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

by Scott Beith

  Akoni scanned the room, looking for anyone to offer a counter argument. All but Arlo and myself were no longer willing to look him back in the eyes as the rest of the crowd stared at the ground.

  “No,” Akoni said.

  “Ok, grab him,” stated the queen.

  The other technicians whispered to one another, only to see two engineers either side of him stand and grab hold of both his shoulders.

  “Let him go!” Arlo then demanded, looking both of them dead in the eyes, both of those men scared but refusing to do so, while a whole crowd advanced towards the two of them, preventing either of them from backing away.

  “Last chance,” the queen warned. Both a civilian militia and military to either side. “Reinstall that crystal!” she stubbornly directed, pointing towards the underlying maintenance trench-ledge where the gold and silver framed orb structure hanged over.

  “I won’t,” he stated

  “You will!” she demanded.

  “Not until we know more,” he said, dropping his tool belt and wrist bracer to the ground as both a form of surrendering disarmament and dramatic objection.

  “Take him to his father!” she instructed. “If one of them fixes it, then maybe one of them will get to live,” she decreed.

  “Whoa. Calm down. On what grounds?” Arlo asked quickly in concern, leaping forward to block the route of incoming guards handing over Akoni from the technicians that still currently held him.

  “Treason,” she replied, staring her son in the eyes.

  The guards dared to then push the prince aside but stopped as he pushed back with an even rougher and more ferocious resolve.

  “Step away, Arlo,” Zephyr ordered the prince, drawing his bow straight up toward Akoni’s middle mass while his noble friend blocked the arrows flight path.

  The civilians, like me, were all scared stiff, merely waiting for a subtle breeze to erupt the room and allow pure chaos to commence.

  The prince raised his glossy clear sword from his back, the light of the orange sun reflecting onto his crimson glowing narrow blade.

  “OK THAT’S ENOUGH!” the queen roared, her words echoing throughout the chamber, quaking the ground again and sending everyone to their knees in agony. Pushing her son aside and grabbing Akoni herself throughout the aftermath of her screeching torment.

  The voice was like a vice compressing my head as she continued to shriek each time someone tried moved from the floor, torturing everyone but herself as she dragged Akoni towards the stairs.

  But then that voice sharply stopped. Milena’s own shadow had tackled her, and was currently smothering her mouth from screeching as she was kept momentarily pinned down to the floor.

  Everyone looked immediately to me, even though no one was more shocked or scared than I was by the shadows sudden appearance. All I’d wanted was the pain to stop, but given my relationship to all those involved, it appeared as if I had just stated where exactly my own loyalties truly laid.

  All but my close friends appeared ready to converge on me. I got to my feet and timidly backed away towards the wall. Milena exploded her way out of that apparition with a strong volcanic burst of sound, all remnant and presence of my protector puffing away in a figureless puff-cloud of shade. The well-mannered obsidian knight I’d spoken to on the beach was suddenly three feet away from me, the first to raise a sword of solid frosty black ice in careful approach towards me.

  I looked around the room for help. Arlo had chosen to abandon Akoni as he came protectively towards me, his sword striking his old training partner as he managed to flick a small spinning kick into the man’s abdomen and push himself directly away from me.

  “Bring me my son,” Milena ordered as she continued to drag Akoni down the stairs forcefully in exit of the chamber floor. “AND KILL HER!” she wickedly shouted, the pure hatred in her voice elevating my already trembling heart.

  I couldn’t even dream to describe my light-headed flood of feelings upon hearing her say that towards me. My eyes widened to a point of pure white blindness. I was completely out of focus as if time had slowed and my whole world had already gone dark. It was a chamber full of hostile enraged strangers who were suddenly facing me as if I were a monster in need of sleighing. The looks on their faces made me feel as if I had fallen onto the dinner plate of starving siren cannibals, as for that second, and that second alone, I had no doubt in my mind that it would be the end of me.

  Despite all I had learned in my weeks travel, I was back to being a helpless damsel all over again. I was in too panic to raise my fists and try to fight, too much to be any use at all as Arlo attempted to protect me from arrows and curved little black knives that were being hurled around him and aimed to hit me along the sidelines.

  Arlo was my only friend in the room, catching arrowheads that slowed as they came towards me, all of them launched towards my head and chest by Zephyr in ludicrous rapid fire.

  “Wait! Please don’t!” I begged towards the crowd as they continued to persistently advance towards us. My pleas falling on deaf ears as this remorseless group were pushing us further towards the sky and open balcony overhang, the space we shared becoming too small for any proper form of continued deflective combat.

  The two of us were only a shy prod away from tumbling over the low level rails and plunging down the many elevated stories of the castle’s inner walls towards the concrete front steps near the marketplace.

  A fleet of bolts and daggers flew towards us from the back of the crowd, the prince using his sound-talents each time to slow those sharp instruments down, carefully flicking them away towards the walls and ledge with the edge of his glossy crystal sword.

  “Son, walk away from her now or you walk away from everything,” Helios threatened, moving before the front of the crowd, acting the part of a worried father.

  The prince actively lowering his sword in a surrendering response, only to look behind himself towards me and the ledge with the very same fear-stained stare he’d given me when we were in the well during the swamp ambush of Ambarvale.

