Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

by A. L. Brooks

  There were no response. Quickly he took the bottle of Lyfen Essence from his pack and administered a drop into her mouth.

  The result were surprising. Right before his eyes her wounds began to heal. He had not seen the Essence work so well even on giants. Still… it did not restore her fully. He heard her breath return, a light, short breath. But that were all.

  ‘Melai?’ he asked. ‘Do you hear me?’

  No response.

  ‘Melai, it be Gargaron. Hear me. Please.’ He watched as her eyelids moved and slowly parted. Though her eyes did not see him; they appeared to gaze off into the woodland. If she were actually seeing anything he could not tell.

  He moved his face into her line of sight, gently smoothing her hair from her brow. ‘Melai,’ he said gently, ‘it be me. Gargaron.’

  He watched her blink, and then he believed her eyes focused on him. She watched him for a long while. He held her hand. She tried to speak. There were no sound. Not at first. But then a murmur. ‘Gar… garon.’

  It were so faint it were like a listless breath of breeze on a summer’s afternoon.

  ‘Gargaron,’ she murmured weakly.

  He smiled, but tears were in his eyes. ‘Melai. I be here with you.’

  ‘It got us.’

  ‘Lie still. Don’t talk. Let me aid you.’

  ‘It got us,’ she said again softly.

  ‘Melai, save your strength.’

  ‘I looked into its eyes,’ she whispered. ‘I saw its thoughts and mind. It cannot be stopped. I know it now as I did not before.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Gargaron laughed awkwardly, smudging sweat and blood from her forehead. ‘Stop talking. Keep your strength.’

  ‘I… I’m dying. It’s too late.’

  ‘Melai, no, I shan’t let you.’

  Slowly, painfully, she reached up with her arm and touched his cheek. ‘Oh, if we’d only met years before. We would have been great friends. You are a kind soul. I am truly sorry for the loss of your daughter and wife.’

  ‘Thankyou,’ he said, a lump in his throat. ‘But you shall be fine. You shall be fine.’

  ‘My wings are dashed. I am dashed. I must go now. Remember your promise. Take me back to Willowgarde, release me to my sweet sisters.’

  Her eyes watched him as her life slipped from her; her body fell limp and her arm fell from his face. A slight smile remained on her lips.

  ‘Melai, no,’ Gargaron sobbed. ‘Melai, please, no. Stay awake, hear me now, stay awake. Please.’

  Her head lolled back and her eyes gazed out into the treetops of this hell forest of Vol Mothaak. And Gargaron saw it then, away through the woodland, the top of the tower, the idiot face gazing down at him with its idiot, mocking smile.

  11

  Gargaron roared and stood, taking up Drenvel’s Bane once more. ‘NO!’ he yelled.

  Once more a blinding fury swept over him. And once more his pain fell away, and the strength of a hundred Skinkks filled him. He strode through the woods toward the tower. All the anger that had seethed within him since the tolling of the first bell drove him, all the fury that had built up since the fall of his village, since the discovery of his wife and daughter dead.

  He began running, running, faster and faster, bashing aside Star Angels who now descended upon him, springing and wriggling from tree to tree, attempting to crowd him, hundreds jabbing at him with their spikes. But he flailed his hammer and smashed them asunder and he charged toward the toxic silver pool at tower’s base and when he reached its bank he took a breath and roared as he leapt out over the poisonous Mercuruan pond…

  He crashed heavily into the small island on which the tower stood. He landed on his knees and rolled and all in the same movement he were up and on his feet, wheeling back Drenvel’s Bane, bringing it crashing into the stonework.

  A boom shook the foundations, dirt and dust splintered from the ancient mortar, bits of brick peppered the pond. Ignoring the tower’s leering demonic face that dropped down at him with tremendous speed, its enormous mouth aghast and laughing, Gargaron wound his arms back and brought his hammer into the tower again and again and again, punching stone’s out across the toxic pool, splashes of silver liquid crashing against the banks.

  Bring me down if you can! a voice screeched in his mind.

  ‘Oh, I intend to!’ Gargaron roared.

