by A. Evermore
The wind gusted again, whipping her hair violently about her face. She looked up to the right, it would be a treacherous climb to find shelter, and perhaps there wasn’t any. There was only backwards where the weather was coming from and where there definitely wasn’t any shelter until she reached town again, or forwards where there might be shelter. The path rounded a corner ahead so she couldn’t see if there were any caves or dugouts.
‘Forwards, then,’ she sighed to the huddling raven though he gave no sign of agreement.
She carried on and rounded the bend but if anything the path became narrower and the cliffs both up and down sloped steeper. Issa stared up at the clouds; they clustered and billowed like boiling mud. She suddenly saw a black speck disappearing and then reappearing as it moved through the clouds. It grew larger and clearer as it dropped out of the grey.
A sea bird trapped in the storm, she thought, but it was odd because sea birds found shelter long before bad weather hit and, though they could be large, they were not that large. She took a few more paces and then squinted up again. The black speck looked like a long thin black line but as it came closer she could see flapping wings, like a gigantic bat coming towards her.
Her heart leapt in her chest and her legs trembled uncontrollably. Her body’s reaction to whatever headed her way made her more scared. The raven was cawing madly, a screaming banshee sound that scoured her ears. She tore her eyes away from the thing in the sky. The raven took off forwards along the path and she fell into a run behind him, stumbling over the rocks until her feet were bruised all over. Clearly the raven agreed. There was nowhere else to go but onwards. Issa prayed he knew a secret hiding place and was taking her there.
She rounded another corner and almost cried for joy. The path widened to the right and the cliff flattened out. A short steep climb up there was a low outcrop of rocks surrounded by stunted trees and set in a shallow dip facing away from the sea. The only protection she could see on otherwise bare cliffs. The raven was there first and she stumbled in after him, pulling gorse around them as best she could but her initial excitement faded for the coverage was sparse, the rocks stood low and the dip shallow, making it a poor hiding place.
The beat of massive wings came closer, like the slow beat of a huge heart deafening in the ears, billowing gusts of air and earth around her hiding place. Issa peered through a small gap in the branches, and stuffed a hand into her mouth before she could scream. The wings belonged to a monster, a great black Dragon like the ones she had heard about in Fairy tales, only this one was ugly and not majestic for it had many horns the colour and texture of onyx sticking out of its head, its wicked mouth was lined with hundreds of sharp grey teeth and all-black lidless eyes flashed in the dull light. Metallic greenish black scales gleamed slick and its breath was foul as a stagnant swamp gusting around her.
Upon its back sat an armoured rider with triangular eyes set deep within a tripartite helmet. Those eyes glowed green then dark blue and back again. The rider was twice the size of a tall man and upon its chest swung a brilliant red amulet glowing so brightly Issa could not look at it, but when she closed her eyes it was all she could see. Her heart thudded so hard she thought it would break her body apart. Was this what her mother had spoken of? She had never seen a Dread Dragon and its Dromoorai rider before.
‘Come out,’ the rider said, its voice was too deep and airy to be human, as though a gale blowing through a chimney, it raked through Issa as if she were a limp doll being dragged over rocks. Her legs tried to stand of their own accord, controlled by that commanding voice, but Issa clung to the rocks to stop her body obeying the command.
‘Come out, magic wielder,’ the voice came again.
Issa shivered, remembering the destruction she had wrought in the cavern and wondering if the Dromoorai had somehow sensed it. Was that magic she had used? Could she do it again? She tried to reason but the Dragon fear pushed all thoughts aside. A tremble in her belly shuddered all her organs and her brain spun up and down like a wheel rolling in her skull. There was nothing she could do to fight it and she learnt then that Dragon fear could only be endured.
The wings beat closer, sending earth and rocks and leaves whirling around her hideaway. The Dragon’s massive head snaked around from behind the rock and an all-black eye bigger than her head peered through the gorse. Tears fell down her face and her whole body shook.
