The Other of One: Book Two

by Brian G. Burke

  Finally, young Jimzin soared in. Over the frozen volcano he flew, and with his feet pulling behind him, he crashed through its summit, transforming it into a mound of dusty scree. More vengeful than they had ever known it to be, the rainstorm collected within the darkness until its rains, now pounding forcefully into the soils of Lythiann’s east, were gnawing into that unholy precipice so as to deposit rushing, muddy streams into every gaping crevice. Some Glogs strove to escape through those deluges of mud, but none succeeded. They were, instead, cocooned by its sludge, which only constricted the more they struggled. Wren and William hid from the falling debris as it crashed to the ground on every side. And still it was all so thrilling to behold; this last, pitiful stand of those filthy villains.

  Opening his lean jaws to bare a faint light intensifying within, Jimzin discharged, with a fervent blast, a torrent of raw flames over the Glogs. Had they only had their full potential to hand then, perhaps they might have been able to withstand the intensity; but now that they were partly frozen and half-poisoned, this dragon’s fire was too much to withstand. Having said that, one of the Glogs endured.

  Able to preserve just enough power to function, Mogh bounded at the crimson beast as he bulleted past him, and in one formidable move, he grappled Jimzin around the throat who then took to the clouds above.

  “Thérn!” William shouted, but his sword was gone; sailing into the unknown.

  It was quite the daring action on the Glog’s part, considering how hard Jimzin was flying. It’s a wonder Mogh didn’t have his arms torn from their sockets altogether. Then again, he was an adamant thug, and he was ready to combat the odds, no matter the consequences.

  Jimzin carried him up into the rainclouds and was forced to fly wildly, in the hope of shaking off his hijacker. Thank the stars, he was equipped with the armour of the acclaimed Dragon’s Union, as Mogh was pummelling down on his skull with the only section of bare blade that was spearing from his forearm. Jimzin would have stopped him, if ever he could; however, the Glog was on top of him and well out of both his sight and reach. And being the mighty sword of Mysun, it was making short work of his armour. This did not bode well for Jimzin.

  Thrashing his head from side to side, the dragon continued into the pinnacle of the storm, into where he could no longer be seen from below. Into the very belly of gloom they thundered, to where the streaks of lightning pulsated against that intimidating wall of whirling cloud which ingested them. Amid the cyclone of blustering rain, those haunting shadows had returned and were winging around them, in all directions; watching the clash whilst intermittently goading the filthy Glog to carry the day. And within this perilous realm of howling gusts, Jimzin fought to stay in control, but it was bettering him by the second, giving Mogh the advantage.

  He had almost penetrated the armour. In screaming out into the throat of that merciless storm, the Glog was recoiling his arm to dispense his killing blow. But in one stray streak of lightning, Thérn’s tip flashed in Jimzin’s eye, thereby baring the Glog’s position. The dragon pleated his enormous wings and, in a force so devastating, he boomed, head-on, towards that fissure of lightning. And, just as he’d hoped it would, the bolt shot through Thérn’s steel and blew the Glog to Kingdom come, volleying him into the air, until he was but a dwindling dot plummeting into the scrub of the far north. At last the Glogs, by blessings of the most timely, had all been conquered.

  When the chaos ended, all three dragons cantered across the sweeping snow to greet William and Wren. How happy they both were to see Jimzin again, not to mention his famous guardians, Turogoth and Varmanna. Wren found it fitting to impart a sundry of “thank yous” in return. Pleased and obliged by her civility towards their regal race, Turogoth moved in and, using his kingly tusks, stripped away the frayed wreckage that clasped her leg. The second she was free, Wren ran to her Bondite and leapt in with a huge hug. She hugged him so lovingly, it was like she never wanted to let him go.

  With tears of rapture, she cried over the rain as it blew in around them, “Oh, welcome back, Jimzin! How I’ve missed you. Your red scales and even your pig-headed moods. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you after all this time.”

  Jimzin caressed her cheek with his own, for he was happy to see her, too, even after what she said about his stubborn ways. A touching reunion for both. As you can tell, like Redmun, Jimzin had grown somewhat more easy-going and open since his discovery of fire.

