King of Jungles
by Sini



Curiously Sini came in through the cave-hole.

And suddenly, without him knowing how it had come to pass, a deep-green jungle surrounded him. And he turned in all directions aweing. Loose vines hanging down like drapes and wild trees crawling with cicadas were all about. And the air was humid.

A bright blue crane with a sort of limp in his walk and a gnarled staff curled at the top he used as a walker approached him. The crane wore a conical bamboohat. And nearing Sini he asked:

“How have you come here?”

That dazed Sini. “What d’you mean how have I come? The trail about the mountainside goes directly here.”

“Stop right there.”

“I am stopped.”

“I ask you how have you come here. I did not ask what lead you here.”

“The hell’s the difference?”

“What difference?”

“I am asking.”

The crane in his old age did not see the question mark at the end of difference and, that taken into account, couldn’t distinguish the question from a statement. Again he asked—this time a little differently:

“What hell?”

“What d’you mean what hell?”

“I ask you.”

All a’ sudden the branches overhead rustled and out from them peeked the heads of cranes. Dull blue cranes. Cranes who wore conical bamboohats as did the bright blue one. Their eyes considered the oddly-wingéd guest for a moment; and then with their interests piqued they said:

“He speaks! The way he speaks! it is cool! Can we chill with him father?” Some said only a word or two; but collectively the dull blues said specifically this.

The bright blue started to speak when behind him came a rustle from a patch of bramble. Twigs crackled. And then out from the patch came prowling a black lion large as an elephant in the world of Sini. A sheen slid across his fur with every footstep. And he halted next to the bright blue, coughed loudly, and holding a wine-glass said:

“I do believe we are mistreating our guest. Chardonnay, Sini?”

Startled Sini wondered how the lion had come to know his name and in his wonder-ing did not even wonder of what was such a thing as chardonnay.

“Sini’s my name,” he began to say; “and I am from a land they call Malygomire, real far away from here, I think. I dunno what such a thing as chardonnay is, really. But by the sounds of it you know Common, too, so if you’ve a dictionary on you I can look it up real quick and then answer that for you, mister lion sir.”

“Dooriki!” the bright blue crane said to the lion, and demanded to know, “how he get through that Leh-lon Portal?”

“Beats me, Elder Ishiyohn,” said the lion, then took a sip from the wine-glass. “The Dooriyohnnexxuss hasn’t opened before. Not for Lió, not for Hiryus, not for Tamonnaxx. I’m suspecting his biological composition may’ve kickstarted the ley-line connection between the Two Worlds. Thus, how he arrived.”

“Shit,” then “Two Worlds, Shit,” the crane said really to himself.

“Yeah. Shit. Kinda sucks,” Sini said, “but I won’t be of bother to ya any longer, ‘cause I’ll go now, so—” he turned to dip hurrying for the Dooriyohnnexxuss.

Suddenly the dull blues cried out, as if stabbed or shot or incinerated, except not. “Friend! Do not go! The way you speak is cool. We would like to hear you speak cool more. Here it is humid. We like the cool things.”

“Yes, Sini. Ease up, and drink some chardonnay!” offered the lion, and raised his wine-glass-holding paw.

A sigh, and then Sini said, “Alright.”

“Yay!” exclaimed the dulls.

“Shit,” said the crane mostly to himself.

When Sini came thataway the lion clapped him on the back and then laughed merrily. Together they brushed into and then out the bramble patch, first the lion, then the dragon, as overhead the dull blue cranes hopped from tree-branch to tree-branch alongside them hip-hip-hooray-ing.

“We shall’ve a toast for this oddly-wingéd thing guest, whatever he may be,” the lion said; “and we shall’ve a many foods and drinks. There shall be many hip-hip-hoorays of merriment, also. Now, Ishiyohn! Doesn’t that sound a pleasant change to you?”

But the breath of the bright blue was spent and, far behind them, he stood bent at the knees, panting. He had tried to match his pace with theirs, the younglings’, but could not, but, yes, from the beginning the lion knew definitely that he would not. That was his plan. And when the tip of the lion’s tail slipped through the bramble the crane in his old age became finally and completely blind and did not ever find his way back.

* * *

“We are merry!” The lion threw his golden goblet high, and wine spilled all about.

