Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

by A. L. Brooks

  ‘Aye,’ Locke replied, ‘still strapped to Zebra.’

  Hawkmoth, satisfied, took a quick swig of Gemtian, one of Skitecrow’s old brews. Its effects were immediate. His mind were suddenly clear, his pain swept aside, he felt an acute buzz surge through him. Without thinking, he pushed his way back to the battlefront and unleashed Lancsh upon the coming Bewitched. Screeching walls of flame filled the stairwell, near igniting Gargaron and Melai. The giant stumbled backwards, his arm over his face and Melai swooped away.

  Hawkmoth were not done though. Just as one wall of flame roared down stairwell, incinerating a hundred Bewitched, he called on Lancsh to deliver another.

  Gargaron threw himself up the stairs taking Locke and Grimah with him just as the second inferno ignited the stairwell behind him; the heat were so intense it could be felt far up the stairs where Melai had retreated. Even Hawkmoth took evasive action in the end, bounding up the steps away from the flames, his beard singed and smoking.

  He reached the others, panting, wide of eye, his muscles still buzzing from the Gemtian tonic.

  ‘Be you well?’ Melai asked him.

  He looked at her, blinking, as if not comprehending. He did not answer her at any rate. He simply turned, and taking from his robe’s pocket a handful of Duska (relieved from Skitecrow’s office), he pitched them all at once down the stairwell.

  Down there somewhere, hordes of Bewitched could be heard pouring in through the lower floor doorway. And piling up the stairway, plasteec limbs clicking and clacking.

  The small rock-like Duskas bounced down the stairs. And came to a standstill. Where they burst open and gave birth to a trillion more small Duska stones that piled up in no time creating a monstrous barricade from stair to ceiling.

  ‘Right then,’ Hawkmoth said, catching his breath, looking around at his friends.

  They all watched him. No-one moving.

  ‘What happened to Razor?’ Melai asked him.

  He bit his lip, gazed at the stairs for a moment. ‘Razor,’ he said as if it had slipped his mind. ‘Yes… Razor. There be no time to explain. We must get ourselves to the Blackbirds.’

  3

  Gargaron lead the way up the stairwell, Hawkmoth throwing down a second load of Duska stones, creating another barrier. Behind them, the Bewitched were already tearing through the first wall; rocks shifting and rolling and tumbling from their stack as the Bewitched ripped them aside.

  As Gargaron dashed out onto the roof there came the sound of an almighty crash and the tower lurched sickeningly underfoot.

  Gargaron reached for something to hold onto lest he fall over. He retook his footing just as another lurch near knocked him again from his feet. ‘What by Thronir be that?’

  The others were equally as baffled. Gargaron rushed to roof’s edge and peered down. At ground level he saw it: Dark Ones bashing their battering rams against tower. Beside Gargaron, the others watched on.

  ‘Let us not waste the moment,’ Hawkmoth said panting, ‘Into the birds! We have little time. This tower be coming down.’

  They raced across roof toward the metal birds awaiting them and the Bewitched broke through the second barricade and stormed the rooftop.

  Gargaron turned to fight off the coming mass, hacking at the surging enemy with his great sword, buying his friends some precious time to board their birds. Locke fired bolts; Melai, in flight, rained down arrows. Hawkmoth had not yet reached a bird, though he had taken stance and were casting spells where he could, stabbing his spiked staff at the odd Bewitched who managed to break through Gargaron’s attacks. Slowly he and Gargaron backed their way toward the birds.

  Zebra hissed and from where she were coiled around one of the so-called Blackbirds she shot out her fang-filled jaw, knocking Bewitched from the roof. Grimah were in a bird by then but the Bewitched were coming at them from all sides now. The rooftop filling up with them.

  Another mighty hammer smash shook the tower and this time it began to lurch. The birds began to slide toward the edge. But they stood up, their metal talons arresting their momentum. Still, one of them kept sliding, Zebra’s weight too much for it. Over the side of the tower it went. Locke leapt for it at the last moment, reaching it before it fell from sight. And Hawkmoth, pursued by Bewitched, dashed away and jumped from the rooftop, plummeting out of sight. The Blackbird spread its wings and swooped away into the sky, the crabman and sorcerer dangling from its sides.

