Part of the tower caved inwards, into the hollow where the tip of a large fleshy appendage dangled, resembling the tongue of a god. Gargaron did not care. He smashed and bashed.
Bring me down, bring me down, bring me down if you dare!
He hammered and hammered and hammered and hammered…
Until nearly the entire base had collapsed.
Here he stopped. Panting. Sweating. Bleeding. Confused. But his rage held. He had brought down far more than needed to make this tower topple. Yet the tower looked no closer to falling than it had before he’d begun assailing it. It looked like a tree that had been almost chopped through, standing via a mere chip of bark. He began to fear Melai had been right. It were unnatural. It could not be destroyed. It were enchanted.
He looked up and saw the hell face glaring at him, its grin as big as ever he’d seen it, a wicked, joyous grin that told Gargaron it knew things he did not.
Gargaron ignored it and wound back Hor’s great hammer once more and brought it against the final piece of base not yet destroyed. The face above squealed. And with one last lunge Gargaron swiped away the remainder of the tower’s base. And for a moment the entire construction hovered there, supported by absolutely nothing, the face cackling at him, suspended there above him, its nose almost touching him, drool dripping from its vast lips.
And then… down it came…
12
It did not topple as Gargaron had hoped. It did not simply fall one way or the other. It instead dropped in on itself, the face collapsing first, plunging into him, its huge mouth trying to swallow him. He heaved it aside with Hor’s cutter but the impact pushed him into the pool and dragged the hammer from his grip.
His anger left him immediately. His pain returned, felt his skin beginning to singe. Felt it burning. The black steel armour that seemed somehow part of the hammer vanished. And down he sunk into the poisonous depths of Mercuruan.
13
It were deep. There seemed no bottom to it. Gargaron dropped like a stone in a well. He tried kicking his legs, tried swimming against the pull of gravity but blocks of the tower plummeted into the pond above and pelted him, pushing him further into the murky depths.
He crashed against some ledge, or floor, he were not sure which. Tons of stone piled on top of him. He were trapped; snared like a fly in oil. His struggles began to weaken… the strength were going out of his limbs.
Soon… he realised he no longer cared. All he knew had died. He had brought down the tower, silenced the death bell. His loved ones would stay dead but at least he had saved their beloved Vale. There were naught for him anymore.
You have work here yet, his wife had said.
And now I have done it, my sweet.
It were time to let life go.
He withdrew his conscious mind into himself. Drew himself peacefully into a meditative state. Prepared himself for his passing. He would now never reach Endworld to be with his wife and daughter. But… such were life.
His consciousness ebbed away. He imagined Veleyal at his side. He imagined she were there, taking to him, telling him that all were well, that she loved him. He felt her tugging his arm. ‘Come,’ she seemed to say. ‘Come, let us go now.’
She took his wrist. She began to drag him from the tower stones that lay heaped on top of him. He felt his consciousness return a little. He felt his dream dissipating, felt Veleyal leave his mind.
Something had hold of his arm, something hauling him from tower rubble. What be it? he wondered distantly. A fish? What damned fish could live down here? And what watery beast dares drag me from my passing?
He opened his one good eye, at risk of burning it. Though if he were dying he would not need it anymore.
He saw not a fish but arms of dark light clamped around his limbs. And he were being hauled up through stone and mortar and rubble that continued tumbling from above.
14
He were yanked into open air, drips of silver beading off his arms. He lay gasping on the banks of the pond. He saw an enormous Dark One looming over him. It stood peering down at him. As if wondering what to do with him. If it meant to do as the other Dark Ones had not, that being taking Gargaron’s life, well, Gargaron now had not the sense to care. He barely registered the creature standing there. To him, reality were already a numbed and distant dream.
Yet one thing he saw broke his spirit. The tower. It stood there full and unbroken, the face leering at him, grinning.
He shut his eye against the sight of it.
DARK ONE
1
GARGARON’S consciousness ebbed and flowed, there came periods of darkness followed by periods of light. In these times, when his eye came open he were distantly aware of being lifted from the woodland’s soft leafy floor, of being cradled like a pup. Later, during a period where he felt slightly more alert, he saw the tops of the woodland gliding by, as if he were being carried off somewhere.
Beyond that, there came a prolonged period of dark. It might have been sweet oblivion had it not been for the disharmonious dreams and nightmares. When his senses aroused again he saw just the vast darkening sky above him. And a sense of the suns lowering and the horizon filled with red and yellow. And there were yet another colossal Dark One looming above him. This one even bigger than the last, with far reaching buffalo horns. Gargaron had again the sense of being carried, transferred, as if from one colossal ox cart to another. He took heart when he saw Melai lying there beside him, and Locke on the other, and Hawkmoth being lifted in behind him.
He wanted to stir, yet naught save an extreme exhaustion weighed him down. And again he fell away into a depthless sleep.