“Merry and cool, very cool!” The dull blues, seated along the length of the Elder Thresh Table, mimicked the spilling-of-wine, clanging their cups, and then cried in a clamor:

“Food!” “Drink!” “So cool man!”

Sini smiled politely. He raised his golden goblet to toast briefly. Neither him nor the lion sat: for the four-legged ones did not ever bother with chairs.

All the eyes of the cranes were on Sini expectantly. No doubt they expected him to do and say cool things to contrast the jungle’s humidity; and so, unable to handle the pressure, he grew nervous. And great was the urge to go without a goodbye, even.

All a’ sudden the lion strode to Sini’s side then conjured from his natural coat-of-fur a napkin ebony sewn with an “S” bright white. To Sini he held it out. Well, I’ve already a napkin of my own, Sini thought. But before he could reach into his neck-pocket for it the lion had already tied the one with the “S” round his neck. A feline chuckle: and then avian chuckles mimicking it! Sini grew even more nervous and, now, greater was the urge to go without a goodbye, even.

“You seem unsure of something,” said the lion tying a similar napkin sewn with an “E” and a “D” round his own.

“What’s the Dooriyohnnexxuss? I wanna know.”

“Ah. That is what is on your conscience, then, Sini. So quick to the chase. But you are from the Dooriyohnnexxuss. You know you are, yes?”

“I know I’m from it and I know I am, if you want to be philosophical, lion sir. What I don’t know is what the Dooriyohnnexxuss is, which is why I asked you. Yes—I know it’s a gateway to my world, the world you call the Second World (‘cause the Elder already shat at us about that). What I specifically don’t know is how it came to be. Is it from an older civilization? Was it made in an accident? from the curiosity to explore other worlds?”

A sigh, and then, “Save your breath,” pushing a silencing claw to the lips of Sini. “We thought you’d be able to answer the question for us. Seems not. Pity then.” He shook his goblet, the wine’s surface rippling. “Shame it is. You let down your world, o Sini. We had great expectations. For your world.” Before Sini could speak the lion mumbled, “Somewhere in you lies the answer. F’ only you could find it for us. The answer. The answers to everything. They are there. S’ only a matter of . . . a matter of—”

(“—Digesting—”)

“—PROCESSING the information,” the lion roared over the dull blues, “processing it so that we may better understand your world. So that we may bridge the gap between the Two Worlds.”

“So we can always be cool,” said the cranes.

Sini smiled politely, pinching his sweating neck, looking about the place swiftly.

Suddenly feeling faint he stumbled away and turned to leave, without a goodbye, even. Snickering the lion and the cranes approached him, gathering around him in a ring, orbiting him, saying nonsense in songs of whisper—of what language Sini was unsure. The speaking and the spinning about him dizzied him, dazed him, made him want to give in finally for a sip of chardonnay. Then in his mind formed a tablet of stone. Chiseled into it were letters, letters of Common Sini somehow knew had translated for him their whispery nonsense song. And the tablet began to ascend; and it seemed, to Sini, to say a prophecy:

When comes the day
the crane does not see well
seek the portal.
When comes the day
the portal does open
greet the Guest.
Throw Him a feast
and the crane shall go blind:
for shall come his time.
Throw Him a feast
and He will not dine,
but shall be offered wine
and shall decline.
If should he,
do not offer Him
but offer Him as thine:
and the lion shall learn His name,
His creature name.
And the lion shall consume Him,
and the portal shall open:
the key to the Second World
wherein he, the new Elder,
the seeing Elder,
the Elder of the dull cranes,
shall open the gates
to the Third, Fourth, Fifth,
and Worlds all else:
whereof he, the lion
no longer a lion,
shall become King.

“King. King. King. King. King,” the cranes chanted—

as the lion closed the gap between himself and the dragon, bearing his beastly fangs, licking them hungrily. They’d hid behind his upper and lower lip. Now great incisors plunged above and below his muzzle, sharp as sawblades, and long as claws long unclipped—as if drawing up his lips elongated the choppers and made them more monstrous. A ghastly snarl sent ripples across his stomach. His fur-of-black shivered. Sini, shivering too, turned to bolt. But blocking his escape-route were the cranes with their wings bound together, completing a ring of chain. King . . . King . . . King, they whispered; and Sini yipping leaped up. Midair he spread the leathers of his wings. But the lion with super-feline strength snatched the tip of his tail and then, as if Sini were a sack of meat, hurled him swiftly downward. A great THUD, and he rolled across the jungle floor, his head thunking into a tree trunk. “Ohh.” King. King. King. King. King. The ring of shadows squeezed close on him. Then up ahead the ring broke; and through it the lion forward came. A deep purr. An eery flash of his red eyes. Death-gripping Sini’s neck he lifted him up.