  William had also given all three dragons many thanks for their help. Jimzin, however, assumed him to be a mite distraught. It then dawned on him that he must’ve felt lost without his weapon. With this in mind, the beast approached him, but with a curious smirk.

  William didn’t know what to expect from this. It was only when the dragon opened his claw did he realise. Shining with a pale-green shimmer, while the raindrops trickled along its fine edgings, was Thérn, and it was laying in the dragon’s palm just staring up at him. Jimzin, the magnificent creature that he was, must’ve snatched it from Mogh before he’d gotten cast into the storm.

  “My sword! You saved my sword, Jimzin. Thank you so, so much. I owe you for this. I really do!” said William, taking his blade back.

  Jimzin was more than happy to help, and wouldn’t hear of payment.

  Having just then been made aware of the shouts and hollers on the other side of the gate, Varmanna went to inspect.

  She sank her teeth into the crooked, iron gate, and wrenched it from its hinges. Icrick, ready for the worst, came waddling out with his eyes shut tight, swinging his fists in windmills, half-expecting to run into the middle of some battle. ‘Twas only when he slipped on a film of ice and hurt his bottom did he open his eyes to discover what truly happened, and he was so relieved. But the smell of dead Glog left much to be desired.

  “Jimzin?” gasped he, drenched to the skin, and holding out two handfuls of snow in his paws, then he asked, “Where did you come from? And this snow. Where did this come from? And the Glogs. What happened to them?”

  “The dragons are what happened.” Wren answered, ever hugging her Bondite. “They came and they froze, and they poisoned, and they incinerated all those foul gurriers straight back to hell where they belong.”

  “But, how ever did they find us?” asked Stell, who was also very puzzled, but happy at the same time.

  Wren went on to further explain, “When Jimzin left us, all that time ago. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on us from time to time. Whenever he got ‘round to it, and such. Lo and behold, he did. This very day. Can you even believe it?”

  Altogether amazed, Stell spoke to her dragon, “Well! I must admit, Jimzin! Your timing is impeccable, old boy. If ever there was a time we needed help it was now, and you answered our prayers tenfold. If we ever get out of this quest alive, I must prepare for you, and your kin, my famous roast mutton and plum sauce as my way of saying thanks. You deserve it. That, and a hundred times more.”

  William, who wished for a clearer understanding, was compelled to ask Wren another question.

  “So that’s what you two were discussing…at the lake…before he took off? You were asking him to watch out for us? But…you told me you’d never see him again.”

  “I know I did, William…” she regretfully said. “…I lied. I am so sorry. I felt bad about that. But it was for your own good. You seemed so worried about everything else that I decided to keep it from you. What kind of person would I be to add to your troubles by giving you false hope should he never return? You know what dragons can be like. Are you mad at me? For not being honest?”

  “NO!” William said with a fine grin. “Definitely not!”

  He was so ecstatic to discover that this white lie—this tiny secret—could very well have been the manner in which Wren had allegedly betrayed him. I’ll grant you, at first he wasn’t so sure, because it seemed like such long odds, and yet the more he pondered it, the more plausible it actually seemed. Especially after taking into account Redmun’s warnings abo
ut the mystic, Vahna Webble.

  It was all falling into place for him now.

  Vahna, that double-crossing wench. Her venomous counsel had corrupted him into believing that Wren’s betrayal would be worse. All the rumours surrounding her were true after all. About how she augmented the truth, and how she preyed upon the weak-minded for her own warped enjoyment. Very well, she might have been truthful, to a degree; but it was all so terribly embellished. Furthermore, this made William fairly sceptical about everything else she’d told him also. Perchance, had she over-exaggerated those particulars too? If so, was his own life actually in danger? Or was Wren truly as corrupt as she’d made her out to be? Deep in his heart and soul, he didn’t believe the latter to be so; yet the foremost remained a mystery, even now. As such, he decided to give Wren his unconditional trust from then on in. He’d gone through so much with her for him to simply forgo her companionship. And whilst she might well be Vahna’s daughter, he was only too happy to grant her his trust again. Particularly now that she was willing to confer with him, at some point along the way, her true past; to be frank and open with everything that had happened in her life.