2
When he awoke again there were stars in the heavens, and the moons were out (although he could not have named them) and there were no sign of the woodland, nothing but the mighty shadow of the Dark One, its back to him, as if it were at the helm of some enormous cart. Its horns were lit by moonlight, and it seemed to hum cheerfully to itself. A sonorous yet melodic tune, if not a little melancholy.
Gargaron had a distant sense that he were surrounded by the Grass Sea, but he were not aboard a ship. Gargaron wanted to rise, to survey his surroundings, but again his mind did not permit it, and instead he succumbed once more to pain and weakness and delirium.
When his eye opened, it were sometime near dawn; but somehow he knew many nights and days had passed. The sky were turning blue. He looked around. Before and behind him he believed he saw a wooden road, suspended on stilts, crossing the Grass Sea, vanishing into far distance in either direction.
Then he were opening his eye once again and the suns glared overhead. And he were being placed gently upon dusty ground. With a sense of distant awe, like a child observing a god, he watched the horned Dark One.
Next he felt himself waking again, the Dark One had gone and Gargaron were alone.
3
Gargaron were unsure how many days and nights had passed since their foray into Vol Mothaak. He sat up slowly. His head thumped, his skin ached. He looked about. The effort seemed to take all his strength. He felt he were pulling himself up from death, as if all the dark beasts of the Afterworld were holding him down. He were shocked to take in such surroundings. Nothing but barren, endless desert in all directions. Rock, stone and dust. No vegetation. No signs of habitation. No signs of life.
None except for that of Hawkmoth it seemed. And for long moments, with his remaining eye, Gargaron simply stared at the sorcerer, unblinking, assuming the sorcerer were but some apparition.
Hawkmoth were kneeling, his hands on his knees, and his head bowed. His back were to Gargaron. Gargaron looked around for the others. Perhaps Melai and Locke were simply waiting somewhere for Gargaron to awaken.
Maybe he had simply dreamt their terrible demise. Perhaps they had been successful in bringing down the tower. Perhaps he had taken a knock to his head, taken some injury.
He saw them. Lying together.
He pulled himself to his feet. An
d ignoring Hawkmoth for the moment he plod slowly toward the nymph and the crabman with a sense of misgiving. He had hoped Melai and Locke were merely asleep. But he saw now they were not. They lay there in ruins, both of them battered, pulverised, broken, dead. Lifeless corpses, side by side.
Gargaron blinked as he looked down at them. ‘I am sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I am so sorry.’
He stared at Melai at length hoping her eyes might come open, hoping she would look up and see him and smile. But she did not.
Hawkmoth stood beside him now. But when the sorcerer spoke Gargaron did not recognise his voice. ‘It be imperative we keep moving.’ The voice were scratched, weak, croaky.
Gargaron peered at him. The glare of the suns, both high in the sky, made it difficult to see him, to get a full picture.
‘Come, giant, let us be off.’
Gargaron did not move. Not immediately. He wanted Melai, to remain in her company. She had become his daughter, his wife, his surrogate family. He could not desert her.
Hawkmoth squeezed his shoulder. ‘Come now, giant.’ There were a pleading sound in that voice. ‘Come now. There is naught you can do for her. She came to me in my sleep and asked me to tell you goodbye. That she is safe, and pain can reach her no longer.’
Gargaron bowed his head and wept. The sorcerer squeezed his shoulder. ‘There now,’ Hawkmoth said soothingly, ‘there now, giant. All comes to an end. One way or another. Sad though it is. For that is the way of life.’
Unsteady, Gargaron stood, stepping around to get the sun glare off his face. When he did, he could not take his eye from the sorcerer. What he saw terrified him. The sorcerer’s skin were wrinkled and turned a deep sickly tinge of blue, as if rot were not too far off. His hair were blackened, as if scorched. He were hunched. One of his arms were stiffened, as if the entire limb were become stone. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he whispered, ‘what be wrong with you?’
Hawkmoth drew in a deep breath. But he offered that old disarming smile. ‘Nothing. I am dying, but that be all.’
‘Dying?’ That squeezed Gargaron’s heart. He had lost so much. He did not want to be left alone. ‘Dying?’
‘Aye.’ He said it looking about, as if this were it, no coming back from this condition, as if taking in the barren beauty of this new land. ‘Oh, and I would already be so had I not summoned my life’s reserves.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘As you saw with my old mentor Skitecrow. A trick a sorcerer learns early on in his career. To put away certain reserves in the event that death should visit him. The idea be to use enough to stave off death. But I have had to call on all of it just to be standing here talking to you. So once it be used up, that is it, I’m afraid. I too will go the way of all else.’
Gargaron looked horrified. ‘How long have you got?’
The sorcerer smiled. ‘A day. Two at the most. I hope. Perhaps naught but mere hours. Sometime at least. So, let us press on.’ He turned and started off.
‘What about Melai? Locke? We cannot leave them.’
