by Marc Secchia
She prayed as never before.
In a voice of furious thunder that shook the space or tunnel they were in, the creature roared, “I am Shuzug the Debased, Majestic Lord of the Abyssal Plains, Masterful Fire-Lord of the Earthen Realms. Who dares trespass in my demesne?”
“I am Jesafion Jistari the White, Prince of the White Thunder Pegasus Clan, Holy Avenger of the Morning Star,” declared her companion, moving several steps ahead of her on the path. Zaranna eyeballed him speculatively. Really? “Stand aside, foul Shuzug, lest I smite thee with the light of a star’s glory.”
“You I do not know, o Prince. But your light I despise.”
“Light will always triumph over darkness, o pathetic lord of nothingness.”
Zara wanted to kick him. Smiting. Star-glory. Jesafion just could not resist trotting out these marvellously-constructed aphorisms. As if Shuzug the Debased, master of assorted bits and pieces of underworld nastiness, cared about a Pegasus’ feeble insults, or the eternal battle of light and dark. As far as she could tell, she stood about eye-level with what might be Shuzug’s big toe. All the noble windbag had achieved was to make the Fire-Lord noticeably more irritable. His fires roared at an even more almighty pitch than before, if that were possible.
“Any last wishes, mortals?” Shuzug thundered.
Jesafion shrugged. “Do your worst, fiend.”
Without further ado, Shuzug majestically and masterfully whipped out what appeared to be a flaming mallet, the head of which approximated the dimensions of a double-decker London bus, and whanged the Pegasus with a report like a derelict building being dynamited. Air and magic blasted her fifty feet backward. Commendably, Jesafion managed to throw up one of his bubble-shields. Less commendably, the shield shattered on impact.
The Pegasus quaked as though poleaxed, which was hardly surprising, since the rest of Zaranna’s world felt exactly the same way. “I didn’t expect that,” he muttered. His eyes rolled to white as his knees caved in. And that was Jesafion’s entire contribution to the debacle, clearly. His left cheek hit the Safeway with a sickening slap.
Shuzug swung the mallet back up onto his shoulder, somewhere up there in the almost-darkness. “Ha.”
How should she respond? She had the terror part down pat, but not a great deal more.
The demon-creature’s flame gave off a peculiar kind of light, as if a night was not fully dark, but ought to be. Now, he bent ponderously over Zaranna, eye-sockets and body burning with that baleful light. “And you?”
She spluttered something unintelligible.
“YOUR NAME?”
“Zara … Inglewood, your … ah, mighty Lordship?” Thankfully, this much emerged without her suffering the same fate as Jesafion.
The creature roared, “Your title? You must have titles?”
“None whatsoever, o … ah, dread – dreadful Fire-Lord. I have none. I’m not important, you see. Not like this idiot, that is, my companion. He does not know to respect your indubitable magnificence.”
“HA-HA-HA!” Shuzug snorted monstrously. “Think you to flatter me, little Plains Horse?”
“No, my Lord. You can flatten me with a breath. We agree on that.” The creature remained bent over her as if a person bent to inspect an ant. His stertorous, furnace-like breathing filled her world. Zaranna faltered, “I can’t imagine what this fool was thinking. Are all the Pegasi this arrogant? Surely, my Lord, such as these cannot be worthy of your attention? You must be awfully preoccupied down there in the Abyss … er –” Painting his fingernails? What did these creatures do for fun? “– annihilating your enemies and multiplying the terror of your awful presence to all quarters and suchlike, mighty Shuzug. You are most appallingly, enormously and intolerably evil, your great Lordship.”
And her command of handy adjectives and adverbs clearly required polishing. But the grovelling appeared to be having the desired effect.
“Ha,” said Shuzug, shrinking in size by a third or thereabouts. The roaring of his black flame diminished in proportion. “I like you, little horse-creature. Are you certain I should not crush your insignificant life?”
He liked … oh dear! Zaranna choked out, “My Lord, I am so exceedingly far beneath you, even the dust is mightier than I. Merely eject us by the nearest portal, which is in, ah …”
“Obscurant Vale,” supplied Shuzug.
“See how little I know? I don’t even know who rules that place,” she lamented.