  As for his nightmares and Vahna’s frightening, yet debatable, fortunes of his ruin—the only thing he could do now was wait, see, and with all the aspirations of his heart, hold on.

  When they’d allowed themselves their usual reprieve under the shelter of the roadside trees, and Wren had bandaged William’s hands for him, they readied once more for off. Strangely, no one mentioned the incident with the gates. Perhaps it was that they took it for something else; like the storm had done it. As for William, he just didn’t want to add more weight to their hopes by offering his own theories. What if he was wrong?

  By then, the weather had only worsened, so they couldn’t wait around for it to tail off.

  Wren had also asked Jimzin if he had any desires to remain with their party, but he couldn’t. But he did comfort her with the knowledge that he would always be around, someplace, looking out for her. He also said—in his own dragon fashion of nods and snorts, which only Wren could understand—that he would try to swoop by as often as he could to say hello. Anything more than that, he could not do, for Jimzin was a dragon, and dragons live much different lifestyles to the rest of us, and it would have been undue of Wren to ask him to deny his natural existence.

  So, upon a more affable farewell this time ‘round, Jimzin and his kin took to the air, where they petered out into the mounting squalls, leaving the group to face the long and lonely path of the Bohàr Pass—whereupon, by the way, Icrick just happened to spy the ‘tool’ which William had utilized for blocking up the stream of eels that time, and it made him feel awfully queasy.

  Along either side of the gate-keeper’s great, fat body lay two revolting-looking heads, sliced clean at the neck. Both were plugged into the waterways on either side of the path, leaving the eels with no place else to go, other than flood out across the road before them, squirming and wriggling in a messy puddle. They bypassed this, and made their way along that tight chasm way.

  On either side, the walls were all the more dense with those chains and corroded iron panes. Inane and hazardous though they appeared, they managed to endow decent shelter from the rain as it flurried down in gusts from the north. Soon, it came to the point where, similar to a spider’s nest, both crags were utterly swathed in those bizarre embellishments. More chains. Further panels. And now, even old wooden scaffolding, decayed and unkempt.

  Wren then asked, “What are all of these chains and things about? What’s the point in them, I mean? Do they serve any purpose at all? Or do they just hang there, forgotten? Old and useless?”

  Having dwelt within those very gorges many years ago, Icrick answered, “A lot of mining went on here, Wren, back in the Free Age. Before the wars. The meshes of chain and steel were used for protection so that no loose stones came tumbling down, walloping some poor chap on the noggin. Trenchin bestriding Dwarves lived high within these gorges, too. Labouring night and day in the hunt for iron ore; that of which they used for fabricating better tools and, similarly, sturdier contraptions. Alas, this was countless lifetimes ago and, now in this epoch of darkness, it is nothing more than a memory. It’s all so very, very old now. Derelict. I’d say these walls haven’t felt a pickaxe in a few hundred years!”

  Melancholy deflated him as he spoke, and Khrum appeared saddened, too. It was with a sort of fondness they were absorbing their surroundings, when that same fondness was stolen by a cold feeling. A sense of dread and despair.

  Seconds roved on to minutes, then minutes into hours. The bleak of that place lured them further into its innermost bowels. Even the scenery did not seem to alter from that same old spindly road of gnarled planks, old crags, in that same old fire-wrought shadow. Then, at long last, their path unfurled to a wide scene of tunnels and bridges, leading to and from the cliffs all around. Dozens of them. Hundreds, even. High up and down low, too. But their route was the Bohàr Pass, not any other, so they stuck to it.

  This rundown way of theirs would soon come to a dead end, thereby forcing them into another predicament; that of a lofty flat wall, bearing two magical-looking tunnels, with one set on top of the other within a large door-like frame of cobbles and shale. Other than backtracking, there was no other place to go. Neither Icrick nor Khrum knew what to do either, as this was new to them.

  Now was the ideal hour for their Artisan to offer up his skills, because, wouldn’t you know, they had one in their midst, only none of them actually knew it.

