by Scott Beith
“You offered me nothing. You bribed me. You bribed me because you’re hiding something, and even though I don’t know what that exactly is yet, all the money in this world won’t stop me from figuring it out,” I bit back, proud of myself for standing up to her.
The two of us stared at each other in silence before she finally said, “I have done more for you than you could ever understand.”
“Then tell me!” I shouted back at her, the first time I’d ever yelled directly in her face. She looked torn over whether to tell me what she knew or keep it a secret, a moment of thought passing only to have her turn around and walk away from me, leaving me alone with my new carriage of wealth.
I was in shock over the fact she’d just walked away in surrender, giving me the victory – much more shocked than the bounty of treasure I’d just received. My entire world had just been turned on its head, and yet my own head could think of nothing other than what it was that she knew about my parents.
The irony was I shouldn’t have been angry over her wanting me out of the Capital. I hated living in a palace under her constant supervision anyway. I dreamed of a day I could be finally free. And that my best friend, the princess, would have no problem running away to visit me wherever I was. But I knew taking this deal meant never seeing the prince again.
Maybe Milena was right and that getting away from him was for the best. I loved the sight of him, so much so that it had become too painful to be around him anymore, knowing that he was betrothed to another. Milena was right to say this was a huge win for me: a lifestyle upgrade unlike any other imaginable.
I needed a moment to compose myself. I focused on the quiet serenity of the calm wind and crashing ocean waves while I picked up the fallen treasure and threw it back into my carriage cart, looking inside at the riches one last time before covering it back up with the canvas roofing.
Taking one small silver tray for Puppey to crunch on as I made my way back to the gateway stone, the first time smiling as I began to comprehend all of the potential lives I could live, given my sudden change of circumstance.
I didn’t say anything to the others once I reconvened with them and the rest of the beta group. We were all sitting down beside Akoni and his pottery lesson class, giving the small silver tray to his leashed up raptor secretly as I quietly entered in upon his instructions of how to make the desalinating jugs.
“You alright there?” Anara whispered to me, trying to mould a thin bending nozzle onto the top end of a jug barrel as directed. “So how much trouble did I get you in?” she asked with remorseful sorrow.
“None,” I lied. “I’m all fine,” I said with a smile, wanting to make her feel better.
“See, it always works out for us in the end” She smiled back, for once blissfully unaware of what I and her mother had discussed.
Childishly, I took some of Arlo’s clay for myself as I sat beside Ode, who seemed most content and happy with the arts and crafts time we were all attending.
From there on, my day was only fun and breezy. After finishing Akoni’s pottery lesson, everyone left the jugs on the campfire to distil, allowing those tiny little fire braziers to heat like a kettle. Meanwhile, Anara, Arlo and I took to the ocean’s cooling waves to refresh ourselves, mostly just body surfing the waves before eventually relaxing in the sun on the beach.
After having shown some compassion, Milena ended up sending Zephyr with a few others to pick up food and supplies from his home village, giving him at least a small reprieve to once again be with his townsfolk, leaving the rest of the day for us to be mostly recreational.
By late-afternoon, Arlo, Anara, Akoni and I volunteered to help with the firewood effort by picking up logs and chopping down a few trees in the fields beside the first inlet quarry that went along the outskirts of the field. The prince begun showing me how to swing an axe, only for the task of chopping wood to turn into a competition of who could make the biggest bundle of wood. By the end, we had far more wood than we ever could have needed.
Out in that flats of the neighbouring woodlands and its little lagoon lake quarry, some men had moved rocks from the cliffs and made little rock pool spas. The scorching sun turning the water warm as many others, like us, followed in suit and turned that poolside forest clearing into our own hotel daysprings.
Both Akoni and Puppey were scared of the water for similar reasons, but even they could find pleasure devising his own wooden deck chair to sit on, sipping on desalinated water through a tumbleweed straw, relaxing while Zephyr’s men returned to a standing ovation as soldiers came up to kiss the caravans, kegs and canteens of food and drink slowly being pulled towards us in vastly stockpiled cartes.
It was crazy to see just how happy, energetic and playful everyone became with each other the second that food reached the foreshore, the atmosphere changing almost completely. Joy and relief filling the soldiers as everyone, other than the four of us, joined into groups with their friends, relaxing while they shared stories and entertained one another amidst the slowly descending twilight.
The Sunspire’s shine was quite weak out here, but once we went back onto the beach, we had very little to be afraid of as, once again, for one last night we were far out enough to be able to see a few of the brightest stars, humbled by Aurora and Orion, and Cupid and Psyche, while the bonfires of the beach perimeter were lit. The campfires helping to ward off the great onset of insects and other predators.
Many members of the army came over to me and the others to ask for some of our logs so that they, too, could make simple makeshift tables and equipment to put around their own sandy dug out trench pits.
24
Midnight Pulse
I listened to Adria, a bright bubbly middle-aged woman seated before our bonfire, regaling us with the dangerous exploits of when she was a youngster like us, back in the days before the Sunspire’s creation – a time of dread and terror that came with constant periods of cold and dark wintery famine.
