Who Is Chend Tentkenen?

By Po Ivey

In an alternate dimensional Madison, Wisconsin; two high school students from very different worlds become friends due to the pandemic. In a short amount of time, they are thrust into an adventure beyond their imagination. Old friends, classmates and other figures take on dramatic new roles as the world around them changes in unanticipated and profound ways. Can they contend with this brave new world? Is the legendary figure known as Chend Tentkenen real or myth? Will they be able to find him? Will they have to spend time with Schlenk? Only by grasping the truth of "Nan-Danth" will they be able to set things right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Po Ivey
• Release date: Nov 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201143527

Book preview

Part 1: An Uncomfortable Freedom

Two new and unlikely friends made their way down a newly disused bike path. Three months of online high school courses had slowly, but surely faded into monotonous complacency. The once tense atmosphere of a world shut down and quarantined from the virus Covid-19 had somehow evolved into something completely new. Max and Andy found themselves kicking old beer bottles and loose tree branches aside as they navigated the once bustling bike path towards Madison's east side. In the old times they had walked past each other every day, part of different worlds. Things had been re shuffled. This was the third time they had found themselves with nothing better to do then share stories.

You said your brother was into satanic rituals? Andy asked Max.

Demonic rituals, Max corrected. 

What’s the difference?

I don’t know...anyway, that’s not the real problem. It got really bad.

Did he read the necro-comicon?

I think you mean the Necronomicon, Max corrected, adjusting his baseball cap and realizing his hair was getting long. And yes, he tried to order it online.

You can order that online? Andy asked.

He searched for months...

And?

Apparently you can’t buy it online, Max explained, getting somewhat distant.

So he tried summoning the devil on his own? Andy continued to pry.

That's a very dark way to ask that, and yes. He started filling his entire room with lit candles every night...I don’t know how he even afforded them...he must have been spending all his money from the hardware store.

Your brother is an athlete too?

Was an athlete, Max corrected. You would have heard of him. He was three grades above us. Xavier Thomas.

The Xavier Thomas who won five trophies in one year?

I thought you didn’t care about sports?

I don’t, but everyone knows that. I didn’t know he was also a Satanist. What happened with all the candles?

That went on for a week and a half before he almost lit his room on fire. After that our parents made him see a psychiatrist. This guy named Dr. Throst. We had family therapy sessions and he insisted that Xavier’s candle lighting was based on a repressed trauma from seeing a burning house when he was a kid.

That sounds like a stretch.

That’s what I thought..., Max replied, kicking something rusty that looked like it fell off a bike.

Anyway, Max continued, noticing that the sky was getting darker and some stars were visible. He put my brother on Prozac...Xavier stopped lighting candles after that, but he got really sad and quiet for a long time....and then he talked to this guy Chend Tentkenen.

No way! Andy exclaimed, suddenly breaking his almost constant, even tempo.

No way what? It's true...he stopped trying to summon demons after that.

No...Chend Tentkenen! Your brother really met him?

Yeah. Is he famous or something?

He's a legend...or..a myth...I'd say. How could you possibly not know! Andy began to explain, his face still holding a stunned expression. The only person I've ever heard that met him in person was my mom's old boyfriend

What does he do? Max asked.

He worked at a gas station...what does that matter?

No, replied Max, laughing. What does Chend Tentkenen do?

Everything! Andy began to explain. He was well known for always stopping fights when he went to Center Affiliated High.

He went to the alternate school? Max asked.

Yeah...a lot of people would tell you he was there ten or so years ago. How have you not heard of him? They say he had to change schools around town, and also to other counties because his dad was involved with some kind of research.

How many fights did he stop?

All of them...apparently he knew some form of martial art. He caught a bullet at the gas station once! That's what my mom's old boyfriend said!

He caught a bullet at the gas station?

That's the legend. Chend Tentkenen can do anything! How have you not heard of him?!

How did your brother meet him? Andy continued. Did he use some kind of unique psychology method to cure your brother of his problem?

Xavier..., Max began to explain, He was in his second month of being on Prozac. He had barely spoken to anyone in the family since he started it. He stopped lighting candles and trying to summon demons, but he didn't do anything else anyway. He even lost interest in football...

And then he met Chend Tentkenen and Chend cured him with his powers? Andy insisted.

Xavier said he met him at a party held by a friend of a friend who lived out in Regal Hills.

Where all the super rich people live?

Correct...he used to go out there sometimes. I was always jealous...anyway, he told me Chend Tentkenen was sitting in this guy's basement on his own, drinking his own beer that he made himself and playing guitar.

And!?

He told me he talked to him for over two hours while Chend played guitar, and that the whole conversation was like a dream. He said Chend explained how elephants were smarter than us, or from another planet or something...and that if he wanted to stop being depressed he would have to dispel a negative entity that he had attracted from his demon summoning.

And then what?

That was it...he told me that after the whole conversation he felt completely better. He tried to ask people later on if they had met Chend and where he was from, but no one else saw him or remembered him being there.