“Worafion, the only Fire-Lord mighty enough to walk beneath the storms of Equinox,” Shuzug explained, sounding as if this were a desirable state. At her tiny, querying whinny, he added, “One who was once bound to the Abyss – but he has risen, may the Earthen Fires burn and rule over all, forever!”
His thundering almost bowled Zaranna over. She teetered on the path’s edge, before a sizzling prod of Shuzug’s mallet-handle righted her. Why? Why should a creature like this show the tiniest hint of mercy?
She was still wondering, when an irresistible force plucked up both her and Jesafion and hurled them through space. Zaranna popped through what felt like a membrane before she found herself skidding across a plain of loose scree, a storm of sparks flying from her hooves. Cold, desolate wind moaned around her. She whirled, just in time to see a disembodied, flaming black hand dump the Pegasus Prince on his nose at the base of the most enormous wall she had ever seen.
Shuzug’s voice growled, “Mercy? You mistake my intentions, Dreamer. I only wish for you to grow mighty, so that when I drag you to your eternal doom, the battle will be worthy of the name.”
With that, the portal slammed shut and vanished.
* * * *
Recently, there had been a rash of times in her life when a few juicy swear words would have expressed her feelings perfectly. This was a perfect example. His Unroyal Underworld Unsightliness had just written her name at the top of his hit-list. To cap it off, Jesafion looked more dead than alive and she was not just in another Vale, but apparently on another planet. Maybe.
Obscurant Vale could comfortably vie for a spot on Equinox’s Top Ten Hellish Locations, Zaranna decided, glancing about her with – well, not interest, exactly. Foreboding. Only a sense of foreboding could describe such a dark, blasted moonscape of jumbled rocks spreading from the faraway horizon up to this great granite wall. She could see not a single relieving scrap of green, apart from atop the slopes of two ridges where the wall appeared to end, similar to the basic geography of Sentalia Vale, she assumed. The wall was different. It looked to be half a mile tall and as solid as a mountain. Her head turned again. Whoever had built such a giant structure must have done so for a good reason, either to keep something in, or to keep something very dangerous out.
The pertinent question was, which side was the safe one?
She imitated Jesafion’s lofty tones. “Choose wisely, little filly, or stand and face the consequences.”
Zaranna’s eyes narrowed. There was something moving out there, a dust cloud boiling up toward the leaden sky, and it was approaching fast. The perspective made it tricky to judge, but her gut told her it moved as swiftly as Alex’s motorbike. Now she saw two more dust clouds further East.
Having cantered back to Jesafion’s side, she prodded him with her hoof. “Time to rise and shine, royal snoozer.”
His face was mashed against a boulder. Drool trickled from beneath his curled-up lip. The Prince accurately imitated a wrung-out dishrag.
Zaranna kicked him again. “Hey!”
Her father used to say, ‘Hay is what the horses eat, Zars. Manners, please.’ She was rapidly learning that manners were necessary in certain circumstances, but there were times when it seemed wise to skip etiquette and get straight to business, such as the business of kicking Jesafion where and how he deserved it. This was both efficient and deeply satisfying.
Night had passed. Judging by the light filtering through the low-hanging cloudbanks, the time might be several hours after dawn – or spots or flares or whatever. The wind swirl
ing at the wall’s base was nippy and capricious, tossing her mane about like a child trying to irritate an older sister. The clouds brooded overhead without apparently threatening rain; rather, they had a cloth-like quality, as though a vast grey and white sheet had been scrunched up and … keraack! Her ears twizzled to orient on the faraway thunder. Peculiar, the sensation of one’s ears moving independently atop one’s head, or a tail brushing one’s hindquarters. Two dust clouds moved slowly apart, gathering speed.
Her gut suggested it would take matters into its own writhing coils if Zaranna did not shake a hoof. So she did. “Jesafion, this isn’t funny.” She kicked him urgently.
Keraack! More faraway thunder.
Ha. About two miles distant, the sheer, unrelenting wall of closely-fitted grey granite blocks appeared darker, as if stained by damp, across a wide area. Did she spy the angular lines of a stairway zigzagging upward on the nearer side of the damp patch?
One of those dust clouds was racing toward her. Three more clouds had appeared out there, their lowest points abutting the ground surrounded by flying flecks, like a picture she had once seen of a tornado picking up debris and hurling it about. Further back, the horizon was starting to turn a nasty black-green colour. She firmly told her gut to behave, but a hot flush of angst rolled up her body.