  Part of the tower caved inwards, into the hollow where the tip of a large fleshy appendage dangled, resembling the tongue of a god. Gargaron did not care. He smashed and bashed.

  Bring me down, bring me down, bring me down!

  He hammered and hammered and hammered and hammered…

  Until nearly the entire base had collapsed.

  Here he stopped. Panting. Sweating. Bleeding. Confused. But his rage held. He had brought down far more than needed to make this tower topple. Yet the tower looked no closer to falling than it had before he’d begun assailing it. It looked like a tree that had been almost chopped through, standing via a mere chip of bark. He began to fear Melai had been right. It were unnatural. It could not be destroyed. It were enchanted.

  He looked up and saw the hell face glaring at him, its grin as big as ever he’d seen it, a wicked, joyous grin that told Gargaron it knew things he did not.

  Gargaron ignored it and wound back Hor’s great hammer once more and brought it against the final piece of base not yet destroyed. The face above squealed. And with one last lunge Gargaron swiped away the remainder of the tower’s base. And for a moment the entire construction hovered there, supported by absolutely nothing, the face cackling at him, suspended there above him, its nose almost touching him, drool dripping from its vast lips.

  And then down it came…

  12

  It did not topple as Gargaron had hoped. It did not simply fall one way or the other. It instead dropped in on itself, the face collapsing first, plunging into him, its huge mouth trying to swallow him. He heaved it aside with Hor’s cutter but the impact pushed him into the pool and dragged the hammer from his grip.

  His anger left him immediately. His pain returned, felt his skin beginning to singe. Felt it burning. The black steel armour that seemed somehow part of the hammer vanished. And down he sunk into the poisonous depths of Mercuruan.

  13

  It were deep. There seemed no bottom to it. Gargaron dropped like a stone in a well. He tried kicking his legs, tried swimming against the pull of gravity but blocks of the tower plummeted into the pond above and pelted him, pushing him further into the murky depths.

  He crashed against some ledge or floor, he were not sure. Tons of stone piled on top of him. He were trapped; snared like a fly in oil. His struggles began to weaken… and then… he realised he no longer cared. All he knew had died. He had brought down the tower, silenced the death bell. His loved ones would stay dead but at least he had saved their beloved Vale. There were naught for him anymore.

  And decided it were time to let life go.

  He withdrew his conscious mind into himself. Drew himself peacefully into a meditative state. Prepared himself for his passing. He would now never reach Endworld to be with his wife and daughter. You have work here yet, his wife had said. And now I have done it, my sweet.

  His consciousness ebbed away. He imagined Veleyal at his side. He imagined she were there, taking to him, telling him that all were well, that she loved him. He felt her tugging his arm. ‘Come,’ she seemed to say. ‘Come, let us go now.’

  She took his wrist. She began to drag him from the tower stones that lay heaped on top of him. He felt his consciousness return a little. He felt his dream dissipating, felt Veleyal leave his mind.

  Something still had hold of his arm, something still hauling him from tower rubble. What be it? he wondered distantly. A fish? What damned fish could live down here? And what watery beast dares drag me from my passing?

  He opened his one good eye, at risk of burning it. Though if he were dying he would not need it anymore.

  He saw no
t a fish but arms of dark light clamped around his limbs. And he were being hauled up through stone and mortar and rubble that continued tumbling from above.

  14

  He were yanked into open air, drips of silver beading off his arms. He lay gasping on the bank. He saw an enormous Dark One looming over him. It stood peering down at him. As if wondering what to do with him. If it meant to do as the other Dark Ones had not, that being taking Gargaron’s life, well, Gargaron now had not the sense to care. He barely registered the creature standing there. To him, reality were already a numbed and distant, dream.

  Yet one thing he saw broke his spirit. The tower. It stood there full and unbroken, the face leering at him, grinning.

  He shut his eye against the sight of it.

  DARK ONE

  1

  GARGARON’S consciousness ebbed and flowed, there came periods of darkness followed by periods of light. In these times, when his eye came open he were distantly aware of being lifted from the woodland’s soft leafy floor, of being cradled like a pup. Later, during a period where he felt more alert, he saw the tops of the woodland gliding by, as if he were being carried off somewhere.