There was rustling above her and then a thunderous sound of cracking rock. Issa clung to the gorse, thorns cutting deep into hands as the cliff fell away behind her. The Dragon’s massive claws pulled away the whole outcrop of rocks, as easily as if picking an apple from a tree, and she heard them crash down the cliff into the sea far below. Issa lay on her back stricken, staring up at the Dread Dragon and its rider, in the distance two more black shapes appeared out of the muddy clouds. But for all her fear a fury stirred within her chest. It was these monsters that killed Ma, destroyed my home!
‘You killed them all you bastard!’ She screamed up at the Dragon and its rider, her voice ragged and hoarse, the massive wings beating her hair about her face in a gale.
‘The Immortal Lord will have all magic wielders,’ the rider said, his voice was thunder rumbling through her shaking body. The Dragon reached one gigantic claw towards her but as it did so the raven shot forwards from the gorse, straight as an arrow, into the face of the rider. Sharp raven claws raked into the eyes of the Dromoorai. He fell back trying to swat the raven with a gauntleted fist whilst the other hand instinctively yanked back on the Dread Dragon’s reins.
Obeying its master the Dragon lurched sharply upwards. The rider grappled for the iron claymore on his back, struggling to fight the raven and control his mount; the burning red amulet swinging wildly upon his chest.
Seeing the fearless bird attack the massive beast broke through the Dragon fear. Issa was up and running before she knew what she was doing, adrenaline surging through her exhausted legs. She dared a glance behind; the Dromoorai was turning in her direction, the raven nowhere to be seen. She could not outrun it but she would not to be taken alive.
I will die here next to Ma. By my own hand if I must!
The path widened and then narrowed again as the cliff rose up once more to her right, leaving nowhere left to hide. The Dromoorai had regained control of his mount and was close behind. A black claw the size of a stake swooped above and she ducked. It missed her and raked the rock where she had been, cracking stone and leaving a jagged scar.
She ducked again and lunged forwards as the Dragon struck, missing her by inches as its whole body slammed into the cliff. The ground shuddered from the impact and the sound of crumbling rock filled her ears.
A glance back confirmed the path was gone, deliberately destroyed under the Dragon’s weight; there was no way back even if she tried. She ran as fast as one could along a narrow path, reasoning that the Dragon could not fly and try to catch her at the same time without battering its wings upon the jagged cliff or killing her, and it was clear they wanted her alive.
In a change of tactic the Dromoorai angled the Dread Dragon away from the cliff and surged ahead of her, turning swiftly so that she was running straight towards it. She skidded on the path, nearly losing her footing completely. The raven darted above her again, Issa cried out in relief, his claws scraping once more on the metal of the Dromoorai’s helmet.
Issa turned back but the path was gone, up was a sheer climb and down was a sheer drop. Her heart pounded and yet she felt more alive than ever she had before.
‘Haha!’ she cried, feeling at once hopeless and wild with life, ‘you will not take me alive! She licked her lips and glanced back at the Dromoorai fending off the raven. The raven was badly injured, one leg hung down limply and a wing was crooked, but he still fought valiantly, pecking and clawing his enemy as black feathers tumbled around him, buying her time. But time to do what?
The raven will not last much longer and after it has gone I will be the monster’s prisoner.
‘I will not be taken by them, Ma,’ she breathed. ‘There is no other way.’ She shook her head, staring at the ocean below. Her reason had run dry; there was no other option. Whatever magic she had used in the cave was gone now and she had no idea how to call it back or how to use it even if she could. If she leapt far enough out she would miss the rocks at the base of the cliff, at least she hoped. I might survive the fall. If not… wait for me Ma.
She looked from the crashing sea below to the horizon. The sky was still blue but tinged with the faintest peach as the day moved into early evening. The sea glittered like a path of gold where the sun shone upon it, a path leading her spirit onwards. She clutched her ragged shirt at her chest, her breath coming so fast she was giddy, and with every ounce of her will forced her legs to a leaping run and jumped.