What it was like living in a world where predators competed for the exact same food source, with dragons flying silently over lakes in hunt. Afraid of burning iridescent fire bugs and needle-nosed bloodsucking gnats camouflaged like harmless stars and comets that lit up the sky, while the razor-sharp horns of stampeding Taurus-shaped beetles charged from the pitch black covers of withering bushland and shrubbery. Snatched up by the impaling hands of stalking mantis bugs hiding in the canopy as they dangled down from the treetops, ambushing prey by dragging them up into the treetops, never to be seen again.
Stories like hers were rare to come by, and ordinarily being tales I couldn’t hear enough of. However, considering my run in with Milena and other recent events, I tended to drift in and out of her story lazily, completely losing track of what she said at times, perhaps too drained or lost in my own vivid thoughts to be able to give her the attention she rightly deserved.
From what I could gather about this Adria woman, she was a high ranking, but recently retired, officer, who unfortunately was re-conscripted into the army in order to replenish the low number of trained netters that were essential to our survival out in the wild.
For even though she never directly said it to us, I think every friend I had around that campfire knew she was one of the few nocturnal huntresses who was still proficient at laying down traps and protecting the perimeter of the convoy during the brisker hours of day. Once serving as one of the crown’s leading insurance policies in terms of keeping all the nocturnal predators away. She was possibly even the sole reason why no Badland critters came out of their unseen sand burrows to feed on us while we slept out in the flat expanse of the long white desert.
But even though she sat among us telling stories of monsters we couldn’t even comprehend to exist, she spoke with a heightened speed of somebody who was flustered or on edge, as if she were undergoing some kind of nervous verbal test or try-out and there was a time limit in which her story needed to be told in. Although maybe this was just because she was still technica
lly on duty throughout the twilight, free for just a short hour or so while others were soon to swap her back into routine patrol of the beach’s outskirts. The greatest irony for her being that she was such a reliable asset to the crown that Milena had had no choice but to drag her away from her kids and family and back into the war, seeing as no one else was half as talented as she was with a rope and a few serrated hooks and nails.
Given the greatest duty of all, it took almost that full hour beside her before she cared to inform any of us that she was the one in charge of watching over Midas and his cronies, responsible for keeping them locked tightly in chains.
It intrigued me to know, that Milena had given her one short evening’s rest from being the elected prison warden, having been relieved from those duties just after my confrontation with her. Our queen personally choosing to stand watch over Midas and the dark enclosed iron carriage straight after offering me her gold and her pardon, appearing as if she no longer trusted even her most loyal associates to ensure he remained locked up.
Genuinely thrilled to be among us though, Adria was ecstatic about the fact that the war campaign had ended so quickly, talking endlessly about her two kids and how dearly she missed them both. It was a fresh reminder of exactly what this army was fighting for. It was a joy for Anara, Arlo and many of his top associates to respectfully sit back and overhear her banter about how amazing her civilian life was when she’d been freed of service all those years ago.
And although it took some time to properly realise it, her speedy voice and ecstatic attitude was coming more from genuine nerves than it was from unbridled excitement – over exactly what though, I wasn’t too sure. She did do well at holding the concentration of a group of friends when she was the only fresh face to that campfire cluster, but more than that, I was starting to believe her introduction among us was forced and that she had drawn the short straw with those in her unit. Being chosen as the one to introduce herself to us so that she could secretly pave the way for the rest of the unnamed beta soldiers who were, one by one, circling our bonfire and slowly inviting themselves into our inner circle.
All those freshmen soldiers wanted to be the next alphas and had started off by circling around our campsite, waiting for a moment of casual acceptance, enviously awaiting for some small mention or recognition so that they, too, could successfully merge their group with ours, just like Adria had done in the beginning all by herself.
Rather charismatic and joyful, though, Adria was a fresh burst of positivity – something you wouldn’t expect, given just one glance at her. In all honesty, she looked rebellious and wicked, with black eyes and long dark hair, all shaded under a scary spiked metal battle helmet that ordinarily sat on her head, rather than against her lap, while she entertained the tiny masses. That intimidating helmet, quite possibly, was the very reason why none of us had never once seen her face prior to our campfire.
But all the same, she kept everybody else enthralled with her stories, and did happen to make me smile and laugh. She was a lady on a mission after all; somebody who yielded gifts both dangerous and disgusting as she sat there passively doing it before us, cracking and ripping out her fast growing nails as many looked to the helmet of which they bounced and bucketed into, spitting out razor sharp teeth every so often, as they added to the collection of sharp ivory she build her traps and snares with.
She wore black leather that was stitched and embedded with serrated bone spikes, she had a mix of dyed black and brown body colour, painted to resemble oak, or perhaps the bark of dying wildwood that was most prevalent to her own homeland out near the western mountain border.
I stayed respectfully silent while I maintained my peace and listened to everyone around me.
