done him the favour of actually killing him. But the latter only looked at him languidly, eyes half-opened, from the pompous couch:
"Vinctus, what's up? Are you without a real task? Come here to me and sleep. It's the best way to pass these dreadfully dull hours anyway."
At this she yawned and Vinctus already felt heavy and sluggishly looking at those crescent moons. With a shrug he then went to her - surrendered. Sleep came quickly.
But early in the morning Vinctus was awake and fresh and rested, and life merely sprouted from him. Swiftly, he skipped Boredom before she could wake up and headed for the centre of conscience and questioning - ignoring in the back of his mind the thought of why she was actually such a frequent visitor lately:
Who would be his opponent today?
Who would he mess with and who would he teach a lesson? They were all always and always so easy(!) to defeat. All one had to do was know the key pressure points, merely engage with their language, search their fighting techniques and strategies and then use them against them! Some didn't even realise it. They liked to be defeated, it seemed.
Vinctus dressed, of course, in the finest garments tailored for him by those who had also tapped into the bright side of life for themselves and in whose fine arts he had been instructed himself. He loved heavy brooches and mighty rings on several fingers.
Was he someone who took it easy? Certainly not. To keep Boredom from interfering with him, he deliberately went to places and areas that people described as "strictly to be avoided".
In the last two hundred years, however, to his astonishment,
he had found it increasingly difficult to find such places, indeed, he had to track them down!
He had not fought animals for a long time, they were generally so rarely encountered in the cities that honour forbade him to seize their lives. And after all, he could not set them riddles or persuade them to other mischief, so he only kept company with them when he wanted his peace from people.
The fellow humans in Droida and elsewhere,
seemed to have been striving for the same thing: to become completely harmless, even all of the same morality, so that it took him ever greater effort and, above all, long journeys to finally find someone worthy to conquer.
The peoples seemed to have passed together through a linguistically prefabricated sluice gate and were terribly quick to take offence at seeing something dirty, foreign, dangerous and disgusting. Dead bodies, rotting organic, sticky, corrosive, they wanted nothing more to do with any of it.
The pavements; cleaned corridors, swept empty of the refuse of human activity. No clutters, no surprises.
Even the few red light districts looked tidy and changed into wannabe's.
A restlessness took hold of Vinctus, for indeed, he had sometimes spent days looking for places that smelled different from these glossed-up areas of people who used to call themselves modern. And who were immediately offended if you shouted a single crude word at them.
Women no longer acted like women, men no longer acted like men. They pretended as if they could be anything and anyone at any time. If only they would at least do it, and do it risky and colourful! Strangely enough, the more they shouted "difference!", the greyer they became.
Entangled in these terrible daydreams, Vinctus noticed almost too late how the footsteps of Boredom were already approaching, just one more corner and she would have caught up with him again. Just away! "Ciao, Beautiful!" he called and ran.
This time too he made prey, a haggard looking slasher,
what a catch, so rare in the world, you had to look for them like the proverbial needle in a haystack. But of course, people made a fuss as if they were whole slasher armies. Each single exceptional case of hearing from one, an accident, an unfortunate mixture of circumstances, an illness, and they made either a liability issue or a movie from it. Mistaking exceptions as rules.
The other one fought really hard and gave him a wound or two. With a brutal shove in front of a stone wall, the slasher went down bleeding. Before he breathed his last, almost in wonder and possibly also relieved to be rid of his evil burden at last, he spoke the words, "If only I had known..."
Not long and it took Vinctus months to seek out a worthy conqueror,
even the artists were not breeding further infants and so, one day, Vinctus realized: He was besieged. Just like that. No trumpets, no fanfares, no nothing.
Not, like he had imagined it. He had thought of a mighty figure, a sky-scraping challenge, a mind wracking task, a really hard end fight. But not this!
He simply got besieged from something worse than Boredom.
What killed him was the absence of differences.
Sheer disinterest in live. What finished him off was total unity. So he died from a broken heart.
The end? Hardly.
Vinctus was no more, but who cares? He, she or it found a new living space somewhen else.
The dance begins anew, once upon a time.
Picture source:
Photo by vadim kaipov on Unsplash
Contest requirements and infos, run by @scholaris, you find here.
Thanks again for the word of the week. I enjoyed playing with it!
Congrats also to the winners of the last contest and word of the week: happiness!