“Jess! Jessie! Prince of Moronic –”
Calling him names wouldn’t help. Lowering her head, Zaranna sank her teeth into his right ear. Jesafion groaned. Good. She chewed his flesh like a dog mauling a rat.
“Ugh … Earthen Fires! You wretched little carnivore!”
“Honestly, you should just zip that flapping lip of yours rather than try to insult anyone else,” Zaranna snapped. “Up. Quick-sticks.”
He groaned again, trying to pull his legs underneath him. “What … my head. Did I get run over by Storm-Pegasi?”
“No, some underworld mega-thug. But you will be if you don’t hurry.”
“Where are we?” Jesafion checked the ground in alarm. Pebbles were starting to bounce around his hooves.
“About to get trampled by a bunch of thunder-producing monsters, and there’s a storm coming,” Zaranna cried, shoving him with her nose. “Move it. This way.”
“Uh … Shuzug … what happened?”
They stumbled into a run along the loose scree, Jesafion weaving along with a series of ungainly lurches. The dust cloud was roaring toward them with thunder of its own making. Keraack! Two dust-clouds head-butted each other at perhaps a mile and a half’s distance. The impact carried to the horses as a sharp concussion, stabbing their ears painfully. This seemed to tweak the Pegasus Prince’s enthusiasm. He charged past Zaranna at a healthy clip.
“After you foolishly insulted him and Shuzug vented his spleen upon you from a dizzy height,” Zaranna shouted after him, struggling to catch up, “I charmed him into letting us go.”
“You did what?”
“Charmed him. You know, feminine wiles, delicate negotiations … will you just shut up and run?”
Bulging of eye, he glared over his shoulder. “You feckless, imbecilic –”
She roared over the rising rumble, “Jesafion, you idiot! Which part of ‘run for your life’ do you not understand? RUN!”
The incoming creature hurtled from their flank at a phenomenal speed, apparently bending its course slightly to aim more squarely at the fleeing equines. Zaranna saw hooves thrashing up boulders and tearing up the earth; the entire front third of the beast appeared to be a crimson, armour plated head, as best she could tell. A horse-cross-millipede? She was not about to pause to take notes. It reminded her sharply of the locomotive which had crushed their car and her legs inside of it; the creature was as long as a train, but considerably taller and broader, especially in the region of that massively armoured skull. Hundreds of thrashing hooves kicked up the clouds of dust she had seen, moving so rapidly that the friction generated an electrical charge, sparking lightning from the storm rising above it.
“I’ve read about those!” Jesafion shrilled over the din, unable to keep silent for longer than a few seconds. He must miss his voice terribly, meantime. “They’re called Unbreakable Equipedes, if I remember rightly. Creatures of the Beyond. Supposed to be extinct.”
Zaranna just panted and tried to concentrate on not tangling up her hooves on the juddering ground. Her fine companion could classify the creatures which intended to pancake them in his own time, thank you very much. And she knew exactly who would be properly extinct if she did not shift gears, fast. Stretching her legs still further, she galloped with all of her might, fairly flying across the ground. Jesafion was actually flying. Fine for him. The creature’s thundering and the wind whistling over its armoured carapace drowned out all else. It bore down relentlessly.
No! Not fast enough … she had to find more … the thing loomed in the corner of her eye, blurring toward her …
“Away!” cried Jesafion.
Exactly as in her dream of Misty Dawn on Noordhoek beach, Zaranna felt her hooves leaving the ground, buoyed up on a heaving mass of nothing firmer than magical butterflies. She laughed hysterically as the Pegasus whisked her into the sky. The Unbreakable Equipede did not pause or blink an eye – wherever its eyes were – as it charged onward, and struck the wall with a deafening KRAAAACK!! Jesafion and Zaranna both cried out, even though she realised he had dampened the sound somehow. Otherwise, it would have burst their eardrums. Nevertheless, they tumbled away in a storm-wash of displaced air. The Pegasus’ horn-magic sparked and hissed, saving them from a nasty impact with the wall, before easing Zaranna down again.
