“Let me in!” a voice demanded. It was the deep voice of one of her personal guards.
She remained silent and sank further into the darkness of her covers. Maybe the guard would just leave.
The noise stopped and then seconds later something came splintering through.
She could hear the guard’s arm as it scraped past the splintered wood of the newly gashed hole to undo the lock.
There was a clicking sound and the door softly brushed open. “Where are you princess?” the guard’s low voice came. His footsteps trod heavily on the floor. “Lying down to sleep like a good girl? Your father has promised you will bed me tonight. He lost a game of cards in the keep.” The guard’s knee pressed into the cushion of the bed.
Lilya moved quickly to the opposite side.
This wasn’t the first time her father had wagered her body in a bet.
“This won’t take long!” The guard clamored with his large calloused hands until finding her wrists and pinning her against the bed.
Lilya shook violently and winced. The reek of beer consumed his breath as he huffed down upon her and clumsily touched her curves.
“Hold still!” he commanded before clutching both her wrists with one arm and pulling down her under garments with the other.
“No!” Lilya balked and wailed causing the guard to lose his grip on her wrists. She clawed his face with her nails and attempted to escape but he pinned her legs down with his own.
“The more you fight the longer this will take!” the guard bellowed as he repined her wrists. He ripped a hole in the front of his pants with his spare hand and approached her below.
“No!” Lilya screamed again before the guard’s hand silenced her mouth. She bit him and thrust her right leg out from beneath him, bashing it into his groin.
The guard curled over in pain as Lilya fled from her bed and down the hall outside her room.
“You wench!” the guard screamed in pain.
He would soon follow her, Lilya knew. The torches burning against the castle walls blurred as she ran past their lights. “Help!” she called out. But no-one replied. Had the whole castle lain down to sleep?
The stone walls curled as she dashed in a circle and then down a flight of stairs. One foot after another, she descended the stairwell as her mind raced, certain that at any moment the drunk would catch her.
Suddenly her bare feet caught in a stone groove and she went careening to the floor.
From where she had come, the guard drunkenly stumbled toward her. “Now I’m going to hurt you as well!” His lips slumped on his face in his stupor. “Stay still wench, so I can drag you back to your room!”
Not tonight, Lilya thought while clamoring back to her feet and down the torch lit hall once more.
With a pivot on the cold floor she darted into the main hall where cloth tapestries depicting Cush’s history rippled in a breeze against the walls. A knight in one of them seemed to look at her with a stern bravery on his face and a bone white sword clenched in his fists.
“If only you were here now,” she whispered beneath her breath as she searched the great hall for somewhere to hide. Behind father’s throne? No. Surely he’ll look there.
If she hid anywhere in the hall, she decided, eventually the drunken guard would discover her. Her heart thumped rapidly against her ribcage. There were swords hanging with a shield against the far wall.
Within seconds she reached them. She pulled on a sword and it came loose from its brace. She could barely support its weight in her hands.
“Ha…!” the guard mocked her as he exited the stairwell and saw her struggling to wield the weapon. “A little role-playing before the festivities young soldier?” His drooping smile revealed crooked rotting teeth. He licked them. The motion repulsed her. “Come to me, wench!”
Lilya held the sword in the guard’s direction while walking backwards toward the main hall’s massive outer doors. “Stay back,” she warned him.
He followed closely a few feet from her blade.
As her back met the wooden doors she swayed her sword toward the guard and pulled with all her strength on the heavy door behind her. It slowly gave way and she slipped from the torch lit hall into the pitch-black night.
Where to go? The scent of spring flora wafted through the air. She remembered the labyrinth to the castle’s side and darted for it.
“Not so fast, whore!” the guard’s voice startled her as his massive hand clutched her wrist, throwing her to the ground.
As she rose and began running, she thought, He will come. Her weapon braced close in the black night. And when he comes I will run this steel through him.
“Here, kitty kitty!” the guard mocked her.
The darkness was silent.
Something warm overcame her and a light in the distance rapidly came her way. It dove from the sky above and crushed into the ground, quaking the earth beneath her.
There was a faint red glow and the scales around its winged body rippled in the breeze. Muscles in the creature’s long face tensed as its pure nova white eyes pierced the guard’s own stare.
The guard backed toward the castle doors, quaking with fear, and stumbled into them. He fell to the ground. As he lifted his head and brushed his unkempt hair from his face he mumbled to himself. His hands shook and he looked frantically around.
The dragon walked forward, tossing dirt with its claws. “Leave her be,” the voice boomed forth from the dragon’s mouth.
“It speaks!” The guard found confidence through his intoxication and strode toward the dragon as he mocked it. He lifted a cragged stone from the earth close by and chucking it against the creature’s forehead. “All hail the great beast! Why don’t you just leave me and this pretty maiden alone and I won’t have my fellow guardsmen hunt you down and slay you.”