“Great power I have,” the lion said, over the chokes of Sini; “for when the crane died I inherited his Elder-hood. Now I am the one the dull blues follow. And all their power’s mine, s’well. Now you—you the guest the verses of Eld call Sini—you are fuel. Your purpose in life is to feed me: Dooriki: for Dooriki is my name: for all the worlds I shall unlock, and all the kingdoms conquer, and all the creatures overcome. And when I absorb you the Dooriyohn shall open. Then no longer shall the lion be only the King of Jungles, but the King of Worlds. Hm hm!”

“Can’t,” wheezed Sini. “Can’t. Won’t. Won’t b-beat me. I a-am.”

“What?”

“I . . . a-a-am . . .”

“LOUDER, my dear!” the lion roared. “LOUDLY—so EVERYONE can hear you! The word—what are you? You must give it to me! Oh!”

Dooriki’s jaws split open in a silent cry of glee: it looked as though he’d been gunned down a second ago. But the smirk that creeped up his face next proved that that had not been so: for it was the widest one Sini had ever seen. Wild it was. The lion’s jaws flexed open-closed-open-closed, resembling the laughter of a mime hyena. And his tongue: his tongue kept flexing out, tasting the air for . . .

For the word.

“ . . . I am a dr—”

Dooriki inhaled deep—deep as a vacuum. Then the eyes of Sini shook in alarm and his lungs contracted, and he wheezed until he was left breathless; for Dooriki had seized his breath, and the word “dragon” with it. From his jaws in a drawn-out gasp . . . plumed a purple fog . . . a fog that went whirlpooling into the jaws of Dooriki. Yes, thought the lion, fondling his swelling stomach; yes, yes! Blissfully he rolled his eyes. Then with a finalizing slurrrrrrrrrrrrp the fog disappeared, and his jaws rattled shut.

A metallic CLANG shook Sini to the core. Speckled and blurry was his vision when he re-opened his eyes: when he saw next only the jags of Dooriki’s cream teeth in front of his face and, out from in between them, purple smoke seething.

Fear. Fear, and the lion smelled it . . .

The lion with adrenaline-enhanced strength tossed the dragon into the sky then, when he fell, swallowed him with a swift GULP. His neck sagged low, bulging like the beak of the pelican who has preyed on the pelican. And very much it had become like a beer belly, round and furry. To the jungle floor it thudded. Sweating he lifted it a foot up. Every kick, writhe, and squelch sent shudders through his gullet. Great throat muscles clenched down on the dragon, so the dragon lay suspended there.

I am such a tease, the lion thought, and chuckled.

The cranes watched with awe. Dooriki strode round the circle-of-them whipping his head-and-mane about proudly. And every now and then he with a purr glanced at a crane who presently fainted, infatuated. Eventually they all fell down like kids did at the end of “Ring Around the Rosie”. Dooriki stepped out of the ring. Monstrous teeth he bore. Drops of saliva splashing sizzled at his feet. To the fight of his prey he had become numb.

“Cute, dragon. But no.” His gullet-flesh squoze Sini tighter. “I could digest you there if I liked. Your puny scales would hardly stand against the enzymes of my slather. But no!”

A second GULP . . . and the dragon-shape bulge was relocated to his gut with a loud, wet urooolm. Sighing Dooriki spread his legs, braced them. The dragon thrashed and thrashed in his fleshy cocoon. This way and that the stomach jerked. Heavily it swayed just an inch above the jungle-floor—namely because the lion was sucking his breath in (elsewise it’d come crashing down and lift him off his feet, and he’d be paddling them uselessly). He ground his jaws, grinning, shutting each eye as he ground to their respective side, then loosed a foul, deafening belch! As time went on he yawned his mouth open wider and wider till the bass of the belch wasn’t only flapping his cheeks, but blowing back his mane. Then he ceased. All oxygen was gone. The poison dragon was dead.

