Starfall (The Fables of Chaos Book 1)

by Jackson Simiana

  Tomas weaved between the timber and wattle and daub houses around the centre of Brittlepeak, dodging between fleeing, confused people in nightgowns, boots, and winter coats.

  The dark shapes taking shape looked like they were stalking, sticking behind trees and within the shadows. Clawed appendages scraped against the tree trunks and walls.

  Tomas barely caught a glimpse of them as they rushed from place to place, faster than a horse, all the while releasing ear-splitting screams and wretches.

  They’re coming again, Tomas realised in a panic, pushing through the exhaustion weighing him down, determined to do what he needed to do.

  He had not seen things like these before. They weren’t like the hulking beasts that had torn through Gharland’s company, nor like the ghouls they had seen at the Repository.

  These were something else entirely. Spindly, clittering, and draped in shadow.

  Thunder cracked up ahead through the mist, yet no lightning was flashing. The winds were gusting yet again.

  And then came the rains.

  Fist-sized clumps of ice and azure fire began to fall from the sky, slicing lines through the clouds of mist before making an impact.

  Frozen fire.

  It took Tomas by surprise. One of the balls of ice slammed into the snow before him; the ice simply shattered like glass, yet the blue flames raged on, melting the snow around it as if fuelled by an invisible oil.

  More of the strange hailstones began to fall, punching holes in the roofs of cottages and farmhouses before engulfing the structures in raging azure fires.

  Tomas held his hands up to protect his head from the falling ice; they slammed into carts, walls, fences and eventually even people with ferocious booms.

  The blue flames were hotter than any normal fire and seemed to suck the air in around them as they came alive, creating maelstroms of spinning snow dust.

  Townsfolk were screaming and running, trying to get away from the danger all around them. Some raced for cover but were snatched and dragged off by unseen claws of shadow.

  Tomas ran down the street towards his house at the edge of town- the same street he had attempted to escape his father from all those years ago.

  Snow steamed and crackled around him. A ball of flaming ice smacked into Tomas’s back, knocking him to his knees. Despite the pain and sizzling clothes, he hastily got back up, only a few steps away from his front door.

  A patch of Tomas’s clothing had caught alight. Upon realising, he patted it down to try and douse the flames, before resorting to using handfuls of snow.

  The flames fizzed as they were extinguished, having burned through a section of his tunic, and leaving parts of his skin red and raw.

  He pressed on; he was too close to quit now.

  Tomas did not even wait to knock; he simply shoulder-charged the front door to his father’s house. Thankfully, it had not been locked or bolted and was flung open with a loud crash.

  Tomas’s father, Evin, leapt up from his armchair in a rage. “What the fuck do you think you are doing, boy?”

  No time to explain. Tomas ignored his father and ran for his old bedroom in the back, key in hand.

  His father, having then heard the screams and commotion coming from outside, stumbled to the door and looked out in horror as the sky continued pummelling the town with stunning blue hailstones of ice and fire.

  “What in the æther…?!”

  Tomas dove to his knees, sliding towards his raggedy bed. He stuck his hands down beneath the cot, shuffling through an assortment of dusty junk and forgotten items to try to find what he was looking for.

  “Come on, where are you?” he whispered to himself.

  “Boy?! What the fuck have you done to my door?” Evin shouted, still in an angry tone.

  Even with the chaos around them, Tomas’s father seemed more concerned with the door that Tomas had charged through. Perhaps it was fear, disbelief… or just resorting back to what he knew best when Tomas was around.

  Tomas ignored him, continuing to search in the space beneath his cot, with little luck.

  “Fuck this,” Tomas said in a panic, grabbing the edge of the bed and flipping it up onto its side.

  His eyes searched the mess of old stuff, desperately trying to find the right item. Cobwebs, mouldy books, old boots, boxes, baskets, and dust. Lots of dust.

  Then, he spotted it.

  Tomas saw the black box he had purchased many years earlier from an out-of-town trader who had once visited, selling an assortment of odd trinkets and items.