Every story about Chend Tentkenen is like that.

It was two months after the pandemic began when Max and Andy first met on the bike path. Central High School, where they attended, had closed all classes due Covid 19. Max was the quarter back of the schools football team (haven taken after his championship winning brother) the Center High School Argonauts. He was well liked and popular, but was always struggling to stay afloat in school, partially due to a moderate case of dyslexia. He stood 6 feet tall and had short dark hair. Although popular with all the girls in school, he never considered himself especially good looking, and always complained about what he perceived as a large nose and one hand which he was certain was smaller than the other. He would often keep quiet, not talking until he had a point to make or something he wanted to say. He wouldn't play the role of leader until a situation got bad.

Andy was an anomaly to other people in many ways. His grades would waver between perfect and failing. When people would ask him why he would simply explain that he only liked to do his homework when the subject interested him. He was in various clubs that seemed to have no relation to each other, such as being in a pottery club and also the Young Arab Americans Clubs, although he was Caucasian and usually looked pale. He stood an unusual 6' 4" tall and almost always dressed in athletic wear, although his exercise routine mostly consisted of chasing after the school bus when he was late, which was often.

Max and Andy had at least a passing awareness of each others existence before the Covid 19 Pandemic. Andy had always seen Max prominently displayed at rallies before foot ball games (when he actually chose to attend, sometimes by accident). They were both seniors and on the verge of graduating; before the school had been shut down and classes transferred to online seminars. The two had never crossed paths directly, except on one occasion at a party that both were too intoxicated to remember. It had happened at the end of summer and the beginning of their senior year.

The conversation in question involved Max confiding in the then unknown Andy that his life had so much pressure that he was never able to party at all. Andy tried to reassure Max that it wasn't a big deal. They were both eventually interrupted by a character named Schlenk, who was universally hated at Center High School, or CHS as the students and faculty called it. CHS had an especially large student body, with more than 2000 students and a battalion of faculty. Both of them only retained a small conscious trace of this event. That night Schlenk was accompanied by the life coach his wealthy father had hired for him, and the rest of the conversation was dominated by the life coach instructing Schlenk (as if he existed in a removed, invisible bubble only Schlenk could see) with exactly what to do and say as he interacted with the two students. The conversation was as awkward as it was intoxicated.

Max was three months into the new and unusual situation of having all of his school work be in a three hour span of online classes, and wasn't sure what to do with himself. This strange new freedom was first greeted with euphoria, but had slowly given way to monotony.  He had spent an entire day just throwing a foot ball at a wall, and remembering his brothers stories about the bike paths of Madison, decided to take a long walk. After having a hard time navigating an unfamiliar and less populated part of town, he eventually ran into Andy, who was stuck in a trance of procrastination.

Hey man, said Max, approaching the stranger. Do you know if all of these bike paths are connected?

They are supposed to be, Andy replied, his gaze mysteriously fixed on the tree tops as the sun set. ...but good look trying to figure them out. No matter which way I go I end up behind the Morris Community Center out towards the woods. It's probably magic or something.

I've never been out to this area, Max stated, not exactly sure how to respond to Andy's statement.

Don't you play football at Central? Andy asked, Weren't you the guy who threw a 70 yard touch down pass!?

It was a 80 yard touchdown pass.

Back in the old times..., Said Andy, staring at Max blankly.

Yeah...you go to Central don't you?

I think you mean went to Central.

Anyway, I think I've seen you before, Max said, the memory from their drunken encounter many months before coming into his mind, only to fade away again. Is your name Andrew Plurubus?

Andy Plarabuss.

Aren't you the guy who tricked the cafeteria into serving Applebees?

I am, Andy said, removing his gaze from the tree tops. What did you think?

About the Applebees? Max asked.

Yes,

It was great, how did you do that?

It's too hard to explain...

Alright...

I got bored with playing 'Tales of Symphonia,' Andy explained, without there being any question. That's why I am out here."

You play Tales of Symphonia? Said Max.

You know what it is?

Of course I do. I love the 'Tales Of...' series.

You don't really seem like the type to...

Why do you have to judge me? I scored a one hundred and forty seven hit combo one time.

You scored a one hundred and forty seven hit combo?

Yeah, I mean...I'm an athlete.

Do you think it would destroy your social status if people knew you played JRPGs?

I can't say I've never worried about that.

But you've only played Symphonia right? That's it?

No way, I've played Vesperia, Tales of Xillia, Berseria...um...Tales of Destiny 2.

You mean Tales of Eternia? Andy somewhat smugly corrected, his gaze returning to the tops of the trees again.

Yeah, I had a copy of it my weird cousin played, but then I sold it.

It's worth almost three hundred dollars! Andy exclaimed, looking offended.

I needed money to pay for a knee surgery, Max explained.

I liked 'Tales of Vesperia' the best, Max continued. It had a smoking dog.

He also wielded a knife, Andy explained.

What was the dog's name?

I think Josh maybe.

This conversation marked the beginning of a friendship between the two almost