  Beyond that, there came a prolonged period of dark. It might have been sweet oblivion had it not been for the disharmonious dreams and nightmares. When his senses aroused again he saw just the vast darkening sky above him. And a sense of the suns lowering and the horizon filled with red and yellow. And there were yet another colossal Dark One looming above him. This one even bigger than the last, with far reaching buffalo horns. Gargaron had again the sense of being carried, transferred, as if from one colossal ox cart to another. He took heart when he saw Melai lying there beside him, and Locke on the other, and Hawkmoth being lifted in behind him.

  He wanted to stir, yet naught save an extreme exhaustion weighed him down. And again he fell away into a depthless sleep.

  2

  When he awoke again there were stars in the heavens, and the moons were out (although he could not have named them) and there were no sign of the woodland, nothing but the mighty shadow of the Dark One, its back to him, as if it were at the helm of some enormous cart. Its horns were lit by moonlight, and it seemed to hum cheerfully to itself. A sonorous yet melodic tune, if not a little melancholy.

  Gargaron had a sense that he were surrounded by the Grass Sea, but he were not aboard a ship. Gargaron wanted to rise, to survey his surroundings, but again his mind did not permit it, and instead he succumbed once more to pain and weakness and delirium.

  When his eye opened, it were sometime near dawn; but somehow he knew many nights and days had passed. The sky were turning blue. He looked around. Before and behind him he believed he saw a wooden road, suspended on stilts, crossing the Grass Sea, vanishing into far distance in either direction.

  Then he were opening his eye once again and the suns glared overhead. And he were being placed gently upon dusty ground. With a sense of distant awe, like a child observing a god, watched the horned Dark One.

  Next he felt himself waking, the Dark One had gone and Gargaron were alone.

  3

  Gargaron were unsure how many days and nights had passed since their foray into Vol Mothaak. He sat up slowly. His head thumped, his skin ached. He looked about. The effort seemed to take all his strength. He felt he were pulling himself up from death, as if all the dark beasts of the Afterworld were holding him down. He were shocked to take in such surroundings. Nothing but barren, endless desert in all directions. Rock, stone and dust. No vegetation. No signs of habitation. No signs of life.

  None except for that of Hawkmoth it seemed. And for long moments Gargaron simply stared at him, unblinking, assuming the sorcerer were but some apparition.

  Hawkmoth were kneeling, his hands on his knees, and his head bowed. His back were to Gargaron. Gargaron looked around for the others. Perhaps Melai and Locke were simply waiting somewhere for Gargaron to wake.

  He saw them. Lying together.

  He pulled himself to his feet. And ignoring Hawkmoth for the moment he plod slowly toward the nymph and the crabman with a sense of misgiving. He had hoped Melai and Locke were merely asleep. But he saw now they were not. They lay there in ruins, both of them battered, pulverised, broken, dead. Lifeless corpses, side by side.

  Gargaron blinked as he looked down at them. ‘I am sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I am so sorry.’

  He stared at Melai at length hoping her eyes might come open, hoping she would look up and see him and smile. But she did not.

  Hawkmoth stood beside him now. But when the sorcerer spoke Gargaron did not recognise his voice. ‘It be imperative we keep moving.’ The voice were scratched, weak, croaky.

  Gargaron peered at him. The glare of the suns, both high in the sky, made it difficult to see him, to get a full picture.

  ‘Come, giant, let us be off.’

  Gargaron did not move. Not immediately. He wanted Melai, to remain in her company. She had become his daughter, his wife, his surrogate family. He could not desert her.

  Hawkmoth squeezed his shoulder. ‘Come now, giant.’ There were a pleading sound in that voice. ‘Come now. There is naught you can do for her. She came to me in my sleep and asked me to tell you goodbye. That she is safe, and pain can reach her no longer.’

  Gargaron bowed his head and wept. The sorcerer squeezed his shoulder. ‘There now,’ Hawkmoth said soothingly, ‘there now, giant. All comes to an end. One way or another. Sad though it is. For that is the way of life.’

