Tall Tales: The Nymphs' Symphony (Scott T Beith's Tall Tales Saga Book 1)

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Tall Tales: The Nymphs' Symphony (Scott T Beith's Tall Tales Saga Book 1) Page 25

by Scott Beith


  He wriggled his sleeve free from her. “What? I don’t know. How are you clean? We were fending off scarabs by the campfire all night.”

  “Oh,” Anara and I both said, looking at each other in concern.

  “How bad was the night for you girls?” Akoni asked, seeming too tired to be his usual bumbling self around Anara.

  The two of us considered whether it would be funny or cruel to tell them about our three-star hotel stay, but ultimately decided to leave it unmentioned. Vallah instead breaking the ice for us as she shuffled past us and into the corner, where Arlo and Akoni’s spiders sat, prancing around in greeting before climbing the walls to hide amidst the shaft’s roofing.

  “We thought you two might need a hand,” I said, the first to try and explain why we bothered to come seek them out.

  “Girls, this isn’t a place you go to just because you’re bored — its dangerous!” the prince loudly and angrily declared. “You’re both lucky you made it this far without being hurt,” he sniped towards us bitterly, not the exact invitation I was expecting to receive upon my arrival, even if it was partially deserved after the scene I made when I last saw him. “And you know what? I’d expect this behaviour from you little sis, but, Kya, you know better than this.”

  I know his words were spoken out of concern, but they sounded cruel when spoken in such a harsh unforgiving tone.

  “No, this time, it’s you two who are the fools,” Anara remarked.

  “How so?” he uttered back

  “How do you open the doors, Arlo?” I then cut in, mimicking a similar condescending tone to his. It had only taken me a short glimpse towards the diamond- shaped keyhole that locked the cogs together.

  “It’s a puzzle, Kya, and Akoni’s already halfway to working it out,” Arlo answered confidently on behalf of his friend.

  “Well, actually...” Akoni interjected.

  Anara walked forward and took his hand away from the keyhole. “We didn’t come here for fun, or to impede your all-important mission. We came here to warn you,” she divulged, dragging Akoni away from the door.

  “Warn us of what?” Akoni enquired curiously.

  “Your father,” she told him before looking to me to explain the situation in full.

  I picked up Arlo’s new sword.

  “It’s simple, every lock has a key,” I said. “Just like every mine has a map,” I added, holding out the map for Arlo to re-inspect. “Midas left this sword for you, Akoni,” I said, sliding Arlo’s cool crystal sword into the diamond-shaped slot. The crystal lighting up as the doors churned and emitted various rainbow colours that signified the unique colourcoding combination of the door.

  The earth started to shake as the walls churned in some form of rusty preparation. The cogs becoming cranking wheels as I pulled the sword back out and allowed the doors to split as they rolled into the slits of the wall via a few rotating cuffs.

  A gust of stale-smelling wind blasted across our faces as the door opened. I was once again faced by the daunting challenge of walking into darkness and what was, most likely, the home and birthplace of the gnolls.

  With the doorway open and quietly inviting, I was surprised by the boys’ lack of words about me figuring out the puzzle.

  Arlo pulled me aside from the other two to have a few quiet words. “Look, I’ll be the first to admit you’ve definitely done more than your duty coming out here,” he whispered. “Warning us was really helpful and thoughtful, so thank you… But the fact is, we need a new crystal, and me and Akoni still have to go inside, regardless. We just don’t get the choice on the matter,” he stated, only to stop in a brief failure to gather his thoughts and figure out what he wished to say.

  “But my sister listens to you, and I need you to be on my side about this… She’s going to want you and her to join us, but unlike her, you can’t just disappear at the first sign of trouble,” he informed me, choosing his words carefully to avoid any offence. “What I am trying to say is that I want you both to stay out here with the spiders while Akoni and I find the diamond.” He then finally concluded, making a very valid point, for I knew what he was saying was coming from genuine concern. But my stubbornness and sense of pride kept me from agreeing with him.