“Weak!” boomed Dooriki with a new, great power. “I would’ve thought you at the least would have struggled. You are the guest who was prophesied. You were. Ah well. Let us see if your form was even worth the absorbing.”

His stomach muscles clenched down scale-tight. He stood wide, tensed up, threw his head to the sky, howling: “Huh-arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!” Purple shimmers raced sheen-like across his furry gut. Gut-muscles hardened and hardened until it began to shrink. Gurgles resounded. Claws tensed up. Tail, too. The lion tore the napkin initialed “E.D.” to his feet with another belch, then felt his knees buckle. As his tail sporadically twitched he lurched forward, feeling the need to sneeze. A roar tossed the jungle. Overhead flocks were sent on their way. Power! A dragon’s power! His pupils shrank. He blinked his irises purple. His tail: it felt to have torn asunder. The roar came to a climax. From base to tip a band of brightly-glowing chakra scanned down his tail; and wild he threw his rump on the lawn. The black fur of the tail burst aflame. It simmered into red dust, dancing in the air round him. Then it disintegrated. From his skull shot out horns: dragon horns, violet and skyward curving. Claws spasmed. Then they flashed huge. The feline nails exploded into elongations. Draconic and violet they became. Next fangs grew. Fangs long as stalactites and backwards-bladed. Evolved fangs of Sini.

Dooriki fell. Across the ground he rolled back and forth crying “More! More! More!”, laughing maniacal laughs until tears rolled down his whiskered face.

Seeing a snout-horn shoot out of his muzzle he exclaimed; snorted flame. Dragon-fire began to broil in his belly. Soon as he put his paws on his belly he understood. He lifted them warm as oven-mitts. An evil smirk grew wide, wide, wide. Pressing his paws deep into his gut, he pressurized gas. He gave his gut a hearty slap. Then black lips ground out a disgusting belch: a dragon belch. Flame and filth spewed forth, for the length of the resounding “BRAAAAARRRRRRRRRRP”. His stomach shrank till it lay empty. Then sinew started to snap. Dooriki’s shoulder blades jerked themselves out of their sockets, screwed themselves clockwise and counterclockwise (his left and his right respectively), then tensed up. New joints molded above. From these joints sprouted limbs of fur-of-black, and as the limbs reached farther and farther more joints grew. From each limb an additional two limbs sprouted, branching off. Between these limbs leathery membranes stitched themselves together until, eventually, they became colossal batwings.

Standing Dooriki unfolded them. Two purple flags sprung up over his sides, hurling shadows on his flanks. Stroking them he felt the wind whip and whistle all around him, heard the branches above crackling, and bark peeling from the wind’s cutting edge.

Yet the pleasure of Dooriki faded.

“More power,” he growled. “More power you hide from me, Sini, in your treasure-vault. The vault of your genetic code. Yet I shall unlock this vault: for I am the key; and for all things I am not, I am the key-finder.” So more power he sought. And immediately.

He blinked, and his surroundings flashed into black. Above him levitated on their sides double-helixes. Long they were; and their rows were never-ending. He could reach them only if he leapt. Dooriki started down the abyss, his eyes scanning the endless columns of genetics. The bars connecting the helixes, technicolor, gave off the glows of fireflies. No, he thought No, no, no. There—yonder were his fire-breathing genes, hot red; there—on his right were his wing genes. But something unlike any of these and far more crucial Sini still held secret from him, he knew. And he’d find it.

What seemed like hours passed. Honestly only minutes had. It was when he saw a chunk of double-helix devoid of color that he leaped up, and into the center-most bar plunged his fangs. Fiercely white the bitten section shone. And Dooriki commanded it: You shall reveal to me your secrets.

An explosion of pluming smoke and a loud ZAP had the lion bottle-rocketing backwards. He crash-landed, skidded a leap, skipped in a series of somersaults (“armf!” “urmf!” “umf!”) and then finally slid to a stop. The smell of electrically-burnt fur lingered, an incense in the air. Shakily he stood, sniffing. Seeing the end of his muzzle flayed of fur: a groan. Static still coursed through him: he felt the tingles every now and then. The devoid-of-color section had not changed, though. Still the DNA was dull and grey. He’d fix that. With a roar he raced towards the bar, then again bounded up. Another shrieking ZAP sent sparks everywhere. But still he swayed from the bar, jawing it. And with his forepaws he grasped it like a monkey-bar. High-voltage screeches continued. He was lit up blue, bright as a billion-watt Christendom star, and from the smoke hissing off him starting to smell like King-of-Barbeques.