Landing, she glanced over her shoulder. The Equipede, indeed unbroken, was backing up slowly, eyeballing them with a single dark eye set back in its head, aft of perhaps a hundred feet of armour. No wonder it could survive that kind of impact. It had to have the thickest skull in the universe. And a temper to match its headache, judging by the hatred it communicated.
“Gallop!” Jesafion screeched, still charging along on his personal magic carpet.
Ladies first? None of that. Or could his magic not levitate her for long? Her hooves clattered across the rocks. That stairway was in clear sight, just a quarter-mile away now. The Unbreakable Equipede rumbled forward, accelerating with the kind of speed and power that would have made Alex squirm in rapture. Could she … butterfly … herself?
Not easily. Not when that thing was breathing down her neck, already just a stone’s throw behind and closing in like a cheetah overhauling a buck. Spotting a low ridge, Zaranna swerved and made a headlong dive. All she heard was Jesafion’s scream and then a multitude of legs churned overhead, shaking and thumping and cracking the small knoll protecting her; she huddled into the hollow at its base and wished the carmine-and-yellow butterflies would spirit her away. Instead, while rocks and sand avalanched over her prone form, she found herself protected inside a small bubble of fluttering wings and butterfly-kisses. Huh?
The monster charged off into the distance, unheeding.
After a moment, Zaranna rolled to her feet, sheeting rocks and dust off her withers. She shook herself like a wet dog, raising clouds of dust. “Funky.”
The Prince had pulled up just ahead, looking startled and relieved. “Alright?” he called.
“Fine and dandy,” she called back. Unbreakable Thunder-Head slowed, clearly confused by the lack of petrified prey ahead. Then, spying a long-lost friend a few miles off, it charged away again, probably to greet it with a head-on collision at high speed.
Keraack! More thunder out there on the barren plain. Maybe she would just leave the Unbreakable Equipedes to their prodigious headache-producing fun. She had a stairway to climb before that storm rolled in.
* * * *
Zaranna tip-tapped up the narrow stone steps, keeping half an eye on the approaching storm-front, but in truth much more concerned with the fact that the stairway was barely wide enough for one horse to negotiate, and lacked even the most basic handrail. Fine for those with
wings. She was the one ascending a near-vertical wall, slightly curved as she looked along it, she noticed, making her imagine a dam. The steps crumbled beneath her hooves. As she climbed, the plain spread out before her, but there was no improvement to the bleakness, just a better view of the Equipedes sporting below, assaulting each other head-on with cracks of armoured skulls audible from miles away.
Out over the wasteland, the green-streaked black cloud-horses billowed ominously, seeming to bully their way through the layer of overcast. Save in her dreams, she had never seen clouds move like that, foaming and frothing over each other like storm waves assaulting Cape Town’s seafront. Jesafion cried at her to hurry.
Wind tugged at her legs, making the footing uncertain. Zaranna wobbled, caught herself, negotiated the switchback turn and bounded up the next set of steps, taking them seven at a time. Higher. Faster. Lungs burning. Turn in the narrow space provided. Up again, slowly scaling that vast curve of wall, her mane and forelock swishing around her eyes now, the storm sweeping in with terrible, inexorable speed. Clearly, the wall’s purpose was twofold protection.
She was getting there! She’d make it! Jesafion swirled above her, making heavy weather of flying in the rising wind. She yelled, “Go! Meet you up top!”
Stubbornly, he waited for her. Waiting to see she was safe. Noble idiocy in the best Jesafion tradition, which she did appreciate. Slipping, skinning her knees, Zaranna raced up the last stretch. The first of the dark green cloud-horses raced overhead. She and Jesafion galloped across the flat paving stones atop the wall.
“Jump … other side!” panted the Pegasus. “Water.”
Water? From a half-mile up? She might as well land on concrete. Yet they had no choice, no time to think, for the first real blast of wind swatted Zaranna in the hindquarters, causing her to slew across the stones. Her hooves scrabbled for grip but she charged on regardless, feeling like a beginner ice-skater trying to keep from crashing. The massive barrier seemed endlessly wide, a hopeless gallop to the far side, but the shrieking wind definitely helped, lifting and shovelling her along mercilessly. She realised she could not have stopped had she wanted to. Gathering herself mid-stride, Zaranna leaped over the low parapet at the far edge and plummeted into space.