Air rushed around her tugging at her clothes and hair and roaring in her ears. Her eyes flickered open and shut of their own accord and in the glimpses she saw the world spinning from sea to rock to sky and back again. There was a great boom in her ears, a surge of cold, and then the world shuddered and turned dark.
Issa felt no pain; there was only a vast nothingness, it was as if her whole being had been shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered across the empty stillness of the universe. An eternity passed in that dark nothingness and then the scattered parts of her began to unite, reaching out, like to like, until a glimmer of who she was began to form as pure consciousness in a place that was beyond time. All around her were tiny specks of light like stars in a night sky only fainter.
Voices echoed around her, sometimes sounding like her own voice and at other times unrecognisable. She couldn’t determine whether male or female and they seemed to come close and then fade away, as if she were dropping in and out of somebody else’s conversation. Purple lights flashed in the dark and she wondered if the voices belonged to them.
‘Heal the Rift before it is too late…’ a voice echoed.
‘All must be given, or all is lost,’ a deeper voice rolled over her like an ocean wave. She was floating on the words as they vibrated around her.
‘Love will set you free,’ the voice pulsated through her and then rolled back in an undertow. To and fro she moved on the tide of voices.
Far away there came a tearing noise, like fabric ripping, and it felt as if the universe contorted in upon itself. A void opened in the dark and blackness seeped through. The blackness was conscious, she could feel its mind but it was twisted with wrongness, eking hatred and vengeance. The faint stars around her were helplessly drawn into the blackness and sucked into the void where they sparked once and then went out, never to shine again. Each star that went out made the dark void grow as it fed upon the living light.
‘She will not survive!’ a voice cried in the distance.
‘Enter not the Void,’ another voice very close whispered.
The voices faded away and there was nothing but a whooshing noise like the sound of the sea rolling backwards and forwards upon a pebbled shore.
CHAPTER SIX
Last Of The Ancients
Yisufalni’s eyes flew open.
‘The prophecy is set in motion,’ she breathed, staring unseeing at the pastel swirls of blues and pinks and silvers that formed the sky in her world. ‘Zanufey has awoken, a Child of the Raven has been found.’ She looked down at her lap. Her slender six-fingered hands folded palms up atop her gossamer soft silver-white robe, a simple dress-like robe she had worn a long time ago when The Ancients walked Maioria. ‘But will she be the Raven Queen…?’
Yisufalni stood up on six-toed feet, her form moving easily in the semi-ethereal plane, one of the few things she enjoyed about the place. Here her form held less density, here gravity was a mild force and if she wanted she could float rather than walk, according to her will. She walked; preferring to be reminded that she still existed as a real solid person, even if she could not walk upon the earth of Maioria for more than an hour in any one day. Such was her curse.
She walked upon what could best be described as soft grass, but it was the palest silver green and more indistinct than distinct, and as solid as her own semi-ethereal form. Clouds not made of water moved over the grass, causing it to frequently disappear from view. Her long robe drifted about her as she walked though there was no wind, instead it moved with the currents of energy that flowed through the place where she was bound to exist.
For here was a place just beyond Maioria but intimately linked to it; where the unseen energies of the world flowed and seeped through all matter both dense and etheric. She had learnt long ago to read the ebb and flow of the energy. It was the last place where the energy still flowed pure and it was shrinking daily, an ever decreasing island of light in the growing darkness.
Here was where she clung to life, where she had walked for thousands of years, cursed by the Immortal Lord to never set foot upon Maioria again, but also never to die and never to see her kin again. It was an eternal damnation.
Yisufalni sighed heavily and held a shaking hand to her face. Her heart shuddered and the ground mirrored it, little ripples flowing through the grass around her. ‘I must be strong,’ she clenched her fist, ‘there is hope now.’ For if she, the last of The Ancients, wavered in her strength and purity then the island of light upon which she walked wavered also, and she would not give in to the dark, not after so long. Millennia in isolation had shaped her. Oh she had done the dark nights of the soul, some of those nights had lasted centuries. She was beyond that now.