‘And we cannot take them with us.’ Using his staff as a walking stick, the sorcerer hobbled away.
4
Gargaron watched him. Then his gaze returned to that of his deceased friends. He crouched and tenderly ran his huge meaty fingers over Melai’s head; he were barely aware that the skin on his knuckles were flaking and peeled, that the skin and flesh of his hand and wrist were blistered and weeping, that the sleeves of his shirt were shredded. But his attention were entirely on Melai.
‘I am deeply sorry.’ Tears stung his eyes and cheeks, but he bowed his head and touched his giant’s forehead to hers and then he sat there and whispered to her a small prayer, all the while tears dripped from his face to hers. It haunted him that his tears did not convert, become night fairies, or skybeetles. It haunted him that all were dying, even the magic of Cloudfyre.
Hawkmoth had stopped, were waiting, using his staff as a crutch to keep him upright.
‘Gargaron,’ a voice said.
Gargaron looked to the sorcerer but it were not he who had spoken. Blinking, Gargaron looked up and around. And through bleary eyes he saw a wraithlike vision of Sir Rishley Locke, standing there with his customary smile.
And behind him, just beyond his shoulder, were Melai, a ghostly apparition.
‘Melai. Bu-but you live.’
Yet her small broken body still lay at his knees.
‘Melai?’
‘Be well, my friend,’ Locke said. ‘I shall escort her back to Thoonsk and save you the burden.’
‘Wait.’
‘You must walk on now,’ came her voice, soft and distant. ‘You must follow Hawkmoth, my giant of Hovel. For you have work here left to do.’
Confusion tore at his mind, as he were not certain if that last sentence were spoken by her, or if it had instead come from inside his mind.
He looked around at the sorcerer, who were speaking it seemed: ‘… aye… you have work here left to do.’
When Gargaron turned for Melai and Locke once more he saw them now distant, walking from him, away through the desert. He blinked and wiped his eyes but when he looked again, their ghosts were no longer there… just the endless wastes and swirling dust.
5
Gargaron trailed the limping sorcerer. Once or twice he looked back. But all he saw for a little while were the small broken bodies of Melai and Locke lying there being bitten at by the gritty wind.
Eventually the dust haze swallowed them and Gargaron saw them no longer. Yet those words still whispered over and over in his mind: You have work here left to do.
It brought his wife’s face to his mind. And the smiling face of his daughter. Dust stuck to the tears on his cheeks and chin. He felt delirious, feverish, he had no idea where he were, where he were going. The sorcerer hobbled on through the swirling desert sands, unspeaking, his thoughts to himself.
Gargaron felt parched. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he tried to say but naught save a raspy sound spilt off his lips. He tried to wet them, licking them with a dried tongue. They felt rough and split, felt as if chunks had sloughed off.
‘Hawkmoth, please, where do we seek?’
‘I am not certain,’ came his reply, as his form faded amidst the howling sands.
His sudden vanishing alarmed Gargaron. ‘Hawkmoth?! I cannot see you! Where be you! Tell me!’ He stumbled, fell, his fleshy arms catching his fall. ‘Hawkmoth?!’
He felt his strength failing him. He felt the pain in his body elevate. He did not know it, but there were parts of his body where his bones were exposed. Beneath his arms the flesh had burnt away to expose his ribs. The rear part of one leg had had its meat burnt off, the bones below his knee were open to the elements and were now brown with grit, and the skin and muscle around it black with decay. His hair were all but singed away. Mostly he were numbed by it all, mostly his consciousness washed in and out of some bizarre dream world.
He were not sure now if Hawkmoth had ever been leading him. Perhaps the sorcerer’s body too had been somewhere near that of Melai’s and Locke’s. Perhaps Gargaron had merely been trailing some aimless wraith.
He picked himself up, determined to press on. He told himself that if Hawkmoth were there, the sorcerer would not leave him.
6
The sand flurries howled and raged. And came in waves of varying intensity. And every now and then they would dull enough for Gargaron to gather a clearer picture of the way ahead. He saw more desert and naught else… and still he saw him, the wandering figure of Hawkmoth getting further and further ahead.
‘Hawkmoth!’ he tried to call with his dry, rasping voice. ‘Hawkmoth, do you hear me? Wait!’
But on went the sorcerer and on came the swirling sands, concealing him again from Gargaron’s view.
In his mind Gargaron began to hear a song his dear daughter used to sing. ‘Oh, on the sweet fields of Sorollayn, I see the maids, oh, on the sweet fields of barley, comes my sweetheart.’ He heard himself singing it. Dust and
grit peppered his tongue. He spat out what he could. But he sang and hummed and closed his eyes against the storm and pressed forward, mindless, wandering, wandering, one step and another step and another in front of the other.
‘You have work here yet,’ came the voices of something above him. ‘You have work here yet.’