  The second bird were flapping its wings in preparation for flight, looking around as Gargaron still fought his way toward it. But his path were swamped with no help now but Melai firing her arrows from above and Grimah awaiting him at the bird. Another crash sent the tower into a shudder, knocking Bewitched off their feet, staggering Gargaron.

  Grimah wailed; he knew Gargaron were naught going to make it.

  ‘Run, giant!’ Melai commanded him. ‘Hurry!’

  But he were trapped, he were being swarmed from all sides.

  Grimah snorted and reared up and left the bird, charging headlong into the Bewitched, knocking them flying and another mighty crash made the tower shiver and it were suddenly tilting, falling, great numbers of Bewitched tumbling out into space, over the edge of the rooftop.

  The tower steadied for a moment.

  More Bewitched piled onto rooftop from stairway, rushing toward Gargaron who swiped at them with his great sword. A voice came into his mind.

  Leave now. I fend off your enemy so you may save yourself. We shall meet again someday. You have work here yet.

  He turned to find Grimah charging headlong into the rampant mass of Bewitched, taking huge numbers of them with him as his momentum carried him from the rooftop. Gargaron were backing away toward the bird. ‘NOOO!’ he roared, ‘Grimah, no!’ But it were too late, Grimah were gone. And this tower were coming down.

  Gargaron turned and charged for the bird just as it slid from tower’s roof, leaping into it. As it soared for the heavens, Melai swooped down, stowing herself within its hollow as Bewitched leapt after it in great masses, trying their best to grab hold, only to miss and plummet to ground as the great tower came tumbling down.

  4

  They seemed a long time in flight. Too long for Gargaron’s comfort. The air chilled him though he wore his thick blood-splotched yak-spun coat. Melai huddled beneath Gargaron’s blanket. She were quiet for a time not knowing what to say. Gargaron sat there melancholy, speechless. He could help it not, but in his mind, whether his eyes be open or shut (and shut were worse), he saw over and over Grimah’s last moments. Piling headlong into the Bewitched, taking a huge number with him off tower’s roof… and then gone without barely a look back.

  Yet, that voice he had heard, a voice he had taken as words from Grimah. Leave now. I fend off your enemy so you may save yourself. We shall meet again someday. You have work here yet.

  The Dark Ones had stormed Sanctuary in the wake of the Bewitched. Something the witches had no doubt orchestrated. He had seen them punch their hammers through that wave wall. Had felt their hammers against that tower. Sadly, Grimah must have fallen amidst them.

  He gazed at the space in the back of the bird. Space where Grimah were to have been, had he made it. But it were vacant except for Gargaron’s bull-hide pack filled with all his belongings, Drenvel’s Bane poking out the top. Somehow Grimah had detached he pack from his saddle and dropped it here. It were painful to look upon.

  Melai sat there huddled, gazing up at the giant. She had her chilled fingers on his ankle. She watched him at length.

  The other bird were before them, slightly more elevated. It soared through cloud mass that made the riders of both birds wet and shiver. Zebra were coiled up as tight as her body would allow, stuffed inside the confines of the bird, the cold taking the energy out of her. Locke sat near the bird’s shoulders, staring back at the sorcerer; earlier he had called out to Gargaron, offering commiserations at the loss of a fine steed. Gargaron had nodded at him. Other than that, none spoke. At first they had been
all too busy patching up wounds and bite marks and scratches. And at some stage Hawkmoth had called out their heading, to perhaps confirm they were flying on a correct path. Then he had partially disrobed to inspect his chest. Other than his bizarre stone skin, there were no hole in Hawkmoth’s chest or back, nothing to suggest he had been punctured first by the chain barb and then by that halberd.

  Gargaron, Melai and Locke all noticed this but none questioned it for now, each of them suspecting some magical spell had caused him to heal.

  Now all were fallen to silence. Though Melai kept her eyes on Gargaron. And eventually she could hold her tongue no longer. ‘I lament your loss, giant. But I feel somehow Grimah be not perished. Nor even injured. I cannot tell you how I know this. But I feel it. I see it. A warhorse bolting down the outer side of a far tilted tower and jumping long at its base to avoid those Harbingers.’