  Tomas had hidden it beneath his bed for safe keeping. He knew that if ever the day came when he needed protection again, it would always be there for him. Only he had the key.

  Tomas took the box out from amongst the junk, crouched down and inserted the key that hung from his neck into the inbuilt lock.

  With a satisfying click, the key slotted in perfectly. He twisted it and the lid popped open.

  Sitting in the same position as he had placed it all those years ago, Tomas’s eyes studied his father’s old cleaver. The curved, rectangular blade was rusted yet certainly still sharp enough to cause harm. The handle had an old, brown stain permanently painted onto it from when it had been last used.

  The memories flashed into Tomas’s head as he took the cleaver from the box.

  The phantom, Evin, dragging Tomas out of bed. The lambs screaming. The cleaver, his only hope of freedom. Gripping that handle like his life depended on it, stabbing his father in the leg, and fleeing into the bitter night.

  Tomas took a deep breath in as he felt his heart palpitate, recalling the guarantee he had made himself as a child- that if his father ever attacked him again, he would defend himself and would have the means to do so.

  Even if it meant hurting his father again.

  It filled Tomas with a sense of strength, as if the butcher’s cleaver had somehow stored the innocence he had long forgotten he once had, holding on to it over all those years so that it could one day be restored.

  Evin barged towards Tomas, knocking him back into the moment with a sudden rush of adrenaline.

  “Boy, you will answer me. What is going on? What are you doin’?!” Evin shouted, charging at the crouching Tomas.

  Tomas shot up, cleaver in hand, looking his father straight in his angry, grey eyes- something he had never been brave enough to try before. It was immediately intimidating, like facing off against a starving bear.

  Yet Tomas maintained the eye contact. He gripped the cleaver behind his back out of sight.

  Evin stopped an inch shy of Tomas’s face, stinking of flat ale and sweat-stained clothes.

  “The town is under attack,” Tomas told him calmly.

  “No shit, boy!”

  “I am leaving, and you should too if you want to live.”

  Evin shook his head in dismay. “You truly are pathetic, running away once again.”

  Tomas went to walk around his father, but Evin pushed him back.

  “Did you bring this upon us? You did, didn’t you?” Evin spat, his drunken words slurred over the distant screams.

  “I’m leaving, and I’m never coming back. You can do what you like,” Tomas said sternly. He felt his hand shaking at his rear, trying his best to keep his composure.

  It was not the response his father had expected. Evin grimaced in confusion, but before he could reply, Tomas tried stepping around his father.

  It caught Evin off-balance, causing him to stumble and nearly fall. Tomas made for the front door to their house in a desperate rush.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, boy? Don’t you dare leave me here.”

  But Tomas had no other words he wanted, or needed, to say. He turned his back to his father for the last time ever and stepped out the door of the house he had once grown up in, feeling no need to whisper any sort of farewell to it.

  “Get back here, now!” Evin shouted.

  Tomas breathed in, feeling a certain weight lifted from his should
ers and letting the cool mountain air fill his chest and relax his twisted stomach, even for a moment.

  “Don’t you dare leave your father here! Coward!”

  Tomas did not let the words phase him. He focused his attention on the present danger before him. The air was frigid, making the hairs on his arms stand. The village was still in a state of pandemonium as the creatures in the night revealed their twisted forms from the shadows.

  “Tomas!” a soft, familiar voice called out from amongst the snowstorm.

  It was Lynn. She raced towards him with Old Bertha’s arm over her shoulder, trying her hardest, yet struggling, to keep the elderly woman at a speedy pace. In her other shaky hand, she wielded her dagger.

  “Lynn? What are you doing? I told you to stay-”

  “We need to leave, now!”

  A wall from the neighbouring house exploded as one of the monstrous creatures leapt out with something strange hanging out of its gaping mouth.

  Tomas, Lynn, and Old Bertha were knocked over into the snow by the force of broken wood and materials striking them.

  Tomas popped back up after realising that the thing he had seen was a child in the creature’s snapping mouth.