  Care to venture a guess who?

  - Chapter Fourteen -

  Gifts from his Servants

  For a long, old spell they did nothing apart from stare, while some went about studying the duo of hollows facing them. Relatively tight and impeccably rounded, the caves were just about wide enough to fit Stell, now that he was the tallest of their throng with the Dullahan gone. It still wasn’t going to be so easy even then, ‘specially with the rain still blowing in.

  Were it not for them sharing in a weird and odious awareness, the likes of which goaded them to beware these dingy shafts, they probably would have meandered forth without a fuss. And yet, this was not how the situation went for them, as these passageways were tremendously odd indeed, in the sense that, not only was one burrowed directly over the other with an ancient flight of stepping stones walking up to it on the left-hand side, but other forbidding qualities leached from them as well.

  Take the lower tunnel, for instance.

  It glittered long into its darkness, as though its very walls were inundated with scores of tiny, grain-sized crystals. The rim of this cave sparkled in the same manner; all frostbitten and blue. This might’ve appeared comely to some, yes; but beauty hardly ever rested in the Shadowlands anymore, so they could only question it. Neither could they see as far in as they would have liked, for the flaming furrow they’d previously ignited, together with those monstrous black candlesticks, had since scattered off to the more distant ends of the gorge, thereby providing them with improper light. They could spot one thing, however. Well, lots of things in fact. Every second or two, a tiny sapphire-toned pixie—with tall ears, beady, black eyes, leaf-like wings, and sharp features—would pop its head out, wave them inside, chuckle, and then hide again. There must have been a few dozen, easily. It was almost like they were up to something. Probably harmless antics, going by their size and nature. Then again, it could also have been something sinister, considering their haunt. It was difficult to tell, but not big enough a deal for them to stress about then and there.

  Far more frightful than the first tunnel was the one above. Not for any discernible reason, mind you, save for the fact that it was pitch-black and, on this basis, was impossible to say exactly how deep it went. Let alone the volume of buggy-eyed, slithery things which may very well be taking refuge within its damp corners, skulking in the blackness, waiting for some so-called plaything to steal past. And William would have made a sele
ct prize indeed. Whereas the likes of Khrum? Well…let’s just say he was terrorized by the thoughts of being turned into an amusing hand-puppet, or some other such invasive feature along those lines. Size mattered not to the malicious critters of the east, and if there was a victim nearby, big or little, darkly beasties would be there jump out and throttle them faster than they could cry ‘Yelp!’

  Haunting them further were the faint moanings which seldom slid from the mouth of this upper cave as the breeze sliced through its gaps. It injected further life to those devilish notions of theirs, as if those same dreamt-up creatures were now calling them in under the cover of darkness so that they could steer our heroes into some blind end. Yet be they reticent or not, they had no other option but to explore these mines.

  Much braver than they had ever given him credit to be, Icrick was the first to shuffle in and check the bottom one. To be expected, he was very scared, and trembling beyond his control, but undertaking this duty, voluntarily no less, remained a far sight more than anything he would have done six months prior. More interesting than that was how he managed to keep his cool, and was breathing quite steadily as a result. Remember the times when he could scarcely even mention a Gremlin without keeling over in a fit? I’m confident you agree that he has come a long way since then, our audacious little Icrick.

  In any event, just as he was leaning in, all the time being extra careful, one of his flies was suddenly lured into the gloom by one of those conniving little pixies. Having been very fond of his insect escorts to begin with, Icrick was about to let out a screech and snatch the fly back, but he had not even that tiny window of chance.

  It hadn’t buzzed two feet in, when the innocent little insect suddenly seized up in mid-flight, faded to a chilling shade of ice-blue, then spiralled to the deck where it chipped on the stone ground like glass. At this the pixie chortled, before swishing off into hiding again. The Grogoch couldn’t fathom it. And yet, it happened, and saddened him gravely. But that moment’s wonder outweighed all pity, including Icrick’s, so his mourning wasn’t about to deny him further analysis of this cave. He even did so with a countenance which uttered, “Let’s just see one of those nasty little faeries try that craíc with me!”