  “Or why don’t you watch the spiders while we collect the crystal. We got to this place just as easy as you did – if not easier,” I bantered.

  “You don’t need to be brave around me,” he said. “I already know just how brave both you and my sister are, but if your suspicions are right about Midas, then this mission is a lot more dangerous than dealing with everyday cave creatures and bandits. If this is really his home, he could have an entire army somewhere in there – just around that corner for all we know,” he insisted, pointing into the tunnel.

  I started thinking maybe he was right and we should stay outside, that I personally wasn’t prepared for a situation like back in the meadows. I wasn’t naturally strong like Arlo or resourceful like Anara and Akoni.

  For a small moment, I held my head down, ready to nod in agreeance with what he was saying, but when looking down towards the floor, I noticed something most peculiar. Something I hadn’t bothered to notice before… the tremble of Arlo’s own hands as he held onto one of mine, and he wasn’t alone in his fear. Looking over to my other friends, I noticed Akoni’s hands shaking with a slight tremor too, as he stood there with his arms crossed, politely waiting for us to finish our conversation, his shaking wrists rattling against his belt buckle.

  Maybe it was the cold, but I had a feeling it wasn’t as simple as that. The fact was that deep down, they were all just as scared as me. Which led me to think, for the first time in my life, that maybe I wouldn’t be a burden if I went with them, that I would be a helpful extra set of hands and eyes.

  So map in hand, and looking down for one last sceptical moment before I made a complete decision, I realised that courage itself came from resisting fear rather than not having any fear at all. And with that epiphany, I moved out.

  “We’re wasting time here,” I said to Arlo as I walked into the darkness of the cavernous descending ditch.

  17

  Syndicate

  After turn upon turn into the darkening madness of that mountain’s main entrance shaft, we had only my glowing necklace to light and ferry our way forward. The walls around us were always closing in and narrowing before each new corridor gap, forcing us to squeeze and compress our bodies through single-file as we pushed aside rocks and finally managed to move into the main tunnel halls. Kneeling and crawling through tight collapsed gaps in the path, only to be relieved by the giant growing labyrinth of tracks and cargo rails we saw upon our arrival inside the heart of the mine. The four of us were entering into one prime, and seemingly endless, cargo passageway, which branched out like an ant-hill of hidden side shafts.

  With rubies embedded in the walls like little red reflector panels that led the way forward. The mine was cleverly colour coded by gemstones and continuously forked and split into two as we encountered endless exits and wavy turn off passageways. It was a whole cavernous maze, twisting erratically as it continued to drop and expand in both depth and size, making it supremely difficult for us to maintain our bearings with such little light as we tried to stay true to the prime red tunnel we were supposed to be following.

  Without obvious structure or pattern, those long quartz-covered corridors were dropping and rising like waves upon either side of us, elevating our already pounding hearts as we pressed on with an unsteady concoction of adventure and nervous suspense flooding our senses.

  I stumbled over small breakaway stones, as the four of us had to pair up and cling to one another just to keep our balance over the loose stones and crumbling rocks found underneath the railway sleepers we were following.

  We were at the mercy of an old frail map that vaguely showed the layout of this cavern’s vast and intricate network. It took some time for me to adjust and use the map to coordinate our way through the black and b
lurry haze the place had become, carefully contrasting the track’s natural railway curvature from other more recent intersecting tunnels that were not displayed on the scrunched and rudimentary cave map we had at our disposal.

  We surpassed smallish sapphire embedded side shafts thinly excavated along the lower left side of the cavern’s central railings. It took a great amount of effort in simply avoiding those vertical long rolling drop off tunnels, as well as observing many phantom and directionless paths designed to appetize and mislead novice explorers: coaching amateurs away from the enriched mining areas that lured them deeper into the flooded treacherous lava pits described on this map’s lowest volcano levels.

  This place was the very definition of a death trap, slowly swallowing and consuming visitors by confusing them with a plethora of inter-weaved mirroring tunnels. Even an experienced miner could easily fall prey to the never-ending pockets of the maze, to be lost down here forever if any miner’s lantern were to expire before they could find their way back onto the main prime passageways.