  Gargaron knew it were simply an attempt at trying to allay his grief.

  ‘I do, I feel it.’

  He smiled and nodded and gently squeezed her hand in return. ‘Thank you, Melai, I hope you are right.’

  5

  They flew and flew, through chilled, cloudy air and it seemed hours later when clouds parted and Gargaron finally saw land below, lush green meadows and forested regions and he felt they had lost some elevation for the air around them had warmed, no longer did he require his coat. As he shed it gingerly, grimacing as the wounds beneath stung, and stuffed it in his pack, he saw how many bites and scratches and tears in his skin he had actually sustained. His limbs were literally littered with them. Almost no part of him were spared. Most had stopped bleeding at least. Though the Amahlu sap that Melai had provided had not set some of the deeper wounds where the Bewitched had chewed out large chunks of flesh. And they were too numerous and not deep enough to bother with his flesh patches. Thus he asked of Melai for more of her sap and applied great dabs of it to his wounds.

  It were just as he were finishing up, that quite without warning, the birds began to fall.

  6

  Melai noticed the metal ornithens had until then held a blue glow in their eyes during their entire flight but now this glow began to flicker. ‘Do they require more chemical?’ she called out to Hawkmoth, concerned.

  ‘No,’ he called back with a certain frown. ‘Not as yet. But I would not wager them being influenced by some foul witch enchantment. We are over Gwimpen airspace after all. The witches have much influence over this realm.’

  The birds lost height dramatically, dropping more steeply with each passing moment. Hawkmoth called for his companions to brace themselves. ‘Unless I can arrest this fall we might be in for a solid landing!’

  Pushing Grimah from his mind, Gargaron gripped Melai to him and dug himself down into the confines of their bird. Across from them, dropping faster under greater weight, Locke’s serpent had coiled itself about the second bird, and Locke, smiling, were strapped in tight to the serpent’s saddle, snug beside the bundle of Mama Vekh. Hawkmoth however, stood at the front of this bird, staff held aloft with both hands as if he were having some struggle summoning magic.

  Below them and forward some two hundred yards, standing directly in their current flight path, there protruded from the surrounding landscape, an enormous nub of rock shaped like a gigantic mushroom. It were matted in a vast carpet of grass and vines and stunted trees. And as Hawkmoth persisted with his incantations, a large swatch of it began to shift, as if it were a bed of vipers rudely awoken. Yet quickly, as if all on its own, it fashioned itself into a pair of mighty arms that writhed and twisted upwards and outwards toward both metal birds hurtling its way as if they were but arms of giants stretching out to swat down pesky flies.

  Instead of slapping the birds from the sky, however, they grasped them in long leafy wooden “fingers”, and brought them down to the rock shelf in what were still a rather heavy landing.

  The Blackbirds jolted and bumped along the matted rock, dragging up beds of flowers and grass, snapping twisted snake-vines, splintering withered trees, and then finally settled near the far end of the mushroom-rock’s domed surface. The “arms” of vegetation that had brought them down now seemed to untangle and fall apart and were soon but chunks of wood and huge tufts of grass and detached lengths of purple vine.

  7

  Gargaron and the others took stock of their situation, and the metal blackbirds looked about as might a pair of real birds might who had just arrived somewhere new. That were before the blue light went from their eyes altogether, and now they sat, curled their beaks beneath their wings and made as if to sleep.

  Only now did Gargaron release Melai, noticing the grimace upon her face. She stretched her limbs, fluttered her wings and gazed up at the giant. ‘I know you meant well, Gargaron,’ she told him, ‘but next time we’re in a falling metal bird, might you let me take my own flight.’

  Where he still sat inside the body of the bird Gargaron blinked down at her. And couldn’t help a sudden but short burst of laughter. ‘Oh my, I am sorry, Melai. Of course, you can fly.’ He clasped his jaw in his hand. ‘I did not even think.’

  She patted his knee. ‘No. It touches me you would squeeze me half to death to protect me.’ She smiled at him sideways.

  ‘So, sorcerer,’ Locke said, ‘where do we find ourselves? If this be Dark Wood then I see no witches.’