  It was one of Tomas’s old neighbours. A small, blonde boy named Ren. No older than four years.

  The child’s gargled, bloody screams rang in his ears as the creature bounded for the forest edge with immense speed.

  The snows beneath it ran red.

  Tomas did not see a clear image of the shadowed creature; it was incredibly fast. But what he did see were enough to rattle him.

  Many spindly legs, like a spider, with insect-like, segmented bodies. Multiple, finger-like appendages clicked and clattered around its vicious mouth. Within seconds it had vanished into the woods.

  Some of the other creatures leapt onto people, large enough to topple them over, before dragging them under houses and into the shadows. They seemed drawn to the dark.

  “Tomas!” Lynn shouted. “We must leave, at once, or we are going to die here!”

  The urgency in her voice helped Tomas to focus and think. She was right- they had little time before the creatures in the night would pick them off as well.

  Tomas drew his sword, looking for an exit as Old Bertha struggled to catch her breath after running. He scoured the area, searching, hoping, begging for an escape.

  The river.

  Tomas pointed towards the frozen river that ran through town, down an embankment by his old house.

  “The river, that’s our escape,” Tomas said.

  “You’re sure?” Lynn questioned.

  “The mist, it’s frozen the water. We can cross it, follow it downstream and out of the Fist.”

  Lynn looked towards the dark gulley, lined with pine trees, bushes and scrub. “Shouldn’t we-”

  “Lynn, you said it yourself. We are going to die. Do you have any better ideas?”

  Lynn took a moment, realising they had suddenly switched roles from earlier that night.

  Another one of the spider-like monsters jumped from the roof of a house with an awful shriek, smashing through the door of another house that a group of people were desperately trying to barricade.

  Lynn considered for a moment before nodding, her floppy tricorn hat covering half her face as she gave Tomas a look as if pleading with him to be right.

  A guttural scream suddenly came from above.

  Tomas jumped in shock, glancing up to see one of the hideous, spider-like creatures on the roof of his old house, its many legs punching holes through the thatch roof, staring back down at them with dozens of small, black eyes.

  The creature’s nubbed facial appendages flared out as it screeched, revealing rows of tiny teeth and a black void that was its mouth.

  “Run!” Tomas screamed.

  Tomas and Lynn each took one of Old Bertha’s arms over their shoulders and bolted for the embankment of the ravine. They were struggling to carry her weight, continuously tripping over themselves in the snow.

  The monster atop the roof gave chase, scaling down from the rooftop, its pincers and teeth snapping and chattering constantly and uncontrollably, like it was anticipating its meal to come. Its ridged carapace scraped against the wooden wall.

  “Hurry!” Lynn shouted, turning back to see the creature closing in on them.

  They were only a few metres ahead, but the spider-like monster was fast. It leapt into the air, its segmented legs flailing about.

  The trio had come to the edge of the embankment as the monster pounced for them. Seeing it as his only option to save the women, Tomas pushed Lynn and Old Bertha down into the ravine. They screamed as they slid down the muddy, snowy steep embankment, roughly being flung about and eventually coming to a stop onto the frozen river.

  The fall was dangerous, Tomas knew. But he believed they stood more of a chance of surviving than by facing the incoming attack.

  In one swift move after pushing the two women, Tomas spun around with his cleaver drawn to face the beast. He roared as he swung the cleaver through the air to where he thought the spider was coming from.

  He had guessed correctly. The cleaver sliced through the air as he blindly spun before striking into the side of the leaping creature’s head.

  It was not enough to stop it in its tracks, however. The cleaver stabbed into the spider’s solid carapace but did nothing against the inertia. The spider, having already vaulted at Tomas, crashed into him head-on.

  Tomas was thrown backwards into the ravine at great speed with the spider’s entire body on top of his. He clutched onto the hard exoskeleton with his free hand while continuing to smash the cleaver into the monster’s face.

  Tomas’s world turned upside down as he was thrown into open air.