But by the time all these new introductions were made, the night had truly set upon us, and our small ring of dugout beached sand was as far as it could expand out. Like knights to a round table, we were entrenched by the very holes we had made in the sand by our legs digging seats while piles of sand gusted into our face from the terrible wind-block of sand mounds we made as new rings grew out further away from our inner circle, the perimeter constantly increasing as two cheerful groups slowly merged into one.
Most of the new soldiers within that inner circle were young rising stars like Arlo and Ebony – many I would have been too embarrassed or shy to introduce myself too one week ago. But after my travels, I had no need to hide away anymore, as they were all going out of their way to nervously introduce themselves to me.
I showed off a bit at times, the pulse of midnight setting in and becoming the prime time for my own mastery of the mists to paint pictures of creatures I had seen walking past me during my arrival at the Hideout.
I summoned shadows to my own careless whim, moving them around like living clay puppets amidst the outskirts of the campfire..
Before I knew it, I was part of the social elites. Every soldier from other groups knew my name, and they began making their way over in a constant crowded invasion of our campfire space, roasting damper among our fires, taking some of Jax’s honey jam from the jar to enhance the taste of the dough. It was a time for all those tough soldiers to sit back and relax while the invited stewards and village cooks got to work, creating us snacks and dinners they brought to the fire sites, taking us briefly away from the barbaric and nomadic lifestyle we had been living over the past few days.
Shortly before the warden Adria’s abrupt departure, however, she shared with us one last ghost story – a sense of imagination and historical recreation brought visually to life as I used my shadows to blur the lines between myth and reality.
The story was simple, as we all knew it well, but her black eyes were completely withdrawn, as if this particular fable had some truth or unforgettable memory attached to it.
A wicked and grotesque tale of necromancy, witches, and prophets of death she insisted was as true as tropical rain.
She continued to grow, grind and graft ivory from her skin as she retold the old story, but no one but me seemed to notice those spitting teeth and bone fragments as the ‘story-telling artist’ within her had come out to, well and truly, painting her fantasy into each nymph’s gullible mind.
I, myself, was sitting the closest to her and the fire, breathing out cooled air as the man who could turn dirt into sharp icy mud spikes peered towards me from the opposite side of the fire, doing his all to avoid each awkward glance we locked together before stating quietly, “No thanks,” when I politely offered him the plates and sponge cakes I first assumed he was staring towards.
Many members of Arlo’s old unit were in close attendance, all trying to pretend they weren’t bullies to me back in my previous life – back before the dynamic shift of authority and power. I found it hard to remind myself that I didn’t like any of them, despite how polite and nice they were currently treating me.
“Don’t even think about it,” I scolded a man who was about to hit a servant’s backside with a wooden spoon. My defiance catching Anara’s eye. She just smiled with a look that confirmed what I knew she was thinking, giving that very same steward her own spot beside herself, and handing him a piece of the desert he’d given out, symbolizing to all those around us that, even with great success, I and her weren’t going to stand for inequality just because someone might be more noble than those who were next to them.
Adria’s final tale was the most terrifying of all. It was the story of the Nyx monster – a moonlight-driven night stalker who was allegedly pulled down from the heavens for being too wrathful and cruel to be allowed to remain up in the kingdom among the clouds. It was a silly fable I had heard many times before as a child, but one I had rarely put any thought into until the first eclipse I walked through – probably because it was a tale so terrifying at night-time it could bring chills to even Adria’s tough audience.
Her story went all the way back to the days of our species’ forerunners: the first sea-nymphs to come out of the ocean and settle upon the land – back
when us sprites were just sirens committing heresy by abandoning the hunt for meat and choosing to live peacefully off jungle terrain instead.
It was said that the Nyx was one of the first of the forest nymphs to grow wings and ascend, but later refused to stick with fruit over flesh when flight gave its primal instincts much added strength, and so it was kicked out from the heavens, left to prey on all the bottom dwellers, like us, who never had an ability to adapt and ascend.
Unrivalled by its feelings of hatred and betrayal, the dark angel was said to have hunted and eaten all nymphs alike, and began to blacken the sky with clouds in order to block out the sun and starve out its own kind so that they could share in its pain.
It was also said that this Nyx assassin’s capture brought our very civilization to the brink of extinction. Its capture was a victory only accomplished when both the wisp angels and siren succubi teamed up to vanquish the foul creature from the middle land.
All three species of nymphs working together to destroy the monster and build the magical moth head totem shrines that help to ward off that evil beings everlasting spirit.
The night ended on that bedtime story as, with nothing to top that tall tale monster myth, things quickly began to quieten down and subside, with most nymphs wandering back to their own campsites to sleep, while those, like myself, who were passionate to remain, moved closer to renew the dimming fire. Ode in particular, needed the company and some extra reassurance as he was most notably spooked by the tale he had never heard before, things non materialistic in nature being the only thing that scare someone build with a skin as hardened as coarse rock and stone.