  I nodded acceptingly of the horror I knew he was considering, holding my breath and bracing myself for a long scary jump and fall.

  “Arlo don’t” Helios muttered, more afraid than I was when he realised what Arlo was thinking. “Leave with her and you’ll never be king,” he managed to spit out, only for his son to dive and leap us over the balcony together, escaping the volley of sharp projectiles thrown at my head before we began our treacherous freefall.

  Air dramatically cooled like frost as the downforce of high pressure wind blew against our eyes and face. We had in essence traded one horrible fate for another, falling much faster than the slowly descending sun as we moved in between the shaded pockets of the eastern bell tower and the old northern lighthouse that hanged off the cliff face.

  We came to an abrupt mid-tower stop when Arlo stabbed his sharp crystal sword into the castle’s wall, the blade slicing through the stone like cloth, only to eventually slow down under the friction as all but the hilt sparked and glowed red with the crackling fury of lightning and fire, heat-friction eventually cooling and stopping us near halfway down the ludicrously high tower spire. My grip slipped from the impact of the stop as his sweaty shoulders and arms caused me to slip away, only to be caught in the ‘nick of time’ by his quickly lowered loose left hand grip.

  “Just hold on!” he shouted ironically as he held my right wrist too tight for me to move it and do the same with to his. Both of us stuck insanely high up from the concrete paved market square below. Stranded upon the inner city wall above one of four tall corner towers, neither a ledge or window in sight for us to escape through. Our only choice was to keep holding on and wait for something or someone out there to arrive and save us.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any ideas?” Arlo asked worryingly, admitting this was as far as he had thought his plan through as I battled to reaffirm another hand for grip against the bottom of his ankle, feeling as if I had no grip
at all but was merely glued on by just the sweat of my palm.

  “No,” I said in cower. Only to notice we were right in between the nodes of sun and tower shadow as is it slithered like tiny worms in wait of me. “Maybe just let go.”

  Arlo looked down at me, deciding whether or not to trust me about losing his sword and grip to another terrifying freefall. It was a lot to ask of him, and it meant taking his trust in me to a whole new level. One I wasn’t even particularly confident with, considering the speed of how quickly we’d fall. The chances of those worms becoming a clouded net large and dense enough to catch us without simply going through it were slim to nil.

  “Are you sure,” he then yelled down, a whimper in his tone, too, as he saw exactly what insane feat I was intending to accomplish.

  “Not really,” I admitted in full scared confession, my biggest difficulty being how best to judge the exact speed of our fall to match the catching speed of a cloudy impermeable hook and net just below us.

  “But are you ready?” he then whimpered to his own scared concern.

  “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think I can do it, Arlo,” I shouted up to him while I dangled, looking at my feet and the huge drop towards flat concrete below.

  “Then don’t think, just do it, ok” he stated, only to swallow his breath deeply and look away as he faced his own fears, pulling us up slightly higher only to let the sword go altogether.

  I was so scared I couldn’t see straight. We had fallen straight into a web of blackness I had made, a dark black blanket of blindness cloaking over us as we landed squarely on top of a quickly devised warped bed of scaly shadows that then immediately ripped and frayed apart into feathers upon our landing. Struck too hard by the intense downforce of wind and gravity that came down along with us.

  The impact made upon my failed cloud net was far too heavy and the shadows far too weak and flimsy to be able to both catch and successfully restrain us. Instead our landing was so forceful that every hook fitted into the war-torn crevices of the stone walls I had made, were pushed out from their wormy burrows and forced us to continue freefalling down in one huge unseen blob-bubble of slowly evaporating shade.

  It was futile of myself to have even tried to attempt it, there simply was no worm-like pin or brambly thorn I could physically manifest with the amount of resource needed to have been able to make something solid enough to sink into the brisk dusk wall. Nor a tentacle or pad of suction that could stick us or it as we fell right past all guard windows of the city walls upon the carpet cloud net I had melded. However, thinking quick on my feet, I and the wind were working together at spreading my shadows and stretching the blanket thinner and lighter upon our giant fall.

  Like a parachute box in the making, this time, we were sitting on top of the sail rather than hanging off one from underneath. I felt like we were slowing down as we dropped towards the floor, gliding and ballooning just like the crazy spiders that were rumoured to be able fly on their silk lines. I had truly pushed my limits as I kept my mind solely focused on flattening the blob in all its clumpy fat areas and spanning out the sides like bugs wings, pushing the feathery sheet further and further apart from each end as I did so.

  My hands were ruffling the bulk of what we sat, grooming and flexing it out until it was sufficient enough to catch and sale in the wind and drift us over the long connective alley streets downwards from market square. I had granted myself a whole new lease on life upon the realisation we could sail above all of the dangers below us. Together we soared, feeling just the floating pollen debris found out in northern grass-fields just above the walls and beyond the hinterlands outside of our sight.

  The wind blew in our ears almost refreshingly as our descent slowed. Arlo was still clueless of what I was doing while he remained covering his eyes in terror of my failed net idea. “You can look up,” I said in a proud gloat.