  The spider screeched as black blood sprayed from its wounds, the cleaver puncturing its many eyes and splattering the shell into pieces.

  Within a second, Tomas was hurled through the air and slammed into the frozen river at the bottom of the ravine while clutching on to the giant spider. The impact hurt more than the initial strike from the spider; the ice was frozen solid, and his bones rattled with a dull, aching pain from the jolt of coming to a sudden, violent stop.

  His chest tightened; it hurt to take a breath. He felt warm blood soaking into his hair on the back of his head where he had smacked into the ice.

  The spider to his side spasmed as it lay bleeding and dying. The upper portion of its body had been completely eviscerated.

  “Tomas!” Lynn screamed from somewhere close by.

  Everything spun for a moment as he sat up, coughing.

  The far-off screams from town were blood-curdling and harrowing.

  A motionless body lay half-buried in the snow at the side of frozen ravine by the embankment. An elderly woman, eyes wide and staring blankly into nothingness.

  It was Old Bertha, her neck hideously twisted from the fall.

  Oh, no.

  Tomas grabbed his bruised forehead, retching in pain as Lynn limped over to him.

  “Is… is she…” Tomas began, strangled with dismay. His stomach spasmed and bloodied vomit gushed up his throat and out his quivering mouth.

  Lynn shielded his face from the horrific view. “We have to keep going.”

  “What… what have I done?”

  “Look at me, Tomas” Lynn demanded, grabbing his cheeks with both hands.

  Tomas rubbed his swelling eyes, trying to wipe away the blurriness. He focused on Lynn’s soft features and bright, determined eyes as she peered through his façade.

  “You did nothing wrong, Tomas. You tried to save us. It was the fall that killed her. I’m sorry, but we need to leave, right now. We cannot stay any longer.”

  Before Tomas could even respond, more of the chilling shrieks and wretches came from up the ravine. Tomas and Lynn got to their feet in a panic, turning to see three more of the huge, spider-like creatures up the frozen ravine barrelling across the ice towards them.

  Toma
s collapsed back down, hurling up more blood, the cleaver falling from his shaking hand.

  “I can’t go on any longer,” he cried.

  Lynn, wide-eyed, tried pulling him by the hand. “Tomas, get up!”

  He shook his head, broken and exhausted, watching the spiders scuttering closer and closer.

  “Leave… go,” he said, trying to push her away. His mind felt as though it was fading. “You have the leave, go, now.”

  Tomas tried pushing Lynn with what little strength he had left, but she refused to move.

  “Get up, you fool!”

  “I can’t. You have to leave me.” He wiped the blood from his lips, staggering down into the snow.

  “I won’t leave you!”

  Tomas spat up another mouthful of chunky blood, falling into the snow, giving in to complete exhaustion. Lynn screamed for him to get up as the trio of ravenous spiders closed the distance.

  “Tomas!” she cried, but he was barely hanging on to her own consciousness.

  Lynn paused, her eyes darting between her crippled companion and the incoming monsters. There was no way they could fight off all three at once, even if Tomas weren’t so badly injured. They would have been torn apart within moments of engaging.

  They were going to fall prey to the hideous creatures.

  Lynn took a single moment to make her decision.

  Run, or die.

  Run… or die.

  Lynn tore the vial of Blight from the chain around her neck as the three monstrous spiders scurried closer, screeching, and snapping their mandibles, anticipating for their imminent feast.

  Lynn took the vial to her lips, shutting her eyes firmly as she poured a few drops of the black, viscous liquid into her mouth and swallowed with a grimace.

  Tomas noticed what she was doing and felt a sudden blast of panic. “What…what are you doing, Lynn?” Tomas shouted. “Don’t!”

  He recalled the stories he had heard growing up of the black liquid that Magisters drank. Poisonous, disease-inducing, demon’s blood. Was any of it true?

  He remembered the explanation Lynn had given him when they were locked in the cell, how some Magisters believed that drinking Blight could bestow some people with extraordinary powers… but at a great cost.