“You assume I’ll let you live.” Smoke fumed from the beast’s nose.
“This wench is my prize and I’m not leaving without her.” The disheveled guard retrieved the decorative sword from Lilya’s stunned hands and approached the scaly creature. “And besides…” He swung the sword in circles, passing it from hand to hand. “You assume I’ll let you live.”
“I warned you boy.” The dragon dislodged a paw from the ground, thrust it against his attacker, and plunged him amongst a plume of dust in the earth.
“Let… me… go…” howled the guard as he pushed with all his might against the dragon paw that pinned him. He reached for the sword that was just out of reach beside him, but was unable to free himself from the massive paw.
“This is your last chance. Go in the castle and leave me and this young lady alone.”
As the dragon lifted his paw the guard clamored for the sword and rose in a threatening stance. He charged and opened his mouth to scream but never gasped a breath.
An inferno of light and flame exploded forth from the dragon’s mouth, instantly dispensing the man’s clothing in a puff of ash. His skin boiled before charring against his bones and soon in the licking flames of the dragon’s breath all that was left of the soul that once was, were his blackened bones as they tumbled to the ground.
The fire sucked back into the mouth from where it had come. “You are safe now.” The dragon’s massive paws churned soil as he approached Lilya.
She fainted against a patch of lush grass.
With all the tenderness a dragon could muster the beast scooped the maiden into one of his front paws and stared at the soft beauty of her face. Slowly her head rolled to the side and rested in a groove of his palm. He would look after her tonight; at least until she awoke and could take care of herself once more.
With a gust of his wings he was airborne in the night sky. Earth below him disappeared in darkness as he soared above, destined for his lair in the mountainous cliffs outside Cush.
The Ark of Humanity, also by Scott J. Toney
God flooded the earth to annihilate humanity's sins. What if that sinful race didn't die when floodwaters covered t
hem but instead adapted to breathe water?
"I can see comparisons to Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy in some of the themes raised [in The Ark of Humanity]. As with Pullman's 'daemons', the relationship between the beings and their companions who transport them is particularly enjoyable, a relationship which also reminded me of the dragons in the film 'Avatar'. I can see this as a fantastic storyboard for a Pixar film.”
–HarperCollins
“And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end to all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch…
‘For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of flesh, you shall bring two of every living sort in the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you, to keep them alive.’
Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation…
‘For in seven days I will send rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.’
And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.”
The Book of Genesis
But those beings whose home was the waters lived, as did those who fled to the waters instead of away from them.
1
The Escaped Scroll
Between Sangfoul and Baneal
In the depths beneath the sea
Darkness and oceanic starlight shimmered around him as Evanshade pursued the youth he had been sent after through the ocean depths. His heart pulsed strongly in his chest and his thick tailfin beat heavily behind him. Where are you, boy? Then, with a glance, he saw movement on the dark horizon.
“Halt! Surrender and you will not be harmed!” he called out. It was a lie, but would the lie produce his prey? No, the boy continued away from him in the distance. With a pump of his tailfin Evanshade burst forward, hugging close to the ocean floor as fish swam up, curling around his body in startled fear. Now that the youth was in his sight he would close on him quickly.
He didn’t want to kill, but this boy carried secrets, secrets he had stolen from Sangfoul. They told of things that were soon to come and Evanshade could not let those secrets get out, not if he treasured his own life and wanted to keep it. He was a leader in Sanfoul’s forces and the dark lord would never let him survive if this information escaped.
Water curled around him.
With another pulse from his fin he neared the boy, lifting his trident upward and driving it down into the legged boy’s back, crushing his body to the sand below and pinning him there. Crack! The sound of the boy’s spine breaking beneath his trident’s force echoed through the depths.
“Ach…c…c…” The youth’s body convulsed as globules of blood spewed forth from where the trident pierced him.
Evanshade felt bile rising in his throat but swallowed it down. “It is how things must be,” he told the dying boy as the youth’s fingers scratched at the ocean floor below him. “And there is much more to come, not for you, but for the others. I cannot stop it. I am trapped in this as much as your people and the people of Meridia are destined for their fates.”
He drew a dagger from a whale-leather sheath on his side and drove it through the youth’s back and into his heart, taking what remained of life from him. Then he withdrew the dagger and brought it to the dead boy’s finger, pressing down against it and severing it from his hand. This will prove your death, he thought. How many lives are traded for me to live? How many lives am I worth?
Evanshade tucked the bloody finger in a pouch at his side, sheathed the dagger and, while holding the dead body firm under his fin’s weight, hefted his trident out of its back.