  The wind was finally soft enough for us to be able to hear each other clearly. His reaction though was less of gratitude and more of panic as he looked all around, pointing downwards and highlighting the source of frantic war horns and soldiers being called to arms. “Can we go faster?” he shouted.

  As from magic carpet to fluttering moth in the sky. My prince and I continued to glide downwards towards flat paved concrete and the profound grey growing smudges of incoming infantry members already moving out onto the streets and merging as one unanimous witch-hunting crowd.

  Doors were being busted open, full of fresh and shiny unified recruits coming out in mass numbers, marching in one prepared chase to catch us wherever we landed.

  Arrows shot from the high walls towards us as those below came in like a flood that washed across the upcoming sandy pavement and streets, cutting off all immediate safe areas we could potentially have descended upon. It was a real unavoidable problem, as I had no ability to regain our dropping altitude, and, regardless of where we were to land, infantry soldiers were inevitably going to be there mere moments upon our eventual landing.

  I watched them all fan out to cover up as much area as possible, each diagonal swivel we made changed our direction as we virtually did circles around the market square and inner city district. I had no choice but to swoop us down quickly to dodge bolts being fired from a skilled crossbow marksman hidden in his shop stall below us.

  The sight of each junior soldier’s face becoming distinguished within the clustering crowds as we near crashed on top of them before pulling up and veering downhill towards the lower outer street suburbs, somehow managing to utilize the fierce speed of the drop to rise over a few small and flat upcoming housing estates.

  We felt helpless and terrified, the wings themselves were fading as they had expanded too far out to be sucked back up or controlled, spreading from the size of huge moths to that of the blood-sucking bats that prey on them, we started swinging and swaying left and then right off-balance as we dodged roofing only just managing to stay above the downhill descent while crashing towards the drains, caverns and south sandstone wall of our cities end.

  I knew very little about flight avionics, Akoni had made it look so much easier than it was upon my first trial at it. One would imagine there was nothing at all to hit when you’re in the free air up above, but nothing could have felt further from the truth. Fact was, all you ever seemed to do was turn and dodge things coming in an immediate collision course towards you.

  Luckily for us, though. I had done a sufficient enough job at saving Arlo and me from all incoming perils, and had quite serendipitously also amplified our speed at the cost of losing most control in order to safely distance us from the soldiers and civilian armada that were in pursuit of our long-winged black sail.

  For that moment we were safe, but we had very little time to land before the light of dusk fried up too much of our wings’ edges and left the cloud so soft and thin we would fall right through it. I had managed to find an area to land from just up above the side alley streets by the poorer low level side of town, passing over multiple rows of closed shops and stalls on our way towards the underground irrigation bunker tunnels that made up the castle’s intricate catacombs.

  Ready or not, I chose to wrap the wings around us both as we shot and crashed into a stockpile of fruit barrels in an abandoned street wagon, smashing into them destructively despite the low powered pillow cannon our fierce crash landing felt to us.

  The prince was first to find which way was topside after drooling on himself realising which way gravity was pushing amidst the murder scene of splintered wood and dark juice stains we had found ourselves splattered within. He pulled me up and out of the wagon we had smashed and broken, getting up on the angle due to fracturing of the right wheel upon our impact with it.

  He grabbed my hand in a hurry as he attempted to lead us away as quickly as possible, the two of us leaving one bloody massacre of red and blue berry stains across our clothes, face and skin – red raspberries resembling the sight of dripping blood as we were quick to flee the crash site before l
icking the back of our hands and realising that for ourselves.

  Upon our escape, I finally got a stray moment to wonder what kind of new evil I had found myself in the middle of. Obviously, there had been some serious lies told and covered up by the nobles.

  I wondered while he dragged me to safety how much Arlo might have known about what was actually going on, whether I should even be trusting him. After all, everything his mother ever taught him involved some form of power play and, whatever it was the nobles were hiding, the queen herself had become dangerously engulfed in the very middle of it. Milena had been manipulating an entire closed-off society with propaganda that was clearly corruptive and all consuming.

  For her to abandon her daughter and make her son an outcast and villain in every villagers’ eyes was not something that was going to be related to a deceit that was either small or trivial. There was a big secret yet to be revealed, and clearly one only Midas was brave enough to try and reveal before his exile.

  When Arlo and I ducked behind posts and watched the soldiers in the street pass us, I could see in their eyes a certain form of disgust. They were hunting us with hatred, as if we were the new gnolls in need of disembowelment. But we weren’t gnolls. We were just rebellious survivalists who had become anarchists and traitors to them.

  We moved swiftly and silently through the outer city street side alleys, we were blocked upon all fronts, merely waiting for the soldiers to eventually track us down. The prince and I had to keep deafly quiet as we stuck to the darkness and its corners, finding an empty old broken wood window to step through, hiding while the soldiers and village militia’s with pitchforks and torches worked together in hunt of us – hardly the same locals I had bought clothes and bread from just a short week ago.

  “We need to find Camilla,” I whispered to Arlo.

  “She won’t risk treason to help you,” Arlo whispered back.

  “Midas told me she was the key,” I said, a name spoken out loud that filled Arlo with almost immediate regret.