  Hawkmoth pointed with his staff as he stepped down from his bird. ‘Indeed, we are some way short of Vantasia. See that dark smudge away west? That be the Dark Woods. Vantasia lies hidden therein.’ Hawkmoth studied him, seeing for the first time something about the crabman’s attire were altered. ‘You have lost your helmet?’

  Locke smiled. ‘Aye, I left it behind as a souvenir for the Bewitched. Something for them to take back to their witch masters to remind them who decimated them.’

  Hawkmoth smiled. ‘Very well.’

  TREK TO DARK WOOD

  1

  THEY left the Blackbirds “asleep” where they were, and took some time taking stock, checking any further wounds, quenching thirst from their gourds. None spoke at all for a while. Gargaron kept expecting Grimah or Razor to appear. Their absence were acute and felt by all.

  ‘Be we all well?’ Hawkmoth asked finally, shedding his robes to once again pay some mind to his chest.

  ‘As best we can be,’ were Gargaron’s reply. ‘What of yourself? Twice you were impaled, yet you sport no obvious wounds.’

  Hawkmoth, chin pressed against neck, were straining to conduct a thorough inspection of his chest. And then of his lower back. The halberd wound showed up as naught but light pink welts. So too the wound where the chain had pushed through him. All else there were, were old battle scars and the various panels of stone skin.

  ‘I cannot explain it,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘I can only guess that in Razor’s final transition, his regenerative powers somehow healed my injuries and kept death at bay. Pity it did nothing to rectify my stone plating.’

  Locke narrowed his eyes with intrigue. ‘Final transition? What, by Ehl Nori, do you mean?’

  Hawkmoth pulled his robes back over his trunk and shoulders. He stepped forward a few paces, gazing out across the surrounding land. He could not help reminiscing for a moment, a sad smile crossing his face. ‘When Razor first came into my life he were not in the form you all know him. Aye, that’s right. He were no horse, but a wee dragonfly. Sounds a daft thing,’ Hawkmoth said, agreeing with the expressions of his friends, ‘but that’s what he were. I bought him as part of a collection of exotic bugs from a traveler who claimed to have caught them on the Northern Cape. Whether the traveler knew he had something special on his hands I do not know, but I felt instantly the energy and magic given off by this dragonfly amidst the seller’s wares. For a legend did the rounds of Sanctuary in the days when I resided there about an untamed creature that could not die, but that with each passing of its life it would become a creature anew. Thus when Razor passed on as dragonfly his body were but a sugar-glider. After that he w
ere a goshawk for many a year until attacked by tomb serpents and killed, his body then a hound for almost a decade. Beyond that he were Razor my steed. And now, well, it seems he has moved beyond this physical realm to an entirely new existence.’ He swallowed, momentarily empty of voice, contemplating his Razor, saddened that he were gone now from his side. ‘Eve will be most displeased when I tell her,’ he said. ‘She so wished to be there to witness his next phase.’

  ‘I am sorry you had to part,’ Gargaron told him.

  ‘As I am sorry for your Grimah, giant.’

  Gargaron nodded. ‘Aye. Though I have not known him long.’

  ‘Yet a fine steed he were, and a close friend and ally to us all,’ Hawkmoth told him.

  Gargaron nodded. ‘Aye. Thank you. He died a warhorse’s death: in battle, a hero, and saving the life of a friend.’

  ‘I have told you I feel he be not perished,’ Melai reminded him.

  Gargaron glanced at the nymph. ‘And I hold onto that.’

  Hawkmoth nodded, contemplating this news. Then he said, ‘Right then, let us find a way off this rock.’

  2

  Due to its shape, finding a way down from the rock shelf proved no easy task. Even for Zebra who tried snaking down over rock’s curving edge. For in her effort to curl beneath the overhang and curl deftly about the rock stem, she fell. Locke frowned as she whumped heavily into the grass fifty feet below. But she were up and about, shaking her head, in a mere daze.

  ‘Maybe you ought to try flying next time,’ he called to her laughing. ‘You’ll have the same result but I dare say it might be less labour intensive.’

  For the others it were the use of vines dangling over the side of the rock mount that were the solution. By use of Hawkmoth’s magic, multiple strands were plaited together for strength. The group then shimmied their way down. All except Melai, of course, who simply sprung from the rock and flew down with an easy grace.