Volt after volt after volt, “Guh-guh-guh-guh-guh!” was his response.

Fractals of Sini. Memories. Character. Kinks. Information raced through him in the form of Sini, over and over and over; and he howled through the surge of electricity lighting him up like a hundreds-of-pounds firecracker. Multiple memories which were crucial to him came at once: one of a mirror long as a bus Sini once strutted across (wherein Dooriki noticed the neck-spikes and tail-spikes he’d yet to absorb); and another of Sini, after blowing his nose on tissue paper, sneezing (and in the sneeze snorting a deep purple gas)!

The devoid-of-color section flared up into technicolor reds, greens, and yellows, and suddenly shot the lion back.

And he thudded into tall grass. He opened his eyes. What he noticed was not only was he hyperventilating; his breath was coming out deep purple. Not the gas which needst be belched up. Gas that he—that I breathe naturally. Toxic gas. He lay there watching the soft huffs of venom wisp out to the rise and fall of his stomach for a while. Then abruptly he got up and whirled around, chasing his tail. Spikes-of-purple he saw running its length. He slowed then, to be sure about the others, a nudge of a wing-claw against the nape of his neck. Ah. So there were the neck-spikes. He’d reaped the harvest and, now, he had all the benefits.

Poison. Poison spikes. Poisonous breath. Poison he may’ve expelled in his post-digestion spree of belches, but now he had poison at his command. For he breathed it. For he loved it. For he felt it in his blood system wherein he could assign certain venoms to his claws, to his fangs, and his tail, and his pores, a lieutenant deploying certain squadrons to different fields of battle.

He sniffed his underarms, blushing at his own toxic musk. Sini had been ingrained with near two-a-dozen years of discipline in controlling his poisons. His step-mother had made sure that training exercises were daily routine to him in his youth. Dooriki had none. Any memories of the dragon’s hatchlinghood had been disregarded and/or locked away deeper. Only power concerned him. So, as he paced in circles, adjusting to his makeover, poison secreted from the pads of his feet; and festering decay left the grass gray wherever/whenever he walked. And the decay ate away the soil, digging shallow holes the shape of footprints. Alas. The lion turned round. And at the sight of his own work-of-ruin he crooned proudly. He then put a paw to his muzzle so he could huff into it and whiff his own rotten dragon’s breath.

“When I enter the Second World I shall’ve someone sniff it for me,” he concluded. “Oh—imagines the look on their face when they get a load of ripe, dead dragon dipped in stale sweet-and-sour sauce. Kinky . . .”

Chuckling, then frowning, then:

“What sort of creatures shall I find in the Second? Creatures no different from Sini? If it is so, I must not go with a posse of cranes. Weaklings. I’ll go, and I’ll find a new posse, a new circle, in the new land; and their Kings shall fall to me. And then not just their jungles, but their grasslands and their snow peaks and their firelands, and their cities and oceans shall fall to me.”

With that he plodded through the junglescape and away from the Elder Thresh Table; through the underbrush and onto the dirt trail made by cranes where, as he suspected, the Previous-Elder crane was nowhere to be found. And then he stood before the Dooriyohnnexxuss. Sini had never looked back, so he’d never seen the gateway between the Two Worlds himself. But there it stood, a stone discus standing on its curve and cut out in the center: there it bore bright turquoise light which illuminated Dooriki’s frontal features. A three-stair case was before it: for it was mounted on a pedestal half-a-person high. The gate, the stairs, and the pedestal all had chiseled into them runes of a long-forgotten civilization; and vines grew on them; and nature (with time) had wore on them, so they were misshapen and chipped away at and dusty-dirty and quite ruinous-looking.

The dragonlion stepped up. Its sea-green radiance engulfed him and a sound something like a whirring hum, as well. Then he drew into it. The waves ebbed and fluctuated and made a soft murmuring but, unlike before, welcomed him in. And when the last of his tail slipped through the gateway he in his power lust had become finally and completely what the Elders of before had called crossed-over, and he did not ever return to the jungle. The Second World was ahead.

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