  Unsteady, Gargaron stood, stepping around to get the sun glare off his face. When he did, he could not take his eye from the sorcerer. What he saw terrified him. The sorcerer’s skin were wrinkled and turned a deep sickly tinge of blue, as if rot were not too far off. His hair were blackened, as if scorched. He were hunched. One of his arms were stiffened, as if the entirely limb were stone. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he whispered, ‘what be wrong with you?’

  Hawkmoth drew in a deep breath. But he offered that old disarming smile. ‘Nothing. I am dying but that be all.’

  ‘Dying?’ That squeezed Gargaron’s heart. He had lost so much. He did not want to be left alone. ‘Dying?’

  ‘Aye.’ He said it looking about, as if this were it, no coming back from this condition, as if taking in the barren beauty of this new land. ‘Oh, and I would already be so had I not summoned my life’s reserves.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As you saw with my old mentor Skitecrow. A trick a sorcerer learns early on in his career. To put away certain reserves in the event that death should visit him. The idea be to use enough to stave off death. But I have had to call on all of it just to be standing here talking to you. So once it be used up, that is it, I’m afraid. I too will go the way of all else.’

  Gargaron looked horrified. ‘How long have you got?’

  The sorcerer smiled. ‘A day. Two at the most. I hope. Perhaps naught but mere hours. Sometime at least. So, let us press on.’ He turned and started off.

  ‘What about Melai? Locke? We cannot leave them.’

  ‘And we cannot take them with us.’ Using his staff as a walking stick, the sorcerer hobbled away.

  4

  Gargaron watched him. Then his gaze returned to that of his deceased friends. He crouched and tenderly ran his huge meaty fingers over Melai’s head; he were barely aware that the skin on his knuckles were flaking and peeled, that the skin and flesh of his hand and wrist were blistered and weeping, that the sleeves of his shirt were shredded. But his attention were entirely on Melai.

  ‘I am deeply sorry.’ Tears stung his eyes and cheeks, but he bowed his head and touched her giant’s forehead to hers and then he sat there and whispered to her a small prayer, all the while tears dripped from his face to hers. It haunted him that his tears did not convert, become night fairies, or skybeetles. It haunted him that all were dying, even the magic of Cloudfyre.

  Hawkmoth had stopped, were waiting, using his staff as a crutch to keep him upright.

 
‘Gargaron,’ a voice said. ‘Be well, my friend. I shall escort her back to Thoonsk and save you the burden.’

  Blinking, Gargaron looked up and around. And through bleary eyes he saw a wraithlike vision of Sir Rishley Locke, standing there with his customary smile. And behind him, just beyond his shoulder, were Melai, a ghostly apparition.

  ‘Melai! Bu-but you live!’

  Yet her small broken body still lay at his knees.

  ‘Melai?’

  ‘You must walk on now,’ came her voice, soft and distant. ‘You must follow Hawkmoth, my giant of Hovel. For you have work here left to do.’

  Confusion tore at his mind, as he were not certain if that last sentence were spoken by her, or if it had instead come from inside his mind.

  He looked around at the sorcerer, who were speaking it seemed: ‘… aye… you have work here left to do.’

  And when Gargaron turned for Melai and Locke once more he saw them now distant, walking from him, away through the desert sand and rock. He blinked and wiped his eyes but when he looked again, their ghosts were no longer there… just the endless wastes and swirling dust.

  5

  Gargaron trailed the limping sorcerer. Once or twice he looked back. But all he saw for a little while were the small broken bodies of Melai and Locke lying there being bitten at by the gritty wind.

  Eventually the dust haze swallowed them and Gargaron saw them no longer. Yet those words still whispered over and over in his mind: You have work here left to do.

  It brought his wife’s face to his mind. And the smiling face of his daughter. Dust stuck to the tears on his cheeks and chin. He felt delirious, feverish, he had no idea where he were, where he were going. The sorcerer hobbled on and on through the swirling desert sands, unspeaking, his thoughts to himself.

  Gargaron felt parched. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he tried to say but naught save a raspy sound spilt off his lips. He tried to wet them, licking them with a dried tongue. They felt rough and split, felt as if chunks had sloughed off.