  I was glad I had my pendant – an everlasting light to guide us through this darkness. It twinkled with a steady sparkle of light, radiating outwards and dimly illuminating the tunnels ahead, suddenly making me the most valuable member of my team.

  “Are you sure this is the right way to go?” Arlo asked as I navigated our way. I noticed he was shivering slightly as he leaned close towards me and my luminous pendant, failing to maintain the proud bravado of a soldier, even if he was completely unwilling to admit he was spooked by the strengthening darkness as he pushed closer and closer beside me.

  “No,” I responded. “I’ve never been here before either,” I reminded him.

  I could feel a strong resistance of drag, like bouts of air pressure, fluxing against my hand as dangled next to his. I could tell he was on edge, nervously flickering ultrasonic sound in an uncontrolled jittery angst, just as scared of beasts leaping from the lurking shadows as I was.

  “Are you as scared as I am?” I asked him.

  “No,” he sharply denied.

  “Not even slightly?” I pressed.

  Already aware he was, due to his scouting eyes and lack of reply, the man begun straightening his slumping posture and lifting his chin up as he pulled his hand away from mine.

  “Well, if you were scared, that would be ok too,” I reassured him. “You don’t have to be fearless to be a good soldier, and no one here is going to think any less of you for it if you did,” I added, once again trying to melt down his crippling pride.

  “I dunno actually, I might,” Anara cut in to tease, cheekily punting at her brother as she shuffled past him and me, taking the lead, using her keen sense of sound and echo to map her own way without the use of light and eyesight.

  “What about you, Akoni?” she then pried towards him invitingly.

  “Oh, of course,” he bantered back to her, slipping past Arlo and me and taking Anara’s offered hand. He was wearing special thermal specs he’d brought along in his backpack, which granted him a full radar of vision that freed him from the same idealistic fears and impairment me and the prince both timidly shared. “Just scream if you need us,” he then mocked toward his best friend, waving his repaired plasma flare gun as he and Anara disappeared ahead into the darkness, that purple electric trail gleaming out of his backpack, waving like a tail as it dimmed and eventually disappeared.

  Arlo and I walked in silence for a good minute before we caught up to Akoni and Anara’s trail, seeing them stop at the end of the tunnel as they inspected a thin passageway that blocked our way any further along the red path. It was a tight and treacherous corridor created from a recent cave in, and yielding only a small running seam between two collapsed cave walls that had avalanched and fallen onto each other in order to meet in the middle.

  Akoni and Anara didn’t bother waiting for us. They helped each other squeeze inside one by one and vanished from our sight altogether again. Leaving Arlo and me behind as we stayed glued to the guide in wait for their safe reply from the other side. We stared blankly towards the map’s twinkling gold ink while we waited, as if staring at it long enough might just cast some magical spell that would move the earth and offer us a safer alternative to squashing into the slim passageway crack we knew we were eventually going to have to enter.

  It was funny how a single little piece of scrap paper could become so vital to our survival, and yet how quickly it would have been discarded by the prince if he had entered that farmhouse alone. To me, the map was my contribution to the group – something that made me paramount towards completing our mission, of which was a really good feeling to have.

  “It’s safe, come through,” Anara’s voice eventually echoed back to us.

  Following their words, Arlo helped me into the thin gap first. I felt claustrophobic and anxious simply trying to avoid the jagged and slippery rocks within the gaps of boulders that lined the passageway, slithering slowly side by side as Arlo entered shortly after me. Both of our shoulders practically squashing against one another, while my right and his left were left rubbing oil and grit off the crumbling greasy coal walls we were shuffling sideways through.

  I decided it was a good time for a distraction, and time to try and quell the tension between Arlo and me. “Hey, Arlo,” I whispered backwards to him, unable to turn my head around to actually see him as I said it.

  “Yeah, what?” he sharply answered, both of us still trying to slither through a crevice, which was no wider than half of my waistline.