With a turn and a pulse of his fin Evanshade disappeared in the starlit darkness of the ocean once more.
*
From beneath the boy’s body a small kelp scroll was carried out by the currents, moving onward in a journey its messenger would never make.
Later the boy’s father, a leader of Baneal, would discover it and then his son. He would cry tears into the water as blood permeated around him.
2
Beginnings
Orion’s Birth
To many men, Orion's Birth was a place hushed; plagued within their thoughts, vanquished from their words. But Maanta was not just any man.
In truth he was not a man at all but rather something of a boy, and amongst his peers was observed as more strange than not. The most normal of his bizarre traits was the fact that his body had not agreed with him in the decision to lengthen and evolve into adulthood.
In the recent illuminations and fallings of the sun, his peers in the Meridian Hearth Sands grew many minnow lengths. Their chests broadened, muscles gained definition, and their vocal cords evolved into tones akin to that of walruses, as opposed to the high-pitched sounds of whale songs.
*
Maanta's pale, thin legs reflected dim crescents of sunlight as the rays pierced the surface and refracted through the northern current of Orion's Birth, giving a prismatic sheen to the multicolored fins on either side of his ankles. Warm curtains of light delicately played across Maanta's body before finding rest upon the surrounding sand; his chest a canvas for their wavering, his eyes of pure opal dreaming longingly of the births above.
His slim, white fingertips sifted meticulously through the soft earth as he gazed towards Orion's oceanic sky. Maanta's frail insecurities showed not in this majestic place. This was his place. This was his home.
I wonder what all of this means, Maanta thought as he breathed in the brisk midday passing currents.
All about Orion's Birth, bubbling plumes of silver, emerald, and other hues swam towards the sea births overhead. This transparent liquid was long feared by his race and forbidden from their sands.
In youth, before his mother's death, Maanta had been taught this belief. Amongst his mother’s kelp-melded cove, embedded along the East Shale Wall, she spoke of these things. The myth of the transparent fluid was something she had told him of. Her sweet scent of jelly flora still fresh upon his mind, her words simmering upon his tongue...
“Junge Fisch," she had said, "Many fathoms past whence aqua fabrics first roamed the world and mortals breathed their beginnings we existed of the transparent womb. Our elder ones traversed many wheres above the seas and partook much of those wheres’ fruits. Seas were not the places in which our ancestors dwelled. And so it was for many years that men ate northern meats and northern fruits and cherished the world of sand.
Then one day a dark being fell from beyond the northern land plummeting deep within north's soil, for in this sand, air, we breathed, and Gelu kept all where sands did meet the water's shore. Gelu had shunned the dark one and so gave him forth the ancestors to do with as they wished.
With coming tides came knowledge from the dark man, allowing our ancestors to grow north fields vaster than a chasm’s deepest deep and providing them with gems in such amounts that greed took their souls. And so it was, that man too
k in Gelu's drowned son and many shrines were erected in his glorification. The dark one was pleased and soot and shade disgraced the sand.
Gelu forsake our ancestors for this and so, as he had drowned the dark one he soon would drown our peoples. Telling only the pure of heart, Noa, of his plans Gelu forsook the realm of men commanding the currents which we breathe into our gills to devour all the northern sands giving birth to our new world.
Legend has it that the dark one still dwells somewhere beneath our depths shunned by our people for all time’s realm. Few of our people adapted to the ocean breath and it is said that if any man breathes north fluid again his soul shall cease to be.”
Maanta's mother had finished this particular haunting tale with a warning to never approach the deadly fluid which pulsed within the walls of Orion's Birth. Of course this was all the more reason for Maanta to seek out the fluid. Because of this very tale the people of the Meridian Hearth Sands dared not venture past the glowing runed walls. Maanta was the only one to have entered within this place for many tides and was shunned for doing so.
Water currents swam between his slim, pale back and the clay earth beneath him. Closing his eyes, Maanta submerged his fingertips within the cool clay, embracing the currents rippling beneath his body. When he closed his eyes he almost felt as if he were a Manta Ray and not just a Maanta boy, with his swiveling body braced close to the sand and kelp floor. He imagined he was a ray combing the depths for food and exploring the world, speaking to the fish as he pulsed along. He imagined the sunlight warming his closed eyelids to be molten crevices in the crust of the Meridian Hearth Sands, illuminating his trail to future seaweed fields and volcanic chasm delves.
A school of glimmering fish swam in unison across his long bluish gray fins, tickling them. The fish flowed with graceful ease until the horizon swallowed their path. While immersing his thoughts in the cast of imaginary lava webs and swaying vegetation, Maanta awoke. One lone ripple peacefully swept itself across his daydream, then another, and then another until every precious flowing droplet of his illusion shivered into a blur.