He stopped and peeled open his eyes so slightly, and squinting, he gazed into the heavens. It were a maelstrom of dust and dirt and nothing more. But here he spied Hawkmoth again before him. He had almost stumbled into him.
Hawkmoth were poised there, pointing to some point that Gargaron could not see.
‘What be it?’ Gargaron asked him, trying to be heard above the winds. ‘What be it, tell me?’
‘Can’t you see it? Just over there. Go forward now, time is almost done. I know now that you did not come to help me stop the war with the witches. It were I who were meant to help you. It is why the Dark Ones left us alone. That we helped you, to a lesser or greater extent, to get you to this point. Go now. Your guardian angel be there to take you the rest of the way.’
‘Guardian angel?’
‘Cahssi were right. You be the earthchild. I read the paintings on the cave wall wrongly. I thought they were instructions on destroying the death bell. I thought destroying the Empty Tower would give life back to our world. But I know now that all must die. For only then will life once more flourish. When the earthchild grants it so.’
Gargaron blinked at him. ‘I do not understand.’
‘The earthchild theory tells of a starman who came to Cloudfyre from a distant world called Earth and brought life here. And so that one’s spirit lives on, to bring life to where life has been extinguished… You will give us a world renewed, giant. Of grass and trees and fresh, clear skies. And of laughter of people living out their lives. And of the joyous sound of children and animals, large and small, getting about their days.’
Gargaron looked but could see nothing for the storm.
‘Life be an enigma,’ Hawkmoth said, his voice growing weaker. ‘Fleeting. It be but smoke on the breeze. And those who come after us would do well to be mindful of this fact. Lamps glow and lamps go out. Such is the way of things on a lonely world floating amidst a cold universe. And we who float upon it are all there be. Travel safe my friend.’ And with that he moved no more, standing there, his body solidifying, his eyes turning dark blue and then to black. His skin became stone. His arm still pointing, his other arm clasping his staff out from his side. And no sooner had he become rock, than he began to erode.
Gargaron stumbled back, watching it happen.
‘Hawkmoth? What be the matter? Hawkmoth, can you hear me?!’
But Hawkmoth Lifegiver spoke no more.
Gargaron could only watch as the sorcerer’s form slowly lost detail, like a river stone rubbed smooth over a vast passage of time.
Gargaron knew he were dreaming. For as Hawkmoth eroded away, he gazed toward the spot where the sorcerer had been pointing, and what stood there made no sense.
A horse. With two heads.
7
Gargaron watched the mirage, waiting for it to slide away, to fall apart under the howling grit. He looked back at the sorcerer. But Hawkmoth were quickly featureless. Naught but a shape approximating his original form. A round lump of a head, no face, rounded shoulders, no clothes, a narrowing torso, arms and legs withering away to thin cords, his hands gone, his arms ending in rounded nubs, his staff now but dust on the air. And yet part of Hawkmoth’s arm, what had become of it, were still pointing.
In the distance, the two-headed horse still stood there. As if waiting for him.
Gargaron regarded it at length, waiting for it to vanish. But vanish it did not. Compelled now, he took his tired legs and trudged toward it, hunched against the biting gusts. Dream or not, he would see himself to this apparition, if only to reach out and touch it, to prove it were not real.
Once or twice he looked back at what used to be Hawkmoth, but there were little left of the sorcerer now save a spire of sand-stone, growing ever thinner and less defined. But more and more Gargaron were drawn on by the sight of the horse, for the nearer he pushed to it, the more substantial it grew. Intrigued, he willed himself forward, curiosity feeding his determination. His consciousness faded to grey here and there, and each time his senses returned he stood, hunched for a moment or two regaining his bearings. Yet always the horse stood there, waiting. Until finally Gargaron reached it, and the horse were right there, close enough to touch.
‘Grimah,’ he croaked. ‘Grimah? Be it you, my friend?’
The horse nuzzled him with its two noses and made a soft noise at his ear as if to confirm his identity. He kept nuzzling him, as if encouraging him to climb upon his back. Distantly Gargaron got the notion, but it seemed an insurmountable task. He felt so heavy, so tired, so burdened. But somehow, aided by the horse’s strength, he managed to drag himself into saddle. There he slumped forward panting, clinging to Grimah’s mane so that he would not slide off and tumble back into the dirt. He did not like his chances of getting back to his feet if that happened, let alone climbing back again onto the steed.
Soon he were aware of movement, of the horse carrying him away. And once more Gargaron slept…
EARTHCHILD
1
GARGARON had no awareness of the passage of time. While he slept, Grimah carried him diligently across this desolate part of Godrik’s Vale. While he slept, Cloudfyre underwent its final transformation before its Fall. Dark Ones and Harbingers and Juggernauts, billions upon billions of them, spread out across the world, setting alight the forests, hammering down all signs of habitation and civilisation, reducing all of it to rubble and dust. They took to the oceans annihilating the last of the sea-dwellers and their cities. They took to the skies, dealing death and destruction and cleansing wherever it were needed. The destruction and annihilation went on and on until Cloudfyre began to rumble and shake, until Cloudfyre called back her children and thus the Dark Ones, the Harbingers, the Juggernauts, returned to Cloudfyre’s deep womb where they would again sleep soundly for ten thousand years before their next emergence.