  “Bats versus cats, which giant wins?” I asked randomly, attempting to break the ice and use thought to take away the panic of feeling stuck in a wall.

  “Ahhh... that’s a good question. No idea,” he said, too involved with his struggle of squeezing down the narrowing passageway to put much thought it. “Why? What do you believe?” he eventually asked back.

  “I’m not too sure either. I guess logic says it would be cats because they’re said to grow bigger,” I stated.

  “Yeah, true, but bats fly, and they also stick together, so that’s one hell of an advantage,” he offered back, starting to give it some thought.

  “Yeah, although if there both predators how could cats grow any bigger than bats if bats weren’t what those cats fed on?” I pondered.

  “I’m confused? How is any of this relevant exactly?”

  “Well, it isn’t, but that’s the point,” I said. “I’d rather not think about where we are right now – nor where we’re going”

  “Ohh, it must be such a curse, never being able to turn off that big brain of yours,” Arlo then said towards me playfully.

  “Are you mad at me for what I said back at that dinner table?” I then proceeded to ask him, already rehearsing a full apology in my head as I carefully slipped my way through the tightest gap so far. One I knew he was going to have trouble with, even if Akoni and his thick metal backpack managed to somehow find a way through it.

  He gave off a long delay before responding to me, making me wonder whether I was going to have to remind him about what happened.

  “Uh, no I don’t... Ah, what part exactly?” he asked absentmindedly, concentrating on keeping his crystal sword from getting constantly lodged between the rocks, the issue of how to get it through the gap without the pointy end stabbing into me on the other side.

  “You know, when I made a scene about bread,” I reminded him, feeling embarrassed at the very recollection of it as I choose to continue moving and climb over one of the last tiny jagged steps before the clearing. The passageway widening out more comfortably as I slipped up and down a rock with a finesse I knew Arlo was going to be incapable of reproducing.

  “Uh, yeah, no… It’s all cool,” he said. “I mean who doesn’t love bread?” he humoured, trying to lighten my mood. “I get that it’s been a strange week for all of us,” he then added as he struggled through the tight passageway segment I had cleared, both of us near the cave-in’s very end. “And I guess I can relate t
o that right now,” he finally concluded, sliding down and free triumphantly as he no longer needed to feel his way through the most constricting part of the slowly reopening corridor gap. Both of us relieved he didn’t lose his temper and release air-waves capable of collapsing the rock tunnel all over again.

  “And besides, if you said what you said because of the poor way I and my family treat you, then that’s really our fault and not yours, right?” he asked rhetorically, humbly flaunting that selfless inability he had to ever blame someone else for something that might happen to him in his life – one of the very admirable traits to his whole stubborn persona that made me fancy him the way that I did.

  I felt freed from the constricting guilt and anxiety that I had been clinging to since my whole dinner table outburst. “Thank you,” was all I could shyly express to him about it as I helped pull him free from the final rocks of the gap still in his way, attempting to be modest but considerate nevertheless, as, in actual fact, it did mean the world to me to have him say those words.

  I began dusting off my hands before patting myself down, allowing silence to descend again before approaching another subject. “So…” I began, relentless at wiping away the grime from my own shoulders as I spoke, “you’ve had a pretty big week compared to most,” I remarked with a scandalous grin and smile, referring to his proposal to Ebony.

  “Yeah… I...” he flustered to say. “It just… needed to be done,” he said, looking around, semi-embarrassed as he tried to play it off while trying to work out where to go to next. “Are you really sure this was the right way?” he asked again.

  “Um, yes… Yeah, this time I’m positive,” I said, pointing up to the dim silhouette of his sister and best friend, who waved back to us from the small dark hillside wall climb straight above us. “The tracks go up now that it’s broken,” I added, stepping onto a large granite boulder and, with Arlo’s help, placing my hand on his clean and less-grotty shoulder plate as we began the vertical hike up towards Anara and Akoni, who were catching their breath way up above.

 

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