‘There is hope,’ she repeated, energy like a fine golden silver mist swirling around her in response.
Cursed as she was to dwell in the energy realms surrounding Maioria, she was not without some power. Baelthrom could take everything else but he could not destroy the eternal living spirit within her. She had found a way to walk Maioria, but it involved taking on a form of much greater density and not only was it very hard to move around in it was a drain on her own energy.
After many attempts to take her own form to Maioria the form of a small human child was all she could ever create and, though she looked like any other child, she was so pale as to be almost albino with snow-white hair, pale translucent skin and big pale eyes.
But it served to keep her true identity hidden. If Baelthrom discovered she had a physical presence upon Maioria he would find her easily. He was skilled in hunting down and destroying each and every Ancient, and she would suffer a fate far worse than death, an oblivion of her being. When she was at her strongest she found she could walk upon the solid lands for an hour a day, though doing so every day soon became tiring but it could be done.
In time she seldom went to Maioria, preferring to sit and read-feel the energies that flowed through the ethereal planes. A day in Maioria was but an hour in her world. Whole years had passed in the physical world whilst she had sat here in meditation, silently reading the energies. They told her many things about Maioria, where the darkness moved, the general health of body and spirit of each race and of them all as a collective. Yisufalni was watching for the time when great change would come. She felt the cycles of the moons and the stars and the suns moving into alignment and knew the change was soon.
She walked over the silvery grass towards the tall trees. Their trunks were dark liquid gold, their bows moved to the flows of energies and their green and golden leaves swirled gently so that you could not tell where the leaves stopped and the energy flows started. Amongst the trees was a small pool of silver white water and she knelt down beside it as she had done countless times over millennia. This was water she had brought here long ago, water from a sacred spring, all that remained of her land before Baelthrom destroyed it.
Though water was not as dense as solid matter Yisufalni had been surprised that the water stayed here rather than dissipating. Perhaps it was its sacredness and purity that allowed it to remain, cupped lovingly by the roots of the trees, encircled by the shimmering grass, perhaps it was a gift from the Great Goddess. She be
lieved it was both.
The water reflected her ethereal face and as she remembered her features they became more solid in response to her memories. Matter was far more pliable in the ethereal planes. Even in this semi-solid state she began to make out familiar features. Pale pearlescent skin, long oval face and a slightly longer head than the humans and Elves had.
In her true form she was over six feet tall though she remembered clearly always being shorter than her friends. Friends long gone, she sighed, and pushed their faces away before the pain of loss could touch her. Her eyes were large and wide, larger than a human’s, slanted and gleaming luminous violet. Her ears were long and pointed upwards like an Elf’s only longer but not as thin. Her long straight hair was nearly white with the faintest hint of blue and held back in a silver circlet high upon her head, accentuating her aquiline features. The circlet was the other item she owned from her past, that and her robe.
She did not speak to the silver waters but thought to them. Sacred waters from my beloved home; Zanufey moves amongst us, I can feel her divine presence. The silver water rippled as if a wind had blown over it though there was no breeze.
‘Hope sparks a light within the growing darkness encompassing Maioria. If the loving Source of all Creation has chosen to move amongst us as the Goddess of the Night, then her Raven Queen will move amongst the peoples as one of them,’ she whispered aloud.
The waters stilled and Yisufalni looked upon Maioria, green islands set in a sparkling sapphire blue ocean. She smiled, tears blurring her vision as they always did whenever she looked upon the untainted lands of the world. But the tears did not fall and dried swiftly.
‘His shadow draws near,’ she breathed into the pool, her smile fading as reddish brown clouds of profane magic swirled over the islands. ‘The raven protects Zanufey’s own,’ she bent closer to the water, a hope filled horror knotting in her chest as she looked upon the three Dromoorai and their black Dread Dragons screaming for their prey; a young woman fleeing before the first.