When Gargaron awoke he were first taken by the searing blue skies. Were he floating? It certainly felt as such. The sky were all about him. Above and below. And yet, yet he felt solid ground beneath his bare feet. He looked down and saw his blistered toes and his reflection. He barely recognised himself. His hair were mostly gone, as if burnt free. One eye were gone, the eyesocket pushed inwards, as if some mighty blow had dashed the side of his face. He had lost considerable weight. His clothes were shredded. His limbs hung with chunks of flesh. And in parts, his bones were exposed.
But here were his reflection nonetheless.
He looked up and around. Grimah were nowhere to be seen, making him think that the horse really had been some dream of delirium. And yet, the imprint of horse’s hooves in the crystalline white earth lead off into the endless distance. Other than that, here were a featureless landscape, utterly white save the reflection of the vast blue sky and the wispy white clouds upon it, reflected perfectly, like a mirror.
It were absolutely beautiful in its isolation, in its silence. Gargaron turned slowly about. There were a clarity to his mind that he had not known since before his foray into Vol Mothaak. A lucidity. But the sudden memory of the tower stung him. Locke and Melai. And Hawkmoth. All of them dead. A lump filled his throat. Guilt and sadness for friends lost. And for a while he could not shed the memory of dear Melai. He had promised to take her back to Thoonsk. He sighed heavily. ‘I am sorry, Melai. I pray you forgive me where ever you be.’
Again he looked around, still getting used to viewing the world through a single eye.
So… he were alone. That thought came upon him like a crushing weight. And there were some sense, some deep part of him, an intuition, that told him he were but the last thing alive. Not only on Godrik’s Vale, but on all the world of Cloudfyre. That the laughter, the voices, the cries, t
he tweets, the howls of Cloudfyre’s millions upon millions of living things had been silenced. And he were all that remained.
He completed one full rotation, his eye scanning the horizon in all directions for any tiny landmark that he might strive for. For there seemed no feature to this landscape but its endless floor of white and the blue sky and clouds reflected upon it.
Yet, he saw something. Indeed it almost startled him. A tiny ethereal being standing twenty yards from him.
2
Its sudden, unexpected presence made him jump. He grunted, alarmed, his hand moving instinctively for his sword or hammer, both of which he seemed to have lost. He did not move. He simply stood gazing back at this tiny little being.
In return it did naught but stand and watch him. A sad expression upon its face. Like that of a child who has lost its mother.
It be some ghost, Gargaron decided.
By appearances it were not a substantial being. He might’ve been down to one eye but he could see through its form the reflected clouds off the white salt flats, could see through its head the blue sky. It were much like those watery mirages seen at a distance on steaming hot afternoons.
Gargaron felt thirst beginning to bite him. He realised he were not only without his weapons but were without his rucksack. But a gourd he found tied to his belt. It were not his own he realised as he unclipped it. He recognised it as Hawkmoth’s. He frowned. Had the sorcerer given over his precious water to him? Gargaron felt its weight. It had a heaviness about it. Full.
He unstoppered it and brought it to his cracked lips. As cool water sluiced over his tongue and he drank, he had to fight all his will not to up end the entire contents down his throat. But it were evident he were a long, long way from fresh water on this strange land. What he had must be rationed.
He took two or three hearty gulps then forced himself to stopper the vessel. He clipped the gourd back to his belt. And once again his eyes went to the tiny being standing there.
Be it a mirror man? he wondered.
He considered his gourd again. He took it from his belt and offered it. ‘Forgive me. I have quite forgotten my manners. Be you thirsty?’
The being made no response.
‘Water,’ Gargaron said. ‘That be all it is. I offer you some.’
Again, no response.
Gargaron placed the gourd upon the flat white salt beneath his feet. And took himself back from it.
‘Drink,’ he told the being. ‘I mean you no harm. If you be thirsty then, please, drink.’
Still, the being made no move, no reply, as if it did not comprehend.
3
Gargaron looked around. So what now? he thought. The suns were full, the light off the salt flats bright and glaring. Once more he caught sight of Grimah’s hoof prints leading away from him. He scanned again the horizon for any sight of some landmark he may have missed, turning fully about as he had already done.
As before, there were no visible feature to be seen.
What to do? What be my purpose? ‘Do you know why I am here?’ he asked the wee one. It failed to speak. ‘Do you have others like yourself here somewhere?’ There might have been a tribe of them watching him, all half invisible. Unless they moved he would probably not spy them. Perhaps Grimah had gone on, trailing some scent of fresh water.
‘Are there others like you?’ he asked again. ‘Would you take me to them? I mean you and your kind no harm. Honestly.’
Again the thing simply stood there eyeing him before looking around again, as if worried about its surroundings, as if it had never seen such a land before. Its expressions intrigued Gargaron. The creature seemed as lost and unsure about this place as he did.
Eventually it were pure necessity that gave Gargaron purpose. The salt pans were growing hotter the longer the day advanced. The gourd would not hold water forever. Sooner or later Gargaron’s thirst would see to that. He pointed for the benefit of the being. ‘I need to trail my steed. You may come with me if you want.’
Again, no reply.
Gargaron nodded. ‘Right then, please yourself, but if I stay here I shall perish.’
No hint of understanding from the being.
Gargaron sighed. With that he started off.
4
The creature did not follow. Gargaron were gone twenty feet when he looked around and saw the thing still standing on the spot. When he had gone fifty feet the little being were almost swallowed up by the white and blue and the perfect mirrored reflections.
Gargaron knew it were wasted energy worrying himself about it.
He concentrated only on Grimah’s hoof prints now, following their meandering trail northways. They seemed never ending. He began to wonder how long ago Grimah had passed this way. It may have been days. Or, for all he knew, weeks had swept by.
Hours trickled on as he trudged this mysterious land. Exhausted, hot, sweating. He halted his march and allowed himself some small sips of water, trying his best to ignore his raging thirst. He felt his lips blistered from the suns. He took some moments looking about again, hoping perhaps the distance he had covered might have delivered him closer to some new landmark previously lost beyond the horizon. But there were none. He longed for his spyglass. He reattached his gourd and were about to set off again when he got the fright of his life.
The small being stood there, watching him.
It stood closer than it had earlier, as if it now viewed Gargaron as a remote threat rather than an imminent one. As it eyed him, he heard words in his mind. I do not know what I am. Do I belong to you?
Gargaron frowned, eyeing it carefully. ‘Be this you I can hear?’ No reply. ‘I have not seen your like before.’
The creature watched him.
The ground beneath them both suddenly shook. Gargaron looked down with some consternation. He then searched the sky for a yellow discolouration. He feared a shockwave. But minutes passed, none came.
‘If you hear me and understand me,’ Gargaron said, ‘then listen. I have a steed. I need find him.’ He pointed to the hoof tracks as though this were sufficient explanation. ‘He will carry us from his place. If I do not find him then I shall perish here, for I will soon be out of water.’ He shook his gourd; it felt as though it held mere drips now. ‘If you hear me, if you wish to come with me, then come, I shall offer you my protection. If you choose to stay here then I am sorry but I cannot stay.’
He regarded the little being for some moments. It did not move. No further voice came from it. It simply watched him with those big transparent eyes.
‘So be it,’ Gargaron said sorrowfully and with that he set off again.
5
The creature trailed him this time. Keeping back some two dozen feet. Gargaron glanced at it once or twice over his shoulder, happy for the company, silent though it were.
Another hour passed. Gargaron’s thirst grew. He wanted so much to throw away his gourd so that he might not be further tempted to drink up the last of its contents. Though if he did, he would be without any means of hydration. The irony were not lost on him. It caused him to laugh. As he did he looked around at the little being, hoping to share the moment. But the creature simply gazed up at him, expressionless.
Gargaron quieted himself and took up his gourd and again offered it to the being. ‘I give this to you. Please accept it before it sends me insane.’
The little being looked perplexed. And when Gargaron stepped toward it, offering up the gourd, the little one took a step backwards.
‘I mean you no harm, honestly. And even if I did, I have not the strength. So, please, accept this water before I put my hospitality aside and drink it myself.’
The being would not come forward to receive the gourd. It irritated Gargaron. He placed it atop the salt crust and ambled slowly backwards. ‘Please. Have it.’
Again the being seemed confused, as if it did not recognise such an object. It occurred to Gargaron that this creature stood before him without water nor provisions and yet looked qu
ite unperturbed, quite unstressed.
She be a ghost then, Gargaron convinced himself. She be that and nothing more.
He stepped forward and bent down to fetch the gourd, his hand on his hip to assist him in his effort. He felt like a giant three times his age. He straightened slowly, unstoppered the gourd, lifted it, arched his back and neck, upended it into his mouth, and this time left not a drop…
He regarded the gourd when he were done. Upending it again to his lips to suck out any last drips. He sighed when he were done. Knowing now he were doomed to die here.
With great effort he clipped it back to his belt. There may be fresh water ahead, he thought. And if there were none, well, he would trail the hoof prints until his body and mind succumbed to exhaustion and delirium. Then he would likely fall to his knees, slump forward onto his belly and face, and let sweet death carry him away.
He turned and resumed his trudge across the plain.
6
It were not long after that he spotted some far off object.
He stopped and stood, his head craned forward, mouth ajar, his eye narrowed. Were it something tangible he were seeing or something thrown out by his mind? It were impossible to tell. But it did not leave his sight, even when he blinked, it remained there, in the general heading of the meandering hoof prints.
‘Do you see that?’ Gargaron asked the little one eagerly. ‘Tell me. Do you see it?’
The little one were looking with keen, perhaps cautious, interest. It did not reply directly except a voice arose in Gargaron’s mind, What be it?
‘Come,’ Gargaron croaked. ‘I wager it be Grimah, my steed. We must not let him out of our sight. Come now!’
Gargaron set off with renewed purpose, with a new sense of optimism and feeling of strength. He did not take his eye from the object lest it move and vanish from view.
Vanish it did not. And as they progressed toward it, it remained where it were. And slowly it grew in detail.
Gargaron saw first its legs, and its bulky torso, and saw two heads. He almost cried with relief. Tears filled his eye. ‘Grimah,’ he panted desperately. ‘Oh, Grimah, sweet horse. You await me.’
Yet, as he and the being advanced further, what Gargaron had taken for two heads and a bulky horse torso and long legs, turned out to be something else altogether. Confused, Gargaron shaded his brow with his hand and slowed his pace.
Soon, perplexed, suspicious, he stopped altogether. No horse were standing there, although hoof prints appeared to trail toward it and culminate there at its feet.
It were a Dark One, tall and black with a feminine posture, with searing white eyes glaring back at both Gargaron and the new being. Beside it there were a ceramic sink with a white faucet and flowing water. Beside that a white marble dais with berries and fruit and bread and succulent sliced meat.
Gargaron were not certain if what he saw before him were real or if it were a phantom thrown out by his mind. As he watched, the Dark One, tall, almost graceful in her movements, stood back, as if beckoning him and his new companion, allowing them access to food and water without her hindrance.
Gargaron were naturally cautious. Yet, strangely, he felt no threat from her. He could not fathom why. He had seen her kind kill and destroy and yet… none had ever seen it their business to harm him. He felt that trend were not about to change here. Still, what did it matter if it did? He would die out here soon enough. If she struck him down it might be a blessing.
He glanced around at the small being behind him. It had stopped, and seemed to be using Gargaron as a shield between him and the Dark One. Gargaron eyed the food and water. He suspected a trap, but he were almost beyond caring.
He strode tiredly toward the faucet, eyeing it, waiting for it to swirl away like smoke on the wind. It remained there however and when he reached it and stuck his hand out to touch it he found it solid and real. There came to his nostrils the scent of pristine water as it gushed from the tap. He put his fingers beneath its flow and cool water gushed over them.
He did not remember cupping his hands beneath the flow and guzzling feverishly. All he knew were he had his eye shut and his mouth deep in water and he were filling his belly. It were an almost instant relief, the feelings of strength and vitality surging through his bones and muscles, bringing on a renewed lucidity to his mind.
Yet soon he were doubled over, vomiting great gushes of water into the salt crust; not because it were poisoned but because his belly were not ready for such inundation.
He caught his breath, coughed spit from his mouth, wiped his chin. Then he were bent over the faucet again, drinking and hoisting handfuls of water over his face and head, drenching and cooling himself.
7
He breathed in deep, stood straight, sucking in huge gasps of air, his eye remained shut, his head turned to the heavens, a soft breeze cooling his damp skin; he felt like he’d just awoken from Afterworld’s torturous limbo. Now he got a scent of the food. With his thirst abated he were suddenly overrun by raging hunger.
As he stepped toward the dais laid out with foodstuff, he glanced around at the tall Dark One. She stood there, calmly watching. The transparent small being stood aside, watching Gargaron with bewilderment and confusion.
Gargaron grabbed handfuls of meat, berries, fruit, stuffing them into his gob with a ravenous ferocity he had never known. He ate until not much were left, until there were but scattered scraps and morsels and then he fell to his knees and vomited, heaving up mighty lumps of half masticated meat and bread, followed by more water and bile and spit.
Then he turned over and slumped to his rump and sat there, arms loose at his side, his head hanging, drool spilling from his lips. He endured a time of reflection as he sat there. He remembered an old dream. Of he and Veleyal, his daughter. A famine had struck and she had wasted away to almost nothing. Her skin had become transparent. There were no food to give her. No water. All he had left were his life. He had prayed to the gods to take it from him and give it to his daughter. And they had granted him his wish. All he had to do were touch her, make some physical bond, to pass on his life force.
He emerged from his reverie… puzzled. He were not certain it had ever been a dream he’d experienced. It felt more like a thought that had occurred to him only now. For it were not Veleyal he imagined needed saving, but the small being.
More images came to him then. Of beings great and small, thousands of them, in the eons of time that had come before this moment, conducting similar selfless acts, giving over their life to some transparent ghostlike being.
Gargaron gazed up at the Dark One. He saw there were no faucet gushing water, no dais layered with platters of food. It were just the Dark One gazing down at him with her empty, white, soulless eyes. The salt plains stretched on about her, still brilliantly reflecting the blue sky and the mountainous white clouds on the horizon. And not only that, the colourless being now stood before him, searching his eyes as if for his guidance.
He thought of the words of his wife: You have work here yet. He looked across at the small being. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, took in a deep breath. The message has been with me for some time. I did not understand its relevance. His gazed switched from the small being to the Dark One. I am the last, he thought. And his eyes settled on the small transparent creature once more. And this be the first. The last of this great epoch gives his life up to the first of the next. I do not proclaim to know how or why Cloudfyre has come to this. Sadly this is as much as I comprehend.
From where he sat he reached out his hand, gesturing to the small one. She came forward. And stopped before his outstretched fingers. She watched him. And he heard her thoughts one last time: May you not be forgotten.
Then she reached out and lay her hand on his.
8
Above them, at that moment Cloudfyre were pulled at last from the grip of Melus and delivered into the hold of Gohor. The world rumbled, and shook and far away mountains came down and oceans sizzled and might
y waves hundreds of feet high crashed across barren and empty lands.
But the assault did not last long. For the process had begun months before. This were but the final tug. And like a petal ripped from its flower in a gale, the violent rent were quickly done… and Cloudfyre soon fell to silence.
9
Their hands and fingers became one, gelled, coalesced, merged. Gargaron felt his life begin to drain from him. For a while he watched it happen. He saw colours of energy, blue, red, green, washing down his arm and gushing into the being, like water flowing into a cracked, dry river bed after heavy rains. He saw her filling up with it all. And for a time he even saw himself, as if gazing back through her eyes.
He felt the vitality of youth, sheer optimism, strength, power, yearning, pride. He felt it all as he watched himself fade. Watched the colour go from his skin. Watched the light go from his remaining eye.
The small one saw green vines sprout from her toes and feet, vines with yellow pods, that opened and burst and filled the air with spores that caught the wind and drifted serenely away.
And with that, the tall Dark One, knowing her work were done, turned and walked away, leaving four hoof prints in the salt, and soon she were gone, unseen, swallowed up by the watery mirages of the plains.
HOORSK
DAWN OF REETH
100 YEARS LATER
THE great salt plains of Uyiga were no more. In a century waters had found their way across them, islands had risen, and it had become a peaceful shallow sea teeming with fishes and turtles. On one of the islands a stone formation that were once a giant from a small village called Hovel stood. And it were considered a sacred place; sentient souls from surrounding lands would travel to it and pay respects. For he were the God of birth, it were said, Gargarre were his name, a child who had come from the stars to bring life to a barren world. And any who would seek him out would receive blessings of long life and fertility.
And the small being he had impregnated, she had lived a long revered life but she were perished now, yet her people had flourished and remained custodians of these lands. And a revered people they, the original people of this world, the Firstwuns, who it were said had lived during the last days of Gargarre, and had greeted him when he had fallen from the stars.
DUMIINS
GREAT FALL 5473
10,000 YEARS LATER
THE oceans were filled with some of the most magnificent creatures Cloudfyre had ever known. The mighty Fraeysharks with their luminous mouths, so large, colonies of Seasprites lived within them. And the gargantuan Lesothaurs who could swallow time itself. And born into this watery world deep below the raging ocean’s surface, were a small mergirl from the seafloor city of Envili Deep. She were but a little creature. And were but a youngling, with all her long life before her. She swam about her days, carefree and joyful, playing with her friends, helping her Oldwuns with chores, and she did not know that one day she would be the last living thing on this world, before Gohor gave Cloudfyre back to Melus, when the Dark Ones would again rise, when the Death Bells would once more toll…
~ THE END ~
Want More Monsters?
If you enjoyed this tale and have a taste for more monsters and adventure then check out STRANGEWORLD: THE MORTIFERA. It is real five course meal of adventure, fantasy, and horror, with a tantalising mystery running through its core. And for more of the same, keep your eyes open for STRANGEWORLD: DAWN OF SHADOWS, coming out (hopefully) in 2017.
Also, be on the look out for EPHEMERYS. Another tale full of monsters and adventure, with a dystopian sci-fi back drop and a dose of romance. (Hopefully out before Christmas 2016.)
And for a quick dose of otherworldy beasties, check out my short story THE SHAPESHIFTERS.
Happy reading!
Review or not to review…
If you enjoyed Cloudfyre Falling and have a few moments to spare, please feel free to leave a short review at the site where you found this book. Reviews not only help new readers take a chance on these books but they also help an author gauge how his writing has been received out there in the wider world. Think of it like a round of applause at the end of a stage play. After so many months of silence, locked away tapping at a keyboard, it’s nice to hear some noise.
Thank you,
A. L. BROOKS
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